The Ghost Photographer

Bainbridge Brown took pictures of ghosts and then became one himself

Season Two of Company D is sponsored in part by:

Episode 19: Brainbridge P. Brown

Show Transcript

Bainbridge Porter Brown died on May 11, 1878, at the age of 42. A few days later, his family buried him in their cemetery on Brown Point in Bowdoinham, Maine.

We don’t know how Bainbridge died. His family never reported his death to authorities. There is no death certificate. There is no obituary.

No official record of his death has ever been found. The circumstances of Bainbridge’s death are shrouded in mystery.

The only evidence of Bainbridge’s untimely passing is a white marble headstone, rather elaborate for rural Maine in 1878, that identifies him as the son of John and Seraphina Brown and records that he was 42 years, three months, and eleven days old when he died.

Bainbridge had traveled from Boston, where he owned a photography studio, to visit his family several days before his death. No evidence suggests he was sick or ailing.

Town lore holds that Bainbridge was killed in a hunting accident while roaming the woods with members of his family.

Which would be a shocking coincidence, because Bainbridge accidentally shot and killed one of his relatives in a hunting accident in Bowdoinham 15 years earlier.

Two fatal hunting accidents involving the same man more than a decade apart. But if it was an accident, why wasn’t it reported?

Fifteen years earlier, Bainbridge’s accidental fatal shooting made newspaper headlines across Maine. This time, there was only silence. No headlines. No articles. No accounts whatsoever.

Which raises an unsettling question: Was Bainbridge Brown’s death really an accident?

INTRODUCTION

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Company D, the narrative history podcast that explores the lives of the soldiers who served with Company D of the Third Maine Infantry Regiment. We celebrate the everyday soldiers and leave the pontificating about generals, politicians, and battle tactics to others.

Our goal is to uncover the stories most people have forgotten and to remind us that history happens to everyday people—not just to the rich and famous. We do this by focusing on one regiment, the Third Maine Infantry Regiment, and one company within it, Company D.

One regiment. One company. Countless stories.

The Third Maine Infantry fought in nearly every major battle of the American Civil War and was often in the thick of it as one of the upper-echelon fighting regiments, yet it is often overlooked.

My great-great-grandfather, Charles F. Snell, fought with Company D of the Third Maine and left behind a diary of his wartime experiences. Charles’s diary is the inspirational text behind the amazing stories you’ll find on this podcast.

I’m your host, George F. Snell III. Three’s a crowd, but a crowd can create a rather quirky history podcast.

In today’s episode, we’re exploring the life of perhaps the most eccentric and colorful man to serve with Company D: artist, teacher, and photographer Bainbridge Porter Brown of Bowdoinham, Maine.

Bainbridge was a teacher when the war broke out, a poetry aficionado. He volunteered to fight with the Third Maine and may have been among the least suited to military life, more concerned with books than military tactics.

After the war, he entered the controversial world of spirit photography, producing portraits that appeared to show deceased loved ones returning from the dead, a practice that became enormously popular as families grieved after the mass death of the American Civil War.

There’s also local oral history to suggest that Bainbridge may have been a homosexual man at a time when same-sex relationships were criminalized and had to remain largely hidden from public view.

By 1878, Bainbridge had built a new life in Boston, far from his family and the quiet shores of his hometown. But during a visit to Bowdoinham that spring, Bainbridge ended up dead and buried in the Brown Family Cemetery, leaving behind almost no explanation for how he died.

The best place to begin Bainbridge Brown’s story is Springfield, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1877, when his spirit photography business came crashing down.

CHAPTER ONE: “THEY WILL FIDDLE AND DANCE, AND THE DEVIL WILL CHUCKLE”

1877. Montague, Massachusetts. Nine months before Bainbridge’s untimely death.

Every August for the last three years, Spiritualists from around New England gathered on the piney shores of Lake Pleasant in Central Massachusetts for camp meetings. Spiritualists taught that the human spirit was a distinct entity and that the living could communicate with the dead.

