The Brutal Death of Berengera Caswell
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This is Murder, She Told. True crime stories from Maine, New England, and small town USA. I'm Kristen Zevey. You can connect with me at MurderSheTold.com or on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. This episode discusses and contains descriptions of abortion in the historical context of the 1850s. If this is a trigger for you, please listen with care.

Life was exciting and new for Berengara Caswell. She and her two sisters had just kicked off the dust from their small, rural hometown near Sherbrooke in Quebec Province and arrived in Lowell, Massachusetts to start a new life.

They had heard stories of other young girls leaving their families and going to work in the New England factories. And the prospect of earning their own wages and having an opportunity to see the world before being married off to some local boy back home sounded terrific.

Berengara, Ruth, and Tice arrived in Lowell, Massachusetts and quickly found work. But they heard that things might be better in Manchester, so after just a few months, they packed up their belongings and moved to New Hampshire, where they were to live for several years.

Wealthy entrepreneurs and businessmen were creating entire towns centered around factory life. It was the Industrial Revolution, and the textile industry in New England was booming. Manchester was one of those towns, and the men behind Ameskeg Manufacturing Company endeavored to craft a utopian factory city with their mill being at the center of it. It was 1848.

just ten years after the town of Manchester had been founded, and it was thriving. All three sisters found work at the textile factory. Berengara worked in the carding room where raw cotton was cleaned and converted into thread. Her sister Tice found work in the weaving department. They worked hard, and they were surrounded by other young women like themselves.

80% of the workforce was female, and though it was exciting to be earning their own money, women were poorly paid. Berengara made only about $1.50 an hour in today's money, and she worked long shifts. In 1848 money, she earned just 54 cents per day.

She earned money based on her performance, getting a certain amount per yard of cloth or length of thread in a system called piecework. And though the wages were modest, after paying for her housing and food, she still had some money left over. Enough, at least, to enjoy some of what Manchester had to offer.

After their long days, they would walk the city streets window shopping, perhaps finding a bit of jewelry, a new hat or scarf, or even some fancy fabric to craft a new dress. They might visit a circus or see a fortune teller. For a day and a half's wages, 75 cents, they might have their photograph taken by a daguerreotypist. The Manchester Museum's Gallery of Fine Arts had shells, fossils,

fossils, and the entire skeleton of a Greenland whale on display. But some evenings, the Caswell sisters may have stayed home in their boarding house rooms, sewing, reading, or writing letters back home. The sisters may have been 200 miles from their fathers, but they were still under strict paternalistic rule of the mill.

The company built so-called boarding houses where the women were to live, sometimes as many as six to a room, under the watchful eye of matrons.

The matrons kept close tabs on the women's comings and goings and enforced the rules of the house. There were strict curfews, cleanliness standards, and a requirement to attend church. And any misbehavior jeopardized not only your housing, but your job as well. The crowdedness of the dormitories allowed for almost no privacy. The only place that the women were allowed to have visitors was down in the common areas of the house.

Though it sounds uncomfortable by modern standards, the women made the most of it, forming close relationships with one another, sometimes referring to themselves as a band of sisters. They would rise before dawn and have breakfast together before heading off to the mill in their daily uniform, a dress, boots, and stockings.

Many of the dresses of the time resembled a kind of hybrid between a dress and an apron, and beneath the dress, a long-sleeved shirt might be worn. Hair was generally kept up and out of the way of the many hazards of the mill.

Work was hard. The average work week was about 65 hours, Monday through Saturday. They suffered early hearing loss from the constant drone of noise from the machinery, and they had to use hand signs and read lips to communicate with their co-workers. Still, work back at the farm was just as grueling, and at least they were getting paid at the mill.

The mill was neither heated in the winter nor cooled in the summer, and I can only imagine being on my feet for 11 or 12 hours a day in a room heated by only bodies and machinery within it during a harsh New Hampshire winter day. Berengara alternated between working at the mills and returning home to see her family. She went for a visit in August of 1848 back to Canada and returned to Manchester with Tice in 1849.

Barangara Caswell was 5'4", had fair skin, long dark brown hair, and was described as a good-looking girl. While we don't have a lot of information on her, her teeth, according to a doctor's account, were the handsomest he'd ever seen, being complete, uniform, and perfect.

