GREAT EXPECTATIONS Pt. Seven ROCK SOLID

I think, for all the pain and anxiety caused by James Reavis in the Peralta Grant scam, the most heinous crime he committed was what was he did to the woman known only as Sophia. She was an orphan, a woman and a Mexican in a sexist, racist culture. She had no family for economic or emotional support, no dowry to secure a supportive husband. She was adrift in the world, forced to face at an early age what we all must face in our adulthood, that we are largely alone in this world. And then, in 1877, she met a stranger on a train, who told her she had a physical resemblance to a noble family. And over the years this man continued to tease her with hint after hint that seemed to confirm her personal fairy tale. And then he swept into her life again, and offered to rescue her from the drudgery and poverty of her life and welcome her into a world of wealth and privilege. And all he asked in return was that she believe him and marry him.

She was working as a servant girl in a hotel in the Stanislaus River ferry crossing village of Knights Landing, California – about 20 miles north-west of Sacramento. The community was in decline, and the hotels and rooming houses were closing one by one. And the working class girl who had no past was facing a bleak future when James Reavis arrived on the Southern Pacific to rescue her. They were married on December 31, 1882. And in January, she was enrolled in a convent school, to train her in the social skills expected of a well born lady.

While the girl studied, Reavis journeyed to San Francisco. From Huntington and Crocker and other financial supporters he collected letters of introduction to several important Washington power players.

He also met with San Francisco banker Maurice Herr, who put up $25,000 to fund The Arizona Development Corporation. Where Reavis' Peralta Grant scam had only sought to fleece the people of Arizona, this corporation could fleece investors from all over the world. Reavis had finally learned the secret lesson of capitalism – a thief is a man who robs a bank, while a financial wizard is a banker who robs investors. At the same time James Reavis met with John W. Mackay, whose holdings in the Comestock Lode produced half of all the silver in the United States. Mackay wanted to get an inside track on the Peralta Grant, and offered to finance Reavis' Spanish research, paying him a stipend of $500 (the modern equivalent of $11,500). a month. It seemed James Reavis and wife and party, would be traveling to Spain in style

They stopped off in New York, where Reavis used his letters of introduction to bond with powerful Senator Roscoe Conkling, former Congressman and lobbyist Dwight Townsend and Bankers Henry Potter and Hector de Castro. A few weeks later the party boarded ship for Spain; the reprobate ex-lawyer Cyril Baratt, the short, violent thug Pedro Cuervo, the newly minted lady, Baroness Sophia Peralta, and the new version of James Reavis with the new name – James Reavis -Peralta, Baron of Arizona.

Once again, luck was with Reavis. His party arrived in Spain at the perfect moment. The 27^th year old Alfonso XII (above - aka “The King without good fortune:) was entering his 10^th year on the throne, his monarchy having been restored at the end of December 1874. The theory of noble blood was de require in Spain, and onto this stage entered the long lost royal cousin, the lovely, regal Sophia Peralta, and her charming, debonair paramour, the man who had rescued her from commonality, James Reavis-Peralta. The public and the nobility were both primed to see her as she saw herself, a fairy tale come true.

Reavis made his tour of the great cathedrals of Madrid. The civil government of the municipios had only been recording births and deaths since 1831. Everything before that, christenings and deaths and weddings, would be found only in the many cathedrals, Iglesia de San Andrés or the San Pedro el Viejo for example. It took weeks before James was able to discover the codicil to the will of Don Miguel's will leaving the Peralta grant to his only surviving daughter, Sophia. 

When he was not laboring alone over the ancient dusty documents, Reavis-Peralta was wandering through the second hand shops and flea markets, buying the occasional paintings or daguerreotype of a forgotten nobility which had lost its fortune during the brief Republic before Alfonso's restoration. James picked those which struck him as bearing a resemblance to Sophia, those which might have been her ancestors. And in his weaving of her tale, they became her ancestors. And the living members of Peralta family were as willing to believe that this rich American had discovered their long lost distant cousin, as Sophia was. Wasn't she graceful? Didn't she carry herself like a baroness? You do not learn those things in a Catholic finishing school. True nobility is born with grace and culture. And Sophia was obviously born of noble blood.

