The following is a re-print of a past column by former Advertiser columnist Stephen Thorning, who passed away on Feb. 23, 2015.
Some text has been updated to reflect changes since the original publication and any images used may not be the same as those that accompanied the original publication.
Wes Nicholl was one of several dozen railroad workers drawn to Palmerston in the late 1870s when the Great Western Railway expanded its yards and facilities there.
Nicholl worked as a yardman, helping to split up trains and couple together new ones to be sent on the lines radiating from the town. Unlike many of his co-workers, Nicholl was married, and the couple had two young daughters. In August 1881, to help with the household chores that were overwhelming Mrs. Nicholl, the couple hired Julia Crittenden, a girl in her late teens, as a domestic servant.
Friction between Wes and his wife had been growing in recent months, and the couple apparently thought that some additional help around the house would reduce the stress on everyone.
All seemed to go well with the new arrangement – for three weeks. One day Mrs. Nicholl went out to do some shopping. When she returned there was no sign of Wes, or the two little girls. Young Julia was nowhere to be found either.
At first, Mrs. Nicholl did not see a link. There had not been a hint of intimacy, or even much contact, between Julia and Wes, and Julia had been in the household less than a month. Mrs. Nicholl did not know what to do.
No one around the Palmerston station had seen them depart. She heard nothing from Wes, and could only assume that he had the two daughters, and that he was with Julia. A few days later she learned that, before he left town, Wes had borrowed $200 from a friend named Johnston. Wes said that he wanted the money for a building lot, and that he planned to have a new house constructed.
The old time railroad grapevine, though sometimes slow, was invariably an accurate communications system. In November, about seven weeks after Wes and Julia hurriedly left Palmerston, a Great Western employee told Mrs. Nicholl that Wes had been seen in Detroit, and was living with a woman and two young girls. Before he left the station master had given him a letter of recommendation, the man told her, and he probably could be found working for one of the railways that operated into Detroit. That was all she needed to know.
Mrs. Nicholl arrived in Detroit on Nov. 17. She stayed with some friends in the city, and they helped her on her search. On Nov. 21 she met with city police and railway officials at Central Station, the depot of the Michigan Central Railroad. Later that day she had reinforcements. Mrs. Nicholl had sent a telegram to Julia’s family, and her father and brother came to Detroit as quickly as they could.
That evening, a patrolman spotted a man fitting Nicholl’s description entering a hotel with a young woman. The couple, apparently, realized that they were being watched, and made a hasty exit out a back door.
By then, Michigan Central officials had identified Wes as the employee, with a regular assignment at one of the railway’s Detroit yards. They also had his address. Julia’s brother and a constable rushed there at once, but Wes was not there. Neither were Julia and the girls. It was obvious they had fled: most of their clothes and other possessions were gone.
Poor Wes didn’t move fast enough. Constables nabbed him the next afternoon, and provided accommodation for him at a lockup in Central Station. By then the story was a sensation in Detroit, with front-page stories in the city’s five dailies. The editor of the Detroit Journal sent a reporter to interview Wes, and he provided a wonderful, tearful performance, proclaiming his deep love for the little ones, and that he “cherished Julia more than anyone could tell.”
His wife did not understand him or treat him well, he insisted. He had sent Julia and the girls to stay with a friend in the city, but he was not sure where they were. Sobbing, he asked the reporter to find his girls and bring them to him.
If Mrs. Nicholl read any of those stories, they only hardened her resolve further. On Nov. 22 she laid a complaint, charging her husband with bigamy. That charge, of course, did not stick, and a subsequent one of adultery was dismissed by the Michigan court as well.
In the glare and pressure of big-city publicity, Wes decided to abandon Julia and return to Palmerston with his wife and daughters. Perhaps he and Julia made private plans to reunite at some point in the future. In any case, the Nicholls were back in Palmerston in the first week of December 1881, and Wes was back at his old job in the Palmerston yards.
The icy domestic atmosphere was only one of the problems Wes faced. His ex-friend Johnston wanted his $200 back. When Wes said he could not pay, Johnston filed charges of forgery and taking money under false pretenses. Then Julia’s family got into the act, charging Wes with inducing her to elope with him.
On Dec. 12 Wes disappeared for a second time. Constable Caswell of Palmerston immediately sent telegrams to his colleagues in all the towns and villages in the area. On Dec. 15, Constable Munson at Arthur believed he spotted Wes at the Commercial Hotel in that village. Wes, by the standards of the late 19th century, was a big man – about five-foot-10, very muscular and 180 pounds. He had a thick head of curly black hair and unmistakable dark, penetrating eyes.
Inside the hotel, Munson arrested Wes at once, and took him to the tiny but secure Arthur lockup. He telegraphed Caswell, who arrived that evening, along with Johnston, who was becoming fearful that he would never see his $200 again.
Johnston and Constable Caswell decided to stay in Arthur for the night, and take Wes Nicholl back to Palmerston the next morning. Caswell signed Wes out of the lockup, and took him back to the Commercial Hotel. The three men slept in three adjoining and connected rooms on the upper floor of the hotel, with Wes in the middle one. As a precaution against escape, Caswell took all of Nicholl’s clothing except for his shirt, his boots, and all his money.
Johnston and Caswell slept soundly. Wes didn’t. When he heard snores from the rooms next to his, he tied the sheets and quilt into a make-shift rope, secured one end to the bed, and lowered himself out the window. It was a vertical drop of 24 feet. Two blankets were gone. Apparently, Wes wrapped himself with them for protection against the mid-December chill.
When Caswell awoke, all he could do was marvel at Wes Nicholl’s skill in tying secure knots and his ability to work silently. The clean escape convinced Caswell that Wes had some experience at jail breaking.
Without clothes, shoes or money, everyone thought that Wes could not have gone very far. Somehow he made a clean break, perhaps aided by another railway worker. By all accounts he was a competent and steady yardman, and could readily secure another railway job, under an assumed name if necessary. That was a common practice for railway men who were running from something those days. It was known as “working under a flag.” Railway officials seldom asked questions if a man was a good worker.
That is the last I have been able to find on Wes Nicholl. Like so many 19th century domestic tales, his combines tragedy and melodrama with occasional streaks of comedy. Did Wes ever answer the criminal charges resulting from his four-month escapade? If he did, was there any hope of redeeming his marriage after his antics? And what of Julia Crittenden? Where did she wind up, and did Wes try to rendezvous with her?
Whatever happened, Wes Nicholl’s rash and selfish behaviour created a great deal of chaos in the lives of many people.
*This column was originally published in the Advertiser on April 15, 2005.
