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April 3, 2013 29 mins

On Oct. 27, 1845 Mary Ann Bickford's body was found in her Boston boardinghouse room. Her paramour Albert J. Tirrell was eventually charged with murder. Tirrell hired Rufus Choate to defend him, and Choate claimed his client had episodes of somnambulism.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from house
stop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to our podcast.
I'm Holly Frying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And uh,
have you ever had about of sleepwalking? I have never

(00:21):
had about of sleepwalking. My brother used to when he
was very small. My parents had to put a lock
on his door so that they could get in in
an emergency, but that he could not get out and
injure himself, which is germane to our podcast today. It
totally is. The sleepwalking defense in criminal trials is not

(00:42):
entirely uncommon in modern modern trials. Medical and legal experts
are continuing to study the validity of such claims. And
did you know sleepwalking crime is actually on the rise.
It doesn't surprise me. It's one of those things where
as as people become more aware of sleep disorders and
sleep walking disorders both there's both the getting diagnosed increase

(01:05):
and the use as a defense, whether accurate or not increase. Yeah,
And we also don't um know if there is a
cultural or social trigger. Some UH experts in the field
have posited that because we live in a sort of
a more nervous, anxiety laden culture, it's actually triggering more
people to have sleepwalking disorders and sleep disorders in general.

(01:28):
So we don't know the exact root of why those
are on the rise. Those three things are all factors.
But in eighteen forty six, it was completely unheard of
to claim sleepwalking as a defense. No no one had
used that ever until Albert J. Terrell, who was on
trial and his lawyer Rufus Choke, who took a really
unorthodox approach to defending his client, and it for the time,

(01:53):
it was so out of left field that it was
almost like that it wasn't me, Like, yeah, you saw
me do it, but that was not me. But nobody
did see him do it comes up in the trial.
So the crime took place on October and Mrs Mary
and Bickford's body was found in a ceed boarding house

(02:14):
in Beacon Hill in Boston. She was only twenty one
and her body was found on the bed, partially on
the bed, partially on the floor. Uh. There are different
illustrations you can see online that kind of um put
her in slightly different places, and there's an account that
comes up in the trial really described part of her
body being on the floor. She was in a nightgown,

(02:35):
and she had a wound to the neck that had
nearly decapitated her. Uh. The bed had been set on fire,
as well as two other places in the room, and
Bickford's hair and skin were singed and burnt. Uh. An
earring was missing from one of her ears, which was
split open as though it had been pulled out, and
there was a straight razor at the foot of the bed.
Which is a pretty grizzly scene. It is pretty grizzly

(02:57):
and and a lot. There's a lot going on there.
Albert Terrell had been seen with her earlier that evening,
and a witness account also described him to speaking with
a stable keeper to try to get transport away from
the city. Now, to give a little bit of background
on these two, because this was not appairing that was

(03:17):
unknown already. That was not her first encounter with Terrell
by any means, so they were actually known to be
engaged in an affair. Both of them were married. Bickford,
who also went by Maria and some other pseudonyms at
different times, had gotten a taste for city life when
she was visiting relatives, and she actually left her husband,

(03:37):
who was in Maine, to stay in the city permanently,
and she had even written him a letter and said,
you can come and live in the city, but I'm
and we'll be husband and wife, but I'm gonna need
my freedom, kind of saying like, I will play the
part of wife, but I'm not really married to you
in my heart. Uh. So, at one point, her husband, James,
actually traveled to Boston to look for her, discovered her

(04:00):
working in a brothel, and headed back to Maine by himself,
and in corporateceedings, the prosecution stated at one point that
she had actually moved to Boston with a paramore that
she had presumably met on that first visit to the
city that was obviously not her husband. Uh And then
that man deserted her, which is what led her to prostitution.
So Mary had met Albert Terrell while working and the

(04:22):
two of them had started a very intense relationship. People
described it as both passionate and volatile. They traveled together
as a married couple, even though she was already married
and he also was married and had a wife and
a family. Uh. And on September forty five, which was
one month before the murder, Terrell had actually been charged

