The Brutal Death of Berengera Caswell
Berengera Caswell leaves her small hometown life to become a factory girl
Life was exciting and new for Berengera Caswell. She and her two sisters had just kicked off the dust from their small rural hometown (Brompton) near Sherbrooke in Quebec Province, and arrived in Lowell, Massachusetts to start a new life. They had heard stories of other young girls leaving their families and going to work in the New England factories, and the prospect of earning their own wages and having an opportunity to see the world before being married off to some local boy back home sounded terrific.
Berengera, Ruth, and Thais arrived in Lowell, Massachusetts, and quickly found work, but they heard that things might be better in Manchester, so after just a few months they packed up their few belongings and moved to New Hampshire where they would live for several years.
Wealthy entrepreneurs and businessmen were creating entire towns centered around factory life. It was the industrial revolution, and the textile industry in New England was booming. Manchester was one of those towns, and the men behind Amoskeag Manufacturing Company endeavored to craft a utopian factory-city with their mill being at the center of it. It was 1848, just 10 years after the town of Manchester had been founded, and it was thriving.
The pitiful wages of factory girls
All three sisters found work at the textile factory. Berengera worked in the carding room where raw cotton was cleaned and converted into thread. Her sister, Thais, found work in the weaving department. They worked hard, and they were surrounded by other young women like themselves. 80% of the workforce was female! And though it was exciting to be earning their own money, women were poorly paid. Berengera only made about $1.50/hr in today’s money, and she worked long shifts. In 1848 money, she earned just 54 cents per day. She earned money based on her performance, getting a certain amount per yard of cloth, or length of thread, in a system called piecework. And though the wages were modest, after paying for her housing and food, she still had some money leftover. Enough, at least, to enjoy some of what Manchester had to offer.
Life in Manchester, NH
After their long days, they would walk the city streets window shopping, perhaps finding a bit of jewelry, a new hat or scarf, or even some fancy fabric to craft a new dress. They might visit a circus, or see a fortune-teller. For a day and half’s wages (75 cents), they might have their photograph taken by a daguerreotypist. The Manchester Museum’s Gallery of Fine Arts had shells, fossils, and the entire skeleton of a Greenland whale on display. But some evenings the Caswell sisters may have stayed home in their boardinghouse rooms, sewing, knitting, reading, or writing letters back home.
A sisterhood grows in a crowded boardinghouse
The sisters may have been 200 miles from their father, but they were still under the strict paternalistic rule of the mill. The company built so-called “boardinghouses” where women were to live, sometimes as many as six to a room, under the watchful eye of a female overseer. She would keep close tabs on the women’s comings and goings and enforce the rules of the house. There were strict curfews, cleanliness standards, and a requirement to attend church, and any misbehavior jeopardized not only your housing, but your job as well.
The crowdedness of the dormitories allowed for almost no privacy. The only place that the women were allowed to have visitors was down in the common areas of the house. I suspect that the rooms smelled a bit, well… fresh… considering how many women shared the limited bathing facilities.
Though it sounds uncomfortable by modern standards, the women made the most of it, forming close relationships with one another, sometimes referring to themselves as a “band of sisters”. They would rise before dawn and have breakfast together before heading off to the mill in their daily uniform: a dress, boots, and stockings. Many of the dresses from the time resembled a kind of hybrid between a dress and an apron, and beneath the dress, a long-sleeved shirt might be worn. Hair was generally kept up and out of the way of the many hazards in the mill.
Long hours at the textile mill
Work was hard. The average workweek was about 65 hours, Monday through Saturday. They suffered early hearing loss from the constant drone of noise from the machinery, and they had to use hand signs and read lips to communicate with their coworkers. Still, work back home at the farm was just a grueling, and at least they were getting paid at the mill! The mill was neither heated in the winter nor cooled during the summer, and I can only imagine being on my feet 11 or 12 hours a day in a room heated only by the bodies and machinery within it during a harsh New Hampshire winter day.
Berengera alternated between working at the mills and returning home to see her family. She went for a visit in August of 1848 back to Canada, and returned to Manchester with Thais in 1849.
Berengera met a boy
Berengera was 5’4”, had fair skin, long dark-brown hair, and was described as a “good-looking girl”. Her teeth, according to a doctor’s account, “were the handsomest he had ever seen; being complete, uniform, and perfect.” Her unusual name came from her cousin, who had sadly died at the age of two, and her cousin had been named after Queen Berengaria, a 12th century queen married to Richard the Lionheart. She wore drop earrings and accumulated many beautiful accessories and baubles from her wages she earned at Amoskeag. She likely attracted quite a bit of attention from the men in her circle.
In the summer of 1849, Berengera met a young man who worked in the machine shop named William Long. They likely met through a mutual acquaintance named Oates Tyler, who was also from their hometown in Canada, and they struck up a summer romance. In September, though, William was fired from his job at the mill and decided to return to his hometown (Saco, Maine), to get back on his feet.
Berengera leaves her sisters and makes a startling discovery
Berengera, too, decided to leave, but not to join William in Saco. She picked up her last paycheck (seven dollars) and spent two or three days sewing and packing, giving Thais scraps of fabric from her dresses to remember her by. She headed to the Massachusetts coast to work in Salem, leaving her sisters behind.
