Newfoundland Stories (3 page)

Those lost: Moses Spracklin, Jonathan Spracklin, William Spracklin, Elisabeth Spracklin, Amelia Spracklin, Priscella Spracklin, Samuel Wells, Richard Wells, Elias Ford, George Iveny, Solomon Taylor, Joanna Croke.

The survivors: Samuel Spracklin (captain and owner), Thomas Iveny, Henry W. Spracklin, Samuel Rowe, Henry Iveny, Samuel P. Spracklin, Thomas Noseworthy, Thomas Spracklin, William Wells, Richard Ford, George Wells, James H. Wells, William E. Spracklin.

It is also interesting to note that the plaque at Pouch Cove mentions only Alfred Moores, with no reference to the other five men who played such a crucial role in the rescue operation and who received bronze medals for their efforts, namely Eli Langmead, William Langmead, Christopher Baldwin, William Noseworthy, and Christopher Mundy.

Information for this story came from the
Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador,
edited by Joseph R. Smallwood (St. John's: Newfoundland Book Publishers Limited, 1967, 1981) as well as from The Courier (St. John's: December 4, 1875).

1
It is not known for certain that Richard Ford was actually the man chosen to scale the cliff with Captain Spracklin.

THE HANGING OF
ELEANOR POWER

S
he stumbled unto the scaffold, guided by two burly guards whose faces betrayed the distaste they held for the task they were performing. They led her to the centre of the scaffold where her hooded executioner stood waiting. Her loose flowing garment failed to hide the violent trembling of her body. She swayed once, and her guards moved quickly to prevent her from falling.

The crowd lining Water Street several rows deep watched, hushed. The hanging of a convicted criminal was a relatively common occurrence in St. John's at the time and always drew large crowds and high emotions. Sometimes outbursts of anger and slurs were hurled at the condemned with such fervour that the police were hard pressed to maintain order and keep the rowdy crowd at bay. At other times the crowd showed pity for the person being hanged while openly displaying their contempt for the Crown. Even more rarely, boisterous levity was the order of the day. The mood of the crowd usually depended on the identity of the condemned man and the particulars of his crime.

This hanging, however, was different. To see a woman on the gallows was a rare thing. None of the spectators had ever witnessed such an event. Most of them found it difficult to connect the frightened woman waiting under the noose to the heinous crime of which she had been convicted. Their silence accentuated their reservations and doubts.

Even the sheriff, John Thomas, appeared reluctant to initiate the proceedings that would send the woman to her death. Finally, with no option other than to carry out his prescribed responsibility, Thomas asked her if she had any last statement to make. A low moan gave a small voice to the stark terror she felt inside, having witnessed the hanging of her own husband only minutes earlier. The noose was fitted over her neck and after another interminable pause, the final order was given. With Thomas' pronouncement “May God have mercy on your soul,” she too was sent to her doom. The trap door opened and she plunged downward. The snapping of her neck was audible to those standing nearby, and her body thrashed spasmodically at the end of the rope for several seconds before sagging into perpetual lifelessness. Eleanor Power, age unknown, had paid the ultimate price for her crime.

The execution was the final chapter in a sordid plot that had been hatched in the Powers' kitchen at Blackhead, Freshwater Bay, one late-August evening. A chance remark made there on that fateful day would unleash a tragic sequence of events that eventually culminated in the murder of a prominent St. John's citizen and the first recorded hanging of a female convict anywhere in British North America. The date was October 10, 1784, and justice in St. John's on that day was swift, merciless, and extreme.

At the time, Eleanor Power was a maid and washer-woman in the household of William Keene, Sr., a prominent St. John's import/ export merchant, magistrate, and justice of the peace for the city. Keene's properties included a large house on Duckworth Street, along with business premises and a wharf on the south side of Water Street. He also owned a summer home, business premises, and another wharf nearby in Quidi Vidi Village. By all accounts, he was a successful and influential man of the time.