Her unusual name came from her cousin, who had sadly died at the age of two, and her cousin had been named after Queen Berengaria, a 12th century queen married to Richard the Lionheart. She wore drop earrings and accumulated many beautiful accessories and baubles from her wages she earned at Amiskeg. She likely attracted quite a bit of attention from the men in her circle.

In the summer of 1849, Berengara met a young man who worked in the machine shop named William Long. They likely met through a mutual acquaintance named Oates Tyler, who was also from her hometown in Canada, and they struck up a summer romance. In September, though, William was fired from his job at the mill and decided to return to his hometown in Saco, Maine to get back on his feet.

Berengara too decided to leave, but not to join William in Saco. She picked up her last paycheck of $7 and spent two or three days packing and sewing, giving Tice scraps of fabric from her dresses to remember her by. She headed to the Massachusetts coast to work in Salem, leaving her sisters behind.

By November, she realized that her body was changing. She had missed a period or two and noticed she was feeling nauseous. Her breasts were swollen and tender. Berengara was pregnant and in a terrible predicament. In the culture of the 1840s, having a child out of wedlock would bring terrible shame upon her and her family, and she was all alone in a new seaside town.

She decided that she needed to meet up with the baby's father, William, so she packed up again and headed to Saco.

William was working in the enormous machine shop of the Saco Water Power Company. The building was 275 feet long and 46 feet wide. He spent his day making the machines and equipment that kept the area's textile mills in production. He lived in the company's boarding house on Gooch Island, now known as Factory Island, a small island situated in the center of the Saco River, overlooking Saco to the north and Biddeford to the south.

It was an ordinary Monday morning for him, a few days before Thanksgiving on November 26th, 1849, and he went to the counting room to pick up a check. He walked through the doorway and was stunned to see his old beau, Barry, and her friend, Rosalie. He greeted them warmly and suggested that they all take a meal at his boarding house together. They took him up on it, and at noon, they all made their way to the dining hall to have lunch.

Conversation was light and easy, but William could tell that Berengara had something that she wanted to talk to him about. Later that afternoon and again that evening, they met privately. He was stunned to learn that their brief romance had resulted in her becoming pregnant. After a difficult conversation, they decided that the best thing for both of them was an abortion.

Abortion was an option in 1849, but they didn't call it that. There was a widely held belief in a concept called quickening that referred to the moment that the fetus could be felt moving within the womb. For someone in 1849, the word abortion generally referred to terminating a pregnancy after that moment.

Up until that point, a woman might refer to herself as imbalanced or having a case of irregularity. She might be blocked or have missed her monthly sickness. If she didn't want to have another child, she might find an advertisement for menstrual regulators or preventative powders in the newspaper.

Or she might make an appointment with a doctor to be fixed up or to be put straight. And if things were successful, she would say that her menses had been restored or it had slipped away. Euphemisms ruled the day, and what was hidden behind them was a deeply conflicted feeling amongst many Americans about the concept of life prior to quickening but after conception.

They needed a safe way to talk about the common procedure without the straying into the very dangerous and illegal talk of abortion. Berengara might have been able to find a provider from a quick look through the newspaper ads or asking around town, but William said that he would handle it, so she waited. William somewhat surprisingly went to his boss at his new job and asked him for help. He set up a meeting at the local tavern called the Saco House.

Three men, William, his boss, and Dr. James Smith, sat around a table together to determine Berengara's fate. Dr. Smith was a botanic doctor who primarily used herbal remedies for healing. He said that he could take care of the problem for an upfront payment of $10. William's boss likely offered to cover the payment with the expectation that William would work off the debt in the months that followed.

the doctor shared with the other men that he really needed the money, perhaps an indication of the popularity of his practice, or lack thereof. Still, William felt bad for the doctor and bought him a cigar, and they concluded their business with a smoke. As they were parting, William asked Dr. Smith if he wanted to know her name, and he said no. He gave her a pseudonym, Mary Bean.