By November, she realized that her body was changing. She had missed a period or two and noticed that she was feeling nauseous. Her breasts were swollen and tender. She was pregnant, and in a terrible predicament. In the culture of the 1840’s, having a child out of wedlock brought terrible shame upon herself and her family, and she was all alone in a new seaside town. She decided that she needed to meet with her baby’s father, William, so she packed up again and headed to Saco.
William’s surprise visitor with some big news
William was working in the enormous machine shop of the Saco Water Power Company: 275 feet long by 46 feet wide. He spent his day making the machines and equipment that kept the area’s textile mills in production. He lived in the company’s boardinghouse on Gooch Island (now known as Factory Island) – a small island situated in the center of the Saco River overlooking Saco to the north and Biddeford to the south.
It was an ordinary Monday morning for him, a few days before Thanksgiving, on November 26, 1849, and he went to the counting room to pick up a check. He walked through the doorway and was stunned to see his old beau, “Berry”, and her friend Rosalie. He greeted them warmly and suggested that they all take a meal at his boardinghouse together. They took him up on it and at noon they all made their way to the dining hall to have lunch. Conversation was light and easy, but William could tell that Berengera had something that she wanted to talk to him about. Later that afternoon, and again that evening, they met privately. He was stunned to learn that their brief romance had resulted in her becoming pregnant. After a difficult conversation, they decided that the best thing for both of them was abortion.
Enceinte, emmenagogue, and other euphemisms
Abortion was an option in 1849. But they didn’t call it that. There was a widely-held belief in a concept called “quickening” that referred to the moment that the fetus could be felt moving within the womb. For someone in 1849, the word abortion generally referred to terminating a pregnancy after that moment. Up until that point, a woman might refer to herself as “imbalanced”, or having a “case of irregularity”. She might be “blocked” or have “missed her monthly sickness”. If she didn’t want another child, she might find an advertisement for “menstrual regulators” or “preventative powders” in the newspaper, or she might make an appointment with a doctor to be “fixed up” or “to be put straight”. And if things were successful, she would say that her “menses had been restored” or “it had slipped away”. Euphemisms ruled the day, and what was hidden behind them was a deeply conflicted feeling amongst many Americans about the concept of life prior to quickening but after conception. They needed a safe way to talk about the common procedure without straying into the very dangerous and illegal talk of abortion.
One medical commentator asked rhetorically, did "public opinion in the United States sanction abortion?" and he concluded that it did indeed. "The United States," he argued, "tolerates abortion done within the bounds of discreet secrecy.” (DeWolfe, Murder of Mary Bean)
Berengera might have been able to find a provider from a quick look through the newspaper advertisements or asking around town, but William said that he would handle it, so she waited. William, somewhat surprisingly, went to his boss at his new job, and asked him for help. He set up a meeting at the local tavern called the Saco House.
Who is Mary Bean?
Three men, William, his boss, and Dr. James Smith, sat around a table together to determine Berengera’s fate. Dr. Smith was a botanic doctor who primarily used herbal remedies for healing. He said that he could take care of the problem for an up-front payment of $10. William’s boss likely offered to cover the cost with the expectation that William would work off the debt over the months that followed. The doctor shared with the other men that he really needed the money—perhaps an indication of the popularity of his practice… or lack thereof. Still, William felt bad for the doctor and bought him a cigar, and they concluded their business with a smoke. As they were parting, William asked Dr. Smith if he wanted to know her name, and he said no. He gave her a pseudonym: Mary Bean.
His choice of pseudonym was not just some spontaneous choice – it had meaning from his past. Some nefarious associates of his would use the last name Bean to refer to secret business that they had together. In the death of a Manchester tax-man from five years earlier, the man was lured out of his home for a meeting with a “Mrs. Bean”, a code-word, and it was reported in the murder trial coverage that followed. Dr. Smith was even connected to the man’s death though he was never charged.
Berengera moves in with her doc
The next day, William brought Berengera to Smith’s home on Storer Street in Saco. The doctor said that she would need to stay with him for at least a few days. When Berengera had arrived in Saco/Biddeford, she had gotten a room at a boardinghouse, and, assuming her stay at the doctor’s would be brief, she even left her trunks of clothing there. Once she got settled in, the doctor gave her a tonic, made from juniper, called savin, to induce uterine contractions and cause her to abort. While she waited for its effect, she helped around the Smith house, doing light housework, sewing, and selling milk from their dairy cow to neighbors.
Her beau, William, visited repeatedly throughout her stay, particularly on Sundays. He wore the same outfit each time: green pants, a black frock coat, and a hat.
As the days passed, her concern grew. Her “delayed period” hadn’t come. The doctor gave her a second dose in early December, again, with no effect. Hers was a persistent case of “blockage”.
Surgery goes wrong; Tragedy results
On December 15, 1849, after “Mary Bean” had been with him for a couple of weeks, and about three months into her pregnancy, Dr. Smith took more drastic measures. He decided it was time for surgical intervention. Using a group of instruments that included a wire, about eight inches in length with a hook at the end, he performed an abortion. It was no doubt very painful. He used no anesthetic, and as the tool made its way through the cervix into the uterus, the uterus likely produced intense, painful contractions. He was successful in terminating the fetus, but made a fatal mistake. He cut the uterine wall, leaving a gash 1/4” wide and 4” long.
