The Saga of Bessie Webster – Part IV

#MiddleburyCT #BessieWebster #Wakefield

This undated photo is of Katharine Martha (Houghton) Hepburn (1878-1951), mother of actor Katharine Hepburn and a feminist social reformer and suffragist leader. She objected to Bessie Wakefield’s sentence. (Wikipedia image)

By DR. ROBERT L. RAFFORD

Part IV of V – As the investigation into the murder of William O. Wakefield continued, the evidence against James Henry Plew and Bessie Wakefield was overwhelming. Bessie had confessed to her role in the murder and provided the narrative of how her lover, Plew, had carried out the deed. On July 10, 1913, the grand jury handed down indictments for first degree murder to both of them.

Bessie’s trial got underway quickly, and the jury was selected by October 18, 1913. During the subsequent trial, however, she declared under oath that she did not conspire with Plew to murder her husband. Nevertheless, on November 1, Bessie was convicted by the jury of first-degree murder. Since Plew had become only the second accused in state history to plead guilty to the charge of first-degree murder (the first was Joseph Bergeron of New Britain a few days before Plew), it was only up to the court “to determine the degree of the crime, and give sentence accordingly,” based on a 1642 statute.

On November 4, Bessie and Plew were each sentenced to die by hanging on the morning of March 4, 1914; Bessie became the first woman to be so sentenced in Connecticut since 1786, when 12-year-old Hannah Ocuish, a mixed-race child, was hanged in New London for killing a six-year-old girl.

In the early 1900s there were several high-profile cases of women committing mariticide (murdering one’s husband). The 1939 play and 1944 movie “Arsenic and Old Lace” were based on real events that took place in Windsor, Connecticut. Amy (Duggan) Archer-Gilligan (1873-1962), who ran a boarding house, the Archer Home for the Elderly and Infirm, poisoned two husbands. She may have poisoned an additional 62 people with arsenic between 1907 and 1917.

In addition to Archer-Gilligan, Kate (Palm) Edwards (1865-?) of Stouchsburg, Pennsylvania, killed her husband in 1901; Mary Rogers (1883-1905) of Vermont chloroformed and drowned her husband in 1902, with help from an accomplice; Annie F. Monahan of New Haven, poisoned her second husband in 1913. Bessie, now charged as an accessory in her husband’s murder, was imprisoned in New Haven on “murderer’s row,” where Monahan also was being held. Monahan would poison her third husband in 1917.

While Bessie’s case had already generated national headlines, what happened next made it soar to even greater prominence. The day after her death sentence was pronounced, Governor Simeon E. Baldwin declared that he would let the law take its course. However, the Women’s Political Equality Club had already begun circulating a petition asking that the sentence be changed to life in prison.

The next day, Mrs. Katharine Martha (Houghton) Hepburn (1878-1951) of Hartford (mother of the actor), head of the Connecticut Women’s Suffrage Association, said she would also present a petition to the board of pardons. She stated, “It is my contention that no woman should pay the death penalty when women are barred from participation in the lawmaking functions and that no woman should be hanged unless women concur, equally with men, in the legal operations whereby such a situation was brought about.” (Hartford Courant). The flood of opposition to Bessie’s sentence had begun.

In addition to Katharine Hepburn, Cecelia Blickensderfer (1868-1922) and other prominent “public mothers” (politically active women in high social standing) rallied to save Bessie. Blickensderfer had been an early women’s rights activist, challenging the death sentences of Kate Edwards and Mary Rogers, among others.

Cases such as Bessie’s had already awakened the ire of women’s groups across the nation; It was then 124 years since women were denied equal rights by the nation’s Constitution; women and some men had been forcefully speaking out and activating for justice for decades. Seven years before the 19th Amendment to the Constitution extended many rights to women, Bessie’s captors, coroner, interrogators, prosecutors, counsel, judge and jury were all men, an unfair situation, suffragists claimed. But would the suffragists prevail in time to save Bessie?

Most arguments against Bessie’s appointment with the gallows declared opposition to capital execution entirely. It would take another 99 years before Connecticut abolished capital execution in 1912.

You are urged to join the Middlebury Historical Society by going online at MiddleburyHistoricalSociety.org or visiting them on Facebook. Questions about membership can be sent to Bob at robraff@comcast.net.