The New England Spiritualist Camp Meeting Association built a rustic village of cottages, shops, and meeting halls and set up nearly 200 white tents for thousands of attendees, mostly ordinary folks from across New England. The camp combined a summer resort, a religious gathering, and a lecture circuit into one.

The biggest draw was the public lectures on topics such as communications with the dead, the nature of the afterlife, and the science of Spiritualism. There were séances, healing sessions, and trance speaking. Vendors gathered in tents to sell books, pamphlets, artwork, healing devices, and occult supplies.

Then there were spirit photographers like Bainbridge Brown, whom the organizers had personally invited to set up a gallery. Bainbridge was building a reputation as one of the region’s leading spiritual photographers. He hung up his “Brown Photography” sign and opened for business.

Spirit photographers like Bainbridge offered grieving people a chance to be reunited with their dead loved ones, at least on paper. Customers would pose for a portrait while concentrating on a deceased relative. When the photograph was developed, a faint, ghostly figure would appear beside them. To believers, it was proof that the dead still lingered.

It was a scam. The images were created through photographic manipulation—double exposures, composite negatives, or plate substitution. The grieving families who paid for them had no way of knowing that.

As Bainbridge was about to discover, concerns about fraudulent spirit photography were growing among both legitimate photographers and Spiritualists.

And he was about to be exposed.

CHAPTER TWO: BAINBRIDGE OF BOWDOINHAM

Bainbridge Porter Brown was born on the last day of January 1836. His home was a farm on Brown’s Point, a spit of land that jutted into the broad waters of Merrymeeting Bay in Bowdoinham, Maine.

He was the sixth of nine children born to John and Seraphina Brown. His father was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and may have married his cousin, Seraphina, after moving to Bowdoinham sometime in the 1830s.

When John Brown was 20, he was appointed as a musician with the brigade band of the Maine Militia. He would pass on that passion for music to his children.

Bainbridge grew up in a tight-knit family cluster on Brown’s Point, surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins with the surnames Brown, Jack, and Wiggin. His father was a mason and farmer and served on the Board of Selectmen for several terms.

Two of Bainbridge’s brothers died as children in the winter of 1833, probably from a fever or other contagious disease, which led his parents to adopt his older sister, who died at the age of 12 in 1841, when Bainbridge was five years old. The Brown family emphasized education and the arts. Bainbridge, his siblings, and cousins were part of a family musical group known as the “Band of Cousins.” A photograph of the group, taken in the late 1850s, shows eight members holding two guitars, a cello, and a violin.

In the photo, Bainbridge is seated at the far right at the edge of the group. He’s in his early twenties and holding one of the guitars. He looks relaxed and confident, his blue eyes staring directly into the camera lens. His light brown hair is longish and wavy, framing a high forehead, broad jawline, and symmetrical features. He has ruggedly handsome features, and because he’s seated, you wouldn’t know he was six feet tall. He bears a passing resemblance to the late actor Heath Ledger.

Later in life, after the war, Bainbridge’s facial features would become gaunt and drawn. He would lose weight and become tall and lanky, with long arms and legs. His hair would become curlier, and he’d grow a walrus mustache that drooped over his upper lip. His neck became nearly as wide as his lantern jaw.

In 1860, when Bainbridge was 24, he was a teacher in Bowdoinham. The town employed men to teach during the winter term for about $20 per month. He boarded with his parents and all his siblings, including his older brother, Loyalist, and his beloved sister, Mary. His brother, Loyalist, was a fisherman, and Bainbridge would join him on fishing excursions into Merrymeeting Bay and along the Kennebec River.

Then came the war.

CHAPTER THREE: “OTHERS ARE DOING ALL THE FIGHTING AND GETTING ALL THE CREDIT”

When the Civil War began in the spring of 1861, Bowdoinham was a town of about 2,300 people, supported by farming, fishing, and a surprisingly busy commercial district with stores, hotels, banks, a railroad station, and even its own photography studio.

