She Devils Around the World

by Sylvia Perrini

  The judge ordered Henrietta to remove the veil or she would be held in contempt of court. Henrietta responded, through Martin Townsend, that she would submit to whatever punishment they gave her rather than remove her veil. The judge relented, and Henrietta Robinson wore the veil for the rest of the trial.

  Throughout the week long trial, she sat as motionless as a veiled statue. At the end of the trial, the jury found Henrietta Robinson guilty of first-degree murder. Upon the reading of the verdict, Henrietta jumped up and shouted:

  “Shame on you judge! Shame on you! There is corruption here! There is corruption in the court!”

  Her defense counsel then asked for an adjournment of the court before sentencing. Again Henrietta leapt to her feet and shouted:

  “The court is corrupt! The district attorney is corrupt! Some of the jury is corrupt! I demand another judge.”

  The Sheriff and his wife persuaded her to sit down and remain quiet. The judge then adjourned the court to the following Monday. Appeals by Henrietta`s defense team kept the case open for another year. The defense lawyer’s request for a new trial was, however, denied.

  Sometime before the sentencing, Henrietta had been recognized yet again. This time as Charlotte Wood, who had attended the Troy Female Seminary.

  On June 14, 1855, Henrietta Robinson was brought into court for sentencing. She was sentenced to hang on the third of August, 1855. However, due to numerous appeals and petitions from the public in the State of New York, the governor of New York commuted her sentence to life in prison.

  Henrietta spent eighteen years in Sing Sing prison and was then transferred to Albany prison, New York. In 1890, she was transferred again to the Mateawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane where she spent the last fifteen years of her life.

  Though she was urged to reveal her identity on her deathbed, she refused; the veiled murderess took the secret to her grave.

  MARTHA GRINDER

  "The Pittsburgh Poisoner"

  Martha Grinder was born in 1833 and married when she was nineteen in Louisville, Kentucky. Around 1887, Martha and her husband and their young daughter moved to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, today known as the North Side of Pittsburgh. At the time that Martha and her husband moved to Allegheny, it was a growing industrial city and had factories that provided ample opportunities for employment. It was an area particularly popular with German immigrants.

  Martha became known in the area as an “angel.” If any of her neighbors or friends had sickness in their home, Martha would be there night after night sitting at bedsides, never too tired to nurse or cook food and feed the children in the homes where sickness had struck.

  Where there was sickness, there was Martha Grinder. Then, to the shock of the neighborhood, she was arrested for murder.

  A neighbor of Martha’s, a Mr. Caruthers, reported to the authorities that he suspected his wife and himself had been poisoned by Martha. His wife, Mary Caroline, had since died.

  According to Mr. Caruthers, he and his wife had moved into a property adjoining the Grinder’s house in Gray’s Alley, off Hand-street, near the Allegheny River.

  Martha Grinder invited his wife Mary Caroline for tea on the 27th of June. When his wife, who had always enjoyed good health, returned home was suddenly taken ill and within a few hours was suffering violent vomiting and an appalling headache and complaining of a great thirst.

  The following morning, Mr. Caruthers called the local physician, Dr. Irish. Mr. Caruthers then left for work returning at lunchtime to check on his wife, finding her still lying in bed but feeling moderately better. Martha Grinder assured him that she would keep an eye on his wife while he was at work. When he returned home that evening, he found his wife had had a relapse.

  The following morning, Martha Grinder popped in with coffee, crackers, and toasted bread. Mary Caroline partook of a little of the coffee and crackers and then became exceedingly ill again with vomiting and burning stomach pains. Dr. Irish advised the couple to take a trip out to the countryside for a few days. Mr. and Mrs. Caruthers took his advice and went to New Castle, Lawrence County. It was here that Mary Caroline recovered her health.

  Because of work commitments, Mr. Caruthers returned to the city leaving his wife in the country to make a full recovery. When he returned, he learned that Martha’s young daughter had died. He was invited by Martha to attend the funeral in Leechburg. On the morning of the funeral, he went and had coffee with Martha and noticed that the coffee had a peculiar metallic taste; shortly afterwards, he felt ill.

