The Devil's Gentleman

by Harold Schechter

  My own opinion, based on my long immersion in the details of the Molineux affair, as well as my beliefs about the dark potentialities of human nature, is that the jury at Roland’s first trial rendered the correct verdict.

  PROLOGUE

  1. Mark Essig, Edison & the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death (New York: Walker & Company, 2003), p. 253.

  2. Daniel Allen Hearn, Legal Executions in New York State, 1639–1963 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1997), pp. 81–92; New York World, March 21, 1899, p. 1.

  3. Hearn, p. 94.

  4. New York World, February 24, 1900, p. 12.

  5. Roland Molineux, The Room with the Little Door (New York: G. W. Dillingham, 1902), pp. 26–32; New York Times, February 27, 1900, p. 14.

  CHAPTER ONE

  1. Edward Molineux’s scrapbooks are owned by his great-grandson, Will Molineux.

  2. From an unsigned note among the Molineux family papers.

  3. The source of this legend is Nellie Zada Rice Molyneux, History, genealogical and biographical, of the Molyneux families (Syracuse, NY: C. W. Bardeen, 1904), pp. 17–18.

  4. All information regarding Edward Molineux and the Tiemanns comes from the unpublished reminiscences of William Tiemann, a copy of which is owned by Will Molineux.

  5. Even before the formation of the 159th Brigade, Edward had already taken part in the war, having been a volunteer member of the storied Seventh Regiment New York State Militia that hurried to the defense of Washington, D.C., immediately after the fall of Fort Sumter.

  6. Among them, Port Hudson, Donaldsonville, Martinsville, New Iberia, Pine Mill, Marksville, Halltown, Winchester, Markettown, Cedar Creek, Fisher Hill, Charlestown, and Berryville.

  7. “The New Major General,” Brooklyn Eagle, March 25, 1869, p. 2.

  8. From a speech made by William F. Tiemann on October 19, 1896, on the thirty-second anniversary of the Battle of Cedar Creek. A typed transcript is among the ELM papers.

  9. As he did in a speech to surviving veterans of the 159th in April, 1902. See “Gathering of Veterans,” Brooklyn Eagle, April 15, 1902, p. 5.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1. In June 1884—during a controversy over Governor Grover Cleveland’s appointment of ELM as major general of the Second Division of National Guard—the Brooklyn Eagle noted that “General Molineux has been in the West for some time.” The reasons for ELM’s trip—i.e., to bring Roland home after his two-year exile—were, of course, unknown to the public. See Brooklyn Eagle, June 6, 1884, p. 4.

  2. Edward Leslie Molineux, Physical and Military Exercise in Public Schools: A National Necessity, p. 9.

  3. Quoted in John Rickards Betts, America’s Sporting Heritage: 1850–1950 (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1974), p. 52.

  4. J. Willis and R. Wettan. “Social Stratification in New York City Athletic Clubs, 1865–1915,” Journal of Sports History, 24 (Spring 1997), p. 54.

  5. Willis and Wettan, p. 54. See also Malcolm W. Ford, “The New York Athletic Club,” Outing (Vol. XXXIII), December 1898, pp. 248 ff., and Bob Considine and Fred G. Jarvis, The First Hundred Years: A Portrait of the NYAC (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1969).

  6. Eric Homberger, Mrs. Astor’s New York: Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 212.

  7. Theodore Dreiser, The “Rake”, Papers on Language & Literature, 27 (spring 1991), 148–49.

  8. There were two very different versions of this scandalous incident, one told by Mr. Edward O. Kindberg, the other by his wife, Eleanor. According to the former, his wife had been involved in an adulterous affair with the rakish, fifteen-year-old Molineux. Mrs. Kindberg, on the other hand, claimed that her husband had set her up. According to an affidavit she filed during their exceptionally ugly divorce, on the evening of February 24, 1883, the teenaged Molineux—“a friend and companion of her husband”—called upon her at her apartment at 292 Henry Street, Brooklyn, and “remained in the house until 10 P.M.,” innocently chatting with her. About fifteen minutes after his departure, “her husband and several men broke into her room while she was in bed, lighted the gas, and her husband said, ‘Now, we’ve got you, you must sign this paper. We will write for you.’” With one man seated on each side of the bed, she was threatened and “compelled to sign a blank piece of paper,” which was later filled in with a fake confession of her own supposed adulterous behavior, to be used as evidence in denying her alimony. See New York World, January 12, 1899, p. 12.