In December of 1885 the King, Alfonso XII, fell ill with tuberculosis. His last words were, “What a struggle. What a struggle!” He was succeeded by his pregnant wife, Queen Maria Christina. Her son, and the new king, would not be born until five months later. By then, the delightful Baroness Sophia Peralta and her gracious American husband were so well accepted by the nobility, they were even presented to the Queen. In a cloud of fond farewells, the noble couple returned to America, arriving in New York in November of 1886

As they say, everybody loves a winner, and the Peralta brand was clearly winning. On their return to N.Y.C., they received the endorsement the powerful Missouri Republican James Broadhead, who endorsed the claim, referring to James Reavis-Peralta as, “a man of remarkable energy and persistence." Republican Senator Roscoe Conkling vouched for the validity of the claim, and said he believed Sophia “to be the person she believes herself to be...the lineal descendant of the original grantee.” Back in California in 1887, James was able to add to his list of supporting documents a testimonial from Alfred Sherwood, of San Diego County, who swore he had known Sophia all her life and her parents as well.

In August, the Peralta's journeyed by Southern Pacific train to Arizona. And fortuitously, while pausing in Phoenix, they took a carriage ride into the mountains, and stumbled across yet more evidence, the very Inicial Monument”, the great stone Don Miguel had carved his family crest upon when first coming to the grant in 1758 – wasn't that lucky. James even posed Sophia next to the carving, and included it in his new claim filing, in Tucson on September 2, 1887. Now his claim was simple and direct. He was the grantee, by benefit of his marriage to the direct ancestor of old Don Miguel Peralta Doña Sophia Micaela Maso Reavis y Peralta de la Córdoba, third Baroness of Arizona.

James Reavis-Peralta now formed the Casa Grande Improvement Company to exploit his land. He issued stock, which sold $3 millions, based on plans to build a massive damn on the Salt River, which would allow irrigation systems to make the desert bloom. But for all his plans, James barely paused in his fortress at Arizola. They had built or bought homes where their investors lived – San Francisco, St. Louis, New York and Chihuahua, Mexico. It was while in New York City that Sophia adopted a two month old orphan and named him Fenton, after James' father.

It looked as if the land commissioners in Arizona had little choice to approve the grant, and make James Reavis a millionaire and Sophia a fairy tale princess. And I have no doubt that would have happened – except for one man – the Surveyor General for Arizona, Royal Johnson.

- 30 -

AND WHO IS BURIED IN GRANT'S TOMB?

I suppose you could call it the Melting Monarch's Mummy Trick, or the Ebbing Emperor Illusion – except this was no illusion. On June 11, 323 B.C. , Alexander III of Macedonia died in Babylon, probably after being poisoned since assassination was the normal recall procedure in Macedonian politics. But the death of Alexander the Great was just the prologue to the second greatest act of prestidigitation in world history, when the mummy of the most famous man since Adam vanished from the center of one of the largest cities in the civilized world, from one of the most famous and often visited mausoleums in the world. One day he was there, and the next – poof - he was gone, never to be seen again. And it wasn't that anybody forgot about him. The day his corpse went walk-about, he was still the best known conquer in history. He was “The Great” with a capital “G”, for heavens sake. And then he was gone. And he is still gone. It must be a mystery; right?

His body lay in his tent for three days, unattended. His loyal follows paid no respects to the man they had followed into the mountains of Afghanistan and the plains of India because they were too busy arguing over who should inherit what parts of his empire. Alexander himself thought the best way to enhance his image would have been for his body to be thrown into the Euphrates River, so he would simply disappear- very mysterious. Instead, eventually, he was mummified after the Egyptian fashion, and placed in a casket carved to bear his image. This was then placed inside a gold sarcophagus. The intent was to ship his body back to Macedonia, where he would be buried next to his father. But somewhere in Syria the procession was waylaid by cavalry under the command of Ptolemy, who Alexander had assigned to run his province of Egypt.

After slaughtering the funeral procession, Ptolemy hijacked the mummy to the Egyptian holy city of Memphis, about 160 miles south of his new capital which Alexander had ordered built, and had named “Alexandria”. Under Macedonian tradition, by burying Alexander's corpus delicti,  Ptolemy was laying claim to his empire. But after twenty years of fighting, Ptolemy gave up his dreams of world-wide glory and had himself just crowned Pharaoh of Egypt. And the late Alexander the Great took up residence in the temple of Ptah in Memphis.

