The Fall of the House of Walworth: A Tale of Madness and Murder in Gilded Age America

by Geoffrey O'Brien

In the tradition of The Devil in the White City comes a spell-binding tale of madness and murder in a nineteenth century American dynasty

On June 3, 1873, a portly, fashionably dressed, middle-aged man calls the Sturtevant House and asks to see the tenant on the second floor. The bellman goes up and presents the visitor's card to the guest in room 267, returns promptly, and escorts the visitor upstairs. Before the bellman even reaches the lobby, four shots are fired in rapid succession.

Eighteen-year-old Frank Walworth descends the staircase and approaches the hotel clerk. He calmly inquires the location of the nearest police precinct and adds, "I have killed my father in my room, and I am going to surrender myself to the police."

So begins the fall of the Walworths, a Saratoga family that rose to prominence as part of the splendor of New York's aristocracy. In a single generation that appearance of stability and firm moral direction would be altered beyond recognition, replaced by the greed, corruption, and madness that had been festering in the family for decades. 

Genres: True Crime, History, Nonfiction, Crime, Biography, Mystery, American History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published July 20, 2010

Reviews

[Scott Fuchs · Rating 1 out of 5]

Solidly ! uninteresting non-ficton
Considering that the motives leading up to a murder and the event itself are wrapped up by page 16, this would be the logical place to end the book. Instead we are subjected to 275 pages more, with next to no information other than what we have read up to page 16.
These remaiing pages are filled with many writings of the victim, where one alone would suffice. Even more irritating are the pages and pages of s-t-r-e-t-c-h.
I stuck this through to the end, expecting a plot twist or 'shocking' revelation that never happened and hoping that there would be some detailed historic points of reference. Marginally there were a few of these; very few.
To the publisher's credit I was indeed suckered into purchasing this based on both the title and subtitle, the latter being "A tale of madness and murder in Gilded Age America".
I can find no reason to read [or publish] this book.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young man from a prominent New York family kills his father in 1873. Frank Walworth and his siblings and mother have endured years of mental and physical abuse from his father Mansfield Walworth. In the last few years Mansfield has been writing death threat letters to his ex-wife Ellen. He also describes how he will kill their two sons so the name of Walworth will die out. Such statements would be chilling no matter when or how they were written but Walworth was a writer from the Sensationalist school, think "East Lynne" by Mrs. Henry Woods , "Lady Audley's Secret" and "Aurora Floyd" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon or Wilkie Collin's " Woman in White". This type of writing is highly over dramatic though often entertaining. The books Walworth wrote were painfully bad and these letters, written in the same florid style, were just as bad but with foul words and name calling as well. They were vicious letters and must have caused Ellen and Frank some sleepless nights.

O'Brien makes the story interesting although the first third of the book is a bit slow though needed to explain what led the murder. The best parts in my opinion were about Ellen. After enduring all she can from her husband she takes their large family, seven in all, five who live to adulthood, and goes home to her family's home state of Kentucky. There she raises them mostly on her own. She had some help from her extended family but largely she was their financially and emotionally support. After Frank goes to jail she not only opens her own school but becomes involved in local and national politics including founding the Daughters of the American Revolution. She lived an unhappy but productive life.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a meaty, multi-layered book illuminating one of the most prominent families in America since pre-Revolutionary days, the last of which died in 1952. If you like true crime, American history, women's rights and a bunch of weird stuff, then this is the book for you. The title itself is a sly wink to Mansfield Tracy Walworth's deep admiration of Edgar Allan Poe ... so much so, that he tried to mimic Poe in his excruciating books and letters.

Really, M. T. Walworth was a horrible writer -- yet that didn't stop him from getting about ten books published. That our author Geoffrey O'Brien managed to read these books and managed to paraphrase them so no one else ever has to read them -- hell, that self-sacrifice alone is worth five stars.

Sadly, Walworth was worse as a human being than as a writer. He treated his wife Ellen like trash. In fact, he probably treated trash better than Ellen. He beat her up, cheated on her, took all of the money and left her with a household full of kids, and (of course) blamed her for his behavior. I am a domestic abuse survivor, so I was amazed at how Ellen managed to rebound after finally divorcing her abuser. Which was practically unheard of for a Catholic in 1870s America.