Berengera’s body fought to heal the wound and the rapidly developing infection. She had terrible chills and fever. A young Irish girl, Ann Coveny, who worked in the Smith residence, later recalled Berry’s yelps of pain and calling out in the night as her body was overcome by infection. Sepsis had set in.
Dr. Smith tried to help her, but didn’t have the tools or knowledge to make a difference. In futility, he put two medicated plasters on her back, hoping to treat the infection through the skin.
Late on Saturday evening, a week after the abortion (December 22nd), Dr. Smith and his wife retired for the night, fully clothed, in a nearby parlor; and Berengera, alone and in septic shock, died a terrible death.
Dr. Smith hatches a plan
The next morning, Smith and his wife awakened and discovered Berengera’s lifeless body. His mind raced with what to do. He knew that Berengera was not from Saco and only few people even knew where she was staying. He thought that perhaps her disappearance might not be noticed if only he could make her body disappear. His servant, of course, knew her, so he brought young Ann Coveny into the parlor where Mary Bean’s body rested, and he told her that she had passed away. She asked how, and he thought quickly. Of typhoid, he said. Typhoid’s symptoms included a high fever, so to little Ann, this might seem plausible enough. He told her to keep quiet about Mary Bean, and he even gave her an apron as a gift to memorialize her agreement to be silent.
Dr. Smith covered her with a sheet and waited. He had hatched a plan to get rid of the body. His home, on Storer Street, was virtually in the center of town. At the end of his block was Main Street, which went right over Saco River to Gooch Island (now Factory Island) where the mills and boardinghouses were located. In other words, there was plenty of foot and carriage traffic as well as neighbors that might see what he was up to. So he waited for nightfall and went to his barn and removed a large board – large enough to cover her whole body. He left her in her stockings and a thin shift dress, and a nightcap, and he tied an apron over her face. He laid her out on the board and, using some rope, tied her arms and legs together, and her body to the board. With some help (which forever remains a mystery, perhaps Mrs. Smith?), he moved the large board and her body to Woodbury Brook, a small tributary that fed the large nearby River that ran through downtown. The brook was just a short walk from his house. He put her face-down in the stream, her body concealed by the floating board above, and sent her on her way to the Saco River, which in just five short miles drained into the Atlantic Ocean. It was mid-December and though the winter change of weather was well underway, he was fortunate that the small brook hadn’t frozen over, and as he freed her from the bank and watched her float away, he counted his blessings for his good fortune and his quick mind. He returned home and settled into bed.
Tying up loose ends
The next day, William appeared to inquire about Berengera’s health. He broke the bad news about typhoid, and William, with a heavy heart, accepted her death. He may have connected the dots between the abortion and her death, and he likely doubted this cover story. He felt some responsibility himself, and he told Smith that he would see to having the body buried, but Smith told him he had “partly made arrangements for that himself.”
A few weeks later, in January, Dr. Smith came to William again, this time seeking more money and the other trunk that still remained at the boardinghouse that Berengera had stayed at when she first arrived in Saco. When William confessed that he had no money to offer and had no interest in retrieving the trunk for him, Smith, angry, told him that Mary had died in childbirth and delivered a son as big as Smith’s fist. William asked where he had buried her body, but he again dodged the question, saying that he would reveal her final resting place some other time.
Dr. Smith took a horse-drawn sleigh to the boardinghouse and collected the trunk. When the matron, Mrs. Means, confronted the doctor over her unpaid bill, he resisted but eventually paid the long overdue charge of one dollar for a week’s room and board. Mrs. Means was concerned about Berengera’s lengthy absence—she had left her valuables unattended for over a month—but the doctor said that she had left suddenly to take care of family “in the east” and was just now retrieving her trunk as she returned and “headed west”. The story seemed reasonable enough, and for several months it seemed that no one raised any further questions to the doctor about Berengera Caswell.
Saco town boy makes a startling discovery
On April 13th, the first sunny day of spring, young Osgood Stevens, a 14-yr-old boy, was helping to clean out Woodbury Brook. Storer Street ran over the brook and beneath the street was a stone culvert that had an obstruction. Osgood went into the stone tunnel in the icy-cold waters and discovered a large board that was wedged in the culvert. He moved it a bit and discovered an icy hand beneath the board. He was scared and shocked, so he went to sound the alarm and fetch help. A crowd gathered as some of Osgood’s neighbors pulled the body from the water and up the banks of the brook.
News traveled quickly and soon enough Dr. Smith realized what had been discovered. Ann later recalled that he had muttered under his breath “Ah, they have found Mary.” The need for secrecy was heightened and the doctor’s wife threatened Ann, saying that if Smith went to prison, they would be left poor and destitute, and that she would put the young girl out on the street. To sweeten the deal, she gave her stockings and shoes from Berengera’s trunk.
An inquest jury is assembled
With the weather turning wintry and the crowd pressing, Constable James J. Wiggin moved the body to a nearby barn. The coroner, Thomas Tufts, called a local doctor, Dr. Hall, to the scene. They cleaned the body of months of dirt and debris with several pails of water and removed her clothes. With the body relatively clean, the doctor concluded that she had obviously been murdered, so the constable, Thomas Tufts, assembled an inquest jury, a group of men that were to conduct an initial investigation. The doctor continued his examination and found no obvious trauma to the exterior of her body, but he discovered that she had recently been pregnant and died as a consequence of abortion. The town’s undertaker arrived shortly thereafter and the very day that her body had been discovered, she was buried.
