Fall River

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1:12This episode contains mentions of suicide and sexual assault. Please use discretion.

1:22In 1833, a woman named Catherine Williams was beginning to work on a new book. She was a poet. She would write about the American Revolutionary War. And she was a biographer who became very, very respected and well-known. This is author Kate Winkler Dawson. Catherine Williams was from a well-known family. Her grandfather had been the attorney general of Rhode Island. She'd started making a living from writing five years earlier. She'd published her first book when she was in her 40s. She was successful enough to support her daughter by herself. Catherine had divorced her husband a few years earlier.

2:04And so for a woman, I cannot stress this enough, for a woman to file for divorce in the 1820s, especially a woman with a one-year-old baby, and for it to be granted, he must have been a really bad person. So it was almost like an act of God to get that. She wrote that her ex-husband had deceived her. and that while they were married, quote, his social character was fast deteriorating, although he never was implicated in the commission of any crime. By 1833, she'd written four books, but this book was going to be different than anything she'd written before. It was about a woman named Sarah Cornell from Fall River, a town on the border between Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

2:52She'd been found dead about six months earlier. Her death was all over the newspapers, and people everywhere in New England were talking about the case. Catherine overheard people criticizing Sarah Cornell, saying things like, no matter who killed her, such a person were better out of the world than in it. Someone else called her a drab and didn't think it was worth having a trial over her death. But Catherine thought there was more to say about the case She wrote that it wasn't fair for people to talk about Sarah Cornell when, quote, she cannot answer them back again So, this was a story she was passionate about, and I think she saw an awful lot of herself in Sarah Cornell Before Sarah Cornell came to Fall River, she'd lived all over New England She had to move a lot to find work She'd started working as a teenager after her father had abandoned their family.

3:54And Sarah, at a very young age, decided to become a tailor, an apprentice. And so she was trained very well in tailoring dresses and suits. And she was, you know, somebody who actually had a lot of great skills. And she left very early. This is the time period, 1820s to 1830s, where there were factories popping up, mills popping up all across the East Coast in New England. And so she, with these skills, was able, like a lot of women, to move from mill and factory and kind of explore up and down the coast, which was very new for women in the country in general. This was kind of a first taste of independence for a lot of them.

4:41And so Sarah went from place to place exploring different areas. She was able to travel by herself. If she didn't like a factory, she could quit and move to another one. Her mother had called her, quote, a moving planet. What was the work like in these textile mills? Hard. Very, very difficult. There's all these newspaper articles about fires where the doors had been locked to prevent thieves from coming in. And so women had to jump out of windows. And there are women and girls losing fingers and limbs and looms. They were paid half as much as men. But there weren't a lot of job options for women.

5:26Factory work paid more than what they could earn on their family farms. Kate Dawson says that the factory owners liked hiring young women because they were considered more obedient than men. I think that the mill and owners and the factory owners really enjoyed employing young women. They were sort of used to being under their family's thumb already and they weren't out getting drunk at night. You know, they were very dutiful. There was a bell that would send them off to the factories in the morning and then a bell to go to church and then, you know, to come home. And so it was very regimented.

6:07And I think there were very, very high expectations that even though these women were able to have a lot of independence, manage their own money, At the same time, they were certainly expected to have decorum, to not go walk around the block with a young man unless they were really officially courting. So there were an awful lot of rules for girls and women who were being offered an awful lot of freedom at the same time. Once she started working in the factories and moving up and down, would she see her family often? No, and I think that she was unmoored from her family. Sometimes she would go a long time without receiving any letters from them.

6:54When you read the letters that she wrote her sister and her mother and her brother-in-law, they're pretty painful because she'll say, I haven't heard from you all in months. I want to try to come back to Providence or Connecticut at one point. And sometimes she wouldn't receive a response. In 1822, when Sarah was 19 years old, she was in Providence visiting her mother and sister. It was the first time she'd seen them in years. And she was excited to be in a big city with fancier shops. When she belonged to two different churches, she gave quite a bit of her money from the factories to these churches.

7:33And so she didn't have a lot of extra spending money. And so she had never really been able to have nice things. And so she was in Providence and kind of going in and out of clothing stores and fell in love with some material and a dress, and she ended up shoplifting. The shop owner saw her and chased after her. He found Sarah at her family's house. And she was caught and had kind of an extreme reaction, which I would say is just pure nerves. She would cry and then she would laugh, and the shopkeepers kind of finally let her go. But then, Sarah bought silk on credit at another store and never came back to pay for it.

