fleeing holdup men, another policeman at 4 o’clock
at Tenth and Holmes streets, arrests Ed Wilson, our
hero of “Real 1.”
REAL IV.
At police headquarters today Wilson is identified
by Mathis as one of the pair who held him up.
Wilson agrees with him and tells his partner’s name.
Mathis then goes to the hospital, but fails to
identify the wounded man, who gives the name of
Harry Walters.
From this Wilson gathers that the wounded man is
not his pal.
But who, then, is he?
“You say this Hoover cop picked up something when
he shot the fellow?” queries Wilson.
“What was it?”
“A black mask, eh? Well, ain’t that the limit?”
“Why, that must be the fellow we held up to begin
with and turned loose because he was in the
business.
“And here he goes and gets shot because a cop
thinks he looks like me. That’s luck for you!”
* * * * *
STREET CAR BANDIT
_Los Angeles Times_
Two pairs of arms entwined the neck of Harry
Blair, wounded and confessed streetcar bandit, as
he lay chained to a cot in the Emergency Hospital
yesterday morning. While his young wife embraced
him, sobbing, their year-old baby laughed and
cooed. He crawled across the pillow on which
Blair’s head rested, and, snuggling close to his
father, threw his chubby arms around Blair’s neck.
Hospital folk and the police are used to pathetic
scenes in the hospital, but that sight seemed too
much for them, and silently they stole from the
ward and closed the door, leaving the wife to her
grief, the husband to whatever thoughts he had, and
the innocent babe to its joy.
It was a decidedly hard-luck story that the Blairs
related to the detectives and nurses. The first
year of their married life happiness and prosperity
smiled on them, they said. But when the stork
visited the Blair household in Dallas it brought
not only a bright-eyed baby but also a nemesis.
Their savings went for doctor’s bills and clothing
for the little one. Then Blair had difficulty, he
says, in finding steady employment at his trade,
painting. When they were reduced almost to poverty
they decided to come to Los Angeles. They have been
here six weeks. In that time, Blair says, he was
unable to earn enough to provide properly for his
sick wife and impoverished baby.
The last dollar the couple had went a few days
ago for rent. Weary of tramping the streets in
quest of work, weak from lack of nourishment, and
worried because he couldn’t buy food, clothing
and medicine, Blair says he conceived the idea of
turning highwayman.
“Even then my nemesis followed me,” he said,
choking. “I got a few dollars from the conductor
and was hurrying home to give it to my wife for
food and things when I was stopped by a police
officer. I escaped from him and was climbing a
fence when the bullet caught me in the leg.”
Blair will be confined in the criminal ward at the
County Hospital until he is physically able to be
arraigned. He will be charged with highway robbery,
the police say.
* * * * *
FREE-FOR-ALL FIGHT
_New York World_
With whistle screeching and hundreds of passengers
yelling for help out of the windows, a northbound
Third avenue elevated train was held in panic late
last night by a crowd of roughs, who terrorized the
passengers and assaulted a conductor.
More than a dozen women, returning from the
theatre, fainted, and Mrs. Sadie Arthur, of No.
991 East One Hundred and Seventy-eighth street,
was thrown into violent hysterics and taken to the
Lebanon Hospital.
The riot started at One Hundred and Thirty-eighth
street and continued all the way to One Hundred
and Sixty-sixth street. There policemen shoved
through a great crowd, which had been attracted
by the whistling, and arrested Adolph J. Weiss,
eighteen years old, of No. 444 East One Hundred
and Sixty-fifth street. His companions in the
excitement managed to escape.
Weiss, who is somewhat of a fighter, was the
ringleader of the disturbers. They began their
horseplay by throwing hats about the car, smashing
hats and jostling the passengers. Dresses were
torn and women insulted; yet no one took a hand to
suppress the outrage.
“Shame on you men,” cried some of the women.
“Haven’t any of you enough spirit to protect us?”
Just as one woman received a severe blow in the
face, Conductor Thomas J. Boyce, of No. 108 East
One Hundred and Twenty-first street, who is known
on the road as “Scrappy Tom,” jumped into the
fracas and hit straight from the shoulder.