He stayed there for about fifty years before the son, Ptolemy Soma , had him shipped down river to Alexandria, where he was given his own tomb inside the Brucheum, the Greek quarter of the city. Then in about 210 B.C. the grandson, Ptolemy Philopater, built a larger shrine, the Mausoleum of the Ptolemies (later called just The Soma), to house the mummies of his parents, grand and great-grand parents as well as Alexander. This is how you build an empire, with the foundation poured on top of the upper floors.

The new temple, designed to look as old as the ancient temples still dotting the landscape, stood at the corner of The Street of Soma and Canoptic Street – the 42^nd Street and Fifth Avenues of ancient Alexandria. Down the street from this temple of the divine were the Royal Palaces, the famous Library of Alexandria and the Temple of the Caesar's. For the next five hundred years they dragged the corpse out for special occasion, and for viewing by visiting dignitaries, including a Who's Who of classical Rome - Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, Caesar Augustus, and one Roman Emperor after another. This dressed-up desiccated carcass had become an object of veneration, made divine by the faith imparted in the cadaver by the thousands who prayed and offered sacrifice to it. To facilitate them, the ninth Pharoh to bear the name Ptolemy had the gold sarcophagus melted down, and Alexander's mummy case was encased in glass, the better for the tourists to see. The gold, went in the Pharoh's purse.

But it was not faith alone that persevered Alexander's corpse, it was also the tourist industry, which sprang up to serve the faithful and the curious who visited The Soma. There were hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops - everybody wanted souvenirs. When they caught Caesar Augustus trying to slip Alexander's nose into his pocket, he claimed it broke off by accident. They still made him leave it behind. The Emperor Caligula was brazen enough that he broke the glass and walked out with the breastplate ripped right off of Alexander's chest. In the second century A.D., to protect the taxes produced by this industry, the Roman Emperor Septimus Severus closed The Soma to all but the richest visitors. Average folks still came to look at the building, but not as many.

You'd would think it would be easy to locate such a famous spot, even 2,000 years later, but just after daybreak on July 21, 365 A.D. there was an 8.3 earthquake off Cyprus, 400 miles to the northwest. The shaking and tsunamis slammed into Alexandria, killing about 5,000 people, knocking down 50,000 houses and dropping the sea level of the entire coast about 20 feet. Needless to say, the morning after that morning, The Soma lost its importance to the city. Probably Alexander's mummy had slipped into the harbor and most likely the survivors had more important things to worry about other than the dried out carcass of a long dead heathen monarch.

The only reason to suspect The Soma and the corpse survived this temblor is the reprobate philosopher Libanius. He had resisted conversion to to the new political correctness - Christianity. For committing that sin he had been exiled from Constantinople. Yes, he was a pagan. But the dirty little secret of Christianity is that even pagans were appalled by the sins usually attributed by Christians to the pagans; sins like lust and greed. In describing greedy capitalists about 390 A.D. Libanius asked, “Who could be the friend of such as these? When they behave like this for money's sake, would they keep their hands off temple offerings or tombs?...And this evil...is universal, whether you mention Paltus or Alexandria where the corpse of Alexander is displayed..” And that alliteration is the only mention of the tomb of Alexander after the earthquake of 365. And since there is no record that Libanius ever visited Alexandria, I find this less than convincing, especially considering that Libanius died not long after writing this passage. Had he lived, maybe he would have corrected it.

There is a theory floating about that the corpse of Alexander was re-named as the corpse of the Christian Saint Mark, and The Soma as the Church of St. Mark. It just seems to me to be a lot of trouble to go to. After 365 the tourist industry of Alexandria certainly needed a new Alexander, but the two things ancient Alexandria had after the earthquake was dead bodies, and salvaged stones for building new temples. And while it might be emotionally satisfying to blame religious fanatics for the loss of the Alexander's corpse, and it might be appealing to suppose Alexander the Great still exists, buried under St. Mark's square in Venice, it is far more likely that he ended up in the harbor of Alexandria, soaking like a packet of old freeze dried coffee, slowly losing his effervescence.

The real magic trick of history is that in the face of overwhelming evidence each generation continues to labor under the delusion that they invented sin and mystery, or at least identified it better.

