Illicit affair led to the death of a mother and child

Under the headline A Sad Tale, the Guelph Weekly Mercury reported the death of Mrs. Benjamin Lawrence and a newborn child in its issue of Sept. 27, 1888.

The story related the tragic end of a family with the death of a widowed mother in child­birth. Newspapers across Onta­rio picked up the story in the days following.

The story began many years earlier. Benjamin Lawrence (the name is also spelt Laur­ence in some records) farmed in Minto township after marry­ing Deb Copeland, of Eramosa Township, in 1872. He was 22 and she was two years younger. Their farm, a short distance northwest of the then-new town of Palmerston, was located at Concession 3, Lot 29 of Minto.

Lawrence had a brother, as well as his father, living nearby, and the family members helped one another with heavy work. The Lawrences seem to have been a typical farm family of the 1870s in Minto. Only their religious affiliation, to the United Brethren, was unusual for that place and time. Soon Ben and his young wife pro­duced a family of their own, four sons and a daughter.

Benjamin Lawrence died suddenly in 1882 at the age of 32. The oldest son, Henry, was then 8, and the youngest, Fred, only a year old. Unable to carry on herself, and with her sons far too young to pick up the burden of farming, Deb (or Mrs. Lawrence, as she was always known) decided to re­turn to Eramosa with the young brood. With some support from her own family, the Copelands, she set up housekeeping in a small house in Rockwood. After a few years, with the family all of school age, she took a job at Jago’s Glove Fac­tory in Rockwood, making woolen mitts.

By all accounts the life of Mrs. Lawrence was an entirely respectable one. Though the fam­ily struggled, she managed to keep her household together while working tirelessly at the factory and at household chor­es.

Around Christmas 1887, she met a young farm labourer named Ben Symons at a Metho­dist revival meeting. He worked as a hired hand for Henry C. Roth. Within weeks he became intimate with Mrs. Lawrence, who was about 10 years older that he was. He frequently visited at her house, sometimes overnight, and he in­variably escorted her home from church services on Sun­days during the first months of 1888.

The relationship caused a few raised eyebrows. To quell the rumours and questions, Mrs. Lawrence hinted to sev­eral people that she and Ben were married, and that they would make an announcement in due course.

By mid summer of 1888, many of the neighbours sus­pected that Mrs. Lawrence was pregnant. When anyone hinted at the subject she denied it vehemently. One of those with suspicions was Henry C. Roth. He questioned his hired man in early September, after Ben had spent the night with Mrs. Law­rence. Young Ben boasted that he and Mrs. Lawrence had been intimate, and that he had no intention of marrying her, even though she was pregnant.

Furious, Roth told Ben that he should be thoroughly ash­am­ed of himself, and dismissed him as his hired man.

On Sept. 22, 1888, Mrs. Law­rence was up early attend­ing to some chores in the kitch­en. After a time, she went back upstairs, according to 13-year-old George, the second oldest son, and returned to bed. She refused all food at breakfast and at the noontime dinner. It was a Saturday, and all the child­ren were at home except the eldest, who was away work­ing for a neighbour.

In late afternoon she told George to send the three young­est children outside, and to lock the doors. He asked if she wanted anyone to come, and she replied that she wanted no one, and that he should close her door and stay downstairs.

Alarmed at his mother’s seem­ing illness and strange be-haviour, George went to a neighbour, a Mrs. Hurlburt, and asked her to come to the house. She had her own strong suspi­cions about Mrs. Lawrence’s condition. Not desiring to em­barrass her neighbour, she told George to go back home and ask his mother if she would accept a visitor.

A few minutes later young George returned. He believed his mother was dead, he told Mrs. Hurlburt, and pleaded with her to come at once. She did so, but first recruited two other neighbours to come with her. She suspected what had hap­pened, and realized that extra help might be necessary.

The three women were at the Lawrence house in a matter of minutes. They found Mrs. Lawrence dead, and a new-born child in a basin of water under the bed, also, apparently, dead. The women immediately sent young George to fetch Dr. Dryden, the Rockwood medic. He arrived soon after, and con­firmed that both mother and child were dead, both from loss of blood.

After examining both moth­er and child carefully, Dr. Dryden went home and tele-phoned Crown Attorney Henry Peterson in Guelph. As expect­ed, Peterson called for an in­quest, and sent Dr. Herod, the county coroner, to conduct an autopsy. He arrived in Rock­wood later that evening, and soon completed his examina­tion.

Dr. Herod booked the din­ing room at Mrs. Duffield’s hotel for the inquest on the following Monday. By then he had recruited 16 men to serve on the coroner’s jury. John Wright served as chairman.

The first witnesses called were the women who came to the Lawrence house. Mrs. Hurl­burt described the scene as she found it, and told of her pre­vious suspicions about the pregnancy. Another neighbour, Mrs. Bolton, told what she knew of the dead woman’s rela­tionship with Ben Symons.

Henry Roth described his confrontation with Symons, and said that he recently had received a letter from the man postmarked Morriston. The auth­orities, it appears, wanted Symons to testify at the in­quest, but had been unable to find him.

George Lawrence, the 13-year-old son, described his mother’s activities on the last day of her life, impressing every­one with his maturity in handling the situation. He con­firmed that Symons had been at the house a great deal since the beginning of the year, and that he had spent the night there two weeks earlier.

Mrs. Copeland, the deceas­ed woman’s mother, explained the family circumstances fol­low­ing the death of her son-in-law six years earlier. She said she had also suspected her daughter’s condition, but that she had refused to admit any­thing about it.

Dr. Dryden was the last wit­ness, offering technical medical testimony. There had been some suspicion that Mrs. Law­rence had tried to drown the baby in the basin of water, or at least had intended to do so. Dr. Dryden thought that was un­likely. He stated that the deaths of mother and child were due to loss of blood.

The jury deliberated for less than an hour. Their verdict was that Mrs. Lawrence came to her death “from want of proper attention, caused by her own criminal action in not allowing and refusing help, and the child’s from loss of blood.”

It is obvious that shame and embarrassment caused Mrs. Lawrence to act as she did. She had given birth to five children already, and probably believed that she could do it again all on her own. Whether she intended to drown the baby after it was born is not altogether clear, even though Dr. Dryden sus­pec­ted that she did not. On the other hand, she had done every­thing possible to hide and deny the pregnancy. At some point she would need to admit the existence of a sixth child and explain its parentage.

Mrs. Copeland was believ­ed to be well-to-do, and many expected her to take charge of her grandchildren. She may have done so for a time, but the census taken in 1891 shows the family was broken up, with young George serving an ap­prenticeship in Rockwood.

Altogether, it was a tragic out­come to an unwise rela­tionship. It certainly had a trau­matic impact on all five child­ren, made all the worse by the social conventions of the late 19th century.