Eleanor Power had been employed by this man long enough to cultivate a deep dislike for him. She considered him to be overly demanding and vindictive, and, to her way of thinking, abusive and demeaning to the other domestics working for him. To Eleanor's Irish sensibilities, Keene represented everything that had kept the Irish people downtrodden and oppressed for centuries. Still, with nowhere else to turn to for money, she kept her mouth shut, trying to shield her true feelings from him as much as possible in order to maintain her position. She feared instant reprisal or dismissal should she accidentally reveal her true opinion of him.

Eleanor Power was not alone in her dislike for Keene. Her sentiments toward him, in fact, reflected those held by a large segment of the St. John's public, especially those of Irish descent who at the time comprised almost half of the city's total population. Keene, as a public official, was well known for the excessive sentences he routinely meted out for what were considered mostly minor crimes. There were many enemies and detractors in and around St. John's who, having experienced Keene's form of justice firsthand, would have gladly done him serious bodily harm if given the opportunity. Eleanor Power was far from being the only person in the area to feel at least some degree of enmity toward the man.

One evening in late August, unbeknownst to her and possibly without any malice intended, Eleanor Power sowed the seeds of her own demise by disclosing to her husband, Robert Power, and a number of other men the fact that Keene kept a large sum of money in his house in Quidi Vidi Village, and that she knew where he kept it. Her fateful words were uttered in her home in Blackhead where her husband and the others were drinking, slowly becoming intoxicated in the gathering dusk, as they often did. Whether her comments were intended to instigate the events that subsequently unfolded or whether they were merely passing conversation is unclear, but they immediately piqued the interest of Robert Power and his companions.

“How much?” they wanted to know, to which she replied that it was at least a thousand pounds, and that she had watched Keene take it out and count it once when he didn't know she was around. She added that he kept it in a chest under the stairs, hidden under linens and other such household items.

Keene and his money remained the main topic of discussion for the rest of the evening, during which someone raised the notion of stealing it from him. The suggestion, which may have initially been made in jest, took root and quickly gained momentum. Before the night was over, a conspiracy was minted to pilfer the old man's money. A thousand pounds, even when divided among all of them, was more money than any of them had ever seen in their lifetimes.

The conspirators met again in the Powers' house during the next three or four evenings to finalize the details of their plot. By that time the group had grown to a considerable size, now comprising nine members including Edmund McGuire, Matthew Halleran, Paul MacDonald, Lawrence Lumley, John Moody, Dennis Hawkins, and John Munhall, in addition to Eleanor and Robert Power, all of whom were of Irish descent and some of whom were soldiers stationed in the fort at near by Cape Spear. In that short time, McGuire had established himself as the ringleader of the group.

One night in the first week of September, the gang made its move. At that point another man, Nicholas Tobin, was drawn through necessity into the plot. Tobin operated a ferry service between Freshwater Bay and St. John's. He was needed to transport the others across the five-mile expanse of rough water to the scene of the intended robbery. In return he would receive a share of the spoils. When they arrived in Quidi Vidi Village around midnight, the wharf was still busy with a number of fishermen at work despite the late hour, cleaning and salting down an exceptionally large catch of cod from that day. There being no indication that the fishermen would be leaving any time soon, the gang decided to abandon their plan that night and return at another time.

Three nights later they tried again. This time, to their chagrin, they found that Keene had guests. Two large vessels were berthed at his private wharf, and several lights burned in his house nearby. For a second time, they were forced to abort their plan.

Finally, on September 9, they made their third attempt. This time they were armed, although they did not intend to harm Keene. They only wanted his money. Two muskets, carried by Robert Power and Halleran, and a broken scythe blade carried by McGuire comprised their arsenal. Arriving again at midnight, they forced their way into Keene's house, where Eleanor Power led them to the chest under the stairs where she had witnessed Keene handling his money. The old man did not awaken, and the group was able to carry the chest away without any alarm being raised. The chest was heavy for its size; those carrying it believed that perhaps it contained even more than the thousand pounds that Eleanor Power had told them about.

