This remarkable tale also involves
children, yet with a strange twist, for both the perpetrator and victim
were both minors. It began not in New Hampshire, but in Richmond, Virginia
just before the outbreak of the Civil War, where on January 13, 1859, John Sherman Emerson was born to thirty-six year old Richard Emerson and
his wife. Emerson was originally from Candia, New Hampshire,
fought in the Mexican War during the late 1840s, and relocated to Virginia,
where he married Margaret Wade and started a family. By 1860, the federal
census documents that John Emerson was the youngest of five
children, including Clara, Margaret, Mary, and Sarah. This
document captured a moment in time before the turmoil of the Civil War changed
the fortunes of the Emerson family.
 |
| John S Emerson recorded as a one year old child of Richard and Margaret Emerson in the 1860 US Census |
Even though he was from New
Hampshire and had served previously in the U.S. Army, during the Civil War
Richard Emerson served as a private in the 25th Battalion Virginia
Infantry, which was organized to defend the city of Richmond, the capital of
the Confederacy. However, in May 1864, Emerson’s ragtag regiment was called
into the field by General Robert E. Lee to reinforce the decimated Southern
army in the massive battle of Spotsylvania. By the time he was discharged from
the Army of Northern Virginia in 1865, Richard Emerson was listed on the
official records as being a musician.1 But for some unknown reason,
Emerson abandoned his young family after the war ended and went to California,
where he died soon after. A few years later, his estranged wife Margaret
Emerson also passed away, and John Emerson, only eight years old, was left an
orphan. There was nothing left for him in Virginia, so he traveled north to the
birthplace of his father, and where some of his older siblings had already
relocated: New Hampshire. And yet it was in the Granite State, where young John
Emerson sought refuge in a land desolated by war, that he would nearly lose his
life in what one contemporary described as one of the “most singular tragedies
of which there is any record in criminal annals.”2
While John Emerson spent his early
childhood in Virginia, another boy about the same age named Wilfred Fitts was
growing up in Candia. Wilfred was described as having a “pleasing appearance”
and he was also “a good scholar in school, and well liked by his teachers.”
Once arriving in New Hampshire, John Emerson began living with different
families in Candia who had known his father’s family and doing chores on their
farms. He soon became “a favorite among the citizens of that town” and was
described as being “very intelligent.” At one point, John lived with Wilfred
Fitts’ uncle, Jesse, and the two boys got to know each other well. According to
those who knew them, “there had never been much trouble between the boys and
they appeared to enjoy each other’s company.”3 But in April 1873,
when both John and Alfred had entered their teens, a bizarre incident occurred
that would change the course of both their lives.
On the night of Monday, April 14,
young Emerson was boarding at the farm of Charles Rowe, a farmer who lived with
his wife, two children, and his elderly mother on North Road in Candia. Earlier
that evening, Mr. Rowe had left for Exeter, where by some odd coincidence he
had been summoned for jury duty the next day. Rowe must have been shocked to
learn that during his absence a murder had nearly transpired at his own home.
According to riveting account from the Independent Statesman of Concord
on April 17, John Emerson and seventy-six year old Sarah Rowe, who perhaps
served as a surrogate grandmother figure for him, slept in adjacent rooms and
around midnight, a commotion in John’s room caused her to awake. After calling
to him twice and receiving no reply, Mrs. Rowe rose out of bed to see what was
wrong. Groping in the darkness, she touched the bed and was “horror-struck by
feeling his body and the hot blood pouring...into the bed.” The rest of the
household had been awakened by her screams and ran to get help at the nearest
farm, which belonged to Jesse Fitts where Alfred was staying, some
three-quarters of a mile away. When he arrived at the scene of the crime, Mr.
Fitts was astonished to discover that lying near John Emerson’s bed was an axe
smeared with blood which he instantly recognized to be from his own workshop.
But how did it get there?
But before that disturbing question
could be answered, the Rowe family turned their attention to the young victim
who was life was ebbing away before their very eyes. Jesse Fitts rode hard through the darkness to
the residence of Dr. Edward Berry, who quickly traveled to the Rowe residence
and found John Emerson “very much exhausted from the loss of blood, but having
his senses. He found a terrible gash extending from the right corner of the
mouth into it and back to the neck, under the ear; another gash extending from
just below the nose on the left side, about two inches long, penetrating into
the mouth and separating the jaw and cutting out a piece thereof, and pushing
out several teeth.” During what must have been his attempts to fend off his
attacker, John Emerson’s thumb on his right hand was severed completely and two
other fingers cut so badly that they had to be amputated. Despite these serious
injuries, Dr. Berry “entertained strong hopes of his recovery, the lad being
conscious and bearing his pain with much fortitude.” Here we get a prophetic
insight into the resilient character of this teenager who had an intimate brush
with death.
While John Emerson’s condition was
stabilized, an inquiry began the next morning to determine who had perpetrated
the attempted murder and why. Who would have had access to that particular axe?
