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Lydia Sherman, the Derby Poisoner, Commits the Horror of the Century

Lydia Sherman had an unfortunate addiction to murder. She went on a decades-long killing spree in New York and Connecticut, poisoning at least eight children and three of her husbands.

Lydia Sherman

Her sensational trial in 1872 resulted in newspaper headlines that called her “America’s Queen Killer,” “The Poison Fiend,” “The Modern-Day Lucretia Borgia” or simply, “The Derby Poisoner.”

While awaiting trial, she wrote a best-selling confession, called, The Poison Fiend!: Life, Crimes, and Conviction of Lydia Sherman, (the Modern Lucretia Borgia,) Recently Tried in New Haven, Conn., for Poisoning Three Husbands and Eight of Her Children : Her Life in Full! Exciting Account of Her Trial–the Fearful Evidence : the Most Startling and Sensational Series of Crimes Ever Committed in this Country : Her Conviction and Confession.

Lydia Sherman

The childhood of Lydia Sherman offers few clues to her emergence as a serial killer. She was born Lydia Danbury on Christmas Eve, 1824, in Burlington, N.J. A year after her birth, her mother died, and she went to live on her uncle’s farm until she turned 16. Then she went to live with her brother in New Brunswick.

She was slim and pretty, with blue eyes, dark hair and porcelain skin. She also had a strong attachment to the Methodist church. At 18, she attended a Methodist dinner and met Edward Struck, a widowed blacksmith with six children. Shortly afterward, he proposed marriage. She said ‘yes.’

They set up housekeeping in New York City and had eight children of their own. With such a large family to support, Edward Struck decided he needed more income. So he got a job as a New York City police officer. But a few years into the job, witnesses charged him with cowardice during a hotel robbery in Manhattan. Edward Struck lost his job.

How It Started

Edward Struck sank into depression, refusing to leave the apartment or his bed. Lydia decided to put him out of his misery.

One day she went to the drugstore to buy arsenic, easy to obtain as a rat-killing poison in the 19^th century. She stirred a thimbleful into Edward’s oatmeal – though a few grains will kill a man – and after several agonizing hours he died. First his throat burned, then he suffered excruciating abdominal pains and diarrhea, then convulsions and finally death.

Months earlier, their two-year-old daughter Lydia contracted measles but died of similar symptoms. Her mother never admitted to killing her, though she confessed to killing eight other children. .

Child Killer

As the Civil War raged, Lydia created carnage in her own household. Without any means of support and young children to feed, Lydia decided her youngest three — Martha Ann, 6; Edward, Jr., 4 and William, 9 months old — “could do nothing for me or for themselves.” She decided to put them out of the way the same way she had disposed of their father. Less than six weeks after killing Edward Struck, Lydia poisoned her three children.

Three of her older children stayed alive, at least for a while, by finding work to support the family. But then George, 14, contracted lead poisoning from his job as a painter. He took to his bed, a fatal mistake. His mother gave him arsenic in his tea.

Lydia’s 12-year-old daughter Ann Eliza was the next to go, as she didn’t have a job and had always been sickly. John, 16, had moved out of the house, which probably saved his life. Eighteen-year-old Lydia, the last child living at home, had a job as a retail clerk. But then she fell ill and had to stay in bed. Soon, her mother got rid of her the same way she got rid of the others.

Then she got a job as a nurse.

Move to Connecticut

By the end of the Civil War, Lydia’s stepson Cornelius Struck grew suspicious about Lydia and shared his concern with the district attorney. The DA promised an investigation, but nothing happened.

Confessionaal best-seller by Lydia Sherman

When the Civil War ended, Lydia got a job selling sewing machines in New York City. She met John Curtiss, a customer impressed with the 41-year-old’s nursing experience. In 1867, he hired her to take care of his elderly mother in Stratford, Conn.

After eight months with the old lady, she encountered a rich widower named Dennis Hurlburt in the local grocery store. She still had her looks and enough charm to convince Hurlburt he needed her as his housekeeper. She accepted the job, and soon he asked her to marry him.

