221-The Mystery Man of Essex County
Futility Closet
Greg Ross
4.8 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2018
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1882, a mysterious man using a false name married and murdered a well-to-do widow in Essex County, New York. While awaiting the gallows he composed poems, an autobiography, and six enigmatic cryptograms that have never been solved. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll examine the strange case of Henry Debosnys, whose true identity remains a mystery.
We'll also consider children's food choices and puzzle over a surprising footrace.
Intro:
In 1972 two Canadian scientists set out to figure the number of monsters in Loch Ness.
Winston Churchill's country home must always maintain a marmalade cat named Jock.
Sources for our feature on Henry Debosnys:
Cheri L. Farnsworth, Adirondack Enigma, 2010.
Craig P. Bauer, Unsolved!, 2017.
George Levi Brown, Pleasant Valley: A History of Elizabethtown, Essex County, New York, 1905.
Caroline Halstead Barton Royce, Bessboro: A History of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y., 1902.
"Debosnys Ciphers," The Cipher Foundation (accessed Oct. 7, 2018).
Craig P. Bauer, "When Killers Leave Ciphers," history.com, Nov. 14, 2017.
Nick Pelling, "Henry Debosnys and the Cimbria ... ?" Cipher Mysteries, Nov. 16, 2015.
Nick Pelling, "Thoughts on the Debosnys Ciphers ..." Cipher Mysteries, Nov. 7, 2015.
Nick Pelling, "The Person Not on the S.S.Cimbria ..." Cipher Mysteries, Nov. 17, 2015.
"Guilty of Wife Murder," [Washington D.C.] National Republican, March 8, 1883.
"Hangman's Day," [Wilmington, Del.] Daily Republican, April 28, 1883.
"A Murderer's Story," Burlington [Vt.] Weekly Free Press, Nov. 24, 1882.
"A Wife's Fearful Death," New York Times, Aug. 6, 1882.
"A Remarkable Man Hanged," New York Times, April 28, 1883.
The Troy Times of Nov. 23, 1882, had noted, "The prisoner spends his time writing verses, or what he thinks is poetry, and he has over a ream of foolscap paper closely written. Much of this doggerel is written in Latin, French, and an unknown cipher, which Debosnys says is used in Europe quite extensively." These six cryptograms came to light in 1957 -- none has been solved:
Listener mail:
August Skalweit, Die Deutsche Kriegsernährungswirtschaft, 1927.
Emma Beckett, "Food Fraud Affects Many Supermarket Staples, So How Do You Choose the Good Stuff?" ABC, Sept. 3, 2018.
Stephen Strauss, "Clara M. Davis and the Wisdom of Letting Children Choose Their Own Diets," Canadian Medical Association Journal 175:10 (Nov. 7, 2006), 1199–1201.
Benjamin Scheindlin, "'Take One More Bite for Me': Clara Davis and the Feeding of Young Children," Gastronomica 5:1 (Winter 2005), 65-69.
Clara M. Davis, "Results of the Self-Selection of Diets by Young Children," Canadian Medical Association Journal 41:3 (September 1939), 257.
This week's lateral thinking puzzle was inspired by an item on the podcast No Such Thing as a Fish. Here are two corroborating links (warning -- these spoil the puzzle).
You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss.
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Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.
If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Futility Closet Podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. |
| 0:14.1 | Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from monster density to a perpetual pussycat. |
| 0:23.7 | This is episode 221. I'm Greg Ross. |
| 0:31.1 | And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1882, a mysterious man using a false name married and murdered a well-to-do widow in Essex County, New York. While awaiting the gallows, he composed poems, an autobiography, |
| 0:36.9 | and six enigmatic cryptograms that have never been solved. |
| 0:40.2 | In today's show, we'll examine the strange case of Henry de Bosni, whose true identity remains a mystery. |
| 0:47.3 | We'll also consider a children's food choices and puzzle over a surprising footrace. |
| 0:56.6 | In December 1870, a mining engineer named John Wells died in an accident in Essex County, New York. |
| 1:03.1 | He left behind a wife of six years, Betsy, who was pregnant with her fourth daughter. |
| 1:07.4 | But the mine gave her a financial settlement, and with time her property grew into |
| 1:10.8 | 15 acres of prime real estate. When a man named Henry de Bosney arrived in Essex 12 years later, |
| 1:16.2 | he immediately began pursuing the wealthy widow. He told her he was from Paris. He was now down on his |
| 1:20.6 | luck, but he was cultivated and charming, and after a whirlwind five-week courtship, they were married |
| 1:24.9 | in June 1882. He immediately began pressing her for the deed to the |
| 1:29.1 | property. She refused to give it to him or to tell him where she kept the settlement money from the |
| 1:33.0 | mining accident, which was hidden in a compartment that John had built under the windowsill. Betsy and |
| 1:37.8 | DeBosney began to fight. She wanted to save her wealth for her daughters, and his intentions were now |
| 1:42.0 | plain enough. Unsuccessful, De Bosni asked her on July 31st |
| 1:45.9 | to go with him on an outing to Port Henry, 20 miles to the south. He said he wanted her to leave her |
| 1:50.6 | current farm in her daughter's hands and to join him in a new one. 16-year-old Eliza later remembered |
| 1:55.4 | that De Bosny was impatient to depart that morning. Betsy had told her she had reservations about going, but said she would go and see what he'd got. We don't know what passed between them on the trip. Possibly Betsy refused the |
| 2:04.9 | idea of leaving her daughters in Essex. But when they arrived in Port Henry, several witnesses |
... |
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