The Poison Plot

A Tale of Adultery and Murder in Colonial Newport

Elaine Forman Crane

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781501721328
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

An accusation of attempted murder rudely interrupted Mary Arnold's dalliances with working men and her extensive shopping sprees. When her husband Benedict fell deathly ill and then asserted she had tried to kill him with poison, the result was a dramatic petition for divorce. The case before the Rhode Island General Assembly and its tumultuous aftermath, during which Benedict died, made Mary a cause célèbre in Newport through the winter of 1738 and 1739.

Elaine Forman Crane invites readers into the salacious domestic life of Mary and Benedict Arnold and reveals the seamy side of colonial Newport. The surprise of The Poison Plo t, however, is not the outrageous acts of Mary or the peculiar fact that attempted murder was not a convictable offense in Rhode Island. As Crane shows with style, Mary's case was remarkable precisely because adultery, criminality and theft, and even spousal homicide were well known in the New England colonies. Assumptions of Puritan propriety are overturned by the facts of rough and tumble life in a port city: money was to be made, pleasure was to be had, and if marriage became an obstacle to those pursuits a woman had means to set things right.

The Poison Plot is an intimate drama constructed from historical documents and informed by Crane's deep knowledge of elite and common life in Newport. Her keen eye for telling details and her sense of story bring Mary, Benedict, and a host of other characters—including her partner in adultery, Walter Motley, and John Tweedy the apothecary who sold Mary toxic drugs—to life in the homes, streets, and shops of the port city. The result is a vivid tale that will change minds about life in supposedly prim and proper New England.

Part I THE STORY

If Boston was older and New York bigger, Newport was just as cosmopolitan. The center of town was a compact collection of colorful shops and houses; commercial prosperity brought development and noise. In a town where people sailed as often as they walked, signs of expansion were everywhere. New wharves competed to attract both ships and shops. Not to be outdone, proprietors extended older wharves into the harbor. Before the end of the 1730s, legislators had completed plans to rebuild Colony House, and although they reached agreement on an elegant brick structure in harmony with the chic town itself, their dispute over its axis (north-south? east-west?) fueled bickering and consumed time.

The Arnold home, on Thames Street, gave Mary ample opportunity to take stock of the people in her adopted town. Mary lived in a centrally located neighborhood, one within convenient walking distance of her needs and interests. The records do not disclose whether she took notice of the slaves paving and repairing the streets on which she walked, but whatever her mission on any particular day, urban din accompanied her. In addition to the ordinary sounds of a seaport, mischief makers brazenly fired guns and pistols, threw squibs, and set off fireworks. Newport’s rats and mice were also brazen and were as likely to satisfy themselves with a meal of stolen paper currency as anything more delectable. Once in a while Mary might pause to watch a local tribe perform a Native dance that was, presumably, accompanied by the beat of drums. As she walked, Mary could not avoid the noisy taverns where Governor John Wanton was accused of diverting seventy pounds from the public till to quench the thirst of potential voters. Government corruption was never far from the surface of daily life.1

The location of Mary’s residence encouraged acquaintance with townspeople. It allowed her to strike up conversations with friends and strangers—or even with transients coming and going from the sloops, brigs, snows, and schooners that crowded the waterfront. No doubt she met Turff the Bayman and Walter Motley in this fashion (although how or why such meetings would lead to rendezvous and intimacy remains an uncertainty).

If, in her role as housewife Mary purchased provisions, one can imagine her passing the prison yard en route to the butcher. With little concern for her reputation or class, she might have exchanged pleasantries with a temporarily incarcerated miscreant. Ordinarily, if Mary had servants, they would attend to chores and errands, but their mistress could always opt for a particular dinner menu. What in Thomas Huxham’s shop would tempt her—beef, lamb, mutton, or veal? Perhaps a lobster from the fishmonger? What would take her to John Tweedy’s apothecary shop—the need for an opiate? Yet even if Mary occasionally shared household tasks with those below her, the presence of servants gave Mary time for leisure activity. That being so, a ferry run to Jamestown would make for a pleasant afternoon. So would a nip at the White Horse Tavern. For pleasure seekers, there were multiple possibilities to round out the day.

Nearly one hundred manuscript pages contain the elements of a narrative in which Mary Ward Arnold is accused of poisoning her husband, who responded to such malice by divorcing her. Despite the extensive documentary trail, however, Mary absented herself from the group of raconteurs. No record of a self-proclaimed defense survives (if one ever existed), which thus allows Mary’s critics to monopolize the narrative. Neither modesty nor an inability to write excuses her; scribes took down statements from uneducated antagonists ready to condemn her. As a result, we can only speculate about the sequence of events and questions raised by existing documents that cast Mary as a villain. Did Mary try to poison Benedict? And if she did so, why? What motivated her to engage in adultery with at least two men who fall into a social and economic class below that of the Arnolds? Did the masks she purchased cover a face scarred by smallpox, or were they accessories to a masquerade gown?

