The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur)/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
A STRANGE CONSPIRACY
DURING the summer which followed the lawsuits arranged and prosecuted by the student Arens, affairs at Number 8 Broad street progressed more quietly. Both Mr. and Mrs. Eddy were teaching metaphysics. Mrs. Eddy’s classes were held at her Lynn home, but Mr. Eddy taught in East Cambridge and in Boston, as well as in Lynn. The disaffected student Spofford was seldom seen in Lynn. He had opened an office in Boston and still retained one in Newburyport.
In October, 1878, the Boston Herald printed an article stating that Daniel Spofford had disappeared and his friends were greatly alarmed concerning him. A description of him was given and other papers were asked to copy it. A few days later the same paper stated that his body had been found and was lying at the morgue. On the twenty-ninth of October the Herald was able for the first time to print a fact in this case, relating that Asa Gilbert Eddy and Edward J. Arens were under arrest for conspiring to murder Daniel Spofford.
After the lapse of many years it is as difficult to form an opinion concerning this amazing charge as it was at the time of its occurrence. It is difficult because it requires one to follow the tangled threads of a conspiracy, a conspiracy so well wrought as at first to deceive the grand jury of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and, as was afterward found, too intricate to yield its prime mover even under legal scrutiny, and the indictment against Mr. Eddy and Mr. Arens was quashed by the District Attorney, Oliver Stevens. It may be well to state at once that Mr. Spofford had not had a hair of his head harmed, and lived years, still rehearsing the strange features of this strange story which, without explanation, would throw discredit on the blameless life of Mr. Eddy, and by implication on Mrs. Eddy.
When the two innocent men were arrested they were held in three thousand dollars’ bail for examination in the municipal court on November 7 for the crime of conspiring to kill Daniel Spofford. The preliminary hearing was held before Judge May. Counsel for the government submitted no argument after the hearing of evidence, but called the attention of the Court to a chain of circumstances established which he believed was strong enough to hold the prisoners. Judge May, after deliberation, declared it his opinion that the case was a very anomalous one, but that he would hold the defendants to appear before the Superior Court at the December hearing, and he again fixed the amount of bail, which would release them from the necessity of going to prison, at three thousand dollars each.
The case was called before the Superior Court in December, 1878, and an indictment was found on two counts. The first read: “That Edward J. Arens and Asa G. Eddy of Boston aforesaid, on the 28th day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight, in Boston aforesaid, with force and arms, being persons of evil minds and dispositions, did then and there unlawfully conspire, combine, and agree together feloniously, wilfully, and of their malice aforethought, to procure, hire, incite and solicit one James I. Sargeant, for a certain sum of money, to wit, the sum of five hundred dollars, to be paid to said Sargeant by them, said Arens and Eddy, feloniously, wilfully, and of his said Sargeant’s malice aforethought, in some way and manner and by some means, instruments and weapons, to said jurors unknown, one Daniel H. Spofford to kill and murder against the law, peace and dignity of said Commonwealth.”
The second count charged the prisoners with hiring Sargeant “with force and arms in and upon one Daniel H. Spofford to beat, bruise, wound, and evil treat against the law, peace, dignity of said Commonwealth.”
The Superior Court record reads: “This indictment was found and returned into Court by the grand jurors at the last December term when the said Arens and Eddy were severally set at the bar, and having the said indictment read to them, they severally said thereof that they were not guilty. This indictment was thence continued to the present January term, and now the District Attorney, Oliver Stevens, Esquire, says he will prosecute this indictment no further, on payment of costs, which are thereupon paid. And the said Arens and Eddy are thereupon discharged, January 31, 1879.”
This monstrous charge was thus dismissed without a trial. The men accused were made to appear too insignificant in the world’s affairs to warrant a full and clear exoneration. They were let go like guilty culprits who just escaped the sting of the law’s lash. Their case is not singular. It is to be deplored that the law does not always make the vindication of a man, entangled in its meshes through the unwarranted suspicions of his enemies or neighbors, so clear and emphatic that he may stand innocent in reputation, unblemished, and without reproach, even as he did before the law laid hands upon him.
What would have happened had the process of law taken its full course? Doubtless the guilty conspirator would have been made to appear. To fasten a crime upon an innocent man is in itself a hideous crime, and by the very nolle prosse of this indictment a conspiracy was shown to exist which, had the district attorney of that day felt his whole duty, he would have disentangled by thoroughly sifting the evidence. He had a crime to fit to an individual. He should have gathered all the known details, examined every circumstance, however slight. He should not have lost a shred or tatter. For his work was to piece together a fabric of evidence to match a fabric of guilt. The garment would have fit but one man and that man the criminal.
