Conducted by: Michael Gruber and Stephen P. Ryder
Where: South Kent and New Milford, Connecticut
(USA)
Date: May 23, 1996
Objective: Photograph and record places significant to the last years of Florie Maybrick, wife of James Maybrick, who lived her last twenty or so years in the area of South Kent, CT.
Investigations report written by Stephen P Ryder
Background of Investigation
Having never conducted actual hands-on research before, I was eager to participate in this investigation when I was told of it by Michael Gruber, a long time reader and contributor to the Casebook, in early March of this year. Living in the relative proximity of the area in which Florence Maybrick spent her last years in seclusion, he had mentioned he was planning to travel to the town of South Kent and search through town records and deeds to see if he could come up with anything relevant to her case. I mentioned I would be interested in doing the same, and so the investigation slowly took shape.
I hadn't been exposed to the story of Florence Maybrick, like most people, until I read Harrison's The Diary of Jack the Ripper, which purports that James Maybrick was, in fact, the Whitechapel fiend. Her's was a fantastic story of a southern belle thrown almost like a fish out of water into the somewhat aristocratic life of a well-to-do Englishman, filled with love, deceit, and murder. (For an in-depth review of her story, see the Maybrick History Page.) I was immediately interested, and was fortunate enough to find her story within the Notable British Trials series at my university library.
The book, entitled The Trial of Mrs. Maybrick, was written and published around 1920, and so the fever of the case, though much diminished, was still famous enough to be the subject of debate. It contained a fabulous introduction to the case, including the story of the family and the contrasting accounts of James Maybrick's last few days. From there it delved into her trial and sentencing, the public outrage over the verdict, and the dozens of petitions made during her sentence which resulted in her release from prison.
The jewel of the volume, however, was a full transcription of the trial testimony, which provides invaluable insight into the intricate workings of her case. It is highly recommended for those who are interested in her case, and some has been transcribed for the Casebook under Florie Maybrick's Famous Trial.
Suffice it to say the case gripped an immediate hold on my interest, and when provided with the opportunity to travel to western Connecticut to research her last years, I grabbed at the chance.
The Investigation
We began the investigation with the simple knowledge that Florence had spent her last years in a small town named South Kent, in Western Connecticut. A quick study of some Topo maps revealed just how small the town was -- more or less just an intersection of two roads and a small school. Neither of us having any knowledge of landmarks or other features of the area, we decided to meet at that intersection on the morning of May 23rd.
Since I live in Northern New Jersey, I had quite a trip ahead of me, so I loaded my '86 Pontiac with some refreshments and plenty of road maps before I left. A quick stop at McDonald's for the customary Egg McMuffin and hash browns, and I was on my way north. The morning began brisk, but it was quickly becoming a gorgeous day, so I let down the windows and blasted the oldies station as load as was humanly possible.
After about two hours of singing along to Motown, I arrived in the area of New Milford and knew I was close to South Kent. And even though I took it slow to avoid missing the town, I passed right through it without even realizing. The town was even smaller than I expected -- there were no signs announcing my entry into South Kent; just a schoolhouse, a post-office, and a stop sign.
I was about an hour early for the rendezvous with Mike, so I stopped into the Post Office and asked the woman behind the counter where the South Kent town hall was. She looked at me queerly for a moment and replied, "You're in it."
She laughed, obviously amused at the puzzled stare on my face, and elaborated that there really wasn't a South Kent town hall, "South Kent if just a postal district," she said. "You probably want Kent town hall, north of here." She pointed me in the direction with a warm New-England smile and I thanked her for the information, thankful I wouldn't have to sort through the six-foot-high stacks of files I saw piled all around the office. New-Englanders are some of the nicest people I've ever encountered, but I can't say much for their sense of humor.
Kent was only about a mile or two north of the post office, and I found Town Hall more or less where I was told it would be, nestled behind a line of shops and next to a convenience store. I parked outside and debated whether or not to go in, but a quick glance at the clock showed that ten o'clock was fastly approaching, and Mike would be at the intersection any time now. So I returned to South Kent and parked just across the northern side of the intersection, leafing through my copy of Victorian Murderesses to freshen up on my Florie background.
Mike's car pulled up a few minutes later and we quickly exchanged greetings, eager to get cracking on the research. He followed me back to Kent town hall, and we both went in to start looking up deeds.
Now I had absolutely no experience in this at all, so for the first hour or so I just tagged along Mike, watching as he pulled out various volumes and maps. I eventually got the hang of it and started looking through some records on my own, but to no avail. Neither of us found anything listed under Florence Chandler (her maiden name under which she was listed after her release from prison in 1904). We even checked under Maybrick just in case, but again we came up blank. There were records in Town Hall pertaining to South Kent properties, but nothing to Florence Elizabeth Chandler. We were a bit discouraged, but refused to give up, and so we headed off to the main street to grab a bite to eat and discuss our next moves.
