The Gravesend Poisoning Case Part 2: A Fatal Bottle of Beer

It was late afternoon on a hot day in June 1878, in the little village of Gravesend, near Brooklyn. In the two story Hubbard cottage, the lady of the house was wanting her bottle of ale.

Maria L. Hubbard was a sturdy-looking Englishwoman in her early 50s. She had been married for about 3 years to Samuel Hubbard, a wealthy farmer a decade her senior. Samuel was either her third or fourth husband. Maria Louisa Allen had emigrated to the US in the late 1840s with her brother Joseph. She had $40,000 of her own from running a restaurant in Fulton Market (in Manhattan) for many years. Maria had invested wisely in real estate and had an income of $1200 a year. She first married John B. Powell in the early 1860s, then Horace B. Hinman and possibly also a man named Crawford.

In the early 1870s, as Mrs. Hinman, she had followed her niece Mary Attlesey* to Gravesend village, where Mary was housekeeper to James A. Williamson (another wealthy, elderly farmer). Maria became Samuel Hubbard's housekeeper. With an income of $1200 a year, it is unclear why Maria took what might be seen as a rather unrewarding job. But she did.

Both Mary and Maria ended up marrying their respective elderly farmers. The gossips said that Maria had been a bit more than a housekeeper for some time, though. Samuel had been married before, too, to Jane Ann Brower, a widow who had apparently left him 6 months after their marriage. He was finally granted a divorce from Jane Ann in 1871 [see note in Sources].

Maria's in-laws had "bitterly opposed" the marriage and two in particular seemed to hate her: Samuel's nephew Cabe Stryker, and his sister Elizabeth (Hubbard) Johnson, who found Maria "repugnant." Samuel was close to both Cabe and Elizabeth, but they wouldn't go near Maria's house. He went to them. And when he came home, he was very hostile to her, she had told friends.But most other people liked Maria: she was kindly, and fond of a good time at Coney Island or at the local beach.

She was also fond of her daily bottle of beer. On Tuesday, June 18, 1878, at about 5 pm, Maria sent her companion Lizzie Lusk to the cellar to get her a drink. Lizzie, age 19, was called Maria's "niece" or "companion" but does not appear to have been related to her by blood. Lusk had recently joined the Hubbard household early in 1878, but it is not clear why. She was in the cellar alone with the bottle of beer and had the opportunity to put something in it. Lusk was never seriously considered as a suspect even though "no one handled the beer except her." Samuel had also just been down in the cellar before Lizzie went to get the beer.

Maria took a sip and immediately complained of a strange taste, saying that she was poisoned. She asked Lizzie to test it but she said no, she'd never drunk beer before and didn't wish to start (and presumably did not wish to be poisoned, as well).

Maria was ill in minutes, and within an hour she was dying. As it turned out, there was strychnine in the beer. Strychnine poisoning is quick and agonizing, affecting the victim within 20 minutes and killing them within a couple of hours. Some people thought it odd that Maria noticed the poison so soon, and thought perhaps it was a case of suicide (i.e. that she had known in advance, or slipped it into the bottle herself, which seems unlikely).

Dr. Van Cleek was called, and Maria asked for her closest friend, Mrs. Hicks.** Just before dying she shouted that Cabe Stryker had done this to her.

Samuel, Cabe and Elizabeth Lusk were arrested, then released because no one knew if anything was in the beer or not. Lusk said she was never going back to that house, not even "if the house were built with gold."

Finally, a Professor Eaton tested the remaining beer from the bottle on six unlucky frogs. He also examined the contents of Maria's stomach found both it and the beer contained strychnine. Samuel was rearrested, and removed to jail in Brooklyn. But a Grand Jury failed to find enough evidence to proceed with a trial, and he was released once again, to resume a quiet life in the village, where he died in 1893.

The Hubbard case was never solved.

Starred Notes

*Mary Attlesey was Maria's English-born niece, who was a relative of the Robert H. Attlesey (b ca 1845) of Brooklyn who witnessed Joseph Allen's Naturalization petition in 1863 (Joseph was Maria's brother). She and Maria had had a falling-out after Maria married Samuel. Mary was the chief benefactor of Maria's earlier, lost will, as was Mary's natural son, whom Maria had adopted for some unknown reason. Maria adopted Mary Attlesey's son John Henry Attlesey, renaming him John Henry Powell (she was Maria Powell at the time).

Robert H. Attlesey has been tentatively identified as the son of William and Alice (Martin) Attlesey of Soham, Cambridgeshire, England - and thus the nephew of my husband's third great grandmother, Sarah (Attlesey) Haylock of Soham (and first cousin of her daughter Sarah, his great great grandmother). I'm still not clear on the connection of the Attleseys to the Allens, though there were Allens in Soham. But they seem to have been fairly closely related.

**Maria's best friend in Gravesend was Cornelia Hicks, wife of Thomas Hicks, Jr (who served on the jury for this case). Thomas was a 5th cousin of my great great grandfather Daniel Losee Hicks.

SOURCES

From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

"The Gravesend Poisoning Case," Jun. 20, 1878, p. 2.
"Poisoned: A Startling Tragedy at Gravesend," Jun. 20, 1878, p. 4.
"Mysterious: The Suspicious Death of Mrs. Maria L. Hubbard," Jun. 21, 1878, p. 4.
"The Gravesend Case," Jun. 22, 1878, p. 2.
"Unsolved: The Supposed Mysterious Poisoning Case at Gravesend," Jun. 22, 1878, p. 4.
"Strychnine," Jun. 26, 1878, p. 4.
"Mrs. Hubbard: The Mysterious Gravesend Poisoning Case," Jun. 26, 1878, p. 2.
"Discharged: Hubbard: The Alleged Gravesend Poisoner," Jul. 27, 1878, p. 4.
"The Hubbard Poisoning Case," Jun. 27, 1878, p. 4.
"Mrs. Hubbard," Jun. 30, 1878, p. 4.
"Mrs. Hubbard," Jul. 1, 1878, p. 4.

From the New York Times:

"A Farmer's Wife Poisoned," Jun. 20, 1878, p. 5.
"The Gravesend Mystery," Jun. 21, 1878, p. 8.

Clues to Samuel Hubbard's ancestry - and the name of his first wife - are from this Pedigree Research File at Familysearch.

One mention of the Samuel Hubbard-Jane Ann Brower divorce is made in a notice in the Eagle on Aug. 18, 1871 which states that Samuel Hubbard of Gravesend was given an unconditional divorce from Jane Ann Hubbard. She was the widow of Charles B. Brower of Brooklyn, whose curious Mexican War adventures merit a separate post.

IMAGES

Image of bottle of strychnine from the Inventing Ourselves exhibition, Lemelson Center, Smithsonian Institution.

Image of beer bottle from Antique Beer Bottle Hall of Fame.