ASHES TO ASHES
One day towards the end of the 19th century a pyromaniac razed Port Elizabeth’s Trinity Church. Hours later, St Mary’s almost suffered a similar fate. But the mystery arsonist wasn’t done yet
April 1 1897 “ushered in one of the greatest disasters that has happened to Port Elizabeth in recent years” the Eastern Cape Herald wrote at the time.
When the town woke, according to the newspaper, “it learned to its sorrow that one of its prettiest and most popular churches” had burnt down. By morning “what was the previous evening a grand edifice was nothing but a stone shell containing a mass of smoking ruins ... debris, gas-pipes, brass hinges ...”
Everything had seemed normal on March 31, when the rector of Trinity Church, the Rev Dr James Alexander Hewitt locked up after the evening service. Even at 3.15am, when “the policeman on the beat passed the sacred edifice, nothing attracted his attention”.
Fifteen minutes later, however, “the policeman noticed the flames, and immediately gave the alarm”. By 4am “the flames were through the roof”.
The firemen soon gave up on saving the main building and instead tried to stop the blaze from reaching the belfry and the vestry.
Nearby residents, “wakened out of their sleep, flocked to the scene of the disaster, and saw the grand but awful sight. The flames burnt through the windows, the glass fell at intervals with loud crashes, and the roof fell piece by piece, helping to feed the fire which roared within. The beautiful organ was a mass of ashes ... and the teak altar suffered a like fate.”
The next morning Hewitt told the Herald: “I feel as if something dreadful has happened, as if I have lost my wife or child.”
The police immediately suspected arson. Evidence, including an open door near the organ and the fact that the gas pipes had been turned on, pointed to “incendiarism or robbery, probably the former, as the thief who breaks into a church has little to gain nowadays”.
But the Trinity was not the only Port Elizabeth church to burn that day.
“The presumed miscreant, whose diabolical work is recorded, was evidently not satisfied with his day’s work and tried his hand on St Mary’s Collegiate Church in the afternoon,” the Herald reported.
St Mary’s, which had burnt to the ground in 1895, was still being rebuilt when the arsonist struck. After lunch, the builders’ foreman, a Mr Gough, thought he smelt smoke but assumed it had wafted over from Trinity. At about 4pm, however, he noticed smoke coming from the roof and went to investigate. He found a fire under the altar.
Though the blaze was “speedily extinguished”, this was not enough to save the altar, the altar cloth, the oak seat and the bishop’s kneeler, which “were charred to cinders”.
It didn’t take the police long to conclude that this, too, was no accident. The “scoundrel” had used the church candles to “start his fire, and to feed it he had heaped a considerable quantity of coir under the altar”.
The bishop’s Glastonbury chair, kneeler and missal had been piled on top of the altar as fuel.
Port Elizabeth had a serious problem on its hands. “A detective was immediately put in charge of the matter, though owing to there being no organised detective department here, it is improbable that any result will come,” the Herald reported. “If the miscreant is caught, considerable credit will lie with the detective.”
Third time unlucky
The reporter’s mistrust in the police turned out to be unfounded. The detectives Archer and Orchison were
put in charge of the case and their suspicions soon fell on “a woman of strange appearance and manner, whose movements had given rise to a certain amount of comment”.
Archer and Orchison shadowed her that very evening, following her to the Masonic Hotel, where she’d been staying. Here, they overheard a conversation that led them to believe they were on the right track.
The next morning they followed her to St Mary’s and staked out the building. The suspect “tried to enter the church by two doors, but they were both locked. She then took a walk around the grounds, and when she got to the heap of debris from the fire of the previous day, she picked up some of the charred remains of the kneeler and threw it down in an exclamation of disgust.”
In the meantime, the detectives hid themselves in the building. The trap nearly worked: their quarry entered the church and started opening cupboards presumably looking for fuel for another fire. By this time Orchison had “managed to secrete himself in the pulpit and the woman began to examine the kneelers”.
Suddenly, St Mary’s priest Dr Theodore Wirgman arrived on the scene. When he asked the woman whether she wanted anything, she “asked whether it was usual to ask persons in church what they wanted”.
