The Life and Death of Elliott Speer (S5E1)

The son of an internationally renowned Presbyterian preacher, Elliott Speer became headmaster of the Mount Hermon School for Boys, a religiously oriented boarding school, in 1932. On the night of September 14, 1934, a trespasser murdered Speer in his own home, devastating his family, his colleagues, and the rest of the community.

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Above: A photographic portrait of Elliott Speer, taken in 1934, months before his death. He was thirty-five years old. Taken by Underwood & Underwood Studio Photographers in New York City.

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SHOW NOTES

Elliott Speer’s yearbook profile from Phillips Andover, Class of 1916. Elsewhere in the yearbook, young “Ell” is teased for being a heartthrob with the young ladies at a nearby seminary.

Illustration of a YMCA cellar in Flanders, The Y provided vital services to soldiers and visiting family members throughout WWI. A pacifist, Elliott volunteered with the organization instead of fighting.

Caricature of Dwight Lyman Moody, by Carlo Pellegrini, from an 1875 issue of Vanity Fair. Moody was an evangelical preacher, who was known for high-impact sermons and his respectable, business-like aesthetic. His religious empire included a large church and institute in Chicago; he was also the founder of the Northfield Schools. Held by the Library of Congress.

Postcard depicting Memorial Chapel, Mount Hermon School for Boys (ca. 1910). The spiritual heart of campus life, the chapel held services for Mount Hermon’s students several mornings a week.

During the Golden Age of detective fiction—roughly the years between the two world wars—mystery novels were so popular that their intricate plots spilled out into other media, including theater, radio, and even games. This photograph depicts a mystery-inspired card game from the 1930s, called “Krimo.” Consisting of 60 cards, it required players to play their hands in ways that allowed them to commit a crime and evade detection. Held by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Photograph of a crossword-inspired tournament, dated February 18, 1938. The image shows a tense contest between the staff of the Wellesley College News and the Harvard Lampoon. Like the whodunnit, the crossword fed a vast cultural hunger for puzzles, which characterized the 1920s and 30s.

This 1925 cartoon from the satirical magazine, Punch, lampoons the antisocial impulses of crossword fanatics. Here, the puzzle-obsessed old man wakes up his physician late at night to ask him about a medically-related clue that has stumped him.

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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manuscript Materials & Archival Documents

--Moody, Frances Wells. Northfield Recollections. Northfield, MA: Dickinson Memorial Library (loc 929.2 Moody).

--Speer, Robert Elliott. Robert Elliott Speer Manuscript Collection. Princeton, NJ : Princeton Theological Seminary:

*Clippings and Mimeographed Material : Northfield schools. 1917-1942. - Northfield and Mt. Hermon Reports (Series VII: Clippings and Mimeographed Material. Subject File; Box 130, File 130:6).

*Letters Concerning Elliott Speer, 1915-34 (Series II: Correspondence; Box 25, File 25:5).

*Letters Concerning Elliott Speer, 1934 (Series II: Correspondence; Box 26, File Box 27, File 27:1-8).

*Letters Concerning Speer, Elliott. 1898 (Series II: Correspondence; Box 25, File 25:6).

*Letters: Family letters, 1911-1936. Folder 2 (Series II: Correspondence; Box 20, File 20:7).

--Various census records, passport applications, war records, yearbooks, birth and marriage certificates, Mount Hermon ephemera.

Books & Dissertations

--Amende, Coral. The Crossword Obsession: The History and Lore of the World’s Most Popular Pastime. New York: Berkley Books, 2001.

--Carter, Burnham. So Much to Learn. Gill, MA: Northfield Mount Hermon School, 1976.

--Coyle, Thomas. The Story of Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon, MA: The Mount Hermon Alumni Association, 1906.

--Curry, Joseph Robert. Mount Hermon from 1881 to 1971 : An Historical Analysis of a Distinctive American Boarding School. Ph.D. dissertation: University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1972.

--Day, Richard Ward. A New England Schoolmaster: The Life of Henry Franklin Carter. Bristol, CT: The Hildreth Press, 1950.

--Edwards, Martin. The Golden Age of Murder. London: HarperCollins, 2015.

--Edwards, Martin. The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books. Scottsdale, AZ: Poisoned Pen Press, 2017.

--Marsden, George. Fundamentalism and American Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

--Piper, John F. Robert E. Speer: Prophet of the American Church. Louisville, KY: Geneva Press, 2000.

--Straton, John Roach. The Menace of Immorality in Church and State. New York: George H. Doran, 1920.

--Symons, Julian. Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel, a History. London: Faber & Faber, 1972.

--Symons, Julian. The Detective Story in Britain. London: Longman, Green & co., 1962.

--Walley, Craig. Murder at Mount Hermon: The Unsolved Killing of Headmaster Elliott Speer. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004.

--Woodthorpe, R. C. Una bala para el señor Thorold. Tr. María D. A. de Derisbourg. Buenos Aires: Clarín/Emecé, 2015.

