The Way West

Isaac M. Ruth’s death astonished all who heard the news on the streets of Lawrence, Kan., the morning of April 27, 1871.

The well-known business manager for the Lawrence Tribune was not known to have health problems, although his wife, Kitty, regularly consulted the family physician, Dr. Medicott, for an undisclosed chronic ailment.

Isaac met Kitty in St. Louis after the death of his first wife. Kitty was in an unhappy marriage to Seymore Voullaire. They soon divorced.

The first time Voullaire saw Kitty with Isaac Ruth, both men pulled pistols and fired. Voullaire was seriously injured. Kitty tended to him until he had sufficiently healed, and then promptly married Mr. Ruth. The couple moved to Lawrence in 1868.

That same year Dr. John J. Medicott and his wife, Sarah, moved to Lawrence. Mrs. Medicott was a widow and used her fortune from the previous marriage to establish Dr. Medicott’s office in their Lawrence home. The doctor developed a respectable practice and Mrs. Medicott, “many years his senior,” was loved by all who knew her.

Imagine the shock of finding her dead the morning of Dec. 15, 1870.

Dr. Medicott called in other physicians but nothing could be done to resuscitate her. The attending physicians noticed signs of poison but Dr. Medicott insisted she had died of a stroke. She was buried the very next day.

Four short months later Isaac Ruth lay dead behind a mysteriously locked door in his own home. Dr. Medicott had been playing chess with him the evening before. Most damning for the doctor was a note left by Mr. Ruth for his wife.

Ruth wrote that Dr. Medicott had given him medicine that was making him feel numb and blind.

“I write this so that if I never see you again, you may have my body examined and see what the trouble is. Good-bye and ever remember my last thoughts were of you.”

Dr. Medicott was immediately arrested. On his person were found a photograph of Kitty Ruth and two love poems written in her hand. Rumors had persisted for some time that the doctor and Mrs. Ruth had been carrying on in an unseemly way. Now, the question of Mrs. Medicott’s poisoning was revisited.

The trial was set to convene in October with a change of venue 50 miles south of Lawrence at Garnett, Kan. The newspapers were convicting Dr. Medlicott and his “lover” with each edition.

The Lawrence Standard published photographs of Dr. Medlicott and Kitty Ruth taken when they visited at a photo gallery together. Kitty’s love poems to Medlicott were also printed and picked up by other newspapers.

The trial began on Oct. 10, 1871. Dr. Medlicott’s cell mate, Henry Johnson, testified that the doctor had concocted an elaborate escape attempt. Johnson said that he passed coded letters out of the jail for Medlicott.

Kitty was appalled that the prosecution would rely on Johnson, a convicted felon, for truthful testimony. In a newspaper interview she said that she and her husband were deeply in love, and Mr. Ruth had never been jealous of Dr. Medlicott. She did not believe that the doctor could have murdered her husband.

She kept her medication in the room in which her husband died and believed he may have taken something by mistake.

Other “witnesses” offered sordid details of the affair between Dr. Medicott and Isaac Ruth’s wife. A maid told of Dr. Medicott visiting twice a day after his wife had died in December. Mr. Ruth was always away at the newspaper office. The two often went behind a locked door for up to an hour in Mrs. Ruth’s room. A neighbor of Medicott testified that Mrs. Ruth had visited the doctor’s home several times after Mrs. Medicott had died. The body of Mrs. Medicott was exhumed. Morphine was found in her stomach; the same for Mr. Ruth.

The jury was out for about 11 hours from Wednesday to Thursday morning, Oct. 26, 1871. At 8:30 a.m. the jury rendered the verdict; guilty of murder in the first degree. He was sentenced to be hanged. An appeal was referred to the Kansas Supreme Court.

Mrs. Ruth was arrested Sunday, Oct. 29, 1871, as “an accessory before the fact” in the murder of her husband. The “pretty, pretty baby” was summarily found guilty, but all was not lost. On the very day scheduled for Medicott’s hanging, Jan. 26, 1872, the Kansas Supreme Court announced a stay of execution to review the case.

The March 14, 1872, Saline County Journal announced that the Supreme Court had reversed the judgment, citing several legal exceptions relating to the proceedings. Mrs. Ruth was released, but Dr. Medicott languished in jail while Douglas County determined whether to retry the case. Medicott was finally released in September after 17 months in jail. When asked if he knew the whereabouts of Mrs. Ruth “he responded heartily, ‘God knows, I do not’.”

The way in which the entire episode ended did not convince many of the innocence of Dr. Medicott and Mrs. Ruth. Was it murder? Did Isaac Ruth take the medication by accident or did he commit suicide to revenge the lover of his unfaithful wife? Only eternity can unveil the mystery of entangled love and death on The Way West.

The Cowboy,” Jim Gray is author of the book Desperate Seed: Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier, Ellsworth, KS. Contact Kansas Cowboy, 220 21st Road, Geneseo, Kan. Phone: (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans.com.

In other news

A screening of the documentary, “Fort Harker. Gateway Post to the Frontier,” attracted well over 100 residents from Ellsworth County and beyond Sunday to the Performing Arts Center at Ellsworth Junior/ Senior High School.

The almost 57-minute movie was followed by a question and answer session with the documentary’s producers, Steve Stultz of Hays and Greg Heller of Ellsworth. Heller, who appears on screen throughout the documentary, oversees activities at the Fort Harker Guardhouse Museum at Kanopolis. The museum is a one of four original fort buildings still standing. Three are under the control of the Ellsworth County Historical Society and the fourth is a private residence.