by Steve Vernon
The Trial of William Millman
The trial was set to be held in front of the Prince Edward Island Supreme Court on January 24, 1888. Over one hundred people crammed into the courthouse to watch the proceedings. At eleven o’clock in the morning, Justice Joseph Hensley and Justice Edward Palmer arrived at the courthouse. They were joined by lawyers James H. Peters for the prosecution and E. J. Hodgson for the defence.
Shortly afterwards, a pair of Charlottetown constables escorted William Millman into the courtroom. People booed and called out loudly for justice.
“Hang the dog,” one man shouted. “I’ll be glad to buy the rope.”
The judges called for order as three strapping court bailiffs lugged the heavy stone killick into the courtroom as evidence. The rope that bound Mary Tuplin to the killick was also brought to the bench. It was proven that a red painted, flat bottom oyster boat belonging to John Cousins was stolen from its mooring on the north bank of the Southwest River. John Cousins was sworn in, and he allowed that the killick was the same stone he used as ballast in his boat.
“There’s always rope in there too,” he admitted. “It wouldn’t surprise me if that bit of ragged rope belonged to me as well. I’d be glad to have it back once we’ve hung the bugger with it.”
“It is clear to the court that whomever stole the boat is most likely the culprit we seek,” Judge Hensely declared. “However, whether or not that culprit is the defendant, William Millman, has yet to be proven. There’ll be no talk of hanging in my witness box, sir.” The required proof was provided by several testimonies.
“I remember the Tuesday evening on which Mary Tuplin was lost,” a local farmer by the name of Jonathan Adams testified. “I was down in the field, weeding the bean patch. I have seen a boat moored on the other side of the Southwest River. The boat is always moored there, as far as I can tell. That night, I saw the boat on the opposite shore, near the Mud Road. I don’t know who brought the boat there.”
“Are you certain it was Cousins’s boat?” Hodgson questioned.
“It was a red boat,” Adams admitted. “As far as I know, Cousins’s boat is a reddish boat as well.”
The further testimony of Joseph Davison drove another nail into Millman’s coffin. “I saw a boat on the river,” Davison swore. “There was a man in it. It was going toward the western side of the river. I saw it go to shore. I could not tell exactly where. I was over half a mile away. The man jumped onto the shore. One man was all I saw. It would be between half-past six and half-past seven, just before sundown.”
“And was it Cousins’s boat?” Hodgson questioned.
“It resembled Cousins’s boat. I suppose it was. No other boats are moored there. I can give no idea as to the identity of the person in the boat.”
Peter Thompson, another local farmer, added to this testimony. “I was at home at my father’s farm on Tuesday evening, and noticed a boat leaving Warren’s Shore. It was Cousins’s boat, I am sure of it. The time was half-past six or seven o’clock in the evening. The boat didn’t go back before sundown.”
But it was Jonathan Adams’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Dorothy Ann Adams, who fit the last piece of the puzzle into place. “I remember the evening Mary Tuplin was murdered,” she testified. “I was in my father’s potato field, near the Mud Road. I saw a boat near the end of the Mud Road. I saw a person there. It was William Millman. He was tying the boat. He went up through the field toward the Mud Road. I kept him in view until he got out of sight. He had dark clothes on and a very dark hat.”
“Are you certain it was William Millman?” Hodgson prodded.
“I know William Millman,” Dorothy testified. “I have often seen him.”
There was a bit of conflicting evidence raised in the trial. It seems that Millman’s pistol was a .22, but the calibre of bullet that killed Mary Tuplin was a .32. However, it was revealed that Millman had previously borrowed a .32 calibre revolver from a friend, Francis Powers, several weeks before the murder. He told Powers that he was thinking of buying the pistol from him, but first wanted to try it out for size.
