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ONE hundred years ago there was committed in Dedham, Massachusetts,
one of the most famous murders of this country, a crime, some description of
which falls naturally enough into these chapters, inasmuch as the person
punished as the criminal belonged to the illustrious Fairbanks family, whose
picturesque homestead is widely known as one of the oldest houses in New
England.
In the
Massachusetts Federalist
of
Saturday, September 12, 1801, we find an editorial paragraph which, apart
from its intrinsic interest, is valuable as an example of the great difference
between ancient and modern journalistic treatment of murder matter. This
paragraph reads, in the quaint old type of the time: "On Thursday last Jason
Fairbanks was executed at Dedham for the murder of Miss Elizabeth Fales. He was
taken from the gaol in this town at eight o'clock, by the sheriff of this
county, and delivered to the sheriff of Norfolk County at the boundary line
between the, two counties.
"He was in an open
coach, and was attended therein by the Reverend Doctor Thatcher and two peace
officers. From the county line in Norfolk he was conducted to the Dedham gaol by
Sheriff Cutler, his deputies, and a score of cavalry under Captain Davis; and
from the gaol in Dedham to the place of execution was guarded by two companies
of cavalry and a detachment of volunteer infantry.
"He mounted the
scaffold about a quarter before three with his usual steadiness, and soon after
making a signal with his handkerchief, was swung off. After hanging about
twenty-five minutes, his body was cut down and buried near the gallows. His
deportment during his journey to and at the place of execution was marked with
the same apathy and indifference which he discovered before and since his trial.
We do not learn he has made any confession of his guilt."
As a matter of fact,
far from making a confession of his guilt, Jason Fairbanks denied even to the
moment of his execution that he killed Elizabeth Fales, and his family and many
other worthy citizens of Dedham believed, and kept believing to the end of their
lives, that the girl committed suicide, and that an innocent man was punished
for a crime he could never have perpetrated.
In the trial it was
shown that this beautiful girl of eighteen had been for many years extremely
fond of the young man, Fairbanks, and that her love was ardently reciprocated.
Jason Fairbanks had not been allowed, however, to visit the girl at the home of
her father, though the Fales place was only a little more than a mile from his
own dwelling, the venerable Fairbanks house. None the less, they had been in the
habit of meeting frequently, in company with others, en route to the weekly
singing school, the husking bees and the choir practice. Both the young people
were extremely fond of music, and this mutual interest seems to have been one of
the several ties which bound them together.
In spite, therefore,
of the stern decree that young Fairbanks should not visit Miss Fales at her
home, there was considerable well-improved opportunity for intercourse, and, as
was afterward shown, the two often had long walks together, apart from the
others of their acquaintance. One of their appointments was made for the day of
the murder, May 18, 1801. Fairbanks was to meet his sweetheart, he told a
friend, in the pasture near her home, and it was his intention at that time to
persuade her to run away with him and be married.
Unfortunately for Fairbanks's case at the trial, it was shown that he
told this same friend that if Elizabeth Fales would not run away with him he
would do her harm. And one other thing which militated against the acquittal of
the accused youth was the fact that, as an inducement to the girl to elope with
him, Fairbanks showed her a forged paper, upon which she appeared to have
declared legally her intention to marry him.
One tragic element
of the whole affair was the fact that Fairbanks had no definite work and no
assured means of support. Young people of good family did not marry a hundred
years ago without thinking, and thinking to some purpose, of what cares and
expense the future might bring them. The man, if he was an honourable man,
expected always to have a home for his wife, and since Fairbanks was an invalid,
"debilitated in his right arm," as the phrasing of the time put it, and had
never been able to do his part of the farm work, he had lived what his stern
forebears would have called an idle life, and consequently utterly lacked the
means to marry. That he was something of a spoiled child also developed at the
trial, which from the first went against the young man because of the testimony
of the chums to whom he had confided his intention to do Elizabeth Fales an
injury if she would not go to Wrentham and marry him.