  In the evening, Martha invited Mr. Caruthers for supper. He says he ate a hearty meal but after returning to his house became ill and started vomiting. In the morning, he felt marginally better, and Martha popped in and brought him coffee and toast, which he gratefully accepted but less than thirty minutes afterwards was sicker than he had been the night previously. Thinking he was going to die, he sent for his wife.

  Mary Caroline arrived later that evening on July 14. She cooked her husband breakfast the following morning, and he began to feel better. For lunch, his wife cooked him some rice but had run out of milk and so borrowed some from Martha Grinder. Mary Caroline left her husband eating his milk rice and went out to stock up on provisions. When she returned to the house an hour later, she found her husband to have taken a turn for the worse. Mary Caroline sent for Dr. Irish and while Dr. Irish and Mary Caroline were attending to Mr. Caruther, Martha prepared some supper for Mary Caroline. After eating her supper, Mary Caroline became dizzy and complained of a burning sensation in her stomach and within a short time began to vomit. She joined her husband in his sick bed.

  For the rest of July, James and Mary Caroline were confined to their beds. Martha Grinder attended to all of their needs. Mary Caroline died in the afternoon of August 1. James Caruther was distraught and went to stay with friends and recovered his health. It was while he was recovering at his friend’s house that he realized that his and his wife’s illnesses were almost certainly due to Martha Grinder.

  On August 24th, James Caruthers made a statement to Mayor Lowry charging Mrs. Martha Grinder with the murder of his wife, Mary Caroline Caruthers, by means of poison. The Mayor took his statement seriously as the previous year a similar allegation had been made about Martha Grinder concerning a young girl by the name of Jane Buchanan. Jane had died while staying in Martha’s house on the 28th of February, 1864, despite just days before being in excellent health. Friend’s of Jane’s had voiced their suspicions to the coroner. Unfortunately, the coroner ruled the death as that of natural causes.

  The mayor issued a warrant for Martha’s arrest and for a search of her house. In Martha’s house, several small packets containing a fine white powder and a small jug of milk were taken for analysis by Professor Otto Wuth. The powder was found to be antimony and the milk was found to contain a high dose of arsenic.

  The bodies of Mary Caroline Caruthers and Jane Buchanan were ordered to be exhumed. Both arsenic and antimony were discovered in the bodies. Investigators suspected that Martha had been the cause of many more deaths but if they could get a conviction on these two, it was enough for a death sentence.

  The newspapers quickly cottoned on to the story and began interviewing friends and neighbors of Martha Grinder. They began to hear of more suspicious deaths such as of her brother-in-law, Samuel Grinder. Shortly after arriving at her house in good health, he had died in great agony. Other people recollected “how strange at times had been her conduct” and how “people who had accepted her hospitality had fallen ill”, and how “how terrible were the deaths which happened to those she nursed.”

  Before Martha’s trial began, she was given a thorough medical test and mental condition and the conclusion was unanimous that she was entirely sane.

  Martha’s trial began on Monday, Oct. 23rd. During the five days of the hearing of evidence, the court-room was packed almost to suffocation by local men, women, and journalists from around the country, anxious to hear the extent of Martha’
s atrocities. On October 28th, the jury found Martha “Guilty of murder in the first degree.”

  The Pittsburgh press denounced her as a “wretched torturer,” “a demon embodied,” and “fiendish”.

  On the morning of November the 25th, Martha appeared in court for sentencing. In this hearing, Martha confessed to killing the two women.

  She said, "I loved to see death in all its forms and phases and left no opportunity to gratify my tastes for such sights. Could I have had my own way, probably I should have done more."

  The judge sentenced her to be hung until dead.

  Newspapers around the country termed Martha an American Lucrezia Borgia.

  The New York Times said of Martha Grinder-that she was unremitting in her attentions to the sufferer and exhibited so much apparent kindness and sympathy as to completely disarm suspicion. After the death of the person whom she with her own hands destroyed, none were more careful in the preparation for the funeral than the murderess herself.

