New Haven County Court Records: Blog

Superior Court Finds, Part I: Conspiracy or Intoxication?

Now that we have begun processing the New Haven County Superior Court records, we examine a selection of the interesting, amusing, tragic, and sometimes infuriating cases we’ve discovered in both the files and papers by subject series.

In part one, we demonstrate how newspapers can help enrich the narrative of a court record, which often only tells part of the story.

Four Intriguing Bail Bonds

In the Superior County Court papers by subject category Miscellaneous, we discovered these intriguing bail bonds for Emily Pierce, Georgie Merton, Lizzie Howard, and Louisa Jennings—four women from Hamden, Connecticut who were charged with the crime of conspiracy in August 1873.

Bail bond for Emily Pierce

Bail bond for Georgie Merton

Bail bond for Lizzie Howard

Bail bond for Louisa Jennings

A Maddening Mystery

Given that these bail bonds were removed from their original order and placed into a nondescript category sometime in the previous century, we were unable to refer to additional case documents for context, and these bonds did not offer any further explanation as to the nature of these charges. As such, we decided to investigate if any newspapers of the time period reported on the type of conspiracy that these women allegedly committed.

At first, our searches of online newspaper databases proved somewhat fruitless. Using the women’s first names and surnames as search terms, we found three articles in the New Haven Register (then called the Evening Register). However, they did not provide the answers we sought and instead raised more questions.

Article from the Evening Register, August 13, 1873, p. 2

The first article we found mentioned Pierce, et al. in conjunction with one Ellen Hatch, but only stated that their bonds were forfeited. In addition, there was an intriguing tidbit about the “case of James A. Hatch,” which sadly did not provide any details about his “partial and somewhat interesting hearing.”

Questions raised by this discovery: Why was Ellen’s bond more substantial that those of Pierce, et al.? Are the Hatches and these women connected in some way? Were Ellen and James spouses, siblings, or otherwise related? What exactly happened at James’ hearing?

Article from the Evening Register, August 18, 1873, p. 3

The second article we found reported that while Ellen Hatch and James A. Hatch were charged with conspiracy, Jennings, et al. were merely charged with intoxication, and their bond was raised to $500.

Questions raised by this discovery: Why was Ellen now listed with James instead of the four women? Why was she the only woman charged with conspiracy? How were the Hatches and these women connected?

Article from the Evening Register, August 19, 1873, p. 2

The third and final article we discovered was disappointingly cryptic, merely stating that Jennings, et al. were “drunk, to the 20th” (meaning that they were charged with intoxication and their hearing was moved to this date). Interestingly, Ellen Hatch was also downgraded to “drunk,” and her trial likewise moved to the 20th. James A. Hatch was not mentioned at all, most likely because his case was wrapped up the day before, as indicated by the second article.

Questions raised by this discovery: Why was Ellen now listed separately from the four women? Did the Court prosecute Jennings, et al. for conspiracy but later change the charge to intoxication? Did these articles possibly contain incorrect information about nature of the charges?

Given that Jennings, Pierce, Howard, and Merton seemed to be connected with the Hatches, we reviewed the bonds contained in the Superior Court records, but unfortunately found nothing for Peter A. Hatch or Ellen Hatch. So we decided to once again check the online newspaper databases—but using the Hatches’ names as search terms instead.

Success! We found an entire article that explained “The Hatch Cases” in full and vivid detail.

Article from the Evening Register, August 18, 1873, p. 2

In summary: Emily Pierce, Georgie Merton, Lizzie Howard, and Louisa Jennings were indeed charged with conspiracy, as well as intoxication. There were several other people involved in this affair, including Ellen and James A. Hatch, who appear to be husband and wife, as they were titled “Mr. and Mrs. Hatch” in the article. Apparently, this group attempted to induce Ann Lyons and Isabella Schultz to relocate from New York to New Haven “to live in a house of ill-fame” kept by Ellen Hatch in Hamden. This was done under false pretenses, via James A. Hatch pretending to seek “waitresses [to work] in a respectable restaurant.” All of the defendants were found guilty of conspiracy and required “to furnish bonds for their appearance before the next criminal term of the Superior Court.” In addition, everyone except James A. Hatch was arrested “on a charge of drunkenness... and when the women were refused a hack to go to jail in, they gave up to partial despair. This was complete when they were forced to embark in the Black Maria [a pejorative slang term for the coach or van that conveyed people to prison], in the presence of a crowd of witnesses.” Intriguingly, the paper (perhaps sarcastically) predicted that “Mrs. Hatch will probably be out in a short time, for it must be easy for such an influential (?) woman to get a surety for $75, but the women will probably remain at Capt. Webster’s for some time.”

A Final Postscript

Thanks to the plethora of digitized newspapers available online—courtesy of the Connecticut State Library, Library of Congress, and Readex—as well as a little perseverance, we were able to solve this maddening mystery. Case closed!

Lessons learned: Court records are factual but rarely tell the entire story about an event. While newspapers are an excellent research resource, investigators need to be creative with their keywords, persistent in their searches, and follow all possible leads to find the information they seek.

As noted in a previous post, the records for these cases, as well as several of the cases previously profiled in this blog, are currently in the process of being digitized. They will eventually be available for public viewing at the Connecticut Digital Archive (CTDA).

This project is made possible through funding from the Historic Documents Preservation fund of the Office of the Public Records Administrator. We also recognize the past support of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).