Headline The Sunday Leader Feb. 6, 1887
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In the tiny lumber town of Duryea, a young Jennie Dale wanted to marry her sweetheart, Thomas Hamlin, in January 1887.
The 17-year-old Jennie had the blessing of her widowed mother, Jane Dale, but not her older brother, Nathaniel Dale, 22, who did not enjoy Hamlin’s company.
Jennie and Hamlin devised a plan to drug Nathaniel by lacing his beer with laudanum, a form of opium, to make him sleep through the wedding ceremony held Jan. 23, 1887, inside the Dale household next to the Lackawanna & Bloomsburg railroad. Nathaniel worked in one of the lumber mills with Hamlin, 19.
“The plan decided upon was to give Nathaniel Dale a dose of laudanum in beer for the purpose of bringing on sleep and then while he was quietly slumbering, the marriage ceremony would take place,” the Sunday Leader reported Feb. 6, 1887.
Jane Dale was told of the plan and agreed.
“At an early hour, Mrs. Dale procured a glass of beer and putting the poison in it, awaited her opportunity. It came sooner than she expected. The young Nathan, who was in the habit of drinking beer, and he was given the liquid which he drank with relish,” the newspaper reported.
As Nathaniel fell asleep, Jennie Dale and Hamlin summoned a justice of the peace to the home to conduct the marriage ceremony. While the family and a few friends celebrated in the parlor, Nathaniel remained asleep in a rear room.
By midnight, Jane Dale was not able to wake up her son and called for Dr. C.S. Cary who responded to the home at once.
“Upon his arrival, he made an examination and though the fact that a deadly draught had been administered was withheld from him, the doctor noticed that the case exhibited symptoms of opium poisoning,” the Sunday Leader reported.
Nathaniel Dale died shortly after Dr. Cary entered the parlor.
On the following morning, the Dale family quietly buried Nathaniel Dale near the “old brick church cemetery on the back road,” hoping the matter would come to rest.
But gossip spread throughout Duryea and eventually Pittston where coroner Dr. John B. Mahon was in charge of investigating suspicious deaths and issuing burial certificates.
Mahon exhumed Nathaniel Dale’s body for a post mortem examination and discovered a large amount of opium in his stomach. A coroner’s inquest was formed with six jurors on Feb. 5, 1887, to hear testimony from those who were inside the Dale home before, during and after the marriage.
Dorothy Dale, sister of the deceased, with tears in her eyes, testified her mother admitted to giving Nathaniel Dale some laudanum to quiet him for the evening. Dorothy Dale would also admit she discarded the vial in a swamp near their home.
Other attendants to the wedding tried to cover up the offense telling the coroner’s jury that Nathaniel Dale was dancing and drinking beer excessively, fell and struck his head.
Mahon told his coroner’s jury Nathaniel Dale did not display any head trauma.
After testimony was reviewed, the coroner’s jury issued their verdict recommending no criminal indictment be filed against Jane Dale and others who participated in the conspiracy they labeled “poison by mistake.”
“The coroner’s jury returned a verdict to the effect that the deceased came to his death from opium poisoning administered by his mother but without criminal intent. The matter will rest here as there is no disposition to prosecute,” the Evening News reported Feb. 9, 1887.