No recruiting offices opened in Bowdoinham, but groups of men met at the Lancaster schoolhouse and the town hall to organize. Both efforts failed to materialize, and young men who wanted to volunteer ended up traveling to other towns to do so.

Bainbridge was among nineteen young men who served with the Third Maine Infantry Regiment. He and three others from Bowdoinham, Charles B. Elliot,  Nathaniel Gilpatrick, and Levi Appleby, all became members of Company D.

Bainbridge’s older brother, Loyalist, volunteered a month later and enlisted in Company A of the Nineteenth Maine Infantry. Unlike Bainbridge, Loyalist thrived in military life and eventually became the regiment’s drum major.

When Bainbridge joined Company D, he was recruited by Sergeant Moses O. Crafts. On a side note: Moses Crafts was the subject of Episode 13 of Company D.

Bainbridge fell ill and was admitted to the regimental hospital almost from the beginning of his military service. An Army surgeon diagnosed Bainbridge with a “chronic disease of the urinary organs” that predated his enlistment but was aggravated by military service.

Bainbridge’s diagnosis was frustratingly vague. It could have described any number of chronic bladder or kidney disorders, and the records never became more specific, but he was listed as sick and absent from the Company D rolls for July and August of 1861. The Third Maine fought at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, but Bainbridge was listed among the regiment’s sick and never saw the battlefield.

He was in and out of the hospital throughout the fall of 1861, and never left the Union headquarters at Camp Howard in Alexandria, Virginia. During this period, Bainbridge wrote several letters home to his sister, Mary, revealing that he did not seem comfortable as a soldier.

The letters reveal a man deeply rooted at home and intellectually curious. Bainbridge spends a lot of time focused on local gossip, recent weddings, relatives, food, books, and clothing, and very little time on the Confederates, politics, patriotism, or military strategy. He brought several volumes with him.

While many soldiers carried extra socks or tobacco in their haversacks, Bainbridge carried a blue cloth-bound edition of Sir Walter Scott’s romantic poem, “Lady of the Lake.” But the book was heavy, and he worried he might have to send it home. He pleaded with his sister Mary to send him any literary magazines or journals she could spare.

He joined the Third Maine’s Literary Society, called the Stratapedian Society (roughly translated from Greek as “Camp Society”), with many college-educated soldiers from Company G. They held debates, gave speeches, and ended meetings with food and singing.

But it’s also clear that his health was suffering. Bainbridge avoided discussing his urinary condition with his sister, but often complained about back pain, a persistent cough, a sore throat, and exhaustion. He mentioned being on the sick list, unable to drill, and often confined to his tent or quarters due to illness.

By the end of February of 1862, Bainbridge’s frustration at being sick was mounting. “I do not seem to like lying here doing nothing while others are doing all the fighting and getting all the credit,” he wrote to Mary. “I want to have a finger in the pie too.”

Several months later, Bainbridge would disappear. Company D reported him as a deserter.

CHAPTER FOUR: “THE ORDERS ARE VERY STRICT TO HAVE EVERY MAN FIT FOR DUTY”

During the winter of 1861–62, Bainbridge became close friends with Tallman L. McIntire, a 21-year-old private from Woolwich, Maine. When Bainbridge wasn’t in the hospital, the two shared a bed in a tent with eight other soldiers.

Bainbridge spoke fondly of McIntire in his letters to his sister, but didn’t like the fact that McIntire smoked tobacco. The smoke in the tent, Bainbridge wrote to his sister Mary, is “as much as I can bear sometimes,” given his chronic cough and sore throat.

McIntire and several other members of Company D were transferred to gunboat duty because they had worked as sailors in civilian life.

Bainbridge asked to be transferred with them but was denied. He complained to his sister that he had been rejected for the role of “Water Guard” and instead found himself hauling buckets of water from a nearby stream for the regimental cooks. “So I’m one of the Water Guard today,” he quipped.

