The Suffragette's Saga

By Martin A. Sweeney

Told by a Central New York pub owner, The Suffragette’s Saga is a story of grief and grievances. In an era of streetcars, vaudeville stars, and gritty men in corner pubs, a seemingly unsolvable murder leaves the unmarried Julia O’Rourke wondering if she is responsible for her father’s death. The economic livelihoods of the local brewers and pub owners have been threatened by her wearing bloomers, riding a bicycle, and marching for the vote and Prohibition. Resentment is palpable. After experiencing the gossip of other women, the theft of her “Freedom Wheels,” arson, and the trampling to death of a protesting suffragette, Julia comes to terms with her obsession for social and political reforms and discovers her voice, the love of her life, and the murderer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rogue Phoenix Press
• Release date: Feb 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781624203879

Book preview

Prologue

Why they would just suck all the oxygen out of a room, and they controlled all the important rooms in life.

This was my grandmother’s lament about men. Now, mind you, it wasn’t that Julia O’Rourke disliked men. She liked men. She loved her father and brother with whom she lived on a farm just outside of town. But even they had advantages that she was denied because of her sex. And that she found suffocating. And that caused deep resentment.

At the age of thirty-four years, that was how she felt four days before Christmas in 1894. It started out for Julia as just another December day on the farm. It meant another day of labor and another day of being denied full personhood.

Earlier that day, her father—my grandfather and namesake—Seamus O’Rourke, went to the village to the Brockway Block on Main Street. There he sold the fowls Julia had raised for forty dollars and fifty-seven cents to O. B. Andrews & Company, the only grocer in town. The store had signs advertising that a pound of tea sold for seventy-five cents, a cup of sugar for six cents, a quart of cream for twenty-five cents, and a lemon for two cents. Since Grandpa did not enjoy his tea English-style—or anything English for that matter, as Julia also knew quite well—he wrinkled up his nose at the promoted items. Instead, he purchased a five-pound bag of assorted hard candies—lemon, licorice, and horehound—for fifty-two cents, a one-pound wooden box of dried, salted cod fish, and a tin of fresh Wellfleet oysters packed in ice. He was hoping the oysters would keep a few days in the ice box until Julia served them up as oyster stew, a special traditional treat enjoyed on Christmas Eve after the decoration of the tree.

That evening, he made another trip back into town for a much needed pre-holiday haircut and shave at Billy Jones’ barbershop on James Street. Before heading home, he planned on savoring a drink or two right here. It was Doyle’s Pub at that time. There was no reason to expect anything sinister to occur on his way home. After all, it was the Christmas season—four days before Christmas. It was the time to celebrate good will to men. Carolers had been serenading villagers up and down Main Street and singing God rest ye merry, gentlemen. Let nothing you dismay…. It was a holiday, for God’s sake. Quite literally.

Seamus found himself basking in the admiration poured on him by another patron of the pub in response to his boasting of good fortune. He explained how he had received a tidy sum for the sale of his daughter’s Christmas turkeys and how pleased she was that her hard work had paid off so handsomely.

My lovely Julia knows how to fatten a turkey for the holidays and for takin’ first place at the county fair every year. Aye, that she does for sartin. And I know how to fetch a proper price for ‘em, too, I do!

What he did not say was that Julia had wanted to bring the turkeys to market herself.

I can dicker the price on my own, Pa, she had said.

But Seamus countered, It would not be seemly, Julia. We have talked about this before; you just have to accept that negotiatin’ is business, and business is something men do.

With her hands on her hips and eyes flashing under long lashes, a frustrated Julia responded, ‘Business’ is one of many things that men claim they alone can do. The good ol’ boys club has a corner on too many things Pa that women should have a right to do, too.

But Seamus’ mind was made up, and that was all there was to it, and Julia was too busy to argue the point any further.

After quaffing a glass of dark, celebratory beer at this very bar that I have kept preserved in all its wooden grandeur, Seamus made his way over here to another room dimly-lit by gaslights; Doyle’s office. I can see it in my mind. At this spot John Doyle is seated at his big wooden desk. His black hair is parted down the middle. He is pulling slowly at the ends of his impressive, black, handlebar moustache. Other men, some with facial hair and some clean-shaven, are standing or seated nearby. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.