- 30 - 

GREAT EXPECTATIONS Pt Six AT THE BRINK

I think Guadalajara is one of the most surprising cities in North America. It's name has Arabic roots, wadi l-ijara, meaning “the valley of the stones”, which hints at the Medieval Moorish occupation of Spain, mother country to Mexico. At the same time Guadalajara's university, founded in 1791, helped make the capital of Jalisco province an economic power house. But when James Reavis, Cryil Baratt and Rufus C. Hopkins arrived in the winter of 1882, the town was struggling to recover from 60 years of racial bloodshed, during which Indian tribes rebelled against enslavement and oppressive government rule 27 separate times. It was only the Catholic church's obsession with order and precedent which saved the region's history. And that is what drew our trio of gringos to this cultural island.

Rufus C. Hopkins was probably not the worst man Surveyor General Robbins could have picked to send on this mission, but about his only qualification was that he could read the Spanish used in old landgrants. He was 70 years old, and Reavis and Baratt hovered around the old man, introducing him to the archivists, the priests and clerks, ever eager to point out important documents and even discovering a previously unknown copy of the 1748 cedulare approving the Peralta grant. This latest discovery was important, since nothing would discourage doubters looking closer into the grant than the threat they would only stumble over new evidence supporting it. The old man was clearly convinced. His report would support Reavis' claim. Unfortunately for Mr. Reavis, back in Tucson Arizona, things had taken a turn for the worse.

Hopkin's boss, Joseph W. Robbins, had died of tuberculosis while the trio was in Guadalajara. His replacement was his chief clerk, Royal A. Johnson, and he was healthy and had a healthy skepticism about Hopkin's report on the Peralta grant. He noted that tucked away in the back of Hopkins' report was the note that the only records in Guadalajara which mentioned the Peralta Grant, were those which specifically dealt with it. In discussing the need for troops to deal with the Apache, for instance, there was no mention of the grant, even though it was smack in the middle of their land, and it was claimed Don Miguel Peralta had been driven off “his” grant by the Apache. This was why Hopkins report, like all good historical scholarship, could only say that after a cursory examination there was nothing to disprove the legality of the grant.

James Reavis (above), of course, took much more forceful interpretation of the report. He and Cryil Baratt began spreading the rumor that the American government was about to offer him $100 million for the Grant. And given Huntington and Croker's political friends in Washington, that was not impossible. Reavis had already refused to sell another right-away, similar to the one Huntington's Southern Pacific had bought, to the competing Texas and Pacific Railroad, which was trying to fulfill James Gadsden old dream of connecting the southern states to the Pacific ocean. With land rights in Arizona now uncertain, the banks withdrew their support for the Texas and Pacific, and progress on that railroad ground to a halt

Meanwhile Reavis' bodyguard, Pedro Cuervo had recruited a small army of thugs who were shaking down every farmer, rancher, miner, home and business owner in Arizona for anything from $1,000 to a free meal for an immediate quitclaim on their properties. Many paid up. Those who resisted found their businesses vandalized, their employees beaten, crops and barns burned and wells fouled. There was even trouble from an activist newspaper man named Tom Weedin, editor of the Florence Enterprise” in Pinal County, about 40 miles southeast of Phoenix. Reavis offered him the standard bribe, and when Weedin said no, his offices were burned to the ground. But Weedin responded by forming an “Anti-Reavis” committee, to raise money to oppose his thugs in court. Other committees sprang up in Phoenix, Tucson and Tempe. To Weedin it felt like rowing against the tide. Cuervo's bandits squeezed an estimated $5.3 million out of Arizona in 1884. Organized crime had been turned loose on the libertarian wonderland of the Old West, where almost everybody carried a gun. And contrary to modern theory, the result was that citizens were left screaming for government activism – and immediately!

Reavis was feeling confident enough to build himself La Hacienda de Peralta, a fortress with a nine foot wall enclosing servants quarters, stables, barns, a well, and a ten room redwood and brick mansion (above), with running water. He laid it out just south of the ruins of Casa Granda, about 80 miles south of Phoenix and about 60 miles north of the Mexican border - should a quick escape be required. He called it Arizola, and began referring to himself as the Baron de Arizona.

