The "Gentile Polygamist": Arthur Brown, Ex-Senator from Utah

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 52, 1984, No. 3

The "Gentile Polygamist": Arthur Brown, Ex-Senator from Utah

By LINDA THATCHER

ON DECEMBER 13, 1906, ARTHUR BROWN, one of the first two U.S. senators elected after Utah gained statehood, died in the Emergency Hospital in Washington, D. C, from complications following a gunshot wound. He had been shot on December 8 by Anne Maddison Bradley, his mistress of several years, after a turbulent and wellpublicized love affair. Residents of Salt Lake City were "shocked but not surprised by the news that Mrs. Anna [sic] M. Bradley had shot ex-Senator Arthur Brown." His death brought to a culmination an episode in Utah's history much written about at the time but little known today.

Arthur Brown was born March 8, 1843, on a farm near Schoolcraft, Kalamazoo County, Michigan. When he was thirteen years old the family moved to Yellow Springs, Ohio, so that his sisters could attend Antioch College, which had been started by Horace Mann. His parents were interested in the college for his sisters, as it was one of the first to admit women on an equal basis with men. Arthur also attended the college, graduating in 1862. He then attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he obtained a law degree in 1864.

Brown practiced law in Kalamazoo, building a large and lucrative practice. He was also active in politics but never held office, although he tried several times to secure the nomination for prosecuting attorney of Kalamazoo.

While living in Kalamazoo he was married to a women, later known only as Mrs. L. C. Brown, and they had one child, Alice. After his marriage he became enamored with Isabel Cameron, the daughter of Alexander Cameron, a member of the Michigan State Senate. At the time they met she was running a newsstand in the Kalamazoo post office. The affair became public knowledge, and Brown and his first wife separated in the late 1870s. He moved to Salt Lake City in 1879 in the hope of being appointed U.S. district attorney for Utah. Failing to receive the appointment, he set up a private law practice in the city. Isabel Cameron followed him to Salt Lake City, and they were married after he obtained a divorce from his first wife. They had one son, Max.

As a successful attorney, close to forty, Brown apparently settled down to respectable family life with his second wife and son and once more became active in politics. He rose to prominence in the Republican party and was nominated in 1896 by the Republican caucus of the predominantly Republican Utah State Legislature to run for the U.S. Senate along with Frank J. Cannon. Some representatives threatened to withdraw their support of Brown in the final election in the legislature because of his views on the "silver question." However, when Brown published a letter in the Deseret News stating that he supported the Republican stand on the controversial silver issue, he received the necessary votes from the legislature to secure the office. He drew the short term and served in the U.S. Senate from January 22, 1896, to March 4, 1897.

It was primarily through his work in the Republican party that Brown became acquainted with Anne Maddison Bradley in 1892. By the time of his election in 1896, the fifty-three year old senator and the twenty-three year old Bradley were close friends.

Anne Maddison Bradley was born January 7, 1873, in Kansas City, Missouri, a daughter of Matthew and Mary E. Cozad Maddison. The family lived in Kansas City until she was about eight years old, when they moved to Colorado Springs. She received her schooling in Denver and later worked for a clothing company there. When her family moved to Salt Lake City in 1890 she worked as a clerk in the Salt Lake Water Works Department for three years and eight months, quitting a week before her marriage on September 20, 1893, to Clarence A. Bradley who worked for the Rio Grande Western Railroad.

Anne Bradley appears to have been a young woman of culture with a wide range of interests. Active in community affairs, she belonged to the Salt Lake City Woman's Club, the Utah Woman's Press Club, and the Poets' Roundtable. She was also, for a time, editor of the Utah State Federation of Women's Clubs' publication. In 1900 she served as secretary of the fifth ward Republican Committee and as secretary of the State Republican Committee in 1902. Local church records reveal that she was a charter member of the First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City. She had two children by Clarence Bradley — Matthew, born in 1894, and Martha Clare, born in 1898.

According to Anne Bradley's testimony at her trial, she stopped living with her husband in 1898, and after first spurning Brown's advances discovered that she loved him.