Another aspect that got me quickly hooked in this book is that most of it is set in Saratoga Springs. I'm only familiar with that town being the home of the Saratoga racetrack. However, much of this book is set BEFORE the track opened in 1863 (I forgot it opened during the FREAKING CIVIL WAR, because even war can't stop gambling). The track opens about p. 129 ... and the Walworths did not like horse racing. So, I got to see a side of Saratoga minus the racing.

As the old English saying goes, "There's nowt as queer as folk."

You can enjoy this book at the Internet Archive ... for now, anyway.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Walworths are forgotten now (I never heard of them), but they were prominent in law and politics in the late 19th century. The patriarch was a chancellor (similar to a judge) and highly regarded despite his long winded tangential ramblings and sometimes arbitrary decisions. He seemed a little nuts to me, but not nearly as nutty as his offspring, and his grandchildren were nuttier still. Son Mansfield fashioned himself a novelist and had many books published (excerpts showed they were dreadful). Mansfield's wife, who was also his step-sister, was brilliant and highly accomplished and bore him 8 children. Her favored son Frank murdered Mansfield to put a stop to the abuse and death threats Mansfield rained down on her. Frank was genuinely mentally unbalanced, but some of his siblings were on the odd side as well. There was finally nothing left of the family except the stories told around Saratoga, NY, where they had their mansion. The house is gone too.

[David Blake · Rating 2 out of 5]

Depressing tale of a pretty despicable family — not much fun to read

[Ronnie Cramer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting historical true crime saga, though far more history than crime. Told in period-appropriate language; I had to look up a lot of the antiquated words.

[Katherine Addison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an intensely Gothic Victorian book, as are the lives of its subjects. (I was half persuaded, all the way through, that I was being gaslighted and The Fall of the House of Walworth was actually a novel. But the central person of the book, Ellen Hardin Walworth, was one of the founders of the DAR, so if it's a scam, the Daughters of the American Revolution are in on it.) It is in some ways intensely frustrating, not because of anything O'Brien is doing wrong, but because, first of all, the people are frustrating for their failures and their blindnesses (as real people are wont to be), especially Ellen Hardin Walworth herself, who, for all the time she spent in introspection, never seems to have seen herself clearly at all. (Mansfield is not frustrating. Mansfield is HORRIFYING, and I admit I ended up reading those parts of the book in breathless curiosity about what awful thing Mansfield would do next.)

The other reason for frustration is that the central ACT of the book, the murder of Mansfield Walworth, remains inaccessible. It is not a mystery--there was never any doubt, first to last, that Frank Walworth murdered his father--but it simply cannot be seen. This book shows with bitter clarity that murder trials are not about finding the truth. They are about the competition of narratives, and both prosecution and defense will shape their narrative to defeat the competition, not to try to reveal the truth about anything. And all we know about the murder of Mansfield Walworth comes from Frank's trial. Was it premeditated, as the prosecution argued? Was Frank epileptic, as the defense argued, and ought he to be found therefore not guilty by reason of insanity? (Victorian doctors considered epilepsy a form of insanity.) The evidence is both scant and contradictory, and we are left simply not knowing. O'Brien is far more a biographer than a criminologist; he doesn't assess the evidence for or against, makes no effort at a meta-narrative. I also find that frustrating, but I recognize that that's because I come to these things as a mystery reader first and a historian (insofar as I can make any claim to that title) second. His failure to do what I want is not a flaw. And what he is doing, he does brilliantly.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

On June 3, 1873 the lives of the Walworth family were forever changed, making family secrets public and effecting the futures of everyone. When Frank (the eldest son) goes to New York and murders his father this is a crime that not only effects the well-known and respected family but also the legal world (this was the first case in American history to determine if it is first or second degree murder). This book analyzes the family history, the case itself, and what happened after the decision came in this precedent setting case.

Mr. O'Brien has definitely done his research with this book. He provides an insight into the lives of an American Victorian family and how their circumstances effected them. At times this story was a bit challenging to read - the author goes into a great deal of detail at moments when it isn't necessary. I also had a bit of an issue with how the story was told; the author begins with the crime and then backtracks though the entire family history before recommencing the murder case. I think that he should have started with the intriguing family history moving sequentially into the murder, the trial, and after effects. It was definitely an interesting read but I do think that Erik Larson is better at telling Victorian murder cases.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had never heard of the Walworth family until this book. It was interesting but was more intellectually presented, making it seem like reading an account in an encyclopedia. Because of this, it was difficult to feel like the characters were real people and it was hard to sympathize with them.
Ellen Hardin Walworth, mother of Frank and husband of Mansfield, who Frank killed, was the most interesting character.
She founded and oversaw an educational academy and the Daughters of the American Revolution. She also was the leading force to bring attention to the battle of Saratoga, which she thought had been neglected over time.