William Millman quietly returned the pistol to Powers the night after the murder. He then asked Francis Powers’s younger brother Patrick to swear that he was with Millman somewhere else on the evening of the murder. “Even if you would only mention that you were with me that night, I would be greatly obliged,” Millman had pleaded. “Perhaps that will be enough for the judge to rethink his actions.” However, Patrick Powers would not oblige William Millman. Further, when the authorities examined the revolver, they found it to be loaded with three full cartridges and two empty shells, presumably belonging to the bullets that were fired into Mary Tuplin’s skull.
The evidence was hard to deny. Witness after witness was called upon to testify. The days passed slowly. The trial lasted over a week. On February 6, 1888, the jury declared William Millman guilty of the murder of seventeen-year-old Mary Tuplin.
The Sentence Passed
Three days later, the sentence was passed. “Your trial has been an unusually long one,” Judge Hensley stated. “No less than forty-eight witnesses were examined on the part of the Crown, and eighteen on your own behalf. After an admirably painstaking defence on your behalf by your counsel, and a most patient and attentive hearing by the jury, you have been found guilty.”
As Judge Hensley pronounced sentence, Millman put his fingers in his ears so that he might not hear the spoken words. Tears were streaming from his eyes and he was sobbing uncontrollably. At one point he passed out cold, and had to be revived before the sentence was completed. Suffice it to say, he did not meet his fate in a manly fashion.
“Your present conditions are sad and awful, and will doubtless excite the sympathy of many a tender and Christian heart, not only for you but for your aged and agonized parents, whose grey hair will go down with sorrow into the grave,” the judge observed. “But I will dwell no longer on this painful subject.” This brought on more tears from Millman. But the judge was not finished.
“Your time in this life must be limited to a brief period, and before I pronounce the solemn words of your doom, I implore you most earnestly to employ that precious time toward reconciliation with that God whom you have so deeply offended.”
More tears flowed. The judge remained unmoved by this display.
“The sentence of this court is that you, William Millman, be henceforth taken to the prison from whence you last came, and that you be kept in safe custody until Tuesday, the tenth day of the month of April, and on that day, between the hours of eight in the morning and four in the afternoon, within the walls of that prison, you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may the Lord, in his infinite goodness, have mercy upon your soul, for I do not.”
The Final Hours
William Millman spent his final days in the very same cell in which George Dowey had been kept two years previous. Millman spent his last few weeks clapped in cold iron after he broke a bottle over his jailer’s head in an attempt at escape.
Millman’s attempt was almost successful. He actually made it out of the cell and into the jail yard. And that was as far as he got. Three guards corralled him and brought him to his knees with brute force.
Millman was next placed in a cell reserved for madmen, and he spent his last days in great discomfort, constantly under guard and chained in irons. On the last night before execution, he begged and pleaded to be simply left alone to wait.
“What can one poor fellow do,” he pleaded, “chained to the floor as I am? You’ve got me, and I know it rightly so.” The desperate plea for merciful solitude was eventually honoured, in lieu of a last request.
The Hanging of William Millman
Tuesday, April 10, 1888, was a cold and dreary morning. A huge, iron-grey storm cloud hung over the prison yard like some great, heavenly hearse waiting patiently to carry away its next customer.
&nb
sp; Onlookers had been gathering out in the street since early morning, although the gallows were boarded on the sides that faced the street. Only about fifty-odd spectators, those with previously arranged execution passes, were allowed into the prison yard itself.
As the clock tolled eight, Millman was led to the gallows. He was blindfolded at his own request. He was dressed in black, perhaps to match the black mackintosh and slouch hat that the waiting executioner wore. The Reverend James Simpson walked sombrely in front of Millman, wearing a black cassock, surplice, and biretta as he read from the prayers for the dead.
Millman seemed calm to all who watched. The jailer reported that Millman had slept well the night before. Sheriff Curtis appeared visibly shaken, pausing occasionally to drag his heavy forearm across his eyes to wipe away his tears as he solemnly read out Millman’s death warrant.
“Let us pray,” Reverend Simpson intoned. Millman bowed his blindfolded head. Viewers could see his lips moving along as the Reverend Simpson read out the Lord’s Prayer. “Amen,” Millman loudly added as Reverend Simpson completed the prayer.