Before that time, she said, Senator Brown had told her much of his life, and said he was very unhappy. "I told him that what he wanted would be only sorrow," but, he replied, "Never! never!" . . . "He was a very strange man. Finally, he began coming to my house at very unseemly hours, and I told him it must stop, but he answered. 'Darling, we will go through life together. I want you to have a son' and after several months we did."

They started an intimate relationship in January 1899, and on February 7, 1900, Bradley gave birth to a son, claimed to be Brown's, who was christened Arthur Brown Bradley. However, according to a deposition given by her sister, Louise Maddison Garnett, Bradley lived with her husband on and off until around 1902, and Clarence was living in the house at the time Arthur Brown Bradley was born in 1900.

In 1902 Anne Bradley took several trips with Brown and lived for a few months in Grand Junction, Colorado. While she was living there Brown assured her that he was taking the necessary steps to get a divorce and that the only problem was the property settlement. She claimed to have told Brown "to give everything to Max Brown and Mrs. Brown ... [as she] wanted none of it." 7 In March, while they were in Grand Junction, she said that he gave her an engagement ring. They took a trip to Washington, D.C, accompanied by his daughter Alice from his first marriage. On this trip, Bradley said, she traveled as Brown's wife.

Brown separated from his second wife and was living in the Independence Block in 1902, while Isabel resided in the Brown residence at 201 East South Temple. Isabel Brown and Salt Lake City District Attorney Dennis C. Eichnor hired a private detective, Samuel Dowse, to follow Brown and Bradley in September. Dowse observed both Brown and Bradley going into Brown's room in the Independence Block, and on September 28, 1902, both were arrested on charges of adultery. 8 Bradley claimed at her trial that she had gone to the Independence Block to wait for a few days until Brown could accompany her to Idaho to visit his ranch. Brown signed two five hundred dollar bonds for himself and Mrs. Bradley and they were set free. Mrs. Brown started the adultery proceedings in retaliation for divorce proceedings Arthur Brown had started against her.

According to Mrs. Brown's statements Mrs. Bradley has had Brown under her influence for nearly four years. During that time it is alleged that they have had apartments in various rooming-houses and business blocks, their room most of the time being in the Dooly block, room 410, and recently in the Central block, room 26.

It is said that Mrs. Brown has in her possession a collection of nearly three hundred letters and telegrams which have been received by Brown from Mrs. Bradley. Many of these letters were from the Brown ranch and are said to be not particularly readable. These epistles will be used when the case is called for hearing.

Mrs. Brown was against the divorce as ". . . she intended to be presented at court in England next year and, as divorced women are restricted from that court, she . . . [objected] seriously to being divorced at all." 10 She offered to withdraw the charges against Brown and Bradley if he would drop his divorce proceedings. Meanwhile, Anne Bradley had gone to Brown's ranch in Idaho alone. While she was there Dr. David Utter of the Unitarian church visited her in an attempt to persuade her to end her relationship with Brown. When she returned to Salt Lake City to consult Brown on the matter, "He fell on his knees before me, and begged me not to desert him. . . . He said he had given up everything else in life, and was living for me alone."

In January 1903 they were once more arrested on a charge of adultery. Brown promised his wife that he would stop seeing Bradley, and Soren X. Christensen, a lawyer, was asked by Brown and his wife to stay with Brown to try and keep Brown away from Bradley. Christensen stated that during this time Brown would sometimes "call . . . [Bradley] vile names and abuse her, and at other times he would tell me that he couldn't live without her." Brown and his wife also attempted to reach a settlement with Bradley: She would receive a home in California or Salt Lake City, "not to exceed $5,000 in value," and "$100 a month as long as she remained single, for her care and the care of the children." She rejected the offer saying that "she wanted nothing but the Senator."

In April of that year Brown and Christensen planned to leave Salt Lake City for a few months, supposedly to escape Bradley. Brown went ahead and Christensen was to follow with his luggage. When Christensen found out that Brown had met Bradley in Pocatello, Idaho, he and Mrs. Brown followed them, to help Brown escape, if he really wanted to get away from Bradley.