The name Mary Bean materialized quickly. Newspapers reported a few theories of how she was identified. Some said it was a scar on her wrist that Mrs. Means had recognized; others said it was a local dentist who remembered removing a tooth of hers; but most of them said that she had been identified by the “extraordinary length and beauty of her hair.”
Dr. Smith worked to destroy any trace that Mary Bean had been a patient of his. He burned a trunk of hers that had her initials spelled out in brass buttons on its end. He wrote his own name on her wooden trunk. He broke his surgical instruments used for abortion into pieces and threw them into his parlor stove.
Dr. Smith admits his connection to “Mary Bean”
By Monday, 2 days after her body was found, Mary Bean had been linked to Dr. Smith. Constable Lane searched his house and uncovered the contents of his stove, retrieving nails, hairpins, bits of metal buttons, and broken wires. Dr. Smith tried to leverage his relationship with the Constable, calling him “his friend” and suggesting that it was all just a misunderstanding. Dr. Smith admitted that Mary Bean had lived with his family. Ann, their servant, was called in for an interview, but she was terrified; she swore she knew nothing and afraid to return to the Smith’s house, she ran to Biddeford to stay at her brother’s home.
The jurors walked up and down Storer Street canvassing the neighborhood, putting together pieces of the puzzle from Smith’s neighbors.
On Tuesday, 3 days after the discovery, her body was exhumed so that Dr. Hall could conduct a more thorough examination. He removed her reproductive organs and placed them in glass jars, which he took to his office for further study. Four other physicians observed the detailed autopsy. After he was done, her body was buried again. His report read that she had “enjoyed good health … with unusually healthy lungs and the absence of nearly all evidence of disease.” He believed that she “would not miscarry from any natural cause.”
Is this your board, Dr. Smith?
Osgood’s father had watched as the body was removed from the brook and remembered something that would crack this case wide open. He realized that the unusual whitewash on the plank reminded him of a whitewash that he had seen in Dr. Smith’s barn. The constable and a local carpenter went to inspect the barn and discovered that one stall was missing a plank. They brought the board that was discovered in the brook and to their great surprise, found it was a perfect fit.
An arrest is made!
The next morning, Wednesday, April 17, 1850, the constable arrested Dr. Smith for the murder of Mary Bean. Saco had no jail, so he held the doctor at the Saco House (a public house), where the constable kept watch.
On Thursday night, the inquest jury finished their report with their findings: they announced that Mary Bean had died from a massive infection in her abdomen or uterus resulting from an abortion performed by Dr. James Smith.
The constable brought the report to the local judge, Frederick Greene, recommending the charge of murder. The judge scheduled a hearing right away to give the attorneys the chance to present evidence. This was the 19th century equivalent of a modern-day probable cause hearing. The hearing was scheduled to begin on Friday, April 19—not even a week after her body was found—but the judge’s sudden illness forced a postponement until Monday. The wheels of justice moved awfully fast in 1850!
The whole town turns out for the judicial hearing
News of the murder had spread far and wide. It was all that anyone was talking about. It was front page news, and the weekly newspapers printed daily specials with the latest information about inquest jury’s discoveries. Anticipating a huge turnout, the judge selected the largest meeting room in Saco as the venue for the hearing. Over 600 people jammed into the Cutts Island room and hundreds more lingered outside in the rain. Curiously, although the room was packed, women were far and few between, one reporter writing that he only observed two women in the whole room, one of whom was called to testify.
Judge Greene remained ill, though, and to avoid rescheduling again, he made the arrangement to have a Saco attorney record the evidence and relay it to the housebound judge. At 2:00PM, the proceedings began. To begin with, the report from the inquest jury was read verbatim, and The Maine Democrat reported that the audience listened in “profound silence.” Three long tables sat on a raised platform, and the men seated at them faced the crowd. At the center table sat the prosecuting attorneys, the defense attorneys, the attorney who was standing in for Judge Greene, and the defendant, Dr. James Smith, a man who the papers described as having a “prepossessing appearance.” The flanking tables provided seats to reporters and local authorities, including the coroner and the constable.
Witnesses were amidst the crowd, and when called, would make their way to the front and sit, facing this makeshift stage. This made it hard to hear, and when a particularly long-winded or quiet-voiced witness droned on, the crowd grew restless. A stern look from the constable, though, would quickly restore order and silence any chatter.
As DeWolfe wrote in her book,
“Despite the serious nature of the alleged crime, Smith, a short, stocky man of middling size with light eyes, coarse features, and a complexion “as ruddy as a summer’s morning,” was calm, even jovial, “and at times was quite jocose in his remarks.” He joked with the reporters about his “devilishly pretty” wife, and at one point, while waiting for the day’s proceedings to begin, sat and read the newspaper reports of his own case.”