(04:44):
with adultery. His trial was delayed for half a year,
for six months after friends and relatives and even his
wife actually petitioned the court to delay the proceedings because
they wanted to all work together to help Albert reform
his ways. And they thought if he could, you know,
prove he was a good citizen for six months and
then go back on the adultery charge, even if he

(05:04):
um was found guilty of it, they would be a
little more lenient because he was clearly trying to mend
his ways. And the delay was granted, and then Albert
was released after you know, posting bond and he went
right back to Marian big first. So that's sort of
the history of of them as a couple. When Terrell

(05:28):
ran from Boston after the murder happened, he went to
hide with relatives in Weymouth. Then he went north to
Canada to get passage aboard a ship to go to Liverpool.
That voyage had to turn back because of bad weather,
and he got on a second ship in New York
to go to New Orleans. On December five, he was

(05:49):
arrested after a Louisian authorities got a tip that he
was aboard a vessel in the Gulf. So at that
point he's in custody and he was transported back to
Boston for the trial, and he hired Terrell, we should note,
was not a poor man. He had some wealth. His
family was well established in the shoe manufactured trade. And
he hired rufus Choate, who was a protege of Daniel Webster,

(06:12):
as his defense. And Choke was already a very high
profile figure with both the political and legal career. He
had served on the Massachusetts State House of Representatives and
the state Senate. He had been a member of the
twenty three Congress. He was well respected in legal circles.
Uh So it was really like the equivalent of hiring

(06:33):
a pretty heavy hitter lawyer. Today, everybody would have known
who he was. And Choke conceived of this novel defense
for his client, claiming that in fact, Albert was a
somnambulist and that he performed the entire murder in a
sleepwalking trance. Now that wasn't his only defense. He also
tried to discredit the possibility that he had even committed

(06:53):
the murder. But that was sort of one of the
new and novel ways that he defended his client right.
The proceedings started on March six, and according to court records,
the judges were judges Wild, Hubbard, and Dewey. A Judge
Shaw was also scheduled to be there, but he was outsick.

(07:14):
Representing the Commonwealth was Samuel D. Parker and for Terrell
rufus Choate and and us An A by Meryl Esquire.
Jurors were very quickly selected that morning. If you read
the Boston Daily Times account, it seems like they really
whipped through like war, dear and additional questioning really really quickly.

(07:34):
It took about half an hour, according to that reporter's
account of it, to select the entire jury, which if
you have ever done jury duty, it never takes just
half an hour to get everybody settled, so that was
pretty expedient. And then Parker's opening arguments uh included a
plea to the jurors to disregard any bias that they

(07:55):
might have as a result of hearing rumors about the
deceased Bickford's fashion as a woman of the night was
not really helping the case, but he openly acknowledged what
he called quote her depraved character. But he reminded the
jurors present that the law protects even the wicked as
well as the good when it comes to murder. Parker
also asserted that Terrell, who was the son of a

(08:16):
really successful shoe manufacturer, had had to get married very
young at the age of eighteen because he had probably
gotten his girlfriend pregnant. He stated, the cause of so
early a marriage in his minority, I need not state
that's part of an overall scheme to kind of chip
away at Terrell's moral image, showing that he was impetuous

(08:38):
and given to impulsive and wanton behavior. Parker further claimed
that Bickford had actually been afraid of Terrell after his
adultery arrest, because she was scared that he would be
angry that their relationship had gotten him into such trouble,
because at that point it was very public what was
going on, and again there many many people petitioning the courts,

(08:59):
so everyone knew his business at that point. The prosecution
also painted a picture of the events leading up to
the discovery of Bickford's body. Uh First, it mentioned the
pair being seen together in the days and on the
night leading up to the murder. Two Uh describes a
faint shriek coming from Bickford's room early in the morning.

