Careful reader learned doctor received pardon

Without people passing on either by written word or voice their eyewitness accounts of events, history for the most part would die with every passing generation. And in almost every case, the stories of history can continue to be expanded.

Since the first Yesteryears column appeared on Nov. 12, 1989, any number of people have helped fill in “the rest of the story,” as the late Paul Harvey was fond of saying.

Most recently it was John Eros who helped this writer discover the final word in the Dr. Sara Ruth Dean story that ran March 7.

For those who missed that column, Dean was the first woman to graduate from the University of Virginia’s medical school, receiving her medical doctor degree in 1922.

The physician’s next chapter

The column was about her later being accused and convicted of poisoning her colleague and lover, Dr. John Preston Kennedy, in the summer of 1933.

After reading the story, Eros did some sleuthing of his own. After spending a little time online, he discovered an important piece of information that I since have been able to confirm through our newspaper’s archives.

In early July 1935, the governor of Mississippi, Sennett Conner, granted Dean a “full and complete pardon.” The reason he gave was that he “had the benefit of information not available to the court either in the original trial or on appeal,” to the state Supreme Court.

This information was verified by a three-paragraph Associated Press story found on an inside page of The Daily Progress published July 9, 1935. With the date, other newspaper stories of the day were located that fleshed out the story.

After her conviction, Dean had spent time in the LeFiore county jail and then in a nearby hospital when she became ill.

Because of the financial strain her relatives were experiencing during her stay in the hospital, she was allowed to convalesce in her Greenwood, Miss., home.

Her chief counsel, A.F. Gardner, delivered the good news to her as she rested on her sickbed.

“The governor has done justice in this act of mercy,” Dean was reported to have said.

“I am innocent of the charge that was brought against me.”

Financial motives suspected

The AP story went on to say that Kennedy’s former wife, Bessie Barry Kennedy, and the deceased man’s two brothers had “vigorously” fought the pardon. During the trial much had been made of the fact that Mrs. Kennedy had a lot to gain by Dean being convicted.

The departed doctor had been heavily insured.

If the accused physician was convicted of poisoning him, the divorced wife would secure a double indemnity payment from the insurance company, because he had met his death by homicide.

Attorneys for the defense used the double indemnity factor as part of the foundation for their case.

Although the jury convicted Dean, the foreman was reported as saying, “We hated to send a woman to prison, but we had no choice. It was either death or life imprisonment.”

In the book, “Inner Lives: Voices of African-American Women in Prison,” the author, Paula C. Johnson, touched on the Dean case to illustrate the differential treatment of women based on race.

She writes that the governor had been “bombarded” with requests for mercy for the prison-bound white doctor.

Johnson said Conner never said what new information he had gotten that compelled him to pardon Dean. She did quote him as telling friends that he just couldn’t send Dean to prison no matter what she did.

Apparently, Dean moved on with her life. Thanks to the help of a Yesteryears reader, at least this chapter of her life can be concluded.