8:15The store owner found her two months later in another town. From another store, she stole a shawl and bonnet. At the time, shoplifting was a felony. Convicted shoplifters sometimes face the death penalty. This really cemented her as a criminal, and this followed her from place to place. You know, I think, oh, New England, it's so large. But everybody knew everything. And especially in these factory communities, being somebody who was caught shoplifting a couple of different times, what that means, one time's a mistake, multiple times is compulsive. And that was a really big deal in New England at a time period when, you know, a man's handshake is indicative of his character.

9:03You know, if he made a promise, he made a promise. And sort of that spills over into all of society. and the perception of Sarah was if she were this petty thief, then she was a criminal in general and a wayward woman who, you know, would sleep around, do improper things, maybe be lazy at work. There was one instance where her loom accidentally broke and she was just scared to death of that because there was so much more scrutiny on her than on anywhere else. If you make one mistake, it just dooms you. And that's what happened. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

9:47What is her relationship like with the church at this point? Sarah was able to choose what church she would belong to, which, of course, you would have gone with whatever church your family was with. And so there were a lot of choices that could be made. She was raised in a Congregationalist church, you know, mainstream Protestant, what you would imagine, which would be, you know, brick and mortar church and, you know, a minister who had been formally trained. And that was the expectation of, I think, the majority of the people in New England, sort of those Puritan values, very conservative. But there was this also, there were a couple of other denominations that were popping up, and this wild one called Methodists, which every time I say that, nobody believes me.

10:42But, you know, Methodism had only been in the United States for 50 years. John Wesley had come. And this really began as an appeal to workers in England who felt like they were left behind by the Church of England. And so when the Methodists came to the United States, the same thing happened. So the Methodists would have these massive tent revivals, which I joke is like the Burning Man of religious ceremonies and festivals. I mean, they would go on for days. They were very exciting. Evangelical, I would say. Certainly a lot of passion, a lot of good-looking young ministers. And so it's no surprise that a lot of these, what they would call factory girls, were attracted to the Methodist church.

11:32Sarah wrote to her family after she was baptized in the Methodist church. She said, quote, God in mercy has shown me the depravity of my own wicked heart. Sarah also wrote, I want you should forgive me. So she fell in love with the Methodist church. She really did. She was God-fearing. She was very proud to be a Christian. She gave a lot of money. She was dutiful. And, you know, she was respected in churches until they found out about her background. After she'd been caught shoplifting, Sarah was forced to leave Providence. Eventually, she moved to Fall River in the fall of 1832. She rented a room in a boarding house.

12:21And so there would be a matron kind of in charge and would provide her meals and, you know, of course, receive rent. But someone who kind of would keep an eye on these young women and their morals. And of course, the matrons would not allow men to spend the night. And so Sarah was working for a factory. She was going to different meetings. She mentions going to a tent revival in Cape Cod. And so she seemed to be doing fairly well. Two months later, she was dead.

13:01We'll be right back.

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14:31Comparison includes discounts, credits, and optional charges. $400 with new account on qualifying line, unlock device credit, ported in 90 plus days with device and carrier and timely redemption required. Virtual MasterCard typically takes 14 weeks, no cash access, and expires in six months. card issued by Sunrise Banks and a member FDIC. Visit T-Mobile.com. Very early on the morning of December 21st, 1832, a farmer named John Durfee took his horses out in Fall River, and he saw something strange. He sees a figure who appears to be kind of hovering above the ground just slightly. As he approaches, he realizes it's a woman.

15:08He gets off his cart and runs over, and he sees that it's a woman dressed in a winter flock, you know, and has a bonnet on. And she has a noose around her neck, which is attached to one of his haystack poles, which is a very large pole that helps sort of stabilize these massive bales of hay. and her knees are almost touching the ground. She's clearly deceased. And he screams for help immediately. Someone went to get a doctor in town, a man named Thomas Wilbur. He was Sarah's personal physician who she had visited in about, within the three or four months of her death. So he gets up and he goes and he sees, once he reaches there, his, you know, patient who is dead.

15:58And he said, this is, I know who this is. She's Sarah Maria Cornell. The coroner called for a preliminary jury to determine the cause of Sarah's death. These were not people who had to have any kind of medical expertise. Their job was to essentially decide if this was murder or suicide or accident. And so this group of men shows up, and they pretty quickly believe that this was a suicide. And they make a pretty rash decision and decide to go ahead and bury her the next day and have a very quick funeral, because there was no other reason for them to think this was murder or anything else. Two of John Durfee's sisters and some of the women from town helped prepare Sarah's body for burial.

