Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1832. Minister, mill girl scandal rocks R.I.

The story line could be from a 21st-century made-for-television movie:

An unmarried factory worker says a prominent minister forced her to have sex, getting her pregnant. After she refuses his request to have an abortion, her body is found hanging by a cord around her neck. A note she left in her belongings says that if anything should happen to her, then the minister would know.

But the case of the Rev. Ephraim Kingsbury Avery was a real-life trial-of-the-century from 1830s Rhode Island. It also represented a challenge to The Providence Daily Journal: The key events in the case happened in Tiverton, Fall River, Bristol and Newport -- all hours from Providence at a time when news moved only as fast as a man could carry it. Papers would often publish news from anybody who sent them a letter.

The Journal's first report falls far short of the journalistic standards of 2004. The story ran on Dec. 25, 1832, four days after Sarah Maria Cornell's body was found on a Tiverton farm.

"We learn, very direct, that a murder, attended by the most aggravated circumstances, has been recently committed, in the edge of the town of Tiverton, near Fall River," the story began.

What followed was an account that did not spare lurid or incriminating details, which the editor was not even sure were true. The article concluded: "We may hope, that the report is somewhat exaggerated -- although it reaches us in 'no questionable shape.' "

The story did not name the victim, but incorrectly asserted she was from Bristol. It tried to name Avery, but called him Averill, while correctly identifying him as a Methodist minister from Bristol.

The newspaper's factual errors were pointed out in a letter from an unidentified reader, published Dec. 27. That prompted a plea from the editor: "Will some of our readers in that quarter -- acquainted with all the facts in the case -- advise us how far the statements of our informant were incorrect?"

After receiving a Fall River newspaper the next day, The Journal assured its readers (and perhaps itself) the errors were not significant. "Our informant is not likely to be impeached, in his essential statements," the editor wrote, adding, "The accused, however, should be deemed innocent, until proved guilty."

On Dec. 31, The Journal reported it had little new information from a preliminary hearing being held in Bristol, but noted that Avery had not given an alibi, though he was still promising to do so.

That prompted an angry letter the next day from one of the prosecutors, W.R. Staples, who thought newspapers should not cover the case until after a jury reached a verdict -- if a trial were ever held.

"The public mind is sufficiently excited, without the press taking any side or part in the business," Staples wrote. "My sole object is to request you to forbear publishing any statement of facts in the case referred to, until it is finally disposed of."

When the trial began in Newport in May 1833, The Journal was more reticent.

In the issue of May 7, 1833, the day the trial began, the paper had only two sentences, noting the trial was expected to start.

Courtesy of John Hay Library / Brown University

Daily coverage was hampered by the sailing time of steamships. The last left Newport each day at 3 p.m., arriving in Providence in early evening.

On May 9, The Journal listed the three judges who would sit on the case and the names of all the lawyers involved. The story concluded with an announcement that meant little news would be coming out of Newport: "The court required of the reporters their pledge of honor, that none of the proceedings of the trial should be published until its conclusion."

That changed for Journal readers on May 27. The Boston Morning Post, in defiance of the court order not to report on the trial until it was over, had begun running transcripts of each day's testimony. The judges banished the Morning Post reporter from the courtroom. Editors of other papers covering the trial, not wanting to be scooped as papers around the country copied the Morning Post's stories, rushed their accounts into print as well.

The Journal would continue running transcripts until June 10, more than a week after the jury announced its verdict of not guilty.