Sarah Jane Whiteling: The Last Woman Hanged in Pennsylvania

 

June 25, 1889, was a remarkable day in the annals of Pennsylvania crime. On this date, infamous Luzerne County outlaw "Red Nose Mike" was hanged in Wilkes-Barre. Meanwhile, a hundred miles away in Philadelphia, George McCann, who was awaiting trial for crushing his wife's skull with a hatchet, hanged himself inside his cell at Moyamensing Prison. And just a few feet from McCann's cell, was the cell of Philadelphia housewife Sarah Jane Whiteling, who was also hanged that very same day. This is the shocking story of the last woman hanged in Pennsylvania-- a woman who came to be known by a variety of names, such as the "The Philadelphia Fiend" and the "Kensington Killer".

In the late 19th century, the neighborhood of Kensington was a soot-stained industrial center dotted with factories and textile mills. Life wasn't easy for the impoverished residents of Kensington; from finding food to put on the dinner table to finding clean air to breath and safe water to drink, every day was a struggle. Among the thousands of working class poor was John Whiteling, a 38-year-old former streetcar conductor and cigar factory worker who had little trouble finding work, but, because of his failing health, had a difficult time staying employed. Because of John's health problems, the Whitelings had bounced around from cheap tenement housing to even cheaper tenement housing, finally settling with his wife and two children on Cadwallader Street in Norris Square.

Sarah Jane Bard was a short, stout middle-aged woman when she married John Whiteling in March of 1880. The daughter of a German immigrant widow, Sarah had arrived in the United States as a nine-month-old child, but her mother passed away shortly thereafter, leaving Sarah in the hands of a family from Iowa. Sarah and her first husband, Tom Brown, moved to Chicago, and then to Philadelphia, where Tom was arrested for robbery and sentenced to a long term at the Eastern Penitentiary. He died there, leaving Sara a widow. She became pregnant by the owner of an oyster restaurant and gave birth to a daughter named Bertha. Bertha was just nine months of age when Sarah married John Whiteling. In 1886, Sarah bore John a son, whom they named Willie.

Dr. George Smith was the Whiteling family physician and he attended the Whitelings even as the family bounced from apartment to apartment, and it was Dr. Smith who attended to John Whiteling when he fell ill in March of 1888. On March 20, 1888, after days of sickness, John doubled over in agony. While waiting for the arrival of Dr. Smith, Sarah sought the assistance of a neighbor, Mrs. Gilbert, who instructed her to put hot dinner plates on her husband's stomach to relieve his suffering. This seemed to work, but then John began vomiting violently. He died before the doctor could arrive, but Dr. Smith diagnosed his cause of death as inflammation of the bowels. 

Being a poor man, John's life was only insured for $145, and his membership in the Benevolent Order of Buffaloes provided his wife an additional death benefit of $85. This money was promptly collected by Sarah Whiteling, who paid $60 in cash for her husband's funeral and used five dollars of the remaining money to buy herself a new watch. Being that John had always been a sickly man and that he carried such a small amount of insurance, very little attention was paid to the matter. But then, just one month later, nine-year-old Bertha Whiteling suddenly fell ill and died. Dr. Smith performed an examination and certified that the child died of gastric fever on April 24, 1888.

When two-year-old Willie was stricken with a sudden illness in May, Dr. Smith was again notified, but, sensing that something was not quite right, refused to attend to the sick boy. Another physician visited the Whiteling home on Cadwallader Street, but it was too late. The physician certified the child's death in May 26 was caused by congestion of the bowels. Like John and Bertha, Willie was buried at Mechanic's Cemetery at 22nd Street and Susquehanna Avenue.

The Bodies Exhumed

Upon hearing about Willie's death, Dr. Smith notified Coroner Ashbridge. The coroner ordered the bodies exhumed on Wednesday, June 6, but, by some mistake, the exhumation was carried out one day early. When Sarah Whiteling visited the cemetery on Wednesday, she was shocked to find that the graves of her husband and children had been disturbed, their coffins laid on the grass. She approached the cemetery superintendent and was in the middle of a heated argument when the coroner arrived, accompanied by Dr. Formad, Dr. Stewart and Detective Frank Guyer. The coroner asked Sarah to identify the bodies, which she did, and he and Detective Guyer escorted Sarah to the funeral chapel while the physicians went about their business. 