Christensen and Mrs. Brown were at the head of the stairs in their hotel in Pocatello when, according to Christensen's account,

. . . Mrs. Bradley came up the stairs with — I think she had a coat or ulster on her arm, and a grip in her hand, when Mrs. Brown said to her, "How do you do, Mrs. Bradley? I have wanted to talk to you!" Mrs. Bradley sort of cowed over to the wall, and Mrs. Brown walked up towards her and grabbed her by the throat and threw her down, and intended to kill her, I took it. ... I separated them, they got up, and commenced talking in a very low tone of voice again, when Mrs. Brown grabbed her again. I separated them, and Mrs. Brown says, "Let me alone, I will kill her," and I says, "Not when I am here." Then Mrs. Bradley called out and says, "Arthur, they are killing your Dolly — open the door." They was about 6 or 8 feet from the door at the time. There was no response from the Senator's room. Then they commenced talking again, the two women. The conversation I don't remember. I went and sat down and looked on. Finally Mrs. Brown rapped on the door of room 11, and said, "Arthur, open the door or I will mash it in," and the door opened and the two women went in, when Arthur Brown came and called me, and said "Come in, I don't want to be left alone here with them." That was about 1 o'clock in the morning, and then there was a general conversation pertaining to their conduct, until 7:30 the next morning.

During this dramatic confrontation, according to Christensen, Brown denied that he was the father of his son Max by Mrs. Brown and admitted to being the father of Bradley's son Arthur. All three accused each other of all sorts of indiscretions. After the incident, Brown gave Bradley a revolver to carry with her as protection from Mrs. Brown.

Bradley had the impression that some sort of agreement had been made in Pocatello by Brown, his wife, and Christensen for a settlement so that she and Brown could be married. She remained at his ranch during the month of May, leaving only after she received a telephone message on June 3 from Brown telling her to "get off the farm and remain off it." She returned to Salt Lake City about three months pregnant to find that Brown and his wife had reconciled. Brown had also denied fathering her child Arthur Brown Bradley in order to avoid going to prison. When Bradley confronted him on these issues, he told her that "when he had settled certain business matters he would right the wrong." He told her that he "would marry . . . [her] and give . . . [her] and the children all the protection that was necessary."

The court date was rapidly approaching for their adultery trial, and Bradley informed Brown that unless he acknowledged their son she would plead guilty at the trial. Brown refused to acknowledge the child, and Bradley pleaded guilty to the charges. Brown pleaded not guilty and was tried. Brown was later acquitted and Bradley was never sentenced.

Before the trial Bradley said that Brown had pleaded with her not to testify against him, and "he promised to get a divorce from his wife within a year and marry Mrs. Bradley. Then they would leave the United States and settle in Poland." Despite his reassurances to Bradley, Brown felt bitter toward her for pleading guilty, and their relationship deteriorated. He was not yet able to give her up, however. On November 24, 1903, a second son, supposedly fathered by Brown, Martin Montgomery Brown Bradley, was born.

On August 22, 1905, Isabel Cameron Brown died of cancer in Salt Lake City. Bradley stated that Brown called on her the night after his wife's death and said: "Now, darling, go ahead and get your divorce and we will make this matter right." After her divorce she frequently approached him on the subject of marriage, but he was in no hurry to gain legal access to what he had enjoyed illicitly. He put her off, according to her testimony, with such statements as: "we want a courtship, don't we," or "we must have more regard for public opinion."

This charade apparently ended when they set a wedding date for June 1906. Brown urged her to go away until the wedding, and they decided on Ogden so that he could visit her more frequently. He vowed he would not delay the marriage again, saying, "Dolly, if I don't carry out my promise [to marry you in June] I call upon God to avenge it." When the wedding day arrived, however, Brown was ill, and they merely had conversation on the telephone.

