Who Were John and Lavinia Fisher?
In the early 19th century, wagon traders from upstate South Carolina and neighboring North Carolina continuously came to Charleston in covered wagons, carrying animal skins, cotton, fruits, vegetables and other agricultural goods, Mark R. Jones writes in Wicked Charleston: The Dark Side of the Holy City. Around early 1819, wagon traders were repeatedly attacked by a criminal gang that was using the local inns, including the Six Mile House, as their headquarters.
“It was one of a series of wayside taverns, basically rest stops, commonly used by people who were coming and going in and out of Charleston,” Butler says. “Basically, at every mile marker, there was a house or some place where you could stop and get a meal, stable your horses and maybe spend the night.”
Aside from the business they ran, little is known about John and Lavinia’s early lives. However, Jones wrote that Fisher was a known criminal, while Lavinia was “young and graceful in her walk and manner.” Both were believed to be in their late 20s when the saga began.
What Really Happened?
On February 18, 1819, a mob of local citizens descended on the Six Mile House to investigate the recent attacks on local travelers, some of whom had mysteriously disappeared, according to Wicked Charleston. That day, the Fishers and other members of the so-called Six Mile Gang reportedly became involved in multiple physical altercations on the property. Several people at the scene were arrested, and the Fishers were charged with common assault and assault with intent to murder. The inn was later burned to the ground.
The charge against the Fishers was later changed to highway robbery. After the couple’s 1819 conviction, they served eight months in the city jail. A judge rejected their motion for a new trial in January 1820 and sentenced them to death by hanging—a possible sentence, in some states, for highway robbery at the time. While the Fishers were incarcerated, the remains of a white male and a Black woman were discovered in a grave near the Six Mile House, though nobody was ever charged in their deaths.
In February 1820, the Fishers were executed before a large crowd. Lavinia died instantly while John struggled for several minutes, writes former criminal investigator Bruce Orr in Six Miles to Charleston: The True Story of John and Lavinia Fisher. The Fishers proclaimed their innocence until their death. It's been reported that Lavinia's last words were "If any of you have a message for the devil, tell me now, for I will be seeing him shortly," but this has not been verified.
Only one other person arrested at the Six Mile House in February 1819, a man named William Heyward, was convicted and sentenced to death in a separate trial. “Since [the Fishers] faced trial together as a couple and separate from any of the other members of the gang, this is why the erroneous belief arose that they acted alone,” Orr writes.
‘Fictional Embroidery’ Fueled a False Narrative
Butler says the narrative was “spun into a much richer story with all kinds of fictional embroidery.” Such accounts likely began circulating in 1830, when a man named Peter Neilson, who was originally from Scotland, claimed in a book to have witnessed the execution. Neilson alleged that the Six Mile Gang “had for years carried on a complete trade of murdering and robbing” and that a “great number of skeletons were found” where the inn once stood.
Contrary to popular belief, Jones wrote, “The number of bodies discovered was a grand total of two, not fifteen.” Jones also debunks the urban legend that Lavinia was hanged in her wedding dress, noting that the Fishers were executed in loose white robes over their clothes—the “traditional garb for the condemned.”
The myth that the Fishers used a trap door to murder their victims. By some accounts, it led into a pit lined with spikes, a narrative further fueled by a fictionalized essay published in 1897. It was printed in multiple South Carolina newspapers and described the Fishers as a “murderous young couple.” It also stated that local townspeople discovered a large number of human bones in the Six Mile House cellar after the inn was destroyed.
“People in succeeding generations thought it was somebody reporting the news in a factual fashion—and that’s not what it was at all,” Butler says.
Orr argues in his 2010 book that the smell of multiple decaying bodies in the Six Mile House basement would have been difficult to hide. “That never happened, and the reason that it never happened is because the story of a cellar full of corpses, just like the oleander poisoned tea, is fabrication and fiction,” Orr wrote. In fact, he concludes that the Fishers may have been wrongly convicted in a conspiracy led by corrupt politicians who wanted to seize the Six Mile House property.
More than two centuries later, old stories of Lavinia’s ghost haunting the streets of Charleston persist, as does the unverified story of Lavinia as America’s first female serial killer.
“There’s absolutely no evidence that [the Fishers] killed anybody ever,” Butler concludes.
