Murder in Elk Falls

[W. Gray]

Elk Falls, Kan., Dec 23 [1891]—a reward for the arrest of Don Brittain was offered to-day by Elk County officials after a Coroner's jury had returned a verdict that Brittain had caused the death of Miss Maude Bingham, his sweetheart.

Brittain and Miss Bingham went driving in a buggy on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 26. Late at night he returned to the home of his stepfather, Burr Reynolds, a farmer, near here, and shouted: "Come quick! Maude has fainted."

Miss Bingham was found crouched down in the buggy, dead. Brittain disappeared, after explaining that the girl had become ill after eating candy. A sample of the candy was analyzed, but was found to contain no poison.

The Coroner's jury held that death was due to chloroform.

New York Times

[Sarge]

When I was working at O&B in Elk Falls about 19 years ago a couple of older women stopped and asked me where the Border school house was. They said that somewhere along that road their great aunt was killed by a man named Don Britain when he tried to perform an abortion on her. They said she bled to death.

[W. Gray]

When posting that event, I had a lot of thoughts about what transpired and none included abortion.

My last thought was whether they ever caught him. The Bloody Benders got away and he probably did also.

One wonders why they did not just take off to some far off place, claim they were married, and start a new life.

To resort to chloroform and abortion, there must have been some huge reservations from both partners.

[Sarge]

Yep they caught him. I don't know what was done, but I do know that when my Dad was younger (mid 30's) Don Britain was always at every dance selling his home brew for a quarter a bottle.

[W. Gray]

For someone who did what he did, his still being around to sell home brew in Elk Falls seems to be getting a little strange.

[Sarge]

Yep, it does. I don't know what happened to him over that, but whatever it was he was selling home brew in the 30's. He was an old man then according to what I've heard.  Whimpy Taylor told me that old Don Britain couldn't see too well  so Whimpy and his friends would pass off railroad tokens to him as half dollars for a couple bottles of home brew.  Ad Kitterman would usually be at the dances too, but he sold the hard stuff that was bootlegged into Kansas. Ad was my Dad's cousin.  I guess he was a very good baseball pitcher when he was younger and according to my Dad, Ad made a wild pitch at a ball game hitting the batter in the head and it killed the kid. He never played baseball again.

[Buddyboy]

My sis whizkid could confirm this, but I think I have heard her say that there were two Don Britains in the family, the one that murdered the girl and another one that was around in the 40's. Somewhere on the forum there is additional information on this. Don was charged and sent to prison. I have looked at the papers from that time and they were pretty blatant as to what they thought about the situation, no impartiality. Also, in the one that told of his sentencing just a few columns over in the social columns, there was a blurb about the sherrif accompanying Mr. Britain to the prison, right with the ones about who had who over to supper that week. Don was the son of Florence ? Britain Reynolds Meadows. She lived to be 102 and is buried in Oak Valley. She was my dad's aunt and the wife of my Grandma Zollars's brother Burr.

[W. Gray]

If we could get a couple more people to "rememberin," we just might could piece this whole story together.