Dr. Inch got the point
Home renovations have unearthed a sword that may have killed an Irish doctor in 1829
Dr. Henry Inch, an Irishman, arrived in Guysborough, N.S., in the 1820s and quickly set about establishing a medical practice and dispensary.
Almost as quickly, he also set about wooing the newly widowed Mary Nixon, a woman of great means some 20 years his senior.
Ms. Nixon, the historical record will show, was both fond enough of the young physician to marry him, and wise enough to have him sign a pre-nuptial agreement before the deed was done.
And, after it was, poor Dr. Inch ran into some money problems and then, sadly for him, he ran into the point of a sword some time during the night of Jan. 28, 1829, near the Guysborough market square, a short walk from his and Mary’s front door.
His body was discovered the next morning, frozen, stabbed clean through.
It was a murder, to be sure. One that was never solved. And it receded into history until Duncan P. Floyd, a local lawyer and sometime writer, described the events in detail in 1910 for the Guysborough County Advocate and Canso Breeze — whereupon it was forgotten, again, until Fabian Gerrior, who owns a bakery/ antique shop with his wife, Aldona, cracked into the upstairs wall of their Main Street home while renovating and discovered a rusty cavalryman’s sabre.
Experts have dated the sabre to the American Revolutionary War. Local amateur historians have said, “Aha, we’ve found the murder weapon.”
“We are not so convinced that the sabre is the actual murder weapon,” says Ms. Gerrior from Bangor, Maine, where the bakers/antique dealers were shopping Thursday at an outlet mall.
“But there is always that possibility. Fabian and I don’t discuss it that much, to be honest.”
To be honest, they might be the only ones in Guysborough who aren’t discussing it, obsessively.
Lois Ann Dort, curator at the Guysborough Historical Society, laughed when I called, knew the reason before I could express it and handed the phone to Jamie Grant.
Mr. Grant, a retired high school guidance counsellor, is a past president of the society and a chief speculator as to the motive behind the bloody demise of Dr. Inch. So then, what was it? A duel, fought over an unpaid debt or, perhaps, over a young (alleged) rapscallion Irishman, wooing the widow Nixon and sullying her honour? Was the doctor killed in a fit of jealous rage? Or was he simply a nasty cur, and no great shakes as a doctor — and locals wanted him dead?
“I think the only plausible explanation is that people in town thought that Dr. Henry Inch needed killing,” says Mr. Grant.
“And Henry Marshall was the only one man enough to do it. I think there is a reasonable chance that when Fabian opened that wall, he discovered the murder weapon.”
Henry Marshall was the son of Capt. Joseph Marshall, a veteran of the Revolutionary War who settled in the town.
As a cavalry officer, the captain would have had a sabre. The Marshalls were a family of honour and quick tempers. The old captain punched out a doctor years before the ill-fated Irishman showed up.
His son was charged along with three other men for the murder of Dr. Inch. During a preliminary hearing, none of the witnesses called before the magistrate could remember anything from the night of the crime. (Within three years, three of the four accused were elected to public office.)
Once t he ground had thawed, Dr. Inch was dumped in an unmarked grave.
“You can look through the old birth records and see that for about 50 years after the murder there were an awful lot of children born to prominent families, who were christened Henry Marshall something-orother,” Mr. Grant says.
Mr. Marshall, it seems, was a local hero for some reason, while the alleged murder weapon was, with time, lost behind a wall in a yellow house. There to be discovered by a local antiquarian, doing renovations. The sabre remains in the yellow house. And the mystery? “There is really no solving it,” Mr. Grant says. “And that,” he says, “is part of the fun.”