Hello folks, and welcome back once again to another episode of Ghost Hunt: the podcast where I, your host, Erin Bogert, bring you short and not-always-so-sweet radio plays that delve into the details surrounding the Hall-Mills murders. Today’s radio play brings us into the home of Edwin R. and Elovine Carpender. The affluent Edwin R. Carpender was the first cousin of Mrs. Frances Hall. According to Middlesexcreates.com, his wife, Elovine Carpender was one of the founders of the Urban League in New Brunswick and the first female member of the Federal Housing Authority; prominent among Republican women in New Jersey. She was elected a delegate to the convention for the repeal of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution repealing the prohibition of alcoholic beverages. On September 16, 1922, Elovine was the family member who first informed Mrs. Hall of her husband’s death. Edwin had been the family member who identified the body of Rev. Edward Hall when it was found on DeRussey’s Lane, and was in charge of the funeral arrangements for the rector. The couple lived caddy-corner and across the street from Frances Hall and her mansion at 23 Nichol Ave. In the 1920s, the Carpenders were one of New Brunswick’s wealthiest families. Today, however, we will not be joining them in the great room for this radio play. Instead, we find ourselves in the kitchen, eavesdropping on the internal dialogue of their gossipy maid, Anne...
This episode was brought to you by the New Brunswick Historical Society and Thinkery & Verse. Grant funding has been provided by the Middlesex County board of chosen freeholders through a grant award from the Middlesex Cultural and Arts Trust Fund. Our theme music this season comes from Blimp66 of Freesound.org. Today’s radio play was written by Ania Upstill and performed and edited by Karen Alvarado. I’m your host and engineer, Erin Bogert. Thanks again for stopping by and I hope you’ll join me again soon.
Episode 5 - Maid in Middlesex
Intro - Hello folks, and welcome back once again to another Ghost Hunt Episode of That’s How the Story Goes; the podcast where I, your host, Erin Bogert, bring you short and not-always-so-sweet radio plays that delve into the details surrounding the Hall-Mills murders. Today’s radio play brings us into the home of Edwin R. and Elovine Carpender. The affluent Edwin R. Carpender was the first cousin of Mrs. Frances Hall. According to Middlesexcreates.com, his wife, Elovine Carpender was one of the founders of the Urban League in New Brunswick and the first female member of the Federal Housing Authority; prominent among Republican women in New Jersey. She was elected a delegate to the convention for the repeal of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution repealing the prohibition of alcoholic beverages. On September 16, 1922, Elovine was the family member who first informed Mrs. Hall of her husband’s death. Edwin had been the family member who identified the body of Rev. Edward Hall when it was found on DeRussey’s Lane, and was in charge of the funeral arrangements for the rector. The couple lived caddy-corner and across the street from Frances Hall and her mansion at 23 Nichol Ave. In the 1920s, the Carpenders were one of New Brunswick’s wealthiest families. Today, however, we will not be joining them in the great room for this radio play. Instead, we find ourselves in the kitchen, eavesdropping on the internal dialogue of their gossipy maid, Anne.
Main:
[The sound of a faucet being turned on; water rushing into a sink; a faucet being turned off, then scrubbing]
These fancy French sauces sure take a good bit of scrubbing. Made with real cream. Stickier than you could ever imagine. Cream and flour, stirred together in butter. Just turns me stomach. Give me an honest piece of sausage any day. Just bread, sausage, and a bit of sauerkraut. Like me mother used to make. Good, honest food for good, honest people, that’s what she’d say. Not like the people I work for. Them and their old money. They’re all related to each other too; keep the money in the family, The Neilsons, the Carpenders, the Van-somethings. The Johnsons, of course.. The Halls, now. They think they’re better than everyone else, but they still need to eat like the rest of us. They just eat strange things and call it being “sophisticated”. I bet they don’t like it either, but there you go.
[Sounds of more scrubbing]
But they don’t want you to know they don’t like it.. Oh, no. They want you to think they live better, cleaner. They think they’re up above everything that is dirty in the world, so high and mighty but I can tell you, there are some skeletons in those closets. I remember that poor kid, the Piper kid. Found four months after going missing with a bullet hole in the chest. Unsolved crime. They called that doctor in but of course he was acquitted. A decorated war hero; rich, and a doctor to boot. What jury would convict that? I for one am sure that he did it, and I’m also sure that his money helped him cover it up. It’s always like that. Money talks around here. The poor can’t be heard, and the rich run around like they own the place, because they do.
[Sounds of a bucket being emptied]
I saw another of them got done for murder today. The cousin of me boss, the one that married that reverend at St.John’s. More bullets, him and a choir singer, found out in that lover’s lane. Scandalous, that’s what it is. I heard through the grapevine that their maid, Louise, heard some suspicious conversations. Has some ideas about how it went. That’s the funny thing about these rich people. They only see us when they want to see us while we’re cooking their food and washing their clothes and sweeping the floor. And they know we might be listening and they just don’t care. They know that we can’t do anything about it. That they control what justice gets done. I hope Louise heard enough to put that fancy Frances Hall away, but I doubt it. And what jury would listen to a maid, anyway. Nah. Frances Hall has plenty of money to grease the wheels. She’ll get off, but how nice it would be to see one of them actually get done for once.
[A yawn]
Oooh, these late night dinner parties will be the death of me. Waiting around for them to finish their polite talk and endless courses. Nothing ever really said but everything sort of implied. If it’s true that the reverend was having an affair with that choir singer, I can’t say that I blame him. He probably just wanted some normal company, someone from his own class. Somebody comfortable. Not born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Not always needing to be dignified and proper. I bet he needed someone with warm blood in her veins. A real appetite. A feeling of what it is to be human.
[Another yawn]
That’s it, dishes done and time for bed. Tomorrow I’ll polish this silver. Has to be shiny enough so that they can see their reflection, like their money shining back at them.
Outro - Tale as old as time, isn’t it? Money talks so the wealthy don’t have to. The murders of Eleanor and Edward happened in September of 1922. By the end of that November, the grand jury had failed to indict anyone. While the Mills, especially Eleanor’s daughter Charlotte remain desperate for answers, for justice, wealthy Frances Hall, a prime suspect, travels abroad to Europe, where she remains for months. How would this case have been different if Eleanor Mills and her family had been wealthy? If Frances Hall and hers had been poor? I wonder, I wonder…
Thank you for listening to this episode. If you want to experience this radio play again, or others like it, might I suggest downloading the Geocache app where you can do some real life Ghost Hunting by traveling to the locations mentioned (in this case, New Brunswick’s Carpender Hall) and searching for our caches. You can also purchase tickets to Thou Shalt Not 2022, our real-life play that is coming back to the stage for the centennial of the murders this September, available through our website at thinkeryandverse.org. This episode was brought to you by the New Brunswick Historical Society and Thinkery & Verse. Grant funding has been provided by the Middlesex County board of chosen freeholders through a grant award from the Middlesex Cultural and Arts Trust Fund. Our theme music this season comes from Blimp66 of Freesound.org. Today’s radio play was written by Ania Upstill and performed and edited by Karen Alvarado. I’m your host and engineer, Erin Bogert. Thanks again for stopping by and I hope you’ll join me again soon.