Suspicions immediately fell on fifteen-year old Wildred Fitts, who apparently
for some months had been known in Candia for being a somnambulist. This obscure
medical term is derived from the Latin words for sleep (somnus) and walking
(ambulus). For months, stories had circulated around town that in the middle of
the night Wilfred would “conceal his school books and clothing in obscure parts
of the house, being unable to find them afterward, and accusing others of
having hid them.” Only about a week before the assault on John Emerson, Wilfred
had been found sleepwalking inside the nearby home of Augustus Robbins,
standing upright with an axe in his hands. When Robbins approached the teenager
carefully and discovered he was asleep, Wilfred had to be escorted back to his
uncle Jesse’s farm. After this incident,
the Fitts family had taken measures to make sure he stayed in his room at night
but did he?
Modern medical research has
demonstrated that sleepwalking occurs often in children as they enter their
teens. They may get up and walk around, or do complex activities such as moving
furniture, going to the bathroom, and dressing or undressing. The episode can
be very brief or it can last for thirty minutes or longer, but most episodes
last for less than ten minutes. If they are not disturbed, sleepwalkers will go
back to sleep. This is an relevant
observation, since an examination of the crime scene at the Rowe’s home in 1873
“showed that whoever committed the crime took an old chair from the barn,
placed it to the parlor window and got in there, passed through into the hall,
up stairs and through an intricate hallway to the rear of the house, where
Emerson was asleep, and went out...the same way. On the window-sill was some
blood.”4
The morning after John was
assaulted, Wilfred was found asleep in his bed and there was no apparent blood
on his clothing, but there was a track of footprints leading away from the
house. Later that morning, he was told to return to his parents in Lowell, and
while passing the Rowe farm, “desired to call and bid John Emerson goodbye, appearing
to have no knowledge that his friend was injured.” To those who believed this
was indeed an incidence of somnambulistic violence, Wilfred’s behavior seemed
to provide more convincing evidence that he was completely oblivious about the
attack. Nevertheless, on Wednesday April 16, Wilfred Fitts was taken into
custody by authorities and brought to Exeter, where the Rockingham county
prosecutor, J. S.H Frink had to decide how to proceed with this unorthodox
case. How could he prosecute an attempted murder committed without an apparent
motive or malice and a defendant who claimed not to remember committing the
crime?
In the meantime, more information
came from the Fitts family which seemed to confirm that Wilfred may have
inherited his sleepwalking condition from his mother, who told reporters that
“she herself was accustomed, when young, to rise from her bed without knowing
it; and that on two or three occasions in her earlier married life she had, in
her sleep, clutched her husband by the throat in fancied defense of some
assaulter..” The theory that Mrs. Fitts could have passed on her past
sleepwalking behavior genetically to her son is actually supported today by
clinical research. In a recent book on the subject, three prominent
psychologists affirmed that “it is clear that sleepwalking is highly
hereditary...If both parents sleepwalk, there is a 60% chance any child will
sleepwalk. If only one parent sleepwalks, the risk is 45%.”5 In
Candia, where people knew both of boys well, most citizens agreed that the deed
had been committed by Wilfred in his sleep. The Farmer’s
Cabinet of Amherst described the incident as “one of the most horrible
freaks of a somnambulist ever recorded.”
But according to the Independent
Statesman in Concord on May 1, some residents of Candia were skeptical and believed that
“Fitts committed the assault in full possession of his faculties.” This wasn’t
the first time in nineteenth-century New England that sleepwalking had been
used as an alibi by a defendant. In New Hampshire during the 1830s, Abraham
Prescott attempted to elude the gallows by claiming he was a somnambulist but
was still hanged in 1836 for the murder of Sally Cochran. In the 1840s, Albert
Tirrell of Boston was tried for murdering his wife and then setting fire to the
crime scene, though he was acquitted partly thanks to attributing his actions
to sleepwalking.6 In a way reminiscent of modern debates
about the impact of violent video games and television, some of Wilfred Fitts’
contemporaries believed that the sensational print media had incited the
teenager to commit an act of violence. They claimed he was “impelled to it by a
morbid craving after notoriety, superinduced by reading accounts of murders and
assassinations, in the papers, and dime novels.” But the legal authorities of
New Hampshire were to take a much more lenient view of the case.