Over pizza and sandwiches at a local restaurant, we decided to go back to town hall one more time and give it another shot. If that didn't work, Mike suggested we go out on a limb and try the New Milford town hall, which was about fifteen or twenty minutes south.
Again we were disappointed in Kent town hall -- not a single trace of a Florence Chandler. Remembering that she had published a book about her struggle entitled My Fifteen Lost Years, we thought the local library might have a copy, considering it was of local color and history. We stopped in and looked around, again to no avail. But as chance would have it, I thought to ask the librarian if she knew anything about Mrs. Maybrick. When she answered in the positive, we had our first good news of the day. "Oh, you mean old Mrs. Chandler, the cat lady," she responded. The cat lady was what she was known as during her last few years due to her reclusive behavior and her enormous collection of stray cats, which were her only companions. "I'm afraid we don't have anything here," she said, "but you might want to try the South Kent School." The librarian continued that the story of Mrs. Chandler was quite well-known in the area, and that because of her destitute nature she was often cared for by the boys of South Kent School, who gave her groceries and milk for her many cats. "I'm sure they'll have something," she concluded.
Finally, with a our first hint of a lead, we headed back toward the small area of South Kent and headed up to the South Kent School, which appeared to be quite a prestigious (and expensive) private prep school for boys. We walked out among the grounds looking for the library in hopes that they would know something that could help us, and found it just on top of a steep hill behind the church. It was empty except for an elderly man inside reading a paper, who was kind enough to inform me that it was a holiday weekend for the staff and that most of the offices were closed. We searched both floors for some kind of reference to Mrs. Chandler but again came up empty-handed.
With frustration quickly setting in, I remembered the librarian saying that the story of Mrs. Chandler was quite well known in these areas, and I asked the man in the library if he might know of anything. Again, that archetypal New- Englander smile ran across his face and he gleamed, "Sure, sure... old Mrs. Chandler used to be quite a story. Hell, she's buried just outside that window." He pointed to the small graveyard I had noticed before, and I looked out to see Mike already checking out the headstones, paused before the middle one in the first row.
I thanked the man and was about to dash out the door when he added, "And she used to live up on an old dirt road just west of here. Oh, what was it called..." I remembered our passing a small road called Old Stone Road on the way over and Mike commenting that if he was a recluse like Florie he'd probably choose to live right there. Again I took a chance and suggested, "Old Stone Road?," to which the man clapped his hands sharply and said, "Old Stone... yes, that's the name!"
Now we had two definite finds -- the location of her grave and the relative location of where she used to live. I ran down to the graveyard and Mike pointed out Florie's grave. I had seen a picture of the headstone in Harrison's The Diary of Jack the Ripper but I wasn't prepared for what I saw.
First of all, the graveyard had only ten graves in it and was no bigger than a forty or fifty-foot square bounded on three sides by a wooden fence and on the third by the remains of a fallen stone wall. The grass was respectably trimmed but nevertheless possessed a truly dull look to them, and a dead, thorny bush on the grave just to the left of Florie's didn't add to the decor. The yard itself seemed irreverently jammed between the library on the eastern side and some tennis courts on the west, where a team of boys stopped their game just long enough to wonder about why we were taking photographs of a half-century-old grave.
Her headstone wasn't much of a stone at all, but rather a old and faded wooden cross covered in fungus and lichens, with the initials F.E.C.M. engraved in the center. The years of her birth and death were engraved above and below the initials, respectively.
The grave looked pathetic enough, but when I went to touch the marker, the horizontal section separated from the vertical, and only a quick reflex prevented it from falling to the ground. The two sections were loosely jointed together at the center, and even a slight breeze would cause the one to wobble.
Finally, as a final disgrace, there was a coffin-sized depression just in front of the marker, no doubt the result of a second-rate coffin collapsing soon after her burial.
With a strange feeling of disgrace I snapped a few photos of the grave and surrounding area, and dropped a pansy on her grave which I had plucked from a nearby garden.
On the way out we passed the large church of the school, and although we had no records to prove it (since the offices were closed due to holiday) it is quite likely that is where she had her services and funeral, if indeed she was even granted the dignity of either. It is a modest building, but beautiful nonetheless, situated just south of the graveyard.
It wasn't because of her circumstances in South Kent that the condition of her final resting place seemed so irreverent. In fact, considering that she was destitute and a recluse, without any known family, it would seem she received a more than proper burial. But one must remember that this woman was once a strong Southern Belle, a mother, a wife, and a fervent member in the higher ranks of London's social order. She was fond of lavish parties, luxurious gifts, and risking vast sums of money at the races. But here she now lies, in an obscure graveyard on the grounds of a preparatory school under a disintegrating marker, her coffin having no doubt collapsed soon after her interment.
