Weird Island

55. MURDER: Carter Jackson Monument

Episode Summary

In South Kingstown, there’s an odd monument hidden away in the bushes off Tower Hill Road. It’s a four-sided granite pillar covered, from top to bottom on all sides, in a written inscription. And this inscription tells a story. But not one of a famous battle or prominent leader or politician or historical landmark. It tells the story of a gruesome murder that took place here. To Visit: Map to Koch Eye Associates in Wakefield, at 20 Hampton Way, Wakefield, RI 02879. Park in the Koch parking lot near the business’s dumpster. The monument is directly behind the dumpster. It’s in thick brush. You won’t see it at first, but if you walk to the edge of the busy road (be safe) right in line with the dumpster, you’ll see a break in the bushes where the monument is hidden.

Episode Notes

In South Kingstown, there’s an odd monument hidden away in the bushes off Tower Hill Road. It’s a four-sided granite pillar covered, from top to bottom on all sides, in a written inscription. And this inscription tells a story. But not one of a famous battle or prominent leader or politician or historical landmark. It tells the story of a gruesome murder that took place here.

To Visit: 

Map to Koch Eye Associates in Wakefield, at 20 Hampton Way, Wakefield, RI 02879. Park in the Koch parking lot near the business’s dumpster. The monument is directly behind the dumpster. It’s in thick brush. You won’t see it at first, but if you walk to the edge of the busy road (be safe) right in line with the dumpster, you’ll see a break in the bushes where the monument is hidden. 

Episode Source Material

• Jackson Was Murdered And Carter Was Hanged For It-But That Is All We're Sure About - Online Review of Rhode Island History
• Memoirs of the Rhode Island Bar | Wilkins Updike
• The Narragansett Historical Register | Volume 1 1882-3
• The Narragansett Historical Register | Volume II 1883-84
• The Narragansett Historical Register | Volume VII 1889
• State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the End of the Century: A History | 1902
• Literary Gossip, Criticisms of Books and Local Historical Matters Connected with Rhode Island | 1902
• South Kingstown Public Library Digital Collections | Hazard Diary 009
• Joseph Peace Hazard Papers
• Mysterious Carter Jackson Monument, South Kingstown, Rhode Island
• Joseph Peace Hazard: Rhode Island Spiritualist · Introduction · Special Collections Exhibits
• Murder memorials: A grisly history written in stone - BBC News
• Murder stone - Wikipedia
• The Gibbet: A Disturbing Execution Practice Meant To Deter Criminals
• The Gibbet — History's Most Inhumane Punishment | by Hdogar
• Who was Joseph Peace Hazard? | SKPL History
• National Register of Historic Places Registration Form G
• Hanging in Chains - Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse - NCBI Bookshelf
• The Incredibly Disturbing Historical Practice of Gibbeting
• Memorials and Monuments
• Why Just 'Adding Context' to Controversial Monuments May Not Change Minds | History| Smithsonian Magazine
• Who do American monuments honor the most? A landmark study finally has answers.

Episode Transcription

• There are monuments everywhere. If you look around while you’re driving, you’ll notice stones and small statues at intersections, in parks, near older buildings. There’s one near me in front of a CVS in a busy intersection, and it always strikes me as kind of a strange spot for a monument. You can’t read the sign from your car, and it really isn’t a very safe or convenient place to stop. And it got me wondering not about the things or people that monuments commemorate, but about the people who put them up. Who chooses where a monument is placed and what it represents?
• In South Kingstown, there’s a particularly odd monument hidden away in the bushes off Tower Hill Road. It’s a four-sided granite pillar covered, from top to bottom on all sides, in a written inscription. And this inscription tells a story. But not one of a famous battle or prominent leader or politician or historical landmark. It tells the story of a gruesome murder that took place here.
• I’m Sara and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week, I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. And this week, I’ll be telling you about the mysterious Carter Jackson Monument and the eccentric man who placed the monument there 138 years after the crime took place. 
   
