Hatcheted to Death at the Hand of My Husband

[This story is told by Naomi Pounds Cooper (1826-1909 ) who was born in Ohio, married in Illinois, and moved to Jewel County KS about 1880. Her husband having died some years before, in 1904 she married Edward Edwin (fictitious name), who five years later took a hatchet to her head.]

                    

G.A.R., Jewell Co., 1900

I’ve known a few cavalrymen in my life but never a one I liked. One of the ones I knew best was my nephew-by-marriage Jack Wallace who made life such a hell for my poor niece Rachel until she finally moved back to Mason County Illinois and divorced him. Jack was a colossal bore with a voice like a foghorn and an ego like a wrecking ball. He actually hit Rachel with a poker. Probably had misplaced his consarned cavalry sword. At any rate, that scared her enough that she went back to Mason County and filed for divorce. She told me that she thought for sure he was going to kill her. I believe she hoped the divorce would go through quickly enough that she could be buried under her maiden name of Pounds, since she was already ill by this time, but the poor soul died before the divorce was finalized. Her tombstone reads Rachel Wallace, and I know that has made her final resting place an unquiet grave. 

Edward Edwin--my third husband, I always called him Mr. Edwin--was no better, he was just less of a man than Jack. He was six feet tall but didn’t weigh more than 150 pounds, a reed of a man. But he had his picture took in his uniform wearing his sword and his boots. Oh you can bet your boot soles he did that. But it didn’t make me no nevermind. I’d seen him in his underwear, and I had no fear of him. Unlike his first wife, I should say. I never met her but she seems to have been one of these docile smiling women whose every word is “Yes, Dear.” Me, I’d seen the man in his underwear and I figured that in a fair fight--no swords or pokers--I could whip him. 

At the same time, in spite of his sword and boots, he was fragile because he had the falling sickness. I didn’t even know this when we got married because the sickness didn’t strike him that often, and with me there’d been no sign of it. He was polite, well spoken, and seemed like a gentleman. He had some children by his first marriage that lived around Jewell, and one of them warned me about his falling sickness, but I didn’t listen.  

I don’t listen good, I never did, but perhaps this was the one time I should have. On Friday, 28 May 1909, the Jewell County Republican ran a lurid and fulsome headline. I would have enjoyed it if it had been about someone else:

AN INSANE MAN'S DEED

EDWIN EDWARDS KILLS HIS WIFE 

WITH A HAMMER

WIFE WAS FORMERLY MRS. T. L. COOPER

A SHOCKING TRAGEDY

About 5:00 o'clock last Tuesday morning Edward Edwin, who lives in a little house near the eastern end of Delaware Street, went to the home of his neighbor, William Nixon, and said, "Well, I have killed the old lady." Mr. Nixon hastened back to the house with him and found the story to be true. Mrs. Edwin lay in the bed in her night robe. The pillows and bed were soaked in blood, and blood was on the walls and ceiling. Mr. Nixon summoned Dr. Vallette and other neighbors, and Mr. Edwin's sons from the country. When the coroner arrived a jury was impaneled and witnesses heard. 

Mr. Edwin said he and his wife had quarrelled over a rocking chair that he bought at a sale. She had rebuked him for bringing home old worthless furniture. 

That’s what it was too. It was rickety, needed varnishing, and it wasn’t worth more than a dollar. I doubted I’d get even that much when I sold it to the next junkman that came buy. But underneath this argument was a hotter one neither of us could even mention. I’d married this man four years younger than myself with the notion that he’d play the part of a husband in my bed, but he didn’t want me. He wanted a young Shulamite to warm the bed of his advancing years and nothing else.

The tragedy occurred about three o'clock on Tuesday morning. He said he didn't sleep any all night. He didn't know whether his wife had slept any or not. Then he had occasion to get up, and found a light burning in the sitting room adjoining. He couldn't sleep, and they got into a dispute. His wife tongue lashed him and he tried to make her shut up. She said she would not.

Make me shut up? The very idea. And how was he going to do that--with his cavalry sword or with the fireplace poker? I’d have taken it away from him and rammed it down his withered gizzard.

He doesn't know when or where he got the hammer, but he had it. It was kept in the kitchen. He told her he had stood all he was going to. When he came into the bedroom with the hammer his wife clenched him, clawed him and tried to choke him. Then he struck. He didn't know how many times, maybe a dozen. Said he just boiled over. Thought his wife did not speak after he first struck her, but she hollered a time or two before. 

