Legal Studies by
Paulino Fuentes Castro
Lawyer
Associate to the public prosecutor of the Illustrious Court – Director of the Judicial Diary
Anonymous Crime
The Poisoning of Mrs. Isabel Lewis
Lima, Peru
1893
Translated by
Andres Guerrero and Sue Chasen
Interpreted
by Pam Randles
2019
Introduction
In December of 1891, a beautiful woman arrived alone, without family or servant, in the Hotel Maury in Lima, Peru. She took a room next to a well-known gentleman. The hotel staff felt this was not proper and asked her to move. A few days later she was found dead in her room under mysterious circumstances.
The hotel staff could not know that she was Mrs. Isabel Lewis, one of the wives of Capt. Charles Lewis. She had left her husband and children in San Francisco to travel to Peru.
This is a true story, an unsolved mystery. It is a story of a death of an North American woman, wife of a captain of the merchant ship, George W. Elder, out of San Francisco, California. It happened in Peru in 1892.
I happened upon this story because the captain, Charles Henry Lewis had gone on to captain the steamship Clara Nevada to the Alaska gold fields in 1898. It had wrecked and exploded in a February storm on a rock in Lynn Canal in Southeast Alaska. Eight hundred pounds of gold had gone down with it. Everyone was lost…except the captain and fireman. That shipwreck prompted the U.S. Congress to build lighthouses in Alaska, including one on that very rock, Eldred Rock in 1905. As of 2019, that lighthouse still stands as it was originally built, and it is a lovely landmark as people pass up and down Lynn Canal.
Captain Lewis had a wife, Sarah, and four children in Baltimore. He also had a wife, Isabel, in San Francisco. Isabel had hree children from previous marriages, and two from her marriage to Capt. Lewis. She accompanied Capt. Lewis to Peru in 1891. Isabel returned alone 6 months later and died under very suspicious circumstances that were never completely resolved.
As part of my research into the shipwreck, I recieved this legal case study about Isabel’s murder, published in 1893 in Peruvian Spanish. A descendent of Isabel Lewis found a copy of the manuscript and she shared it with me. This story keeps on turning up more and more wonderful mysteries!
I found a person, Sue Chasen, who could translate Spanish. But this was century old Peruvian Spanish which is heavily mixed with Quechuan and filled with technical language. Sue found a translator in Venezuela, Andres Guerrero, who translated the entire manuscript. It was extremely difficult for my English language mind to comprehend. So slowly with the help of online translators and my limited knowledge of romance languages, I have attempted to render it into comprehensible modern English.
It is a fascinating story of intrigue, romance, greed, and forensics told by Paulino Fuentes Castro, Peruvian lawyer and director of El Diario Judicial, a series of case studies in law.
As you read it, remember it takes place in 19th century Peru, and see if you can figure out whodunit!
Pam Randles
Haines, Alaska
2019