The prosecuting attorney began with ninety minutes of opening remarks. He claimed that this murder was the first in Saco’s history. He interpreted the large crowd as an indication of the community’s outrage and their demand for justice for the young woman (still known only as Mary Bean). He spoke of the town’s duty to the victim and to the public by punishing the transgressor as a deterrent to future would-be murderers. He played to the crowd’s higher moral character, downplaying their obvious morbid curiosity that was fueled by Victorian crime novellas. He finally acknowledged it, though, when he said,
“the very name of murder, as it falls upon the ear, startles and alarms. [It] excites in us feelings of horror and indignation. But the murder of a young and beautiful woman . . . under circumstances the most revolting to humanity, may well excite an interest amounting almost to agony.”
Following his remarks, key members of the legal team left Cutts Hall to examine the culvert where the body was found. Many of the spectators had already visited Berengera’s icy resting place (now quite the tourist destination), much to the dismay of Smith’s neighbors.
When they returned, they called the boy who had discovered the body to testify. A few other witnesses (who had helped to move her body) also testified. And with that, court was adjourned. Little was revealed on Day 1, but much was promised.
The prosecution lays out their case
On Day 2, Tuesday, April 23, the bad weather continued, but despite the rain and cold, a large crowd gathered. This long day of testimony began at nine, broke for lunch at noon, resumed at two, and continued all afternoon. In scientific and precise language, Dr. Hall read his graphic autopsy account, which detailed the extent of the inflammation and internal infection he had discovered. He also said that there was no evidence of typhoid (Dr. Smith’s defense). He described the instruments that were often used in surgical abortion and emphasized the skill needed to properly use these tools, a skill few trained physicians had, let alone, Hall implied, an unschooled botanic physician.
Next the prosecution sought to prove that Mary Bean had indeed been pregnant and not “blocked”. They asked a woman who did the Smiths’ laundry to testify, and she offered pungent details. She had washed twice for Dr. Smith, the first time was on the date of the abortion: December 15th. She found skirts and linens with stains and the distinctive odor of amniotic fluid—sweet, musky and sharp. She noted similar blots and smells on the clothing and linens she washed a little more than a week later, the day after Mary’s death. She even testified that she had seen Mary at their home and recognized that she was pregnant.
The prosecution then called the two roommates of Mary Bean’s from the boardinghouse she briefly stayed at on her arrival in Saco/Biddeford. They both believed, from her appearance, that she was pregnant. Even a neighbor of the Smiths, a 67-year-old woman named Sarah Bryant, testified that she believed that Mary Bean was pregnant. That concluded Day 2.
On Day 3, the weather finally cleared. It was a typical Maine spring day with bright blue skies and crisp cool air. Two people were called to testify about conversations that they had had with Dr. Smith, where he spoke in detail about his abortion business – including the tools that he used and the methods he employed.
Prosecution saves the best for last
But the star witness was the Irish servant Ann Coveny, who had decided to testify for the state against Smith, despite the threats from Dr. Smith and his wife and her promise to secrecy that they had coerced. Evidently the apron bribe just wasn’t enough... Ann described how Dr. Smith alone would retrieve a particular black bag from the hall closet and how he would take girls into his parlor behind closed doors. She said that no one else ever touched the bag or entered the parlor when Smith was in it. Ann remembered the dates that Mary Bean had arrived at the Smiths, and she recalled the last night that she had seen Mary alive. On Saturday evening, December 22, Ann approached her, lying alone in the front parlor, and asked if she could get her anything. All Berengera could manage was to look at her; she was too ill to speak.
Last to testify was William Long, who finally revealed to the public the true identity of Mary Bean. He took the court through his romance with Berengera, beginning with their meeting in Manchester. He admitted to their sexual relationship, though he described it as “on terms of unlawful intimacy.” He was finally asked the question on everyone’s minds: what did Berengera tell him in that private November meeting? How had they come to the decision to get an abortion? Before he had the opportunity to respond, Smith’s defense attorney objected on the grounds that his testimony would be considered hearsay. After a complex legal argument, the judge ultimately ruled that it was indeed hearsay, and thus inadmissible, much to the chagrin of all the spectators present, and to us today. We’ll never know what Berengera’s final thoughts were—even filtered through the lens of her lover.
There were no more witnesses to call. The hearing was over. It would be up to the judge to make his determination.
Judge Green announces his decision
On Day 4, Judge Greene, who was still sick, relayed his decision through his stand-in. Goodwin announced to a packed room that Smith would be charged with murder and would face trial in the fall session of the Supreme Judicial Court, and he would be held without bail until trial. Although he had been lighthearted throughout the hearing, Smith became emotional as he bid his family goodbye.
Smith was taken to the York County jail, in the village of Alfred, 15 miles west of Saco/Biddeford, to await his September trial.
Witness bonds?
Strangely, some of the witnesses were required to put down big money to guarantee their appearance at the future trial. I’m not sure how common this practice is, but I’ve never heard of it myself. William was ordered to put down $1,000 ($31,000 in today’s money) and young Ann Coveny was ordered to put down $200 ($6,100 in today’s money). I assume if they were unable to produce the appearance bond, they would be held, in jail, until trial.
