AN ACCOUNT OF THE ARREST, TRIAL, CONVICTION AND CONFESSION OF JABEZ BOYD, FOR THE MURDER OF WESLEY PATTON. BY A GENTLEMAN OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD.
Philadelphia: T.K. & P.G. Collins, Printers, 1845. 15, [1 blank] pp. Stitched and lightly foxed, some pencil linings in margins. Good+.
"The victim was beaten to death at Westchester, Pennsylvania, while being robbed. Boyd was arrested in church 'with a hymn book in his hand, and from which he was singing with apparent composure.' He was hanged" [McDade]. The pamphlet's author says Boyd "was brought up in ignorance, and surrounded by depraved companions." From his youth he "exhibited a cruel disposition, and a manifest delight in tormenting and witnessing the sufferings of others, and more especially those of dumb animals." Conceiving a plan to poison someone with arsenic, he tested it by giving "it to a coloured man engaged about the premises." The pamphlet recounts his pattern of criminal behavior.
"Eventually to be known as the American Jekyll and Hyde, Jabez Boyd was always judged to be a highly religious man in his community, but it appears that he used his church-going activities to learn when potential victims would be abroad with sums of money on their persons or in their homes" [Steakis, Encyclopedia of American Crime 118].
FIRST EDITION. McDade 126. AI 45-953 [3]. Cohen 12386. OCLC 70114956 [3- Yale, Lib. Cong., Clements], 82107487 [1- Harv. Law School] as of July 2021. Item #37655
Price: $850.00