On Nov. 22, 1868, Lydia married Dennis Hurlburt and made sure he wrote her into his will. Fourteen months into the marriage, she noticed his hands shaking while he shaved for church. He said he felt dizzy, and couldn’t shake it off.

She decided he suffered from some malady, so she put him out of his suffering with a large dose of arsenic in his clam chowder. Three excruciating days later, Hurlburt died, leaving Lydia $20,000 worth of real estate and $10,000 in cash.

Eight weeks later, she met a Derby, Conn., factory mechanic named Horatio Sherman, a recent widower with four children. They married within a few months later, and she moved to Derby.

Lydia Sherman Unmasked

Horatio Sherman, unaware of his wife’s murderous proclivities, drank heavily and spent her money freely. One day, while drunk, he ranted that he wished his sickly infant son Frankie would die to end his suffering.

George Frederick Barker, who discovered the arsenic used by Lydia Sherman

Lydia Sherman took the hint, and mixed a little arsenic into the baby’s milk. He died quickly. The next month, her 14-year-old stepdaughter Ada came down with the flu. Doctors couldn’t help her but Lydia Sherman knew how to take care of her.

The death of his beloved daughter caused Horatio Sherman to go on a bender. Lydia decided to make her husband sick of liquor, so she spiked a bottle of brandy with arsenic. When he took to his bed, she left the brandy by his bedside.

When Dr. J.C. Beardsley came to treat Horatio, he grew suspicious of his strange symptoms. Horatio, inevitably, died, and the doctor asked Lydia Sherman if he could order a post mortem. She agreed.

Beardsley sent Horatio Sherman’s organs to Yale for analysis. Sure enough, Yale professor George Frederick Barker found large quantities of arsenic in Horatio Sherman’s body.

Autopsies performed on Dennis Hurlburt and Frankie and Ada Sherman found more arsenic.

Arrest and Trial

Lydia Sherman had moved to New Brunswick to live with her family, but on June 7, 1872, police arrested her for murder. They took her to New Haven to await trial.

Her trial began on April 16, 1872 and lasted eight days. Lydia Sherman appeared prim and proper in court, wearing a black alpaca dress, a shawl, gloves, a straw hat with a thin veil. She steadfastly claimed her innocence. But the jury, faced with overwhelming evidence, convicted her of the second-degree murder of Horatio Sherman.

Tabloids called it the Horror of the Century.

Five years into her prison sentence, she pretended to have a serious illness and escaped. She got a job as a housekeeper to a rich widower in Providence. He survived his employee, probably because authorities tracked her down after a week and sent her back to prison in Wethersfield, Conn..

Lydia Sherman died on May 16, 1878, from cancer. No one gave her any arsenic to put her out of her misery.

With thanks to Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Connecticut History by Ray Bendici. This story was updated in 2022.

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William Hull Tries To Save Nathan Hale, Then Himself

As a young man, William Hull redeemed his friend Nathan Hale’s image. As an old man, Hull desperately tried to repair his own.

William Hull

He was born June 24, 1753, in Derby, Conn., to a wealthy landowner Joseph Hull III and Eliza Clark Hull, a descendant of the Mayflower’s mate.

William Hull graduated from Yale College in 1772, where he befriended Nathan Hale.

William Hull and Nathan Hale

After graduation, they parted ways, both to teach school for a year. Hull studied law in Litchfield, Conn., with Tapping Reeve. His legal career was cut short when the American Revolution broke out and he was elected captain of a company from Derby. During the war, Hull revived his friendship with Hale, also a captain. They marched together from New London, Conn., to the Siege of Boston, and then to New York City.

There, Hale volunteered to spy on the British positions for George Washington.

Hull tried to talk him out of it. He asked Hale, Who respects the character of a spy? “Should you undertake the enterprise, your short, bright career, would close with an ignonimous death,” Hull said.

Hale, of course, was discovered with drawings and maps of key British fortifications (by Robert Rogers, no less). The British questioned him and hanged him the next morning.

He went to his death with dignity and composure. Before he was hanged, he said,

I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged that my only regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.