Berengera’s true identity discovered by family
Berengera’s family learned of her death, though the news was likely delayed because of the pseudonym Dr. Smith had given her, and her sister, Thais, arrived in Saco/Biddeford on April 29th, just a few days after the preliminary hearing had concluded. She was still in Manchester, hard at work at Amoskeag Mill, while the case was unfolding. She had written to the Saco constable with details about Berengera’s clothing, helping to substantiate her identity and connect her with her family. The constable had responded by letter, inviting Thais to Saco, and he helped her get situated, even providing her with a room in his own home. She went with him to Smith’s home and identified more of Berengera’s things. Before entering the home, she had described to the constable what her storage trunks looked like, and a number of possessions. A notable one was an unusually shaped beaded purse in which she had been hoarding nickels. The purse was discovered at the house, and Dr. Smith’s wife claimed that it was hers, a gift given to her by her husband the previous fall.
Thais wanted to take Berengera’s body home for burial. The constable wanted to do something for Thais, so he solicited donations from residents. He ended up raising between $75-$100 dollars and Berengera was disinterred a final time. On May 1st, Thais left Saco/Biddeford with Berengera’s body in a walnut coffin, and began the 200-mile journey to their hometown in Canada.
What happened next is a bit of a mystery. According to their modern-day descendants, the Caswell family decided not to bring Berengera home to their little hamlet near Sherbrooke, Quebec, but to bury her in Manchester, New Hampshire instead. Perhaps her family didn’t want the publicity of hometown funeral with their daughter’s death under such salacious circumstances. Or perhaps it was simply a logistics issue—there was no refrigeration and her body was not embalmed and the weather was heating up. Maybe it was just too difficult to get her to Quebec by public transit. Whatever the case, her sisters, Thais and Ruth, buried her quietly in Manchester near the mill where she had worked in Valley Cemetery.
Dr. Smith indicted by grand jury, but gets a lucky break
In September, the case against Dr. Smith was presented to a grand jury. The prosecution called 24 witnesses and the jury indicted Dr. Smith, keeping him in jail awaiting trial. Smith meanwhile claimed that he was impoverished and requested a court-appointed lawyer. He was assigned Nathan Clifford, which was a very fortunate turn of events for Dr. Smith. Nathan was a former member of Congress, had been appointed Attorney General of the United States by the president, and had just returned to Maine to establish his law practice. Nathan requested a continuance in order to prepare his argument, and since the fall term was already tightly booked, the judge readily agreed to move the case to a special January term.
The trial began in January 1851. During the trial Smith took an active role, seeming “composed but very attentive to the proceedings” especially in employing his right to challenge potential jurors. Despite the cold winter weather, crowds flocked to the county courthouse in Alfred, fifteen miles west of Saco.
The jury trial of Dr. James Smith
Much of the trial proceeded in a similar fashion to the initial probable cause hearing, but William in particular was excoriated by the attorneys. From DeWolfe’s book:
“The defense painted him as an arch-seducer who was little more than abetting prostitution in using and then abandoning Berengera and perhaps others. Long was raked over the coals as his personality and sexual life were made very public. If this experience were not humiliating enough, the prosecution took its turn, countering the defense’s portrait of William as a fiend and carefully plotting cad. Instead, the prosecution placed blame squarely on Smith; after all, they argued, Long was far too naïve and too much of a rube to be able to mastermind a seduction plot and then walk into court and admit to it.”
William spoke with “much feeling and apparent sincerity, often shedding tears.”
Ann Coveny took the stand for four long hours, repeating her important information on Smith’s practice.
Thais took the stand and told the jury about Berengera’s life. In particular she provided a very detailed account of all of the clothes and trinkets and baubles and accessories she had accumulated, describing a woman who seemed to be a free spirit, independent, and self-sufficient.
It took the jury just two hours to reach a unanimous verdict: guilty. Dr. Smith was sentenced to life in prison.
Life in prison
Smith, one of only four men convicted of murder amongst 87 inmates in Maine, worked in the prison’s shoe shop, and prison life seemed to agree with him. He gained some weight and was described as “fat and hearty.” From DeWolfe’s writing:
He even made himself useful when a prisoner attempted suicide by hanging. With the prison doctor absent, Smith stepped in and helped revive the near-dead man. Perhaps Smith had some medical skill after all.
Successful appeal
In March of 1851, two months after he was convicted by jury, his lawyer, Nathan Clifford, filed an appeal with twenty-two points of contention to the Maine Supreme Court. The main thrust of the appeal was that Smith was guilty of manslaughter, not murder. They considered his arguments for just over a year. In April 1852, they made their decision: Smith had been improperly charged. His conviction for murder was overturned, and since he had already served more than enough time for a manslaughter charge, he was free to go.
Smith returned to Saco and was reunited with his wife and children, but his happy reunion would not last long; he had contracted tuberculosis (likely in prison) and died three years later in 1855.
A theory to the initial charge
The reduction of the charge after the fact begs the question why it was charged in murder in the first place. Willful homicide with “malice aforethought” certainly doesn’t seem to describe Berengera’s death. The doctor performed a surgical procedure that went terribly wrong, but he didn’t intend to kill her. I believe that the case was reported as murder because of how her body was found. Imagine life in peaceful factory-town Saco/Biddeford being disrupted by the discovery of a woman’s body, face down in a culvert, tied to a plank. It smacks of murder. The publicity on it blew up and the town’s leaders set off to find her killer. When they connected the body to the doctor, they had their man, and within a week, they held a very public probable cause hearing to make an example out of him. Perhaps if he had called the coroner’s office right away, this whole thing never would have happened. If he performed the procedure after quickening, maybe he was trying to cover up the illegal act of abortion (by 1850’s standards).