The only trouble was a lawsuit filed by the Territorial Attorney General, Clark Churchill, claiming that Reavis had no right to property owned by the Territory of Arizona, because he lacked clear title to the grant. It was the weak point in Reavis' claim, and in May of 1885 the court granted clear title to the Attorney General. The Tucson Citizen newspaper headlined, “Reavis Nailed Up” In a letter dated May 2, 1885, The Arizona Land Commissioner, W.A. Sparks, wrote to Surveyor Royal Johnson, “The essential foundation of a recognizable claim under the laws of Spain and the treaties and laws of the United States does not appear in this case. It is my opinion that the futile work in which you have been engaged for a year...should forthwith be discontinued.” Johnson agreed, writing back that he hoped “...the many schemes concocted by bad men...will now cease....(and) we shall have no further connection with this grant.”

Almost over night, income from the shakedowns for quitclaims dried up and Cuervo's thugs returned to whatever they had been doing before Cuervo had hired them. Feeling the ground shifting under his feet, Reavis caught a Southern Pacific train for California. James Reavis was looking for more support t from his financial backers, Huntington and Crocker. Another ally did appear, when George Hearst, new owner of the San Francisco Examiner, and father to William Randolph Hearst, decided to back Reavis with favorable publicity in his paper. But Mr. Crocker warned that the weak point remained the 1864 bill of sale to George Willing. It had been written on a scrap of paper, and, frankly Mr Huntington had doubts it would stand up in any court. Didn't Reavis have anything stronger?

Once again, as had happened so many times before in this story, James Reavis did have something stronger. He had a little lady he had met on a train back in 1871. Reavis had stayed in contact with her, exchanging letters, and even sending her to finishing school. And now she was right where and when Reavis needed her to be, and she was even who he needed her to be; Sofia Peralta, sole surviving heir to the Peralta Land Grant.

- 30 -  

A WOMAN SCORNED

I don’t know if Solomon Porcius Sharp (above) could have been President. But a man who had the job, John Quincy Adams, described the Kentucky lawyer as, “The brainiest man that ever came over the Allegheny Mountains.” The 38 year old Sharp had already served two terms as a Congressman, four years as Attorney General for Kentucky, and was now starting his second term as a state legislator – so the boy was not lacking for ambition, brains or talent. He spent his last day on earth, Sunday, November 5th, 1825, conferring with political allies as he prepared for the election as Speaker of the Kentucky House. Every indication was that come Monday morning, he would easily be elected. It seemed possible his next stop would be the United States Senate, and then, possibly, the White House; except, an ex-girlfriend of his, had other plans. 

Her name was Anna Cook, and in her youth she had been a real Southern Belle from Bowling Green, the same region and culture that would produce Mary Todd, Abraham Lincoln's wife. Anna was educated, witty, flirtatious, with a passion for men and for gambling and for gambling on men. But she was never described as a great beauty. And like all gamblers, the more Anna gambled the more she lost. By 1825 she was a spinster approaching forty, and her rose had withered a bit. A critic described her as short, with dark hair and eyes, a few missing teeth, stoop shouldered and “in no way a handsome or desirable woman.” And yet inside Anna there still burned a passion, which had metamorphosed into a burning fierce hatred of her old boyfriend, Solomon Sharp. It is impossible to say with certainty why she came to obsess on the up and coming politician, but when Anna’s young suitor,  Jereboam Beauchamp, had proposed to her, Anna had said yes on the single condition that he first promised to kill Solomon Sharp.

Some five years earlier  Anna had attempted to derail Sharp’s political career by publicly charging he had fathered her stillborn child. But Sharp’s allies had responded quickly by claiming that the dead child had been born with black skin, and thus could not be the child of a white politician. In a slave state like Kentucky, in a bigoted nation such as America in 1820, it was a truly vicious attack. And with no living male relatives to defend her honor and challenge Sharp to a duel, Anna had no way to respond. In fact, her reputation was left in tatters no matter which side was believed. Ann had withdrawn into isolation to her widowed mother’s plantation, where Mr. Beauchamp had sought her out, for reasons left unexplained. He was a neighbor in Bowling Green and had been a law student in Sharp’s office. And to hear him tell it, the hypocrisy of the vicious attack against Anna had awakened an almost religious hunger for justice in the twenty-two year old...or so he said. To call their marriage an affair of the heart seems somehow to have missed the point. And after their 1824 wedding, as soon as it was convenient, Jereboam traveled to Frankfort, looking to settle the score with Mr. Sharp and thus fulfill his promise to his new bride.

