One of my correspondents requests that I make some mention in the course of these reminiscences of the story of the “Veiled Murderess,” a woman who once made a big stir in the criminal history of New York State, and was the cause of a good deal of circus in a prominent New York family.
This woman was the particular friend of a leadin’ Troy politician. She was very showy, and rather popular, but almost everybody knew her real character and position, and used to crack jokes upon it, just as they did about Fisk and Mansfield. But the Troy woman was very vain, and one day a man in some public place made disparagin’ remarks about her. These remarks came to the Troy woman’s ears, and she never forgave ‘em, or the man who uttered ‘em.
Some time afterwards he died suddenly, and the coroner’s inquest on him decided that he had been poisoned. The Troy woman was arrested for the murder, and found guilty. The evidence was pretty strong against her, and if the murderer had been a man he would have been hung sure. But juries are almost always opposed to hangin’ a woman, so the Troy woman got off with a verdict of murder in the second degree, which entitled her to imprisonment for life.
The trial of this woman made a sensation, and she acted all through it in a very dramatic way. She kept her face veiled all the time, and although the judge commanded her to face the jury without the veil she refused to do it, and was sentenced with the veil on. So she got the title of “The Veiled Murderess” which stuck to her all her life.
She tried to keep the veil on in the prison, but the authorities wouldn’t stand it. But she would always hide her face whenever there were any visitors, and this, and other things, kept her pretty well before the public for many years.
The reporters were all the time writin’ yarns about her, and once some country editor said that she was a member of a highly respectable family from Canada. The highly respectable family from Canada went for that editor and made it pretty hot for him with libel suits, and one thing and another, till the editor “squealed” and apologized. But he determined to get even by findin’ out who “The Veiled Murderess” really was, and he got what he thought was his chance sooner than he expected.
Governor Myron H. Clark of New York State visited the prison on a tour of inspection, and durin’ his visit to Sing Sing, where “The Veiled Murderess” was imprisoned, the followin’ incident occurred:
While Governor Clark was at dinner with the warden of the prison and the board of inspectors, a leadin’ merchant of New York sent his card to the Governor requestin’ a personal interview. The Governor granted the interview, and in it the merchant requested to see the Veiled Murderess, about whom he had read a great deal, and whom he really believed he would be able to recognize as havin’ been once an inmate and employee of his family. The country editor, who had said that the V. M. belonged to this Canada family, happened to be in the Governor’s party, and of course he was very anxious to see if the merchant would recognize the V. M. So the Governor granted the merchant’s request and the merchant and the V. M. were brought face to face.
When she entered the room the merchant rose up, and the V. M. rushed into his arms, as if she were his wife or mother-in-law. The merchant didn’t seem quite prepared for so much affection, but he stood it like a man, and the V. M. proceeded to slobber over him, and to vent her feelin’s on his shirt bosom. The man and woman recognized each other apparently at once, and the country editor rubbed his hands and chuckled, for now he would find out who the mysterious woman really was. So he and the Governor and all the rest looked on. The merchant took a seat and pointed to a chair near him for the woman to sit down on. But she made another rush for him, hugged and slobbered over him once more, and then knelt at his feet, showin’ her face as she did so, and a rather pretty face it was. The merchant got talkin’ about his family, and when he told her that his wife was dead the V. M. burst into a fit of tears, real tears, and did some more slobbering on his shirt front. After a while the country editor stepped up to the merchant, and after congratulating him on his meetin’ such an old and dear acquaintance, asked him who this woman he had just recognized, or who had just recognized him, was. The merchant told him that she had been a seamstress in his family, and all his family had got much attached to her, himself included. But who she had been, or what else besides his seamstress she had been, he did not know.
The “Veiled Murderess” was sent back to her cell, and the Governor left the prison, but the country editor determined to call at once on the merchant and work the matter of his former seamstress up, and find out all about her for his paper. He called on the merchant in a few days and ascertained one fact that he thought might be important. The former seamstress had a male friend, who used to take her to singin’ school. This male friend was a master machinist, doin’ business in New York, and possibly he could give some more information about the woman if somebody would hunt him up. So the country editor hunted up the master machinist. He had a good deal of difficulty in finding him, but found him at last. And when he found him he commenced to ask him about Miss Emma H., as the former seamstress in the merchant’s family had been called.
The country editor found the master machinist quite “mum” about Miss Emma, but when the editor told the machinist that he had just seen Miss Emma in prison, the machinist jumped up and was ready to knock the editor down.
“Why, what’s the row?” asked the editor. “If you know this Emma so well you must be aware that she is servin’ out a life sentence as a murderess.”
“It’s a lie,” roared the machinist, “and I’ll stuff it down the throat of the man that utters it. I haven’t been on good terms with the lady lately–that is, not so good as I used to be–but she is no murderess, and she has never been in prison.”