The executioner slipped the noose over Millman’s head as Simpson began reciting a final benediction. Sheriff Curtis slowly raised and dropped his hand. The executioner threw the lever. At 8:08 am William Millman dropped into Death’s arms.
Millman’s legs spasmed for a minute or so. His entire body shook and trembled for a few short seconds. And then he was still.
The black flag was solemnly raised over the Charlottetown courthouse to signal the passing of a murderer. The bell at St. Peter’s Church tolled for nineteen minutes. Reverend Simpson continued to read.
The doctor clambered up a short stepladder to check for a pulse. At 8:19 am, the pulse stilled, and William Millman was pronounced dead. Seven minutes later, they lowered his body into a waiting casket and then they removed the noose. Millman’s neck and spine appeared to have been immediately dislocated. His hands were purpled into the colour of autumn grapes. The coffin was closed. A prison carpenter tacked a small, engraved brass placard onto the lid. The engraving read, “William Millman, Jesu Mercy.”
There are still strong feelings regarding the guilt or innocence of William Millman, but, right or wrong, Millman surely paid the final price.
“kill him right the once”
The Osborne Family
Shediac, New Brunswick
1877
Some people never know when they’ve got it good. On Friday, October 12, 1877, Timothy McCarthy tucked a thousand dollars into his suit coat pocket and left a successful business behind in Moncton.
Well, actually, what he was leaving was his wife, Helen, and his four young children. He should have been happy, I suppose. His business, a tavern, was by all reports very profitable. His children were bright and loved him deeply. But he and Helen could not see eye to eye, so Timothy McCarthy decided that he would leave the province and move to Prince Edward Island.
He boarded a train for Pointe-du-Chêne, intending to take the ferry to Prince Edward Island. However, Helen left the children with her parents and followed on her husband’s heels. When he realized that the wife he was trying to leave was riding on the same train as he was, he decided to do something about the situation. He got off of the train at Pointe-du-Chêne, doubled back, reboarded, and rode the train all the way back to Moncton, leaving Helen alone in Pointe-du-Chêne.
“That’ll fix her,” was what he was thinking. It turns out the person he actually fixed was himself.
He stopped long enough to hitch a horse to a carriage and then he drove directly to the village of Shediac, intending to put as much physical distance between himself and his wife as possible.
It turns out that he accomplished that trick just about as well as anyone could ever hope to manage, putting a lifetime and a death between himself and his wife. Like I said, some people really never know when they’ve got it good.
A Night in Shediac
Tired out from his long journey, Timothy McCarthy found himself a room at the Weldon Hotel. Then he went down to the tavern below.
“I am here to drink,” Timothy McCarthy told Weldon Hotel barkeeper, Martin Macdonald. “I need to drown my trouble in as many glassfuls as it takes.”
“You’ve come to the right place,” Macdonald replied.
“Timothy McCarthy had two drinks, and then left the bar in the company of the town postman, Chipman Smith,” Martin Macdonald later testified. “Beyond that, I know nothing.”
“I took him to the Adams House to meet with the Riley sisters, hoping for a party,” Chipman Smith later testified. “Only the Riley girls wouldn’t let us in, on account of our drunkenness. McCarthy and I parted ways at this point, and I have no idea where he might have gone from there.”
“Where is the liquor cheapest?” Timothy McCarthy asked the Adams House innkeeper, after Chipman Smith had departed. The innkeeper directed him to a nearby bar in the lower floor of the Waverly Hotel, which was owned and run by John Osborne, his wife, Martha, his twenty-five-year-old daughter, Eliza, and his seventeen-year-old son, Harry.
Within an hour, McCarthy was feeling no pain. He bought several rounds for the house, and anyone with eyes noticed his fat, gold watch and the large roll of bills that he continued to peel money from. He was free with his money, and not very careful about concealing his fortune.
Timothy McCarthy was alone and at the mercy of the night. He was never seen alive again.