16:49So, you know, they took all of her clothes off and saw grass stains on her legs. It looks like a lot of defensive wounds. She definitely had been in some sort of altercation, physical altercation. She had thumbprints and large handprints on her body. And, you know, one of the women there who was a more sort of broad woman who had large hands said, this was certainly a man because these are, you know, bigger handprints than mine even, and lots of bruises that they described as very dark bruises. At first, the women didn't tell anyone else about what they'd seen. One of the women asked John Durfee if he could get Sarah Cornell's trunk from the boarding house where she lived so they could find clothes to bury her in.

17:42When he brought the trunk back, he found some of Sarah's letters inside. There was one she'd written to her minister, and then there were three letters addressed to Sarah. They were unsigned. The letters very clearly pointed her to meet with a mystery person. One read, write me some time and place where I shall see you. Write soon, say nothing to no one. Yours in haste. Sarah Cornell was buried on John Durfee's land on December 22, 1832. That morning, Sarah's letters had been read into evidence at a second meeting of the coroner's jury. This time, they formally ruled that Sarah's death was a suicide.

18:31But there was one letter they weren't shown, from Sarah herself. It was written in pencil and signed SMC. It's this note that says, if I am to go missing, please inquire of Reverend Ephraim Avery, who was a minister at the Methodist church where she had once attended. The letter had been found in a hat box in Sarah's trunk by John Durfee's sisters. And so, you know, I think this was alarming to the women. And then they ended up showing the note to John Durfee. He became very alarmed. The day after Sarah's funeral, John Durfee talked to a neighbor who'd found something near the haystack where Sarah had been.

19:18It was a piece of broken comb. John Durfee had found a similar piece when he had found Sarah's body. He brought it to the woman who ran the boarding house where Sarah had lived. She told him it belonged to Sarah. She recognized it because Sarah had recently taken it to the jeweler to be fixed. Two neighbors told John Durfee they'd seen a strange man while they were out working the night Sarah had died. They told him that some of the twine they were using to tie burlap sacks together was missing. It was the same kind of twine that had been used for Sarah Cornell's noose. John Durfee went to visit the coroner and told him that he thought the coroner's jury had been wrong the coroner agreed he called for a new jury and he asked to dig up Sarah Cornell's body at the second coroner's jury two doctors examined the body her own doctor, Thomas Wilbur and another man named Dr.

20:21Hooper and they do a proper examination these two doctors as well as this group of men who are completely uncomfortable with the whole thing. And they take all of her clothing off of her, and they start to examine her and see, of course, the violence that the women had described, made notes of it. Sarah had been pregnant. They estimated she was about four months along. Dr. Wilbur knew who the father was. At one of her appointments, Sarah had told them she'd gotten pregnant because Ephraim Avery had raped her. Reverend Ephraim Avery, from the infamous note, please inquire of Reverend Ephraim Avery.

21:02And so, of course, this was their immediate suspect. On December 24th, the coroner's jury decided on a new verdict. They wrote that Sarah Cornell had been strangled, and, quote, From strong circumstantial evidence, Ephraim K. Avery was principal or accessory in her death. But Ephraim Avery had disappeared.

21:30In 1833, Ephraim Avery was 33 years old. He was married with four children. He'd become a minister about 10 years earlier. When he went missing, a sheriff asked his deputy to look into him. The deputy learned that Ephraim Avery had friends in New Hampshire. There was one woman in particular who'd almost been kicked out of her church. until Ephraim Avery had stepped in. The deputy visited the woman. When he arrived at her home, he noticed she went into one room of the house that was totally dark. He followed her and found Ephraim Avery. He had grown a beard. He had been gone for, I think it was a few weeks, and they were hiding him.

22:16When you have somebody who's a member of your church who needs help, that's what you're going to do. And the deputy sheriff said he was polite, and he came back willingly and just asked for a shave. Ephraim Avery was charged with the murder of Sarah Cornell. Catherine Williams, who at this point had written a few books, began attending the trial. She really despised the Methodists. She always had. She thought they were lower than the low and pandering to the lowest common denominator. She'd attended a Methodist tent revival in Rhode Island about 10 years earlier. She wrote in her journal that she saw people convulsing, and that the services were so chaotic that she could hear people from the inn where she was staying.

