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Guest editor: Nellie P. Strowbridge
On the night of August 31, 1833, John Snow, a prosperous English Protestant plantation owner, disappeared from his home in Salmon Cove, Bay de Grave. His wife, Catherine Mandeville, along with John's 23-year-old indentured servant, Arthur Spring, and his weekend bookkeeper, 28-year-old Tobias Mandeville, a cooper for John Jacob and his partner Thomas Martin, were charged with John's murder. The men were accused of shooting him as he climbed from his boat to his stage after he arrived home from a visit with John Jacob and Thomas Martin at their warehouse in Bareneed.
Catherine and John Snow were the parents of several children when they married on October 30, 1828. In time, the Snows had ten children—two of whom died in infancy. Knowing that her children would have no protection if she was imprisoned, Catherine fled Salmon Cove in an effort to reach Brigus and have papers drawn up by Esquire Richard Mandeville. The path she took brought her through Rip Raps and around Spectacle Head, right where you are walking now.
Catherine crossed through a patch of swampland under soft heather. Her shoes sloshed with water as she moved to dry land and down over the steep rocky footpath to Caplin Cove where lamplight flickered in several windows. She was let into the house of Mary Britt. Catherine told her that she wanted to get to Brigus where Esquire Richard Mandeville would be able to draw up papers to protect the Snow homestead for her children.
The moon was beaming off the ocean as Catherine hurried away from Mary's place and up the rock-knobbed path, keeping a steady step as she trudged over the hill and down the valley to Rip Raps meadow, past houses and tilts, silent and shadowed. She crossed to the side of Spectacle Mountain, a massive peak of rugged rock overlooking Cupids. Near it, The American Man: a pile of rocks. Cold marsh water sucked her shoes before she came to a dry path strewn with tilted, sharp rocks. Leaves flittered to the ground and bushes rustled under autumn winds as she kept going down the path to Cupids. She came to Cat Breen's house all abiver, fearing she was being shadowed. She tripped in brambles as she rushed like someone with the devil in chase. Cat was uneasy, telling her, "Make haste to lie under my bed."
As soon as darkness fell, Catherine left Cat's house by the back door and skirted the backs of houses and tilts, moving cautiously until she got to Denis and Mary Hartery's house. She hoped to make it to Brigus the next day. Catherine slept in the bed of Mary, the Harterys' young daughter. The next morning, realizing that she could not make it to Brigus, Catherine gave herself up to Patrick Walsh and Charles Cozens who had been searching for her.
Catherine Snow, Tobias Mandeville, and Arthur Spring were imprisoned in a St. John's gaol. The Supreme Court had to establish that John Snow's death had occurred. There were no sworn witnesses to his presumed death and no verbal confessions in the court of any prisoner. There was no demonstrative evidence shown at the trial—no weapon, no trousers, blood on them supposedly concealed in ink, and no evidence of a rumoured affair between Catherine and Tobias. John's body was never found. He and his money box had disappeared without a trace.
At the trial in January 1834, Chief Justice Henry John Boulton cautioned the jury:
... some satisfactory proof should be required that the persons supposed to have been murdered are actually dead; for although we may entertain the strongest personal impressions that these unfortunate people have been made away with, yet we can only arrive at a safe conclusion by adhering strictly to clear rules of evidence, and fixed principles of law, and we must not allow our indignation to get the better of our reason, and indict even the most strongly suspected upon mere conjecture.¹
Despite the judge's caution, Catherine Snow, Tobias Mandeville, and Arthur Spring were tried together and convicted of John's murder on January 10, 1834, Catherine, as an accessory before the fact. Tobias and Arthur were hanged from the window of the old St. John's courthouse the following Monday, January 13. To save the young Irishmen from having their bodies anatomized and examined by a Dr. Edward Kielly, residents from Port de Grave seized the men's remains, and, after an impressive funeral, had them buried in Port de Grave. Dr. Edward Kielly confided in Governor Thomas Cochrane: "Anxious as I was to avail of so good an opportunity of practicing anatomy, I dared not do it; my life was in danger from the mob."
He managed only a penknife to their necks before the bodies were taken.
Catherine had "pleaded the belly." She was pregnant, and managed to delay her hanging until months after the birth of her son Richard. Petitions from Father Edward Troy, Father Thomas Waldron, and Father Patrick Ward to Governor Cochrane seeking clemency for Catherine were dismissed by Judge Boulton with these words: "I would mind the barking of a little cur in the streets more than I would care for the rabble and their petitions."
Forty-year-old Catherine Snow was hanged on July 21, 1834—the last woman to be hanged in Newfoundland. Her body was anatomized by Dr. Kielly.
Magistrate Robert John Pinsent, who had been instrumental in entering unsworn statements to the court, petitioned the court for guardianship of the Snow children, claiming the oldest of her daughters was 14. Bridget was 17 at the time, and Eliza was 14. Possibly he intended to exclude Bridget as she would have been old enough to manage the estate and this was not in his plan, though we can never know for certain. He also asked for guardianship of John Snow's three-acre plantation and his fishing property. He claimed that John's brothers were illiterate and dismissed them as unreliable, unable to handle his business, even though John himself was illiterate and managed a successful fishing and farming business. His brother, Thomas, was already a boat keeper.
Edward Mortier Archibald, Acting Judge and Chief Clerk of the Supreme Court, also one of the judges who signed the warrant for Catherine's execution, in a letter to the court, recommended Pinsent as a fit and proper person to take care of John Snow's estate and be the guardian of his children. This was done in April 1834, months before Catherine Snow was hanged. Eventually, the property was sold and Catherine's children scattered. This was a period where the collaboration of religion, racial bigotry, politics, and power became a deadly combination, and they worked against Catherine Snow and her children.
At the time, relatives shied away from their connection to the case of Catherine Snow. Today, believing they are descendants of Newfoundland's most infamous woman, there are some who are trying to prove a connection to the offspring of Catherine's children: Bridget, Eliza, Johnny, Catherine, Martin, Maria, Johanna, and Richard.
Catherine Snow, a novel written by Nellie Strowbridge, was published in 2009. In it, Catherine was given the benefit of the doubt. The book recognizes that it is wrong to assume that conviction for a crime absolutely means that the "guilty" person actually committed it.
On March 29, 2012, the Newfoundland Historical Society held a mock trial at Hampton Hall in the Marine Institute in St. John's. Presiding over the trial were The Hon. Judge Carl R. Thompson, The Hon. Seamus O'Regan for the Crown, and defence lawyer Ms. Rosellen Sullivan. An audience of more than 400 people acted as the jury. Catherine Snow was declared not guilty, validating her own statement: "I am innocent of any participation in the crime of which I am accused as an unborn baby."
¹ The Newfoundland Patriot, January 7, 1834.