Murder, mourning, and ‘spookeasies’ at Alexander Majors house

Victorian America kept death close, and it left behind stories stranger than fiction. At the Alexander Majors House in south Kansas City, museum historians are digging into the era’s darker side for the Halloween season’s events. They include the “Victorian Macabre: History Spookeasy,” in which the museum barn becomes a speakeasy and the history gets grim.

A lifelong fan of history’s spooky side, Sarah Goebel said museum the staff treat the Halloween events as passion projects. The resulting events are just a taste of the in-depth research it takes to prepare them, she said. Goebel is director of programs for the Alexander Majors and John Wornall house museums, and she holds degrees in both journalism and history from Drake University. She also has a master’s degree in museum studies from the University of Kansas.

Getting away with murder: True crime in the 19th and early 20th centuries

In her research for the season’s events, Goebel covers American true crime from 1830 to 1910. Lizzie Borden is the best-known name, but lesser-known cases show how much murder has changed.

Hatchets and axes, readily available, were a common choice for killers. Poison entered a new era as Americans began to worry about germs. Commercial medicines, household cleaners, and other products made toxic substances widely available, and poisoning were often considered a traceless crime. Detecting poison and proving murder remained challenging.

In one case, a New York chemist named Roland Molineux was accused of mailing his rival a bottle of antacid laced with cyanide of mercury. In 1898, the rival’s cousin took a dose for her headache, and she died soon after. The New York World and The New York Journal, locked in a circulation war, covered the trial in detail.

Another case is the 1836 killing of Helen Jewett, a prostitute from New York whose murder became a press sensation. Readers in the 21st century, raised with DNA evidence and forensic advances, might be startled by how often these guilty verdicts came down to reputations.

Mourning loved ones in Victorian style

In the Victorian era, mourning followed strict rules. In her talk on grief, the museum’s Executive Director Sarah Bader-King separates myth from reality. Victorian mourners were known to wear black clothing for up to two years following the death of a loved one. Mirrors, thought to trap the souls of the dead, were superstitiously covered in the house of the dead. Families made keepsakes from the hair of the deceased, and some carried tear catchers: small vials designed to collect a mourner’s tears.

The fear of being burned alive also shaped funeral customs of the era. Without modern medical advances, doctors and coroners could mistake comas, trances, or cholera infections for death. Inventors in the funeral industry answered with safety coffins, which were fitted with string or wire so the “deceased” could ring a bell and ask for help (historians note there is little evidence a safety coffin ever saved anyone’s life).

With the winter chill came its own grim problem. When the ground was frozen, it was too hard to dig a deep-enough grave. That is why families of the deceased often stored bodies in ice houses until the spring, when the earth was softer and burial was more feasible. In Kansas City, Union Cemetery’s stone receiving vault served this same purpose.

Who haunts the halls of the Alexander Majors house?

The Majors House has its own history of loss. Several people died there, including multiple children and Benjamin Majors, the oldest son of Alexander Majors.

Louisa Johnston, Alexander’s great-granddaughter, spent years caring for her great-uncle Benjamin. A Kansas City teacher, she later used her salary to buy the house and save it from demolition. Her goal was to preserve the legacy of Alexander Majors, a co-founder of the Pony Express. Local legend says the feisty Louisa once broke her hip after falling on ice and still managed to pull herself up the stairs. Goebel described her as, “a force to be reckoned with.”

Louisa died in the home before the work was finished, but her friends carried on her vision, opening it to the public as a museum. Goebel, a skeptic, has never experienced anything unexplained or supernatural at the house. That said, she wonders if Louisa might haunt the halls: “I think if anyone did haunt it, it would be her,” she said.

Secrets linger at the Majors House, and the “Spookeasy” offers a glimpse into its past. Join the museum on Saturday, Oct. 24 at 8201 State Line Rd. in Kansas City. Programs are set for 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. More details and the museum’s other events can be found at wornallmajors.org/events/.

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