The Swamp of Death

Early in 1890, three young gentlemen left England for the backwoods of Canada, each hoping to make a fortune. Within days of their arrival, one was dead and the other two had been arrested for murder.

It was common practice in the nineteenth century for genteel young men of means, but no position, to head off abroad to make their fortunes. Agencies in England placed these men with colonial farmers, who, in return for cheap labour, would teach their charges how to make a living from the land. The reality was often much worse, however: having given the agency money, and spent large sums on passage, the men received no training from their hosts, were made to work extremely hard and were put up in appalling accommodation insufficient to keep them warm throughout harsh winters. Unsurprisingly, many cut their losses, made a run for it and begged a passage home, worse off in every way for their experience.

Into this murky world stepped Douglas Perry and Frederick Benwell. Each answered an advertisement placed by one Reginald Birchall, whose charming ways – and wife – were enough to persuade them to set off for a new life in Ontario. In spite of several anomalies in Birchall’s story, and the fact that Pelly didn’t warm to Benwell, the group sailed from Liverpool and landed in New York on Valentine’s Day 1890. A week later, Benwell’s body turned up in a frozen swamp 100 miles west of Niagara Falls.

Rebecca Gowers unpicks what happened during those few days and afterwards in forensic but compulsively readable detail. Birchall and Benwell had gone ahead to see if their designated farm was ready to receive them, but did Birchall tell the truth about what happened on their trip? And how involved in the scam was the fragrant Mrs Birchall?

Perhaps more disturbingly, Birchall’s subsequent trial was, to put it mildly, a grossly mismanaged affair. The crowds that packed into - and around - the makeshift courthouse, made for oppressive conditions throughout, but more serious were the gaps in the evidence and the limitations of the trial judge, the defending and prosecuting attorneys, and most of the witnesses.

In Gowers’ hands, this story of deception comes alive as much for its evocation of the Victorians’ thirst for intrigue and sensation as for the details of what proved, in the end, to be a rather grubby and inefficient swindle.