“Beat him up,” yelled the gang, and they all jumped
on “Scrappy Tom.”
“Come on, all of you,” he roared, his fighting
Irish blood aroused. One, two, three of the
brawlers hit the dusty mat, and finally Boyce
reached Adolph and landed hard on his jaw.
The fight ranged up and down the car, with Boyce
taking care of the entire gang. Three or four
women who had fainted and fallen to the floor were
trampled upon.
Windows were raised throughout the train. Yells
of “Murder!” “Police!” alarmed the Bronx. The
motorman started his whistle going, and this tipped
Policemen Wilson and Dempsey, of the Morrisania
station, who lay in wait at One Hundred and
Sixty-sixth street.
The crowd that was bunched there prevented their
making more arrests and furnished a means of escape
to Weiss’s “pals.”
Pieces of hats, feathers, ribbons and lingerie were
scattered from end to end of the car. A number
of the women had not revived, and Mrs. Arthur
appeared to be in a critical condition. A hurry
call was sent to Lebanon Hospital, and Dr. Singer,
hastily treating the others, hurried Mrs. Arthur
to the institution. He said she was in a dangerous
hysterical condition.
The line was tied up for half an hour by the riot.
Weiss looked as though he had stayed in the ring
twenty rounds with Bill Papke. His face was
unrecognizable.
“I never knew that any of these conductors could
fight,” he sputtered through swollen lips, as he
was led to a cell.
“Over in the old country,” said “Scrappy Tom,” as
he watched the ex-champion led to a cell in the
Morrisania station, “I used to throw a couple of
lads like you over my head before breakfast just
for an appetizer.”
* * * * *
MURDER OF BUSINESS MAN
_New York Tribune_
Walter H. Hammond, a well known business man of
Jersey City and a brother of Colonel Robert A.
Hammond, was shot and instantly killed yesterday
afternoon in the Pennsylvania Railroad Company’s
ferry house at Jersey City. Peter Grew, a man he
had befriended, was arrested as the slayer of
Hammond.
Mr. Hammond was about to have his luncheon in the
restaurant in the railway station, on the second
floor. He had ascended the stairs and turned toward
the restaurant, when he was confronted by Grew, to
whom he made a cheery remark. Without a word in
reply, the police say, Grew drew a revolver, which
he carried in his coat pocket, and fired at him.
The bullet entered the left temple and ploughed
into the brain. Two more bullets were fired into
his body after he fell.
Calmly replacing the weapon in his pocket, Grew
started to walk down the stairs to the street,
but Patrolman Amann, who was on duty at the ferry
house, dashed up the stairs and, meeting him half
way, arrested him. Grew remarked, Amann says, as
he handed the revolver to the officer: “The thing
is all over, and I might as well give up.” Later
he persistently refused to admit that he did the
shooting.
The police say their investigation has revealed
that Grew, who has been regarded as eccentric
and impulsive, had frequently threatened to kill
Hammond. They say that Grew had recently been
drinking excessively.
The victim of the shooting was the head of the
Hammond and Wilson Stock Company, dealers in
butterine and eggs at Jerome and 4th streets,
Jersey City. He was a bachelor and forty-two years
old. He was a director of the Second National Bank
and of the Commercial Trust Company, and an active
member of the Union League Club, of Jersey City. He
lived at No. 314 Harrison avenue, Jersey City.
Grew had been in the same business. Some time ago,
the police say, he was arrested in Brooklyn for
making and selling oleomargarine without stamping
it properly. Hammond gave him a new start in
business. His business dwindled to nothing, and
he accused Hammond of persecuting him. Grew owned
a flathouse at No. 244 3d street, Jersey City, in
which he, his wife and six children lived. This
house he conveyed to his wife during his business
troubles. It is said that Grew complained that his
wife was under the influence of Mr. Hammond and
refused to permit him to have any of the revenue
derived from the rental of the building. Ten days
ago he was arrested for beating her. Judge Harmon,
before whom he was arraigned, ordered him committed
to jail for ten days, but relented when he promised
to refrain from abusing or beating his wife.