Bainbridge worried about McIntire and the others, who had been gone for more than a week, and told his sister, “I have not the slightest knowledge of where they have gone,” but he hoped to receive a letter from McIntire soon.

Bainbridge returned to regular duty in March and April 1862, when the Third Maine broke winter camp and marched to Yorktown, Virginia, to participate in the siege of the Confederate forces holed up there. For nearly the entire month of April, the Third Maine was engaged in digging trenches and building wooden fortifications. It looked as if Bainbridge might finally see combat. Instead, his war would be fought almost entirely against illness.

His cousin, Robert E. Jack, writing to his mother, Bainbridge’s aunt, wrote, “I suppose Bainbridge will have a chance to smell the powder of the Rebels again pretty soon, for I suppose he is at Yorktown. A great fight is expected there.”

Whether because of the demands of the campaign or the progression of his chronic illness, Bainbridge relapsed. By May and June, he was again listed as sick and absent from the rolls, missing the Battle of Williamsburg on May 5, 1862, and the Battle of Fair Oaks on June 1, 1862. Fair Oaks was one of the Third Maine’s most deadly engagements.

The regiment lost more than one-third of its fighting force in heavy combat and earned high praise for holding its line. Sometime after Fair Oaks, Bainbridge disappeared from the company rolls. Company D later reported that Bainbridge had deserted from Harrison’s Landing on July 3, 1862.

Exactly what happened remains unclear. Bainbridge’s whereabouts are unaccounted for until October and November 1862, when a physician in Augusta, Maine, examined him and he received a Certificate of Disability for Discharge.

The discharge states that Bainbridge had “chronic disease of urinary organs, existing at the time of enlistment, but aggravated by military duty.”

Bainbridge was officially discharged on November 3, 1862, but his status as a deserter was never altered. Did Bainbridge desert? The surviving records don’t provide a clear answer.

It’s possible he simply left the Army and went home without permission. That would make him a deserter.

It’s also possible that, as thousands of wounded and sick soldiers passed through the Army’s hospitals during the Peninsula Campaign, he became separated from Company D and was later discharged through official medical channels.

No surviving military record explains how Bainbridge went from being listed as a deserter in July to receiving a disability discharge just four months later in Maine.

Like much of Bainbridge’s story, the historical record remains frustratingly out of focus.

Bainbridge returned to Bowdoinham and his duties as a teacher, but his family didn’t seem to welcome him home with open arms.

A month after Bainbridge left the military, his cousin, Robert E. Jack, wrote to a family member: “Mother writes me that school has commenced and that Bainbridge is teaching. Well, I suppose he can teach the young ideas of how to shoot as he pretends to have done something of that kind himself.”

Ouch.

Whether meant as playful teasing or a pointed jab at Bainbridge’s military service, Jack could not have known how prophetic his words would become.

CHAPTER FIVE: FATAL ACCIDENT

On April 14, 1863, Bainbridge was in an accident that forced him to leave his tight-knit family on Brown’s Point and leave Bowdoinham for good.

Afterward, he moved to Bath, Maine, then left Maine for New England’s largest city, Boston, Massachusetts, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Bainbridge went hunting with his aunt’s husband’s brother, Albion Jack, a 38-year-old fisherman with a wife and two children. Albion lived in a house next to his father’s farm, where Bainbridge had returned to live after being discharged. The two men headed out to go “gunning” along Brown’s Point with shotguns, probably seeking ducks or snipe that gathered in the marshes.

At that time of year, Maine was shaking off the winter cold, the ground soft and spongy, with buds beginning to pop on the bare branches of the hardwoods. Yet the landscape would still have been barren, and a mist may have lingered over Merrymeeting Bay. Bainbridge had been discharged several months earlier, home after only eight months in the military, while most of the men he volunteered with were still fighting in Virginia.

During the outing, as they tramped along the river’s edge, Bainbridge began demonstrating the U.S. Army’s manual of arms to Albion, showing him how a soldier loaded, shouldered, and presented the rifle.

And then…

The gun went off, and the shotgun load blasted into Albion’s chest. The gunshot wound killed him.