In speaking of a district attorney’s obligations to the people, James W. Osborne, a distinguished attorney of New York City, and a former assistant in the district attorney’s office, says:
It is as much his duty to take care of the rights of one of the people as the rights of all. … Resting always on the evidence, his feet are fixed in the way they should go. … A human being moves in certain well-defined circles, which, joined together, make up a complete history of the man’s life. When you have a section of the arc of any man’s history, you are pretty well able to follow it to its completion. It is like the key to a puzzle around which the broken pieces naturally group themselves. There is the social life, the religious life, the business life, — will these sections of the arc fit together? Can you complete the ring? When you have them all they fall into place naturally; all phases join by an imperceptible cleavage; the circle is completed by those who, with hands joined, encompass the life. You see the complex whole. Here is the individual. You know the mainspring of his thoughts, his desires, his habits, his acts. Taken together you have his character; you have the man.
I am not obliged to give you the motive for a crime to prove it to have been perpetrated. … The motives of the human heart are often beyond comprehension. But it is the most natural thing in the world to ask, “Who could have desired to do this deed?” Therefore a motive is a part of the evidence, and when you can prove a motive, it becomes of the greatest importance. It excludes other possible agents, all things being equal, and becomes like a finger pointing unswervingly and declaring to the shrinking and guilty person, “Thou art the man!”
As the district attorney of that day did not see fit to so handle his evidence, no unswerving finger ever pointed out the guilty person. It is therefore not possible to make any direct accusation at this late day either by surmise or inference, but that the reader may form his own opinion of the nature of the entanglement it is only necessary to tell the main facts of the story.
Mr. Spofford did disappear from Boston in October, 1878, and was absent from his office two weeks. But he disappeared of his own free will and passed the fortnight in the home of the man who claimed to have been hired to kill him. Mr. Spofford told his story in court. He said that a man, introducing himself as James Sargeant and describing himself as a saloon-keeper, had come to him in the early part of the month at his office, 297 Tremont street, Boston. This man first asked him if he knew two men named Miller and Libbey. Being answered in the negative, he said, “Well, they know you and they want to get you put out of the way.”
Then he related that these two men had employed him to make away with Spofford. The plan was to get Spofford to take a drive on a lonely road, and in some remote spot to beat him over the head and kill him, then to entangle his body in the reins and cause the horse to run away. Having unfolded this marvelous plot, Sargeant acknowledged that he was to get $500 for his services. He told him that he had already received $75, and meant to try to get the rest. But Sargeant declared he had no desire to risk his own life in such a business, although apparently suffering no qualms from any moral scruple. He further stated that he had already been to a state detective, Hollis C. Pinkham, and asked him to watch the case.
Mr. Spofford said that he himself immediately went to this state detective, and found that Pinkham did know of the matter, but apparently was so little concerned that he had not even thought it necessary to warn Spofford. In fact, the state detective expressed himself of the opinion that it was a trumped-up story sold by Sargeant to ingratiate himself with the police department, for this man, the detective told Spofford, was an ex-convict with a bad criminal record.
According to his own story, Mr. Spofford did nothing further until Sargeant came again to call upon him, and when he again beheld the square-set, brutal-featured man in his office he was greatly alarmed. Sargeant had come to tell him that the men, Miller and Libbey, were pressing him to complete his work; that he had put them off, saying their man was already dead; but they had sent an agent to his office and now accused Sargeant of playing false with them.
Spofford conferred again with the state detective and on that official’s advice disappeared. He chose a strange place to conceal himself. Mr. Spofford actually took the drive on the lonely road with the ex-convict and went with him to his house in Cambridgeport. Sargeant did not even ask him to pay for the hired horse and buggy. Spofford remained in the home of the saloon-keeper of Sudbury street for two weeks, reading the papers in which he was advertised as lost and later as lying in the morgue, never venturing to come forth and disclose his whereabouts to his anxious friends. This strange proceeding would seem to indicate that the depraved man, Sargeant, had been employed by some one as an actor in a farce rather than a tragedy.
At the preliminary hearing in the municipal court of Boston there was a strange assemblage of witnesses brought to swear against the liberty of the teacher of moral science, Mr. Eddy, and his student, Edward Arens. The two men who had been summarily arrested and haled to court were astounded to behold Daniel Spofford in such a company. Besides Sargeant, the saloon-keeper of Sudbury street, there were his sister, who kept a house of ill-fame at 7 Bowker street, and several women inmates of this house; also George Collier, Sargeant’s accomplice, who was under bonds awaiting trial on some charge of evil doings of his own; Jessie MacDonald, a discharged servant from Mrs. Eddy’s household; and the detectives employed on the case, Hollis C. Pinkham and Chase Philbrick, were of the company.
Sargeant, with bold effrontery, professed to identify Mr. Eddy and Edward Arens as “Miller and Libbey.” He then told a long and vivid story of his meetings with them, — how they had come into his saloon one morning and told his fortune and then, getting into confidential conversation, had asked him if he knew any one who could be hired to put a man out of the way; how he had said that he was ready himself for any such job, provided there was money in it; and how by arrangement he afterward met Mr. Eddy and Mr. Arens on the railroad track in East Cambridge on the seventeenth of August at five-thirty o’clock in the afternoon. There, he declared, being somewhat alarmed for himself, he had had his friend Collier conceal himself in a freight car to hear the details of the wicked conspiracy, and he stated how he had also provided himself with a revolver in case these desperate characters should attack him.