• Before we get into today’s episode, I wanted to warn you that I’ll be talking quite a bit about a violent murder, and the maybe even more grusome punishment of the man who committed that murder. So, please take care and feel free to skip this episode if you or the people you’re listening with don’t feel comfortable. 
• Because this was a pretty shocking crime when it took place. People talked about it, not for weeks or months, but for years afterwards. They recalled the details of the crime and how it was discovered. But maybe more than anything, they talked about the disturbing punishment of the man convicted of having committed the murder. People told the story over and over, and as they did, the details were remembered a little differently each time. Leaving us, today, with a number of accounts that all roughly tell the same tale, though bits and pieces don’t exactly match. And the details are so foggy because this wasn’t a crime that happened recently. It took place on January 1, 1751–271 years ago. 
• So, what exactly is the story? And why was it remembered in this way? I’m sure you could guess, but monuments marking the spot of a murder aren’t very common. 
• Well, if you make your way to the monument, the story starts coming together. The pillar is located in South Kingstown, off Tower Hill Road. It’s almost completely hidden in overgrown bushes. But if you know where to look, it’s easy enough to find. And here’s what you’ll start to read on the monument. 
• ““This pillar is erected to the memory of William Jackson of Virginia, who was murdered upon this spot by ship captain Thomas Carter of Newport, Rhode Island, who, having been ship-wrecked, and rendered penniless thereby, and being overtaken by Mr. Jackson, who, also being on his way north, furnished him with money and use of a horse on the way; having arrived at the point that is indicated by this pillar, Carter there robbed and murdered his kind and confiding benefactor with a dagger, about the hour of midnight of Jan. first, 1751.”
• So, the two men were William Jackson and Thomas Carter. William Jackson was said to be a traveling animal skin dealer from Virginia on his way north into Rhode Island.He was described as being dressed in leather breeches, a yellowish-brown jacket, and a red overcoat. And he had a watch with a green ribbon for a chain and this short sword with a serrated edge that hung from his belt. He was traveling with a horse carrying deer skins he intended to sell, and he also likely had a bag of money with him. 
• On the way, he met a man named Thomas Carter, originally from Virginia but recently from Newport, where he had been married a little over a year before. Carter was a ship captain of some sort (some accounts say he was captain of a small vessel, others claim he was a privateer or “legal pirate''). Regardless of the type of ship he captained, Carter had been shipwrecked and had lost everything. When the two men met on the road heading in the same direction, Jackson offered to help Carter out. He loaned him a horse to travel on and money to get him to Newport. And on New Year's Eve, 1750, the two men arrived in South Kingstown where they stopped to spend the night at a tavern before the last leg of their journey. 
• According to some accounts, Jackson was anxious to get going the next morning and make it to Newport by night. But Carter complained that he felt ill, so the two didn’t leave the tavern until the afternoon. When they reached the spot along the road where the pillar stands today, something went wrong. Accounts differ, but likely Carter struck Jackson with a stone and then used the short sword Jackson carried to end his life. Then, Carter either dragged or carried Jackson’s body on his shoulder one mile to the Pettaquamscutt River, where he got rid of the body by pushing it under the ice. Carter then stole Jackson’s possessions and continued on to Newport. 
• The crime wasn’t discovered right away, though one of the more detailed accounts, by a lawyer named Wilkins Updike, suggested Carter was nearly discovered by a hunter that next morning as he tried to obscure the blood. But he talked his way around the encounter or maybe threatened the hunter. That hunter was named in the account as “a man by the name of Hazzard,” and we’ll come back to why that might be notable later on.
• But either way, Carter seemed to have gotten away with the crime. That is, until late February, maybe around the 22nd, when some fisherman pulled a body out of the river. The New York Gazette reported that he was stripped naked with two wounds in his chest and one in his neck that was thought to be made with the short serrated “hanger” sword Jackson carried. A couple of accounts say an inn-keeper named as Mrs. Nash was able to identify Jackson by a patch of hair on his head. Some say it was a patch of black hair. One account claims it was white. 
• The Sheriff of Kings County at the time, a man named Rowland Robinson, arrested Thomas Carter in Newport the next day and brought him to the county jail in the village of Tower Hill. Mrs. Nash was again able to identify some incriminating items Carter had on him when he was arrested. She recalled sewing a button onto Jackson’s overcoat when the two stopped at her inn and she recognized some linens with the initials W.I. on them. Carter was also said to have some deer skins and a green watch ribbon. The fact that Carter now had all of these items once belonging to his traveling partner, who now turned up dead, was pretty incriminating. 
• Thomas Carter was tried on charges of murder and charges of assault and robbery. There were two juries, each of 12 men, for the two separate charges. Carter was found guilty of both. A man named Wilkins Updike, who was a historian, lawyer, and the grandson of the attorney general who prosecuted Carter, wrote in his 1842 account of the trial that Carter heard the verdict without any apparent emotion. But then his punishment was announced, and that’s when he became emotional. It was determined that Carter would be hanged and gibbeted. And this is almost definitely why this crime continues to be remembered today. 
