REPETITION

 

I've heard a rumor that history repeats itself. And while pondering this reflection I started thinking about the sad ship James Franklin, which tied up in her home port of Bridgeport, Connecticut (above) on Saturday,  12  July, 1873.

The James Franklin was a Hudson River Sloop (above), and already a half century old when our story begins.  She was just 51 feet long and 18 feet wide and displaced only 30 tons, with a single mast. When she was young,  she could carry 100 tons of cargo. But by 1873 the Franklin bore the scars of hard use recorded in her chipped paint, rusted cleats, and patched gunwales, He condition tended to put the lie to the romance of the age of sail.

Her master (they dare not call him a captain) was the meager 23 year old Frank E. Bassett, a short young man whose alcohol tanned life was stretched taut over the forty miles between the docks of New York's treacherous East River (above)... 

...through the Hellsgate, the Narrows and into Long Island Sound... 

...to the mouth of the Pequonnock River (above, right), and back again - and up and down the coast of Connecticut. The Franklin and her master and her crew were of value only so long as they were less expensive than a steam ship, and the owners invested in them accordingly. 

Once the latest cargo had been unloaded and the crew paid their meager $40 for the month's work, Bassett invited a crewman to share a drink with him and his regular passenger and common law wife for the past 10 months, Mrs. Lorena Alexander - a "hard faced woman in her forties".  The crewman was “Stuttering Jack”, aka John Rufus,  but legally known as Jack Weinbecker,  “a well-meaning fellow' who was also described as a “simpleton”, who “belonged to a low, miserable, drunken class”.

After a drink in a dockside tavern the three comrades walked to Lorena's rooms at William and East Washington Avenues, in Bridgeport's East Side neighborhood. Jack was probably expecting little more than a a few ounces of whiskey, enough to dull his misery.  He got that, certainly. But after clambering through the broken fence surrounding the abandoned Brewster carriage factory (above) where Lorena and Frank squatted in empty rooms, he also received something far more mercenary.

Two months later,  while Lorena Alexander was away in New London, Connecticut, giving birth to a new daughter, our hero Frank Bassett was arrested for the theft of a wallet containing $65 dollars in cash (equal to about $1,400 today).  The judge gave him a choice, repay the money or go to jail. Frank had already, of course, spent all but $10 of it, and desperate to avoid jail, he now sold all the furniture and Lorena's personal belongings from their shared apartment. It did not come close to replacing the stolen funds, and Frank was jailed anyway.  

A week later, when Lorena returned with her new child to find all her belongings gone, she was infuriated. She took the unusual step of approaching the new Prosecuting Attorney for Bridgeport. Frank Leroy Holt. to ask what she could do to have her property returned. And to reinforce her case, she told Holt that Frank Basset was "...a very bad man and had done enough to be hung."  Naturally enough the young Holt asked if Mrs. Alexander could please elaborate.  And Lorena launched into a most curious tale.

Lorena began by explaining she needed funds to feed and cloth her new baby. She had even inquired of a Doctor Sanford at Yale Medical School to see if she could be paid for donating her body for dissection in advance of her death. The doctor had told her, said Lorena, that such a contract was not possible, but if she wanted to dispose of the dead bodies of any of her friends, he would purchase them.  

Naturally enough, Lorena had shared that conversation with her diminutive common law husband, Frank Bassett.  And Frank had responded, "They might get hold of a body sometime and make a stake that way."  He had then joked, "he guessed he would kill her to commence with". Lorena then announced, Frank had actually killed a poor simpleton named Stuttering Jack, for the cash to be made from selling his corpse. 

When pressed, Lorena said that on the night of the 12 July, she was in the bedroom “attending to some sewing” when Frank ordered her to join  the men in the front room.  Stuttering Jack was passed out on the sofa and Frank ordered Lorena to fetch a bottle of chloroform (above) from the mantle. She says she cried out, “Oh Frank, what are you going to do with that? What are you about?” Frank replied, "Shut up, you act cowardly and child-like.”