The tragedy sent shockwaves through the tight-knit Brown, Jack, and Wiggin families in Bowdoinham and beyond.

Bainbridge’s cousin, Robert E. Jack, wrote to his mother shortly after the accident. “I received Father’s letter on Wednesday giving the particulars of that sad occurrence concerning Albion’s death,” he wrote. “I suppose it has cast a sort of gloom over the neighborhood, and his wife and children being left make the saddest feature. I should imagine that Bainbridge would feel rather badly, but I suppose he can adapt the power of his conscience to the circumstances of the case and view with a self-blameless eye.”

In a letter to his sister, Mary, two weeks after the accident, Bainbridge’s older brother, Loyalist, who was serving as drum major with the Nineteenth Maine Infantry Regiment, asked his sister to have Bainbridge mail him a mouthpiece for either a bugle or a trumpet, and then, almost as an aside, wrote, “I have yet heard no particulars of Albion’s death. I feel badly about it.”

We don’t know how Bainbridge felt about what happened. What we do know is that he soon left Bowdoinham and would never live in his hometown again.

CHAPTER SIX: PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

Bainbridge moved to Bath not long after the shooting accident and reinvented himself. He appears to have gone to work as a photography apprentice with William B. Stearns. Stearns was a local government official and entrepreneur who owned a photography studio in Bath.

After a long illness, Stearns reopened and expanded his “Photograph Rooms” in the Church Block on Front Street in Bath on May 30, 1864. He broadened his offerings to include visiting cards, which were portraits mounted on cardstock and became extremely popular after the war. As part of his reopening, Stearns may have hired Bainbridge.

Stearns sold his photography business to Bainbridge on December 4, 1865. Stearns took out an ad in the local newspaper to announce the sale. “I take pleasure in recommending Mr. B as an accomplished artist and fully deserving of the confidence of the public,” he told his customers.

Bainbridge referred to himself as a photographic artist and renamed the studio B.P. Brown’s Photography. Bainbridge advertised his innovative approach to photography throughout the mid-to-late 1860s. His advertisements proclaimed that “Art Excels Nature” as he added landscape photography to his regular portrait studio work.

“I am happy to inform my patrons that I am again able to wait upon any favor with a call,” Bainbridge promised.

He became an accomplished photographer of land and cityscapes and captured the images of hundreds of customers in his studio: men, women, children, families, and couples.

During this period, Bainbridge discovered his love of fraternal organizations and joined Lincoln Lodge #10 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He was elected chapter conductor of the Odd Fellows in 1867, an important ceremonial position.

In 1869, he and his sister, Mary, attended the Grand Bal Masque held by the Gleam Boat Club at Columbia Hall in Bath. The masked ball was a huge social event in the city, with hundreds of guests. Mary wore a plain white domino costume, and Bainbridge was decked out in a costume called “fancy.” The ball featured music and dancing until the wee hours.

But he didn’t stay long in Bath. By 1870, Bainbridge craved brighter lights and packed up and moved to Boston, which was in the midst of a cultural boom that solidified the city’s nickname as “The Athens of America.”

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE BOSTON YEARS

When Bainbridge Brown moved to Boston, he entered one of the fastest-growing and most ambitious cities in America. Between 1860 and 1880, Boston’s population more than doubled, growing from 178,000 to more than 363,000 residents. The growth was fueled in part by the enormous Back Bay landfill project, one of the largest engineering operations in North America. The city was literally creating new land, filling the tidal flats of the Charles River with millions of tons of gravel to create more than 700 acres of new neighborhoods.

When Bainbridge opened his photography studio at 687 ½ Washington Street in 1871, the Back Bay project was at its peak, with miles of railroad tracks carrying gravel trains through the city as thousands of laborers built an entire new district. Bainbridge’s studio was located in Boston’s principal commercial artery and one of America’s busiest shopping streets.