Or he said,

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

A British engineer named John Montresor witnessed Hale’s execution. Later that day he carried a message under a white flag to Washington’s headquarters. Montresor told Hull about Hale’s impressive behavior and quoted his words on the gallows as: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

Making a Hero

William Hull publicized those words and transformed Nathan Hale into a national hero rather than an obscure 21-year-old schoolteacher who failed in a disgraceful mission.

William Hull then rose to lieutenant colonel, having fought in eight key battles during the war, including White Plains, Saratoga and Stony Point.

He married a wealthy woman, Sarah Fuller, and moved to Newton, Mass. Hull raised a family, including a nephew, Isaac Hull, who he adopted as a son. He had a distinguished legal career as judge, lawmaker and member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts.

Michigan Governor

In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson appointed William Hull governor of the new territory of Michigan. Seven years later, with the War of 1812 looming, President James Madison wanted to appoint him brigadier general of the newly created Army of the Northwest to defend the territory from British and Indian attacks. Hull was nearly 60 years old and declined. Another man accepted the post, but he fell ill and Hull reluctantly took his place.

Hull’s army was undisciplined and communication was poor. He made an early blunder because he didn’t know war had been declared. He sent a schooner full of supplies and plans for an attack up the river to Detroit, where the British, who did know war was declared, captured it.

Believing his Army vastly outnumbered, Hull then committed a near-fatal blunder. He surrendered Fort Detroit, fearing an Indian massacre of women and children. He took the blame for the ignominious retreat.

The surrender at Detroit

Hull’s grandson, theologian James Freeman Clarke, described what happened:

He probably foresaw that he must face a terrible ordeal. The whole country appeared to be roused against him, and Hull at once became the best-hated man in America. A court-martial was appointed.

William Hull, Vindicated?

Hull, found guilty of cowardice and neglect of duty, was ordered shot. Madison, however, pardoned him because of his Revolutionary service. He lived the rest of his life in Newton, Mass., trying to restore his good name.

He wrote two memoirs explaining his side of the story, which helped sway public opinion to his side. His supporters held a dinner in his honor in Boston in May 1825, shortly before he died. In June, the Marquis de Lafayette, touring the United States, visited Hull. He told him,

We both have suffered contumely and reproach; but our characters are vindicated; let us forgive our enemies and die in Christian love and peace with all mankind.

Some historians have argued Hull was unfairly made a scapegoat for the humiliating loss of Detroit.

William Hull died Nov. 29, 1825.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Farm Auction in Derby, Conn., 1940

The farm auction was a sad but common sight across the United States from the mid-1920s through the 1930s. Though New England farmers didn’t suffer as much as those in the South and Midwest, plenty of them lost their farms to a combination of mortgage debt, overexpansion and falling prices for their products.

Some historians say Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal won support from the public because of his programs to help farmers. Roosevelt, a shrewd communicator, made sure his small army of government photographers captured farmers’ distress. He did it to build public support for continued government intervention in agriculture.

A photographer named Jack Delano took these photos of a farm auction in Derby, Conn., in September 1940.

Derby Farm Auction by Jack Delano. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Delano worked for the Farm Security Administration, a New Deal program that later evolved into the Office of War Information. Photographers for the FSA/OWI took iconic photos of America during the Great Depression and World War II. Other well-known photographers for the agency included Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks.

E. S. Beardsley in action. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Farm Auction Epidemic

The farm foreclosure crisis began with a heady optimism that followed World War I. Prices for farm products rose, and a mania to buy farmland seized America. Many farmers took out bank loans in the 1920s to pay for land and equipment. Then, when prices plummeted during the Great Depression, farmers couldn’t afford to repay the loans.

Between 1929 and 1933, a third of all U.S. farmers lost their farms to foreclosure.

Connecticut didn’t suffer quite as much as the Upper Midwest or the South. In 1926, for example, 9.9 percent of Connecticut farmers lost their farms to foreclosure. But in Montana, 61 percent of farms went back to the banks that same year. For the next five years, the percentage of foreclosures in Connecticut ranged between three and six percent. But then during 1932 , the worst year of the Great Depression, banks foreclosed on 8.9 percent of Connecticut farms.

