a surprising bit of history

So I got to rereading a part of my novel where I reference some little known trivia about my hometown. Appropriate because Lizzie’s hometown is not so loosely based on Oakham. Indeed, I call it Coldbrook, which is the part of Oakham buried under the trees of Rutland State Forest. Maybe you know this trivia – that there used to be springs. Magical springs, supposedly. So there was a bustling community near the hotels set up for the visitors (mostly women) who wanted to take in these waters and soothe their souls. But, the government executed eminent domain and dammed up these waters to feed the Quabbin and leveled the town to make a forest. But, hey, that means I bathe in some of those mystical molecules in my Boston area apartment even now.

Anyway… I use that minor history in my book. So I thought I would pass some time with a Google search to find something, anything to tweak the story of Maria. But, wow, no, found another story completely. Of murder and desperation. A woman killed six of her children, and attempted suicide, in 1901. Apparently those Coldbrook Springs did nothing to soothe her soul. 

It isn’t unlike something the media would have a field day with in this day and age. I’m sure there have been recent stories not far from it… except for the justification she pled for her case. Poverty. As in she didn’t want to send her children to the poorhouse.

So I’m sitting here, thinking about it. How can I not think about it… wondering about the creepy karma that lurks on those hiking trails (although more than ever I want to follow them this spring). But thinking about if it would happen in this day and age. Well… it could. Maybe she had some post partum thing. Or maybe… maybe her level of poverty was that desperate.

Which brings me to think about the present day and poverty and… no matter how awful it is right now – and I know I have a mere fraction of a total grasp of present day poverty… none of it is as awful as it was 110 years ago.

And why is that? We live in a world where we have to worry about too much food consumption as opposed to too little. About the disposal of our too many belongings bought with money we don’t have. And how did we get here? Is it progress? Are we regressing because we want to rip away the government that has preserved our safety and protected us from such levels of poverty in the last century?

I’m not going to try to answer all these questions… or even to ask all the ones circulating through my brain as I realize there is in no way I can use this little horror story in my piece of fiction. But… it is a horror story. A sad, awful end to seven lives in a place where I was a happy child. I never knew about this... the story of those woods was more of the prison camps than the murder of a family. Then again, I never bothered to pay attention… because it wasn’t my story. And yet, it is the desperation of the human condition… so it is.