Madame Rosa and a Famous Murder Trial
Just who was this woman? One newspaper report alleged that she had had six husbands, as well as several lovers. She denied both allegations, saying that she had been married to only three husbands, but had married one of them twice, years apart. Although she said that her legal given name was Amy, she once had testified under oath that it was Zimmel. In different times and places, she had different names, which makes Madame Rosa a tricky person to research. Moreover, she sometimes said half-truths about herself. Discerning the facts of her life from its fictions is difficult.
Per the 1870 U.S. Census, she was 32 years old, and had been born in New York State (she later said that her birthplace was Warwick, New York, just north of the New Jersey border). On that same census, she described her occupation as "Clairvoyant," indicated that she had somewhat better-than-average financial assets, and said that she owned real estate worth $5,000 - likely a reference to her summer house and property in Hicksville.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 11, 1877
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In 1874, she acquired some measure of renown by testifying in defense of a Brooklyn woman accused of a notorious murder - testimony which in no way was connected to her purported skills as a clairvoyant. The explanation is lengthy, but intriguing.
The year before, a fire broke out in Williamsburg, in the second-floor apartment of a Mr. and Mrs. Merrigan. Neighbors rushed to the scene to extinguish it, but the couple stood outside, trying to prevent people from fighting the fire. The husband kept warning, "There's kerosene; don't go up" and "There's no one up there." His wife Sarah, who was pregnant, tried to push the helpful neighbors away, and she cursed them loudly for their efforts.
The couple's pleas were futile. With the fire out, police entered the apartment, and discovered the scorched body of a woman (Margaret Hamill, a friend of Sarah since childhood). The Coroner determined that Miss Hamill had died of strangulation two days before the fire, and that the cause of the fire was arson. Sarah Merrigan was charged with first-degree murder.
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As it happened, on the day she died, Miss Hamill earlier had accompanied Mrs. Merrigan to Manhattan, to consult with Madame Rosa. At the ensuing trial, the defense implied that it would put much stock in Rosa's testimony about the consultation.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 28, 1874
The following summarizes the defendant's account of the events that led to Margaret Hamill's death:
Mrs. Merrigan wanted to "play the numbers." She and Margaret Hamill first visited a traveling gypsy, who instructed them on how to use certain body measurements to predict their respective futures, and thus learn when it would be fortuitous to play. The pair next visited Madame Rosa, Sarah wanting to know which numbers to play.
The two women then went to Mrs. Merrigan's home, in order to measure their respective necks, toes, etc. Hamill stood on a chair, so that the pregnant Merrigan need not bend too far to measure Hamill's toes. That job done, she continued to stand on the chair while measuring her own neck, using a few yards of clothes line as a measuring tape. To make the job easier, she draped the excess over a nearby open door, and had Merrigan tie both ends to the knob on the opposite side, to prevent the clothes line from slipping to the floor. Sarah left the room to tend to other business. When she returned, the chair was tipped over, and Hamill hung from the door, dead.
Madame Rosa's testimony was terse. She confirmed that the two women had visited her on that day. She added that, as she sensed Mrs. Merrigan was chronically unlucky, she provided no numbers for her to play. Instead, she counseled Sarah to never play the numbers game at all. The women left.
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Having constructed this narrative to establish the possibility of accidental death by hanging, the defense promptly abandoned it - perhaps because a prosecution expert already had ruled out hanging as cause of death, testifying that marks on the body showed the clothes line had been pulled backward horizontally, not upward, as it strangled the deceased.
Instead, the defense argued that Merrigan had gone insane and tragically killed her lifelong friend. It offered multiple reasons - but no evidence - for thinking her capable of madness. First, insanity had "saturated her mother's family." Second, a doctor testified that "some women" are subject to fits of insanity during their second trimester of pregnancy. Near the end of its closing argument, the defense abruptly introduced a third possibility - perhaps Merrigan was an undiagnosed epileptic who, zombie-like, had strangled Miss Hamill while in the throes of an epileptic fit.
Incredibly, eight jurors were persuaded that this unsubstantiated speculation constituted reasonable doubt. Thus, justice - poetic justice, anyway - was served: the trial ended with a hung jury.
Despite Madame Rosa's testimony having proved irrelevant to the non-verdict, it brought her brief fame. It was a case which left no doubt as to the killer's identity. She testified for the defense, and the killer was not convicted. That sounded like cause and effect to the public. That Madame Rosa really must be remarkable!
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