  The Pittsburg newspaper described her as a “monomania” while the NY Times said she was a “homicidal monomaniac” - killing without feeling or intent, seemingly indiscriminatingly, poisoning people for no apparent reason. She killed while pretending to care for her victims.

  The Pittsburgh Post said Martha Grinder was suspected of having poisoned two of her husband’s brothers, a child of her own, and a child left with her by a poor woman. The Post said she may have killed as many as twenty others.

  Martha was hanged in Pittsburgh on the cold grey morning of January 19th, 1886. It was reported that she went to the gallows smiling.

  LYDIA SHERMAN

  Lydia Sherman, nee Danburt, was born in Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1824. Lydia became orphaned at the age of nine and an uncle raised her.

  In 1845, she married Edward Struck, a police officer, with whom she had six children. After eighteen years of marriage and six children, Edward Struck was discharged from the New York Police Department. He became depressed, taking to drinking and self-pity. When drunk, Edward would beat her, and it all became too much for Lydia. She visited an insurance broker and insured his life and the children’s before visiting the chemist to buy some arsenic-based rat poison. The next time Edward beat her, she retaliated by putting arsenic in his soup. The local consensus was that he had died of alcoholism.

  Finding herself alone and unable to cope with six young children, in a single day she poisoned nine-month-old baby William, four-year-old Edward, and six-year-old Martha Ann. When her fourteen-year-old son George became severely ill, she put arsenic in his tea. A little while later in a cold winter when Ann Eliza, her eleven-year-old daughter, had fevers and chills that frequently recurred, Lydia poisoned her. Her eighteen year old, eldest daughter, Lydia, passed away of natural causes –a couple of months following the death of Ann Eliza.

  The local community expressed its deep sympathy for the tragic widow. No one suspected Lydia of being anything other than a grieving mother.

  A local storekeeper hired Lydia to care for his crippled mother in Stratford, Connecticut. Following this position, she found employment as a housekeeper to a wealthy, elderly farmer, Dennis Hulbert. Within days, they had married and in less than eighteen months, he was dead of poisoning. She inherited from him ten thousand dollars. By 1870, she had spent all of his estate.

  In April of 1870, Lydia took a job as a housekeeper to a wealthy man, Horatio Sherman, who lived in Derby, Connecticut. He had recently lost his wife and needed someone to look after his baby son Frankie and fourteen-year-old daughter Addie. Lydia and Horatio grew close and married.

  Shortly after the marriage, Lydia poisoned his baby son Frank and then his 14-year-old daughter. Horatio Sherman was grief stricken at the loss of his children. To put him out of his misery, Lydia laced his hot chocolate with arsenic, and he died on the 12th of May in 1871.

  The local medic, Dr. Beardsly, became suspicious. After finding arsenic in Horatio’s Sherman’s stomach, he ordered a second and a third opinion. Lydia fled to New York. Dr. Beardsly informed the police. The bodies of the Sherman children were then exhumed. Dr. Beardsly's suspicions of poisoning by arsenic were proven correct.

  Lydia Sherman was arrested in New York and was extradited back to Connecticut to face trial. The trial lasted eight days and was closely followed by the press. The newspapers frequently reported on how ordinary the forty-eight-year-old Lydia Sherman looked dressed in a black alpaca dress, matching black gloves, black and white shawl, and straw hat. They wrote that she appeared calm and almost cheerful behind her thin lace veil. In January of 1873, she confessed to the murders of seven children and three husbands and claimed her victims were “better off dead.”

  Frequently described as a "Modern Lucretia Borgia," she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Lydia Sherman died in Wethersfield State Prison in Connecticut on May 16, 1878.

  Wethersfield State Prison

  The New York Times reported that a few months before her arrest she had managed to escape. She was subsequently recaptured and placed in close confinement. Since then, her health had broken down. She died at the age of fifty-three.

  SARAH WHITELING

  Sarah Whiteling was born in Germany before immigrating to the United States. She first married a man, Tom Brown, in Iowa. He later died in prison, and Sarah moved to Chicago.

