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                         PRICE, 12 1-2 CENTS.

                                  THE
                            LIFE AND DEATH
                                  OF
                         MRS. MARIA BICKFORD,

                      A Beautiful Female, who was
                          INHUMANLY MURDERED,

           In the Moral and Religious City of Boston, on the
                night of the 27th of October, 1845, by

                          ALBERT J. TIRRELL,

           Her Paramour, arrested on board the Ship Sultana,
                    off New Orleans, December 6th.

                            [Illustration]

                   BY A CLERGYMAN, OF BRUNSWICK, ME.

                                BOSTON:
                   PUBLISHED AND FOR SALE BY ALL THE
                          PERIODICAL DEALERS.

                                 1845
                       SECOND EDITION,--REVISED.

        Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845,
                      by SILAS ESTABROOK, in the
Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.




PREFACE.

“I COME NOT TO DESTROY.”--_Our Savior._


For the principal facts embodied in the following narrative, the Author
is indebted to the ill-fated female who is the subject of them. It was
his lot to be the bearer of a letter to her, in the spring of 1845, from
a companion of her childhood. Aware of her forlorn condition, and of
many acts of atrocity which characterized the latter part of her erring
life, he made it his purpose to learn the history of her career, which
was frankly communicated by her own lips.

The Author tenders his acknowledgments to the person who generously
placed in his hands the original letters which reveal the passion flame
of her FIRST LOVE with a medical student of Brunswick, in Maine. The
contents of these letters establish the fact that this student became
her seducer, and that he afterwards heartlessly abandoned her to
remorse, and the jeers of a scoffing world. She was but fifteen years of
age at the time of writing the letters, and they evince not only much
purity and depth of feeling, but likewise a mind endowed with rare
gifts.

It is not a pleasing duty to record the vicissitudes of the unfortunate.
To draw aside the veil which conceals the cherished treasures, the
blighted hopes, and the undying remorse of an erring soul, traced
through long seasons of unredeeming, rayless wo, is to perform a labor
for the benefit of the living. In this the author has striven to be
faithful, impartial, and truthful.

Life, as a spectacle, is but dimly seen and feebly comprehended; as a
mystery, it is unfathomable indeed. Blown, as it were, a bubble--dark as
the transgressions by which it is checkered, it bursts in an hour we
know not, as the globe of glass is dashed into fragments. We look on the
wreck, and wonder why it had a being, to gather in its train a
multitudinous throng of evils, and make its exit in ignominy and shame.
The author, it will be seen, is a fatalist--a believer in an unalterable
destiny. It is unnecessary here to enter into a defence of that
belief--he hopes that all people have an opinion of their own upon this,
as on other subjects.

Ye rich and great! ye poor and destitute--children of sin and wanderers
from virtue--ye world wronged! cast your eyes over the panorama spread
out to your view in the following pages, and, from the sounding depths
of crime, learn lessons of wisdom.




CHAPTER I.

     _Maria’s Birth--Strange Omens at the time of it--Speculations of
     the Old Maids and Old Women concerning the same--Singular Traits of
     her Youth--Mysterious Spiritual Visitings--Meditations in the Woods
     and Fields--Theology and Philosophy--Penitence--Remarks--What
     constitutes True Religion?_


Mrs. Maria Bickford was a native of Oldtown, a small parish near the
city of Bangor, in Maine--the daughter of poor but respectable parents.
Her maiden name was Dunn. She was born in the year 1822, and was,
consequently, twenty-three years old at the period of her awful and
untimely end. It is said of her, that, from earliest childhood, she had
been the sport of ill omens and startling reverses. At her birth, which
occurred before sunrise on a beautiful morning in autumn, a light of
strange radiance shone into the apartment, and a sparrow fluttered
against the window panes, uttering a plaintive wail, as if seeking
admittance.

Whether these occurrences were the results of unexplained natural
causes, or were the foreshadowings of an invisible fate, the judgment is
not for us to pronounce--perhaps a future life and another world will
interpret them. But certain it is, that their recital made a most
fruitful theme for conjecture with the wonder-loving neighborhood, at
the time. Old maids tied their cap-strings with a double knot for many a
night thereafter.[1] Old women spun long yarns while smoking their
old-fashioned iron pipes in the chimney corners--and the old men scoffed
at what they declared to be ridiculous. However it might have been, a
marked singularity of thought and action was developed in the succeeding
years of Maria’s youth. Her childish prattle was unlike that of other
children--she saw not as others see--she heard not as others hear--she
laughed not as others laugh--but in all and with all there seemed to be
a new development--a strangeness.