Sarah Whiteling was by no means a bright woman, but she knew what was going on. She grew nervous, and began to offer wild explanations as to why the physicians might find a little bit of poison in the bodies of her husband and children. The children had eaten a great deal of candy before they had fallen ill, she claimed, and the owner of the candy shop must've poisoned them. The she pointed out that the water in her neighborhood was bad, and that must've been the reason why they died in agony. The fact that Sarah herself was still alive and well did little to convince Coroner Ashbridge and Detective Guyer.

A House Full of Vermin

Professor Leffman made an analysis of stomach samples taken from the corpses and reported that he had found lethal amounts of arsenic. Sarah was taken into custody and locked up in a cell at the central station. The coroner charged her with the murders of her husband and children and told her to call for him whenever she was ready to make a confession. On June 12, she was ready to confess-- at least to two of the murders.

"Our house was full of vermin," she said to Coroner Ashbridge. "In February I bought a box of insect powder with a bellows and used it around the house, but it did no good, so I bought a box of Rough-on-Rats at George Bille's drugstore... I asked the clerk what it was and he said poison and that I should be very careful.

"Some days after this, my husband, having been sick for three or four weeks and not having been out of the house, was very despondent... My husband called me and said he had taken some of that poison I bought. He pointed to a glass on the windowsill that had some sediment in it. He did not say how much he had taken. He took the poison about nine o'clock on Saturday morning, March 17." Sarah then explained how she had appealed to her neighbor for help while waiting for the doctor. He arrived at 1:15 that afternoon. "I did not tell the doctor my husband had taken poison. My only reason for not doing so was on account of the insurance policy declaring that no money would be paid in a death from suicide. My husband never told me why he took the poison, but I think he did it because of our poverty."

Sarah Jane Whiteling insisted that her husband had taken his own life, and said that she had then made up her mind to do the same. But she couldn't think of what she would do with the children. This was an unusual statement; after all, Sarah had been an orphan herself, and there was no shortage of orphanages around Philadelphia. She then told the coroner that she returned to the drugstore for a second box of Rough-on-Rats a week before Bertha's death.

 
Bedtime for Birdie and Willie

"I gave Bertha the poison. I opened the box and with a spoon took out a small quantity and mixed it with water. I called her and said, 'Here, Birdie, is some medicine. I want you to take it nice.' I gave her a teaspoonful every half hour." After a few days she called for Dr. Smith, who left medicine powder. Sarah admitted that she did not give the medicine to Bertha until shortly before her death. "I only gave her the poisoned water every half hour," she admitted. "I felt sorry for having given her the poison and stopped giving it, and then gave her the medicine for the first time." Bertha died on the morning of April 24. Sarah told the coroner that Bertha's life was insured in the John Hancock Company for $122, which she later received.

After Bertha's death, Sarah rented out the bottom floor of her home to a Mrs. Donovan, while she moved into a third-story room with two-year-old Willie. On Thursday morning, May 24, she began feeding the rat poison to Willie and then once again sent for Dr. Smith, who give her medicine powder. "I did not give Willie any of the medicine which should have been given every half hour," Sarah confessed. "The next morning I received a letter from Dr. Smith saying I should get another doctor, as he did not wish to attend Willie after having lost my husband and Bertha," she continued.

"Mrs. Gilbert recommended Dr. Deitrich. He came and I showed him Dr. Smith's letter. He read it and then prescribed powders every two hours. I gave him three of these before he died. I stopped giving him the poison on Friday morning and then wanted to save him, but it was too late to do so." Sarah admitted that she had insured the child's life one week after the death of her husband. "I received $17 from Prudential and $30 from the Hancock Company," she said. "I did not poison all of them at one time for fear I would be found out, so I thought I would poison them one month apart, then no one would suspect me," she added. 

My Children Are Angels Now

As for her motive-- which was clearly financial--  Sarah told the coroner that she was actually doing her children a favor by murdering them: "My only notion for poisoning my children was that Birdie might grow up to be sinful and wicked, as she had at various times stolen pennies from people, and once a pocketbook from her teacher at the school at Hancock and Thompson streets," said Sarah. "She was very sinful for one so young and I did not want her to grow up and become a great sinner."

