Death of Elizabeth Fales

Jason Fairbanks lived in the family homestead on East Street in Dedham and was courting Elizabeth Fales, two years his junior at 18.

[2] Jason had told a friend that "planned to meet Betsey, in order to have the matter settled" and that he "either intended to violate her chastity, or carry her to Wrentham, to be married, for he had waited long enough.

[2] He also told them that he had also attempted to take his own life, but was unable to, and that accounted for his wounds[4] which left him "still alive, but in a most deplorable situation.

[2] The editor of the local paper, Herman Mann, was called to the scene and reported the incident in the next edition of his weekly newspaper under the headline "MELANCHOLY CATASTROPHE!

[8] Interest in the case involving two prominent families was so great that the trial was moved from the new courthouse to the First Parish Meetinghouse across the street.

[8] Sullivan also presented evidence that suggested Fales could not have inflicted all of her own wounds and demonstrated that Fairbanks borrowed the murder weapon from a field hand that morning.

[8] They showed the jury that, due to a smallpox vaccination that ended up harming him, Fairbanks did not have the use of his right arm and was sickly in general.

[10][4] Fisher Ames drew up a petition calling for his capture declaring that "the stain of blood is upon this land" and that "no honest man's eyes must sleep in Dedham this night.

"[4] When Boston's Columbian Centinel, a Federalist newspaper, blamed the escape on a banditti of the Liberty Pole gentry, the Republican Independent Chronicle shot back the next day.

[11] He was eating his breakfast when he was discovered by Seth Wheelock of Medfield, Captain Henry Tisdale of the Springfield Parish, and Moses Holt of Hadley, Massachusetts.

[11] Within days of the execution the first of four installments of the Report of the Trial of Jason Fairbanks was published by the Boston firm Russell and Cutler.

[11][6] It was 87 pages long and was issued over the course of several months, making it "the first demonstrably popular trial report published in early national New England.

[11] Thomas Thatcher, the minister at the West Church, published a sermon in which he wondered if Fairbanks' hanging and the "riot and confusion" at the end of the day were caused by a hellish legion "of obstreperous, incarnate fiends, who paraded the streets of this peaceful village.