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THE CANFIELD CASE: The Suicide Theory
Apparently Happy Relations Between Husband and Wife Foster This Supposition
Ralph Curry Maintains His Purchase of Strychnine Was to Destroy Rats
[Welland Tribune, 1 February 1907]
Cayuga, Jan 28-Mystery still surrounds the poisoning case at Canfield, and while a dark cloud of suspicion hovers over the affair many persons favor the theory of suicide. Mrs. Perkins considers herself a much abused woman. She has denied herself to reporters, but before doing so stated freely that the rumors regarding herself were the work of enemies.
“I do not know what people are trying to do to me,” she said, plaintively, “but I know who are doing it, and when all is cleared up, as it will be, they will be punished. I have lost everything,” she said, “there will be no will, no insurance, I have lost my husband and my support as well, and now people will not leave me alone.”
Mrs. McDonald of Canfield, neighbor of the Perkins family, speaks strongly of the apparently happy relations existing between Mr. and Mrs. Perkins.
“She used to come over here for water, Mrs. McDonald said, “and what more natural than she should run in for a chat. She used to bring over his letters and read them to me, and it was Henry and Mattie all the time. They were more like the letters of a lover than those of a man who had been married fifteen years. On Friday morning she came over crying with a letter, and said that Henry had had another of his attacks and was very bad. I tried to quiet her and said he often had them, but she seemed to feel pretty bad. I think it is an awful pity she always threw her letters in the fire, for if anything does come out of this fearful business they would have been very strong evidence for her.”
The theory of suicide is sustained by the words of the dying man to Mrs. McDonald on Christmas morning, when she was called in: “Mrs. McDonald, I am done for. This is the last of me,” and when she tried to comfort and cheer him by saying he had often had attacks before, he took very little notice of what she said. From whatever source he had derived the knowledge, he evidently thought his hour had come.
Not much importance is attached to the sensational report of the purchase of strychnine at a local drug store. The poison book of W.A. Quinsey, druggist, is not now locked in the safe of the crown attorney nor is it even now in the latter’s charge. The book is now in the hands of its owner. The signature attached to the purchase as it appears in the book is unmistakeably that of a man’s, and seemingly that of an untrained hand, and is no doubt that of Ralph Curry, the brother of Mrs. Perkins. Curry does not deny that he purchased the poison on the date mentioned in October last, but maintains that it was obtained solely for the destruction of rats, with which the cellar in the Curry dwelling was overrun. The strychnine was mixed with milk and placed where it could easily be obtained by the rodents. The family have not since been troubled with the pest. When the poison was purchased several other parties were in the drug store and Druggist Quinsey believes that Ralph Curry himself signed the poison book. It is not generally believed that this purchase had any connection with the case.
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