(09:20):
Three the sound of something falling to the floor for
a person running then tumbling down the stairs, then being
heard leaving the house. Five was a groan or scream
of fire, and residence in a nearby room seeing smoke
come under their door. And then six Mrs Lawrence, who
uh was of the family living below those rooms, coming

(09:42):
up the stairs to find burning bedclothes piled at the
top of the stairs and against the door of the
other boarder's room. And then seven help arriving in the
room of Mrs Bickford being extinguished because it was on fire.
And then the realization that an item that had been
stumbled over in the rush to put out the fires
there the fire in the closet, on the bed and
in a clothing trunk, was in fact the body of

(10:04):
Mary Bickford. So at first they didn't realize there had
been a murder. They just need there was a fire
which they were putting out, and then they realized, like
this person has been gruesomely killed. There was additional evidence
also there was no fire in the fireplace, so it
could not be explained as an accident. An accident of
the fire used in the room getting out of control.

(10:26):
A man's apparel which consisted of a vest, drawers, socks,
and a cane were found in the room. The razor
that was found near the body didn't belong to anyone
who was in the house. Uh. And then there was
the interchange at the stable that we talked about earlier.
Terre Terrell was reported to have told the man that
he was quote in a scrape about a girl. And

(10:48):
then after that opening on Parker's part, witnesses were called
for the prosecution and there were many called. We won't
list all of them, but some of the really German
points that sort of brought in new information or corroborated
specific elements of information that are important to the sleepwalking angle. So, first,

(11:08):
job As Pratt, who was the coroner, confirmed statements from
the opening and added that he had also found a
ring in the room with the inscription A J T
T M A B presumably Albert H. Terrell to Maryan Pickford.
And Pratt had also found keys in the pocket of
the vest that was in the room, which unlocked of
a lease and a trunk which were believed to have

(11:29):
belonged to Terrell. Another witness was Dr Joseph Moriarty, and
he talked about the wound to Bickford's neck as being
from ear to ear and separating the larn x and
the blood vessels. He also said that it would be
possible to for a person to perform this at one
stroke on herself, and he stated he never knew a

(11:51):
person to commit murder on another person with a razor,
so it's kind of a weird witness or the prosecution
it is. And I was looking over the notes of
the case that were published in the Boston Daily Times,
and I kept rereading that passage, thinking did they really
call a witness that said she could have done it

(12:11):
to herself? But they really did for a reason I
can't fathom, although I think their initial plan was just
to describe the severity of the wound, so he may
or may not have surprised them with those additional comments.
They also called a Joel Lawrence, who owned the house
where Mary was killed, and he confirmed confirmed that a

(12:33):
cravat that was found in the burning room was one
that he had seen Terrell where previously. There was also
James Fulham who was the stable keeper, and he said
that Terrell had told him that somebody had come into
the room and tried to murder him. So we're establishing
a lot of incongruent comments on Terrell's part. Additional witnesses

(12:56):
were called, primarily just to corroborate what had been said
in the opening, like the the list of things that
happened leading up to the discovery and uh. Several were
called just to establish the relationship between the deceased and
the accused is being romantic and volatile and nature. There's
also the testimony of Mrs mary Head, and she described

(13:17):
an odd encounter with with Terrell during which he seemed
out of sorts and almost asleep. So there was also
the testimony of Mrs Mary Head who described an odd
encounter with Terrell during which he seemed out of sorts
and almost asleep, and he also made a bizarre sound
with his throat. Do you know more about that? I do.

(13:38):
It will come up, It will come up. Uh. Just
remember that the opening argument for the defense had some
interesting points, and it was delivered not by Mr Choke
but by his associate, Mr Meryl, and he one of
the quotes from his opening is it does not follow
that because a body has been found exhibiting indications of
violent death, that a murder has therefore been comming did.