Periodical Articles

--Carter, Burnham. “The Study of a Murder,” in Yankee: October 1977, p. 102

--“Dogs Reveal Speer Killer As Household Intimate,” in Daily News (New York, NY): Sep. 19, 1934, p. 11

--“Headmaster Murdered Just as in Novel,” in Daily Express (London, UK): Dec. 4, 1934, p. 1

--Lyman, Loren D. “Mystery Deepens in Speer Slaying” in New York Times : Sept. 20, 1934, p. 48.

--Manchester, Harland. “The Headmaster Murder Mystery” in American Mercury: August 1934, p. 410

--“Mount Hermon Opens,” in The Northfield Herald : September 28, 1934, p. 1

--“Ousted Student Sought in Death of Elliott Speer,” in New York Herald Tribune : Sept. 16, 1934, p.15.

--Pearson, Edmund. “Say, Who D’ye Think Done This, Anyhow?” in New York Herald Tribune: July 21, 1935, p. F3

--“Says Speer Suspect Set Clocks Ahead,” in New York Times : Dec. 8, 1934, p. 7.

--“Speer’s Killer ‘To Be Seized Next Monday’” in Daily News (New York, NY): Dec. 1, 1934, p.6

--Taylor, John Jr., “Elder Jailed Despite Denial,” in Daily Boston Globe: May 27, 1937, p.1

--Taylor, John Jr., “Letters to Fore in Speer Case,” in Daily Boston Globe: Dec. 5, 1934, p. 1

--Taylor, John Jr., “Thrash Norton, Elder Threat: Dr. Cutler Says Dean Angry at Peek Story” in Daily Boston Globe : July 27, 1937, p. 1

--"Thomas Elder Takes the Stand,” in Waterbury Evening Democrat: July 27, 1937, p.1

--Thompson, Craig. “Eder Is Acquitted on Assault Charge,” in New York Times : July 29, 1937, p.1

--Approximately 400 additional pieces, from publications such as: The Boston Globe, The Brattleboro Daily Reformer, The Burlington Free Press and Times (Burlington, VT), Daily Express (London, UK), Daily News (New York, NY), The Daily Recorder-Gazette (Greenfield, MA), The Inverness Courier, New York Times, The Northfield Herald (Northfield, MA), The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Springfield Daily Republican, The Springfield Sunday Union and Republican, The Washington Times…and a few dozen others.

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TRANSCRIPT

It’s 1932, and you’re in a bookshop somewhere in the United Kingdom—let’s say London. A tall man with dark brown hair and blue eyes, age thirty-three, enters the shop. Athletic and affable, he’s of the Cary Grant school of handsome. His name is Elliott Speer. An American spending the year at the University of Edinburgh, Elliott has recently been named headmaster of the Mount Hermon School for Boys, a private boarding school in western Massachusetts.

Since it’s 1932, you are probably here for the same reason as Elliott: to find a cracking new murder mystery. Like millions of other readers, Elliott is an ardent fan of the kind of British puzzle mystery that reached the peak of its popularity between the two World Wars—an era often referred to as the Golden Age of detective fiction. He passes by shelves stocked with the works of the genre’s greats: Agatha Christie, Anthony Berkely, Dorothy L. Sayers, John Dickson Carr, and Gladys Mitchell. Among these heavy hitters is a debut book by a new mystery writer: The Public School Murder by R.C. Woodruff.

No doubt intrigued by the title, Headmaster Speer pays for the book and takes it home with him, eager to dive in. At the time, nobody could have known the role that this same copy of the novel would play in the murder of Elliott Speer, who would die less than two years later at the hands of a calculating killer.

We are used to real-life crimes inspiring fictional murder mysteries. This is a stranger kind of story, one about a detective novel that served as a how-to guide for a real-life crime. You’re listening to Part 1 of Murder by the Book—a five-part miniseries about the improbable death of Elliott Speer. In this episode, we’ll hear about Elliott’s short but consequential life, learn about the culture wars that plagued his tenure as headmaster, and discuss the violent crime that cost him his life one dark September evening in 1934. This is The Art of Crime, and I’m your host, Gavin Whitehead. Welcome to Part 1 of Murder By the Book . . .

The Life and Death of Elliott Speer

Early Life

Elliott Speer was born on November 1, 1898, in Englewood, New Jersey, growing up in a devout, affluent Christian family. His life path closely followed that of his father, Doctor Robert Elliott Speer. The elder Speer was an internationally renowned clergyman and theologian, and he would go on to become one of the most important figures in the Presbyterian church’s global missionary efforts. Like his dad, Elliott would study to be a minister and would dedicate much of his life to community service. His father’s eminent status would benefit his career on more than one occasion.

Those who knew Elliott as a child remembered him as a tall, lanky kid with a gift for conversation and an appetite for good-natured mischief. Like many upper-middle-class boys at the time, Elliott attended an elite boarding school—in his case, Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. As a student, he excelled at academics and was respected by classmates and teachers alike. Given the nickname “Ell,” he became president of the school’s debate club. According to his high school yearbook, he was voted the fifth-busiest and fourth most eccentric student in his class. He was also singled out as the vainest boy in the graduating class. Elliott was both dreamy and a little bit of a flirt for a clergyman’s son. In fact, one of Elliott’s classmates playfully printed these words underneath a picture of him in his yearbook: “A Lion Among Ladies is a Dangerous Thing.”

