A Bitterness Beyond Endurance: The Tragedy of Emily Hall

It was April of 1895 when a newspaper reporter walked into Frank Gibbs' undertaker's shop, for reasons that were never made clear later. People were too busy trying to figure out what came of that visit, to wonder why he was there in the first place. The reporter was walking around and in doing so kicked at one of the coffins. Gibbs cried out "Here! Don't kick that coffin, there's a body in it, and I've got $100 for keeping it."

The newspaperman reported this to the Board of Health, and they promptly began to investigate. Inside the coffin was the embalmed body of a girl. She had been in the shop for two months; no one had claimed her. The death certificate was produced. The girl was Myrtle Cook from Bay City, Michigan, and had died in February of pneumonia.

Gibbs, frightened by the Board of Health investigation, had her buried in Potter's Field. He told several different stories about where he had got the body. He knew nothing, he said, except that he had picked it up at a house near the corner of Piquette Avenue and 12th Street (oddly, there does not appear to be a corner where these streets intersect, at least according to Google Maps). The house was the Lanes' residence (the lying-in hospital was located at 630 Lincoln).

Gibbs' former assistant John Jennings was located and he was more helpful. He identified the Lanes as the people who had hired Gibbs. The Lanes didn't want to talk, not did Dr. Seaman, though he had signed the death certificate. The Board of Health ordered her body to be exhumed and put on display for five days in hopes of getting a better ID.

A woman named Jennie Wilson said she had known Emily when they were both patients at the Lanes'. Her name was not Myrtle Cook and she wasn't from Michigan. She was English-born Emily Hall. Emily had arrived in January 1895 and had died "in frightful agony" on the 6th of February "after undergoing an operation." She identified the body conclusively as that of her friend Emily Hall.

Emily Hall was a poor but educated young woman about 25 years old, from Blackheath, Staffordshire. She was a devout Methodist who hoped to become a lay preacher (women were often Methodist lay preachers; my distant cousin Almira Losee was one). She was hired by the Reverend Jonathan* Bell in the spring of 1894. to care for Mrs. Bell, who was ill after childbirth. The Bells lived at Primrose Villa, Blackheath. And Jonathan Bell was none other than Frederick Bell, the Singing Preacher, who was well known for his singing, dramatic preaching and propensity for trouble making.*

Emily soon found herself in what the Victorians liked to call an interesting condition. The most sensible idea might have been to send Emily to London or Leeds, where there were hospitals; or to friends. Instead, Bell contrived to send her alone across the Atlantic. And she, apologetic and humble, agreed. In one letter she wrote to Bell, poor Emily promised to be brave, not to tell - and added that she was sorry. But Bell had a relative near Detroit and seems to have known just what to do (which suggests that perhaps he had employed the Lane Lying-In Hospital before).

Bell told Emily to write to her parents and tell them that she was going to stay with friends in Leeds, in November; in December, she wrote and said she was going abroad to work as a lady's companion. They would ever see Emily again. Sometime in December, Bell went to America to visit his brother in law, Rev. William Pease, in St. Clair, Michigan. He must have contacted the Lanes at this point. Pease must have recommended them: St. Clair is very near Detroit.

Emily sailed for New York, from Liverpool on the Majestic; she arrived on January 23, 1895. She was carrying detailed instructions on how to reach the Lane Lying-In Hospital in Detroit, which she managed to find after some difficulty. Dr. Seaman performed was was probably an abortion gone wrong and she died on February 6.

Letters were found by the police from 'Jonathan' to Emily and Emily to him; and from Emily to her cousin Joseph in England, all mentioning her trouble. The Lanes also gave police a registered letter that Bell wrote to them, enclosing $50, "the price for the work." There was also a letter that the Lanes had written to Bell, saying that Emily had left them and taken the train back to New York on February 6 or 7 - that she had disliked the Lanes' hospitality and "was odd and had a mind and strong will of her own."

The Lanes and Seaman were arrested for manslaughter in March or April 1895, but Bell was nowhere to be found. His wife in England told reporters that she feared he had killed himself. And a body was found in a pit near Blackheath that was rumored to be him. Alice Lane and Dr. Seaman were both sentenced to ten years in prison. And Emily Hall, of course, was sentenced to death. But Bell was to reappear in Brooklyn, New York two years after this, working as a fortune-teller, buoyant as ever. This was not the work Emily Hall had meant for him to carry on. For she wrote to Bell from Leeds, just before her last journey:

You will never be betrayed by me...Don't, dear, be angry with me. The part I played with you has left a bitterness beyond endurance. We were both weak. I cannot look back without a shudder; but I know the Lord has forgiven me. Do exactly what you like; but, come back and go on with your work with fresh help from above. I will do my best to get well and be brave.

******

*Using the name Jonathan was Fred Bell's odd attempt at a pseudonym. He was definitely identified as the same Frederick Bell who had been at the Park Avenue Primitive Methodist Church in Brooklyn (and many other places), in several publications.

The Fred Bell Series

The Singing Preacher
A Plot For A Million
The Case of Mary Morris
The British Ministerial Freak

Sources

"Emily Hall's Fate: An English Clergyman Said To Have Caused Her to Be Sent Here," New York Sun, Apr. 22, 1895, p. 3.
"Jonathan A Supposed Alias," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Apr. 26, 1895, p. 2.
"Confessed Before He Fled: Pastor Bell Acknowledged Complicity With the Detroit Crime," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Apr. 27, 1895, p. 1.
"Has Mr. Bell Killed Himself?" New York Sun, Apr. 28, 1895, Part 1, Image 1.
"Rumor of Jonathan Bell's Death," New York Times, Apr. 28, 1895, p. 5.
"He Was Her Ruin," Syracuse Evening Herald, link here at Fulton History.
"Emily Hall's Friends Active," New York Times, May 1, 1895, p. 5.
"The Murder of Emily Hall," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jul. 12, 1895, p. 1.
[No Title], New York Times, Dec. 12, 1895, p. 5. [Dr. Seaman's second trial for manslaughter, new trial granted "on errors."]
"Dr. D.J. Seaman Again Convicted," New York Times, Feb. 20, 1896, p. 9.
"Sentenced to Ten Years," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mar. 7, 1896, p. 1.

Detroit City and Wayne County Directory 1893-4, digitized at DistantCousin.com:
D. Joseph Seaman, drugs, 192 Hastings [not listed as a physician]
H.B. and Alice Lane not listed, see here.
Frank Gibbs, undertaker, 25 Miami Ave.

Images from Wikimedia Commons from the series Past and Present (1858) by Augustus Egg.

NOTE: In the interests of not further overwhelming this blog and its readers (!), I have omitted some details, such as the letters quoted at length in the newspapers, and biographical details of minor characters such as the Peases, and Alice Lane's and Dennis J. Seaman's 1900 census enumerations in prison. But I hope to write in greater detail about Frederick/Jonathan Bell in the future, as part of all of a book.