They halted a short distance away from the house in a spot where they felt they would be safe from spying eyes. When they broke the chest open, however, they found to their dismay that the chest did not contain any money at all. Instead, they stared at several bottles of liquor. Frustrated, some of them now turned on Eleanor Power and accused her of leading them on a fool's errand. Fearing for her safety, she insisted that she had seen Keene's money just as she had told them but he must have moved it. Then she suggested that it might still be in the house, probably in another chest that she knew he kept under his bed.

The group remained there some time, squabbling among themselves, drinking Keene's liquor, and gradually becoming drunk. Then, drunk, the fuming McGuire announced that he was going to return to the house and have another try. The group was split on the idea, some, despite their drunken state, opposed, suddenly fearful of the consequences. McGuire insisted that he was going anyway and anyone who wanted to come with him was welcome. Those who didn't wouldn't receive a single farthing. Finally, McGuire, Robert Power, and Halleran returned to the Keene residence. Power stood guard outside and around one o'clock in the morning the other two men entered the house once again – for the final time.

They quickly located Keene's sleeping chamber and the chest underneath his bed. As they were removing the chest, however, Keene awoke and began to scream for help. McGuire, panic-stricken, stabbed the old man twice with the scythe blade, while Halleran struck Keene in the head with the butt of his musket and placed a quilt over his head to suffocate him until his body lay still on the bed. Then the assailants fled, taking the chest with them. It would be another ten days before Keene succumbed to his injuries, most likely dying of an infection caused by McGuire's rusted scythe blade.

The authorities were not long in identifying the perpetrators of the foul deed, for the plot was an ill-kept secret that was broadly known throughout Freshwater Bay. All ten were arrested shortly afterward and brought to trial.

Nicholas Tobin, hoping to save his own skin, immediately turned state's evidence. Under oath at the trial, he confessed everything, revealing the details of the plot, the names and roles of the participants, the two aborted attempts to rob Keene's money, and the final September 9 botched entry of Keene's house and his subsequent murder. He named McGuire and Halleran as the actual murderers, and Robert Power as their accomplice. He also implicated Eleanor Power as the instigator of the whole affair. For providing this evidence, the charge against Tobin was dropped.

The other nine were found guilty. Those not directly involved in the actual slaying of Keene, including Eleanor Power, argued that they should have been charged only with break and entry, not murder – not even robbery. The court disagreed, and all were sentenced to be hanged for their crime.

The executions of Eleanor and Robert Power were scheduled for October 10, 1784, near Keene's own wharf on Water Street, and were carried out as ordered. Both of their bodies were buried near the execution site in keeping with the custom of the day.

By a strange twist that is difficult to comprehend, the death sentences of the others, including the actual murderers, McGuire and Halleran, were almost immediately commuted by Governor Hugh Bonfoy. In fact, the remaining seven men were later pardoned and freed altogether.

Except for her involvement in the Keene affair, little factual information is known about Eleanor Power. There is some suggestion that she was born and raised on the southeast coast of Ireland, perhaps in Wexford, Waterford, or New Ross. English ships put in to such ports in southeastern Ireland on a regular basis each year to deliver fish from Newfoundland and to ship back cargo, including thousands of Irish immigrants. There, the transplanted Irish served as a source of cheap labour for the bustling enterprises of Britain's oldest colony. If Eleanor Power was indeed from that area, she undoubtedly would have endured a hungry childhood of hardship. As a young woman, she would most likely have immigrated to Newfoundland, indenturing herself, in return for her passage, as a servant for a period of at least two years to some wealthy St. John's citizen, perhaps William Keene, Sr., himself.

The fact that she and her husband lived in Blackhead, a small fishing community near St. John's, suggests that Robert Power was a fisherman. It may also be inferred, because she herself was employed in St. John's and had to make the journey to the city by boat on a regular basis, that Eleanor Power's indenture to Keene may not yet have elapsed. It is not known if she had any children.