Chapter One

THE LONGEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR

Seamus O’Rourke pulled up a sturdy, wooden chair near the black pot-bellied stove. He plunked down his six-foot, two-hundred-pound frame as he heard the affable, middle-aged saloonkeeper remark something about it being a good time to be selling cabbage. Mr. Dobbins, the local Cabbage King, was the broker, who always paid a fair price for cabbage and, in turn, made a fortune shipping the cabbage by rail to kraut-makers in Pennsylvania. His stately, three-storied home with Sheraton fans in the second level stood as a testament to his affluence. When he drank at the pub, his favorite advice was, To keep your balance while drinking lads, be sure to hold a pint in each hand.

The men in this pub’s social gathering were either hard-working factory laborers or, like Seamus, dairy farmers from the area. The former found employment making and painting carriages and wagons at either Brockway’s Wagon Company at the south end of the village or at the Johnsonburg Manufacturing Company on James Street. Their accents meant that the majority could trace their origins back to Ireland. A few had actually come to the States around the time of the Great Hunger or later. Others had relatives who had made the arduous journey by sea in the infamous ‘coffin ships.’ The struggles of life had taught these men to work hard and to play hard and to make a living at something more than raising praties, which could succumb to the blight and leave you impoverished and starving. A third of them had fought to save the Union and free the slaves. Two of them had sacrificed an arm at Gettysburg, but they felt better off than the five buried in nearby Glenwood Cemetery or the bugler buried outside Andersonville Prison in Georgia.

On this particular night, in Doyle’s office, the air was thick with talk of politics, the local news, jokes, and a fair share of gossip. Mixed in, too, was the ubiquitous whiff of cow that always permeated many of the patrons’ clothes. Seamus O’Rourke listened to a joke being told about a man sitting in the train station smoking while waiting for a train. According to the bewhiskered teller of the joke, the woman next to the seated man finally turned and said, Sir, if you were a gentleman you would not smoke here. Mum, said the man, if ye was a lady ye’d sit farther away. Very soon the woman said again, If you were my husband, I’d give you poison. Well, mum, replied the gent, if ye was me wife, I’d take it. This caused Seamus and the rest of the pub’s patrons to erupt in raucous laughter and someone exclaimed, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Saints preserve us from women who don’t know their place!

Had Julia O’Rourke been present, she would have found little humor in the derisive banter about the place in which those of her sex were expected to remain. Instead, there would be resentment piled upon resentment.

Then, Doyle stood up and held up his hand to command silence. He waited as the din grudgingly subsided.

Gents, he announced as he reached into his brown leather vest pocket and pulled out and held up a yellow ticket, I have here a ticket for tonight’s performance by Eva Tanguay at the Opera House. I am willing to part with it to the highest bidder. This caused quite a stir among the all-male gathering.

With a dramatic flourish, Doyle produced from his desk drawer a program for the evening’s show and held it aloft. Emblazoned upon it was a printed image in color of a young woman with blonde, curly tresses framing her head and a sultry, come hither expression on her lovely face. She wore a white dress with a heavily beaded, low-cut neckline exposing the top of her firm breasts. She was posed looking askance and with her left hand resting on her hip. Below this in bold print were the words Eva Tanguay…The ‘I Don’t Care Girl’…Finest Entertainer in Vaudeville Today…One Night Only… Friday, December 21, 1894…Show starts at nine PM at the Opera House on Main Street, Johnsonburg.

Doyle gave the men ample time to ogle the program. The younger men jostled each other and crowded in closer for a better look. The most eager used their elbows to push each other aside, spilling beer from their glass mugs in the tussle. They had seen the kiosk in front of the opera house across the street listing a few of the songs this female entertainer had made famous: It’s All Been Done Before But Not the Way I Do It, That’s Why They Call Me Tabasco, and her signature song, I Don’t Care. This was the song that she was known to belt out in brassy self-confidence.

Seamus just watched, bemused. He had no inkling that there might be a discrepancy between the image projected by Eva Tanguay and the standard of propriety to which men expected their wives and daughters to adhere. Neither did he have any inkling that Death would be stalking him shortly.