In nineteenth-century city directories, the “½” usually indicated an upstairs entrance rather than a separate street address, which was common for photographers, who preferred upper-floor studios for the additional sunlight. Bainbridge lived in quarters behind his studio at the same address. At the time, Washington Street was a hub for photography studios, with dozens in the vicinity.

The city recently hosted the Great Peace Jubilee of 1869 to celebrate peace after the Civil War. The event brought more than 10,900 singers and 500 orchestral musicians to perform at a temporary coliseum built to seat more than 50,000 people. Bainbridge’s beloved sister, Mary, who had recently married a grocer from nearby Quincy, Massachusetts, reportedly performed at the Jubilee.

An even larger second concert, the World Peace Jubilee, took place in 1872 and lasted 18 days. It featured a coliseum that seated more than 100,000. Tens of thousands of visitors flocked to Boston to enjoy the music, filling the city’s hotels, restaurants, shops, and photographic galleries. Bainbridge was an active participant in his new home. He joined the new veterans organization, the Grand Army of the Potomac, and served as an officer in the fraternal organization, the Knights of Pythias.

But a few months after the World Peace Jubilee, on November 9, 1872, a fire broke out in downtown Boston, and the Great Boston Fire destroyed more than 65 acres and 776 buildings. Fortunately, Bainbridge’s studio was spared. The city quickly rebuilt.

Boston was thriving. In a city where fortunes were being made, neighborhoods were rising from the waters, and almost anything seemed possible, Bainbridge soon embraced one of the era’s most controversial photographic pursuits: spirit photography.

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHER

The massive death toll from the American Civil War—more than 750,000 soldiers and an additional tens of thousands of civilians—sparked an enormous explosion in Spiritualism, a religious movement that had already been gaining followers before the war. Spiritualism offered something that traditional religion couldn’t: the promise of direct, personal communication with the dead.

In stepped Mediums, public séances, Spiritualist newspapers and magazines, and spirit photography. Spirit photography went one step further. It claimed to give you a ghostly image of your loved one—proof that the dead still existed.

Photographers like Bainbridge would either work alone or with a medium. They would pose grieving parents, widows, orphans, and former soldiers to capture their images, usually with a preamble explaining that the model should focus on their loved ones and that photographs could capture what the human eye could not see: spiritual vibrations and higher frequencies of light.

It was an elaborate hoax. Spirit photographers commonly used double exposures, pre-prepared glass negatives, or other tricks to create translucent figures that slowly appeared as the plate developed. Photographers usually had several options on hand, children, women, soldiers, etc., and selected the plate that matched the subject’s loved one. Some photographers reportedly worked with hidden assistants or costumed models.

The result was a ghostly image, generally out of focus, but convincing enough for grieving customers who wanted to believe.  Bainbridge’s studio was in the same neighborhood as William H. Mumler, arguably the most famous spirit photographer in the United States. The Boston-born Mumler was arrested and tried for fraud in New York in 1869 but was acquitted. In 1872, he took his most famous photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of her husband, President Abraham Lincoln, standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder.

The photograph caused a sensation. The photograph became one of the most famous and controversial images of the nineteenth century.

Mumler returned from New York to Boston while Bainbridge was working there. Their studios were less than two miles apart. No evidence suggests the two men ever met, but as photographers working in the same city during the height of the spirit photography craze, Bainbridge almost certainly knew of Mumler’s work.

Bainbridge was still unmarried. If the oral history that Bainbridge was attracted to men is accurate, Boston would have offered a degree of anonymity unavailable in Maine. Historians have documented networks of hotels, boarding houses, bathhouses, and other meeting places where gay men quietly socialized despite the risks of public exposure.

In 1877, Bainbridge’s reputation as a spirit photographer was growing, and the organizers of the annual Lake Pleasant Spiritualist Camp invited him to set up a spirit photography studio there. He must have thought his star power was rising.

He had no idea that he was walking into an ambush.