Otto S. Wilkins, of No. 21 Park street, who has a
butter business at No. 52 Hudson street, Jersey
City, met Grew less than an hour before the
shooting. He told Captain Larkins, at the Jersey
City Police Headquarters, of a conversation he had
had with Grew. He said that Grew asked him to give
him a job.
“I then told him,” Mr. Wilkins said, “that I
understood that he was in such a financial
condition that he could live without working. He
said, ‘No,’ that his property brought him in $120
a month, and that after he had paid the interest
on a small loan which stood against it, with taxes
and repairs, it left very little to live on; that
his wife would not let him have any of that, and
that Mr. Hammond was responsible for her attitude
in withholding funds from him. He was in a natural
state of mind to-day, cool and collected, and
talked to me in the same strain that I have always
known him to use. He used to tell me four or five
years ago that he had it in for Mr. Hammond and
would shoot him some time.”
In a statement to the police Grew said he had known
Hammond for sixteen years and had done business
with him. “I am not going to answer that,” was his
reply when asked if he had had any trouble with
Hammond. He said that he was on his way home from
Manhattan when he met Hammond, and that Hammond
spoke to him, but he did not reply. “I had the
revolver in my right hand in the inside pocket of
my sack coat,” said Grew, “and that is all I have
to say.” He stated that “Hammond had been pounding
me and had got the inspectors to pound me.”
Mrs. Grew said that her husband’s mind had been
affected by brooding over his failure in business,
and she shared her husband’s opinion that he had
been persecuted.
* * * * *
MURDER IN LITTLE ITALY
_Kansas City Star_
MURDERS IN LITTLE ITALY SINCE JANUARY 1.
January 9--Mario Ippolito shot down and killed by
unidentified assassin.
January 11--John Kanato shot by John Herwetine;
died two days later.
January 23--John Janoka shot by Nick Hontrogen;
died same day.
January 24--Lusciano Musso murdered by gunmen in
daylight.
February 4--Salvador Cangialosi shot and killed by
Angelo Mannino.
February 24--Giovanni Seculo shot down by
unidentified assassin, will die.
SHOOTINGS.
January 24--H. C. Petro, shot in his home, 110
Watkins Avenue, by someone who fired through the
window; not fatal.
February 13--Robert Jordan, 1039 East Fourth
Street, was shot twice by Tony Filo; not fatal.
That impenetrable air of mystery which closed down
on the attack last night on two Italians, as it has
closed down upon every one of the weekly murders
of Little Italy, a sable cloak hiding details,
obliterating the trails of assassins who shoot men
in the back and flee, is not such a mysterious
thing after all. There is only one policeman at
night in Little Italy.
Giovanni Seculo and Tony Boni are walking along
Cherry Street near Fourth Street. It is 10 o’clock
at night. A shotgun barks, once, twice. Seculo
falls, a death wound in his back. Boni falls, shot
in the hip.
Presently a policeman comes, who was blocks distant
at the time.
Little Italy shrugs and avers it was all sound
asleep when Seculo and his companion were shot.
The assassin escapes.
There is nothing different in the main threads
of the chronicle from those of all the other
unpunished crimes of Little Italy.
Always, the crime is committed in some part of
Little Italy distant from that lone policeman.
Little Italy extends from Independence Avenue to
the Missouri River, from Oak Street to Tracy Avenue.
“There should be at least four policemen in that
district at night,” said Larry Ghent, chief of
detectives, this morning. Then he revealed some
figures on the police department.
In the district comprising Little Italy, Hick’s
and Belvidere hollows, which are unsavory negro
neighborhoods, and others almost as notorious, a
district extending north of Independence Avenue
and east of Main Street to Jackson Avenue, there
are at night only four patrolmen.
In the central district, taking in the whole of
the North Side, fourteen out of thirty-one police
“beats” are without patrolmen at night.
In all Kansas City there are only 264 patrolmen,
exclusive of officers. Many of these work as clerks
in stations. The police force is at the lowest that
it has been for years. The city is increasing in
population.
Ghent withdrew detectives from other cases this
morning and sent four of them, under the direction
of Patrolman Louis Olivero, into Little Italy to
attempt to ferret out the attack on Seculo last
night.
