mulligan
Maxwell Place as it appeared prior to 1900. It was the site of a 1904 attempted poisoning of members of the Mulligan family (courtesy of the E.I. Thompson collection).
The sensational attempted murder of one of Lexington’s most prominent families gripped the community for weeks 108 years ago this month. To understand how prominent the Mulligans were requires the back story. Dennis Mulligan came to Kentucky in 1835 as a surveyor, and settled in Lexington. Soon he became one of the town’s leading citizens and a power in the Democratic Party. His store on the corner of Vine and Mulberry (now South Limestone) streets was the center of local politics. Mulligan’s wealth benefited the Catholic church, contributing to the construction of area churches and schools, and organizing Calvary Cemetery on West Main.
His son James Hillary Mulligan easily rode to the top of the local and state political order, serving as judge of the Recorder’s Court – a title he retained for the rest of his life – as well as a state representative and senator. (James is best remembered today for his famous poem “In Kentucky” that ends with the oft-quoted line, “And the politics the damnedest in Kentucky.”)
At the close of the War Between the States, Dennis bought a 14-acre lot on Winslow Avenue (now Euclid) to prevent it from falling into the hands of speculators. The prominence of this acreage was the presence of three natural springs called Maxwell Springs, of which Henry Clay said, “No man can consider himself a gentleman until he has watered his horse at Maxwell Springs.” The springs were also a site for political rallies. Having seen Clay speak here when Mulligan was a child may have influenced his career.
Dennis subsequently gave the land to his son James, the judge, who in 1870 built Maxwell Place (now the traditional home of the president of the University of Kentucky). Judge Mulligan and his wife, Mary Huston Mulligan, improved the property with gardens and flowering trees, and he began raising prized cattle and fine horses. Soon, four children – Louis, James, Mollie and Alice – added to their happiness.
That happiness was shattered on April 10, 1876, when Mary died at age 28. The judge buried his grief in his law practice, while the servants took care of the children.
Five years later, Mulligan took a second wife, the socially prominent Genevieve Morgan Williams of Nashville, a cousin of Gen. John Hunt Morgan, President John Tyler and Mary Anna Jackson – widow of the martyred Confederate general. Although the second marriage produced four more children (Dennis, Marion, Katherine and Willoughby), happiness did not return to Maxwell Place.
But now we are getting ahead of the story.
It happened on Saturday, Sept. 24, 1904, at midday dinner. First soup was served, followed by coffee. As servant Lewis Mitchell presented the serving platter with baked salmon to Mrs. Mulligan, he allegedly bent over and whispered, “Don’t take none of this; it’s doctored.” Dennis, who along with Katherine and Willoughby was seated with their mother, at first wanted to test the fish on the dogs. Bowing to objections, he had the fish sent to be tested at nearby State College (UK), where it was determined to have enough arsenic “to kill several people.” The police were called and Mitchell, a paroled murderer, was arrested.
Mitchell was arraigned on Friday, Sept. 30, and try though he may, the judge could not prevent the Mulligan family secrets from being aired in public.
Like the Todds before them, the Mulligan children were two families that did not get along with each other. Genevieve, upon marrying the judge, had sent the original four children off to boarding school; the judge was deaf to their pleas to come home. Even her own children were rarely happy under her charge, according to letters read in open court and printed on the front page of The Lexington Herald chronicling the dysfunctional family.
Mollie had moved out of Maxwell Place after a fight with her father over a trip to Mammoth Cave (the judge did not approve of the young man she was seeing at the time; now her husband), and left home to live with her sister Alice and Alice’s husband. James Jr. had left for Chicago after another fight with his father, and once contemplated suicide “by jumping in the lake.”
Mitchell, casually referred to as “the negro” in the not-so subtle racism of the time, did not help his own case at all. First he stated he had come to work in the morning and saw the icebox door open and the salmon on the counter. Later, he testified he had started to eat the salmon for lunch when he saw “a fine white powder, which looked like quinine sprinkled around it.” A third time, he claimed he saw a mysterious woman in men’s clothing “dodging about” the yard.
Then Mitchell dropped a bombshell: James Jr. had offered him $100 to poison the judge.
The younger James, it seems, had been in Lexington the day before the attempted poisoning, trying to arrange a meeting with his father. The judge refused, and James returned to Chicago. Under oath, James said he was angry with his stepmother and father because they were spending his mother’s money that rightfully was his and his siblings’. He said would “get even with certain persons.”
Speculation was that the judge was the target all along. But when he did not return from downtown for the meal, Mitchell warned the other family members about the tainted fish.
In the end, James was exonerated, and the jury was hung over Mitchell’s guilt.
The cook? She was hardly noticed at all.