CHAPTER NINE: “THE BOGUS SPIRITUAL PHOTOGRAPHER”

By the summer of 1877, Bainbridge’s success as a spirit photographer was attracting attention well beyond Boston. Admirers saw him as a gifted medium with a camera. Others suspected he was a fraud. Bainbridge caught the attention of Hiram C. Moore, a well-known photographer with a successful studio in Springfield, Massachusetts. Moore had developed a reputation for exposing fraudulent spirit photographers, and several Spiritualists approached him, urging him to investigate Bainbridge.

So Moore traveled to the Lake Pleasant Spiritual Camp to investigate. Moore infiltrated Bainbridge’s studio at the camp by posing as a customer anxious for a spirit photograph. He spent the day at the studio, befriending Bainbridge and having him take several photographs of him while scrutinizing him as he worked. The next day, Moore returned with James Wallace Black, one of the most famous photographers in the United States.

Black, who had a studio in Boston, is credited with taking the first aerial photograph in 1860, when he hovered over Boston in a hot-air balloon. Black had spent years investigating spirit photography. In 1860, he personally examined William H. Mumler’s methods, inspected his camera, glass plates, and plate holders, and, according to Mumler himself, left unable to explain how Mumler took a photograph of Black with a ghostly image of his dead father.

Together, Moore and Black confronted Bainbridge and accused him of fraud and trickery. During the meeting, Moore said Bainbridge lost his temper, and they fought. The confrontation led Moore and Black to threaten to have Bainbridge and the managers of Lake Pleasant prosecuted as cheats. Moore and Black even seized Bainbridge’s camera, which Bainbridge had claimed was “charmed.” The confrontation ended when Bainbridge abandoned his camp studio and returned to Boston.

A few days later, on July 29, 1877, the Springfield Republican ran an exposé on Bainbridge’s fraud. The article included an exclusive interview with Moore, who revealed Bainbridge’s methods for manipulating his photographs and openly accused him of cheating and fraud. The exposure had immediate and lasting consequences. The Lake Pleasant Camp Meeting Association condemned Bainbridge and banned him from the camp.

The story spread rapidly across photography and spiritualist communities in the United States and Canada, and the story was reported in other journals and newspapers. Moore’s threats to ruin Bainbridge seemed to be working, and a war of words erupted between them, with each writing stinging follow-up letters to the Springfield Republican.

“I pronounce the story,” Bainbridge wrote defiantly, “to be absolutely false.”

Bainbridge accused Moore of pretending to be his friend while being a spy. He also claimed the negative publicity had actually helped his business, but an editor’s note belittled Bainbridge’s claim and asked why he had been removed from Lake Pleasant if he wasn’t a fraud.

Moore responded even more forcefully by calling Bainbridge a “bogus spiritual photographer” who operated a “swindling operation.” He claimed Black and other Boston photographers had been suspicious of Bainbridge for some time. “Calling people names, and denying everything, does not alter the facts of the case in the least,” Moore said.

It’s difficult to know how much the negative exposure harmed Bainbridge’s photography studio, but it dealt a significant blow to his reputation among Spiritualists and photographers in Boston and beyond. As Bainbridge fought to defend his reputation publicly, problems were mounting elsewhere.

His fraternal organization, where he was an elected officer, experienced a financial crisis that nearly doomed it. Webster Lodge No. 14 of the Knights of Pythias fractured, and more than half of its members resigned. Within months, Bainbridge’s professional and personal life unraveled, and under these pressures he headed home to Bowdoinham in the spring of 1878 to take shelter with his family.

It was a visit with fatal consequences.

CHAPTER TEN: THE LAST HUNT

When Bainbridge returned to his family homestead on Brown’s Point in Bowdoinham, he came home under a cloud of scandal—exposed nationwide as a confidence man who defrauded grieving families. His social support network within his fraternal organization was also in tatters.

It had been 15 years since he accidentally killed his aunt’s husband’s brother, Albion Jack, and left Bowdoinham amid the disapproval and judgments of his family. So, too, did the lingering questions about his U.S. Army discharge and his alleged homosexuality. The new controversy and old ones followed him back to the family farmhouse.