• Gibbeting was intended to discourage heinous crimes and punish criminals not only in life, but in death. It’s pretty gruesome. It would involve hanging the bodies of executed criminals up for display in public areas in these human shaped cages of iron bands. The iron cage would hang from a tall post, high enough to ensure the body could be seen from a distance (and tall enough so the body couldn’t be stolen easily). There are so many things about this that made it horrifying for witnesses. As the wind blew, the cage would sway and twist in the wind, almost animating the body so it seemed unnervingly alive. And the twisting motion was accompanied by the sound of the iron and wood creaking and clanging. Then as the body decomposed and birds and insects ate away at it, the cage might begin to look more and more empty. Bones might drop out, hitting the ground with a thunk. And on top of all that, the whole thing smelled pretty bad. 
• A body might hang in a gibbet for weeks, months, or even years. One historian said a body could be left there for “up to several decades.” 
• The truth is, gibbeting wasn’t incredibly common, but historians studying have found that the impact of the punishment far exceeded the frequency. It was most common in England in the 1740s, though it would be made an official punishment in the 1752 Murder Act that declared convicted murderers had to either be publicly dissected or gibbeted. Between the 1752 establishment of the Murder Act and its abolishment in 1834, it’s estimated just 144 individuals were gibbeted in Britain. In the Colonies, it was likely even less common. 
• And because it happened so infrequently, the executions became something of a spectacle and drew large crowds. And this crime and the execution got a good amount of press. In terms of the crime itself, Wilkins Updike wrote that, “At this time crimes of the enormity of the one in question were rare. This one awakened the sympathy of the whole continent and even reached the mother country.” 
• And when it came to the punishment, the New York Gazette reported that nearly 10,000 people attended the hanging and gibbeting of Thomas Carter on May 10, 1751. 
• A few years later, a man visiting the town wrote in his diary that his host offered to take him down the hill to “see the murderer as he hung there in gibbets… We beheld the sorrowful sight,” he said, “The man had been there three years already and his flesh was all dried fast to his bones.”
• People talked about the crime for years, decades even. The story was passed down from generation to generation, and that’s likely why we have so many varying accounts of it today. Many of the people who wrote down accounts somehow had a tie to the event. The most comprehensive account was written by Wilkins Updike, the grandson of the Attorney General who prosecuted Carter, and his account is super valuable. But the reason we continue to tell the story today is because of another man, who decided to create a monument immortalizing the memory of the crime and execution. 
• That man was Joseph Peace Hazard. In 1889, Hazard erected the granite pillar marking the spot where this crime took place. Yes, 1889 - this monument wasn’t put up until 138 years after the crime took place. Today, many telling the story have found Hazard’s decision to mark the spot of the murder to be as unusual as the crime itself.
• Both Joseph Peace Hazard and his brother, Thomas Hazard (who also wrote an account of the murder), were dedicated spiritualists, meaning they believed that that the dead exist as spirits and have the ability to communicate with the living. Joseph Peace Hazard said, “Spirits appear to be quite as anxious to communicate, as we are to hear."
• Throughout his life, he kept meticulous memorandum books, containing a daily log of mostly his expenses – but he also included a variety of other notes in the log. One includes an account of the time he shook hands with the spirit of George Washington at a séance in Philadelphia. And then a few years prior to building the monument, his memorandum books became primarily dedicated to providing daily reports on his pocket watch, which he believed served as a medium for spirit communication.
• Hazard deserves a follow-up episode all his own. If you’re familiar with unusual Rhode Island spots, you’ve likely heard of one he created, called the Druid’s Chair. Or his Narragansett castle, Druidsdream. I won’t cover those today. But it’s worth having that bit of context about Hazard’s spiritualist beliefs because it’s very possible that had something to do with his decision to build the monument.
• From what I can tell, no one seems to know exactly why he built it. If it was an attachment to or communication with the spirits of either man, it’s unclear which man or why. But it’s likely Hazard grew up hearing the story of the murder and the gibbeting. His brother Thomas wrote that he remembered sitting in the kitchen as a young boy and hearing stories about how scared people used to be when they rode by the gibbet at night and “heard the chains creaking in the wind” and every now and then the sound of one of Carter’s bones falling to the ground. It’s also possible someone in the family was intimately connect to the crime or trial when it happened. 
• Hazard is a very Rhode Island name. The family is descended from one of the earliest settlers of the state, Thomas Hazard, who came from England around 1639. And in researching how Joseph Peace Hazard might have been connected, somehow, to the crime, I realized… the Hazards seem to be connected to everyone and everything in the early history of the area. Wilkins Updike described the Hazards as a numerous family, the most numerous in Narragansett, if not in the state. Another account described how one Maria Hazard, who lived to age 100, could count up to five hundred children, grand-children, great grand-children and great-great grandchildren. So the family was big. And there are many repeat names. Lots of Benjamin’s and George’s and many, many Thomas’s. So it was hard for me to pinpoint exactly who was who. 