His choice of pseudonym was not just some spontaneous choice. It had meaning from his past. Some nefarious associates of his would use the last name Bean to refer to secret business that they had together. In the death of a Manchester tax man from five years earlier, the man was lured out of his home for a meeting with a Mrs. Bean, a code word, and it was reported in the murder trial coverage that followed.

Dr. Smith was even connected to the man's death, though he was never charged. I'm sending my Aunt Tina money directly to her bank account in the Philippines with Western Union. She's the self-proclaimed bingo queen of Manila, and I know better to interrupt her on bingo night, even to pick up cash.

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The next day, William brought Berengara to Smith's home on Storer Street in Saco. The doctor said that she would need to stay with him for at least a few days. When Berengara arrived in Saco Biddeford, she had gotten a room at a boarding house and, assuming her stay at the doctor's would be brief, she even left her trunks of clothing there. Once she got settled in, the doctor gave her a tonic made from juniper called savin to induce uterine contractions and cause her to abort.

While she waited for its effect, she helped around the Smith house, doing lighthouse work, sewing, and selling milk from their dairy cow to neighbors. Berengara's beau, William, visited repeatedly throughout her stay, particularly on Sundays. He wore the same outfit each time, green pants, a black frock coat, and a hat.

As the days passed, her concern grew. The savin hadn't worked. The doctor gave her a second dose in early December, again with no effect. Hers was a persistent case of blockage. If the description of a surgical abortion is a trigger for you, I suggest skipping ahead a minute.

On December 15th, 1849, after Mary Bean had been with him for a couple of weeks, about three months into her pregnancy, Dr. Smith took more drastic measures. He decided it was time for surgical intervention.

Using a group of instruments that included a wire about 8 inches in length with a hook on the end, he performed an abortion. It was no doubt very painful. He used no anesthetic, and as the tool made its way through the cervix and into the uterus, the uterus likely produced intense, painful contractions.

But Dr. Smith made a fatal mistake. He cut the uterine wall, leaving a gash one-fourth inch wide and four inches long.

Berengara's body fought to heal the wound and the rapidly developing infection. She had terrible chills and fever. A young Irish girl, Anne Coveney, who worked in the Smith residence, later recalled Berry's yelps of pain and calling out in the night as her body was overcome by infection. Sepsis had set in.

Dr. Smith tried to help her, but he didn't have the tools or knowledge to make a difference. In futility, he put two medicated plasters on her back, hoping to treat the infection through the skin. Late on Saturday evening, a week after the abortion on December 22nd, 1849, Dr. Smith and his wife retired for the night, fully clothed in a nearby parlor.

and Berengara, alone and in septic shock, died a terrible death. The next morning, Smith and his wife awakened and discovered Berengara's lifeless body. His mind raced with what to do. He knew that she wasn't from Sokko and only a few people even knew where she was staying. He thought that perhaps her disappearance might not be noticed if only he could make her body disappear.

His servant, of course, knew her. So he brought young Ann Coveney into the parlor where Mary Bean's body rested and told her that she had passed away. She asked how, and he thought quickly. "'Of typhoid,' he said. Typhoid symptoms included a high fever, so to little Ann, this might seem plausible enough. He told her to keep quiet about Mary Bean, and he even gave her an apron to memorialize her silence."

Dr. Smith covered her with a sheet and waited. He had hatched a plan to get rid of the body. His home on Storer Street was virtually in the center of town. At the end of his block was Main Street, which was right over the Saco River to Gooch Island.

now Factory Island, where the mills and boarding houses were located. In other words, there was plenty of foot and carriage traffic as well as neighbors that might see what he was up to. So he waited for nightfall and went to his barn and removed a large board, large enough to cover her whole body. He left her in her stockings and a thin shift dress and he tied an apron over her face.

He laid her out on the board and, using some rope, tied her arms and legs together and her body to the board. With some help, which will forever remain a mystery, he moved the large board and her body to Woodbury Brook, a small tributary that fed the large nearby river that ran through downtown.

he put berengara face down in the stream her body concealed by the floating board above and sent her on her way to the saco river which in just five miles drained to the atlantic ocean

It was mid-December, and though the winter change of weather was well underway, he was fortunate that the small brook hadn't frozen over. And as he freed her from the bank and watched her float away, he counted his blessings for his good fortune and his quick mind. He returned home and settled into bed.

