A mystery inside a mystery: Deaths, disappearance at Whirlpool Farm
It was a shocking and puzzling double tragedy the citizens of Niagara Falls and area would not soon forget.
At noon on Wednesday, May 4, 1910, word was received at Niagara Falls police headquarters that John Baldwin, who was employed by Ben Thompson at his large Whirlpool Farm alongside the Niagara River, had suddenly died under mysterious circumstances. Chief Mains immediately sent two detectives to the old and prosperous farm that was home to the 54-year-old Ben, his young wife, Ida, and the couple’s two little boys.
Ida explained to the detectives that Baldwin had gone out to milk the cows early that morning. After he was gone an unusually long time, she went out to investigate and found him dead in a cow stall.
When the detectives examined the body they found carbolic acid burns on the dead man’s lips. An empty bottle of the caustic, deadly acid lay nearby. A further examination inside the Thompson home turned up quantities of highly poisonous Paris green in several cups and on some meat. Thompson himself, it was discovered, had been suffering from Paris green poisoning since the previous Saturday after drinking a cup of cider taken from a pitcher later found to contain particles of the lethal substance. It appeared that Baldwin had first tried to poison the family. His death was ruled a suicide.
Two days after Baldwin’s death Ben Thompson died. Niagara Falls coroner, Dr. James H. Mcgarry, ordered an inquest. Held at city hall, a number of people were summoned before the 12-man jury to give evidence.
Dr. E. T. Kellam, who made the post-mortem examination of Thompson’s body, testified that death was due to Paris green poisoning.
Ida Thompson explained how her husband always had a cup of cider every afternoon after his work in the fields was done and how, on that fateful Saturday, he became violently ill after taking his usual drink. On examining the cider pitcher, she found traces of Paris green in it. Not until the following Monday, however, did she summon Dr. Tremble from Queenston. In his testimony, the doctor stated he believed arsenic poisoning was the cause of death — arsenic being one of the ingredients in Paris green.
Ben’s sister, Mrs. William Bracken, testified she was sure a previous attempt had been made on her brother’s life several weeks earlier when he was sick with the same symptoms he had at the time of his death. She also told the jury: “His wife had not gone near him when he had first taken ill.” Ben had told her, she said, that he couldn’t see how John Baldwin could be responsible for poisoning him since he had left a better job and had “begged to be employed by me.”
Daniel Thompson, Ben’s brother, felt that a man who had worked for Ben earlier and who had threatened him when dismissed, was probably responsible. Ben’s niece, Loretta Thompson, came to see him several days before his death. She testified how Baldwin and her uncle frequently quarrelled but when Ben became ill his employee tried to care for him. This was in contrast to his wife who, Baldwin told Loretta, never went near her husband even though Ben was “vomiting his heart out.”
Loretta then gave the most startling evidence at the inquiry when she suggested Baldwin had been in love with his employer’s wife. She had seen the two of them together on various occasions. Ben had told her, she testified, that he wondered if “that fool thought I would let him run the place and marry Ida if he got rid of me?” The jury then gave careful consideration to the idea that John had tried to murder Ben so he could have Ida and the farm, but when the plan seemed to fail he took his own life rather than face the consequence of discovery.
In the end, however, the jury brought in an open verdict that stated “Benjamin Thompson came to his death from arsenic poisoning administered by some person or persons unknown.”
Adding a note of mystery to what was already a mysterious tale, just after the inquest, Ida vanished, abandoning her two small sons. (They were raised by an uncle in North Tonawanda, New York.) Nothing more was heard about her until 1947 when one of her sons was notified that she had died, penniless, in Virginia.
Ben Thompson lies buried in Stamford Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Niagara Falls. Just who was responsible for his horrible death remains a mystery.