The presiding judge must have wondered at this on studying the calm, sweet eyes of Mr. Eddy, the astounded and fearless gaze of Mr. Arens, and then the shifty, cruel eyes of Sargeant. But his perplexity must have increased on observing the guileless expression of Spofford. Collier testified to the truth of all Sargeant had said; the women witnesses from the Bowker street house declared that Sargeant had come there and left with his sister the $75 he had received for the murder; the detective, Pinkham, stated that he had listened to Sargeant’s and Spofford’s stories, that he had seen Sargeant talking to Arens on Boston Common, and that he had also seen Sargeant approach Mr. Eddy’s house and be refused admission. The testimony of the servant girl, Jessie MacDonald, was that she had heard Mr. Eddy say that Spofford kept Mrs. Eddy in agony and he would be glad if Spofford were out of the way; also she had heard Mrs. Eddy read a chapter from the Bible which says that all wicked people should be destroyed.
Russell H. Conwell was the attorney employed by Mrs. Eddy to conduct the defense of her husband and her student. The able lawyer had prepared a thorough analysis of the apparent facts, but as the case never came to trial, the defendants had no hearing. Mrs. Eddy, however, did not rest after the peremptory dismissal of the case, but remained active in the defense of her husband’s honor, until every charge was privately examined and affidavits secured covering every point. In these affidavits she was singularly fortunate in receiving the confession of the accomplice Collier which promised to clear up the entire matter had the nolle prosse not been entered. Shortly after the police court hearing, this man wrote the following badly spelled letter now among Mrs. Eddy’s bequeathed papers.
To Dr. Asa G. Eddy and E. J. Arens, — Feeling that you have been greatly ingured by faulse charges and knowing thair is no truth in my statements that you attempted to hire Sargeant to kill Daniel Spofford, and wishing to retract as far as possible all things I have sed to your ingury, I now say that thair is no truth whatever in the statement that I saw you meet Sargeant at East Cambridge or any other place and pay or offer to pay him any money; that I never herd a conversation between you and Sargeant as testified to by me. Whether Daniel Spofford has anything to do with Sargeant I do not know. All I know is that the story I told on the stand is holy faulse and was got up by Sargeant.
This letter led Mrs. Eddy to inquire out the man Collier and persuade him to make an affidavit before a justice in Taunton, December 17, 1878. His sworn statement is as follows:
I, George A. Collier, do on oath depose and say of my own free will, and in order to expose the man who has tried to injure Dr. Asa G. Eddy and Edward J. Arens, that Sargeant did induce me by great persuasion to go with him to East Cambridge from Boston, on or about the 7th day of November last, the day of the hearing in the municipal court of Boston in the case of Dr. Asa G. Eddy and E. J. Arens for attempting to hire said Sargeant to kill one Daniel Spofford, and that he showed me the place and the cars that he was going to swear to, and told me what to say in court, and made me repeat the story until I knew it well, so that I could tell the same story that he would, and there was not one word of truth in it all. I never heard a conversation in East Cambridge between said Eddy and Arens and Sargeant, or saw them pay or offer to pay Sargeant any money.
(Signed)Geo. A. Collier.
The other affidavits Mrs. Eddy secured were statements as to Mr. Eddy’s whereabouts on the day and at the hour when the ex-convict Sargeant declared he was conferring with him and giving him money on the railroad tracks. The statements made before justices and sworn to in all cases were that Mr. Eddy was teaching a class in metaphysics at the home of David Grey, 43 Clifford street, Boston Highlands, from two-thirty o’clock until five-forty-five o’clock. The ride in the horse cars of those days to East Cambridge from this address would have consumed an hour. Mr. Eddy, however, reached his home in Lynn about seven-fifteen, p. m., having gone from Boston Highlands to the Eastern depot and returned to his home on the six-thirty o’clock train. It took him three quarters of an hour to reach the Eastern depot from his class in Boston Highlands. That he arrived home at the hour stated does not rest on Mrs. Eddy’s statement alone but is attested by Miranda R. Rice under oath, who was at 8 Broad street with Mrs. Eddy, waiting to hear particulars from Mr. Eddy of his new class.
As to the detective’s testimony that he had seen Sargeant at Mr. Eddy’s door, Mrs. Eddy wrote at the time:
The only time this man Sargeant came to our threshold, to our knowledge, was the day the detective came to arrest Mr. Eddy; he preceded the detective a few minutes and had just been ordered from the door by Mr. Eddy because of his impertinent remarks, when the detective who had him in attendance rang at the front door and himself admitted Sargeant into the house.
Though the state removed the detective, and Sargeant and Collier subsequently went to jail on other charges, this case, which was built up on perjuries and which collapsed without a hearing, evidently had great villainy in it and it should have been made to appear. Mrs. Eddy never held Daniel Spofford directly responsible for involving her husband in the wicked conspiracy and causing him to appear at the bar of justice in the company of thieves and women of ill-repute. At most she believed him blindly acquiescent in a design which it was never in his heart to originate. But she did point out, without naming, one who had motive and character for the instigation of the dastardly intrigue.