If that wasn't a testimony to the absolute destruction of this woman's life, I don't know what is.
Regardless, we still had more research to do, and although finding the grave was a great achievement, we still had to find both where she lived and some records or deeds. So we headed back to Old Stone Road and drove up as far as was possible, before the muddy trail made us think twice about proceeding by car. I jumped out and walked on ahead down the trail for a mile or so, but passed nothing but wilderness and a few cleared areas. I realized her shack had no doubt collapsed or been removed since her death in the early 1940s, but I was hoping to find some kind of remnant or sign of her existence. The only landmark on the entire road was a modern house on the left side just at the entrance of Old Stone Road. We suggested the possibility that Florie's house might have been built on that land, but without solid records it was pure conjecture and worthless. We needed to find some sort of documented proof of her existence. I'm sure there had to have been something at the school, but unfortunately the holiday prevented us from accessing the administrations building to ask. Our last hope was to try the nearest town hall in New Milford, which was at least a twenty-minute drive from the school.
We arrived there around four in the afternoon, only an hour before closing, but since we had found nothing before we weren't overly concerned about time constraints. At least until we opened the first volume of records between 1932 and 1937 and immediately came upon a listing under, "Chandler, Florence E." Finally, we had something!
We rushed through about twenty volumes and came up with seven specific records pertaining to Florence, including mortgages, quit claims, the state's securing of the property after her death, and a listing under Death's and Marriages for her death. We photocopied what we could in what little time we had left (myself not realizing that photocopies in town hall were a buck apiece!) and began to analyze our findings.
The most important lead we followed was the pinpointing of where it was that Florence lived exactly. It was relatively common knowledge that she lived on what is today called Old Stone Road, but no one that we spoke to knew the exact location. Considering the long length of the road, and the many clearings alongside it, she could have lived among any of them. We wanted to know where.
The first problem we ran into was the fact that Florence's records were in New Milford town hall and not Kent town hall. If she indeed lived in South Kent (and Old Stone Road, to the best of our knowledge, was in South Kent) why were her records not in Kent hall, with the other South Kent records? Upon reading her deeds, a new conundrum arose: they all listed her as living in the Gaylordsville District of the town of New Milford.
Gaylordsville is to the south of Kent and South Kent, and as we understand it, is a section of the larger New Milford. We rechecked our Topos and Old Stone Road was still listed as within the South Kent town line, albeit close to the boundary between New Milford and South Kent. Still, it was clearly in South Kent, so there were three possibilities. Either she had lived in New Milford first and then later moved to South Kent, the town line between South Kent and New Milford had changed since her death in 1941, or the people we spoke to were mistaken about her living on Old Stone Road.
The first possibility is unlikely, because the seven records we found all listed her as living in either New Milford or Gaylordsville, and they range in time from July, 1919 to August, 1942. The property description is always listed as the same as well, and so it seems she lived in the same house between those two dates (otherwise there would be documented records of her moving).
The last possibility is also unlikely, for two reasons. First, we spoke to two people and they both agreed that Old Stone Road was where she had lived. Second, and more convincing, is the property description given in the deeds. It reads as follows:
Situated in the northerly part of the town of New Milford, near the residence of E. H. Austin, bounded and described as commencing at the southeast corner of land now or formerly of Paul Roach, by the highway, at or near a large maple tree, and running thence westerly in said Roach's line to a cherry tree; thence southeasterly in a straight line, to the highway at the intersection of the highway, fence with a stone wall, which point is about thirty (30) feet southerly of another maple tree; thence northerly by the highway to the place of beginning; bounded northerly by land now or formerly of Paul Roach; easterly by Highway known as the "Upper Road"; and southerly by land now or formerly of John and Mary Andrus, being a triangular piece, containing three-fourths (3/4) of an acre, more or less. Being the same and all the same property conveyed to me by Quit-claim Deed of Rosalind Lovy Knapp, dated Sept. 28, 1932 and recorded in Volume 88 at Pages 329 and 330 of the New Milford Land Records.
Other deeds have mention of a spring to the south of this property, to which Florence was allowed to maintain and lay a pipe in order to get water.
Although much of this remains vague in the sense that we could find no records of any "Upper Road," and that the mention of a Highway leaves much to the imagination, we feel we did manage to make a fairly good "guestimation" of where her property was. We attempted to trace back the properties of the people mentioned (Paul Roach and John and Mary Andrus) and did manage to trace their properties well into the past twenty or thirty years, but the closing of the town hall cut the investigation short.
Nevertheless, we drew up a small schematic as per the description in the records, and found that the solitary house and surrounding property which remain on Old Stone Road fit quite well into the picture. Crude schematics of (A) our interpretation of Florence's property and (B) the current property on Old Stone Road are below.
