A Death at Crooked Creek: The Case of the Cowboy, the Cigarmaker, and the Love Letter

9. The Century Turns, and the Hillmon Case Is Concluded: 1900–1903

305  ≈ 9 ∆ the century turns, and the hillmon case is concluded 1900–1903 The Century Turns, and the Hillmon Case Is Concluded The new century, although ushered in with a bout of harsh winter weather, seemed to mark the country’s progress toward easier, less hazardous , more comfortable lives for Americans. Science and technology produced wonders, like Henry Ford’s invention, which flew over the icy streets of Detroit in the new century’s first February. A railroad train was reported to reach a speed of over one hundred miles an hour (on a downhill grade, it is true). Electricity transformed cities like New York, where it ignited incandescent lamps and powered trolleys. Rural residents would have to wait for the electric lines to reach them, in some places for decades, but whale oil and kerosene were gradually becoming unnecessary to the enjoyment of light and comfort.1 Some scientists were less interested in technology than in the human mind; they believed that the exploration of this most challenging scientific frontier of all would yield insights into the meaning of life. And perhaps of death as well, for some psychologists undertook to investigate such phenomena as the receipt of messages from the ostensibly dead, through the “medium” of ordinary living persons. Nor was it only marginal figures in the new profession who interested themselves in the uncanny and occult. William James, one of the founders of American psychology, was drawn to the study of apparently supernatural The Century Turns, and the Hillmon Case Is Concluded 306  phenomena, including mediums. Together with several other distinguished figures (including his publisher Henry Holt), he founded a venture called the American Society for Psychical Research.2 Much of the work of the Society and others like it consisted of discovering and revealing fraud. Many mediums were obvious fakes, entertainers in essence; a few appeared to have genuine and inexplicable gifts, although some of these were not above resorting to tricks to supplement the unpredictable appearances of the spirits. But William James and his associates studied one medium, a quiet New England housewife named Leonora Piper, for decades, and never caught her cheating.3 On the whole it seemed that Americans, at least in their public pronouncements, manifested pride in the accomplishments of their young country during the previous hundred years. Concerning whether the next hundred would call for celebration, however, some doubt crept in. Would the twentieth century be one of peace, prosperity , and progress? Or did the seeds of war, want, and destruction lie waiting to grow and spread? The California journalist John Ingalls wondered in print whether a writer at the end of the new century could rejoice that “the encroachments of capital have been restrained and that labor has its just reward; that the rich are no longer afflicted with satiety nor the poor with discontent; that we have wealth without ostentation, liberty without license, taxation without oppression, the broadest education, and the least corruption of manners.” On the whole, he thought not.4 † † † It did not take long for the two insurance companies remaining in the Hillmon case to identify the errors they alleged to have tainted the sixth trial. Within weeks after their loss in Judge Hook’s courtroom, the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York and the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company filed their appellate papers in the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. This court was one of eleven Congress had created in the Judiciary Act of 1891 to serve as appellate tribunals empowered to hear and decide appeals from federal trial courts. No longer would cases on appeal travel directly from The Century Turns, and the Hillmon Case Is Concluded 307  the judgment of a trial court to the Supreme Court; in most cases, now including Sallie’s, the Court of Appeals must first consider the matter. The defendants’ arguments to the Court of Appeals had a distinctly Isham-esque cast to them, and for good reason: the Chicago lawyer was the chief author of the appellate brief. Judge Hook had made several errors, the brief claimed. He had: • erroneously refused to instruct the jurors in the “dual defenses” theory (put forward at trial by Isham), that the defendants were entitled to prevail even if John Hillmon had been killed, if he had intended fraud when he purchased the policies • erroneously kept away from the jury certain testimony about things Levi...