• But there are a few potential direct connections to the crime. First, there was the keeper of the jail where Thomas Carter was imprisoned while awaiting execution. That man was named as Thomas Hazard, and while we don’t know exactly who he was in relation to Joseph Peace Hazard and his brother Thomas, it seems there was some relation. Joseph Peace Hazard also talks about his grandfather, who was known as College Tom (to differentiate him from the other Thomas Hazards). He writes that College Tom lived in Tower Hill, potentially very close to or where the crime happened. Those coming from the north to visit College Tom would pass right by the gibbet where Carter’s body hung for years. So it’s very likely his grandfather shared memories of the horrific punishment of the crime. There was also that one account that mentioned on the morning following the murder, Thomas Carter was almost found out by a hunter, who was identified as a man named Hazard. Did someone potentially witness Carter trying to cover up the crime?
• And finally, the Sheriff who brought Thomas Carter in was a man named Rowland Robinson. And he was the great-grand uncle of the wife of Joseph’s brother Thomas Hazard. In cases like this, the sheriff very likely would have been responsible for organizing the construction of the gibbet and finding guards to ensure the body wasn’t taken. So Robinson likely had very informed memories to share. 
• All of this is a bit speculative, because ultimately I couldn’t find a direct answer in Joseph Peace Hazard's words to the question, “What exactly was his connection to the crime and how did he feel about it? And, ultimately, why did he establish this incredibly unusual monument to a murder that happened over 100 years prior?” I wanted to know because I believe that a monument says as much or more about the person who made it as the thing it commemorates. 
• And it certainly seems uncommon for a monument to be dedicated to a murder–to telling the story of a murder instead of commemorating the life of the victim. And that’s what this monument does. It tells a story. If you read the full inscription on the pillar, it includes details about what happened and the punishment. Details like the sound of the shrieking chains of the gibbet during boisterous winds at night and the terror of people who lived nearby. 
• In trying to qualify exactly how unusual this is, I came across similar monuments that appeared across the UK in the 1800s called Murder Stones. Most of these stones mark the scenes of crimes that caused particular shock or outrage within a community, and they were typically erected by prominent locals, religious leaders, landowners or justices of the peace. There are roughly 100 or so in the UK, mostly from the 1820s. And they either commemorate the life of the victim or warn of the consequences of committing murders. One even seems to warn women to avoid being victims, laying blame on the female victim for having “incautiously repaired to a scene of amusement, without proper protection.” It appears there are very few of these stones in the US. 
• So, perhaps like the act of gibbeting itself, this pillar served as an ongoing warning of the consequences of committing murder. If you commit a horrendous crime, you’ll receive a horrendous punishment. One that instilled fear in the whole community. But by this time, gibbeting was no longer an established punishment for crime. Really, by the year 1800, it had become not only very uncommon, but very unpopular. There was a wave of aversion to such gruesome punishments, even if these were what were seen as the worst criminals being punished. So, in 1889 when Joseph Peace Hazard established this monument, he could very possibly have been warning not only of our ability to do terrible things to others out of selfishness, but our ability as people to justify other horrors in the name of punishment. 
• I guess it all depends on how you read it and your own ideas that you bring with you when visiting the monument. We may not ever know exactly why Joseph Peace Hazard placed this monument where it is, but it’s certainly an interesting one to check out. If you make a visit or have a thought or opinion about why Joseph Peace Hazard put the monument up, feel free to send it to me at weirdrhodeisland@gmail.com or on instagram at weird island podcast. 
• Thanks so much for listening, and thank you to Gary and his family for suggesting this week’s episode!
• If you’re a listen-every-week type, you might have noticed that I’ve missed a couple of weeks here and there recently. I’m in a busy stretch at work and we’re heading into summer weather, so I’m trying to get away from my computer more in my non-work hours. So, with that being the case, I’m going to be taking a summer break in the upcoming months. Don’t worry, the podcast won’t be going away! I’ll be back at the end of the summer (and knowing how difficult it is for me to force myself to take this break) I plan to come out with episodes here and there during the break. So I wanted to give you a heads up now, because if you’d like to really stay on top of those updates, the best way to do that is to subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you’re listening on right now. That way, when I drop an episode and when I come back from the break, you’ll be notified! And if you’re not comfortable with or able to subscribe, that’s okay too! You can send me an email at weirdrhodeisland@gmail.com and I’ll add you to the list to be notified when I’m back. 
• But I’m not taking a break just yet! I plan to drop a few more episodes before taking some much needed rest. See you next week as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island. Until next time!