In August 1906 she once more tried to get Brown to marry her. Thirty-three years old, divorced, and responsible for four children, she threw pride out the window. "I simply broke down and begged him to marry me. I told him I could never face the little children when they grew up, and I felt as if the future was very dark. I was very disconsolate and remained so for some time, notwithstanding that on the following night Brown had spoken more encouragingly on the future. His mood underwent frequent changes, and his talk corresponded with it." Brown told her several times that he would eventually marry her, she said, but the week before he left for Washington he acted very bitter toward her. Adding to her burdens, she once more found herself pregnant with a child which she lost a few weeks before the shooting.

According to her sister's deposition, Bradley rented her house and moved into the Hotel Wilson in mid-November 1906 because she believed "that as long as she kept on housekeeping and living the way she was, trying to get along on as little as she could, that Mr. Brown would make no effort to change her condition at all."

During this time Bradley also occupied Brown's home without his permission, making him more angry with her. She returned to the Hotel Wilson at her sister's insistence. Her sister said Bradley was very depressed as "Mr. Brown did not show any willingness whatever to take care of her, or to better her condition, and she did not know what she was going to do." Bradley told her sister:

. . . She had come to the conclusion that there was nothing for her to do but to start in some business for herself; that she realized she could not go on as she had been any longer, that she was weary and tired of living the life she had been living, and she realized that she could not stand it any longer, and that she would see Senator Brown and ask him if he would not help her to start some business for herself, some selfsupporting business.

That night she told me that she would see Senator Brown the next day, and would ask him if he would help her. The next afternoon she telephoned ... me that Senator Brown said that he would help her to start in a business for herself, and would pay for a stock of goods for her, amounting to $2000.

Wanting to start a stationery store in Goldfield, Nevada, 26 Bradley went about arranging for her stock. Her sister visited her on Thanksgiving Day, and Anne Bradley told her that "she believed Senator Brown was backing out of his promise to help her in her new undertaking." He had told "her to wait, not to start out in business yet, that she could do it later on, but he didn't want her to go away now." But Bradley said that "she was desperate, that she did not know what she was going to do." The next day she visited her sister's home and told her that "Senator Brown had said he would not do a thing. She said she was heartsick and life seemed to hold nothing for her now."

A few days later, Brown left for Washington, D.C, to plead before the Supreme Court a suit filed against the St. Louis Mining Company by the Montana Company, Ltd. Bradley told her sister that "Senator Brown had left the city and had left no money for her." That evening she visited his law office and found that he had left a train ticket for her to Los Angeles. On December 3, 1906, she supposedly left for Los Angeles, but her sister received a telephone call from her saying that she had decided to go to Washington instead as "she believed if she went to Washington that Senator Brown would be willing to provide her with a stock of goods for her store; that he was there on some big, some important case, and that she knew he would rather buy her a stock for her store than to have her there bothering him."

Bradley changed her ticket for Washington, arriving on December 8. She went directly to the Raleigh Hotel and asked if Senator Brown was staying there. When she found out that he was, she also registered, signing as Mrs. A. Brown, Salt Lake City. The room clerk asked if she wanted to share a room with her husband, to which she replied "No, he is not my husband. I want a room alone." After checking in, she located "Brown's room, where she found letters to Brown from Annie Adams Kiskadden, mother of the famous actress Maude Adams and an important actress in her own right. Kiskadden was born November 9, 1848, in Salt Lake City. She had first become acquainted with Brown in the 1880s when he settled her father's estate.

Bradley returned to her own room where she read the letters and tore them up. From the letters she gained the impression that Brown and Kiskadden were soon to be married.

According to a newspaper account, she became very upset after reading the letters and wandered the streets with no purpose. The account continued:

. . . She went out of the hotel and returned several times, and was lying down in her room when she heard Senator Brown's step in the corridor, and she went to the door of his room and knocked.

Brown called "Come in," and she entered. His first words were "What are you doing here?" and Mrs. Bradley said she replied: "I have come to ask you to keep your promise to me."