Though it is hard to sympathize with Dr. Smith, it is historical fact that he was improperly charged and his stint in jail may have cost him his life.
How would this be handled today?
It made me wonder how this case would be tried today. How would Dr. Smith have fared in 2021, 171 years later?
At a minimum, Dr. Smith and whoever helped him move the body would be charged with “removal or concealment of a body” or similar, which is generally a misdemeanor.
Today, abortion is legal in all 50 states prior to 20 weeks (or 4.5 months) of pregnancy, and Berengera would have been within that timeframe, so the act itself would not have been a crime.
But what about the botched medical procedure? This is a trickier topic. Mistakes in medicine that result in death can be classified in 3 primary ways: medical error, medical malpractice, or criminal negligence. Medical error is not a crime. Neither is medical malpractice. But criminal negligence is, by definition, a crime, and when a patient dies the doctor will be charged with manslaughter. It is, however, exceedingly rare. And the difference between the three levels of mistake? The level of negligence involved. In other words, compared to a doctor’s peers, how grievous was the error.
Only 85 doctors were charged with manslaughter from 1795 to 2005, a period of 210 years. 60 of them were acquitted. Only 22 were convicted. On average, that’s just 1 physician in the entire United States convicted per 10 years.
In the news recently, total deaths in the US from medical error were estimated as high as 250,000 deaths per year. The vast majority of which did not result in any kind of criminal or civil action against the doctor or the business. There are people that die every day as a result of medical errors, but only a small number of them would rise to the level of malpractice, much less manslaughter. How grievous was Dr. Smith’s error compared to his peers?
If the standard that is used today were applied in 1850, it seems unlikely that Dr. Smith would have been charged criminally at all. But there is an exception to that rule: if you are a quack—an untrained unqualified practitioner—you will be charged criminally. Was Dr. Smith a quack? Well, that’s another difficult question to answer. There were several competing schools of thought around medicine: the Thomsonian school, the botanic school, and the allopathic school. The allopaths would later band together to form the AMA (American Medical Association), and their views would not only dominate medical thought, but legal thought as well. But in the 1850’s the AMA didn’t exist. It isn’t clear what training Dr. Smith had, but if he had no training in using his surgical instruments to perform this procedure, you can be assured he would be charged criminally today. If he had extensive training, and this was just a slip, he would likely face no criminal action at all.
Caswell family invents a new (and implausible) history for Berengera
Dying from something as horrific as a botched abortion wasn’t exactly the legacy the Caswell family wanted to be associated with. So instead of passing down their children the truth about Berengera (with a stern warning against the dangers of promiscuity), they fabricated a much more innocent tale, that, to this day, is apparently still remembered.
According to this version of the story, in December of 1949, Berengera was skating at a holiday party on Saint Francis River, the main river that runs right through Sherbrooke, when she fell through the ice. The river’s current was so strong, that it swept poor Berry hundreds of miles downstream to Maine, where she was eventually found in the Saco River months later... a journey that is impossible to accomplish without travelling up and over mountain ranges. The river’s flow heads Northwest and into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, away from Maine entirely.
Where was Berengera truly buried?
According to Caswell’s modern descendants, Berengera’s name was added to a family monument in Quebec in the Greenlay Protestant Cemetery later in the 1800’s. The other names on the monument belong to her parents and two siblings who had died as children. Oddly, her middle name is misspelled—Dolcon instead of Dalton. There is a curious statement on findagrave.com. It looks like it could be an old archived church record.
Wesleyan Methodist,
Burial, Berengera Dalton Caswell, 12th May 1850
Died, on the twenty-third day of December in the year of our Lord one thousand and eight hundred & forty nine, and was Buried in the township of Brompton on the twelfth day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty; by me, Benjamin Slight, A. M. Minister
in the presence of the subscribing witnesses: Stephen Caswell & ??? Frye
Thais left Saco on May 1st, and this record claims a May 12th burial in their Canadian hometown. The record appears to be written by the minister and one of the witnesses was Berengera’s father, Stephen. Was she in fact buried in Canada? I checked to see if Berengera’s name appeared on any of the gravestones documented in Manchester in Valley Cemetery, and I found none that matched. I even sorted all the records by date of death to see if anything looked close, and there were no close matches. Only 70% of the gravestones have been documented, though, so perhaps she is in that remaining undocumented 30%.
Fiction inspired by Berengera’s life and death
But just because the family wasn’t passing down the scandalous version of Berengera’s story, didn’t mean the public wasn’t clamoring to hear it.
Dr. Smith hadn’t even settled into his jail cell when in May of 1850, Hotchkiss and Company, a publisher out of Boston, began advertising a true crime story written by Miss J.A.B of Manchester titled Mary Bean, The Factory Girl; or The Victim of Seduction. One could purchase the novella for 12.5 cents (or around $3.75 today) and be swept into a sordid and cautionary tale that was described by the advertisement as, “a new story of thrilling interest, founded on recent events in Maine and New Hampshire. This work should be read by every young lady and gentleman as it is one of peculiar interest.”