  9. See Brooklyn Eagle, April 7, 1889, p. 1, and February 17, 1891, p. 6.

  CHAPTER THREE

  1. See Jane Pejsa, The Molineux Affair (Minneapolis: Kenwood Publishing, 1983), p. 86. The description of ELM’s parenting style is an extrapolation, based on Will Molineux’s written memories of his own grandfather, Leslie Edward, the General’s oldest son. This seems to me a valid approach, since—as Will Molineux notes—“men are apt to be like their fathers.”

  2. The information about Leslie Edward comes from Will Molineux’s written “Remembrances of my grandfather.”

  3. Pejsa, p. 29.

  4. Samuel Klaus, ed., The Molineux Case (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929), p. 230.

  5. Klaus, p. 223.

  6. Pejsa, p. 30.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1. Joseph E. Cornish, The History and Genealogy of the Cornish Families in America (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis Co., 1907), p. 128.

  2. Klaus, The Molineux Case, p. 3.

  3. Brooklyn Eagle, February 10, 1899, p. 1.

  4. New York Times, December 18, 1895, p. 15.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1. Brooklyn Eagle, April 7, 1889, p. 1.

  2. Klaus, p. 11.

  3. New York Journal, February 15, 1899, p. 2; New York World, February 15, 1899, p. 2.

  4. New York Journal, February 15, 1899, p. 2.

  5. Ibid.

  6. New York World, February 12, 1899, p. 2; Klaus, p. 8.

  CHAPTER SIX

  1. Lloyd Morris, Incredible New York: High Life and Low Life of the Last Hundred Years (New York: Random House, 1951), p. 208.

  2. Pejsa, p. 31; Klaus, p. 19.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1. New York World, March 5, 1899, p. 1.

  2. This story is impossible to verify. Indeed, it is not at all clear that Blanche really had an artificial eye. Some observers insisted that she did (see, for example, the New York World, February 22, 1899, p. 2). Others, however, claimed that her left eye simply had a peculiar cast which, in certain lights, made it look like glass (see Pejsa, pp. 137–38). It appears to be true, however, that whatever was wrong with her eye, Blanche was self-conscious about it. At the time of the first Molineux trial, despite relentless efforts by reporters, only one photograph of her could be found, a group portrait taken when she was a member of the Rubinstein Musical Society and in which she is hardly visible. In her only other surviving photograph—published in the August 27, 1905, issue of The Chicago Tribune—she sits with her left side turned away from the camera, as though deliberately concealing it from sight.

  3. The unpublished memoirs of Blanche Molineux Scott were provided to me by Jane Pejsa, whose used them as the basis for her own book, The Molineux Affair. They will hereafter be referred to as “Scott.”

  4. Scott, p. 16.

  5. Ibid., p. 17.

  6. Ibid., p. 18.

  7. Ibid., pp. 21–22.

  8. Ibid.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1. New York World, March 5, 1899, p. 1; Scott, p. 19.

  2. Details in this passage—evoking the sights that Blanche would have seen on her strolls along Broadway—are taken from Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (New York: Norton, 1970), pp. 226–27.

  3. New York Journal, February 11, 1900, p. 28; New York Sun, February 4, 1900, p. 2.

  4. Lucius Beebe, The Big Spenders (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 115–16, and M. H. Dunlop, Gilded City (New York: William Morrow, 2000), pp. 20f.

  5. Scott, p. 25.

  6. Ibid., pp.
24–25.

  7. Ibid., pp. 30–32.

  8. Ibid., p. 37.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1. Dunlop, Gilded City, p. 124.

  2. New York World, February 22, 1899.

  3. There is an extant portrait of Lois, done by one of Boston’s leading painters of society women, William M. Paxton. Titled Portrait of a Woman in Black (Mrs. Howard Oakie). It shows a quite beautiful woman, perhaps thirty years old, with lush deep-brown hair, large dark eyes, a strong nose, full mouth, and elegant throat. She wears no ornamentation beyond a lace scarf draped over the shoulders of her rich, black velvet gown. Despite her subdued garb, there is a physical vibrancy to Mrs. Oakie, a radiant sensuality that, by all accounts, all three Chesebrough sisters shared and that—in addition to their other attributes of intellect and charm—clearly accounted for the attraction they exerted on men.