At about the seventh year of her age, those visitings of mysterious
thoughtfulness which, in after years, imparted to her a peculiar fame,
first began to be observed. During the recurrence of these periods she
would remain for hours unmoved, regardless of all that was passing
around her--as if in communion with the ascended spirit of some loved
playmate, or in happy contemplation of the joys to be realized far away
in the dim future. It was then that she discovered charms in solitude,
Alone, in the fields and in the woods, she laughed with the flowers, and
talked with the shadows of the trees--and that oaken giant, near her
father’s house, which had sternly derided the blasts of many centuries,
creaked as though it were glad when Maria came, as she often did, and
leaned against its brawny trunk, and exchanged salutations with the
sentinel of time.

“They say I have a soul,” she would say, in a revery, “an immortal
soul--that a good man, who was the son of God, died for me, that I might
live. What have I done to need such an awful atonement? Is it very wrong
to while the Sabbath hours away, out here, with these birds, and bees,
and squirrels? Is it a sin to love these pretty violets?--And this cool
shade, too, and the breeze which fans me so gently--how calmly I sleep,
and how pleasant are my dreams, in their refreshing presence! But they
tell me it is not right to cherish the endearments of this world. It is
neglecting God. I will kneel down here and pray.”

And this was Maria’s theology. What a mistake it is to teach the young
to restrain their love of nature in the desire of “serving God!” As
though his works had not the impress of his greatness and beneficence!
We cannot but regard this very prevalent practice as the vulgar
offspring of ignorance: and we trust that the time is at hand when the
religion of nature will assume, in the human mind, the place and
importance so long usurped by the hypocritical and soul-deadening
religion of formality.[2] What honest heart can entertain a doubt that
Maria returned from her Sunday rambles amid the luxuriance and
enlivening beauties of nature, a purer and better child than when she
had, all the tiresome day, been listening to the dry and repulsive
jabbering of a hireling pulpit sycophant? Oh, had the wisdom of the
child been the monitor of the woman, varied and sweet would have been
the closing years of the life of Maria Dunn.




CHAPTER II.

     _Educational Trainings--Maria’s Departure from her Childhood’s
     Home--Musings in the Coach--The Seeress of Lucky Basin--Maria’s
     Interview with her--The Result, and the Mystery--Fate imprisoned by
     Sealing-wax--Burning Words from a Crow-quill--The Fatal Promise--A
     Terrible Dream--Arrival at Brunswick._


Maria was blessed with kind and doting parents, who, in the plenitude of
their regards for her welfare, were inexorably solicitous that her whole
youth might be devoted to the acquirement of knowledge. Themselves
ignorant of the common rudiments of education, of course they were
incapable of selecting the best methods of instruction. Knowledge, they
imagined, came from the school-house. It was manufactured there by some
peripatetic old bachelor. To school, then, Maria must go, armed with a
spelling-book, at first, and afterwards, an arithmetic: and at school
the golden, unreturning hours of her youth rolled into the lap of
oblivion, until time had notched her fourteenth year upon his dial. And
now there was to be a change in her tuition. Arrangements were completed
for her attendance at the high school in Brunswick, an interesting
little village, some seventy-five miles distant. The day of departure,
for the first time, from beneath the paternal roof, was an important
event in her life. It was at hand. She bore it with but little apparent
emotion, and brushed from her cheek but a single tear.

“Adieu, ye pensive shades and early joys! I will not say farewell. They
tell me there is a recompense for every sacrifice--but my swelling
heart--”

The remainder of the sentence was not uttered. The clock struck nine,
and the rattling of wheels announced the coach for Brunswick. On this
occasion it was full of passengers of high and low degree, from far and
near--all strangers. The driver was belated and impatient. In a few
moments all was in readiness, and Maria opened the wicket gate, which
seemed to swing reluctantly upon its hinges, and entered the coach.

Along they went, at full gallop, leaving grove, and meadow, and friend,
and every cherished thing, behind. It was a July morning. The air was
soft and fragrant, and merrily the birds rang out their joyful songs.
Though ladened with heaviness of spirit, Maria could not but be pleased
with the new sights that met her view, and the sounds that saluted her
ears.

“And this is the world, the great and wicked world, of which I have
heard so much--so long desired to see. How enchanting! And how favored
are they who can travel it all over! Such fortunes and pleasures are not
mine; they never can be, for I am poor and helpless. But it must be so.
Well, I will be contented with a humbler lot: there are millions who are
even less fortunate. It is my destiny: I am satisfied.”

These were silent reflections. On and on they rode. Now they ascended a
mountain, now launched into a valley, and jolted across a pole-bridge.
At length the tall pines laid their shadows on the earth, and other
thoughts came into her mind--other emotions into her heart. Day’s
parting smile played upon the green foliage, and soon the mellow light
announced a golden sunset. Half an hour after this, the driver reined
his wearied horses up to a dilapidated hotel, in front of which dangled
an old sign, bearing the words, “Half-way House.” They all alighted, to
tarry for the night.