Of course there might have been another explanation for the timing of Jereboam’s (above) expedition to Frankfort, besides convenience. The week before, on October 25, 1825, a warrant for Jereboam’s arrest had been issued by the sheriff in Bowling Green. It seemed a single woman named Ruth Reed was suing Jereboam for child support. Our defender of the honor of chaste womanhood was thus alleged to be a dead-beat dad of an illegitimate child himself. Do you get the feeling that the public morality of neither the times nor Mr. Beauchamp were not quite what they claimed to be?  Sort of just like today, yes?

Frankfort was a wooden town of just 1,500 souls when Jereboam arrived in November of 1825. It had been established at a ford across the Kentucky River, and was named for Stephen Frank, an early settler. The village became the state capital because local boosters contributed $3,000 in gold to the state treasury, and property for public buildings. It was not a generous act, as the boosters got rich selling house lots in the new burg. But thanks to their investment, Frankfurt was, in 1825, and remains to this day, one of the smallest state capitals in the Union. There were in 1825, a few brick structures in town, but fire was constantly updating the architecture of all the wooden buildings. Earlier in 1825 Frankfort had burned down its sixth state capital building, and was currently renting a Methodist Church for that purpose. Directly across the street from this temporary cathedral of democracy was the rented abode of Solomon Sharp and his wife and children.

Jereboam waited in the shadows of the church until Sharp returned to his Madison street home, sometime after midnight on November 6th, 1825. Then, as the clock approached two in the morning, he knocked on a side door. When Sharp responded, Jereboam identified himself as “Covington.” Having opened the door, Solomon was evidently suspicious and said he did not know any one by that name. Jereboam then cut the conversation short by thrusting a dagger into Solomon’s neck, severing his aorta. Solomon Sharp was dead shortly after he hit the floor. Jereboam then fled into the night. The first political assignation in American had just been committed.

 There were, of course, elaborate conspiracy theories which sprang up around the assignation of Solomon Sharp, spurred on the victim’s politics and the $4,000 reward offered. But the police stuck to what they could prove, and four nights after the murder Jereboam was arrestedr. They never even found the murder weapon. And although Sharp’s widow eventually identified Jereboam’s voice as the one she heard call out “Covington”, she had initially identified it as the voice of another one of her husband’s political opponents. But several witnesses testified that Jereboam had repeatedly threatened to kill Solomon, and after a 13 day long trial, the jury had no doubts. On May 19, 1826, after just one hour of deliberations, they returned with a verdict of guilty.

In his jail cell Jereboam dropped all pretense of innocence and wrote out a lengthy confession, filled with all the drama and heroics he clearly wanted to believe had characterized his life and reputation. According to his diatribe, Solomon had repeatedly admitted his crime against Anna, and in the final moments of his life had begged for mercy. Even if true (and considering his injuries, such a speech was physically not possible), how that justified the cold blooded murder of a father of small children (On his gravestone the word "father" had even been carved in stone), Jereboam did not attempt to explain. And in the end it did not matter, because, as one commentator has pointed out, it was at this point that the entire affair “went from tragedy to romantic melodrama.”

Anna was being allowed to share her husband’s cell each night, coming and going during the day. Into this place of confinement she slipped in a bottle of laudanum, a potent mixture of 89% grain ethanol, 10% opium and 1% morphine. The lovers intended a joint suicide, but instead produced only a double regurgitation marathon. The absurdity of that sickening episode was matched only by the ineptitude of the jailers, because, just two days later these pin-headed penitenciariests allowed Anna to carry a knife into the cell for another unregulated visit. Jereboam stabbed himself in the abdomen. Anna then grabbed the knife and stabbed herself in the stomach. If it was a race, she won. She died an hour later. Jereboam lived long enough that the jailers had to manhandle the wounded thespian up the thirteen steps of the scaffold, where he died, two hours after his wife.

They were buried together in the same grave, under a lengthy poem, composed by Jereboam, filled with noble words and maudlin sentiment. So the real cost of Anna Cook’s revenge was three lives; her own and the lives of two men she professed, at various times, to have loved. And I suspect she thought that was a fair trade. And that is the real tragedy in this Kentucky story.