He put the hammer under the sitting room stove and waited for morning. Did not lie down. Might have sat down, didn't know. There was blood under the stove, but no hammer. Mr. Edwin went to the kitchen, reached in an empty flour bin and produced the hammer. It was clean except that there were blood stains on the end of the handle where it didn't come up flush with the steel. Asked if he had washed the hammer, he said he might have done so. On request he removed his coat. His shirt was bloody. His face was also splattered with blood. Asked if he had washed after doing the deed, he said he built a fire in the kitchen stove and washed himself in the morning as usual.

Asked if he knew what he was doing when he killed his wife, he said he did. Said he had not intended to kill her when he went to bed, but he couldn't stand her tongue lashing any longer. 

Oh, he couldn’t stand it, could he? Listen to the innocent lambkin. If he didn’t like the edge of my tongue, he could have gotten off his lazy butt and done a day’s work like a man with some gumption. All he wanted to do was lolly-gag around and not do the things I told him needed to be done. No, what he really didn’t like was a woman to be giving him orders, no sirree, not to him with his cavalry sword and boots, hanging out with the Jewell chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic to have his photograph taken in full regalia, uniform, sword, boots and all. 

Mr. and Mrs. Nixon told the jury of his coming to their home. Mr. Nixon said Mr. Edwin turned down the quilt which covered the face of the dead woman and seemed to have no realization of the enormity of his deed.

Dr. Vallette testified that Mr. Edwin did the same for him and said he killed his wife in self-defense. Mr. Edwin told the writer that if they wanted to hang a man for defending himself, why, hanging it was. He did it and wasn't going to run. Dr. Vallette said the form of insanity that justifies its acts was the most dangerous kind. He had found one side of the skull broken and crushed.

Self-defense? That’s a good one, little lambkin, and me not there to to say a word on my own behalf. On the other hand, I can’t be absolutely sure that I didn’t go for him first. That sounds like me. Except that I could swear I was in bed asleep when he came at me. I’m not sure. Hatchet blows to the head can mess up a person’s memory.

Mrs. Kinkead and Mrs. Perfect were neighbor women who arrived early on the scene of the tragedy. Mrs. Perfect testified that Mr. Edwin had said, "Sorry to make you so much trouble, ladies, but I couldn't help it." She said she came once before when Mr. Edwin had hurt his wife. Asked whether she thought it was his temper or his insanity that was responsible for such outbursts of violence, she said she thought it was both. Mrs. Kinkead told how unconcerned he was. He told them there was a kettle of hot water in the kitchen and that they could go to work. Whether he meant they should get breakfast or take care of the body they didn't know.

Charles and S. D. Edwin, sons of Edward Edwin, were much shocked by what had transpired. They testified that their father had in recent years had spells of an epileptic nature and showed signs of insanity. At such times they had taken him home to their farms. He would soon recover and seemed to be fairly rational. There was talk among people that it was not safe for the old lady to live with him. They boys had consulted a doctor and the doctor thought there was not much danger. A guardian had been appointed to look after his property. About two years ago or so he went to Denver to visit his daughter and while there became violent and the police had to be called, but when he recovered he returned home.

All the women who knew Mrs. Edwin well agreed she was a fearless woman. . . . She realized that she had made a mistake marrying again but she was determined to do her part to the end. J. C. Postlethwaite testified that she had told him that she was having much trouble. He suggested that it was dangerous to continue to live with an insane man, but she didn't listen to any measure being taken for her protection. She said she was not afraid. 

At the time of her marriage, her foster daughter, Miss Alice Cooper, begged and pleaded that she would not marry Mr. Edwin, but she was a determined woman, and what seemed to her right, that she did in spite of all counsel.

Mr. Edwin was taken in charge by the Sheriff. He will without a doubt be adjudged insane and confined to an asylum.

One correction: Mrs. Kinkead and Mrs. Perfect, with their names out of a Charles Dickens novel, were not neighbors but boarders. I pretended I didn’t know any better and called the former woman “Mrs. Kinkhead.” They were a pair of darlings too. Small towns are full of them--many tongues to talk but few heads to think.

The obituary concluded by summing up my character according to Mrs. Kinkhead and Mrs. Perfect: "She had no children of her own, but she gave a mother's love to four who needed a home and reared and educated them. In taking a position she was governed by what she considered to be right, but the position once taken she could not be moved." Actually, I can’t argue with that. I could be moved, but it took something stronger than a claim to right reason. It took a hammer. I was 86 years old.

[Excerpted from my book Naomi of Ohio: An American Pastoral (2017). Available on Amazon.com.]