Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the First Session Thirty-ninth Congress
Sir F. Bruce to Mr. Seward
Sir: With reference to your note of the 2d of June, relative to a scheme to introduce yellow fever into New York and other northern cities, I have the honor to state that I forwarded the same with its enclosures to the lieutenant governor of Bermuda.
I now enclose a copy of a communication from the lieutenant governor, embodying the conclusion arrived at by the attorney general of Bermuda after an inquiry based on the statement made by Matilda Swan and Frederick Buxtorf.
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I have the honor to be, with the highest consideration, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, &c., &c., &c.
Lieutenant Governor Hamley to Sir F. Bruce
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your excellency’s letter of the 3d of June, with enclosure received by you from the Acting Secretary of State of the United States, relative to an infamous attempt to introduce yellow fever into New York and other northern cities, and to inform you, in reply, that on receipt of the papers I immediately placed them in the hands of the attorney general of the colony, with instructions to inquire searchingly into the matter, and to take such action as the result of the inquiry might warrant for bringing to justice persons implicated by evidence.
I enclose a copy of his report on the subject, which shows that no evidence, capable of sustaining a charge under the above head, appears to be forthcoming against the barber Rainey, or any other person in Bermuda.
I have, &c.,
Hon. Sir Frederick Bruce, G. C. B.
Attorney General Gray to Lieutenant Governor Hamley
Sir: I have the honor to return your excellency the documents named in the margin, relating to certain statements made by Frederick Buxtorf and Matilda Swan, before the police authorities in the city of New York, on the 29th of May last, concerning the alleged complicity of one Rainey, a barber at St. George’s, in the nefarious plot attributed to Dr. Blackburn, of attempting to introduce yellow fever into certain cities in the United States.
Matilda Swan left Bermuda with Frederick Buxtorf for New York, while her husband was lying in jail awaiting his sentence, Buxtorf’s testimony having contributed to place him in that predicament. Buxtorf and Swan’s wife arrived m New York on the 25th of May, and on the 29th of the same month Mrs. Swan stated that a few days before leaving Bermuda, while boarding at the Telford hotel, she heard the cook, a negro woman, say to a Mrs. Emery that if she, the cook, had been called, she would have exposed the whole matter, and that a man named Rainey, a colored barber, was the man whom Dr. Blackburn had employed to take the trunks of infected clothing to New York.
In compliance with your instructions I have investigated this matter, and I have now to inform your excellency that, as far as I can learn, there is no truth in Matilda Swan’s statement.
The cook at Mrs. Telrord’s tavern or hotel is named Maria Astwood. On my inquiring of her what she knew about the circumstances, she assured me that she knew nothing whatever about them, except what she had heard from Matilda Swan and Frederick Buxtorf when they were boarding in the house, and from conversations between those two persons and [Page 188] others about the time when Matilda Swan’s husband was under trial. On my inquiring whether she knew anything about Rainey, she said she knew nothing about him except from hearing his name mentioned by Mrs. Swan and others.
I asked Maria Astwood as to any conversation having passed between her and Mrs. Emery, when Mrs. Swan was staying at Mrs. Telford’s, relating to these matters.
She replied that there was plenty of conversation on the subject, and Mrs. Emery (who was a witness on Swan’s trial) was sometimes at Mrs. Telford’s about the time of the trial, but she herself had said nothing to Mrs. Emery about Rainey, as she knew nothing about him.
She remembered, however, having heard a woman named Sarah Williams, formerly a cook at the Hamilton hotel, have some talk with Mrs. Emery one day at Mrs. Telford’s hotel, about the man Rainey, but not to the effect stated by Matilda Swan on the 29th May at New York.
From Maria Astwood’s frank and unembarrassed manner of expressing herself, I concluded that she was telling the plain truth, and from what I have heard and seen, I apprehend that, if a question of veracity should be raised between her and Matilda Swan, no jury in Bermuda would hesitate to credit the former.,
Pursuing the inquiry I next called on Sarah Williams, and from her I heard that she had never made any such statement as that imputed by Mrs. Swan to the cook at Mrs. Telford’s hotel, nor had any such statement been made in her hearing. She lived at the Hamilton hotel when Rainey was sent for to take charge of the barber’s shop, and subsequently when he took charge of the bar.
She was also there when Dr. Blackburn and Rainey went away to Halifax, and she had heard that Blackburn treated Rainey very kindly, and paid his passage to Halifax; but she had never heard or said that Dr. Blackburn had employed Rainey to convey to the States any trunks or articles whatever.
Sarah Williams remembered having conversed with Mrs. Emery and other persons on this business at Mrs. Telford’s, at a time when it was a general subject of conversation, namely, while Swan was on his trial.
Lastly I called on Mrs. Emery, and having called her attention to the time and place of the alleged conversation, I was informed by her that she had never heard Maria Astwood or Sarah Williams, or anybody else, say that Dr. Blackburn had employed Rainey to take trunks or other things to New York.
She had heard Sarah Williams say one day at Mrs. Telford’s, while the trial was going on, that she (Williams) wondered how Rainey could have turned so much against Dr. Black-burn—referring to Rainey’s testimony on the trial of Swan—as the doctor had been so kind to him.
This being the result of my investigation, I can have no hesitation in informing your excellency that it affords no ground whatever for suspecting Rainey of complicity in this plot, much less for preferring any charge against him,
Rainey gave his evidence on Swan’s trial with every outward indication of sincerity and truthfulness. Indeed, every one was struck with its apparent reliability. He exhibited neither haste nor hesitation, neither reticence nor zeal. His story may not have been true, but it certainly had all the external features of truth.
On the other hand, neither Buxtorf, who was examined as a witness, nor Matilda Swan, who was not, would be likely, either from their antecedents or from their manner, or from what was generally understood to be their relation the one to the other, to command the respect or confidence of any Bermuda jury.
I should be exceedingly unwilling, after all I have seen and heard of both since Swan was first put upon his trial, to rest any charge of a criminal nature, far less an accusation of the very grave kind now under consideration, on such testimony as theirs.
In the New York Herald of the 6th June appeared a statement relative to Swan’s trial, apparently based on information furnished by Frederick Buxtorf, so scandalously untrue that, if it could be traced home to him, I could never venture to ask a jury to believe him.
From information obtained here I conclude that Matilda Swan is equally untrustworthy, as I am credibly informed that her character for veracity is very much on a par with her reputation in other respects.
Your excellency is aware that no pains would be spared here to bring to condign punishment any and every offender found within our jurisdiction, who could be proved to have taken part in a scheme of such unexampled wickedness, as far as the law would reach the case. But it does not appear to me that we are in possession of any testimony whatever which would warrant our preferring stay such charge against the man Rainey named in this correspondence.
I am the more disinclined to believe Matilda Swan’s statement, since hearing what Maria Astwood and Sarah Williams both assert to the contrary, inasmuch as the statement implies that, whichever of these women it was who made the remarks which Mrs. Swan imputes to the former, she was anxious when called on to expose the whole matter.
Now I am so far from finding either of them anxious or willing when called on to expose the matter as represented by Matilda Swan, that both of them unhesitatingly and perseveringly deny knowing anything about it, and I can see no reason why either of them should have been so anxious in May to expose what in July they solemnly declare they know nothing about.
[Page 189]My office is within a stone’s throw of the spot where the conversation is represented to have been held; and what would have been easier than for either of the women to inform me that she could give material evidence, or what more natural than for Matilda Swan, who placed herself in communication with me on the business referred to, to let me know that there was so near me a witness so important?
I have, &c.,
His Excellency Lieut. Governor Hamley, &c., &c., &c.