Seculo, proprietor of the Neopolitan Macaroni
factory at 516-18 East Tenth Street, and an
influential Italian, probably will die. His
condition was slightly improved today, however.
Neither Seculo nor Boni knows why he was attacked
or by whom.
* * * * *
MURDER
_New York Sun_
Trying door knobs early yesterday morning,
Policeman Merkle of the East 104th street station
found that the door of the little Italian grocery
shop at 321 East 109th street opened. He entered,
thinking that the place might have been robbed.
At the rear of the dark, smelly little shop he
found another door that opened, and as it did so,
a bulldog sprang at him. The policeman shut the
door and ran out to the street and rapped for
assistance. Policeman O’Connell came and the two
went back into the store.
They coaxed the dog into good humor, and, on
lighting the gas in the squalid room, they found
its master kneeling beside his bed in a pool of
blood. Another door in the rear was forced open.
Peter Mutolo, who lives there with his wife and
three children, said they had heard no noise.
They said that the murdered man was Frederick
Cinci, who had kept the shop about a month. He had
been in this country about a year. No one knew of
any enemies.
On the table were three dirty glasses and an empty
wine bottle. Friends sometimes came to see him, the
neighbors said. Nobody knew whether visitors came
to see him before his death. On the floor below his
body they found a stiletto, long of blade, which
was bent double. In his neck, lungs, stomach and
kidneys the ambulance surgeon found five thrusts.
The body was still warm; death hadn’t come long
before the police found him. Some money, $1.60,
was found in his pockets, and his gold watch had
not been taken. Six dollars was found in the cash
drawer of his shop. No one killed him to rob him
of money. The dog, the police think, would have
attacked a stranger and probably recognized the
murderer.
* * * * *
MURDER
_New York World_
Pietro de Angelo ran along Columbus avenue,
Montclair, N. J., yesterday. Plainly De Angelo, a
sturdy fellow of twenty-two years, had run far and
hard. He came from the direction of the Brookdale
section of Bloomfield. He was leg weary, his steps
grew shorter. Panting, he looked over his shoulder
ever and again at an older man who ran behind him
at some distance.
The older man carried a shotgun which swung by
his side in his grasp as he plodded along. He
seemed to be in no hurry; he seemed to be able to
run forever; straight he ran, with his eyes fixed
always on De Angelo, who looked back, fearfully.
Christopher street and Columbus avenue is the most
fashionable part of Montclair. Wealthy persons
live in that neighborhood. Men on the street or
looking from their dwellings had no idea of the
tragedy that was to be enacted. Being law-abiding,
having no reason to run, in flight or pursuit, the
Montclair men thought that De Angelo and the older
man who ran behind him were both fleeing from the
same pursuer.
“The police are after those fellows,” said one
Montclair man.
“Or the game wardens,” said another. “See, the
second chap has a shotgun--been poaching most
likely. The young fellow has outstripped him.”
Not so. Where Christopher street intersects
Columbus avenue De Angelo halted, swayed, almost
fell. His bolt was shot, his breath was spent. He
turned and slowly walked back to the older man, who
did not even hasten his gait, but approached De
Angelo--approached as inexorably as death itself.
As he got nearer, De Angelo stretched out his hands
toward him in mute pleading. The older man, never
hurrying, never slackening his gait, got within ten
yards of De Angelo, stopped, raised his shotgun
to his shoulder, pulled the trigger, and sent the
charge from one barrel into De Angelo’s left breast.
The younger man pitched down on his face, arms
extended, palms down. The older man looked down at
him an instant--yes, one barrel was enough--then,
dropping the gun from his shoulder, he kept on
running, no faster, no slower, than before.
And he escaped. A dozen most respectable citizens
of Montclair all had the same thought, to notify
the police. The dozen rushed to their telephones.
When the police arrived De Angelo was dead. He had
died instantly.
Deputy County Physician Muta went from Orange and
had the body taken to the Morgue at Orange. De
Angelo lived at No. 961 Wilson street, Montclair.
His parents say he had dinner with them there at
noon, then went out. They do not know where he
went. The police are trying to learn.