  4. Scott, p. 36.

  5. Ibid., p. 37.

  6. Ibid., 40–41.

  7. Sidney Sutherland, “The Mystery of the Poison Christmas Gift,” Liberty, March 9, 1929, p 45.

  8. Scott, p. 62.

  9. Ibid., p. 42.

  10. Ibid., p. 61.

  11. Ibid., p. 62.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1. John S. Haller and Robin M. Haller, The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America (New York: Norton, 1977), pp. 108–10; S. Pancoast, Pancoast’s Tokology and Ladies Medical Guide: A Complete Instructor in All the Delicate and Wonderful Matters Pertaining to Women (Chicago: Thomas & Thomas, 1901), p. 35.

  2. For a fascinating discussion of the class of single young women to which Blanche was perceived to belong, see Haller, pp. 246–47.

  3. Scott, p. 60.

  4. New York World, March 3, 1899, p. 1.

  5. Scott, p. 44.

  6. Ibid., pp. 45–46.

  7. Ibid., p. 46.

  8. Ibid., p. 47.

  9. Ibid.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1. Scott, p. 49.

  2. Ibid., p. 48.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid., pp. 49–50.

  6. Klaus, p. 12.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  1. Scott, p. 52.

  2. Pejsa, p. 31.

  3. Scott, p. 52.

  4. In her memoir, Blanche mentions these as places she went to dine with Roland. My description of a typical night at these fashionable eateries derives from Lloyd Morris’s Incredible New York: High Life and Low Life of the Last Hundred Years (New York: Random House, 1951), pp. 260–61.

  5. Ibid., p. 60.

  6. Klaus, pp. 277–78.

  7. Scott, p. 61.

  8. Ibid.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  1. Klaus, p.11.

  2. New York World, February 11, 1899, p. 2.

  3. New York Journal, February 22, 1899, p. 2.

  4. Scott, p. 58.

  5. Ibid., p. 59.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid., p. 61.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid., p. 64.

  10. Ibid.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  1. New York Journal, February 10, 1899, p. 3.

  2. Klaus, p. 10.

  3. Pejsa, p. 57.

  4. Ibid.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  1. New York Journal, February 10, 1899, p. 2.

  2. Subsequent quotations in this chapter are taken from Scott, pp. 65–77.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  1. All quotations in this chapter are taken from Scott, pp. 80–86.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  1. “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XI, trans. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1957), p. 183. In Freud’s experience, psychical impotence was—next to “the many forms of anxiety”—the disorder that most frequently drove men to seek psychoanalytic help. Unsurprisingly, he traces this disturbance to unconscious incestuous wishes.

  2. Pejsa, p. 71.

  3. Luc Sante, Low Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), pp. 126-28. Also, see George Chauncey, Gay New York (New York: Basic Books, 1994), pp. 33–40.

  4. See Stephen Crane, “Opium’s Varied Dreams,” in Stephen Crane: Prose and Poetry, J.C. Levenson, ed. (New York: Library of America, 1984), pp. 853–59.

  5. Scott, p. 63.

  6. Ibid., p. 67.

  7. Ibid., pp. 87–88.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  1. Klaus, p. 302.

  2. Ibid., pp. 312-13. Also see The People of the State of New York, Respondents, against Roland B. Molineux, Appellant. Case on Appeal from the Court of General Sessions of the Peace, in and for the county of New York. Court of Appeals of the State of New York (New York, 1901), pp. 3222–25.

  3. See advertisement in the New York Sun, September 24, 1899, p. 6.

  4. People of the State of New York, Respondents, against Roland B. Molineux, Appellant, p. 3265.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  1. Klaus, pp. 315–16.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  1. All quotes in this chapter are taken from Scott, pp. 92–95.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  1. New York Morning Journal, January 9, 1899, pp. 1–2.

  2. Klaus, p. 135.

  3. One of the many ads for Kutnow’s can be found in the New York Journal, April 30, 1899, p. 3.

  4. Klaus, p. 138.

  5. Ibid., p. 202.

  6. Ibid., p. 206.

  7. See Merck’s 1899 Manual of the Materia Medica, Together with a Summary of Therapeutic Indications and a Classification of Medicaments: A Ready-Reference Pocket Book for the Practicing Physician (New York: Merck & Co., 1899).