(14:00):
His argument was very focused on the beyond reasonable doubt
angle of finding guilt, and he suggested that the clothing
found in the room could have belonged to another man,
or it could have been Terrell's, but because he was
known to stay with Bickford quite often, it could have
been left there at any time, not necessarily the night
of the murder. He also wanted to dispel the idea
that that running meant that he was guilty, so he asked,

(14:23):
are not innocent men often being often afraid of being
thought guilty. Meryl also read a list of cases where
men had been found guilty and executed entirely on circumstantial evidence.
So again they're building multiple angles to the case, and
one is that no one actually saw him do it.
He also asserted that if Terrell had wanted to kill Bickford,

(14:44):
he had ample opportunity in their travels together before this
particular night. There was also a little bit of a
character assassination going on against Bickford. She was characterized by
Maryland the opening as something of a beguiling siren, and
that she used her wiles to infatuate Terrell, and that's
what caused him to leave behind his family and turned

(15:05):
to her. So after all of those layers of defense,
Merrill introduced the somnambulism defense, orating at length about the
nature of the condition and reading a variety of cases
and medical studies to support what he was trying to say.
And according to the Boston Daily Times, Merrill's opening lasted
two hours and forty five minutes. There was a lunch

(15:27):
break in the middle, and according to the reporter, was
quote full of ability and research throughout, so he was impressive,
apparently in his open right. And then witnesses for the
defense were called, the first of which was Mrs Nabby Tyrrell,
who was the widow of Leonard Terrell and the mother
of the defendant, and she testified that Albert had been

(15:50):
quote in the habit of getting up in his sleep
since he was four or five years old, and she
described several episodes from the time he was tiny until
he um was a teenager, and then was a young
man on his own and left so the time he
lived with her, she described multiple episodes where he would
go on walkabouts and do things completely asleep. Albert's brother,

(16:11):
Leonard B. Terrell, also gave testimony that Albert was prone
to wakeful episodes while he was still asleep, and that
during some of them he quote clenched hold of me
very hard and it was difficult to force his hands
off of me. Additionally, family and neighbors of the Terrell
family were called to testify that they had also seen

(16:33):
Albert in somnambulist states, some even asserting that they had
interacted with him during these events and found him able
to speak and even answer questions, but still seem asleep.
The defense attempted to introduce a complaint mentioned by Mary Bickford,
that Terrell had at one point struck her across the
breast forcefully while he was asleep, but it was ruled

(16:56):
out as quote coming within the rule of of declaration,
so they couldn't get a sworn testimony from the deceased
to back up this claim. Uh and most witnesses also
were used to establish the idea that Albert was in
fact really quite fond of Mary and treated her very kindly,
that he was genuinely in love with her. UH and

(17:17):
a doctor E. O. Finney was called there were several
doctors called for the defense, but he testified that the
fatal wound could have been suicide or murder. Witness doctor
Walter Channing also testified that he had knowledge of women
committing suicide in this manner and had also read about
it happening just in his career studies and in you know,

(17:39):
um journals and staying on abreast of the information of
the time. Several other doctors were called to corroborate the
argument that a person could easily commit a murder while
sleep walking, and one thing that Choke and his associates
repeatedly established was that when Albert was sleepwalking, he would
make an odd vocal sound similar to the one described

(18:02):
by Mrs Mary Head when she was on the stand
as a witness for the prosecution. So they kind of
artfully linked that back to do you remember the other
person that said he seemed really odd and made a
weird clicking sound of his throat. That's what he does
when he sleepwalks. We've established he has like an ability
to sleep walk and do things in his sleep. So

(18:24):
on Friday, March six, the defense made closing arguments shouts.
Closing statement was six hours long. Yeah, all day pretty much.
I feel like that's a filibuster almost. He was known
as an orator, uh, And there are some accounts to
talk about how astounding it is that he could go

(18:44):
on for such length. But he never seemed to lose
the thread or focus of his speeches. So he had
a lot to say, and it took him six hours
to say it. Yes, his his testimony included the following,
how far does the testimony lead you? Did any human
beings see the prisoners strike the blow? No? Did any
human beings see him in that house after nine o'clock

