Ever since he had come to Melrose, Mayor Eugene H. Moore had lived a charmed life. Yet that life would end with a tragic death and a family scandal that would leave him broken.
Moore had grown up poor in Somerset, Massachusetts, spending his teenage years working in a nail factory. Following the death of his father, Moore moved with his mother and siblings to Melrose, where he met and fell in love with Annie Foster. Annie was the daughter of D. W. Foster, Melrose’s most prominent attorney. After they were married, his father-in-law gave him the funds to buy up most of the land that became the far east side of Melrose between Upham Street and the Lynn Fells Parkway.
There Moore followed his dream. On his estate, which he dubbed “Moorelands,” he became a gentleman farmer specializing in purebred animals. His chickens won prizes, and he had a barn built that housed over 3,500 fancy pigeons. By the 1880s, he had found his true passion in dogs. He became one of the country’s most esteemed breeders of champion Mastiffs and St. Bernards. His most famous dog was Lord Melrose, a massive St. Bernard who was insured for $20,000, far exceeding the value of most Melrose houses.
In March 1903, Moore’s 19-year-old daughter Irma married 23-year-old Howard Gurney at a grand wedding in the family home at 247 Porter Street. Shortly thereafter, Moore built the young couple a house just around the corner at 82 East Street, and they soon gave him two granddaughters. Everything appeared to be perfect. But there was something wrong.
The marriage of Irma and Howard at Melrose had not been their first. They had married secretly in Worcester a little over a month before. When their first daughter was born, it was too early to have been conceived in wedlock.
When Moore was elected Mayor of Melrose in 1907, he hired Irma as his personal secretary. It was played up as an amusing novelty, but may have masked a desperate need. At that time, genteel mothers with young children were not expected to be employed. In the 1910 Melrose business directory, Irma was listed as a clerk; her husband’s listing was absent, as it always had been.
In June 1911, Irma was stricken with appendicitis. The appendix burst. She was a few weeks shy of her 28th birthday. The informant of her death was her brother-in-law, not her husband. Visiting hours for her casket began that Thursday at 3 o’clock, and lasted until almost midnight. Irma had made many friends in Melrose.
Those friends all came to her funeral at Trinity Church the next day. City offices were closed, and flags hung at half-staff. Following the service, hundreds of cars and carriages made the pilgrimage from the church to Wyoming Cemetery. In the first car were Irma’s father and her husband. In the very last coach, dressed in plainclothes, were Captain O. E. Drown and Patrolman William C. McCarthy of the Melrose Police.
The procession wended its way to the high hill at the back of the cemetery where so many of Melrose’s most prominent people were buried. Irma’s casket was laid in its plot. As the last clod of dirt was shoveled on, Howard Gurney turned to leave, and Drown and McCarthy emerged from the crowd, grabbed him, handcuffed him, shoved him into their waiting carriage, and drove off, much to the horror of Gurney’s daughters, and to the grim satisfaction of Eugene Moore.
A week before, Gurney had cashed a forged check for $28 at a store in Stoneham. Moore had been informed of the infraction, and had conspired with the police to have his hated son-in-law arrested at this dramatic moment. The man who had groomed so many prize show dogs had an eye for theatrics, and newspapers across the country ran the story of the arrest.
Gurney was found guilty of forging the check, and did time at Concord Prison. In 1921 he was arrested on charges of larceny for forging another check, but died at age 40 before he could be brought to trial.
Following the funeral, Mayor Moore suffered a complete nervous breakdown and was confined to his home. His wife, Annie, issued a statement saying that he would not run for reelection. He died in 1919, and all of his pallbearers were former mayors of Melrose.
Annie raised their granddaughters.
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