23:03Catherine described people speaking in tongues, laying on the ground, writhing around. And there was a lot of, I guess, passion. And so I think when you combine that with good-looking men who are relatively young, they did not have to be educated, particularly. And I don't mean with schooling, I mean in the Bible. They just had to have the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. And so I think that created almost a fervor following for these ministers of people who would just, you know, can you imagine being in a church meeting, like a traditional congregational church meeting for three or four days? And that's what happened with the Methodists.

23:49It was so much fun for a lot of these people. So I think it created a lot of personal relationships. To be frank, there was a lot of sex. So it was very different. And I think there was already a big chasm between, I would say, you know, the traditional mainstream Protestants and the Methodists. And, you know, Methodist ministers, because they were literally circuit riders, I mean, they would ride out west to try to recruit people. They were seen as sort of interlopers and trash, and they were a threat. They were growing very quickly. And so you have now turned a murder victim and a murder suspect into avatars for a giant clash between the established and very powerful mainstream Protestants versus, you know, the Methodists who were growing and had quite a lot of money, too.

24:47Catherine wrote that she saw an army of preachers arrive at the courthouse to watch the trial. When Ephraim Avery was brought out, she described him as middle-aged and tall. She said his face, quote, might have passed for good looking, had he not a certain iron look and a most unpleasant stare of the eyes. How is Ephraim Avery described at trial by the prosecution? Oh, sleazy. and, you know, one of the swarmy Methodist ministers, you know, a man who was a predator, I think. And really what the prosecutor was trying to lean on was physical evidence more than anything else. But Ephraim Avery, once you get into the trial, he had no real alibi.

25:37He went on like what I describe as a walkabout where nobody knew where he was. and the prosecutor just said, this is a joke, he doesn't have an alibi. The defense brought in six doctors to testify about whether it was possible for Sarah to have hung herself or not. Ephraim Avery's lawyers argued that Sarah was depressed and suicidal in December. But her landlady said that Sarah seemed cheerful in the days before she died. One of the women Sarah worked with at the textile mill said that she remembered Sarah had left early on December 20th. She said she was going to meet someone. And what do we learn at the trial about how Sarah Cornell and Ephraim Avery know each other?

26:23Well, Sarah's version through her letters, thank goodness she wrote such, you know, long, beautiful, wonderful letters to her family, so we have her voice. Sarah's version is that she had seen Avery, you know, preach at a tent revival and in one of the towns where he lived, she was looking for work, and she told her family she ended up working for him. She was supposed to be a helper for his wife. If you believe Ephraim Avery, he said she never worked for me. She knocked on the door, my wife answered, took one look at her and said no. Sarah continued working in textile mills and factories. She tried to attend church, but she was kicked out of Ephraim Avery's church in Lowell, Massachusetts.

27:11So he said, because of your reputation, he said, I don't want you to be a member of my church. And what you could do if you were kicked out by a church, by one, you know, church in a certain town, you could go to another town and join another Methodist church. But you needed to have what was called a Certificate of Good Standing. A certificate of good standing was a letter written by a clergy member that vouched for you as a good person and, quote, worthy of joining another Methodist church as a member. And Ephraim Avery had refused to do that. He wouldn't give her a certificate of good standing.

27:49And so, you know, she was, of course, very upset about that. And it made her, again, already unmoored from her family. She then becomes unmoored from the Methodist church. She's kind of going from place to place, and it becomes very difficult for her. Catherine Williams wrote that for Sarah, to be out of the pale of the church was to be excluded from salvation. What Avery had said is, I will give you a certificate of good standing if you write down all your sins, everything that you've ever done wrong. Write them down, give them to me, and, you know, I'll forgive all of this. Sarah wrote to Ephraim Avery, I will confess all if I can only be continued in the church.

28:34Sarah detailed everything she'd done wrong, writing to him multiple times, but he never answered, and he refused to vouch for her. He did the opposite. He told one minister that Sarah was guilty of theft, lying, and fornication. He wrote to another, quote, We should all of us here be opposed to her joining anywhere. But that summer, she decided to attend a tent revival in Thompson, Connecticut. And she saw Ephraim Avery there. Sarah's sister and brother-in-law said that Sarah had told them she spoke to Ephraim Avery about what she'd written to him, her list of sins. She asked for the letters back.