By late April, fortunately John Emerson
had begun recovering from his wounds and his survival seemed certain, indeed he would thrive. On Tuesday, May 6, 1873
a hearing was held at the Congregational Church
in Exeter because the crowd who came to witness the unique proceedings was so
large. After visiting the scene of the crime, and hearing the testimony from
about a dozen witnesses, including the Fitts family who claimed that their son
had shown symptoms of somnambulism for an extended time and that they had sent
him to live in Candia to get better, “Judge Cross and the County Solicitor said
they did not regard the boy as responsible for the assault.” They requested
that if the boy was placed in an asylum to treat his condition, no charges
would be filed. Whether Wilfred Fitts
did actually attempt to murder John Emerson while sleepwalking will always
remain an enigma, but even today psychologists continue to document and study
cases of somnambulistic assaults and even alleged homicides.7
After their probable nocturnal
encounter in April 1873, the lives of Wilfred Fitts, and his friend and victim,
John Emerson, could not have been more dissimilar. Emerson fully recuperated
and lived with one of his older sisters in Somersworth before returning to
public school, and in January 1874, James Shapleigh became John’s legal
guardian and was able to obtain a cash settlement of $750 from the Fitts
family.8 Meanwhile, Wilfred was first sent to the New Hampshire
State Asylum in Concord, but by the end of June the superintendent of the
institution requested that he be released back to his parent’s custody because
he had never been observed to sleepwalk there. For the rest of that summer,
Wilfred lived with his parents in Lowell, but his mental state apparently
deteriorated. On September 30, 1873, the Boston Daily Advertiser
reported that he “ran out of his father’s house Saturday last, without hat or
shoes, under an aberration of mind. It was feared that he injured himself, but
after along search was found in his father’s barn.” A few days later, the “boy
somnambulist...who is seventeen years of age, yet weighs but seventy-five
pounds” was accompanied by his father to the Worcester State Asylum, where it
was hoped his health would improve.
But about a year later, Wilfred
Fitts was involved in a tragic demise that was no less bizarre than the
strange crime he had allegedly committed. On February 8, 1875, the Boston
Daily Advertiser informed its readers that when he had been left unsupervised
for a few moments, the teenager “filled a bath-tub with scalding water then
jumped into it, suffering injuries from which he died in twenty-four hours.”The circumstances of his death were so alarming that in "A Report of the Commissioners of Lunacy to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts", which investigated the incident, reported that during his final excruciating hours, Wilfred claimed it was not suicide but an accident. But in the Massachusetts vital records, Wilfred’s death was listed as “injury
(self-inflicted).” His father Isaac Fitts must have mourned the loss of his son
on the verge of manhood until his own death on August 23, 1890 in Lowell at the
age of eighty-one. We don't know the last time Wilfred and John spoke to each other, but when John heard of this news, it must have been shocking.
But the rest of John Emerson’s life
couldn’t have been more different from the sad fate of his childhood friend. It’s interesting to ponder the impact the ax
attack had on young John, and though the historian of Candia said Emerson would
“always bear the marks of the ugly wounds he received on that terrible night”,
it seems to have had a completely unexpected psychological effect on him.9
In fact, it may not be coincidence that after nearly having his life taken by a
childhood friend, John Emerson became a highly respected teacher. By December 1879, at age twenty, John was
educating the youth of Candia at the local high school, where the Independent
Statesman noted “the success which has hitherto attended Mr. Emerson in his
teaching, and the character of the scholars in attendance, a pleasant and
profitable term is anticipated.”
Over the next decade, Emerson moved
on to teach in different communities in suburban Boston and built himself quite
a resume. In Quincy, John fell in love with another teacher, twenty-eight year
old Charlotte Poison, and the Massachusetts vital records show they were
married on April 3, 1890 in Malden, “a union which...contributed greatly to Mr.
Emerson’s success.” Four years later, Emerson became principal of the Knapp
School in Somerville, where he would remain for many years.
In 1897, a book about Somerville discussed the history of the schools in great detail, and described John Emerson“to have been born for the work of teaching, and his success
commenced with his first experience...and yet he is most unassuming.” The photo of him in that book below remarkably shows that any scars of the attack which nearly killed him as a teenager had virtunally disappeared when he was in his late thirties. Ten years later, in 1907, Emerson authored an essay titled “The teaching of local history in the
public schools” which would still make interesting reading today.10
The 1910 census documents that middle-aged John and Charlotte Emerson were
still married and teaching in Somerville as the first decade of the twentieth
century ended. John Emerson’s narrow escape from
death in Candia, New Hampshire and subsequent success as an educator is indeed a remarkable life worthy of remembrance.
Endnotes
1.
Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Spotsylvania Campaign (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1998) 155, 168; National Park Service Civil
War Soldiers & Sailors System, http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/soldiers.cfm, accessed on July 24, 2011.
2. Edward Samuels and Henry Kimball, eds.,
Somerville, Past and Present: An Illustrated Historical Souvenir (Boston:
1897) 660.
3. Independent Statesman, April 17,
24, 1873.
4. Independent Statesman, April
17, 24, 1873; “Somnambulism”, National Center for Biotechnology Information,
U.S. National Library of Medicine website, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001811/, accessed August 14, 2011.
5. Independent Statesman, May 1,
1873; Martin Reite, Michael P. Weissburg, John Ruddy, Clinical Manual for
Evaluation and Treatment of Sleep Disorders (Arlington, Virginia: American
Psychiatric Publishing, 2009) 152.
6. New Hampshire Sentinel, October
1, 1836, April 1, 1846.
7. Michael J. Thorpy, Giuseppe Plazzi, The
Parasomnias and Other Sleep-Related Movement Disorders (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010) 8.
8. Independent Statesman, January
29, 1874.
9. J. Bailey Moore, History of the Town
of Candia, Rockingham County, N.H. (Manchester: George Brown, 1893) 318.
10. Samuels and Kimball, Somerville,
Past and Present, 660; Annual Report of the American Historical
Association, Volume 2 (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1907) 576.