Things had changed in Bowdoinham. His mother, Seraphina, perhaps his biggest ally in the family, had died in the winter of 1873. She was buried in the family cemetery, and soon Bainbridge would join her there.

His father, John Brown, was now 78 and lived at the family farm with Bainbridge’s younger sister, Lettice, 35, who acted as her father’s caretaker and kept the house running in the wake of her mother’s death.

Bainbridge’s older brother, Loyalist, lived next door with his wife and four daughters. Loyalist was on the Board of Selectmen and worked as a fisherman.

Also, nearby were Bainbridge’s aunt, Nancy Jack, and her husband, Captain Robert Jack, the brother of the late Albion Jack, who Bainbridge accidentally killed in 1863.

Bainbridge died on May 11, 1878, at the age of 42. Town lore says it was a hunting accident, but no documentation backs it up. There is no death certificate. No records. No obituary.

Just a headstone.

What happened to Bainbridge Brown?

We see three possible scenarios. The first is that Bainbridge was shot and killed in a hunting accident; the second is that Bainbridge committed suicide; and the third is that Bainbridge was murdered.

If any of these scenarios occurred, it still leaves another unanswered question: why has so little documentary evidence of Bainbridge’s death survived?

The coincidence would be striking if Bainbridge was killed in a second fatal hunting accident. If he did die in a hunting accident, why was his death not investigated or reported by the local newspapers?

Did Bainbridge kill himself? By 1878, Bainbridge had endured public humiliation, professional setbacks, and the apparent loss of one of his most important sources of income. He was desperate and alone. Could those events have led to suicide? Would he have traveled all the way to Bowdoinham to do such a thing? The historical record is silent.

Did his family decide that Bainbridge’s scandals had become too much? Did they take matters into their own hands? Did they kill him? There is no evidence to support that claim.

After 148 years, the surviving evidence simply doesn’t allow us to answer the question. Like his illness. Like his military service. Like his family relationships. Like his spirit photographs. Bainbridge Brown’s life, and his death, never come fully into focus.

Perhaps that is fitting for a man who made his living photographing ghosts.

Thank you for joining us for another episode of Company D. We’d like to thank the Bowdoinham Historical Society, the Maine Historical Society, and the University of Maine Special Archives for all of their generous help and time in researching this episode.

This episode of Company D is sponsored in part by Libro.fm. Company D has joined with Libro.fm to promote reading history. Be sure to check out our Show Notes for our history book recommendations connected to this episode. Through our partnership with Libro.fm, our listeners can enjoy three audiobooks for the price of one when you start a membership at Libro.fm and use the code COMPANYD. See the Show Notes for this episode for more details.

Company D is supported by our listeners. We want to take a moment to thank our Patrons, whose support has helped make this season possible. A special acknowledgment goes out to: Pritesh Ghandi, Trapper Markelz, Jeff Parent, Alex Mueller, Michael Scelfo, Erik Snell, Andy Polansky, Mike McGrail, Scott O’Donnell, Lisa Furnald, Jay Hanley, Art Trapotsis, and Jeff Govoni.

A special shout-out to Jay Brewer, our editor and our own ghost in the machine!

We have collected many of Bainbridge Brown’s amazing photographs, including one of his rare spirit photographs, on our website companydpodcast.com. Don’t miss out on that.

Join us again soon for another episode of Company D.

I’m your host, George F. Snell III. See you next time. And remember, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters.

Historical Note: The Death of Bainbridge P. Brown

The circumstances surrounding Bainbridge Brown’s death on May 11, 1878, remain unknown. According to oral history preserved in Bowdoinham, Maine, questions have persisted about whether his death was accidental or involved foul play, including possible involvement by family members. This account was shared with Company D by the Bowdoinham Historical Society.

No surviving documentary evidence establishes that Brown was murdered or implicates any member of his family. The scenarios explored in this episode are speculative and should not be interpreted as historical conclusions.