  After the great Chicago fire in 1871, which consumed the city’s wooden houses, commercial and industrial buildings, private mansions, killed 300 people, and left 100,000 people homeless, Sarah moved to Philadelphia. Here she met and married John Whiteling, two years her junior, in 1880. Sarah and John had two children together Bertha and a son, Willie.

  Life was tough and John was frequently ill, leaving much of the burden of earning a living and supporting the children down to Sarah. At the beginning of 1888, Sarah took out life insurance policies on her husband John and their two children.

  Sarah then went to her local hardware store and purchased “rough on rats,” claiming that the house on Cadwallader Street was becoming over run by rats.

  On March the 20th, John Whiteling died. The doctor put the cause of death down to “inflammation of the bowels.” On April 25th, nine-year-old Bertha died from what the doctor diagnosed as “gastric fever,” and on May 26th, two-week-old Willie died from “congestion of the bowels.”

  A local coroner became suspicious and on learning of the life insurance policies, ordered the bodies of John, Betha, and Willie to be exhumed. During a chemical analysis of the intestines, arsenic was found in all three.

  Upon interrogation, Sarah confessed to all three killings.

  At her trial in November of 1888, she pleaded insanity due to menopause. The jury rejected her insanity plea and found her guilty of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to die by hanging.

  On June 25, 1889 Sarah was taken from the women’s side of Moyamensing Prison to the gallows. The execution was attended by around 30 witnesses.

  The local paper The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Sarah was “callous hearted to the last.”

  SARAH JANE ROBINSON

  Sarah Jane Robinson, nee Tennant, was born in Ireland. She immigrated to America at the age of fourteen with Annie, her nine-year-old sister. They stayed with their older brother, who had immigrated a few years previously to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  Sarah made money as a dressmaker and at the age of nineteen married a machinist, Moses Robinson. During the course of their marriage, they had eight children. Three of the children died in childhood. The family suffered from acute poverty, and they would frequently abandon their home to escape debt collectors.

  In 1881, they were renting a room from a Mr. Oliver Sleeper. When he served the family an eviction notice, he became ill shortly after. Sarah Jane nursed him, but he soon died. The cause of death was attributed to heart disease. Sarah submitted a bill of $50 for her nursing services to his estate; instead, Oliver’s family gave her a few months’ free rent. Sleeper’s family were suspicious about $3,0
00 that had gone missing from Oliver Sleeper’s apartment. They suspected Sarah Jane had taken it to pay off debts but could not prove it.

  Sarah Jane took out a $2,000 life insurance policy with the Pilgrim Fathers insurance company on her husband in late 1881. In July of 1882, Moses died suddenly at the age of forty-five. Following his death, Sarah Jane’s younger sister Annie and Prince Arthur Freeman, her husband, moved in with her. Sarah Jane insured both their lives. Annie, after a sudden and painful illness, died on February 28th, 1885. Prince died on June 27th, 1885 after four days of excruciating pain.

  Sarah Jane received $4,000 in insurance money. Despite these payouts, within a short time, Sarah Jane was struggling for money again. Sarah Jane had four children, plus her sister’s son Tommy to support.

  In 1864, Emma, her ten-year-old daughter, became ill and died. Just two years later, her seven-year-old nephew, Tommy Freeman, died. The next to die was her 25-year-old daughter Elizabeth. When her twenty-three-year old son William became ill, the Pilgrim Fathers Insurance Company sent Dr. Emory White to Sarah Jane’s house to attend to him. As William grew more ill, Dr. White sent a specimen of his vomit to a chemist at Harvard for analysis. Dr. White also visited the Boston Police to voice his suspicions of poisoning. Here, Dr. White learnt that another doctor who had attended Tommy Freeman had also reported suspicions of poisoning. By the time the chemical analysis was returned from Harvard showing William’s stomach was full of arsenic, William was dead.

  Sarah Jane was arrested for the murder of William.

  Sarah Jane Robinson stood trial on December the 12th, 1887 for the murder of her son William. The trial lasted six days and ended with a hung jury. Sarah Jane was free to go.