Upon graduating from Phillips Andover, Elliott enrolled at Princeton, his dad’s alma mater, where he majored in Biblical Studies. But about a year into college, his life turned upside down. World War I erupted in 1914, and two or three years later, he decided to put his education on hold. Elliott was a pacifist, so he would never enlist to fight in the trenches. Instead, he journeyed to England and from there to France, where he volunteered with the YMCA. The Y played a crucial role in the war effort, in both the United Kingdom and on the Western front. Its volunteers traveled with British soldiers to the frontlines, where they supported organizations like the Red Cross. At age nineteen, Elliott helped care for injured soldiers, conveyed visiting family members to and from the hospital to visit their loved ones, and worked in a network of YMCA “huts,” places where servicemen could eat, relax, and seek spiritual guidance. While serving in France, Elliott sustained a life-threatening injury in a motorcycle accident. For weeks, he was in excruciating pain, his face wrapped in bandages.

He recovered, however, and in 1918, he returned to Englewood, New Jersey to live with his parents. The Great War gave way to fresh horrors as the Great Influenza spread around the globe. A wave of the illness crashed over Englewood just as Elliott was settling in at home. The sheer number of critically ill patients overwhelmed local hospitals, which did not have enough medical professionals to care for them all. Thus, within days of setting foot on U.S. soil, Speer charged into the frontlines of the fight against influenza, risking his life to volunteer in town. As his father later recounted, Elliott undertook “the most menial tasks, from washing sheets and nursing the sick, to burying the dead.” Locals never forgot his contribution. According to Robert Speer, for years after the epidemic, “folk of every condition in life would stop him when he was in Englewood to thank him for helping to pull them through.”

Once the pandemic finally subsided, Elliott resumed his studies at Princeton, graduating in February of 1921. The following month, he married Charlotte Welles, the sister of one of his college friends. Charlotte, who went by the name “Holly,” had just graduated college herself, having earned a B.A. from Vassar. The young couple had a lot in common. Like Elliott, Holly was tall, dark-haired, and attractive. She was also distinguished by her keen intellect and social graces. Their wedding took place at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City’s Washington Square. On the big day, Charlotte wore her mother’s satin-and-lace wedding gown and approached the altar carrying a bouquet of white orchids with lilies of the valley mixed in.

After honeymooning for a few months in Edinburgh, the newlyweds settled down to married life in New York City. Elliott, benefitting from his father’s lofty position in the Presbyterian church, was given a job as an assistant at Bethlehem Chapel, in Greenwich Village. He quickly won a reputation as an energetic and helpful pastor, especially among the neighborhood’s Italian immigrant community. Within a few years’ time, he and Holly had moved to Pennsylvania, where Elliott taught Bible Studies and served as Chaplain at Lafayette College. In 1925, the Speers welcomed the first of three daughters, Charlotte, into their home.

Mount Hermon

Although they could not have known it at the time, 1926 would bring Elliott a career opportunity that would alter their future in ways both wonderful and tragic. To understand the final chapter of Elliott’s life, you first have to look at the history and ethos of the school where he met his death.

The Northfield Schools were a pair of sister institutions located in the bucolic Massachusetts hill towns of Northfield and Gill. The two schools were situated on opposite banks of the Connecticut River, which snaked its way through more than 1200 acres of lushly forested campus. The Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies was the older of the pair. It opened its doors to its first class of students in 1879. The Seminary was founded by Dwight Lyman—or, D.L.—Moody, a renowned evangelical preacher. A little on the squat side and prodigiously bearded, Moody rose to international fame with his bold brand of sermonizing. The Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies was just one small corner of his Christian fundamentalist empire, which included a Bible Institute and a large church in Chicago. Moody’s school aimed to deliver a high-quality education to poor girls from morally upright families. Religious lessons were the centerpiece of the curriculum. Tuition, including room and board, originally cost $100 per year, less than half of the actual expense involved in educating, housing, and feeding each student.

In 1881, Moody opened a second boarding school, with more or less the same educational philosophy, across the river in Gill, Massachusetts. He christened it the Mount Hermon School for Boys. For much of the nineteenth century, the Bible was the core text in the Mount Hermon curriculum, though a rigorous liberal arts curriculum grew in importance as the school sought to prepare a greater percentage of students for university. In addition to academic courses, the boys were required to attend frequent sermons at Chapel and to perform various chores, from cleaning the dormitories to tending the animals on the school’s sprawling farm.

At both schools, a strict code of conduct prevailed. Boys and girls seldom saw each other. Tobacco and playing cards were prohibited—not just to students, but even to teachers. Sunday newspapers were likewise verboten, since they distracted good Christians from observing the Sabbath in the way that Reverend Moody intended. Students even had Mondays off from classes, so they wouldn’t be tempted to study on Sunday.

