A Just Retribution

A Wretch's Perfidy and A Young Girl's Infatuation—A Plot Which Was Partially Carried Out

Early on the morning of July 6, 1878, a carriage drove up to the Parker house, in Boston, from which alighted a young and handsome man. He gazed about him for a moment and then entered the coach. He had hardly seat himself when a young girl, scarcely nineteen, with a face as purely beautiful as a rose-blossom, approached the vehicle and seated herself beside the occupant within. The coach then [preceded] on its way through the city, until it reached a retired spot. Here it stopped, the two alighted and the driver was discharged. The girl was Kate Roberts, one of two daughters of a poor woman who, at that moment, lay dying of consumption in a room in the poorest section of Boston, and her companion was George Davis, a gambler.

Along a path the two walked, and, stopping before what appeared a gloomy-looking mansion, the man knocked. The door was opened and the two entered and were ushered into an ante-chamber, where stood a woman of harsh and forbidding features, and beside her was a man who purported to be the officiating clergyman. He opened some book, the ceremony was mumbled over in a strange indistinct manner, the ring was placed on the finger of the bride, the pair were pronounced man and wife, the book was closed, tucked under the man’s arm, who, receiving his fee, immediately disappeared.… Read More