If "Upper Road," which you will remember we have as of yet found no mention of in any records, can be considered to have been renamed Old Stone Road, the schematics fit quite well. Although we were unable to spot the small stream alluded to in four of the six property deeds, it could have either (A) dried up and vanished or (B) been overgrown by the surrounding foliage and therefore not visible from our standpoint on the main road. Also, the use of the word "Highway" in the records assumes a busy street, which the main street from which both the South Kent School and Old Stone Road branch off can be assumed to have been (considering it is one of only two streets in the entire region of South Kent).
Finally, the dimensions of the property fit. Some high school trig reveals that a triangular property with an area of 3/4 of an acre "more or less" will have (assuming the extreme case of it being an isosceles triangle) a base and a length of approximately 85.2 yards. Admittedly, we did not have the time to measure off the modern property on Old Stone Road, but from memory and reasonable estimation, the property was (in relation to the main road) no longer than one hundred yards at the most and (in relation to Old Stone) about the same. Also adding credibility was the placement of the current house, which was arguably within the triangle (i.e. the house was not on the corner of the main road and Old Stone, but rather inset some sixty or so yards along the dirt road). Since property lines often remain the same over periods of even hundreds of years, it can reasonably be argued that the property detailed by the deeds and the property currently on Old Stone Road are similar enough to be considered one and the same.
One final addendum to the argument -- since Florie was said to have been serviced and aided weekly by the South Kent School, it would stand to reason that she lived nearby within walking distance (remember that at this time she was quite advanced in age, being 79 years old at the time of death and having received aid from the school for at least the past ten years). Old Stone Road is no more than perhaps a half-mile from the school; a brisk walk even for Florie. However, Old Stone stretches far back into the woodlands, some three or four miles in fact. So it is doubtful she would have lived too far back on the road if indeed that is the road on which she lived, for the distance to walk (let alone the decrepit conditions of the road) would have been a bit much for an elderly and destitute woman.
Obviously, another trip to New Milford is needed in order to further qualify these statements, but it now looks as if we have come close to pinpointing Florence's property as being near the intersection of Old Stone Road and the main street on which South Kent School is located.
Mike, however, disagrees, contending that town lines almost never change. The Topo did indicate some buildings farther down Old Stone Road (too far for us to have driven, unfortunately), and he believes one of them could be on Florie's property. This would go along with why her property was listed as in New Milford, because Old Stone eventually wanders into the Gaylordsville section of New Milford. This is just as probable a solution, but as we had no chance to further research this, I feel it best at this moment to elaborate on the former theory.
Regardless, another trip to the area will no doubt reveal the actual truth of the matter.
Other areas of interest found in the deeds are the purchase of the property for $75 from John and Mary Andrus on March 25th, 1919, and Florence's mortgage of July 17th, 1919 of $1055.90 to Rosalind Lovy. In September 28th, 1932, Rosalind Lovy Knapp filed a Quit Claim Deed in the name of Florence Chandler, giving her full ownership of all claimed land. On June 22nd, 1937 Florence applied for "old age assistance," providing her property as collateral to be foreclosed by the state in the event she did not repay her monies along with a four percent interest. We also came across the actual foreclosing deeds but were unable to copy and read them at length due to time constraints.
Finally, Florence's listing under Deaths has her listed as Florence Chandler Maybrick, so it is evident that she was discovered to have been the famous wife of James Maybrick soon after her death. It places her as living in the Gaylordsville District as a "Housewife." Under parents it has no mention, although it lists her as being born in Virginia, while many published accounts have her as being born in Alabama. Her date of birth is given as September 1, 1862 and her death as October 23, 1941, having lived 79 years, 1 month, and 22 days. Cause of death is given as Acute Myocarditis, which is an inflammation of the middle muscular layer of the heart wall. The length of sickness is given as two weeks.
All in all, considering the information with which we entered the investigation, I firmly believe that Michael and I did a decent job at researching the case. We located her grave, albeit perfectly by chance, as well as the probable location of her property (although further research is needed to secure this possibility). We now know a bit about when she bought the property and built the house, as well as the involvement of the state in securing her property.
We'd like to get further research done hoping to discover who the mysterious benefactor was who furnished Florence with money to purchase both her property and house. I suspect it might be someone involved with the South Kent School but we were unable to conduct research there. Further clarification of the exact property location is also needed, as well as research into the lands of Paul Roach and John and Mary Aldus, and the existance of an "Upper Road." Finally, we'd like to work some more on the local "folklore" residing in the nearby areas concerning the cat lady.
Further research will be done in the New Milford area, but as of now the date is unclear. We will update this page when applicable.
Stephen P Ryder
Michael Gruber
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