 When it came to Willie, on the other hand, Sarah's motive was purely selfish. "My little boy was sinless and I poisoned him because he was in the way," said Sarah. "He was a burden to me. Without him I could get along. Now I know my children are angels in heaven and I want to meet them there when I die. I do not expect to meet my husband there because he committed suicide and a suicide cannot go to heaven." This statement speaks volumes about the depths of Sarah's depravity and delusion; though she admitted to killing her own children, she seemed confident that she would face no repercussions in the afterlife for her earthly deeds. In her warped mind, Sarah was nothing less than a hero for rescuing her children from their very own existence.

Neighbors Call For Hanging

After Sarah Whiteling's confession, indignation ran high throughout Kensington, but when it was discovered that Sarah, in order to divert suspicion, had also given poisoned candy to the young son of her next door neighbor, scores of men and women alike said they hoped to see her hang. "She's a villain," declared Sarah's next door neighbor, Mrs. Martin. "One of my little boys is sick in the country now since he ate candy which was given to him by Mrs. Whiteling. My boy was taken sick at the same time as her Birdie and when he child died Mrs. Whiteling told a neighbor she was surprised that my child was still living." She also said that her husband caught Sarah giving the candy to their children, and that she didn't seem the least bit saddened when Bertha drew her last tortured breath.

But what Mrs. Martin said next was beyond chilling. "She told me that she had eight children," said the neighbor, "but didn't say what had ever become of them."

Mrs. Martin also made statements which seem to prove that the murders had been premeditated. Sarah had sold Willie's rocking chair to a neighbor for a quarter while the child was still in the early stages of poisoning, and a few days before John Whiteling fell ill, Sarah took him and the children to a portrait studio to have their photographs taken. 

The Doctor's Statement

"Now that Mrs. Whiteling has confessed, I would say that the diseases all resembled arsenical poisoning, but no physician would suspect that it was arsenical poisoning unless his attention was directed that way," explained Dr. Smith to the Philadelphia Times. "I had attended the family for years. Whiteling was a man prone to sickness and prone to complain while sick. I had attended him for a rheumatic ailment shortly before his last illness.  Mrs. Whiteling seemed to love her children very much at times... then again, I would notice an indifference which I could not understand."

Dr. Smith had been treating another girl with gastritis at the time he was treating Bertha, and he was was inclided to believe that Bertha was suffering from the same disease since the two cases were so similar. "I had up to Bertha's death not the slightest suspicion that the deaths were not perfectly legitimate," he said. As for Willie's illness, Sarah told him that he had collided with another boy while running down the alley and began suffering stomach pains shortly thereafter. Of course, even if this statement was true, it certainly wouldn't have secured Mrs. Whiteling a nomination for Mother of the Year, as it's rarely a wise idea to allow your two-year-old to run loose in the back alleys of Philadelphia's dirtiest and roughest neighborhoods.

"I told Mrs. Whiteling that I would not attend the boy," explained Dr. Smith, "and gave as a reason that, there having been already two deaths in the family, I would not be doing justice to her or myself if I did attend him." He then told her that she would have to find another doctor.

"When I saw the announcement of Willie's death I immediately went to the coroner and told hom of the deaths which I then thought suspicious, and told him that although they might be perfectly legitimate they were worth investigating."

Confession at the Inquest

Up until June 15, which was the day of the inquest, Sarah insisted that her husband's death had been a suicide. But after being taken from Moyamensing Prison to the coroner's office, she admitted to Coroner Ashbridge and Detective Guyer that she had poisoned her husband by slipping arsenic into his egg nog. 

"We were very poor," she sobbed after admitting to her husband's murder. "So poor that we owed everybody-- the grocer and everybody else. The insurance money I got on my husband only did a little while. And then I thought about what was placed on Bertha's life... " At this point Sarah buried her face in her hands and refused to say another word. The coroner's jury, after a brief deliberation, declared that Bertha, Willie and John Whiteling came to their deaths from arsenic poisoning at the hands of Sarah Jane Whiteling. She was taken back to Moyamensing Prison to await trial.

