The Spiritualists and the Detectives

by Allan Pinkerton

"You were told by the Court that if the plaintiff was married at the time when she said the defendant agreed to marry her, such a promise was absolutely void. The plaintiff had herself sworn that the promise was made in 186—, and that she was then, and had remained for nearly two years thereafter, a married woman. Did not the Court tell you that such a promise was void? The Court told you that no subsequent ratification of such a promise could make it binding. The Court further instructed you that if the plaintiff was unchaste at the time of the promise of marriage, and her unchastity was not known to defendant, that the marriage contract, if entered into, was not binding. The entire record in this case teems with the history of her licentiousness. No witness has been so reckless as to swear that within the last ten years she has had either virtuous habits or virtuous associations. That she was virtuous in 1860, or rather, that if then vicious, her character in this regard was then unknown to her neighbors in Indiana and Wisconsin, is rendered highly probable from the evidence. But there was a period preceding this by many years, when the maiden merged into the woman, that the almost exhaustless evidence produced by the defendant shows to have been a time without shame, and when her keen shrewdness and wicked nature had already been developed to a degree of depravity beyond human belief; and there has since been a period when the vilest inmate of the lowest den of prostitution was happy in her virgin purity in comparison with this woman!

"Previous to the first-mentioned time the plaintiff had followed the army of the Southwest in its weary marches—not, however, as the evidence discloses, for any honest purpose. She had wandered infinitely further from purity than from her Northern home. And yet you have at tempted to render a verdict that after all these wanderings, and after this incomparably vile career, she is fit to become the wife of a respectable citizen of Rochester, the mistress of his mansion, and the sharer of his large fortune.

"You were further instructed that if a promise of marriage had been made, and if the plaintiff had at that time been virtuous, and had subsequently become unchaste the defendant was released from the obligation of such a promise; what regard, in view of the evidence in this case, have you paid to that instruction?

"Am I too severe, then, when I say that when, through four long days and nights in your jury room, some of this jury have attempted to force a verdict in favor of the plaintiff, notwithstanding she was not entitled to it, and the defendant's witnesses had proven that she was utterly unworthy of it, you have been actuated by passion and prejudice, and have attempted to pervert justice? Had you been able to infect all your comrades with your pestilential breath, and had a verdict in her favor been rendered, I should certainly have set it aside immediately.

"I cannot but express my severest censure at the result of this cause at your hands, knowing, as I cannot but know, that the same vile machinations which have left a hideous trail of this female monster over every portion of the land, have brought about this disagreement which is a shame and a disgrace to yourselves, to Genesee County, and this Court!"

The suit necessarily went over to the next term of court, over which Judge Williams also presided, when no developments worthy of note occurred, the same evidence being introduced, the same tactics on the part of Mrs. Winslow—who, however, had been obliged to secure new counsel—being attempted, and the same crowd of morbid curiosity-seekers being in attendance.

But the woman had by this time become too well known for the slightest hope of success, or even to enable her to receive the ordinary consideration and protection of the Court.

Without leaving their seats the jury found for the defendant, and the woman, defeated yet insolent and daring, passed out into the summer-decked streets of the little city of Batavia a scorned, dreaded being, driven from everything but infamous memory.

I was never sufficiently interested in Le Compte to trace his future, but it is safe to say that he never visited "La belle France" and "Paris, the beautiful, the sublime, the magnificent," in company with the once fascinating Mrs. Winslow.