Pearl Bryan (I) [Laws F2]

DESCRIPTION: Pearl Bryan runs away to meet her lover Jackson, who, helped by Walling, takes her to Kentucky and decapitates her. Her body is discovered the next day. (The fate of the murderers may then be described)
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1926 (recording, Vernon Dalhart)
KEYWORDS: elopement homicide
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Feb 1, 1896 - Discovery of the headless body of Pearl Bryan, killed along with her unborn child by Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling, near Fort Thomas, Kentucky
Mar 20, 1897 - Execution of Jackson and Walling
FOUND IN: US(Ap,MW,Ro,SE)
REFERENCES (11 citations):
Laws F2, "Pearl Bryan I"
Brewster-BalladsAndSongsOfIndiana 61, "Pearl Bryan" (3 texts plus an excerpt and mention of 3 more; 1 tune; the "A" and "B" texts and the "F" fragment and tune are this piece; the "C" text is Laws F1B)
List-SingingAboutIt-FolkSongsInSouthernIndiana, pp. 343-352, "Pearl Bryan" (2 texts, 2 tunes plus a supplementary text that is a "Pearl Bryan" version of Laws F1)
Burton/Manning-EastTennesseeStateCollectionVol1, p. 77, "Pearl Bryant" (1 text, 1 tune)
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 789-790, "Pearl Bryan" (1 text)
Burt-AmericanMurderBallads, p. 31, "(Pearl Bryan)" (1 short text, classified as "Pearl Bryan (I) [Laws F2] by Laws but as Pearl Bryan (V) by Anne B. Cohen)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia2, pp. 424-425, "The Ballad of Pearl Bryan and Her Sad Death in the Kentucky Hills at Fort Thomas" (1 text)
Friedman-Viking/PenguinBookOfFolkBallads, p. 209, "Pearl Bryan" (1 text)
Darling-NewAmericanSongster, pp. 199-200, "Pearl Bryan" (1 text plus a fragment)
DT 751, PERLBRY1
ADDITIONAL: Anne B. Cohen, _Poor Pearl, Poor Girl!: The Murdered-Girl Stereotype in Ballad and Newspaper_, Publications of the American Folklore Society, Memoir Series, Volume 58, University of Texas Press, 1973, pp. 48-51, "Pearl Bryan I" (2 texts, one from Vernon Dalhart, the other independent of Dalhart's version)
Roud #2212
RECORDINGS:
Vernon Dalhart, "Pearl Bryan" (Vocalion B 5015 [as "Jep Fuller"], 1927; recorded 1926) (Columbia 15169-D [as "Al Craver"], 1927) (Okeh 45090 [as "Tobe Little"], 1927)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Jealous Lover (I), The (Florella, Floella) (Pearl Bryan II) (Nell Cropsey II) [Laws F1A, B, C]" [Laws F1], particularly the "B" subgroup of Pearl Bryan ballads
cf. "Pearl Bryan III" [Laws F3]
cf. "Pearl Bryan IV"
NOTES [1575 words]: To tell this song from the other Pearl Bryan ballads, consider this first stanza (from Leach-TheBalladBook):
Now, ladies, if you'll listen, a story I'll relate
What happened near Fort Thomas in the old Kentucky state.
'Twas late in January this awful deed was done
By Jackson and by Walling; how cold their blood did run!
This particular murder seems to have attracted more local attention than any this side of the Lizzie Borden case; Cohen, pp. 3-4, says that for more than a year it monopolized the front pages of papers in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. Despite this, the story doesn't seem to have attracted books the way the story of, say, Maria Marten did. Polenberg, pp. 268-269, lists books by James McDonald and Joan Christen, and by Anne B. Cohen (cited here as Cohen), plus several long articles and web sites.
One of the two books mentioned above, James McDonald and Joan Christen, The Perils of Pearl Bryan: Betrayal and Murder in the Midwest in 1896, AuthorHouse, 2012, turns out to be historical fiction by a couple of authors who discovered the story because they were interested in the history of dentistry! It does have a handful of interesting illustrations, and the bibliography lists a few pamphlets about Pearl, but I doubt it can be relied on. Except maybe about teeth. On the other hand, Anne Cohen was the wife of Norm Cohen, so I think it safe to trust her reliability. There is also a Wikipedia article, but it didn't seem to have any other particularly valuable sources. Although I have quoted Polenberg as well as Cohen, I suspect Cohen is the ultimate source for almost all of what follows.
Polenberg, pp. 82-89, gives a summary, including a photo of Pearl on p. 83 and sketches of the murderers Jackson and Walling on p. 86; Cohen has newspaper sketches of all of them after p. 36
Pearl, the youngest child in her family, was born in October 1872, and was said to have been friendly and popular, a Sunday School and church worker (Polenberg, pp. 82-83). On the other hand, Cohen, pp. 16-17, says that "there was evidence that she had bestowed her favors on more than one man and that she was capable (in 1896!) of going off by herself to Cincinnati to have an abortion"; her account hints that the rosy picture portrayed, e.g., by Pohlenberg was the result of the papers trying to cast her as the "innocent victim" type.
Pearl's body was discovered early near Fort Thomas, Kentucky, early on the morning of February 1, 1896; the murder had probably happened the day before (Polenberg, p. 82). It would seem she did not carry obvious forms of identification; the investigators were able to identify her by tracing her clothing. Polenberg also says that "certain physical characteristics" helped identify the body. He does not say what he means, but Cox reported that she was "web-footed." Based on her photograph, she doesn't appear to have been particularly pretty.