The next day, William appeared to inquire about Berengara's health. Dr. Smith broke the bad news about typhoid, and William, with a heavy heart, accepted her death.

He may have connected the dots between the abortion and her death, but he likely doubted this cover story. He felt some responsibility himself, and he told Smith that he would see to having the body buried, but Smith told him that he'd partly made arrangements for that himself. A few weeks later in January, Dr. Smith came to William again.

this time seeking more money and the other trunk that still remained at the boarding house that Berengara had stayed at when she first arrived in Saco. When William confessed that he had no money to offer and had no interest in retrieving the trunk for him, Smith angrily told him that Mary had died in childbirth and delivered a son as big as Smith's fist.

William asked where he'd buried her body, but he again dodged the question, saying that he would reveal her final resting place some other time. Dr. Smith took a horse-drawn sleigh to the boarding house and collected the trunk.

When the matron, Mrs. Means, confronted the doctor over her unpaid bill, he resisted but eventually paid the long overdue charge of $1 for a week's room and board. Mrs. Means was concerned about Berengara's lengthy absence. She had left her valuables unattended for over a month, but the doctor said that she had left suddenly to take care of family in the East and was just now retrieving her trunk as she returned and headed west.

The story seemed reasonable enough, and for several months, it seemed that no one raised any further questions to the doctor about Berengara Caswell. On April 13th, the first sunny day of spring, young Osgood Stevens, a 14-year-old boy, was helping clean out Woodbury Brook. Storer Street ran over the brook, and beneath the street was a stone culvert that had an obstruction.

Osgood went into the stone tunnel in the icy cold waters and discovered a large board that was wedged in the culvert. He moved it a bit and discovered an icy hand beneath the board. He was scared and shocked, so he went to sound the alarm and fetch help. A crowd gathered as some of Osgood's neighbors pulled the body from the water and up the banks of the brook.

News traveled quickly, and soon enough, Dr. Smith realized what had been discovered. His housemaid, Anne, later recalled that he muttered under his breath, Ah, they've found Mary. The need for secrecy was heightened, and the doctor's wife threatened Anne, saying that if Smith went to prison, they would be left poor and destitute, and that she would put the young girl out on the street. To sweeten the deal, she gave her stockings and shoes from Berengara's trunk.

With the weather turning wintry and the crowd pressing, Constable James J. Wiggin moved the body to a nearby barn. The coroner, Thomas Tufts, called a local doctor to the scene. They cleaned the body of months of dirt and debris with several pails of water and removed her clothes.

With the body relatively clean, the doctor concluded that she had obviously been murdered. So the constable, Thomas Tufts, assembled an inquest jury, a group of men that were to conduct an initial investigation. The doctor continued his examination and found no obvious trauma to the exterior of her body, but he discovered that she had recently been pregnant and died as a consequence of abortion.

The town's undertaker arrived shortly thereafter, and the very day that her body had been discovered, she was buried. The name Mary Bean materialized quickly. Newspapers reported a few theories on how she was identified.

Some said it was the scar on her wrist that the boarding house owner, Mrs. Means, had recognized. Others said it was a local dentist who remembered removing a tooth of hers. But most of them said that she had been identified by the extraordinary length and beauty of her hair.

Dr. Smith worked to destroy any trace that Mary Bean had been a patient of his. He burned a trunk of hers that had her initials spelled out in brass buttons on its end. He broke his surgical instruments used for abortion into pieces and threw them in the parlor stove. By Monday, two days after her body was found, Mary Bean was linked to Dr. Smith.

Constable Lane searched his house and uncovered the contents of his stove, retrieving nails, hairpins, bits of metal, and broken wires. Dr. Smith tried to leverage his relationship with the constable, calling him his friend and suggesting that it was all just a misunderstanding. Dr. Smith admitted that Mary Bean had lived with his family but stuck to his story. She had died of typhoid.

Anne, the housemaid, was called in for an interview, but she was terrified. She swore she knew nothing and afraid to return to the Smiths' house, she ran to Biddeford to stay at her brother's home. The jurors walked up and down Storer Street canvassing the neighborhood, putting together pieces of the puzzle from Smiths' neighbors.