When D.L. Moody died in 1899, it fell to his son, William, to preserve his father’s vision for the Northfield Schools. By this time, the reputation of both institutions had grown. As the schools admitted more and more students, they needed new dormitories, classrooms, and playing fields. This expansion made their finances and administration far more complex than before. Soon, a Board of Trustees and a Financial Committee oversaw an increasing number of faculty and administrators. Forced to share control of the schools with the Trustees, William Moody did not enjoy the same amount of power and influence that his father had. Still, for several decades, most trustees deferred to the memory of D.L. Moody, making reforms to school policy less frequent than they otherwise might have been. When change eventually come to the Northfield Schools, it did so with a roar.

This is where Elliott Speer comes in. His father, well-connected preacher man Robert Speer, was a close friend to both D.L. and William Moody. In fact, just one day after Elliott’s birth, William sent Robert a letter of congratulation that read in part, “May God’s richest blessing attend your home in all of its overflowing abundance, and may the young Elliott become as great a blessing to thousands of fellow men, as you have been to me.” Given the close links between the two families, it comes as no surprise that Robert—a Christian leader of international repute—ended up on the Board of Trustees for the Northfield Schools. Well, in 1926, Robert hooked Elliott up with a spot on the same board. In doing so, he set in motion a chain of events that would end in a bitter falling out with William Moody, and—indirectly— in the death of his eldest son. We’ll hear how Elliott became headmaster of Mount Hermon and instituted a rash of controversial reforms, after a quick break.

A New President

In 1926, the ageing William Moody had served as President of the Northfield Schools for nearly three decades. The job was physically and mentally taxing, and Moody’s health began to suffer under the strain. Meanwhile, the addition of twenty-eight-year-old Elliott Speer to the Board of Trustees instantly energized the schools’ leadership. So, when Moody floated the idea of taking a year-long sabbatical abroad, the Board’s members told him to go for it. In 1927, Moody stepped down as President and Elliott Speer took his place. For the first time since their founding, the Northfield Schools were no longer under the thumb of the Moody family.

Try telling that to William Moody—he still considered himself very much in charge. This was probably the fault of the veteran trustees on the board, who seem to have sent wildly different messages to the former president and his young successor. On the one hand, Moody was led to believe that, when he returned from sabbatical, he would become Chairman of the Board of Trustees, a newly invented position that sounded powerful and impressive. Elliott would retain the title of President but would basically act as a glorified assistant to Chairman Moody. Based on these promises, Moody concluded that he would call the shots. But that didn’t square with what the trustees told Elliott. They told him, “You’re the new president”—full stop. Since the President had always been the highest position on the Board, Elliott assumed that he would call the shots.

Things soured quickly once the two began collaborating. Moody grumbled endlessly about Elliott’s expenditures as well as his effort to expand the number of faculty and administrators at the school. He was also no lover of Speer’s educational philosophies, which were far more permissive than the strict values espoused by the founder of the Northfield Schools, the late D.L. Moody. More than anything, he chafed at having to compromise with the young upstart who—to his mind—had sidelined him through political maneuvering.

Things went on in this fashion for a little over a year. Then, a deeply resentful William Moody tendered his written resignation to the Board in February of 1929. Its passive-aggressive wording, though politely WASPy, still stung: “My resignation is necessary because of my increasing conviction that the present arrangement is thoroughly anomalous in attempting to divide indivisible authority between a Chairman of the Board and a President…The anomaly has been increased by the difference in age, experience, familiarity with traditions, and outlook of the occupants of the positions…As an inevitable corollary, I find policies which I cannot endorse or conscientiously support.” In a response that shocked Moody, the trustees basically said “Bye, Felicia”—and voted to accept his offer to resign. William would never overcome his bitterness at the members of the Board, including his lifelong friend, Robert Speer, to whom he had sent that letter celebrating Elliott’s birth.

The resignation went public—and in a big way. The New York Times trumpeted the boardroom drama in screeching, all-caps headlines, such as “MOODY QUITS IN ROW OVER HIS LEADERSHIP OF BIBLE SCHOOLS.” For perhaps the only time in his professional career, Elliott Speer ended up on the receiving end of negative press. After Moody aired his dirty laundry to the Times, a follow-up story in the February 19 edition of the Boston Globe reported Elliott’s response to allegations regarding his inexperience and ineptitude.

Though unpleasant, the controversy had a short shelf life in the press. Elliott energetically applied himself to the unglamorous administrative tasks required of him as president. In the years leading up to the Great Depression, he went on a fundraising spree that raised a record-setting $3 million. Some of this money was used on building maintenance and employee pensions. The rest was set aside as an endowment and rainy-day fund. Thanks to his canny financial sense, the Northfield Schools would successfully ride out the Depression.

Even though he excelled at his job, Elliott could not shake the sense that he wasn’t built for a work life dominated by budgets, contracts, and fundraising letters. He wanted a more meaningful relationship with the students. So, in 1931, Elliott happily stepped down from the more powerful role of president of both schools to become headmaster of the Mount Hermon School for Boys. It was in this position that he would usher in his most controversial reforms.