* * * * *
MURDER
_Kansas City Star_
In the parlor of the rooming house at 57 Green
Street A. C. Hobson was busily tuning the piano
this morning. As he bent above the humming wires,
the lid of the instrument thrown back, a light step
sounded down the corridor. Then he heard a fresh
young voice, singing softly. Hobson smiled and
ceased his work to listen.
The voice sang a line or two touching on cows and
green fields.
“A kid from the country,” Hobson said, and went on.
A heavier step clumped on the stairway leading up
from the street entrance. The song ceased abruptly.
“Hello, Maggie,” Hobson heard a man’s voice say.
“What made you leave me?”
There was a little pause; then a girl’s voice
answered sharply:
“Why do you follow me, anyhow? I don’t love you.”
“I came to take you back with me,” said the man.
Hobson had stopped his tinkering. The sound of the
man’s heavy breathing came in to him through the
open doorway from the dim corridor. “Kiss me,” the
man’s voice commanded.
The girl’s voice rose. “No,” she cried. “No. I
don’t love you.”
The man swore. “Then no one else’ll have you,” he
shouted.
Hobson stood motionless, as though paralyzed. Then
he heard a scuffle; the girl cried out sharply. The
restraint on him was broken at that, and Hobson
rushed into the corridor. The struggling forms of
man and woman were disappearing through the doorway
of another room down the hall. An instant or two
later, Hobson heard the crack of a revolver shot
followed closely by a second. Then the moans of a
woman in agony succeeded. Hobson ran into the room.
Man and woman writhed on the bed.
Going to a telephone, Hobson summoned the police.
Sergt. James O’Rile, acting captain of the
Walnut Street Police Station, responded. It was
twenty-five minutes before the ambulance arrived.
The woman was Mrs. Maggie Towes, 24 years old,
who left her husband, John Towes, in Homeville,
Mo., four months ago. Towes came to Kansas City a
week ago, finally, this morning, finding his wife
at the rooming house of Mrs. Mary Howe, where she
had found employment as housekeeper. Towes is a
blacksmith’s helper and is 32 years old.
As he lay on the bed in that twilight state between
the conscious and the unconscious, Towes reached a
hand gropingly towards his wife.
“Kiss me, honey,” he mumbled; “kiss me before I go.”
They were taken to the General Hospital. Mrs. Towes
was shot through the abdomen, Towes through the
left breast. Both probably will die.
* * * * *
MURDER
_New York Sun_[A]
[A] Written by Frank Ward O’Malley.
Mrs. Catherine Sheehan stood in the darkened parlor
of her home at 361 West Fifteenth street late
yesterday afternoon, and told her version of the
murder of her son Gene, the youthful policeman whom
a thug named Billy Morley shot in the forehead,
down under the Chatham Square elevated station
early yesterday morning. Gene’s mother was thankful
that her boy hadn’t killed Billy Morley before he
died, “because,” she said, “I can say honestly,
even now, that I’d rather have Gene’s dead body
brought home to me, as it will be to-night, than to
have him come to me and say, ‘Mother, I had to kill
a man this morning.’
“God comfort the poor wretch that killed the boy,”
the mother went on, “because he is more unhappy
to-night than we are here. Maybe he was weak-minded
through drink. He couldn’t have known Gene or he
wouldn’t have killed him. Did they tell you at the
Oak Street Station that the other policemen called
Gene Happy Sheehan? Anything they told you about
him is true, because no one would lie about him. He
was always happy, and he was a fine-looking young
man, and he always had to duck his helmet when he
walked under the gas fixture in the hall, as he
went out the door.
“He was doing dance steps on the floor of the
basement, after his dinner yesterday noon for the
girls--his sisters I mean--and he stopped of a
sudden when he saw the clock and picked up his
helmet. Out on the street he made pretence of
arresting a little boy he knows, who was standing
there--to see Gene come out, I suppose--and when
the lad ran away laughing, I called out, ‘You
couldn’t catch Willie, Gene; you’re getting fat.’