On Tuesday, three days after the discovery, her body was exhumed so that Dr. Hall could conduct a more thorough examination. He removed her reproductive organs and placed them in glass jars, which he took to his office for further study. After he was done, her body was buried again.

His report read that she had enjoyed good health with unusually healthy lungs in the absence of nearly all evidence of disease. He believed that she would not miscarry from any natural cause.

Osgood's father had watched as the body was removed from the brook and remembered something that would crack this case wide open. He realized that the unusual whitewash on the plank reminded him of a whitewash that he'd seen in Dr. Smith's barn.

The constable and the local carpenter went to inspect the barn and discovered that one stall was missing a plank. They brought the board that was discovered in the brook and to their great surprise, found it was a perfect fit. The next morning, Wednesday, April 17th, 1850, the constable arrested Dr. Smith for the murder of Mary Bean. Sacco had no jail, so he held the doctor at the Sacco house, where the constable kept watch.

On Thursday night, the inquest jury finished their report with their findings. They announced that Mary Bean had died from a massive infection in her abdomen or uterus, resulting from an abortion performed by Dr. Smith. The constable brought the report to the local judge, Frederick Green, recommending the charge of murder.

The judge scheduled a hearing right away to give the attorneys the chance to present evidence. This was the 19th century equivalent of a modern-day probable cause hearing. The hearing was scheduled to begin on Friday, April 19th, not even a week after her body was found. But the judge's sudden illness forced a postponement until Monday. The wheels of justice moved awfully fast in 1850.

News of the murder had spread far and wide. It was all that anyone talked about, and the weekly newspapers printed daily specials with the latest information about the inquest jury's discoveries. Anticipating a huge turnout, the judge selected the largest meeting room in Saco as the venue for the hearing. Over 600 people jammed into the Cuts Island room, and hundreds more lingered outside in the rain.

Curiously, although the room was packed, women were far and few between, one reporter writing that he only observed two women in the whole room, one of whom was called to testify. Judge Green remained ill though and to avoid rescheduling again, he made the arrangements to have a Saco attorney record the evidence and relay it to the housebound judge. At 2 p.m., the proceedings began.

To begin with, the report from the inquest jury was read verbatim, and the main Democrat reported that the audience listened in profound silence.

Three long tables sat on a raised platform, and the men seated at them faced the crowd. At the center of the table sat the prosecuting attorneys, the defense attorneys, the attorney who was standing in for Judge Green, and the defendant. The flanking tables provided seats to reporters and local authorities, including the coroner and the constable. Witnesses were amidst the crowd,

and when called would make their way to the front and sit, facing this makeshift stage.

Elizabeth DeWolf wrote in her book called The Murder of Mary Bean, Despite the serious nature of the alleged crime, Smith, a short, stocky man of middling size, with light eyes, coarse features, and a complexion as ruddy as the summer's morning, was calm, even jovial, and at times was quite jocose with his remarks.

He joked with reporters about his devilishly pretty wife. And at one point, while waiting for the day's proceedings to begin, Satin read the newspaper reports of his own case. The prosecuting attorney began with 90 minutes of opening remarks. He claimed that this murder was the first in Sacco's history.

He interrupted the large crowd as an indication of the community's outrage and demanded for justice for the young woman.

still known only as Mary Bean. He spoke to the town's duty to the victim and to the public by punishing the transgressor as a deterrent to future would-be murderers. He played to the crowd's higher moral character, downplaying their obvious morbid curiosity that was fueled by Victorian crime novellas. He finally acknowledged it, though, when he said, quote,

The very name of murder, as it falls upon the ear, startles and alarms. It excites in us feelings of horror and indignation. But the murder of a young and beautiful woman, under circumstances the most revolting to humanity, may well excite an interest amounting almost to agony.

Following his remarks, key members of the legal team left Cutts Hall to examine the culvert where the body was found. Many of the spectators had already visited Berengara's icy resting place, now quite the tourist destination, much to the dismay of Smith's neighbors.

When they returned, they called the boy who discovered the body to testify. A few other witnesses who had helped to move her body also testified, and with that, court was adjourned. Little was revealed on day one, but much was promised. On day two, Tuesday, April 23rd, the bad weather continued, but despite the rain and cold, a large crowd gathered.