Come on, men, who will start the bidding? asked the saloonkeeper turned auctioneer. It isn’t every day you get to see the one and only Eva Tanguay in our town, is it? I assure you this is going to be an event tonight to talk about for some time to come.

How right he was.

Not getting the response he wanted, Doyle continued his marketing spiel by turning to one of the young carriage workers gawking at the program. Say, Tom Dane, do you have a ticket? The gangly youth of seventeen years shook his head. Doyle made his pitch. You don’t want to miss her doing her famous number ‘Go As Far As You Like’ do you? You’ll want a front row seat for this, my boy! The youth blushed, and one older man generated laughter by making some ribald comments about Tom’s inexperience with emancipated women like Eva Tanguay.

Or any women, for that matter! chimed in another. More guffaws erupted.

Old George Rood, the much respected senior foreman at the carriage manufacturing plant on James Street, holding a pint of ale, spoke up amidst the laughter. Doyle, you’re a scalper of the first order. You know that, don’t you? But, tell you what, I’ll buy the ticket off you for face value so you can break even and I’ll give the ticket to our green-behind-the-ears friend here. He motioned toward Tom Dane, who worked at the same factory as Rood. Color was rising in the youth’s cheeks. He was turning pink, like an anemic beet, and grinning at the good-natured ribbing he was receiving.

To popular acclaim from the men, the proposed deal was accepted. George Rood handed over a dollar to Doyle, and Doyle ceremoniously handed the prized admissions ticket to Tom Dane. The lad mumbled his thanks and then quickly and somewhat sheepishly pocketed it. Doyle added, Now, Tom, you come back and tell us all about the suggestive moves she makes when she coos ‘I Want Someone to Go Wild with Me.’ The crowd of men roared their approval at both Doyle’s impersonation of the female entertainer and his transmission of the ticket to the lad, and they clapped the shoulders of the highly embarrassed youth. His color now matched that of a boiled lobster. Tom nodded; he would go along with this rite of passage that, deep inside, he was most eager to make. After all, he was getting an early Christmas present—a chance to see the seductive ‘I Don’t Care Girl.’ While he thought he was going to see some hoochie-coochie girl, he was actually going to be treated to a performance of song and dance by one who was destined to become the highest paid star on the vaudeville circuit by the turn of the century.

These shenanigans in Doyle’s office took less than ten minutes. Then, a smiling Seamus O’Rourke took out his gleaming gold pocket watch, glanced at the time, and announced it was time to be going home. Stopping at the bar, he ordered another glass of beer. He downed it quickly. Then he wiped his froth-covered upper lip on his sleeve, pulled a dark gray, woolen tam onto his graying head, and went out the back door into the cool air of the first night of winter.

It was the night of the winter solstice—the moment when the earth’s axial tilt would be the furthest away from the Sun. This was to be the longest night of the year, and it marked the beginning of winter. This, among the ancient Celtic tribes of Seamus’ ancestors in the days when the fierce, mercenary gall-óglaigh arrived in Ireland from Scotland, was considered a magical time. According to the Druids, this was the time when the Sun God journeyed through the underworld to learn the secrets of death and life, and rituals were to be performed to mark the transition from the month of the Elder tree to the month of the Birch.

When Seamus left Doyle’s, two other men, scruffy-looking in their twenties, immediately left the pub by the front door and stepped out into a strangely silent Main Street. The crowd had not yet formed at the entrance to the opera house across the way. The third-floor row of windows was ablaze with light from the gaslights within. Outside it was a windless night. All the trees—Elder, Birches and Elm were devoid of leaves. Skeletal tree limbs stretched upward in motionless, pagan supplication, begging for the return of the Sun God. A peddler’s cart pulled by an old mare made its way down the thoroughfare, creating the only sound to be heard—a slow clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop through the otherwise noiseless night.

Illuminated by the moon and the modern, electric arc street lamps installed just three years earlier, the sixty-four-year-old farmer trudged alone up James Street. He passed Barry Scanlon’s blacksmith shop on the right—all darkened and inactive within. He headed in the direction of the railroad tracks and the train depot. He quite literally lived on ‘the other side of the tracks.’

