A Fatal Affection: Southwick, 1873
📜 UNEARTHED — This story has been assembled from separate events and narrative fragments.
⚠️ It includes themes of suicide. Reader discretion is advised.
— A Southwick Time Machine original
In late 1873, Lyman Cooley of Southwick, Massachusetts, received a letter that would change everything.
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| Lyman Cooley received a letter that would change everything |
Lyman was born in Granby, Connecticut, around 1850. His family relocated to Russell, Massachusetts, before settling on a farm in Southwick sometime before 1865. He worked as a farmhand through his youth.
Around 1869, when he was eighteen or nineteen, he began courting a local Southwick beauty. Their courtship would span several years, but the relationship did not progress as Lyman had dreamed. By the early 1870s, he had taken up the butcher’s trade in Springfield.
My Dearest Lyman...
To Lyman’s surprise, the girl had written him, inviting him to visit her at her Southwick home. He traveled from Springfield to Southwick on Thursday, December 4, 1873. He stayed at the girl’s house until the early morning hours, around 2:00 a.m. Whatever transpired during that long night left Lyman heartbroken.
After leaving her home, Lyman swallowed a dose of corrosive sublimate, a highly toxic mercury compound commonly sold in drugstores at the time. He then made his way to his uncle's house in Southwick, but the poison acted quickly. Within minutes, he was severely ill.
When he arrived at Uncle Clark's home, the seriousness of his condition was unmistakable. Uncle Clark immediately summoned Southwick physician Dr. Rockwell, who pumped out Lyman's stomach, but despite the doctor's best efforts, the young man remained gravely ill.
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| December 1873: Lyman Cooley took corrosive sublimate |
Lyman’s story quickly spread. It became the subject of town gossip, sympathy, and controversy—a cautionary tale of desperate love and its fatal consequences.
In a surprising twist that seemed to offer hope, the object of Lyman’s affection relented in her rejection. With Lyman’s life hanging in the balance, she took on the role of caretaker, and he was rapidly recovering under her care. However, the poison had inflicted too much damage, and Lyman closed his eyes one last time on Friday, December 12, 1873.
A Pattern of Desperation
What unfolded on December 4 was only the climax of a long and troubling pattern. The December suicide attempt was not Lyman's first. In the fall of 1873, disappointed in the love he had been chasing for the past four or five years, he had embarked on a calculated campaign to demonstrate his desperation to the woman who had captured his heart. He began taking small doses of laudanum, a tincture of opium commonly used as a painkiller in the 19th century, hoping to impress upon her the depth of his suffering.
When a week of laudanum consumption failed to kill him or change her mind, Lyman escalated his efforts. On October 8, he turned to arsenic, taking larger doses than he had of the laudanum. The poison made him violently ill, but the girl still rejected him.
Accusations Followed
The blame for his death fell heavily on the young woman who had been the object of his obsessive affection. Southwick residents accused her of leading Lyman on, and many in the community held her responsible for his death. The situation was complicated by the revelation that the girl had refused to marry Lyman at the encouragement of her older married sister, adding another layer to the tragedy and spreading the blame beyond just the young woman herself.
While the community changed the focus of its blame to the sister, Lyman’s story reveals a young man whose repeated suicide attempts—each seemingly designed to influence the woman's feelings—spoke to deeper troubles. His death left Southwick grappling with questions about love, responsibility, and the pressures placed on young men and women during courtship.
— Another lost piece of local history preserved by the Southwick Time Machine.
This article is based on primary source research, including but not limited to official records, census data, death certificates, and period newspapers.
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Edited Out/Author’s Additional Research Notes
Corrosive Sublimate: This is mercuric chloride (HgCl₂), an extremely toxic mercury compound that was once used as a disinfectant and in photography. Ingestion causes severe damage to the gastrointestinal tract and kidneys.
Medical Treatment: Dr. Rockwell's treatment of "pumping him out" likely referred to gastric lavage or stomach pumping, a common emergency treatment for poisoning in the 19th century.
Lyman's uncle, William W. Clark, was born in Tolland, Massachusetts, on April 10, 1832. He died on October 23, 1921. William Clark was Lyman's mother's brother.
Lyman came from a family marked by service and longevity. When the Civil War broke out, his father enlisted in the Fifteenth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers and fought in some of the war's bloodiest battles: Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg. Lyman's parents would both live into their 90s, a stark contrast to their son's abbreviated life.
Lyman's grandfather (on his father's side) had a connection to confinement and punishment—he had served as a guard at Newgate Prison, the notorious colonial-era prison in Connecticut that had been carved into an abandoned copper mine.
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