This long day of testimony began at nine and lasted throughout the day.

In scientific and precise language, Dr. Hall read his graphic autopsy account, which detailed the extent of the inflammation and internal infection. He also said that there was no evidence of typhoid, Dr. Smith's defense. He described the instruments that were often used in surgical abortion and emphasized the skill needed to properly use these tools, a skill few trained physicians had.

let alone an unschooled botanic physician. Next, the prosecution sought to prove that Mary Bean had indeed been pregnant and not blocked. They asked a woman who did the Smith's laundry to testify, and she offered pungent details.

She had washed twice for Dr. Smith. The first time was on the date of the abortion, December 15th. She found skirts and linens with stains and the distinctive odor of amniotic fluid. Sweet, musky, and sharp.

She noted similar blots and smells on the clothing and linen she washed more than a week later, the day after Mary's death. She even testified that she'd seen Mary at their home and recognized that she was pregnant. The prosecution then called roommates of Mary Beans from the boarding house she briefly stayed at on her arrival in Saco-Biddeford. They both believed, from her appearance, that she was pregnant.

Even a neighbor of the Smiths, a 67-year-old woman named Sarah Bryant, testified that she believed Mary Bean was pregnant. That concluded day two.

On day three, two people were called to testify about conversations that they'd had with Dr. Smith, where he spoke in detail about his abortion business, including the tools that he used and the methods he employed. But the star witness was the Irish housemaid Anne Coveney, who had decided to testify for the state against Smith, despite the threats from Dr. Smith and his wife and her promise to secrecy that they'd coerced.

Evidently, the "apron bribe" just wasn't enough. Anne described how Dr. Smith alone would retrieve a particular black bag from the closet hall and how he would take girls into his parlor behind closed doors. She said that no one else ever touched the bag or entered the parlor when Smith was in it. Anne remembered the dates that Mary Bean had arrived at the Smiths, and she recalled the last night that she'd seen Mary alive.

On Saturday evening, December 22nd, Anne approached her lying alone in the front parlor and asked if she could get her anything. All Berengara could manage was to look at her. She was too ill to speak.

Last to testify was William Long, who finally revealed to the public the true identity of Mary Bean. He took the court through his romance with Berengara, beginning with their meeting in Manchester. He admitted to their sexual relationship, though he described it as on terms of unlawful intimacy. He was finally asked the question on everyone's mind, what did Berengara tell him in that private November meeting?

How had they come to the decision to get an abortion? Before he had the opportunity to respond, Smith's defense attorney objected on the grounds that his testimony would be considered hearsay. After a complex legal argument, the judge ultimately ruled that it was indeed hearsay, and thus inadmissible. Much to the chagrin of all the spectators present and to us today.

We'll never know what Berengara's final thoughts were, even if they were filtered through the lens of her lover. There were no more witnesses to call. The hearing was over. It would be up to the judge to make his determination.

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On day four, Judge Green, who was still sick, relayed his decision through a stand-in. Goodwin announced to a packed room that Smith would be charged with murder and would face trial in the fall session of the Supreme Judicial Court, and he would be held without bail until trial. Although he'd been lighthearted throughout the hearing,

Smith became emotional as he bid his family goodbye. He was taken to York County Jail in the village of Alfred, 15 miles west of Saco-Biddeford, to await his September trial.

Berengara's family learned of her death, though the news was likely delayed because of the pseudonym Dr. Smith had given her, and her sister, Tice, arrived in Saco Biddeford on April 29th. She was still in Manchester, hard at work at Amiskake Mill while the case was unfolding. She had written to the Saco constable with details about Berengara's clothing, helping to substantiate her identity and connect her with her family.

The constable had responded by a letter, inviting Tice to Saco, and he helped get her situated, even providing her with a room in his own home. She went with him to Smith's home and identified more of Berengara's things. Before entering the home, she described to the constable what her storage trunks looked like and a number of her possessions.

A notable item was an unusually shaped beaded purse in which she had been hoarding nickels. The purse was discovered at the house, and Dr. Smith's wife claimed that it was hers, a gift given to her by her husband the previous fall.