In truth, however, just as many of Irish descent resided inside the village as outside. Yet, because they were of the working class and of the Roman Catholic faith, they were viewed with mostly quiet disdain by the other fifty percent of the area’s citizens; predominantly merchants and professionals of Protestant denominations. To be sure, outwardly they were tolerated, but there were folks who harbored no charitable thoughts for second wave immigrants in general and ‘Papists’ in particular.

This lifelong ‘Papist’ was heading on foot toward his comfortable, prosperous, two-hundred-acre dairy farm that was a couple miles northwest of the village. As he had done countless times before by foot and by horse-pulled wagon, he made his way up Irish Settlement Road and then turned onto the country lane that cut across his property, known on the town records as Lots thirty-three and thirty-four. He reached a small bridge spanning a creek. He was half a mile from his hillside farmhouse door, with a stretch of ground before him that seemed desolate even in daylight.

No wife was waiting to greet him; Seamus was a widower. His wife, Katie, died fifteen years ago from typhoid fever, leaving him with a nineteen-year old daughter and a sixteen-year old son. In typical Irish tradition, Julia, now thirty-four years old and unmarried, had assumed her mother’s domestic burdens, and thirty-one-year-old Thomas, also unmarried, had stayed on to help his father with the farm chores.

As cradle Catholics, the O’Rourkes drove every Sunday into the bustling port and county seat of Maysville, located just four miles downriver. There, they attended Mass with the parishioners of St. Mary of the Angels. It would be another fifteen years before the devout of Johnsonburg would have a parish church to call their own; named after pious Saint Brigid, sixth century Abbess of Kildare. By all appearances, matters of the sod and of the soul were the family’s main preoccupations, and an occasional tippling on a Friday night like this one was viewed by Seamus as one of the few pleasures left to him in this world. Of course, his daughter’s recent public and unpopular stance in favor of a Constitutional amendment granting female suffrage caused him some aggravation.

It’s nothin’ I can’t handle, he confided to friends. But he said it like he was trying to convince himself that he had ‘no problem at all’ with his Julia. After all, she was challenging the notion of male superiority which he, along with others of his sex, believed was Gospel truth.

Earlier, in the fall, when he attended Mass on Sundays in Maysville, Seamus had been unaware that he and his two grown, good-looking children were being watched from several pews behind them. From the time they arrived until they departed, and as they attentively followed the Latin liturgy with their black missals, they had been the object of scrutiny. Julia in particular had been the focus of attention.

Eyes followed Seamus now as he walked along. They adhered to him as he had made his way past the village limits—beyond the houses of three thousand residents. Their doors were hung with fragrant evergreens tied in ribbons of red and gold, and their windows glowed with tinseled Christmas trees. Some doorways were overhung with mistletoe. This ornament surely would have been removed if the homeowners had known that Celtic Druids once used this parasitic plant in human sacrifice and placed it over their doorways to ward off evil.

So, with only the moon to light his way and the alcohol in his blood to warm him, Seamus turned off Irish Settlement Road and headed for the warmth of his own hearth. The eyes following him were drawing closer, much closer now. He stopped briefly to look up at the stars, and the stars looked back. He recalled holding Julia in his arms one clear night, when she was three and a half years old. He had asked his daughter, Tell me, Julia, how many stars are out tonight? The girl had looked up and promptly responded, All of them, Pa. Seamus chuckled again at the sage answer given. He took in a deep breath of the cool night air and exhaled slowly. It was one of those moments where he thought it felt good to be alive. God’s in His Heaven, and all’s well with the world.

~ * ~

I found him this mornin’ lyin’ face down in the road.

John Doyle could not believe what Thomas O’Rourke was telling him. The saloonkeeper had just finished his Saturday mid-day dinner of ham and cauliflower baked in a savory sauce of sharp cheddar cheese when the distraught son of Seamus O’Rourke entered the hotel, clad in his ulster, and began quizzing him.

Was my father here last night? he asked.

There was clearly urgency in his words.

That he was, Tom.

Was he drinkin’ anything?

He did. Doyle sensed something was wrong.