The Golden Age

Though he resigned as President in 1931, Elliott did not actually start his new job until mid-1932. He and his family spent the intervening year in the UK. There, he studied education at the University of Edinburgh, in preparation for his new responsibilities as headmaster. While busy with a young family and plenty of schoolwork, Elliott still enjoyed a modest amount of free time, and he loved to spend it with a good murder mystery. Holldy, however, did not share his taste for the genre, and perhaps because she wasn’t the mystery aficionado that he was, Elliott liked to loan his crime novels to fellow fans of crime fiction. A 1930 letter from Elliott’s father to his son begins, “What shall I do with the book which you loaned me, entitled The Mystery Maker? I have it here in the office and shall send it wherever you direct.” In the wake of Elliott’s death, his book-lending habits would take on a more sinister significance.

Elliott was one of millions of mystery buffs savoring the fruits of The Golden Age of Detective Fiction, a period of literary excellence that lasted from the end of First World War to the start of the Second. During the 1920s and ’30s, British authors pioneered several new forms of crime writing. The most popular of these was the puzzle mystery, with Agatha Christie reigning as undisputed champion. Christie and her contemporaries placed a high premium on the idea of “fair play.” In the context of classical detective fiction, “fair play” meant that the reader ought to be given all the clues they needed to solve the case at the same time as the fictional detective. This had never been the norm in earlier crime fiction. For example, with a few possible exceptions, readers of Sherlock Holmes could never hope to arrive at the solution to the mystery before the sleuth. The appeal of Conan Doyle’s stories resided not so much in solving the case yourself as in having them solved for you by the ingenious Holmes. In short, the puzzle mystery turned detective stories into an intellectual game, one that pitted author against audience. Could the writer craft a riddle that would stump the reader, or would the reader crack it before the denouement?

The success of Golden Age crime fiction was a unique product of the interwar years. The meteoric rise of the whodunnit coincided with the so-called “puzzle craze.” During the 1920s, crossword puzzles became a fixture in newspapers and magazines, and people everywhere were being bitten by the crossword bug. In 1925, employees of the New York Public Library complained about “puzzle fans swarm[ing] to the dictionaries and encyclopedias so as to drive away readers and students who need these books in their daily work.” At the same time, both sides of the Atlantic witnessed an explosion of crossword-inspired merch: jewelry, clothing, and even a pocket dictionary that could be worn around the wrist, like a watch. The British “fair play” whodunnit tapped into this mania for puzzles.

As many historians of crime fiction have observed, the puzzle mystery also provided readers with a rare kind of consolation. In the wake of the mass casualties of World War I and the Great Influenza, the whodunnit transformed untimely death from a source of crushing collective trauma into a source of intellectual entertainment. This tendency appealed to many members of the reading public, who preferred to put the troubles of the Great War behind them. Having witnessed the brutality of modern warfare and influenza first-hand, Elliott Speer certainly fell into that category.

During his stay in the United Kingdom, ever on the lookout for a new whodunnit, Elliott bought a copy of The Public School Murder at an unknown bookshop, probably in London. The Public School Murder is a lighthearted affair, full of eccentric school masters, quirky customs, and academic satire. The story takes place in the self-enclosed world of Polchester, a fictional boarding school for boys, much like the one Elliott was soon to preside over as headmaster. The novel opens in September, at the beginning of a new academic year. Everyone is talking about Mr. Thorold, the divisive and tyrannical headmaster of the school. Just one week back from summer break, Thorold has alienated faculty and pupils alike. He has threatened to expel a struggling student over the objections of his colleagues and pupils. Thorold has also fired a bibulous teacher, who just days before has drunkenly disrespected a statue of Queen Elizabeth I in the main quad. The infraction in question is left to the reader’s imagination, but the fictional faculty view the sacking as excessive. When he isn’t booting students and faculty with diabolical glee, Thorold likes to pass the time bullying pupils, insulting teachers, and carrying on affairs with the wives of his subordinates. In short, Thorold is the kind of tyrannical jackass who tends to wind up dead in detective fiction, and that’s exactly what happens to the headmaster. While the puzzle itself is good enough, it’s the off-beat characters and the curiously insular culture of Polchester that make the novel memorable. Elliott certainly enjoyed it. As Holly would relate at her husband’s inquest, she had never cared for detective fiction, but Elliott always told her about his favorites, and The Public School Murder was one of them.

Headmaster

When the Speers returned to the U.S., they moved into Ford Cottage, the residence of Mount Hermon’s Headmaster since 1911. As part of his compensation, Elliott and his family lived rent-free in this gorgeous, two-story brick mansion, built in the Georgian style. Tucked away in a leafy corner of the Mount Hermon campus, Ford Cottage abutted thick woodland on one side and a stand of pine trees on the other. From the front yard, you could see Mount Hermon’s Memorial Chapel, and beyond the Connecticut River. The Speer family hosted numerous students, faculty, and visitors for dinners and other social events. The impressive house was a ten-minute walk to Elliott’s office, located in Holbrook Hall, to the northeast. An austere brick building with four Ionic columns adorning its façade, Holbrook was the administrative center of the School. This is where the Headmaster, Dean, Treasurer, and Registrar went about their daily business. As anyone who has ever worked in school administration will appreciate, Holbrook Hall was also the epicenter of campus drama.