It is surprising that Benedict’s adult children by a former marriage were not among their stepmother’s critics—at least not in writing. Perhaps their unwillingness to publicly support Benedict’s divorce petition was a measure of their anger toward him for remarrying too quickly after their mother’s death. Did they resent their father’s second marriage to a woman hardly older than Benedict’s oldest son? Were they infuriated by his gifts of real property to her—bequests that defeated their own expectations? Furthermore, why were tenants in the Arnold household so ready to testify against Mary? Was their sense of morality so offended by her behavior that they acted in unison against her? The entire narrative revolves around a spoonful of arsenic (or was it mercury?) in the hands of an adulterous couple.

1 A TOWN ON NARRAGANSETT BAY

Despite the slurs heaped on Rhode Island by its callous neighbors, Newport, the colony’s most important town, displayed the usual urban contradictions. On the one hand, the existence of dancing schools, the proliferation of expensive consumer goods, and the 1733 visit by Lord Augustus FitzRoy, a member of the extended royal family, conjure up visions of civility, gentility, and prosperity. On the other hand, disease, accidents, disasters, and crime competed with the good life on a daily basis, all of which would have become familiar to Mary Ward once she left home to marry into Newport’s gentry—and one of Rhode Island’s founding families. Her husband-to-be, Benedict Arnold III, was heir to considerable acreage in Rhode Island as well as to shares in the Taunton, Massachusetts, ironworks. Mary was undoubtedly aware of her prospective spouse’s assets and had calculated the financial advantages of this alliance even though it meant a commitment to a man almost two decades her senior.

Mary Ward of Middletown, Connecticut, was no stranger to a bustling community that depended on waterborne traffic for both the necessities and luxuries of life. A move from the banks of the Connecticut River to the shores of Narragansett Bay would not have been particularly unsettling for the young woman, since the towns were roughly the same size. Both numbered in the low thousands, and members of the extensive Ward family populated each place. The fractious and ongoing boundary disputes between Connecticut and Rhode Island engaged the political leaders of both colonies and probably stimulated some chatter, but they would have had little effect on Mary’s customary routine.1 In Newport even religious friction was usually limited to nothing more than heated debate over doctrine—despite the many Christian factions and a small Jewish congregation. Anti-Semitic incidents occurred from time to time, and Catholics were less welcome than other Christian denominations, but in general Rhode Island practiced the toleration it preached. Newport may have been more cosmopolitan than Mary’s former home—and thus an enticement to her—but existing documents do not divulge Mary’s assessment of her new surroundings one way or the other.

These small urban centers were also ethnically diverse, although Newport’s black population would have been proportionately greater, thanks to the increasing importance of the slave trade and the rising price of enslaved laborers.2 Mary’s resettlement took her to a town that was heavily engaged in the slave trade, but if she developed a position on this execrable commerce, the records remain silent on this matter as well. Yet as long as she dwelled in Newport, Mary could not have avoided scenes of men and women being traded as commodities. During the summer of 1729, the brigantine Charming Betty arrived with “a parcel of fine Negro Slaves, to be sold for ready Money, or Credit . . . by Godfrey Malbone, Merchant, at his Wharf in Newport, where the said Slaves may be seen.” Many of the enslaved were routed through the West Indies, although by 1730 Rhode Island merchants had established a direct trade with Africa.3 Newport’s traffic in slaves increased during Mary’s residence in the town and became inextricably intertwined with commerce in general: “To be Sold by Augustus Lucus in Newport . . . ; Garlix, and sundry other Goods, lately imported from London (at a reasonable price). As also a young and strong Negro Man, born in the Country, of about five or six and twenty Years of Age.”4

Newport’s coastal location encouraged the coexistence of slavery and piracy during the first decades of the eighteenth century. Members of the first group suffered brutality; members of the second extended it to others. Mary’s attitude toward both was shaped by what she saw and heard. Her response to slavery would have been tested by the well-dressed escapee from Massachusetts who fled with “an Iron Horse Lock on the small of one of his Legs.”5 Similarly, Mary’s reaction to the execution of twenty-six pirates on July 19, 1723, would have been indicative of her attitude toward piracy.6 One can only wonder whether her excessive desire for material goods, not to mention her willingness to flout the law, was stirred by piracy’s daring challenge to social norms. Mary’s environment might have validated her behavior in unsuspected ways.

