The Olden Time Series Volume V Part 8

The Salem Gazette appears to think that no act of the kind was ever lawful in Ma.s.sachusetts. The Boston Courier states that in Feb., 1812, the legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts pa.s.sed a law making it highly penal for any civil officer to take the body of any deceased person, and the writer who furnishes this information says that 'he never heard that any such act of barbarism was ever attempted in that Commonwealth,' but that the law was enacted to guard against the possibility of such an occurrence, by a mistake in the application of the terms, 'we command you to take the body of A.B.' &c.

"This writer undoubtedly knows better than we both the laws and customs of his own state. But we have some recollections of an event of this nature transpiring in the southeastern part of Ma.s.sachusetts. If we have not forgotten the events (or remembered some that never took place), a Sheriff in Barnstable county, we think in Brewster or Dennis, attached the body of a deceased debtor on its way to the grave, about the year 1811. A circ.u.mstance that fixes this event the more firmly in our mind is that it transpired about _this_ season of the year, the time of the gubernatorial election in that State, and was used as a subject of reproach to one of the political parties; and we incline to believe that this act, or, if it never took place, the report of it (for it _was_ talked of), gave rise to the law mentioned in the Courier.

"It is proper, in concluding these remarks, to state that to attach a dead body in Ma.s.sachusetts is now _against_ the law; and if the act ever took place which is detailed by Mr. Degrand, it was done by the advice of an _ignorant_ attorney."

We are enabled to give an accurate statement of the event to which the editor of the U.S. Gazette above alludes; we copy it from a publication made at the time:--

"On the 20th October, 1811, Capt. Chillingsworth Foster, jun., aet. about 41 years, departed this life; on the same day Benjamin Bangs, Esq., of Harwich, with one Mr. Scotto Berry, of the same place, called at the house of the deceased for payment of a sum of about one hundred and thirty dollars, due said Bangs, and requested the father of the deceased to give him his security, said Bangs well knowing the parent to be in low circ.u.mstances, and about seventy-five years old, and the mother about the same age. The father refused to comply, stating his inability to answer so great a demand without suffering immediate distress. The said Bangs then declared that if he did not comply, it was in his power to arrest the body of the deceased. The father still refused, and Bangs left the house; and a most distressed one it was, this being the last son out of three, left these aged parents, the other two being lost at sea, or died.

"The Monday following was appointed to have the deceased buried, when Col. Jonathan Snow appeared as Sheriff, with a writ to serve on the body. Here the melancholy scene commenced, a part of the relations being a.s.sembled, with the aged parents convulsed in sorrow; no one can paint their feelings but those who have children and are denied them the right of Christian burial. The usual ceremonies on such occasions were however performed, and an appropriate prayer was delivered by the Rev.

John Simpkins, and the funeral procession formed and proceeded with the corpse about one and a half mile, and very near to the spot of the grave, when the said Sheriff arrested the coffin, without any service on the body, and it was set down in the middle of the highway nearly abreast of said Bangs' dwelling house, and forbid proceeding any further. A large company who followed, with the mourners, soon after retired, and left the officer in charge of the body. After lying in this situation for some time, one of the Grand Jurors ordered it out of the high road; this was complied with by the Sheriff, by placing it under the window of the said Bangs, and about sunset still further removed it into Bangs' dwelling-house. By this inhuman proceeding the aged parents were deprived of seeing their last and only son buried, as were the widow of the deceased and five children. So distressing a scene never was witnessed in this place, and perhaps not in the most barbarous nations. Between seven and eight of the clock, the same evening, the body was buried by a few individuals, and by the consent of said Benjamin Bangs, Esq., after he had inflicted all the wounds he could on the feelings of the poor grey-headed parents and their relations."

The barbarity and illegality of this conduct of B. Bangs, Esq.

(an influential democrat of that day), were viewed with indignation from all quarters. The statute of Feb., 1812, on this subject was not pa.s.sed to render _illegal_ the arrest of a dead body of a debtor, for that was _always_ illegal, but its object was to fix the punishment, instead of leaving it to the discretion of the Courts. Many undoubtedly recollect the instance at Portland several years before, in which a debtor who was on the limits was suddenly taken sick and carried out of the limits, where he died. It was then decided to be the law that the debtor's bond was not broken unless his body was out of the limits by his own agency and will.

So disinterring dead bodies of men was always a misdemeanor, but in 1815 a law was pa.s.sed by our General Court to fix the penalties.

The case of Stephen Merrill Clark is remembered by many people in Salem and its vicinity.

_Supreme Judicial Court._

At the present term of this Court in Salem, Andrew Dunlap, John Foster, and Solomon Whipple, Esqrs. were admitted Counsellors, and Asa W. Wildes, Esq. an attorney of said Court.

_Capital Trial_.--On Tuesday Stephen Merrill Clark, a lad about 15 years of age, was indicted for the crime of ARSON alleged to have been committed in Newburyport, was arraigned the same day, and pleaded _not guilty_. The day for his trial is not yet fixed.--The Court a.s.signed him Leverett Saltonstall and John G.

King, Esquires, for his counsel on his trial.

_Salem Observer_, Nov. 4, 1820.

Clark was subsequently convicted of the crime for which he was tried, and executed upon Salem Neck in 1821. He had made a confession of his guilt; but considering his youth, and the circ.u.mstances of his having been instigated by others, as was believed, to the commission of the crime, many humane people thought there should have been some mitigation of the punishment.