It took some time for the identification to be made. The newspapers reported the discovery of the headless body, on land owned by John Lock, p. February 2, 1896 (Cohen, p. 10). The coroner's initial report said that she had not been raped but "had been a mother" -- which I interpret to mean that she was not a virgin -- and was dressed in cheap clothing (Cohen, pp. 10-11). The initial assumption seems to have been that she was a prostitute. Then the coroner realized that she had been about five months pregnant (Cohen, p. 11).
Once she was identified, people started tracing her history. A cousin of hers, Will Wood, had introduced her to Scott Jackson, who got her pregnant. (A story floated about for a while that Jackson had drugged her with cocaine when she came in for dental work, then had his way with her, but the dentist for whom Jackson worked showed that that was impossible; Cohen, pp. 17-18.)
Jackson seems to have been quite a piece of work; as a young man, he had been involved in embezzlement, but had turned states' evidence and avoided conviction (Polenberg, p. 83). Then he got Pearl pregnant. (Or someone did; Cohen, p. 27, mentions a possibility that Pearl also slept with her cousin Will Wood.) The only positive thing I can say about him is that he did try to find a way to terminate her pregnancy -- but turned to murder when that failed. He had already apparently thrown her over to go to dental school.
Alonzo Walling was Jackson's school roommate, and for some reason went along with Jackson's plan rather than trying to prevent it. Not even the prosecution could find a motive for his behavior; they had to argue that he did it as a favor for his friend! -- Cohen, p. 25. Cohen, p. 27, does mention one idea: That after Pearl and Jackson failed to find someone who could give her an abortion, they went to Walling to perform the surgery -- and it failed, injuring or perhaps killing Pearl, and suddenly Walling was on the hook for a crime too.
The two gave her a heavy dose of cocaine mixed with water, which made her sick and induced her to go with them; they carted her away in a hired cab (whose driver, confusingly, was also named Jackson; Polenberg, p. 84), then left the cab and murdered her. We of course cannot know what happened after that; Jackson and Walling both accused the other (Polenberg, pp. 84-85). The police inclined to believe Walling, who said Jackson did it, and certainly Jackson had the stronger motive.
If Jackson wanted to demonstrate innocence, he sure found complicated ways to do it, e.g. he wrote a message to Will Wood with several coded elements, including referring to Pearl as "Bert" (Cohen, p. 44).
Cohen, p. 85, reports that "Scott Jackson, established as principal murderer, was portrayed in the newspapers as cold, calculating, brutal, clever, conscienceless, and as a man of action and daring. His only saving virtue was a real concern for his mother. Walling, once he was established as a secondary murderer, was portrayed as weak and dull and tending toward vice." It sounds as if this is all invention, though; their true characters aren't really known.
Neither could offer much of a defense; they didn't really offer much in the way of an alibi, and there is a newspaper report of both accusing the other (Cohen, p. 30). Both were convicted in separate trials (Polenberg, pp. 87-88). Despite all the newspaper hoopla, attendance at Walling's trial was sometimes sparse; it appers that people really did think he was the second fiddle and less important (Cohen, p. 41), although for all we know he committed the actual murder.
All appeals failed; they were hung together (Polenberg, p. 88). Neither ever admitted anything; they would not even respond to Pearl's sister's request to reveal where her head was (Cohen, p. 31. The head was never located, even after they brought in bloodhounds, who led them to a reservoir, but draining it did not reveal a head; Cohen, p. 43). Being hung may have been a small mercy; there was a newspaper report that, on at least one occasion, a lynch mob was formed, and that it included members of the Bryan family (Cohen, p. 13).
Jackson, in his final days, spent much of his time playing music (he was a harmonica player); among the pieces he played with his bandmates in prison was, ironically, "A Mother's Appeal for Her Boy" (Cohen, p. 37, with a text in the note on the next page of the Charlie Poole version "The Mother's Plea for Her Son").
Polenberg, pp. 88-89, says that songs about Pearl Bryan are rare, but although none is individually as popular as, say, "Omie Wise," there are at least half a dozen Pearl Bryan songs all told. Clearly the macabre story took a strong grip on the public imagination.
Laws identifies only four Pearl Bryan ballads, some of them minor variations on older ballads, but Cohen, p. 45, who had access to 135 texts of Pearl Bryan ballads, argues that there are six. Cohen accepts Laws's designation of this as "Pearl Bryan I"; she considers 23 of her texts to be entirely this ballad and seven more to be mixed texts. Within this type she identifies two subgroups, one of which derives from the Vernon Dalhart recording and one from a separate, lost, original. She counts 11 texts of each type plus one that is mixed. I wonder a little about this; Dalhart recorded it as "Jep Fuller," and while a recording by Dalhart could put a song into tradition, would a recording by "Jep Fuller"? Also, Cohen and I independently suggested that Carson Robison rewrote the text a little, which hints that all the other versions could go back to the source version, not just some secondary original. Still, it's probably correct to classify as "Dalhart" and "non-Dalhart" types. Cohen on p. 52 lists the differences between the types; the one easiest to spot is that the non-Dalhart texts mention her missing head; the Dalhart texts do not. Also, Cohen, pp. 54-55, says that Dalhart used the tune of "Mary Phagan" [Laws F20]; the non-Dalharts use something else.
Cohen, p. 72, notes another interesting fact about this song, that it seems over time to have gradually written Walling out of the story. She argues -- I suspect correctly -- that Walling didn't fit the innocent-girl-and-murderous-cad stereotype, and so no one quite knew what to do with him, so they forgot him.
Of Cohen's five other types, Pearl Bryan II (i.e. the "Pearl Bryan" group of "The Jealous Lover (I) (Florella, Floella) (Pearl Bryan II) (Nell Cropsey II) [Laws F1A, B, C]) is by far the most popular -- 65 of 135 texts, or almost half. - RBW
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