. . . [She] declared she could not remember any of the events following. She did not know Brown was shot until she seemed to be awakened as from a dreath [sic] by the sound of a shot. Brown had rushed toward her and grabbed her, Mrs. Bradley said, but she did not remember drawing the revolver, aiming it at Brown or nulling the trigger. She had never fired a revolver before in her life.

The revolver used was the one she said Brown had given her several years before to protect herself from Mrs. Brown after the incident in Pocatello. Brown was rushed to the Emergency Hospital and Bradley was taken to the First Precinct Police Station in Washington. Shortly after the shooting she stated that "she was the mother of four children, and alleged that former Senator Brown was the father of two of them and that he had not treated her properly." She was also asked if Brown was a polygamist, to which she answered: "He is not a Mormon polygamist but a Gentile polygamist." Brown was operated on, but the bullet was not removed as it was too tightly lodged in his pelvic bone. He regained consciousness several hours after the operation and said to the nurse: "I suppose there are some hard tales about me, but I am innocent of them all." Later he told one of his doctors "the shooting was all uncalled for. I never wronged that woman." He also requested that his law partner be notified "of the shooting, in the event of his death, [and] he stated, he wanted his children notified that the taking of his life was through no fault of his own."

Public sentiment was immediately on the side of Mrs. Bradley. The Salt Lake Tribune reported:

It is not overstating the case to say that there is little or no local sympathy with Senator Brown, and that his relations with the woman are condemned universally. The practically unanimous expression of the people here is that his shooting by the woman was the natural outcome of the relations which had existed between them for years, particularly in view of his refusal to marry her and thus legitimatize her children, after he was free to wed. Local sympathy is with the woman regardless of the fact that many people say she entered into illicit relations with Senator Brown knowing that he was married. Salt Lake people believe generally that, in accord with the "unwritten law," the woman will be acquitted of any charge which may be lodged against her in connection with the shooting.

Alice Brown, his daughter by his first marriage, and Max Brown, his son by his second marriage, arrived in Washington soon after the shooting. Annie Adams Kiskadden announced that she would travel to Washington also.

Brown lingered for a few days, but he had been under treatment for Bright's disease and finally died of kidney failure on December 13, 1906. Following an inquest Bradley was held for action by the grand jury.

Annie Kiskadden, who was still active in the theatre at age fifty-eight, announced that she was the cause of the shooting, as she and the sixty-three year old Brown were to have been married. Kiskadden called herself Bradley's "best friend," in the matter, for:

When the Senator first proposed marriage to me, I plainly told him that it was his duty to marry Mrs. Bradley. But he gave me every assurance that marriage with Mrs. Bradley was impossible. He refused positively to marry her and told me, he would not marry any one. Under these circumstances I consented to be his wife if he would arrange matters satisfactorily to Mrs. Bradley. He told me that he would do this and I understand that he had communicated with her and had asked how much money she would need.

Kiskadden wanted to accompany Brown's body back to Salt Lake City on the train, but his children objected: "We know nothing about her, or dad's relations with her," said Brown's son, Max, "and do not believe they were engaged to be married." 37 Max and his half-sister, Alice, accompanied the body to Utah, and Kiskadden went to New York City.

On December 22, 1906, Brown's will, written on August 24, 1906, was published in the Salt Lake Tribune. In it he denied that Bradley's two youngest sons were his.

5. I do not devise or bequeath or give anything to the children of Mrs. Anna [sic] M. Bradley. I expressly refuse to give anything to Arthur Brown Bradley, sometimes known as Arthur Brown, Jr., or the other child of Anna M. Bradley, named by her Martin Montgomery Brown, and I refuse to pay or give anything to any child of Mrs. Anna M. Bradley. I do not think either or any child born of the said Anna M. Bradley is my child. But whether such child or children is or are mine or are not, I expressly provide that neither or any of them shall receive anything from my estate, and I will and direct that no child born to Anna M. Bradley shall receive anything of my estate. 6. I never married Anna M. Bradley and never intend to. If she should pretend that any relations ever existed between us to justify such inference, I direct my executor to contest any claim of any kind she may present and I direct that she receive nothing from my estate.