And Elliot’s early tenure as headmaster saw drama aplenty. Faculty and administrators at Mount Hermon were divided along theological and generational lines. The older staff tended to cleave to the puritanical example set by the Moody family and deplored any deviation from the vision of the school’s founder. Younger staff tended to see themselves as educational modernizers and scoffed at the restrictive atmosphere on campus. Elliott, who sympathized with the second camp, wasted little time in overturning longstanding rules and regulations.

To the delight of many young staff members, the new headmaster killed the prohibition against card-playing and tobacco use among teachers. Speer converted an underused lounge into a faculty smoking room known colloquially as “The Blue Cloud.” In the 1930s, bridge was one of the most popular games in the United States. Speer, like many of his teachers, was an enthusiast. Before Elliott lifted the ban on cards, faculty at Mount Hermon had been forced to pull their curtains and play bridge in secret at home. One young teacher remembered keeping a boardgame like Parcheesi handy during his clandestine bridge tournaments. In the event that an old-timer knocked on the door, the teacher and his guests would hide the cards, take out the Parcheesi set, and pretend that they had been playing the boardgame all evening. Speer put an end to this nonsense, earning the respect and loyalty of many staff in the process.

He also made life less of a drag for students. The new headmaster did away with many of the prohibitions that limited what the boys could do on the Sabbath. At the time, the Moody faction of the staff continued to outlaw the Sunday newspaper. Elliott not only tossed out this rule, but also allowed students to play games like horseshoes and golf on Sunday afternoons. Such pastimes had long been viewed as unpardonable distractions from the proper observance of the Sabbath.

Policy changes such as these boosted the young headmaster’s popularity among students and about half of his staff. However, Elliott did not need much help in the popularity department. When it had been announced that the cool, young Speer would be the next headmaster of Mount Hermon at a student assembly, the boys literally erupted into cheers. He cared about them, and they knew it. He and Holly constantly hosted them for lunch and afternoon gatherings at Ford Cottage. Though serious about education, Elliott was good humored, slow to anger, and less authoritarian than his crusty, old predecessors. When the students told him that they wished they could play competitive sports against other schools, he made it happen. Boys at private schools are notorious for the unflattering nicknames that they assign to their teachers and headmasters in secret. It is telling that, when he wasn’t around to hear, Elliott’s students referred to him as “Daddy.”

Elliott was no less beloved by the townspeople of nearby Northfield. Traditionally, the headmasters of Mount Hermon kept aloof from the town, treating the school as a separate and self-enclosed world. Elliott, by contrast, was a constant presence in civic life. Under his supervision, the students’ dramatic performances and athletic competitions were not just opened to the public, but actively advertised in the Northfield Star, the local newspaper. During their stay in Edinburgh, Elliott and Holly wrote into that same paper to keep the town updated on their excursions to England and continental Europe. Construction workers fondly remembered that, when they met Elliott for the first time, they marveled at his youthful energy and modern style—which included a “slouch hat” and the pipe that was often seen dangling from his mouth. Another Northfield resident recalled how the Speers sought out a family whose house had burned down, offering them food and shelter for as long as they needed it. Elliott was such a well-known figure that his naughty habit of driving above the speed limit became a communal punchline. An anonymous young lady once placed a personal ad in the Northfield Star, in which she jokingly warned her boyfriend: “When I think that you may no longer love me, the world becomes a dull murky brown like the walls of Gould Hall, and my conduct becomes as reckless as Mr. Speer’s driving.” (Gould Hall, by the way, was a massive brick dormitory at the Northfield Seminary for Girls, which the female students affectionately called “our prison.”)

Elliott’s sincerity, generosity, and good humor would eventually win over most of the conservative members on the Mount Hermon faculty, as well. However, two of the changes he implemented met with outrage from older alumni and staff that even his excellent people skills could not easily defuse.

First, he and the headmistress of the Northfield Seminary organized frequent events that allowed boys and girls to socialize with each other. Then, Elliott and his counterpart at the Seminary did something that, up to that point, had been unthinkable: They organized a dance. When the Mount Hermon boys pointed out that they had no idea how to dance with a girl, Elliott hired professional dancers to come in from New York and teach them. Soon, students from both schools looked forward to the handful of evening events spread out across the academic calendar.