This place is known, to this day, by the appellation of the “Lucky
Basin,” a title which it then bore. Now (as then) there may be seen some
eight or ten slab-sided houses, the largest and best of which is the
hotel. Here might have been found, at that time, a very select
community, whose reigning queen was a shrivelled old Quakeress who,
during twenty years, and until death made a requisition upon her bony
frame, enjoyed a world-wide reputation as a fortune-teller. And really a
good old dame was she, in head and in heart; for it appeared that not
only the name, but the good fortune of the place, was attributable to
her fame; that, but for her, the poverty-stricken habitations
thereabouts, with their inmates, would have gone to perdition long
before. She was respected and venerated, of course, and loaded with
caresses, praises, and blessings, by the whole circle of her dependent
neighbors--and she was surely a true philosopher’s stone to them, in her
own person, even if there was no virtue in that green pebble which the
old lady pretended to have received by spiritual bequest, and which was
always wrapped in a shiny covering.

It would be out of our province here to enter into any lengthened
commentary on fortune-telling. This much we will allow--that when we
hear of any helpless woman turning her wits to account in that manner,
thereby delighting the countless votaries of curiosity, and earning a
lucrative livelihood for herself at the same time, we rejoice heartily,
for her sake. Now no one of “the profession” ever made sharper guesses
than Quakeress Jemima Soule, (that was her name,) and deep was the
frequent surprise thereat. And it was sometimes truly marvellous that
her predictions were fulfilled with such exactness. She was honored with
visits from many seemingly intelligent persons, some residing more than
three hundred miles distant. And when we consider the excitement
produced upon those who lived in her own vicinity, or not farther away
than a day’s ride, we need not wonder at the fact that Lucky Basin was
thronged with anxious, and often bewitching faces, at a rate of not less
than three thousand a year.

And let it not be supposed that her visiters were only from among the
poorer classes of society. Her widely-spread fame frequently excited
deep anxiety among many wealthy persons, who never failed, in their
visits, to reward her with gold: and thus was she enabled to extend the
sphere of her unostentatious benevolence, and to secure the fervent
blessings of the unfortunate.

Maria regarded the present opportunity of being able to see the renowned
Seeress, and of having her own fortune read from the book of fate, with
inexpressible delight. As soon as the supper was over, away she hurried,
with impatient step, to the humble dwelling of Jemima, gave a low tap at
the door, and was admitted, without question or ceremony, and motioned
to a chair. Several others were present, but none indulged in
conversation. To some, the moment and the scene were of much sublimity;
to others, inimitably farcical. A part of those present suppressed a
rude giggle as it fell to their turn to be ushered, one by one, into the
presence-chamber of the Oracle--while others brushed a trembling
tear-drop from their cheeks, as they tottered fearfully to the door. It
was Maria’s turn at last. All the others had been served, and were gone.
On entering the apartment, (which was a three-cornered one,) she
encountered the venerable matron, who had risen to meet her. “Daughter
of earth,” said the Oracle, “thy hand.” It was given tremblingly, and
Maria followed the Seeress to a low stool, (which was by the side of
Jemima’s own seat,) and sat down. Fifteen minutes in silence, the blood
shot eyes of Jemima being riveted upon the fair girl. Then came a
suppressed groan, at which Maria involuntarily shuddered. “Daughter,”
said the Seeress, “if the ways of the Lord thy God were as our ways, he
were cruel to thee.” “Why so, good Mother?” “Hush! I write.” Jemima then
took from a glass case a leaf of fine gilt-edged paper, turned her back
towards Maria, and, after consulting the green stone in a yellow box
that had strange hieroglyphics scratched all over it, she laid hold of a
pen made from a raven’s quill, and wrote the following words:
“TO LOVE SO YOUNG--A LAMB AND A WOLF--SO YOUNG--A KILLING
FROST--DESTITUTION--MARRIAGE--CRIME--THERE IS BLOOD--DEATH.”[3]

It was doubled, and strongly sealed with wax. Then turning her form and
face towards the girl, she thus spake: “Daughter, I have written--but
before I give it thee, there is a condition. Thee must promise not to
open this until thou hast looked upon the sun of thy eighteenth year.
Dost agree to the terms?” “I? No, indeed--I cannot,” said Maria,
bursting into a laugh, “delay would make me so anxious to know what it
contained, that I should die of curiosity, long before the time.”
“Daughter, thou art a child of destiny--God wills it. It is hard--but
there is a heaven hereafter. Agree to the condition, or the flames will
devour the record. Promise, child, before thy God.” A short pause. Maria
faltered; her cheeks turned to an ashy paleness; she tried to speak; her
heart leaped up to her throat. “I promise,” was all that she could say.
“It is thine,” said the Seeress, taking a piece of silver from the hand
in which she placed the paper. “Daughter, good night.” And Maria rose
immediately, left the dwelling, and hastened back to the hotel. But she
came not as she went. There was a change