Tice wanted to take Berengara's body home for burial. The constable wanted to do something for Tice, so he solicited donations from residents. He ended up raising between $75 and $100, and Berengara was disinterred for a final time. On May 1st, Tice left Saco-Biddeford with Berengara's body in a walnut coffin and began the 200-mile journey to their hometown in Canada.

In September, the case against Dr. Smith was presented to a grand jury. The prosecution called 24 witnesses, and the jury indicted Dr. Smith, keeping him in jail awaiting trial. Smith, meanwhile, claimed that he was impoverished and requested a court-appointed lawyer. He was assigned Nathan Clifford, which was a very fortunate turn of event for Dr. Smith.

Nathan Clifford, a former member of Congress, had been appointed Attorney General of the United States by the President and had just returned to Maine to establish his law practice. Nathan requested a continuance in order to prepare his argument, and since the fall term was already tightly booked, the judge readily agreed and moved the case to the January term.

The trial began in January 1851. During the trial, Smith took an active role, seeming composed but very attentive to the proceedings, especially in employing his right to challenge potential jurors. Despite the cold winter weather, crowds flocked to the county courthouse in Alfred, 15 minutes west of Saco.

Much of the trial proceeded in a similar fashion to the initial probable cause hearing, but William in particular was excoriated by the attorneys. From DeWolf's book, the defense painted him as an arch-seducer who was little more than abetting prostitution in using and then abandoning Berengara and perhaps others.

Long was raked over the coals as his personality and sexual life were made very public. If this experience were not humiliating enough, the prosecution took its turn, countering the defense's portrait of William as a fiend and carefully plotting cad. Instead, the prosecution placed blame squarely on Smith. After all, they argued,

Long was far too naive and too much of a rube to be able to mastermind a seduction plot and then walk into court and admit to it. Williams spoke with much feeling and apparent sincerity, often shedding tears. Ann Kovney took the stand for four hours long, repeating her important information on Smith's practice.

Tice took the stand and told the jury about Berengara's life. In particular, she provided a very detailed account of all the clothes and trinkets and baubles she'd accumulated, describing a woman who seemed to be a free spirit, independent, and self-sufficient. It took the jury just two hours to reach a unanimous verdict. Guilty. Dr. Smith was sentenced to life in prison.

Smith, one of only four men convicted of murder amongst 87 inmates in Maine, worked in the prison shoe shop, and prison life seemed to agree with him. He made himself useful when a prisoner attempted suicide. With the prison doctor absent, Smith stepped in and helped revive the near-dead man. Perhaps Smith had some medical skill after all.

In March of 1851, two months after he was convicted by jury, his lawyer, Nathan Clifford, filed an appeal with 22 points of contention to the Maine Supreme Court. The main thrust of the appeal was that Smith was guilty of manslaughter, not murder. They considered his arguments for just over a year. In April of 1852, they made their decision.

Smith had been improperly charged. His conviction for murder was overturned, and since he'd already served more than enough time for a manslaughter charge, he was free to go. Smith returned to Saco and was reunited with his wife and children. But this happy reunion wouldn't last. He contracted tuberculosis, most likely in prison, and died three years later in 1855.

Dying from something as horrific as a botched abortion wasn't exactly the legacy the Caswell family wanted to be associated with, so instead of passing down their children the truth about Berengara, they fabricated a much more innocent tale that, to this day, is apparently still remembered.

According to this version of the story, in December of 1849, Berengara was skating at a holiday party on St. Francis River, the main river that runs right through Sherbrooke when she fell through the ice. The river's current was so strong it swept poor Barry hundreds of miles downstream to Maine, a journey that is impossible to accomplish without traveling up and over mountain ranges. The

The river's flow heads northwest and into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, away from Maine entirely.

But just because the family wasn't passing down the scandalous version of Berenguer's story doesn't mean the public wasn't clamoring to hear it. Dr. Smith hadn't even settled into his jail cell when in May of 1850, Hotchkiss & Company, a publisher out of Boston, began advertising a true crime story written by Miss J.A.B. of Manchester titled Mary Bean, the Factory Girl, or the Victim of Seduction.