- 30 -

WORKING ON THE RAILROAD

I can't make up my mind about William Huskinson. “Tall, slouching, and ignoble-looking”, he was

considered one of the best economic brains in England, and represented Liverpool in Parliament as a Tory (the conservative party). At the same time he also agitated for liberal issues, like equal rights for Catholics and Jews and election reform. But it wasn't William's contrariety in politics that confuses me, it was the way he kept falling over things. While on his honeymoon in April of 1799, a horse fell on him. Two years later he dislocated an ankle. He had broken his right arm so many times it was almost useless But was this genial scarecrow just a klutz, or did his bumbling rise to the exalted level of ironic? It was certainly ironic that the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was built only because of the enthusiastic intervention of the sixty year old. But it was also the L and M which was responsible for William's brutal demise. When, I wonder, does unfortunate become ironic?

William was effective in English politics because he was almost universally liked. His official biography described him as “extremely agreeable...generally cheerful, with a great deal of humor, information, and anecdote...As a speaker in the House of Commons...he had no pretensions to eloquence; his voice was feeble, and his manner ungraceful.” Still, because of his brains and his sense of humor, people tended to like him - important people, like Granville Leveson-Gower (above), the richest man in England. In Scotland, Granville, aka the Duke of Sutherland , aka the Marquess of Stafford, is reviled for his wholesale evictions of highland farmers, but in England he was respected because....well, because he was the richest man in England, and because of the two things he had inherited from his in-laws - his talent for “absorbing heiresses” (he outlived three wives) and what he had inherited from his third' wife's uncle, the first “true canal” in England, the Bridgewater.

After its opening in 1761 the 39 mile long canal had cut the price of coal powering the linen mills in Manchester by half, while making the first Earl of Bridgewater very wealthy. In 1776 a connection was cut to the river Mersey which allowed the finished Manchester fabrics to be inexpensively shipped out of the port of Liverpool, the transport taking only 30 hours, and thus making the Earl even richer. So it was no surprise that Granville, who inherited the canal in 1803, was not anxious to see Manchester wool merchants build a railroad and cut into his profits. Even with the canal, it cost as much to move the finish garments to Liverpool as it had cost to ship the raw cotton from America. Granville successfully fought the railroad for years, until the Liverpool MP (minister to parliament),William Huskinson, suggested to his fiend that it might be more profitable joining the Manchester merchants rather then fighting them. With Wilkinson’s adroit assistance, a deal was struck. Granville became a partner in the railroad. And on Wednesday September 15, 1830, a gala grand opening was staged for the 35 mile long Liverpool to Manchester Railroad, including a “whistle stop” visit from the man who had beaten Napoleon, the Prime Minister and ex-political ally of William Huskinson, Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington.

As a politician the Duke (above) was the perfect model of modern major General. He gave ground where it cost him little, as when he urged the repeal of laws restricting Catholics. But he dug in against repeal of the infamous Corn Laws. These slapped taxes on any grain exports from England, and just made things worse for the starving Irish during the potato famine. But the “Iron Duke” was a landowner and willing to defend the Corn Laws to the last Irishman. William Huskinson grew so frustrated with the Duke, he resigned from the government. However his resignation had not driven the Duke to back down, and William was hoping the ceremonies around the opening of the railroad would give him a chance to repair his relationship with his old friend Wellesley.

The Manchester and Liverpool railroad was the invention of George Stephenson, who had even manufactured a prototype locomotive – the Rocket - for the system. Stephenson had insisted on two tracks, one southbound from Manchester to Liverpool, and the other northbound, so the line could safely carry twice as many trains. It was a good idea, but doubled the cost of construction. So Stephenson had saved money by placing all four of the rails equal distance apart. His rational was that this not only eliminated an enormous amount of grading, but should a train have to carry anything wider than eight feet, it could simply shift to the two center rails, providing more elbow room on either side. What Stephenson could not know was that as speeds increased in the future, passing carriages would create a lower air pressure between them, which, without more space between the rails, would suck the carriages into each other. That was one of the things experience would teach railroad engineers like Stephenson. And what happened this opening day, would teach them a few other things.

There were eight separate inaugural passenger trains which left Liverpool beginning at eleven that morning, The Duke's train was first on the southbound tracks, pulled by the 14 horse power engine Northumberland, and made up of a car carrying a band, followed by six carriages each with 12 to 24 passengers. In the carriage just in front of the Duke's sat William Huskinson with his wife Emily, and several important politicians. The other seven trains, with about 60 passengers per car, traveled on the northbound tracks, leap frogging the Duke's train, to provide numerous opportunities for all the celebrants to cheer and laugh and stare at the victor of Waterloo as the trains climbed their way the 35 miles uphill toward Manchester.

