Month: October 2015

I have the privilege in participating in a book group. This month’s selection was The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective.

The story of the shocking murder is laid before the reader: a three-year-old boy, Saville Kent, turns up missing in June 1860. His body is found in the servants’ privy, having been murdered.

The local police force, largely composed of unpaid local volunteers, fails to determine who committed the crime after two weeks. Mr. Whicher, the most reknowned of Scotland Yard’s eight detectives, is sent to solve the disturbing case. John Whicher almost immediately comes to his conclusions: the murder was committed by individuals living in the Kent household in Road Hill, and the most likely suspects are the murdered boy’s half-siblings, teenagers Constance and William Kent. Mr. Whicher only has physical evidence to support accusations against Constance, and that is circumstantial.

The spectacle of a working class man sifting through the family’s soiled laundry to accuse a respectable middle class maiden of brutally killing her younger brother causes country-wide revulsion. Mr. Whicher’s career is destroyed, though he is able to find work as a private detective a few years later, when Constance Kent confesses to being solely responsible for the murder. Constance spends 20 years in jail.

William, freed from suspicion by his sister’s testimony, is able to inherit the thousand pounds his deceased mother had bequeathed to him upon his majority and goes on to enjoy a successful career in science. Once Constance is released, she changes her name and spends the rest of her life with or near her brother, William.

This one murder case has a profound impact on the zeitgeist of the age, manifested in the new genre of detective fiction. It popularized conlusions that had been arrived at decades earlier by those involved in the judicial system: human witness (confession or eyewitness evidence) was too subjective to be trusted. As early as 1825, Jeremy Bentham’s A Treatise on Judicial Evidence (1825) argued that testimony needed to be backed up by material proof.

Yet when it comes to matters relating to the emergence of the central doctrines regarding marriage in Mormonism, the vast majority are content to hang their interpretation on the testimony of human witnesses, ignoring the capacity of these witnesses to mislead, whether intentionally or not. Continue reading A Woman’s Testimony: The Road Hill House Murder

I was delighted to see a formal response from Laura and Brian Hales regarding my writings about Joseph Smith and others who lived in Nauvoo in the 1840s.

Laura Hales’ Introduction

Laura did not engage me on details, and I agree with most of the points she makes. I agree that if one is obsessing about things that damage faith, that “immersing oneself in persistent doubt, fueled by answers from the faithless and the unfaithful, weakens one’s faith.” Continue reading Commentary on the Hales’ Critiques

Bottom Line Up Front: Weather and possibility of an American-born John “McIlwrick” suggest Martha Brotherton’s interview with Brigham Young occurred well before January 1842.

The other day I explained what I think happened between Brigham Young and Martha Brotherton. My thesis was that Martha’s encounter with Brigham occurred prior to January 1842, before we have a positive indication that Joseph Smith had included Brigham in ceremonies related to the New and Everlasting Covenant. The July 1842 letter describing Martha’s alleged ordeal appears to pin the incident as occurring in February-March 1842, when William Clayton was working in the tithing office and prior to the April 7th denunciation of the tale during General Conference.^[1]

I tried in vain to locate a direct reference to the arrival of the Brothertons in the vicinity of Nauvoo, Illinois. But we know that Mary Brotherton (born 1819) had married a John McIlwrick. John and Mary would join Martha’s other sister, Elizabeth, in denouncing Martha as “a deliberate liar;” as “a wilful inventor of lies;” and a circulator of “lies of a base kind, concerning those whom she knew to be innocent.” These family members also accuse Martha as acting outside of “common decency,” by “lying on the top of a young man when he was in bed,” etc.^[2]

Perhaps, I thought, I could find when John McIlwrick arrived in the United States and thus pinpoint when the Martha Brotherton episode could have occurred. Continue reading Who was John McIlwrick?

1. ^[1]Apr. 15, 1842 issue of the Times and Seasons, p. 763, reporting on the Thursday, Apr. 7, 1842, spring conference in Nauvoo. Hyrum Smith “spoke concerning the elders who went forth to preach from Kirtland… [and] then spoke in contradiction of a report in circulation about Elder Kimball, B. Young, himself, and others of the Twelve, alleging that a sister had been shut in a room for several days, and that they had endeavored to induce her to believe in having two wives.” Available online at http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/utils/getdownloaditem/collection/NCMP1820-1846/id/9835/filename/4927.pdf/. Note that the conference refutation only indicates apostles have been implicated. Joseph Smith himself was not defended, indicating the original rumor had not included Joseph himself.↩
2. ^[2]Nauvoo Wasp broadside “extra” of Aug. 31, 1842.↩

Bottom Line Up Front: Brigham Young accomplished a great work, defeating spiritual wifery. But he did his work so thoroughly that it has been difficult for later generations to comprehend what was going on.

In my recent post about giving Joseph Smith a break, there were those who asked for a similar discussion of Brigham Young.

In my “Faithful Joseph” construct, I argue Joseph Smith and his righteous followers predominantly refrained from consummating plural marriages prior to Joseph’s death. If true, then what happened under Brigham’s leadership? There is no question that plural marriages were widely consummated after Brigham Young assumed leadership of the Mormon Church. Continue reading Give Brigham Young a Break

I was ill earlier this week, so took the opportunity to listen to the Priesthood Session of General Conference. I was particularly heartened by Elder Anderson’s confident advice to “give Brother Joseph a break.”

The theme of the Conference was a call to believe, with many suggestions on how belief could be strengthened. For some, however, it helps to quiet the mocking voices in their heads to provide a plausible alternative to the popular bogeyman of the non-believers, the Joseph as narcissistic imposter who allegedly made up scripture from whole cloth and took dozens of his followers’ daughters and wives to his bed.

First, A Picture

In 1969 a family donated a daguerreotype to the RLDS Church (now the Community of Christ). They claimed it was a picture of Joseph Smith. If it is Joseph, the youth and gaunt look of the man in the image indicate the photo was taken in late 1839. In November-December 1839 Joseph took a trip to Washington D.C. to seek redress for the atrocities perpetuated against the Mormons in Missouri. Due to Joseph’s notoriety, it is reasonable an early daguerreotypist in DC would have sought to capture his likeness.

Rick Brunson has a brief article on his blog describing the evidences Shannon Michael Tracy documents in his book, Millions Shall Know Brother Joseph Again. In summary, this daguerreotype allegedly matches the death mask using both lineal matching and facial recognition techniques. The image also corresponds with photos taken of Joseph’s skull prior to the remains being reinterred during the early 1900s.

[Updated 10/11/15: There was apparently a storm of controversy about this image and the Tracy book in 2008. One disappointed summary can be found at Juvenile Instructor. When I scanned that article, it appears the author went from hoping this was an image of Joseph Smith to being completely angered by the unprofessionalism of Mr. Tracy. In my reading of this summary, I missed whether the picture had been proven to be not of Joseph. For the record, I was intrigued by seeing this image illustrating a post from a reputable blogger, with the text indicating that they hoped this was an actual image of Joseph Smith. Searching things more, I happened upon the Brunson blog.]

Continue reading Give Joseph Smith a Break