The prisoner's
counsel were two very clever young
lawyers who afterward came to be men of great distinction in Massachusetts – no
others, in fact, than Harrison Gray Otis and John Lowell. These men advanced
very clever arguments to show that Elizabeth Fales, maddened by a love which
seemed unlikely ever to end in marriage, had seized from Jason the large
knife which he was using to mend a quill pen as he walked to meet her,
and with this knife had inflicted upon herself the terrible wounds from the
effect of which she died almost instantaneously. The fact that Jason was himself
wounded m the struggle was ingeniously utilised by the defence to show that he
had received murderous blows from her hand, for the very reason that he had
attempted (unsuccessfully, inasmuch as his right arm was impaired) to wrest the
mad girl's murderous weapon from her.
The counsel also
made much of the fact that, though it was at midday and many people were not far
off, no screams were heard. A vigorous girl like Elizabeth Fales would not have
submitted easily, they held, to any such assault as was charged. In the course
of the trial a very moving description of the sufferings such a high-strung,
ardent nature as this girl's must have undergone, because of her hopeless love,
was used to show the reasons for suicide. And following the habit of the times,
the lawyers turned their work to moral ends by beseeching the parents in the
crowded court-room to exercise a greater vigilance over the social life of their
young people, and so prevent the possibility of their forming any such
attachment as had moved Elizabeth Fales to take her own life.
Yet all this
eloquent pleading was in vain, for the court found Jason Fairbanks guilty of
murder and sentenced him to be hanged. From the court-room he was taken to the
Dedham gaol, but on the night of the seventeenth of August he was enabled to
make his escape through the offices a
of a number of men who believed him innocent, and for some days he was at
liberty. At length, however, upon a reward of one thousand dollars being offered
for his apprehension, he was captured near
Northampton, Massachusetts, which town he had reached on his journey to
Canada. The gallows upon which "justice" ultimately asserted itself is said to
have been constructed of a tree cut from the old Fairbanks place.
The Fairbanks house
is still standing, having been occupied for almost two hundred and seventy-five
years by the same family, which is now in the eighth generation of the name. The
house is surrounded by magnificent old elms, and was built by Jonathan
Fairbanks, who came, from Sowerby, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, in
1633. The cupboards are filled with choice china, and even the Fairbanks cats,
it is said, drink their milk out of ancient blue saucers that would drive a
collector wild with envy.
The house is now
(1902) the home of Miss Rebecca Fairbanks, an old lady of seventy-five years,
who will occupy it throughout her lifetime, although the place is controlled by
the Fairbanks Chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution, who hold their monthly
meetings there.
The way in which
this property acquired by the organisation named is interesting recent history.
Miss Rebecca Fairbanks was obliged in 1895 to sell the house to John Crowley, a
real estate dealer in Dedham. On April 3, 1897, Mrs. Nelson V. Titus, asked
through the medium of the press for four thousand, five hundred dollars,
necessary to purchase the house and keep it as a historical relic. Almost
immediately Mrs. J. Amory Codman and Miss Martha Codman sent a check for the sum
desired, and thus performed a double act of beneficence. For it was now possible
to ensure to Miss Fairbanks a life tenancy of the home of her fathers as well as
to keep for all time this picturesque place as an example of early American
architecture.
FAIRBANKS HOUSE, DEDHAM, MASS.
Hundreds of visitors
now go every summer to see the interesting old house, which stands nestling
cosily in a grassy dell just at the corner of East Street and the short "Willow
Road" across the meadows that lie between East Street and Dedham. This road is a
"modern convenience," and its construction was severely frowned upon by the
three old ladies who twenty years ago lived together in the family homestead.
And though it made the road to the village shorter by half than the old way,
this had no weight with the inflexible women who had inherited from their long
line of ancestors marked decision and firmness of character. They protested
against the building of the road, and when it was built in spite of their
protests they declared they would not use it, and kept their word. Constant
attendants of the old Congregational church in Dedham, they went persistently by
the longest way round rather than tolerate the road to which they had objected.
That their
neighbours called them "set in their ways" goes, of course, without saying, but
the women of the Fairbanks family have ever been rigidly conscientious, and the
men a bit obstinate. For, much as one would like to think the contrary true, one
seems forced to believe that it was obstinacy rather than innocency which made
Jason Fairbanks protest till the hour of his death that he was being unjustly
punished.
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