Meanwhile, back in Pointe-du-Chêne, Helen spent a few quiet nights contemplating her next move and wondering just where her husband had gone. Finally she had enough of waiting and boarded the train back to Moncton where she spoke with Timothy’s two brothers—Edward and Stephen—who ran a successful King Street blacksmith shop.
The family searched for two whole weeks, eventually tracking Timothy’s disappearance to the Weldon Hotel in Shediac. The only traces discovered were his horse and carriage—which Helen returned home—and his hat, which was found by hunters upon the bank of the Scoudouc River.
It was then that Helen reported her husband missing to Sheriff Botsford of Shediac, New Brunswick. The sheriff began his investigation, doggedly interviewing witnesses and tracking down as many clues as could be unearthed upon this very cold trail. Privately the sheriff wondered if Timothy McCarthy hadn’t either skipped town or taken his own life.
This was all to change in January 1879, when young Annie Parker walked into Sheriff Botsford’s office, sat down, and told him the whole true story about just what happened to Timothy McCarthy.
Annie Parker’s Story
Annie Parker was a rather plain and uneducated young woman who lived alone and worked as a servant at the Waverly House. Born to a hard-working, French Canadian mother in northern Quebec, Annie had come to Shediac at the age of seventeen to find her fortune. Her English, by all reports, was not so good; her mother tongue was French.
“I’d only started working there a few weeks before it happened,” Annie would later testify. “If I’d only known then what I know now, I would have never taken the position in the first place.”
“It happened on October 12,” Annie continued. “The whole Osborne family—Eliza, Martha, and Harry—were there when I saw it. John Osborne was sick in bed that night. Mr. Timothy McCarthy was there as well. He was in the sitting room with Martha and Eliza. I was one room over, scrubbing a floor. Either they didn’t know I was there or didn’t think I was worth worrying about.
“They were talking about a polonaise—you know, one of those bodice-gowns that go over your petticoat? It seems Mr. McCarthy had given one really fancy polonaise to a girl in Moncton, just because he liked her. I think Martha and Eliza were trying to convince Mr. McCarthy to buy them a polonaise—only I couldn’t tell you for the life of me where they would wear such a fancy getup, even if they did talk him into buying one for them.
“‘Were there white buttons
on that polonaise?’ Eliza asked.
“‘They were black buttons,’ Mr. McCarthy told her.
“‘Whoever heard of such a thing?’ Eliza said. ‘Black buttons on a polonaise! A lot you know. I bet you anything those buttons were white.’
“That’s when Mr. McCarthy pulled out a roll of money that you could plug a stovepipe with. ‘What are you willing to bet?’ he asked. I saw the money when I leaned around the corner, and I saw the way Eliza and Martha were looking at it, and I guess Mr. McCarthy would have seen the way they were looking too, except he had already had one too many drinks that evening and wasn’t really looking at anything beyond the tip of his own nose.
“Then Mr. McCarthy and Eliza started arguing on what colour those buttons were, and the two of them argued until Mr. McCarthy decided to go back out to the bar and drink a bit more. Next, I saw Eliza talking with Harry Osborne. Then, right after the clock struck midnight, I heard Mrs. Osborne, Eliza, and Harry talking about how Harry was fixing to give Mr. McCarthy a white powder that would ‘mortifize’ Mr. McCarthy the next time he had himself a drink. That was the word they used—‘mortifize’—and I didn’t like the sound of that word one bit at all.
“Then Mr. McCarthy came back to the sitting room, and he drank with Harry and Eliza, and he paid for the drinks out of that stove-pipe-plugging roll of money. I kept watching him drag that horse-choking roll of money from out of his pocket, and I wanted to tell him not to, but I was afraid to say a thing. And then Mrs. Osborne put that white powder and some sugar into Mr. McCarthy’s drink, saying that she was going to sweeten his drink for him, and they were laughing and so Mr. McCarthy, he laughed too.
“I wanted to warn him not to drink that drink, but Mrs. Osborne, she put that powder into a drink for me and called me over to the table and told me to have myself a drink. But I thought better of it and told her that I had promised my mother never to drink strong liquor, and she took me at my word.