The trains all paused at Parkside station, an hour out of Liverpool and about half way to Manchester.

Here the Duke's train stopped, while the Phoenix and the North Star trains passed ("like the whizzing of a cannon ball", said the Duke) with many shouts and cheers, to wait a few hundred yards beyond the station. As the water tanks of the Northumberland was slowly refilled, about 50 men disembarked between the rails to stretch their legs and probably unload their personal water  tanks, in a light drizzle. William Holmes, the Chief Tory Whip suggested this would be a prime opportunity for William to bond with the Prime Minister, and Huskinson agreed. The two men walked the few yards back to the Duke's carriage where William extended a hand. The Duke, happy at seeing his old friend again, grasped William's hand firmly. They were about to speak when a shout went out, “"An engine is approaching, take care gentlemen!”

It was the Rocket, Stephenson's prototype, pulling another train of passenger cars. The driver, Joesph Locke saw the men on the tracks about 80 feet ahead of him. There was plenty of time, except the Rocket had no brakes. Locke threw the little engine into reverse. There was still ample time to avoid injury, unless you were a major klutz – guess who. All the other men in the way managed to easily escape, either being pulled into the Duke's car, or running the ten feet or so across the tracks. But William Huskinson could not make up his mind. Initially the Duke tried to lift the scarecrow into his car, but William yanked free and started to dash across the tracks. Then, abruptly he changed his mind and returned to the car's side. The Duke shouted, “"For God's sake, Mr Huskisson, be firm!" and grabbed for him again. But William dodged rescue and bolted across the tracks again. Some one threw open the door of the Duke's car suddenly, and William reversed course once again and jumped for the swinging support. He grabbed onto it just as the Rocket smashed it to smithereens. Huskinson, said eyewitness Harriet Arbuthnot, “was... thrown down and the engine passed over his leg and thigh, crushing it in a most frightful way. It is impossible to give an idea...of the piercing shrieks of his unfortunate wife, who was in the car (ahead).”

They dumped the band, because their car was the only one with a flat bottom, and carrying the right Honorable Huskinson on a door ripped off a track side shack, placed him gently aboard. The rest of the cars were then detached, Stephenson opened the throttles full, and the engine, the coal car, the wounded man and two doctors headed for Manchester at 40 miles an hour. Crowds cheered as the speeding machine raced past them. It was perhaps the fastest humans had ever traveled, except for the few unfortunates fired from a catapult. At this rate they would have made it to Manchester in less than half an hour, except ….except the clouds opened up and a storm broke upon the desperate mission. As they approached the little village of Eccles, less than four miles from Manchester, the conditions forced them to stop, supported by Huskinson who said he had a good friend in the village, the Reverend Thomas Blackburne. They managed to lug William up the steep slope to the village, dropping William a couple of times before depositing him on a couch in the vicarage. The Reverend Blackburne was not there, of course. He was in Manchester, waiting with the crowds to welcome the triumphant voyagers. Mrs. Blackburne, who was home, served tea.

“Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine" noted that back at Parkside station, after much discussion, “The final decision being in favor of advancing, seats were resumed, and we moved on; but ...the whole now wore the sombre aspect of a funeral procession. The military band was left to return as it could; I saw them, crest-fallen, picking their way homeward through the mud and mire...” At about nine that night William Huskinson died in a generous laudanum haze - generally considered the first man ever killed by a locomotive.  An inquest was opened the very next morning, but the instant the jury seemed to show an interest in any failure by railroad staff or design, it was pulled up by the coroner. Within a few hours, the verdict was “accidental death”. It does not seem Emily Huskinson agreed.

Half the population of Liverpool, about 69,000 people, attended William Huskinson''s funeral on Friday September 24, 1830. Emily did not. She never returned to Liverpool again, and died in 1856, never having traveled on a train again, either. Meanwhile the publicity surrounding the accident attracted passengers to the new rail line. In the next year half a million people rode the Liverpool and Manchester line at 7 shillings for the two hour round trip. All future locomotives built by George Stephenson were fitted with hand brakes, and he never again built a two track line with so little room for error between the rails. But the question remains unanswered to this day - was William Huskinson's death merely a  tragedy, or was it ironic?

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