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a dark and depressing book that tells the true tale of a scandal in high society, The Walworth family of Saratoga Springs, NY, was a family of famous and marginally famous members....judges, writers, religious leaders, poets. The son, Frank Walworth, murders his father in cold blood after the father has threatened and abused his wife (Frank's mother). The trial of Frank is covered in detail here and illustrates the difference between the justice system of the 1870s and today. The family had many secrets that came to light as the trial progressed and affected the family in years to come as most of the characters came to a rather sad end. An interesting book but depressing in tone.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a sad, detailed but dry look at a prominent NY family, complete with murder, abuse, manic behavior, extreme religiosity, even insanity. Tragedy really stalked this family and seemingly scarred all. It is, however, a good picture of the way whole families--for generations--can be torn apart by parental difficulties. Note: the mother in this family was the high achiever and one of the DAR founders. The book has too much analysis of Mansfield's trite novels but does show a much different legal system in place in the 1800's.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fantastic. It really gives new meaning to dysfuntional family. I had never heard of this family before and since reading this story, have seen them referred to in several television shows.

[Sally]

While the murder is the main reason for this book, this is ultimately about Ellen, wife of the victim and mother of the killer. A victim of domestic violence, her focus became her children. Her legacy is the DAR, and other charitable/non-profit acts, but I sensed that Frank was her reason to live. She even followed him on his prison transfers, providing food for him. (I’m surprised the other prisoners didn’t bully him over that; he was a mama’s boy.

The madness becomes apparent through the notes and letters left behind; even Ellen appeared to succumb to it at the end through her paranoia.

But in the end, all I could think was “How sad.” This once great family with patriarch Reuben Walworth is no more. (Ellen only had one grandchild, who never married.) The house Reuben built is gone. Hardly anything remains of this family except for a couple of names on statues and a museum within a museum. Even the murder pales in comparison to others from the era.

[Jessie · Rating 1 out of 5]

'Other newspapers revisited once more the drama of his crime, but already, the elements of the story were losing their currency.'

If this is the case, then why would you write a book about the thing over a hundred years later?

Having never heard the Walworth name, I was expecting quite a tale as to why, what had happened to them. What I received was absolutely nothing. I went through the book as if I were wading through quicksand - slowly and unpleasantly. I have never read anything so boring and so useless in my life.

I do hope that the author finds something interesting to work on, because he himself does have promise. It's the subject matter that was entirely irritating and fully inept.

[D.P. Hanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story of an upstate New York family centers on the murder of a father by his son in 1873, in the process drawing in the stories of the family members, the town of Saratoga Springs, New York City journalists and others.  The author keeps to the records of the times as much as possible letting the characters speak for themselves.  There is no psychologizing from today's vantage point.  This is left to the reader's shocked confrontation with those times.


I am happy to make the acquaintance of this author, who is also a poet and critic.  I have already bought another of his books.

[Carolyn Rummel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book and a detailed depiction of the era. It was a bit too much detail for me but overall I would definitely recommend. The Walworth family is certainly unique and accomplished but burdened by almost sinister forces they can't seem to escape. It spurs a lot of "if only's" and "why didn't they?". The author clearly knows and understands this family and does a masterful job of telling their story.

[Sandy Bell · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for In Cold Blood, you will not find it here. BUT, if you want to read actual documented thoughts and events of a Civil War family haunted by madness, wife-abuse, religious cults, the embarrassment of mental health, women's rights, corrupt politics, patriotic heritage, suicide, and murder, then you will find this book extremely interesting.

[Nolan Surach · Rating 2 out of 5]

Never finished it. This book gives a lot of good insight about the story and everything, but I felt like the section about the Chancellor dragged on way too much. Overall, not satisfied, but I can see the appeal.

[Cindy Grant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could only struggle through half

The descriptions of characters repeat (and repeat and repeat) at length. These characters should be interesting but the writing is very boring.

[Alicia Primer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really readable and well done history of murder in a well-known family prominent in 19th century Saratoga Springs NY.