Elliott had kicked a hornets’ nest. Throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s, many Christian communities were divided—like, deeply divided—on the question of dancing. So-called “liberal” minsters saw nothing wrong with boogying down every once and a while and increasingly organized dances for young people in their churches. Fundamentalists, meanwhile, decried dancing of any kind as a one-way ticket to harlotry, syphilis, and civilizational collapse. New York-based Baptist minister John Roach Straton was typical of this second school of thought. In his 1920 book, The Menace of Immorality in Church and State, Straton sounded the alarm about the evils of jazz-inspired dances that had become so popular during the interwar period. With twitching paranoia, he alleged that the shimmy, the jitterbug, and “the evil hootchy-cootchy dance” were responsible for the widespread decline in morals and the proliferation of venereal disease. But Straton reserved his most withering criticism for his fellow Baptist ministers who sponsored Church dances: “All of these things are shocking and horrible treason to Jesus and His divine and holy truth; and the time has come for a stiffening up of our moral backbones, and for a war to the death upon these insidious vices that are doing so much to paralyze the church and that are sapping the very life of modern society.” In other words, Straton mused about the possibility of murdering liberal clergy, all in a fight to stop . . . the jitterbug.

Debates about this issue continued into the 1930s and divided not only Baptists, but also Presbyterians. So, it’s little wonder the dances at the Northfield Schools provoked the strong responses that they did. Upon reading about Elliott’s endorsement of these social events, a graduate of Mount Hermon wrote the following in the alumni newsletter: “Our young people do not know the evil nor damning consequences of the modern dance and will not know unless pastors, teachers, schools and churches teach them and hold up the red flag of danger...Many an innocent, pure, fine, noble girl has gone…to the dance floor not knowing the peril of it, and has come out a physical and moral wreck, with hopes blighted, virtue stolen, prospects clouded, and womanhood gone.” Keep in mind that the students at Mount Hermon were learning the waltz and fox trot; opponents made it sound as though they were doing the evil hoochy-cooch as part of a satanic ritual on D.L. Moody’s grave. In the eyes of his most zealous detractors, Elliott Speer had turned the Northfield Schools into a latter-day Sodom and Gamora.

The second hot-button issue that blew up during Elliott’s time as Headmaster had more to do with what students were learning in the classroom. As his attitude toward dancing might suggest, when it came to his understanding of biblical teaching, Elliott was on the liberal end of the continuum. In contrast to fundamentalist readers of scripture, Speer thought that Christians needed to modify their reading of the Bible in light of its historical context. For this reason, he hired new Bible teachers from Union Theological Seminary. Located at Claremont Avenue and 120th St. in the Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights, UTS was a leading center of progressive Christian scholarship.

While these hires raised the blood pressure of some, in 1934, Speer organized an educational event that caused heads to explode. That year, Elliott invited Norman Thomas, Presbyterian minister and national leader of the Socialist Party, to address the students of Mount Hermon. As historian George R. Marsden has shown, Christian-fundamentalist opposition to socialism hardened over the course of the 1930s. Marsden argues that, during this decade, socialist movements were added to “a classic list of conspiratorial threats that had faced America, including the Illuminati…secret societies, Roman Catholics…and the Jews.” Believe it or not, the event made national headlines and caused serious concern among certain members of the Mount Hermon community. To some, the controversy surrounding the visit of Norman Thomas would appear especially important after September 14, 1934—the evening when an unknown person crept up to Ford Cottage and murdered Elliott Speer while he was at home with his family. We’ll hear about the events leading up to his murder after a quick break.

A Big Day

There was something special about Friday, September 14, 1934. As morning dawned, mist glided over the rolling green hills. Throughout the Mount Hermon campus, the anticipation of a new academic year hung in the air. A handful of upperclassmen, known as the “Old Boys,” had returned from summer vacation a few days early, in order to get everything ready for the first-year students, who were arriving early the following week. Teachers and administrators buzzed from meeting to meeting, looking ahead to the year to come.

At Ford Cottage, Mrs. Florence George woke up early, ready for a big day. A native of Bulgaria, Mrs. George worked in Ford Cottage as the Speer family’s live-in housemaid. Her husband, Constantine, worked down the road at the Northfield Inn; the couple had only lived in the area a few months. Short and plump, Mrs. George had dark, twinkling eyes, a quick wit, and a charmingly thick Bulgarian accent. Prior to moving to the U.S., she had studied medicine under a Swiss physician. Before that, she mastered the arts of lace making and embroidery in her native land. Mrs. George was so good with her needle that she once displayed her handiwork to King Boris III—Bulgaria’s final king—and the subject of a pretty awesome podcast called The Butterfly King, which tells the story of Boris’s unsolved murder. She also displayed her feats of high-end embroidery to curious townspeople in the Mount Hermon area.

Today, Mrs. George had her work cut out for her. Elliott, Holly, and their three daughters had just returned from a two-week vacation in Ontario, where they were building a cabin on a small private island in Lake Timagami. There were also houseguests. Holly’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Welles, were visiting from New Jersey for the next few days. There was extra cleaning and bedmaking to do, and the young Polish cook, Stephie Wozniak, could use some help in the kitchen.

For their part, Mr. and Mrs. Speer also had a full schedule. Holly was gone from Ford Cottage for most of that Friday. In the morning, she cut flowers from the garden, which she took over to various sick friends and acquaintances in East Northfield. Elliott, meanwhile, had arranged his Fall schedule so that he could teach a course in Bible Studies, in addition to his standard duties as headmaster. He spent some of the day preparing for his upcoming classes. In the afternoon, he attended a meeting with the French Department, which was welcoming two new teachers that year. He also stopped by his office in Holbrook Hall.

