Flagrant Pension Fraud: She Married A Corpse

1895

One of the Most Flagrant Pension Frauds Ever Perpetrated

Fraudulent pension claimants receive a considerable share of the money obtained from the government in a dishonest manner. The pension office to protect itself employs men as examiners who ferret out these evildoers, find the weak spots in their claims and finally bring the offenders before the law.

"One of the strangest cases I ever handled," said an ex-examiner, "was that of a woman who married a corpse.

"It was while I was engaged in another matter that I got wind of this case, and it was sometime before it was concluded, but the story, as finally revealed was this:

"An old soldier, drawing a pension, lived in Maine, at the home of a gentleman who was a magistrate. One winter the old soldier fell ill and became so weak that the magistrate and his wife concluded that he must soon die. The thought of his death did not distress them, but they could not think of the loss of his pension with equanimity. They received his bounty as payment for board, and of course would lose it at his death. To obviate this they conspired with a young woman, a relative of the wife, to marry the old soldier. This was made possible by the fact that the veteran was not only debilitated physically, but mentally weak and completely under their control.

The programme then was for the soldier to die, his widow to draw his pension and, incidentally, divide it with the magistrate and wife. After some correspondence the bride-elect, who lived in a neighboring city, started to the magistrate's home. There was a heavy snowstorm and owing to this she was late in arriving, so late, in fact, that the intended groom had departed this life a short time before. They did not allow so small a matter to stand in the way, however, and the magistrate, by virtue of his office, performed the ceremony at the bedside of the corpse, and afterward swore that he had made them man and wife."

Another instance in which a dead man figured as performing the actions of a living one occurred in Kansas. It was about twenty years ago when the Pottawatomie Indians had been given lands in severalty, with the privilege of selling them. There was a class of white men then, as there always has been on the frontier, who took every advantage of the red man, often going so far as downright robbery.

One of these gentry appeared at St. Mary's one day with a deed to a parcel of land, formerly the property of White Horse. It was regularly drawn up and signed with White Horse's mark. As the Indian had been missing for some time, its authenticity was doubted, but as the document was regularly witnessed it seemed as if the deed would stand. But a traveler came to town the next morning, who said he had seen White Horse's body frozen in the river, with one hand protruding through the ice. It bore a scar which fully identified the body as that of the Indian. As the river had been frozen two weeks previous to the date of the deed, it proved that document fraudulent. But the white men said that what they swore to was literally true, and it was. The document read:

I hereunto, with my hand, place my mark,

his
WHITE X HORSE
mark

They had placed the pen in the frozen fingers and guided it in making the mark. — Washington Post.