Two harnesses. auctioned off. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Things improved slightly for Connecticut farmers in 1933, another bad Depression year. Lost to foreclosure were 7.1 percent of the state’s farms. That year, In 1933, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The new law gave price supports to farmers so they could have decent purchasing power — and keep their farms. Only 5.2 percent of Connecticut farms got taken back by the banks that year.

Foreclosures then dropped steadily. By 1940, when local auctioneer E.S. Beardsley sold off Anthony Yacek’s farm and household goods, only 3.2 percent of Connecticut farms went to foreclosure.

Dress model and furniture. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Polish Farmers

Anthony Yacek had Polish ancestry like many residents of Derby, the smallest municipality in Connecticut.

Many Poles came to New England to escape poverty and starvation around the turn of the century. In a typical pattern, they found work in textile mills and then used their savings to buy cheap land viewed as useless for farming. The Polish farmers turned the land into thriving onion and tobacco farms.

Farm Auction Photos

Suffering through the Derby farm auction. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Delano’s photos capture an in-between time in rural America, when the outlook brightened for farmers even as the country headed for war.

Women, above, wait while their husbands bid at the auction. They look like they’d rather be elsewhere. Perhaps they knew the Yaceks and found the farm auction depressing. Or perhaps they’d lost their own farms.

Lunch. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Onlookers brought their own food, made at home no doubt, and sat on the ground during a lunch break.

E.S. Beardsley. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Delano called auctioneer E.S. Beardsley a typical New Englander. “A great talker, he is active in local politics and in church work,” Delano’s caption reads.

Old couple. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

“An old couple listening to the auctioneer at the sale of Mr. Anthony Yacek’s farm,” read the caption by Delano, 26 at the time.

This story was updated in 2022. With thanks to Alston, L. J. (1983). Farm Foreclosures in the United States During the Interwar Period. The Journal of Economic History, 43(4), 885–903. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2121054.

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Jim Aparo, Batman’s Greatest Ally

Growing up in New Britain, Conn., Jim Aparo always wanted to be an artist. With only one semester of art school, he became a comic book legend, illustrating the exploits of Batman for more than a decade.

In the late 1980s, Aparo illustrated one of the greatest Batman comic-book novels, A Death in the Family, considered a milestone in American comic book art.

Jim Aparo

He was born Aug. 24, 1932, just before the dawn of the Golden Age of Comic Books. Superman first appeared when he was six. Aparo grew up loving the cheap, colorful magazines. Many, however, viewed them as disreputable. They were called ‘sadistic drivel’ and ‘the ten-cent plague.’

In 1954, a U.S. Senate subcommittee held televised hearings on how comic books led to juvenile delinquency. The next year, housewives in Norwich, Conn., held a public comic book burning.

None of that deterred Jim Aparo. He took art classes at New Britain High School while studying and copying comic books at home. He also took a semester at the Hartford Art School, but mostly he taught himself. After high school he started doing work for an advertising agency. Meanwhile, he submitted drawings to comic book publishers. For years he got nothing but rejection.

Finally around 1966 Jim Arparo got his big break. His work was accepted by Charlton Comics in Derby, Conn, a comic book publisher that existed from 1946 to 1985.

A Jim Aparo cover of a Batman comic

The Charlton Comics editor gave him his first assignment: a teenage comic strip character called Miss Bikini Luv. Eventually he was working full-time for Charlton. When his editor, Dick Giordano, moved to DC Comics in 1968, he brought Jim Aparo along with him and assigned him Aquaman.

Superheroes

That ultimately led to a 10-year stint illustrating a series that featured Batman, often with another DC superhero – a real challenge for an artist to research and render a different superhero every month. He also drew The Brave and the Bold, Green Arrow and the Spectre.

Aparo was an early adopter of the work-from-home ethos, producing most of his work at his home in Southington, Conn.

He won the Shazam Award from the Academy of Comic Book Arts for his 1972 work on The Demon Within for the House of Mystery series.

He illustrated his last cover in 2004 and died at home on July 19, 2005.

Images: Jim Aparo By MichaelNetzer – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16861406. A Death in the Family uploaded by Jimmy to Flickr, CC by SA 2.0. This story was updated in 2022.

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