Failing in her effort mentally to dispose of Spofford, did this vindictive woman endeavor to accomplish her purpose by any other method? I cannot precisely say, but what I can say is this: In December, 1878, after a hearing in the Police Court in Boston (in which one of the witnesses testified she had heard Mrs. Eddy say Spofford was a bad man and ought to be put out of the way), by which they were held for the grand jury in $3,000 bail, and after an examination by the Suffolk grand jury of some six or eight witnesses, one Edward J. Arens, and one Asa G. Eddy, third husband of Mary Baker G. Eddy, and then living with her as her husband, were duly indicted for a conspiracy to commit murder. To commit murder upon whom? Upon Daniel H. Spofford, the same Spofford Mrs. Eddy had solicited her followers to kill by mental means.
There were two counts in the indictment.
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, 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 L. Sargent, for a certain sum of money, to wit, the sum of five hundred dollars, to be paid to said Sargent by them, said Arens and Eddy, feloniously, wilfully, and of his, said Sargent’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.”
What connection there was between the failure of Mrs. Eddy’s efforts to kill Spofford or to have him killed by mental means and her husband’s alleged efforts to have him killed by physical means, I do not positively know. I did not hear Mrs. Eddy say to Mr. Eddy: Asa, we have tried and tried and tried to kill that man Spofford, but he is a tough proposition, and we have made no progress. Now you pay Sargent $500 to lie in wait for him with a club and we will see if that won’t settle him. That was the charge against Eddy. Nothing mental about the club form of treatment! I did not hear Mrs. Eddy say that to Eddy, but I very much doubt if he would have found himself in the position in which he was placed, if his dominating helpmeet had offered any objection to the thing of which he was accused. I do not know that Mrs. Eddy knew anything about Asa G. Eddy’s undertaking to have Spofford killed; but I do know that what I have stated is true, and I do know that the human mind necessarily makes deductions from circumstances; and I do not doubt every human mind that believes the facts to be as I have stated them, will make the same deduction that my mind makes.
For some unexplained reason this indictment was never prosecuted; but, upon the payment of costs by Eddy, was nol prossed. There was no disproof of the sworn testimony given in the Police Court. Eddy never asked for a hearing, he never insisted upon the vindication only a trial could give. He put his hand into his pocket and paid a considerable sum to escape a trial; and Mrs. Eddy and her friends call that a vindication. Does an innocent man accused of serious crime pay money to escape a trial, or does he demand a full hearing and establish his innocence?
And Spofford is not the only assumed enemy the good “Mother” of Christian Science has sought to dispose of by mental murder. Richard Kennedy and Clara E. Choate, both now living in Boston, and Edward J. Arens, also fell under the ban and at Mrs. Eddy’s instigation received so-called mental treatment designed to relieve them of the burden of the flesh by divers diseases.
Another one of her early friends, whom Mrs. Eddy ceased to love and grew to hate, was Richard Kennedy. He had been one of her earliest pupils, studying with her when she lived at the Wentworth house in Stoughton in the sixties; and they had carried on a sort of co-partnership at Lynn, Mrs. Eddy doing the teaching and Kennedy the healing.
But she had had a falling out with Kennedy as with her other early friends, Spofford and Arens, and she had dragged him into court as she had dragged them, Kennedy was a young man and an easy victim. He gave Mrs. Eddy his promissory note for a thousand dollars for her teachings, and after he had paid two hundred and fifty dollars on account she brought suit against him for the balance, seven hundred and fifty dollars, but again she lost her case.
After a time, somehow or other, the strange notion got into Mrs. Eddy’s head that Kennedy was the most malicious and Satanic of all her enemies, who were, by mental means, seeking her destruction. He was the very incarnation of the mind’s hellish power in its most malignant and effective form; and she denounced him in the following lurid language:
“The Nero of today, regaling himself through a mental method with the tortures of individuals, is repeating history and will fall upon his own sword and it shall pierce him through. Let him remember this when, in the dark recesses of thought, he is robbing, committing adultery, and killing; when he is attempting to turn friend away from friend, ruthlessly stabbing the quivering heart; when he is clipping the thread of life, and giving to the grave youth and its rainbow hues; when he is turning back the reviving sufferer to her bed of pain, clouding her first morning after years of night; and the Nemesis of that hour shall point to the tyrant’s fate, who falls at length upon the sword of justice.”