[Dick Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Taken together, the story of the family reads like a sensational novel but at the same time, a tragedy in human terms. Well worth reading.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

In June 1873, nineteen-year-old Frank Walworth shot his father, novelist Mansfield Tracy Walworth, to death in a Manhattan hotel room. The Walworths were a socially prominent Saratoga family long regarded as models of virtue and civic accomplishment. When Frank justified his actions by claiming that his father had threatened to kill his mother, the New York press dug into the family’s past and unearthed rumors of domestic violence, hereditary insanity, and religious fanaticism. The result was a media frenzy that shattered the sanctity of the Walworth name.

Geoffrey O’Brien’s Fall of the House of Walworth limns this Gilded Age murder and the warped dynamics that provoked it. It’s partly the grim history of a distinguished yet dysfunctional family and partly a Gothic morality tale of the sort Poe might have conceived.

Mansfield Walworth was an aggressive and pompous narcissist. His novels sold moderately well but did not bring him the mass adulation he craved. Impulsive and constantly chasing get-rich-quick schemes, he repeatedly abandoned his family but exploded when his wife, the former Ellen Hardin, finally left him. Hardin, an intelligent and articulate woman deeply involved in civic affairs, received abusive and threatening letters until her devoted son put a stop to it.

O’Brien betrays his background as a poet. The book abounds with descriptions like the following: “A quantity of blood had splattered the washstand, filling the toothbrush dish and mingling with the soap in the soap dish to form a frothy red foam." Normally this type of cinematic writing is irritating in a nonfiction work, but in this instance it’s strangely in accord with the dark and surreal story.

Walworth history is covered more extensively than Frank’s act of parricide and the ensuing trial, something that might annoy readers who prefer less back story. But by clearly demonstrating how abuse, psychosis, and murder destroyed a once noble family, Fall of the House of Walworth imparts a chill that a dedicated treatment of the murder alone could not summon.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

Geoffrey O'Brien wrote a wonderful, intriguing start to his book. It was also well-researched from the first page to the last. It chronicles first a tragedy and then a family amid tragedies. The book starts with a sensational crime, described in great detail. It parallels the sensational journalism that is portrayed as shocking later in the book.

Although the narration did often seem biased towards the Walworth family and indifferent at other times, what I appreciated about it was how thoughtfully the author examined into his characters, especially the female ones. At times the attention to detail was almost too much, almost as if Chancellor Walworth had written parts himself. O'Brien did a beautiful job drawing a parallel between Chancellor Walworth and Ellen Hardin, even if they were not related by blood.

Some of the tragedies in the book seemed more intriguing and shocking than the initial crime, but they were not looked into in much detail, such as the Hardin brothers fighting on either side of the American Civil War. The overall presence of war through the generations, deciding the fate of the country, seemed to make the characters of Mansfield and Frank more frail and inconsequential. I thoroughly enjoyed parts of the book, but I found that it lagged occasionally. I would recommend this to people who love sensational historical stories, but it did not quite achieve the success of Erik Larson's Devil in the White City or Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook.

[Jenny Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is interesting, but the book suffers from the author's failure to ever tell us why he's telling the story or to frame the facts he recounts in some kind of meaningful way. Instead, he reports events one after another without making us understand why we should want to know about them.

When I finished the book, I realized that the most interesting character in the story is not the son who kills his father but his mother. She was a distant relative and friend of Mary Todd Lincoln, who was with her when Fort Sumpter was fired upon--and a Southern sympathizer. She ran a school when her husband deserted, then divorced him after his behavior became physically abusive even though she was a Catholic convert in a day when priests counseled women to stay with abusive husbands. Despite the chaos introduced into her family by the mental illness of several of her children, she went on to become a founder of the DAR.

But you only realize how interesting she is in the last few chapters. Until then the author focuses too much on the son's crime, the account of which never goes beyond newspaper and trial transcripts and which doesn't rise to the level that would make this a book I'd recommend to anyone but serious history wonks, like myself, who will read almost anything.

