tuberculosis Archives - New England Historical Society

In 1908, police in New Hampshire drew up a complaint against Madelon Kenmore, a woman they knew as Madelon Coburn. The charge was bigamy.

Born in 1878 as Madelon Kenmore, she claimed English heritage but grew up in Astoria, Long Island. In 1905, at just 17, she eloped to Albany with Irving Looker, a young son of a diamond merchant. So why, the police wanted to know, had she married a New Hampshire minister named William Coburn in 1908?

Rev. William Coburn ran a sanitarium in Wakefield, N.H. where he sold patent medicines and treated certain patients. He was financially successful. But perhaps not too wise in the ways of love.

A widower, Coburn fell in love with one of his young patients, Medelon Kenmore. However, Madelon did not inform Coburn that she was already married. She had threatened divorce, even hired private investigators to catch Irving Looker having an affair. But she had not completed the process.

When confronted with the charge of bigamy, Madelon at first denied it. She swore she had never married Coburn. Coburn’s sons supported their father’s claim.

Further, the Rev. Orrin Baker swore that he had performed the marriage ceremony. Not only that, he said, he had received a letter from a woman calling herself Madelon Looker, asking that he destroy all records of the marriage because her husband was accusing her of bigamy.

The Love Triangle

Soon, Madelon was at the center of a standoff. William Coburn declared that he still loved Madelon. He would make their marriage legal if she would go ahead with her divorce from Irving Looker. Irving said virtually the same thing. If she would drop the divorce matter and have her marriage to Coburn annulled, he would gladly reunite with her.

Then Madelon’s lawyer changed her story dramatically. She had, in fact, married Coburn. The evidence was clear. But the marriage happened when she was being treated at his sanitarium under hypnosis. He had married her while she was completely under the spell of hypnosis and could not recall any of it.

Whatever evidence she had was enough to persuade New Hampshire’s Gov. Charles Floyd to drop any attempt to extradite Madelon to face bigamy charges.

Gov. Charles Floyd

Having cleared away the New Hampshire charges, Madelon’s lawyer returned to the court to announce her decision. She was pressing ahead with her divorce from Irving Looker. She presented evidence that he had been at a hotel with another woman.

Finally in April of 1909 the court found for Madelon and she won her divorce. They cleared the way for Madelon to return to Rev. Coburn.

The Bumpy Road to Love

Not so fast, her lawyer said. His next stop was New Hampshire where he intended to have Madelon’s marriage to Coburn annulled. It would give her a fresh start at age 30.

Rev. Coburn took a prolonged trip west to avoid additional embarrassment, though it’s doubtful he outran the story. The hypnotized bride made headlines across the country.

Madelon Kenmore Looker Coburn made one more trip down the matrimonial aisle. This time she married an engineer from Long Island, Edward Le Compte, whose wife had left him for their chauffeur. Madelon’s first marriages were tame compared to the Le Compte union.

Madelon was a wealthy woman, both in her own right and because of her husbands. She drove in a bright yellow limousine and lived well.

But her relations with Edward quickly grew tense. They fought over a house he gave to his first wife. They were arrested for arguing so loudly in the street that they were declared a nuisance and sentenced to 30 days in jail each.

The Last Lawsuits of Madelon Kenmore

In 1912, the couple began slugging it out in court for a divorce. Edward managed to convince the court to lock Madelon up in an insane asylum. After three days she was released and proceeded to court to charge he was dishonest and scheming against her.

While locked away he had stolen furniture and silver from the house. Madelon accused Edward of trying to strangle her. Her father bailed his son-in-law out of jail.

Postcard view of Wakefield (Sanbornville is a village within the town)

Madelon’s family, meanwhile, said they felt she was mentally unsound. A psychiatrist said she suffered from “litigating paranoia,” a disease that prompted her to incessantly file lawsuits against others. He also noted that Madelon relied heavily on patent medication with ingredients that could explain some erratic behaviors.

The couple tried a brief reconciliation, and Madelon borrowed $6,000 to help Edward relaunch his career. Edward absconded with the money. He would return home later, sick with tuberculosis. Madelon nursed him for several months until he was so sick he had to be hospitalized. He died in the hospital, though not before he wrote to her and asked forgiveness.

If you liked this article, you might enjoy In the Gilded Age, Marriages Began in NY and Ended in RI, America’s Divorce Capital. This story was updated in 2022.

Cornelia Fly Rod Crosby accomplished what legions of outdoor sportsmen can only dream of, and she did it in the 1890s: She made a living at fly-fishing and writing about it. In the process, she attracted thousands of people to the Maine woods to hunt and fish for a uniquely Maine experience, something L.L. Bean would eventually capitalize on.