Whatever was going on in Mary’s mind, however, by 1723 she was already familiar with capital punishment. During her childhood and teenage years in Middletown, four hangings took place either in Hartford or Fairfield, eighteen miles and forty-eight miles distant by land, respectively. A water route shortened the trip. As an adult, Mary would have been unlikely to recall the 1708 execution of Abigail Thompson for killing her husband with a pair of tailor’s shears, although aspects of the case might have resonated in 1738 with people whose memories of regional atrocities lingered for decades. Abigail had been the second wife of the tailor, Thomas Thompson. She was thirty-seven at the time of the murder, and thirteen years younger than her husband.7

If the Thompson execution was distant enough in time and place to elude Mary’s memory, more recent news of spousal murders, attempted murders, and public executions closer to home would surely have captured her attention. A report that Jeremiah Meecum was executed for killing his wife and sister-in-law with an axe in 1716 spread quickly with all the grisly details intact. News would have reached a wide audience when William Dyre broke his wife’s neck and was hanged in 1719—surely a case in which the punishment fit the crime. That same year John Hammett threatened to murder his wife, and Elizabeth Barber fled from the husband who battered her. Thousands of Newporters attended the Meecum and Dyre executions, and the abuse that Sarah Hammett and Elizabeth Barber suffered became common knowledge in a community that relied on street talk in the absence of a local newspaper.8 As Mary Arnold became acclimated to her new home, she learned that several local households were theaters of misogynistic violence rather than peaceable kingdoms.

The Arnold family resided somewhere along Thames Street in Newport, which was the town’s main thoroughfare and ran on a north-south axis along the harbor. Several windows would have faced Goat Island, and the home was bounded on the south and east by Benedict’s own land. To the north the Arnolds had a neighbor, the heirs of Benjamin Belcher, a shipwright. The Arnold property stretched eighty-eight feet from north to south and one hundred feet from front to back. His house was probably two stories high with one or more fireplaces on each floor. Perhaps there was a third-floor attic. A quick count of family, servants, and tenants means that household members would frequently rub elbows as they passed each other in hallways or on stairs. Privacy was nonexistent.

In many ways Newport was much like any other New England town dependent on the sea, and Mary would have been all but oblivious to the familiar sounds of an eighteenth-century port: the shrieks of seagulls, rumble of cart wheels, clack of horse hoofs, chime of church bells, and occasional thwack of a carpenter’s hammer or strike of a blacksmith’s anvil. One way or another, she learned about Newport by walking. Perhaps the babble of African dialects and Indian tongues caught her attention as she passed the colorful two-story wood-frame houses on her various errands. Perhaps she peered through bookshop windows as she circled what is now Washington Square or as she sauntered along the harbor. As early as 1721, the Post Rider, Peter Belton, delivered books from Boston every week, assuring Newporters of a steady stream of reading material.9 Continuing her stroll, she would have paid no mind to street names such as King, Queen, and Duke because she took for granted Newport’s place in the British Empire.

Depending on her route, Mary would have passed churches, schools, and taverns. Schools outnumbered churches, and taverns outnumbered both. Between 1720 and 1729 Baptists, Quakers, and Anglicans built houses of worship. The town school offered classes in writing and Latin by 1720, and the Great School House was in operation under the tutelage of the wife beater John Hammett. The Reverend John Comer established a Baptist school and in 1730 ordered four hundred sets of verses from the printer James Franklin, presumably for his students. Although Franklin sold a variety of printed verses, he advertised only one such publication in 1730: “The Oxfordshire Tragedy; or, The Virgin’s Advice,” a poetic narrative of sex and murder. Why the minister would have chosen this particular work to demonstrate morality is unclear, but surely none of his students complained about the assignment.10

When she did her marketing, Mary sidestepped the traffic in poultry and pigs while walking along Thames Street, but she could not have avoided taverns, dramshops, groggeries, and distilleries, all testimony to the importance of molasses and rum to Newport’s economy. No one went thirsty in this town, although the 1732 law forcing innkeepers to limit customer credit to twenty shillings surely dampened business and enraged regulars who were accustomed to unlimited tankards of rum.11 Nevertheless, patrons forced to move on could easily spend their extra pounds and shillings on trinkets displayed in the many shops that lined Thames Street. Food carts tempted passersby as well. Turning up Marlborough Street, Mary might have wished Weston Clarke a good afternoon; she might even have curtseyed to John Coddington as she passed his mansion and stopped to admire the carved shell hood above his front door.12 It was a short walk from Marlborough to Pelham Street and the Arnold cemetery, where Mary’s ten-year-old son was buried. He had drowned, by all appearances accidentally, in the frigid waters of Narragansett Bay just before Christmas 1736. Wherever Mary lived on Thames Street, the cemetery was close enough for frequent visits.13

Because Mary lived on Thames Street, close to the water, on quiet summer nights she could have fallen asleep to the sound of waves lapping at the shore and tree frogs chirping in the distance. Winter days promised the pleasant smell of chimney smoke, whiffs of which drifted from street to street, mitigating—one hopes—the pungent odors of animal excrement, rotting food, unwashed bodies, and decaying fish that greeted her nose as she walked. With no structures high enough to block them, shafts of sunlight splashed Newport’s streets. Closer to the shore, bright sunshine and blue sky were interrupted by white sails and the inescapable sight of water—water so clear that even at great depths it appeared shallow. On warm days Mary could have shed her shoes and dipped her toes into a saltwater cove that no longer exists. Twilight shut down the day’s activities as dusk and night...

Table of contents

• The Author’s Tale
• Prologue
• Part I. The Story
• Part II. The People
• Part III. Cultural Coordinates
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index