The Upstaged Death of Barton Edsall

"Chicago Tribune," October 7, 1871, via Newspapers.com

In 1871 Chicago, it is doubtful that you could have found a man in more pleasant circumstances than 44-year-old Barton Edsall.  He and an old friend were partners in the thriving wholesale druggist firm of Hurlburt & Edsall.  He had been happily married for five years.  Friends described him as cheerful, amiable, affectionate, optimistic, and a “pure-minded Christian gentleman.”  In short, a prosperous, happy, and fortunate man.

And we all know by now what happens when prosperous, happy, and fortunate men make an appearance on my blog.

On October 5, 1871, Edsall and his wife Isabella retired to bed at around 9:30 p.m.  Their maid, who was entertaining a caller, went to bed at 11.  The cook went to sleep a few minutes later, after making sure all the doors and windows were locked.

Unfortunately, on this night there was one flaw in Edsall’s normally charmed life: he was suffering from a raging toothache.  Unable to sleep, he took some hydrate of chloral to ease the pain and gave his small son a drink of water.  Then he returned to bed.  At around four a.m., Edsall got up again, for reasons that can never be known.  Because a few minutes later, he was dying of a gunshot wound to the head.

When his wife heard two gunshots, she dashed downstairs, to find Barton lying by the open front door, bleeding profusely from his head.  A revolver lay nearby.  Four smudged fingerprints were on the door, and a second bullet was later found lodged in it.  Although a doctor was immediately summoned, by the time he arrived, Edsall was beyond all aid.

So.  The obvious question: how did Edsall go to bed a man with (teeth aside) no known problems in life, only to wind up shot to death before sunrise?  The first theory was that Edsall had heard a prowler downstairs.  When he went to investigate, the criminal shot him and fled.

The problem with this scenario is that the servants swore the front door was securely locked, and there were no signs of forced entry on that door, or any of the other doors and windows of the house.  There were some feeble suggestions that perhaps, plagued by toothache and other health problems, Edsall impulsively wandered downstairs to end it all, but no one, it seemed, was able to take the notion seriously.

There was, of course, a coroner’s inquest, which did precisely nothing to clarify the mystifying circumstances of Edsall’s death.  Mrs. Edsall testified that her husband owned a gun, but she could not say if it was the one found by his body.  She could only assume that he was killed by a burglar.

One of the Edsall servants, Margaret Green, said the front doors were open when she came downstairs after hearing the shot, but she heard no one running away.  She also said that Mr. Edsall had a gun (she had recently seen him shooting at a rat,) but she also had no idea if it was the one found at the scene.  (In case you were wondering, it does not seem to have ever been proven that the gun near Edsall’s body was the gun that killed him.)  Nowadays, the fingerprints on the front door would have been valuable clues, but in 1871, they were worthless as evidence in court.

Edsall’s business partner (and brother-in-law) Horace Hurlbut, scoffed at the idea that Barton killed himself.  Edsall had never shown any sign of “mental derangement”; in fact, Hurlbut described his friend as possessing “a remarkably even temperament.”  There was conflicting medical testimony about whether or not the amount of hydrate of chloral Edsall took on the fatal night could have made him temporarily insane.

The ballistics evidence was equally uncertain.  One gun expert testified that the gun could not be the one used to shoot him: the spring was broken.  Another said that on the contrary, the broken spring would have made it easy for the gun to fire accidentally.  The coroner testified that he had had the bullets examined, and he did not believe the bullet found in Edsall’s head and the one removed from the door were from the same gun.

All this left the inquest jury in a fine muddle.  Some jurors plumped for the “burglar” scenario, others suggested that Edsall had accidentally shot himself.  However, no one in Chicago was entirely happy with either theory.  It was proposed that a reward be offered, in the hope that someone would come forward with information that would help to clear the mystery.  There was talk of hiring private detectives.  The whole city could think of nothing else: who killed Barton Edsall?  According to one local newspaper, “The event has created, perhaps, the most intense excitement throughout the community than has been produced by any similar occurrence for many years, and speculation will be busy on the subject, probably for some time to come.”

On October 8, Edsall was buried in his family plot in Graceland Cemetery.  That night, the infamous Great Chicago Fire began its terrifying march through the area.  It destroyed the Edsall home, the Edsall business, and, of course, most of the rest of the city.

And just like that, everyone instantly forgot about poor Barton Edsall.