[Fran Severn · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd book. The Walworth family was upper crust of Saratoga, NY. The patriarch had a pedigree as a descendant of Revolutionary War heroes and had run for vice president. He had wed a distant relation living in Kentucky who was widowed during the Civil War and moved her and her children to his estate in New York. But madness lurked in the family genes. He was abusive to the point where she divorced him -- a sure recipe for social ostracism. However, his reputation was such that friends rallied around her. But his abusiveness continued in the form of threatening letters and messages to her, which her son intercepted. Convinced that his stepfather meant to kill his mother, the son went to New York City and shot his father. The subsequent trial destroyed the relationships, fortune, legacy, and lives of the Walworth family.
The history and lead-up to the trial is fascinating and its effect on the family -- particularly in the context of the family's social status is interesting. Defense hinged on Frank's mental condition. Once the trial ends, the story continues, as the latent madness in the family surfaced. Some became recluses; others became immersed in civic and religious projects. The final decline of the family makes up the last chapters of the book. Is winds to a sad, slow ending, much as the family itself.

[Misfit · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a non-fictional retelling of the prominent Walworth family of the then fashionable Saratoga Springs, New York. Ella Hardin was married to Mansfield Tracy Walworth who turned out to be a bit of a nutter, as well as an abusive husband. Finally the abuse reaches such a level that it drives their son Frank to shoot his father in a hotel room, thus setting off a sensational trial and scandal that rocked the family and society to its foundations.

Sounds nice and juicy with all the makings of a sensational read, doesn't it? Well guess what, this one is very much on the dry side and it took me several weeks to get through this very short book. If you're expecting this to read like a true crime book, well just keep looking, you'll not find it here. Yes, it was interesting reading about the murder as well as a family who we don't usually read about in the history books. Ellen was able to accomplish quite a

Ellen Hardin Walworth accomplished a lot in her life after her husband's death and thumbs up for that. Perhaps this might have worked better in a novel format instead of non-fiction, but I didn't find the subject matter interesting enough for an entire book, this entry on Wik is more than enough for the casual reader. 3/5 stars.

[Marty]

I enjoyed learning about the history of Saratoga through this book, and enjoyed how the author told the stories of the various generations of Walworths and Hardins involved in the tale. Though I understood why he did it, I would have preferred fewer descriptions and quotes from Mansfield Walworth's horrible pulp fiction -- I began to suspect that the author had written a thesis on these books -- as well as the terrible poetry of Frank Walworth.



Two quibbles: The author several times violated the grammar rules about referring back to a subject with a pronoun. For example, he might start a sentence about "Sarah's daughter" but then in the same sentence use "she" to refer to Sarah, rather than the daughter. Also, the relationship of the parents and children in the Walworth/Hardin union needed to be clarified much earlier -- second marriages for both parents with adult children who then marry, meant that Ellen's father-in-law was also her stepfather (because she married her step-brother). problems had

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an ambitious history book that sometimes reads like historical fiction. The author did a great job recounting the stories and tragedies within two families (one Northern, one Southern) and their experiences around the time of the Civil War. He includes a great deal of 'context' material to give the reader a nice scope of the era these people lived in. I appreciated this view of the then-new America and its progression during the late 1800s. In particular the story of a murder (referred to repeatedly as a parricide--murder of one's father) was detailed very precisely and at times very slowly. The sheer number of documents the author consulted must have been enormous. But he brought them all together for us in a definitive account of the Walworth and Hardin clans. A long book, but I learned quite a lot.

[Elizabeth Desole · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed with this book. It actually had little to do with the potentially interesting story of the murder and much to do with the demise of this supposedly illustrious NY political family. So much time was spent on the boring details of the victims father. But the greatest missed opportunity was in the glossing over of the widow's life. She was actually a fascinating almost Zelig like character for the turn of the century women's movement. Ellen Hardin Walworth was one of the first women elected to a board of education. That's right, she was an elected official prior to even having the vote. She was a founder of the DAR . She presented scientific papers before the leading science associations of the time and more. WHY wasn't the book mostly about her instead of her dusty judge father-in-law/ step grandfather (yup you read that right)

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mansfield Walworth was the descendant of a powerful, wealthy family in New York state, a minor novelist with an exalted sense of his own importance and genius, and a violent, arrogant, controlling husband. The more I see of the world and of people, the more convinced I am that growing up in an atmosphere of wealth and privilege is very bad for most of us. It was certainly very bad for him, and it did no favours for his children, either. The story of the collapse of this family into disfunction and violence is interesting, and the larger social background to that story is also worth telling, but the book feels padded to me, probably about a third longer than it needs to be; a tighter structure would have forced the writer to focus more tightly on his subject and create a better momentum for the narrative.