And he proved it, to the great wonder of the country editor. For leavin’ his shop in Canal street, the machinist went straight away with the editor to a boarding house up town. And there in the boarding house, playin’ on the parlor piano, sat Miss Emma H., who, accordin’ to her own statement and that of the machinist, had been once the seamstress in the merchant’s family, and the pet of his daughters.
“She don’t look much like a jailbird, does she?” asked the machinist of the editor, pointin’ to the lady.
The editor was completely nonplussed. Either the merchant had recognized and positively identified the wrong party in the prison, which couldn’t be, or this Miss Emma H. was not what she and the machinist said she was–which couldn’t be, either.
Anyhow it was arranged that Miss Emma and the machinist, with the country editor, should visit the merchant’s house, with a view of inquiring into the singular state of matter and things.
The merchant was alone when the three called, and when the editor pointed out Miss Emma to him and said, “She is the one who was your seamstress–not the murderess,” the merchant stared at her without the slightest recognition, and shook his head. Miss Emma tried to recall herself to his recollection, pointed out some things in the room where they were and reminded him of some little incidents about ‘em, but it was no use. The merchant couldn’t or wouldn’t recognize her, and the editor made up his mind that she was an impostor.
“And yet, why would she try to impose on me?” he thought; “and why should the machinist help her? There is no money in the Imposture to them.” Altogether it was a very mysterious and mixed up case.
Just at this minute, when the editor had made up his mind that his two companions were frauds, in rushed a young lady, the merchant’s daughter, exclaimin’: “Didn’t I hear Emma’s voice just now?” and lookin’ round and seein’ the woman standin’ by the machinist, she cried out, louder than before” “Oh, Emma, I am so glad to see you!” The daughter knew her, at any rate, if the father didn’t.
The editor was pretty soon satisfied that the machinist was right, and that this Miss Emma had been the pet seamstress. In fact, before long the merchant himself began to recollect and see things differently from what he had at first, and after a while he became convinced that this woman before him was the real seamstress, and friend of his daughters.
“But then,” he said to the editor, “who was that woman up in Sing Sing prison?”
“She is an impostor as well as a murderess,” answered the editor, mad as a hornet at not bein’ any nearer findin’ out who she really was now than he had been before.
“Yes, yes,” said the merchant, rubbin’ his hands thoughtfully. “I remember now, lookin’ back, that when she first entered the room where we were all in the prison waitin’ for her, she kind of looked round perplexed, until I rose to meet her, and then she seemed relieved and pretended to recognize me at once. And I recollect, too,” continued the merchant, “that she never mentioned any of my family’s names first to me, but asked me questions to bring out their names from me first, and then as soon as I mentioned their names, why, she pretended to know ‘em and gushed over ‘em. Yes, yes,she was an impostor. But what,” he asked of the editor, “could have been the woman’s motive in deceivin’ me?”
“That’s what I am goin’ to find out,” said the editor, “and I’m goin’ to go to Sing Sing about it, right off. I’m goin’ to get to the bottom of this mystery.”
At last he got an interview himself with the veiled murderess, and in this interview the woman coolly owned up that she had been “foolin’ the New York chap.”
“But why did you deceive the old gentleman?” asked the editor.
“Oh, the old fellow looked as if he wanted to know me,” she replied with a laugh; “and so I didn’t think it polite to let him be disappointed, especially as he had come all the way from New York to see me.”
The matron of the prison, who was present at the interview, then began to scold the V. M., but she made a jest of the scoldin’, and right in the midst of it, turning to the editor, she said: “Did you notice how I cried on the old chap’s shoulder? I moistened his broadcloth for him in first-class style, didn’t I?” And then she burst into a fit of laughin’.
The matron sent her back into her cell, and she afterwards grew fat and disorderly, and at last crazy. She was sent to the insane hospital at Auburn, and dropped out of public view. But there is one man who never forgot her, and that one man is the country editor–still alive, and who was the correspondent that called my attention to this once notorious woman.
[Editor’s notes: The asylum where “Henrietta Robinson” resided was in Matteawan (Fishkill) NY, not Auburn.
The “country editor” the column refers to was John M. Francis (1823-1897), for many years a newspaper editor in Troy, but also a United States foreign minister at several posts in Europe. As the column indicates, Francis was first taken in by the story that Robinson was a daughter of Robert Wood (1792-1847), a Canadian timber merchant. Wood’s five daughters (Georgiana, Emma, Charlotte, Harriet and Maria) all lived long lives, married, and died in England or Scotland.
Francis, the editor, realized this association with the Wood family was false, and recanted in his paper, the Troy Daily Times. He later investigated the story related in the column above, about Robinson having been a seamstress in a merchant’s family, before settling on the fact that this, too, was false.
Henrietta’s true identity was never revealed before her death in the Matteawan asylum in 1905. However, despite Francis’s investigations, the theory persisted for years that she was one of the Wood sisters; and that the Wood family covered up the fact.]