Frank held the chloroform soaked sponge tight against Stuttering Jack's face. The victim struggled, and began to cough and gag until, eventually, he died.  Lorena said she tried to flee the apartment, but the domineering Frank Bassett ordered her to stay and help cover up the crime. 

To validate her story Lorena lead the Bridgeport police along the roads north to Shelton, Connecticut, to a ravine near the new Ousatonic Water Company canal.  

According to Lorena, Bassett had stopped the wagon on a stretched of road from which, "There was no house nearer than half a mile, and no one was on sight." There Frank rolled the barrel down a slope sixty feet where it was stopped by a large stone.  And that was where they found the barrel, nailed shut. Inside was the naked decomposing body of Stuttering Jack.

Then, out of an abundance of caution, the Bridgeport police traveled 8 miles further,  to New Haven,  and spoke to Doctor Leonard Sanford, Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at the Yale College (above) of Medicine. He confirmed that on Friday the 13^th Lorena had appeared at the school, but denied ever speaking with her before that. She had come that afternoon  offering the body of a friend "who had died on her front step". She was asking $25 for the corpse.  

Dr. Sanford explained to Lorena he required a valid death certificate.  In response, Lorena began pleading and then cursing and even wailing, begging for at least $5 to cover the cost of renting the horse and wagon used to transport the body - until Doctor Sanford finally had her escorted off the premises.  But he did not notify the police. 

In the meantime, Frank Bassett was arrested in New London, where, released from jail,  he had gone in search of Lorena.  Brought back to Bridgeport, Frank told his own, slightly different,  version of events. 

Frank said that on the night of 12 July, 1873, he was in a room, alone,  reading the newspaper, when Lorena entered and announced "she had got him fixed. And I says, "What?"  She says, "I have chloroformed him." Finding Stuttering Jack dead, continued Frank; "I told her she had done wrong. " 

Then, said Frank, she told him, “there is no use of your saying anything, for it would be as bad for me as for her.” Faced with this fait accompli making him an accomplice, Frank said he  "...stood in the middle  of the room dumbfounded”. Seeing his surrender, Lorena then told him, "Never mind, Frank. We can get $25 for the body." Then she got the barrel, and I helped put him in." 

Frank admitted, "I followed her directions...In the morning I hired a team and we both went to New Haven to see Dr. Sanford. After we got there the doctor would not receive the body and we started for home." Then, Frank added, "On the way we dumped the barrel in the woods where it was found." And to validate his version of events, Frank lead the police to the chicken coup on the north side of the abandoned Brewster factory, beneath which he had buried the dead man's coat and shoes. 

The  coroners' jury investigation garnered nationwide press coverage.  The New York World insisted “nothing like it ever happened here before or elsewhere...”, which was demonstrative untrue.  The Hartford Courant headlined, “A Horrible Murder Discovered”, and the Boston Globe called it “A Shocking Example of Human Depravity”. 

Those headlines caught the attention of the powerful State's Attorney James Harvey Olmstead. His family name was engraved three times on the obelisk (above) in the "Old Cemetery" by "The Society of the Descendants of the Founders of Hartford" . 

In fact his cousin, George F. Olmstead, was one of the owners of the ship James Franklin. James Harvey Olmstead proved his skill as a prosecutor when he decided to charge both Bassett and Alexander with the murder of "Stuttering Jack", but to prosecute them separately. It meant any  “she said/he said ” defenses would work for the prosecution. 

As usual, as the trial approached,  the story got more complicated. The stuttering victim, Jack, alias John Rufus, alias Jack Weinbecker, had not only been a drunk but a thief with a police record.  And Frank Bassett's mother would testify under oath that little Frank – he weighed only 125 pounds – was also an alcoholic and “slow”.  Frank had also been been arrested several times, once for assault on Lorena.  But it was upon Lorena that the press focused most of their vitriol.

Lorena had been raised in Manhattan's Bowery (above), a lower east side neighborhood...