How much? probed the young farmer, with worry in his voice.

Two or three glasses of beer was the answer, followed by a question from the concerned saloonkeeper: Has he got home yet?

Aye, he has, answered the agitated Thomas. I found him in the road this mornin’ when I was comin’ down with the milk. He was lyin’ face down. I rolled him over, and I found he had a terribly black eye. Try as I might, I could not get him to come to.

Doyle grimaced at the ugly image that came into his mind.

Thomas continued, Julia and I haven’t been able to rouse him yet, so I’ve come into town for Doc White. The son returned to questioning. Did my father stop at any other place last night that you know of?

Doyle closed his eyes and stroked his chin for a couple seconds and then answered that he could not recall. Then he asked Thomas to explain again how he had come upon his father.

I was comin’ down with the cans of milk, and I saw him lyin’ face down in the lane about half way between our house and the main road. He was breathin’ loudly, like snorin’. I assumed he was drunk and had been out with the boys last night. Since it wasn’t that cold, around forty degrees or higher, I thought it best to let him sleep it off while I drove to town, delivered the milk at the depot, bought some bread at the bakery, and then drove back home. On the way to the house, I stopped and managed to get him into the wagon and carried him to the house.

I have to tell you, Tom, replied Doyle, toying nervously with his moustache, this doesn’t sound like your father. I’ve known your father for a long time and I never saw the man drunk but once. Stone drunk is not like him at all.

I know, agreed a worried Thomas. I’ve got to get back. Julia is there alone with Mrs. Lucey. I want to be there when the doctor arrives.

As he left, Doyle was running the story through his mind again and again. Something did not make sense here.

Later, at the onset of night, Doc White’s son called with disconcerting news.

Father’s back from Mr. O’Rourke’s. He says that I am to tell you Mr. O’Rourke’s skull was broken in and he’s not expected to live.

Immediately, Doyle called Officer Porter, and the two of them went to Doctor White’s office—the one in the large, white home on Pine Street. They wanted to get his assessment of O’Rourke’s condition. From there, they drove directly to the O’Rourke farmhouse, a modest but solidly built structure perched up on a small hill that the O’Rourkes referred to as ‘The Knoll.’ Arriving around six in the evening, they were met at the door by Julia and the gray-haired Mrs. Lucey, a neighbor friend of the O’Rourkes and another ardent suffragette. The faces of both women were stained with tears. Their eyes were red from crying. Normally, Julia took pride in her well-kept appearance, but tonight she was heavily distraught and presented a frazzled appearance. Her reddish-brown hair needed grooming and she was wearing a simple, loose-fitting beige housecoat, but her appearance was of little importance now to either her or John Doyle.

Doyle looked around. On the kitchen table he spotted two plates of partially eaten codfish gravy and boiled potatoes that had grown cold. A black cat with white boots was curled up asleep on the floor near the cast-iron stove, serenely oblivious to the troublesome events unfolding. Steam rose from a tea kettle sitting on top of the stove. Through an open door leading to a backroom he spotted Julia’s notorious bicycle—the controversial, crimson-colored contraption she used to ride into town and for suffrage marches. Doyle was aware that such behavior was viewed as inappropriate in some social circles. He figured Julia knew this, too, but simply chose not to be deterred by it. Once he heard her say, It is high time to cross man-made boundaries, and she had emphasized the word man.

In the other direction Doyle could see Seamus O’Rourke lying in his bed in a room off from the sitting room. He was unconscious and motionless under a slightly dingy-looking, gray blanket. All color was drained from his countenance. He looked ever so much like a corpse waiting to be embalmed.

Doyle glanced around for Seamus’ son. He thought it odd; Thomas was nowhere to be seen. Staring back at Seamus, fear began to take the saloonkeeper by the guts. This did not appear to be an accident. He began to ask himself if Seamus had run into foul play. If so, who could have done such a thing? The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he nervously began to wonder: Who else is in harm’s way? Julia? Thomas? Someone else in the community? Himself? Is this related in some way to the opposition provoked by Julia’s public participation in the temperance and suffrage movements? Surely, no one in the area would express discontent to this extreme—unless that person was trying to make a point…a very serious and potentially