“‘Yes, and old, mammy,’ he said, him who is--who
was--only twenty-six--‘so fat,’ he said, ‘that I’m
getting a new dress coat that’ll make you proud
when you see me in it, mammy.’ And he went over
Fifteenth street whistling a tune and slapping his
leg with a folded newspaper. And he hasn’t come
back again.
“But I saw him once after that, thank God, before
he was shot. It’s strange, isn’t it, that I hunted
him up on his beat late yesterday afternoon for
the first time in my life? I never go around where
my children are working or studying--one I sent
through college with what I earned at dressmaking,
and some other little money I had, and he’s now a
teacher; and the youngest I have at college now. I
don’t mean that their father wouldn’t send them if
he could, but he’s an invalid, although he’s got a
position lately that isn’t too hard for him. I got
Gene prepared for college, too, but he wanted to go
right into an office in Wall street. I got him in
there, but it was too quiet and tame for him, Lord
have mercy on his soul; and then, two years ago, he
wanted to go on the police force, and he went.
“After he went down the street yesterday I found
a little book on a chair, a little list of the
streets or something, that Gene had forgot. I knew
how particular they are about such things, and I
didn’t want the boy to get in trouble, and so I
threw on a shawl and walked over through Chambers
street toward the river to find him. He was
standing on a corner some place down there near the
bridge clapping time with his hands for a little
newsy that was dancing; but he stopped clapping,
struck, Gene did, when he saw me. He laughed when
I handed him the little book and told that was why
I’d searched for him, patting me on the shoulder
when he laughed--patting me on the shoulder.
“‘It’s a bad place for you here, Gene,’ I said.
‘Then it must be bad for you, too, mammy,’ said he;
and as he walked to the end of his beat with me--it
was dark then--he said, ‘There are lots of crooks
here, mother, and they know and hate me and they’re
afraid of me’--proud, he said it--‘but maybe
they’ll get me some night.’ He patted me on the
back and turned and walked east toward his death.
Wasn’t it strange that Gene said that?
“You know how he was killed, of course, and how--
Now let me talk about it, children, if I want to.
I promised you, didn’t I, that I wouldn’t cry any
more or carry on? Well, it was five o’clock this
morning when a boy rang the bell here at the house
and I looked out the window and said, ‘Is Gene
dead?’ ‘No, ma’am,’ answered the lad, ‘but they
told me to tell you he was hurt in a fire and is
in the hospital.’ Jerry, my other boy, had opened
the door for the lad and was talking to him while
I dressed a bit. And then I walked down stairs and
saw Jerry standing silent under the gaslight, and
I said again, ‘Jerry, is Gene dead?’ And he said
‘Yes,’ and he went out.
“After a while I went down to the Oak Street
Station myself, because I couldn’t wait for Jerry
to come back. The policemen all stopped talking
when I came in, and then one of them told me it was
against the rules to show me Gene at that time. But
I knew the policeman only thought I’d break down,
but I promised him I wouldn’t carry on, and he took
me into a room to let me see Gene. It was Gene.
“I know to-day how they killed him. The poor boy
that shot him was standing in Chatham Square
arguing with another man when Gene told him to move
on. When the young man wouldn’t, but only answered
back, Gene shoved him, and the young man pulled a
revolver and shot Gene in the face, and he died
before Father Rafferty, of St. James’s, got to him.
God rest his soul. A lot of policemen heard the
shot and they all came running with their pistols
and clubs in their hands. Policeman Laux--I’ll
never forget his name or any of the others that
ran to help Gene--came down the Bowery and ran out
into the middle of the square where Gene lay.
“When the man that shot Gene saw the policemen
coming, he crouched down and shot at Policeman
Laux, but, thank God, he missed him. Then policemen
named Harrington and Rouke and Moran and Kehoe
chased the man all around the streets there, some
heading him off when he tried to run into that
street that goes off at an angle--East Broadway,
is it?--a big crowd had come out of Chinatown now
and was chasing the man, too, until Policemen Rouke
and Kehoe got him backed up against a wall. When
Policeman Kehoe came up close, the man shot his
pistol right at Kehoe and the bullet grazed Kehoe’s
helmet.