The newspaper concluded that the will "demonstrates the truth of the comment. . . made upon Senator Brown's character since his death, namely: that he was a 'good hater.'" His estate was left to his daughter Alice and his son Max.

Meanwhile, Bradley remained in jail awaiting her trial. The mental and emotional strain of the past few years had exacted its toll on the thirty-three year old woman. In addition, her physical condition had suffered from several miscarriages and three abortions — one allegedly performed on her by Arthur Brown — the latest of which had occurred only a few weeks before the fatal shooting. In July 1907 she was transferred to the Providence Hospital where she was operated on by H. L. E.Johnson for "a badly lacerated cervix."

Her trial finally began on November 13, 1907, in Criminal Court No. 1. George P. Hoover, a young Washington attorney, and Judge Orlando W. Powers of Salt Lake City, a prominent attorney who had served as associate justice of the Third District Court in Ogden, served as her counsel. Powers told the press:

Out there [in Utah] the people are in full sympathy with Mrs. Bradley. At one time, it is true, sentiment was somewhat against Mrs. Bradley, but the people did not know half. It was not until the will of Brown was published that the real knowledge of what Mrs. Bradley had suffered and the irreparable wrong that Brown had done her were known.

The jury selection was completed on November 14 and the trial began. The prosecution's main witnesses were Albert H. Kelly, a friend of Bradley, who testified that Bradley said "that unless Brown acknowledged her second child to be his son she would shoot him." The second witness, James A. Rowan, a guard at Brown's residence at 201 East South Temple, said that Mrs. Bradley had made two attempts to "get into the Brown house, on the first of which she flourished a revolver which, he said, she intended to use upon Brown, and on the second when she reproached Rowan for telling Brown about the revolver."

Bradley's defense of temporary insanity was based on testimony concerning "several criminal operations upon the defendant, one of which . . . was performed by Brown. The effect of these upon her system and mentality was very marked." Additional testimony revealed that insanity existed in her family, as one of her aunts, Mrs. Shrewsbury, was confined to an insane asylum in Los Angeles, and another aunt, Mrs. Ryan, had had St. Vitus dance in her childhood and suffered from periodic attacks of insanity. Bradley's mother testified that Anne had been hit on the head as a child with a hoe and had suffered severe headaches for several weeks. Bradley herself "looking more wan that at any previous period" spent many hours on the witness stand detailing her relationship with Brown, and several of their love letters were read.

The case was sent to the jury on December 2, 1907, and the following day a verdict of not guilty was returned. After the trial Bradley did not have enough money to return to Salt Lake City. A fund was started for her in Washington, but she rejected it, saying she had "plans to earn money in legitimate work that can be performed in her own room in Washington to raise the necessary money to take her back to Salt Lake."

Reactions to her acquittal were mixed in Salt Lake City. The Herald editorialized: "the jury decided that Mrs. Bradley was insane when she killed Arthur Brown, and it seems a pity that, being insane, she cannot be deprived of the custody . . . of the two children whose lives are constant witness of her unfitness for motherhood."

A suit was brought against the estate of Arthur Brown on behalf of Arthur Brown Bradley and Martin Montgomery Brown Bradley, by their grandmother and guardian ad litem Mary E. Maddison. According to the probate records, the two boys never received a settlement from Brown's estate.

After Bradley's return to Salt Lake City she worked at several jobs, including manager of the Railway Educational Association, secretary, and bookkeeper until 1914 when she and her children moved to Price. While living there tragedy struck again. In March 1915, while Mrs. Bradley was on a trip in Nevada, Matthew Bradley died from stab wounds inflicted by Arthur Brown Bradley during a sibling scuffle over who would cook and who would wash the dishes. A coroner's jury decided that Matthew had died from accidental wounds inflicted by his half-brother Arthur, and no legal action was taken. About 1921 Anne Bradley once more returned to Salt Lake City where she operated an antique store called "My Shop" at different locations around the city until her death at age seventy-seven on November 11, 1950, from a heart ailment.

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