Berry’s life was reduced to a caricature of a mill girl, her given name replaced by her pseudonym (Mary Bean), and her story was rewritten: a pure and helpless victim of seduction who, because of her naivete, was lured into the clutches of a depraved monster.
The public was fascinated by the curious mix of Mary’s innocence and the explicit details of this sensational crime: grappling with their own sense of morality at the same time. Mary was a stern warning for anyone who might find themselves thinking of dabbling in the unsavory; a tragic poster girl for maintaining societal standards of virginity and purity who paid the price of death for the wages of her sins.
Even the term “factory girl” meant that readers were in for a juicy read. Booklets about factory girls were almost guaranteed to be about the dramatic demise of one, involving sex, and most likely death.
2 years later in 1852, a second novella was published, entitled A Full and Complete Confession of the Horrid Transaction in the Life of George Hamilton, the Murderer of Mary Bean, the Factory Girl. This booklet was essentially a follow up of the first, focusing more on the criminality of the villainous and fictional George Hamilton, a “vile scoundrel and ultimate seducer,” very loosely based on Dr. Smith. Not only was the public fascinated by explicit stories and sexually motivated crimes, they were also interested in how the minds of criminals worked, wondering “who could do such a depraved act?”
This crime story would be published with a few different titles through the years, each more enticing than the last; a siren calling the spare change from a potential reader’s purse. Mary Bean’s story was a gossipy warning to steer clear the life of a factory girl, and Berengera, the true victim in this sordid and elaborated tale, was all but forgotten.
This story, made possible by Elizabeth DeWolfe
Until around 2007, when Maine author and University of New England Professor Elizabeth De Wolfe wrote about Berengera’s life, death, and legacy in a book titled The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories. The book also includes the two historical novellas, republished for the first time since 1852.
She told me about discovering the fictional novella about George Hamilton in a rare book store, thinking it was typical sensational crime fiction from the 20th century, only to realize (and confirm) it was indeed based on a real case. From there, historical records and newspapers led the way to learning more about the people at the center of the story, and the true story of Mary Bean was born.
Without her work digging through bound newspaper volumes and genealogy records to piece together this story, the name Mary Bean or Berengera Caswell might not even exist in the public sphere today. Her book was the primary source for this episode, and if you want to read more, I’ll link it on the blog and the show notes.
Berengera’s true life story replaced with a lesson to mill girls
When I think about the horrific death Berengera Caswell suffered, I’m saddened to think that her life was reduced to a moral parable in the fictional tale of her alter ego, Mary Bean.
Book publishers, authors, lawyers, preachers, and law enforcement leaders all used her story to advance their own agendas, often discarding the truth in service of their message: women who leave the safety of home and the support of their family are at great risk, and many will veer off the narrowly prescribed course, to their own ruin. A scary complexity was reduced to a safe simplicity, and the message was clear: Berengera was the author of her own misfortune.
But was Berengera a helpless mill girl, seduced by the wily William Long as lawyers and town leaders claimed? Or was she a fiercely independent young woman who struck out on her own, with anachronistic ideas about sex, love and abortion? Was she thrust into Dr. Smith’s deadly hands by her controlling boyfriend, or did she choose abortion instead of a lifetime of shame? Was Dr. Smith a quack physician providing an illegal abortion or was he a competent doctor who made a fatal mistake on a procedure he commonly performed?
In the face of public scrutiny, even her own family reinvented the story of her death, sanitizing it. They hid from the shame her life and death had symbolically become.
But Berengera’s life was more than a symbol. She was among the first of her generation to hold a job and earn her own wages. She had dreams. She loved. She suffered. And her brief 21-year-old life was cut tragically short in a brutal accident.
Links
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Berengera, Thais, and Ruth Caswell (sisters) settled first in Lowell before moving on to Manchester, NH
This is where Berengera and her sisters primarily worked
Another example of an 1850’s boardinghouse
A mill girl in a cotton mill, late 1800’s
Illustration of a mill girl
Examples of 1850’s daguerreotypes
Botanic/natural medicines that Dr. Smith might have had in his arsenal
Medicated plasters, remedy used by Dr. Smith to help Berengera overcome sepsis (unsuccessfully)
Medicated plasters, advertisement
Medicated plaster, applied to the lower back
The intersection of Woodbury Brook and Storer Street is the location of the culvert where Berengera’s body was found.
An example of a stone culvert
Photograph of Storer Street, Saco/Biddeford, 1870
Sources For This Episode
Newspaper articles
Various articles from the Aurora of the Valley, Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, Bath Eastern Times, Boston Evening Transcript, Boston Post, Green-Mountain Freeman, New York Daily Herald, New York Tribune, North Star, The Daily Republic, The Enterprise and Vermonter, The St Johnsbury Caledonian, The Woodstock Mercury, and Windsor County Advertiser, Vermont Christian Messenger, and the Williamsburgh Daily Gazette. No authors were credited in bylines.
Full listing here.
Books
The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories, by Professor Elizabeth DeWolfe (University of New England) (link to purchase)
Photo Sources
Images from the book, The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories, as well as various archives online (Loc.gov, mainememory.net, others)
Credits
Created, researched, written, told, and edited by Kristen Seavey
Research, writing, photo editing support by Byron Willis