(19:06):
the previous evening? No? Did any human beings see him
run from the house? Know did any human beings see
him with a drop of blood upon his hands? No?
Can anyone say that on that night he was not
laboring under a disease to which he was subject from
his youth. No? Has he ever made a confession of
the deed to the two friend or thief taker? Not

(19:30):
one word? So Uh. That was part of the six
hour closing statement and choke finished at about in the afternoon,
and after a brief recess, Mr Parker made his closing argument,
summating his case pretty much just repeating what had come
up throughout the trial, and he wrapped up at six
fifty and Albert Terrell waived his option to address the

(19:54):
jury and the court was adjourned until Saturday the following day.
On Saturday morning, Judge Dewey addressed the jury at length
on the somnambulism issue. He said, quote, medical testimony is
very properly admitted in these cases, but it should be
weighed carefully. It is dangerous to admit the possession of

(20:16):
this disease. Left in the reveries of our brains. The
possessors might commit deeds which in others would be high crimes.
So after just two hours of deliberation, at ten minutes
to one o'clock, the jury returned with their verdict, which
was not guilty, and the foreman of the jury actually
stated though that the question and I quote the question

(20:38):
of somnambulism had not entered into the consideration of the jury.
So even with the sleepwalking defense, it seems like the
circumstantial nature of the evidence was actually what hurt the prosecution. However,
this case is usually cited as the first use of
the sleepwalking defense and is characterized as though that's the
reason for the acquittal, but the jury foreman said that

(20:59):
wasn't even really a fact for them. Terrell was also
tried for the arson charges that were associated with the
night of the murder. Shout defended him again with the
same defense and used many of the same witnesses, and
he was once again acquitted. Perhaps in boldened by these
two successes, Terrell actually this is so brazen, requested that

(21:20):
Chot refund half of his fees, as the case had
both cases had obviously been one with greater ease than expected.
Uh Chote of course refused. However, he didn't get off
on everything. Terrell was convicted of adultery and ended up
serving three years for it, and after that he returned
to his wife and children in Weymouth and he lived

(21:42):
out his days working in the family business of shoe manufacturer.
He could never hang on to any of his money.
They did have another child, but that was sort of
his His life after the trial got pretty quiet. After
his trials and his time, he went home again and
Choke continued his impressive legal career, and he continued to

(22:03):
be involved with politics, which could be a whole other podcast,
because he really was at the nexus point of a
lot of important moments. But what's interesting to think about
is that from a modern perspective, would this defense have
really held water? And we know people used the sleepwalking
defense in modern times. There's a famous case from Canada,
definitely eighties where a man had driven i think fourteen

(22:28):
miles killed his in laws and woke up while he
was driving home and drove himself to the police station
and he was actually acquitted. So we know these still
come up, and there are still some you know, that
come up even more modern than that. They don't always
succeed though, uh and A Michael kramer Borneman, who is
a medical doctor and a medical director of the cardio

(22:51):
Sleep Services at the University of Minnesota, UH was interviewed
by Focus magazine and he said of sleepwalking disorders, something
in the switch between phases goes wrong, creating an aberrant
electrical impulse that triggers an overlap between states. You're not
fully in RIM, so your muscles are relaxed, not paralyzed,
and you're not fully in non rim, so you can

(23:12):
still be dreaming. In this state, some of the brain's
processes will be awake while others are offline. Why does
that lead to violent behavior. You ask, yes, he continues.
As with many things in neuropathology, it's to do with
real estate brain structures like the hypothalamus that regulate sleep
sitting next to the mid brain where early evolved behaviors lie.

