Triple Murder in Battle Creek.
A SPIRITUALIST MOTHER SENDS THREE OF HER CHILDREN TO THE "SPIRIT WORLD."
While we continually have occasion to notice the increase of depravity and crime all over the land, we must expect that sometimes it will come near our own doors. The following horrible events which have just transpired in this city, now come in to help swell the great sum total of human wickedness. They afford, moreover, a fair illustration of the fearfully corrupting tendencies of spirit intercourse. The circumstances are summed up by the correspondent of a Detroit paper as follows: "The quiet city of Battle Creek was thrown into great excitement on Saturday last by the discovery of the dead bodies of three children under circumstances which strongly induced suspicions of foul play. A coroner's jury was at once summoned, and a thorough investigation of the affair was commenced, but was not concluded when our informant left. The inquiry has developed a condition of social affairs which is almost too much for credulity to swallow. That, in this latter half of the nineteenth century, in the midst of a Christian community, persons of both sexes should herd together like cattle, in furtherance of a wild religious fanaticism, almost surpasses belief. When they go still further, and add to their previous crimes the most heinous one known to the laws of God and man, the community in which they live may be pardoned for exhibiting symptoms of unusual excitement. "The circumstances of the case, so far as developed, appear to be about as follows: Last spring a Mrs. Leonard left her husband at Ypsilanti and went to Battle Creek, taking with her five children, two by Leonard, and three by a former husband. It seems that she was a believer in the doctrines of modern Spiritualism, and was led to desert her husband through instructions from the spirit world. She herself possessed the power of communicating with spirits, being in the parlance of that sect a 'medium.' By advice from the same supernatural source she dropped the name of Leonard, and being matrimonially joined, according to the ordinances in vogue in the spiritual world, to her first husband, again assumed his name and called herself Mrs. Haviland. When she reached Battle Creek with her children she had $500 in money, and set up in housekeeping by herself. About this period another character appears upon the stage in the person of a Dr. Baker, of Adrian, who was also a spiritual medium of great repute among his sect. Dr. Baker boarded with Mrs. Haviland. The house was a great resort for Spiritualists, there being many of that sect in and about Battle Creek, and 'circles' and 'seances' were the principal occupation of the gifted doctor and his pupils, for it appears that the Haviland house was a sort of spiritual academy for the training up of female mediums through the spiritual knowledge and gifts of the doctor. A Miss Merrit, of Ionia, a medium, was of the household, and a Miss Hannas, of Battle Creek, a young lady of seventeen years of age, was a boarder in the family. She was developing her gifts, with the help of other mediums, as a 'test medium;' that is, the veracity of spirits in general, and the loquacious ones in particular, were tested through her superior gifts. It was said that she 'developed' more rapidly than any test medium ever known in these parts, being quick-witted and shrewd. This academy went on with swimming success through the Summer and Fall, and furnished incontrovertible spiritual evidence for the conversion of the unbelieving. "About four weeks ago the Doctor borrowed $600 of Miss Merrit and bought a lot in the outskirts of the town, upon which he built his castle in the shape of a board shanty with one room. Into this shanty with one room the Doctor moved the three women above mentioned, and the five children, and they all lived together, continuing to 'develop' the young lady as a test medium. Wonderful things were related of her powers in that capacity. She could go into a trance, and when she arrived back again to this mundane sphere she would relate wonderful things of what she had seen and heard. She had seen and talked with any deceased friend you might name; and could describe him or her exactly as he or she appeared in this life, the dress, size, color of hair and eyes, "Wi mair o' horrible and awful,
Which e'en to name wad be unlawful."
"The party were getting ready to travel and astonish the world by a public display of their intimacy with the spirits. Mrs. Haviland had procured a place for her two children named Leonard, and told the other three that she would take care of them. On Saturday afternoon last, some children living in the neighborhood were playing near the shanty, when the two Leonard children made their appearance. On being asked where their older brothers and sister were, they said they were dead. The children ran home and told their parents, some of whom immediately visited the shanty, and found the report to be true. The woman Leonard alias Haviland, said that the youngest, a girl aged four years, died on Thursday about noon; the second, a boy six years, died on Friday morning at ten o'clock; and the third, a boy eight years old, died on Friday afternoon at five o'clock. Miss Merrit says she asked the Doctor what they should do with the children if they should die, and he said he would make a box and bury them on his lot. They claimed that the children died with scrofula. It was generally believed, however, that these mediums, wishing to travel and not be encumbered with the children, determined quietly to remove them to a better sphere. Considering that they could be with them and enjoy their society quite as much in the spirit world, without the inconvenience of taking care of them and providing them with bread and butter and clothes, the plan no doubt, seemed a very sensible one. "A post mortem examination of the bodies of the children was made by Drs. Cox, French, and Saunders, the result of which was, that the children were healthy, and had the appearance of being poisoned. The stomachs were taken out by the doctors, and the contents were in process of being analyzed when our informant left.39The Coroner's jury were awaiting the analyzation before deciding upon their verdict. The parties had been placed under arrest until the facts of the case could be more fully investigated. The affair naturally created considerable excitement in the town, and the greatest indignation was manifested toward the inhuman mother who could perpetrate such a deed upon her own offspring." The wretched mother, as we learn from the last Battle Creek Journal, has since made a full confession of her guilt, stating that she administered to them arsenic. The analysis of the contents of the stomachs of the children, showed the presence of arsenic, thus corroborating her testimony. In her confession, she thus states the motive by which she was actuated in the commission of the foul deed. "When I looked forward to the time when my children should become men and women, I feared for them; that they would have to suffer for transgressing the laws of the land, and I thought as I had been the author of their existence, in a measure, it was better to send them to the Spirit World while they were innocent. If any one had to suffer, I would do it instead of them."