The Poisoner's Doom

On the evening of Wednesday, November 28, 1888, a jury-- for only the second time in the long history of Philadelphia-- found a woman guilty of murder in the first degree. But it was not the quick and easy verdict many had predicted. When the jury went out they stood eleven to one, and it took two hours for the others to convince the lone holdout that the death penalty was appropriate for Sarah Whiteling's premeditated and selfish actions. When the verdict was finally read, Sarah's eyes were red from weeping, but otherwise she had no reaction.

On December 22, Sarah was brought to court for sentencing before Judge Allison, who had already overruled the motion for a retrial put forth by the defense attorneys, George Arundel and Henry Paxson. Despite the packed court room, Sarah appeared composed and serene while her attorneys fidgeted anxiously. If the prisoner had been convicted of a petty crime she could not have appeared more indifferent to her fate, reported the Philadelphia Times. The judge regarded Sarah with a stern yet pitying gaze as he asked her if she had anything to say before sentence was passed. The defendent smiled and whispered to her lawyer. "She has nothing to say," he told Judge Allison. The judge then spoke in a voice quivering with emotion.

"The facts of your crime were not only denied by your counsel, but confessed by you. These confessions disclosed a willful, deliberate and premeditated purpose to destroy life, and your motive for doing so was stated without reserve. But beyond this confession the testimony disclosed the fact that you profited pecuniarily by the death of each of your victims... The only defense which was or could be made for you was that of insanity. After a careful re-examination of the evidence I am unable to find it in anything that would have justified a verdict of not guilty on the ground that you were not a reasonable and accountable person when you destroyed the life of your daughter Bertha.

"In each instance in which you destroyed life there was a motive assigned for the commission of the crime wholly inconsistent with the existence of an irresistible mania or impulse. Having reached this conclusion it only remains for me to perform my last solemn duty which the law imposes on me... The sentence of the court is that, you, Sarah Jane Whiteling, be taken hence to the jail of the county of Philadelphia, from whence you came, and that you be there hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may God have mercy upon your soul."

The Execution

n the morning of Wednesday, June 26, 1889, Sarah ate a breakfast of fried eggs, toast and chocolate before being removed from the female ward and transported to the male ward. In the corridor stood the scaffold on which she would shortly be hanged. She passed her final hours in prayer with her spiritual adviser, Rev. William D. Jones, and undertaker Samuel Kehr. Together, they sang "There is a Fountain Filled With Blood" (religious hymns were much more disturbing back then) before Warden Krumbhaar and the prison physician arrived to lead the short, solemn procession to the scaffold.

It was a fearless and smiling Sarah Jane Whiteling who marched to the gallows in the center of the prison corridor, but the bravery was just an act; once she climbed the twelve steps of the scaffold her legs grew weak and she trembled like a leaf. "Dear God, hear me!" she cried. "Do not leave me. Savior, have mercy!" Witnesses remarked that they could hear her short, rapid breaths from the far end of the corridor as the hangman dropped to his knees and bound the condemned woman's ankles. Then he stood and slipped the black cap over her face. The noose was placed around her neck.

A guard stationed on the upper rail stood with his hand raised. When the guard's hand dropped at 10:07, the trapdoor of the scaffold flew open and Sarah Whiteling dropped, her neck breaking instantly. In contrast to the ceaseless days and nights of incomprehensible agony which she had bestowed upon her husband and children, Sarah's death was merciful and quick. After thirty minutes her body was cut down and turned over to Dr. Alice Bennett of the Norristown Hospital for the Insane and the Philadelphia School of Anatomy, who wished to conduct research on the killer's brain (it was later reported that Sarah's brain was completely normal).

Afterwards, she was buried at Mechanic's Cemetery in Philadelphia, alongside the husband and children she had murdered.

In 1950, the city of Philadelphia relocated Mechanic's Cemetery and the neighboring Odd Fellows Cemetery to construct low-income housing on the thirty-acre site, which had been a burial ground since 1849. Over 60,000 bodies were moved to Lawnview Cemetery in Montgomery County.

Sources:

Philadelphia Times, June 13, 1888.
Lancaster New Era, June 16, 1888.
Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 27, 1888.
Pittston Evening Gazette, June 26, 1889.

Philadelphia Inquirer, June 26, 1889.
Lancaster New Era, June 29, 1889.