(23:35):
So when this electrical impulse is sparked, it also wakes
up this part of the brain, leaving the moral areas
like the frontal cortex asleep. That leaves nothing to inhibit
your rage reaction while you're sleep walking, And that's why
people are advised to never wake a sleepwalker because their
their reaction may not be delightful or pleasant. It's completely

(23:57):
not um in any way dampened by their morality, so
they could do something without even realizing it. But some
of Terrell's behaviors, like the fire to conceal evidence and
running and hiding are not consistent with sleepwalking actions as
we now understand them, And if he had not tried

(24:18):
to include that in his defense, you could make the case.
But he used the same defense in his Arson trial, right,
So it's feasible from a neurological perspective that a sleepwalker
could kill another person while asleep, but that then attempting
to conceal evidence while asleep unlikely. That's that's much less likely.

(24:40):
Uh So, if he were trying today and use the
sleepwalking defense, particularly for the arson element, he would probably
not faris it well, since that was part of the
concealment of the crime. So that's the first in the
US anyway, sleepwalking defense, and it was successful. Have you
seen the movie Sleepwalk with Me? Yes? And it's it's

(25:02):
reminded me of that, and and how alarmed he is
when he hears that people while sleepwalking when having sleep
disorders have either inadvertently or sort of acting out a
rage impulse, killed the person that that they were sleeping with. Yeah,
it's fascinating stuff. I always worried secretly that I will

(25:22):
one day magically begin sleepwalking and doing bad things. That's
a little weird fear of mine. You also have listener mail,
I do. I have two pieces of mail today. One
is a very lovely postcard from our listener Alicia, and
she writes, I recently discovered your podcast and I've heard
about your interest in postcards. I also collect postcards and

(25:43):
thought I would send you a historical postcard from my
own college. So it's a photo from bryn Maher of
the first class, and it includes some interesting and notable
people potentially in it. One of them, it says, Emily
green Bulch of class of eighty nine, one of the
first two American women to win the Nobel Peace Prize,

(26:03):
maybe one of the unidentified members of this group portraits,
and it's just a lovely picture. And if you're into
historical clothing, which I am, it's kind of a nice
reference point. I think I actually have a pattern that's
based off of one of these outfits. Uh. And I
also have an email from our listener, Thomas, and he says,
dear Tracy and Holly. A while back, Sarah and Katie

(26:25):
did a couple of podcasts on famous historical pets. I
wrote them to tell him a rumor I heard and
calling McCullough's historical novels set in the Roman Empire, Masters
of Rome. She mentioned a mutant horse that Julius Caesar
would ride into battle rather than hooves. It had toes
it would greatly enhance his image with the superstitious Romans
and their enemies. I wrote to ask if either of

(26:46):
them knew of this, or was it an invention of
Miss McCullough's. I did come across another reference to this
horse when I was reading the essays of Michelle de Montaigne,
so this rumor goes back to at least the sixteenth century.
I too, have seen the through her several times, and
I do know a couple of years ago there was
a beautiful exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago, which
is one of my favorite museums in the US, about horses,

(27:09):
and they do mention vestigial toes and how some horses
will actually display what looks almost like a knobby toe
above the hoof levels. So I'm guessing it's something to
that effect, but I want to do more research and
find out for sure, because there are a lot of
stories that talk about Caesar's toad horse and how it

(27:30):
was considered lucky and he was the only man allowed
to ride it. It's kind of interesting stuff. But I know,
of course, this can't have ves digil toes, which we
just re blond really wonderful infographic about some of the
most famous horses in history on our tumbler yesterday, Is

(27:51):
he on there? I haven't looked at it yet. I
know that there is a horse of Caesar's on there,
and I don't recall seeing the tow part, so we
will do more research. But I love weird animal stuff,
so I'm always glad to research that. If you would
like to email us about weird animal as, digital bits,
or anything else, you can do so at History Podcast

(28:11):
at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at missed
in History, on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash history
class stuff. We're also at missed in History dot tumbler
dot com, and we're on Pinterest. If you would like
to learn a little bit more about what we've talked
about today, you can go to our website and type
in sloleep walking into the search bar. Then you will
turn up the article how sleepwalking works. Maybe you would

(28:33):
like to learn about almost anything else your mind can conjure.
You can do that at our website as well, which
is how stuff Works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
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(28:59):
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(29:20):
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