Fort Worth Characters

Chapter 6: The Strange Case of Maggie Tewmey

107 On a blustery winter afternoon in January 1893, Margaret Tewmey set out from her downtown home to give a regularly scheduled music lesson. She wore an old flannel dress over a gray woolen underskirt and pulled a black woolen cloak tight around her to keep out the cold. Atop her head perched a nondescript hat with a silk veil, and she carried her purse and music bag. On the way out the door she said goodbye to her niece, Mrs. M. A. (Frances) Dodd, with whom she lived, but did not say when she would be home; she seldom did. Margaret’s destination was 906 West Weatherford, on the western edge of downtown almost to the Clear Fork of the Trinity, where Louis and Anna Reiney and their two daughters, Allie and Lucy, lived. Mr. Reiney had recently been promoted from stock clerk to salesman at Pendery’s grocery store, so he could afford private music lessons for twelve-yearold Allie. The distance from where Margaret lived at Main and Sixth to the Reineys’ was about twelve blocks going straight up Main to the public square then west on Weatherford beyond the business district. She could take the street car to the square but from there she had to walk the last six blocks. Past Burnett, there were plenty of empty lots on either side of the rutted, unpaved road. She made the trip twice a week. It took no more than thirty minutes, but on this day (January 20, a Friday), she left early because she planned to make a stop along ChapTeR 6 The Strange Case of Maggie Tewmey Fort Worth Characters / 108 the way, at the establishment of either Mr. Happy or Mr. Wood, both of whom dispensed libations for warding off the winter chill. Both gentlemen knew her as a regular customer.1 Margaret would not have attracted much attention on her journey . She was fifty-one years old and wore every year of it on her long, lanky frame. As thin as a pinch of snuff, she had no curves and little meat on her bones. Mr. Reiney described her ungenerously as “an old maid.” Later, a Dallas newspaper would be a little kinder, calling her “an elderly maiden lady.” Either way, it translated as “lonely spinster.” Poor Margaret did not have much to show for her fifty-one years on earth: no husband and no savings. Her prized personal possession was an opal and pearl ring that she always wore. That and her music bag were the only things to distinguish her from the ranks of homeless women who lived unnoticed in the shadows of the city. In addition to her niece, Margaret had a married sister, Mrs. Andrew J. Lawrence (Frances Dodd’s mother) who was also a Fort Worth resident . Both women considered Margaret a poor relative and, worse, an embarrassment. They only tolerated her because she was family. Virtually estranged from her two nearest relatives and with no husband or prospects, Margaret Tewmey’s only comfort in life was the bottle, which was her constant companion. She drank too much, and not just in the privacy of her own home. She frequently sat and drank in the rear (the “wine room”) of Anton Happy’s “beer saloon” or H. O. Wood’s bar, both on West Weatherford. Her twice-weekly piano lessons at the Reineys’ gave her plenty of opportunities to stop in for a little liquid refreshment, sometimes both going and coming.2 On this particular day she got an early start tippling. By the time she got to the Reineys’, she was visibly tipsy. She even brought along a bottle, stuffed into her music bag, and generously offered a drink to Mr. Reiney when he welcomed her. Shocked by such wantonness, the Reineys cancelled the piano lesson and ordered her to leave. They watched disapprovingly as she “staggered” off on Weatherford disappearing into the dusk about the time she reached the corner of Weatherford and Florence. Margaret Tewmey, aka Maggie, was never seen alive again by the Reineys or her own family. Four days later her body was found stuffed into an outhouse. She had been “abused and outraged” before being shot.3 The mystery of who raped and murdered her, and why, is Fort Worth’s greatest unsolved crime of the nineteenth century. The Strange Case of Maggie Tewmey / 109 Maggie Tewmey’s journey to...