On the morning of May 26, 1867, after Mrs. C. M. Cazentre
had cleared away the debris from the breakfast shift at her little restaurant
in the mining town of Gold Hill, Nevada, she went to the back room and prepared
to do some sewing.
She unwrapped the gorgeous green silk dress pattern her
husband had bought her a few weeks before from a fellow French expatriate known
as John Millain. It was carefully done up in clean paper now, but when Millain
first brought it into the restaurant to show them, it was clumsily bundled in
dirty, ragged old newsprint. She had asked
Millain, an odd job man who often worked at the laundry down the street, how he
came by the pattern and he had snapped at her.
“None of your business,” he’d said. But then he warmed up
and told her, in animated French, the sad story of his friend, who had died in
a mining accident leaving his widow penniless with four children to feed. Millain
wanted to help the woman, he said, and had offered to try and sell her
expensive dress pattern to get money so she could pay her butcher bill.
The asking price was $60. It was worth that, Mrs. Cazentre had
thought, eyeing the unusual pale green silk flocked with round velvet flowers, but
theirs was not the sort of business that afforded her the luxury of rich silks.
So she sent him up the street to an elegant brothel where, she told him, there were
women who could afford to help the poor widow. But he returned the next day,
not having found any takers.
Now the asking price was $40 and John Cazentre, seeing how
his wife longed for the lovely pattern, agreed. She had taken the silk and put
it away so she could take her time to think over the cutting and sewing of the
precious fabric. Then came that May morning when, just as she had the pattern
laid out, scissors in hand, two latecomers arrived at the restaurant for a morning
meal.
While she bustled about preparing their order, they fell
into conversation about the infamous murder that had been committed the
previous January in Virginia City. A woman named Julia Bulette, who worked as
an independent prostitute, had been bludgeoned and strangled in her own bed, a
crime that shocked even the often rowdy and rough inhabitants of the town.
The killer had gotten clean away. But there was a Frenchman
now in the city jail for another crime, they said, and it was believed around
town that he was the murderer. Mrs. Cazentre defended her countryman at first. But
they knew him for a thief, the men said. And whoever killed Julia Bulette had
robbed her, too, stolen her jewelry and fancy clothes and furs. And even, they
said, a couple of expensive dress patterns. Mrs. Cazentre grew silent and
argued no further in favor of Millain.
The men finished their breakfast and went on about their
way, but the more she thought about the conversation, the more uneasy she
became. Finally she folded up the green silk pattern and put it away. Then she
made her way to Virginia City and told her story to Judge Jesse Pitzer and the
detective who had been investigating the murder case. Although they had John
Millain in custody for assault upon another young woman, and they believed him
to be connected to Julia Bulette’s murder, they hadn’t a shred of evidence to
work with until they followed Mrs. Cazentre back to Gold Hill and took
possession of the lovely fabric.
At Rosener and Co., the upscale mercantile where Pitzer
believed the pattern had originally been sold, the proprietors both positively
identified the unusual silk. There wasn’t another like it in Virginia City, they
said. In fact, said Sam Rosener, he had been in San Francisco on a buying trip
and purchased the pattern straight off the ship it came in on. It was the only
one of its kind, at least in the distinctive pale green color, in the country
as far as he knew. And he had sold it to Julia just a few weeks before she
died.
From Rosener’s, Judge Pitzer and the detective escorted Mrs.
Cazentre to the city jail, where they asked her to take a look at the prisoner.
Both Mrs. Cazentre and John Millain recognized each other immediately. He
turned pale at the sight of her and she firmly identified him as the man who
had sold her the pattern. Her prized green silk was confiscated as evidence and
would become the focal point of the subsequent murder trial, handled and
carefully examined by a parade of witnesses coming forward to identify it as
having belonged to the murdered woman and having been sold by the accused prisoner.
Other evidence surfaced within a matter of days to connect
Millain to the crime, pieces of the dead woman’s jewelry, her furs and dresses
all found in a trunk he had stored at a friend’s. But it was the silk, which he
had sold and thereby profited from the crime, that elevated the charge to
murder in the first degree.
All the evidence presented against John Millain at the trail
was circumstantial and consisted only of witnesses (beginning with Mrs.
Cazentre) who connected him, over and over again, with items stolen from
Bulette’s cottage that night. Millain protested his innocence, saying he had
been given the things by some men he knew and had no part in the killing. But
it was widely believed that he was the murderer, that he might even have killed
before in San Francisco where the similar murders of two women who worked as
prostitutes remained unsolved, and certainly that he had intended to kill
Martha Camp, whom he had attacked in her cottage late one night, leading to his
initial arrest.
Despite his attorney’s plea for clemency, Millain was
convicted and sentenced to hang. His appeal was denied and the sentence was
carried out, nearly a year to the day after Mrs. Cazentre identified him, in a
gruesome public spectacle attended by Mark Twain, who began his writing career
as a reporter in Virginia City.
Soon after Millain was officially charged with the murder, the
Bulette estate paid out a reward of $200 ‘for the apprehension of’ Julia’s
killer. Who, precisely, received the money was not specified in the record. One
can only hope that it was Mrs. Cazentre, who was brave enough and honest enough
to hand over her beautiful dress pattern and forsake her fashion sense in the
name of justice (she was never compensated for the loss).
As for the pattern itself, after it had been examined many
times by all concerned, the court appeal denied and the murderer hung, it was returned
to Julia Bullette’s estate and sold at auction, where it fetched a price of
$44.00 (about $700 in current value). Now a rather uniquely famous piece of
dress goods, it was one of the first things to go in the sale.
There is no record of who bought the pattern in the final
auction—how they made it up or what it looked like when it was finished, or
whether, every time its wearer put it on, she thought about Julia Bulette, who
had loved beautiful clothing and spent a good portion of her earnings on dress
goods, jewelry and furs.
If Julia had lived just another year, she would have found
herself in a world where fashion was much more accessible, and much less
expensive than it had ever been before. Ebenezer Butterick’s new tissue paper sewing
patterns, graded to fit your personal size and including instructions, had
become an instant sensation in 1863. Because they put stylish garments in reach
of the everyday seamstress by doing away with cutting to fit and grading one
size patterns, and provided a guide for women who lacked the experience to
create the latest fashions on their own, Butterick’s patterns ignited a fashion
revolution of sorts. The company began with designs for men’s and boy’s
garments but it wasn’t until the middle of 1867, some six months after Julia’s
death, that it launched a full line of patterns for stylish women’s clothing.
When Julia died in 1867, the term ‘dress pattern’ usually
referred to a pre-cut length of fabric especially designed to be made up into a
dress. It might have some template
printed on the fabric, but might also be a simple, pre-cut length of dress
goods. It might have special features for the sleeves or bodice woven into the
design, or just be a print or weave especially well suited to the hoop skirt
styles of the times, such as large scale silk plaids. Sometimes the patterns
were sold with preselected trims and notions.
But by the time the now famous green silk dress pattern was
sold at auction in 1868, Butterick’s patterns were a national sensation, changing
forever what home sewers meant when they asked for a ‘dress pattern’.
Butterick’s extensive catalog of designs was available by mail order from the
company headquarters in New York City, and soon the ‘celebrated patterns’ were
available in a shop on Virginia City’s C Street.
“They (the Buttericks) should be ranked with the benefactors of mankind, this firm that has worked out the problem of clothes.” --Home Journal, July, 1871
It’s even possible that when the much traveled piece of silk
was made into a dress at last, it might have been done using a newfangled
Butterick pattern.
Julia, one hopes, would have been pleased.