Postcard showing Fly Rod Crosby with fly rod and fish.

Fly Rod Crosby was six feet tall, scandalized people with her dress, caught 200 fish in a day and became the first licensed Maine guide. Born before the Civil War, she conquered poor health with her vigorous outdoor life and lived past World War II. She befriended Annie Oakley, shot the first caribou legally in Maine and became an advocate for catch-and-release fishing as well as less-restrictive clothing for women.

She described herself more modestly:

I am a plain woman of uncertain age, standing six feet in my stockings…I scribble a bit for various sporting journals, and I would rather fish any day than go to heaven.

Phllips, Maine

She was born Nov. 10, 1854, to Lemuel Crosby and Thurza Cottle Porter Crosby in Phillips, Maine, home of the Rangeley Lakes. Her father suffered from poor health and died of tuberculosis when Fly Rod was two.

She and her brother Ezekiel also had sickly constitutions, and Fly Rod took a fresh air cure — spending as much time outdoors as possible. She inherited $600 in her teens and spent it on two years at St. Catherine’s Hall, an Episcopal girls’ finishing school in Augusta.

During the 1870s she worked as a bank teller near Phillips. Her health failed from time to time, and she spent months recuperating.

Sometime before 1878 she had a lung ailment from which she wasn’t expected to recover. She was carried to the foot of Mount Blue to try the healing power of nature. It not only worked, but she caught her first trout.

In 1886, a friend gave her a 5 oz. bamboo rod. She got good at fishing. One day she caught 200 trout.

She then got a job as a telegrapher in Phillips, spending as much time as she could fishing in the Rangeley Lakes.

Fly Rod’s Notebook

Fly Rod Crosby

She began to write up stories about her fishing adventures, which she submitted to O.M. Moore at the Phillips Phonograph. Moore gave her the nickname Fly Rod, and Fly Rod’s Notebook was born. It was a chatty account of fishing adventures and misadventures with information about where to stay and what the sporting camps were like. Fly Rod’s Notebook became a syndicated column appearing in newspapers in New York, Boston and Chicago.

She caught the attention of the Maine Central Railroad, which was looking to replace its lost freight business with tourists. Maine’s population was moving to the city as young people left their farms to work in factories and mills. The railroad paid Fly Rod to promote Maine’s outdoor industry. It was Fly Rod who came up with the slogan ‘Maine — the Nation’s Playground.’

She organized Maine’s exhibit at the First Annual Sportsmen’s Show at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1895. At the second annual show she caused a sensation. She wore a Paris-inspired green leather hunting outfit with a skirt that stopped short at mid-calf, matching tall green lace-up boots, a tailored jacket with a red sweater and a peaked red and green hat. Record crowds came to watch her demonstrate fly fishing and praise the virtues of Maine’s forests in front of a log cabin stuffed with deer heads and fish tanks with live Maine salmon and trout.

At that 1896 sportsman’s show she met Annie Oakley, who became a lifelong friend.

The First Maine Guide

By the mid -1890s she worked in banks in the winter when her health permitted and fished in the summer. She caught 2,500 trout in the summer of 1893, the ‘happiest and best’ year of her life. She probably released most of them as she was one of the first advocates of catch-and-release fishing.

In 1897, the Maine Fish and Game Association hired her to lobby the Maine Legislature for a state-run system to register the state’s hunting and fishing guides. On March 19, 1897, the Legislature passed the bill requiring guides to buy a $1 license every year and file a one-page annual report. Maine registered 1,316 hunting guides that year and gave Fly Rod the first license.

Postcard ca. 1920 of Rangeley Lake

She organized Maine’s entry at the Boston Food Fair that year. Wearing her green suit, she brought the log cabin, stuffed deer and a 107 lb. squash. Her mother demonstrated spinning and Lucy Nicolar showed how to make Penobscot baskets.

She was sidelined two years after she wrenched her knee while boarding a train, and tuberculosis attacked the injury.

In 1926 she lost sight in one eye and couldn’t hunt or fish. She spent the spring of 1926 in St. Mary’s Hospital in Lewiston, Maine, and converted to Catholicism. She still fished in the Rangeley lakes in her 80s.

Cornelia Fly Rod Crosby died on Armistice Day, 1946, a day after her 93rd birthday. In 2012, the first 20 miles of the Fly Rod Crosby trail opened. Find out more here.

With thanks to More Than Petticoats, Remarkable Maine Women by Kate Kennedy. This story was updated in 2023.

tuberculosis

The Hypnotized Bride of 1908 – Madelon Kenmore Looker Coburn Le Compte