...filled with brothels, opium dens, and “German beer gardens, pawn shops and flophouses”.  The residents survived, if they did, by  their wits, by being merciless and often cruel Still, Lorena claimed she was a pious Christian, until “Men... turned her away from the Lord.”

As usual when covering women, the press were fascinated with her attire, describing her black silk dress accented with a flower pattern and a crown like hat of black velvet, editorializing “The woman’s personal appearance suggests natural shrewdness.”  Something always to be avoided in a woman.

According to the New York Times, “ In 1872  Lorena was living (in Manhattan) on East Houston-street...as Lena E. Coyne, and was employed at Harry Hill's as a barmaid...Among her effects is the outfit of a fortune-teller and astrologer.”  

Lorena admitted having been married three times, but the press uncovered at least three other co-habitations. He eldest daughter was only a few months younger than her co-defendant Frank Bassett, and during Frank's trial, one reporter noted, she was more engrossed in her two year old daughter playing on her lap, than in the testimony.

Frank's defense was described by the New York Times as, “he was so completely under the influence of Mrs. Alexander that she controlled him about as she pleased.”  Frank's jailer, the aptly named Wakeman W. Wells, told the jury, “I was particular to ask him who chloroformed the man, and he said that Mrs. Alexander did ". Then, the paper added, "The father of the prisoner, George Bassett, a man with straight hair, copper-colored complexion, and the features of an Indian, testified that his son...had never been very bright since an attack of scarlet fever when he was 4 years old”. 

This defense was not successful. Frank Bassett was convicted of second degree murder on 1 March, 1879.  He was sentenced to life in prison.  At her trial the previous October, Lorena claimed Frank had conceived the entire plot, and had robbed Jack's body of $5.75.  After her conviction,  Judge Charles Martin ordered Lorena to prison "...for the remainder of her natural life." 

Both prisoners were sent to separate wings of Wethersfield Prison (above), just south of Hartford. On entering the prison their heads were shaved before they were confined to individual 3 ½ by seven foot cells, which were unheated, and had no water or toilets. 

The inmates were required to work six days a week, marching in lockstep to and from the work yard.  But no prisoner was allowed to speak at any time, except if being questioned by a guard. Suicides were common, usually by hanging, but there are records during this time of numerous prisoners cutting their own throats, and at least one man who lay on his bed, emptied his kerosene lamp on himself, and set himself on fire. 

Lorena endured this hellhole for six years, before being transferred to the State Insane Asylum at Middletown (above), where she died early November of 1884. No cause of death was given, but it was common for the bodies of prisoners to be provided to the Yale School of Medicine, for dissection. Surely Lorena's demise was no less horrible than Stuttering Jack's.

Frank did not die in prison, physically. According to the Hartford Courant, “At first Bassett was employed in the prison shop. When his mind began to slip from him, he was given employment as a runner and as a sweeper.” But, according to the story published on the fiftieth anniversary of the murder, “Friendless and feeble, the old prisoner spent the day in idleness, an inmate of the insane ward of the institution....playing in far-off lands and imagining strange journeyings which he describes to whoever will listen.” 

After forty years,  in 1919,  the state board of prisons tried to pass Frank off to somebody else's responsibility, and pardon the old man. But the board of pardons refused to go along. Nine years later, in 1928, the Frank was finally deemed crazy enough to be transferred a mental hospital. And it was there, after 58 years behind bars for the murder of Stuttering Jack, Frank E. Bassett died in November of 1937.

The Courant recorded Frank's death  as follows:  "The longest prison confinement in the state's history ended Friday when Frank Bassett, 82, died at Norwich State Hospital.... He is believed not to have any relatives. Years ago a woman in Chicago made arrangements with an undertaker...to care for his body.”

And if you can't find a similar story in today's headlines, where tragedy is built upon depravity piled upon injustice until all the rules of society collapses into farce, and the broken lives of the poor are considered mere stage dressing for the dramas and comedies of the rich and powerful,  I don't think you are paying attention to how history repeats it's self.

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