At this point she noticed Orchison hiding in the pulpit, and asked what he was doing there. He replied, rather implausibly, that he was feeling sick. While he was walking the suspect to the front entrance, Orchison commented that “it was very sad about the altar getting burned”.
The woman replied that “there was too much altar altogether.”
The suspect then strode away from the church, but the detectives quickly caught up with her “and informed her that she would have to go to the police station and give an account of herself”.
Curiously, the local clergy and important townsfolk joined the police at the interview. There, it became clear that while she had no problem with churches per se, “she disagreed with the ornation of churches with altars, in particular.
When one priest asked if she knew a particular clergyman in nearby Grahamstown, she “asked if he wanted his church burned down too”.
‘Her mind is unhinged’
That afternoon Frances Livingstone Johnstone was formally arrested on suspicion of arson.
Originally from Glasgow, Johnstone was described as “a woman of medium height, [who] wears her hair cut short, and is respectably dressed. She appears to be a woman of good education, and her history shows that she has been a school teacher.”
After arriving in South Africa from Australia some time in 1896, she had taken shelter at the Salvation Army in Cape Town, where she “returned her thanks for the kindness shown to her by setting fire to the Army Shelter”, the Port Elizabeth Telegraph reported.
She then worked as a governess in Worcester, Ceres and other places in the Western Province, according to the newspaper.
During the investigation it emerged that, before arriving in Port Elizabeth, Johnstone had been arrested in Paarl on suspicion of setting fire to a goods shed. She was detained, “but on being found to be a lunatic she was released and taken up by friends at the Royal Hotel”.
As the Telegraph put it: “The history of her movements more than suggests the idea that her mind is unhinged.”
A couple of weeks later she turned up in Port Elizabeth via Kimberley. On the day of her arrival, “the nightwatchman on the north jetty found her on one of the [harbour] cranes, and she was taken down and seen off the jetty”. A couple of days later, “she attracted the attention of the Rev Monsignor Fagan in St Augustine’s by her strange manner. She asked Fagan a number of peculiar questions” before leaving the church.
We all know what she did next.
On Saturday April 10, Johnstone was formally charged with arson. “The court was crowded with well-known townsmen and clergymen. The prisoner preserved a cool demeanour throughout,” the Herald reported.
The matter was set aside to a later date, but not before Dr Wirgman had expressed his “deepest sympathy with my reverend brother and the congregation of Holy Trinity Church in the fiery trial which has befallen them in the total destruction of their church by sacrilegious hands”.
When the case resumed, Wirgman was first to take the stand. He described in detail how the fire at St Mary’s had been extinguished, adding that the church’s insurers had already paid out £80 for repairs.
Wirgman was followed by Gough, the foreman, and a hairdresser, who said that “on Tuesday March 30, a woman entered his shop and asked to have her hair cut. She was very particular how she had her hair done.” But “she said nothing about churches”.
The “female searcher” who processed Johnstone after her arrest “gave evidence as to finding a box of matches, a comb, and other articles on the prisoner”.
The last witness was Orchison, who described the conversation he’d had with Johnstone after she’d found him hiding in the pulpit.
Finally, Johnstone was asked if she had anything to say. She first said she didn’t before changing her mind and asking Dr Hewitt why Trinity Church had burnt down.
The flames burnt through the windows, the glass fell at intervals with loud crashes, and the roof fell piece by piece, helping to feed the fire which roared within
Last hurrah
After the fire, Trinity Church was rebuilt and renamed the Holy Trinity Church, according to Dean McCleland, who has written a number of books about the history of Port Elizabeth. Cape Colony governor Sir Alfred Milner laid the foundation stone on September 12 1897.
The improved and enlarged “Gothic building with magnificent stained-glass windows that stands today” hosted its first service in 1898.
A new altar had to be made for St Mary’s, but the old one wasn’t completely destroyed. Wirgman later wrote that it “was ultimately cleaned of char and fitted for a vestment table, now in the sacristy”. He also provided the final word on the “eccentric and dangerous lady” who started the fires.
Johnstone was imprisoned and sent to the asylum on Robben Island, “where she nearly succeeded in burning the government buildings down while the officials were giving an evening party”.
Johnstone, it seems, was nothing if not persistent.