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  1. Scott, p. 98.

  2. Ibid.

  3. New York World, January 9, 1899, p. 2.

  4. Ibid.

  5. New York Times, November 12, 1898, p. 7.

  6. “Brooklyn Society,” Brooklyn Eagle, November 30, 1898, p. 5. The current Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, located uptown at Fifth Avenue and Ninetieth Street, was not built until the late 1920s. Roland chose to be married in the original church partly because it was close to his club and partly, no doubt, for his usual snobbish reasons, since it was frequented by the city’s elite.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  1. Ezra Bowen, ed., This Fabulous Century: 1870–1900 (New York: Time-Life Books, 1970), p. 166.

  2. George Juergens, Joseph Pulitzer and the New York World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 6 and 51.

  3. Bowen, p. 168.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Juergens, pp. 51–52.

  6. John D. Stevens, Sensationalism and the New York Press (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 70.

  7. Juergens, pp. 67–69.

  8. Denis Brian, Pulitzer: A Life (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001), p. 74.

  9. Ibid., p. 55.

  10. W. W. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst (New York: Scribner’s, 1961), p. 41.

  11. Ibid., p. 47.

  12. Ben Procter, William Randolph Hearst: The Early Years, 1863–1910 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 41.

  13. Swanberg, p. 43.

  14. Ibid., p. 193.

  15. Ibid., p. 49.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  1. Sidney Kobre, The Yellow Press and Gilded Age Journalism (Tallahassee: Florida State University, 1964), p. 62.

  2. Among the staffers he stole away was cartoonist R. F. Outcault, creator of the enormously popular comic strip “The Yellow Kid,” starring a bald, jug-eared slum urchin dressed in a yellow nightgown. In retaliation, Pulitzer hired another cartoonist, George Luks, to continue producing “The Yellow Kid” for the World. The competing garishly colored comic strips supplied the name that would forever be associated with Hearst and Pulitzer’s brand of newspaper sensationalism: “yellow journalism.”

  3. Swanberg, p. 68.

  4. Ibid., p. 66.

  5. New York Journal, December 29, 1895. See Kobre, p. 73.

  6. Swanbe
rg, pp. 124–25.

  7. In this sense, our obsession with knife-(or ax-or chain-saw-) wielding psychos—as well as with scalpel-wielding TV medical examiners—is the flip side of our fantasy that our bodies can be made indestructible through exercise: a grim reminder from the unconscious depths that, no matter how many crunches we do, we are made of all-too-perishable flesh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  1. Roger Lane, Murder in America (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1997), p. 320.

  2. Mark Regan Essig, Science and Sensation: Poison Murder and Forensic Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America. (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Cornell University, January 2000, p. 5.)

  3. New York Sun, March 3, 1899; New York World, March 11, 1899; New York World, March 16, 1899; New York World, April 2, 1899; New York World, April 7, 1899.

  4. Edward H. Smith, Famous Poison Mysteries (New York: The Dial Press, 1927), p. 30.

  5. Ibid., p. 31.

  6. Ibid., p. 22.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  1. Klaus, pp. 151–70; New York World, February 10, 1899, p. 2.

  2. Mrs. Adams’s other child, her adult son, Howard, also lived there occasionally, though at this time he was in Connecticut, nursing a broken leg. See Klaus, p. 221.

  3. New York Evening Journal, December 12, 1898, p. 2.

  4. Klaus, pp. 258-69. There is a slight discrepancy between the testimony of Harry Cornish and Florence Rodgers. According to the latter, she called for Cornish’s help after her mother had collapsed. Cornish testified that he had just reached the bathroom when Mrs. Adams collapsed “like six foot of chain.”

  5. New York World, February 10, 1899, p. 3.

  6. Klaus, pp. 51–56; New York Herald, February 16, 1899, p. 2; New York Journal, February 16, 1899; New York World, February 18, 1899.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  1. Klaus, p. 157.

  2. Ibid., p. 183.

  3. Ibid., p. 158.

  4. Ibid., p. 128.

  5. Ibid.

  6. New York Sun, February 24, 1899, p. 2.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  1. Evening Journal, December 28, 1898, p. 2.

  2. New York Journal, “Gave Poison to a Dozen to Kill One,” December 27, 1898, p. 1.