One could purchase the novella for 12 and a half cents, or around 3.75 today, and be swept into a sordid and cautionary tale that was described by the advertisement as a new story of thrilling interest, founded on recent events in Maine and New Hampshire. This work should be read by every young lady and gentleman as it is one of peculiar interest.

Barry's life was reduced to a caricature of a mill girl, her given name replaced by her pseudonym, Mary Bean, and her story was rewritten. A pure and helpless victim of seduction who, because of her naivete, was lured into the clutches of a depraved monster.

Even the term factory girl meant that readers were in for a juicy read. Booklets about factory girls were almost guaranteed to be about the dramatic demise of one, involving sex and, most likely, death. Two years later, in 1852, a second novella was published, entitled A Full and Complete Confession of the Horrid Transaction in the Life of George Hamilton, the Murderer of Mary Bean, the Factory Girl.

This booklet was essentially a follow-up to the first, focusing more on the criminality of the villainous and fictional George Hamilton, a vile scoundrel and ultimate seducer, very loosely based on Dr. Smith. Not only was the public fascinated by explicit stories and sexually motivated crimes, they were also interested in how the minds of criminals worked, wondering who could do such a depraved act.

This crime story would be published with a few different titles through the years, each more enticing than the last, a siren calling the spare change from a potential reader's purse. Mary Bean's story was a gossipy warning to steer clear the life of a factory girl. In Berengara, the true victim of this sordid and elaborated tale was all but forgotten.

Until around 2007, when Maine author and University of New England professor Elizabeth DeWolf researched and wrote about Berengara's life, death, and legacy in a book called The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories. The book also includes the two historical novellas, republished for the first time since 1852. She told me about discovering the fictional novella about George Hamilton in a rare bookshop

thinking it was typical sensational crime fiction from the 20th century, only to realize and confirm it was indeed based on a real case.

From there, historical records and newspapers led the way to learning more about the people at the center of the story, and the true story of Mary Bean was born. Without her work digging through bound newspaper volumes and genealogy records to piece this story together, the name Mary Bean or Baron Garakaswal might not even exist in the public sphere today. Her book was the primary source for this episode.

and if you want to read more, I'll link it on the blog and in the show notes. When I think about the horrific death Berengar Caswell suffered, I'm saddened to think that her life was reduced to a moral parable in the fictional tale of her alter ego, Mary Bean.

Book publishers, authors, lawyers, preachers, and law enforcement leaders all used her story to advance their own agendas, often discarding the truth in service of their message. Women who leave the safety of home and the support of their family are at great risk, and many will veer off the narrowly prescribed course to their own ruin. A scary complexity was reduced to a safe simplicity, and the message was clear.

Berengara was the author of her own misfortune. But was Berengara a helpless mill girl, seduced by the wily William Long, as lawyers and town leaders claimed? Or was she a fiercely independent young woman who struck out on her own?

Was she thrust into Dr. Smith's deadly hands by her controlling boyfriend? Or did she choose abortion instead of a lifetime of shame? Was Dr. Smith a quack physician providing an illegal abortion? Or was he a competent doctor who made a fatal mistake on a procedure he commonly performed? In the face of public scrutiny, even her own family reinvented the story of her death, sanitizing it. They hid from the shame her life and death had symbolically become.

But Berengara's life was more than a symbol. She was among the first of her generation to hold a job and earn her own wages. She loved, she suffered, and her brief 21-year-old life was tragically cut short in a brutal accident. ♪

I want to thank you so much for listening. I'm so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you. Thank you. If you want to support and contribute to the show, there's a link in the show notes with options. Leaving a nice review or telling a friend is a great way to support too. You can connect with me on Facebook or Instagram at Murder She Told Podcast. A detailed list of sources and awesome photos can be found on the blog at MurderSheTold.com linked in the show notes.

Special thanks to Elizabeth DeWolf and her book, The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories. Thank you to Byron Willis for his research and writing support. If you would like to make a suggestion for a future episode or a correction, feel free to reach out to me at hello at murdershetold.com. My only hope is that I've honored your stories in keeping the names of your family and friends alive. I'm Kristen Sevey, and this is Murder, She Told. Thank you for listening.