At Holbrook, Elliott popped into the office of Thomas Elder, the school’s dean, to discuss various matters related to registration. Dean Thomas Elder was second in command to Headmaster Speer. After saying goodbye to Elder, Elliott chatted with various members of the faculty, plus the superintendent of the school’s buildings, Richard Watson. Those who remembered seeing him that afternoon said he was in especially high spirits, looking forward to brightening the lives of his students over the course of the coming academic year.

The Last Supper

The evening of September 14 was dark, foggy, and overcast. It was hard to see anything without the aid of an artificial light. The handful of upperclassmen on campus gathered in the dining hall for a quick supper. Then, they walked over to Crossley Hall, Mount Hermon’s newest dormitory, where they would spend the next couple of hours in meetings with faculty members.

Over at Ford Cottage, 100 yards to the South, Elliott and his family were preparing for their evening meal. Holly and Elliott sat down to a lively dinner with Holly’s parents at 7:00PM. After dessert, they floated the idea of playing bridge. However, Holly’s mother, who had already retired upstairs to her room, was feeling under the weather. Since bridge is played in pairs, this pretty much put an end to any talk of cardplaying for the evening. As everyone decided what to do instead, a servant took the Speer’s new puppy, Amy, out to the kennel for the evening, while their shaggy black Newfoundland, Andy, ambled throughout the house. Holly decided to go upstairs to spend time with the girls, while her father stayed downstairs, relocating to the drawing room in order to read.

Seeing that bridge was out of the question, Elliott did what he did every evening at 8:00—he withdrew to work in his study, which was located across the hall from the drawing room. Facing Ford Cottage, the study was located on the right-hand side of the house, a corner room with windows looking out in two directions. One set of windows offered a view of the front yard; the other looked out onto a thick cluster of trees on the side of the building, including an ancient maple where Elliott had hung a swing for his daughters. Each evening, the headmaster sat at his desk, his bookshelves behind him, to read a newspaper or catch up on work. It was the one time of day that he had to himself. On the evening of the fourteenth, he was reviewing material related to the class he would teach the following week. Outside, as Elliott bent over his work at his desk, a silhouetted figure crept toward the window and peered inside.

Upstairs in her room, Mrs. George eased into her armchair after a hard day’s work. Her husband, Constantine, had left Ford Cottage to drive a friend into town. Turning over the events of the day, she thought she heard footsteps outside the study down below. She listened for a moment before returning to her ruminations.

Across the hall, Holly was having a chat with the girls. Downstairs, her father, Herbert Welles, looked at his watch. It was just after 8:15.

A few minutes later, a loud bang startled Mrs. George from her reflections, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass. Across the hall, Holly jumped at the noise. Assuming a lightbulb had exploded, she hastened downstairs to fix the problem. Meanwhile, Mrs. George’s attention was torn in two directions. On the one hand, she could hear the swift footfalls heading away from the house and toward the little road that passed by Ford Cottage. Then, in the distance, a car engine revved up. On the other hand, she felt compelled to investigate the explosion downstairs.

When Holly got to the bottom of the staircase, she was met by her father, also roused by the disturbance. The two had barely exchanged words when Elliott stumbled into the doorway of his study, his torso covered in blood. Clearly disoriented, he looked to Holly and Henry and said, “I don’t know what happened.” As soon became evident, he had been shot. With the help of his wife and father-in-law, he made it to the stairs, where he collapsed onto the floor. Holly lowered herself down onto the first step, supporting the weight of her husband’s upper body as he lay across her lap.

At this point, Mrs. George arrived. Having studied medicine in Switzerland, she took charge of the scene. She sent Holly to fetch water. Holly’s father hurried out the door to the home of Dr. McCastline, who lived nearby in the town of Greenfield. Holly also asked him to ring David Birdsall, a neighbor and close family friend of the Speers, who worked as the purchasing agent at Mount Hermon. Holly rushed back into the hallway with the water. Mrs. George did all she could to staunch the flow of blood from the wounds on the side of Elliott’s ribcage. Elliott looked up at them and breathed, “Put a tourniquet on my arm.”

David Birdsall got in his Plymouth and drove with all possible speed to Ford Cottage. Due to the unusual darkness of the evening, he tripped over shrubbery in the front yard as he approached the front door. He picked himself up and flew to the entrance, heading in without knocking. The doctor arrived shortly after, but it was too late. Elliott Speer died at 8:55PM, at the age of 35.

During the final minutes of Elliott’s life, Birdsall did what nobody else had thought to do. He paced over to the phone, picked it up, and called the police. When the line was answered Patrolman Richard Hiller, Birdsall choked out the words: “Come quickly to Ford Cottage. Elliott Speer has been shot. It’s foul play and very serious.”

Next time, we’ll follow the police investigation into the murder—and discuss the shocking discovery that Elliott’s killer based his crime on a detective novel borrowed from the victim himself.