“All the policemen jumped at the man then, and one
of them knocked the pistol out of his hand with a
blow of a club. They beat him, this Billy Morley,
so Jerry says his name is, but they had to because
he fought so hard. They told me this evening that
it will go hard with the unfortunate murderer,
because Jerry says that when a man named Frank
O’Hare, who was arrested this evening charged with
stealing cloth or something, was being taken into
headquarters, he told Detective Gegan that he and
a one-armed man who answered to the description of
Morley, the young man who killed Gene, had a drink
last night in a saloon at Twenty-second street
and Avenue A and that when the one-armed man was
leaving the saloon he turned and said, ‘Boys, I’m
going out now to bang a guy with buttons.’
“They haven’t brought me Gene’s body yet. Coroner
Shrady, so my Jerry says, held Billy Morley, the
murderer, without letting him get out on bail, and
I suppose that in a case like this they have to do
a lot of things before they can let me have the
body here. If Gene only hadn’t died before Father
Rafferty got to him, I’d be happier. He didn’t need
to make his confession, you know, but it would have
been better, wouldn’t it? He wasn’t bad, and he
went to mass on Sunday without being told; and even
in Lent, when we always say the rosary out loud in
the dining-room every night, Gene himself said to
me the day after Ash Wednesday, ‘If you want to say
the rosary at noon, mammy, before I go out, instead
of at night when I can’t be here, we’ll do it.’
“God will see that Gene’s happy tonight, won’t he,
after Gene said that?” the mother asked as she
walked out into the hallway with her black-robed
daughters grouped behind her. “I know he will,”
she said, “and I’ll--” She stopped with an arm
resting on the banister to support her. “I--I know
I promised you, girls,” said Gene’s mother, “that
I’d try not to cry any more, but I can’t help it.”
And she turned toward the wall and covered her face
with her apron.
* * * * *
MURDER
_Kansas City Star_
A boy of 19, carefree, enamored of the life of the
road, ran away from a good home in Elm Grove, Kas.,
on a sunny day last March.
Down in the wilds of Northern Arkansas, riding in
a freight car, one day in the middle of March,
a brakeman came upon him and they fought--the
brakeman angered at the lad, the boy hot with the
lust of youth that welcomes a fray.
The boy, Charles Hyde, hit the brakeman on the
head with a bolt. The brakeman went down, like a
shot thing, and fell from the car under the flying
wheels, which ground him to death.
Then the boy went on. Later he heard a coroner’s
jury had reached a verdict of “accidental death.”
Then began the flight. It was flight--not from the
far-reaching arm of the law; for the verdict of the
backwoods jury had placed no suspicion on any man.
But it was flight from a dread thing that haunted
him, making his nights of no comfort and his days
of dark despair.
Conscience, men call it, and Retribution. But by
whatever name, under whatever guise, the dread
thing caught the boy at last, caught and enfolded
him. And the lad who had been carefree a few short
months ago, now a trembling, quaking, white-faced
wreck, stumbled into the Mulberry Street police
station, down in the West Bottoms yesterday--and
surrendered.
“I killed a man,” he said. “I killed a man when I
didn’t have any idea of doing it. And he’s been
after me. I’ve got to give myself up; I’ve got to
confess. It’s the only way I can get rid of it.”
They heard the boy out, those policemen in the
bottoms, not understanding, sensing only dimly
the fear that was on him. Then they took him to
police headquarters and wired to the authorities in
Arkansas.
“Last night wasn’t so bad,” said Hyde at police
headquarters this morning. “It wasn’t so bad, now
that I have given myself up. That’s made me feel
better. But all the other nights since it happened
have been hell. We’d be fighting in the car again,
with the wheels clicking away underneath us, him
hot and gettin’ the best of me. Then I’d stumble
against something and pick it up and feel it in my
hands, and know he was mine.
“My God!” said Charles Hyde, helpless toy of fate,
entrapped in the coils of a retributive nemesis.
“My God!” And he covered his gaunt boy’s face with
shaking hands.
Back and forth, up and down, across the harvest
lands of the Middle West, went Hyde, riding
in freight cars, clinging to the rods of
trans-continentals, always seeking to escape from
the thing that pursued him--and always failing. In
the hot fields, laboring with his hands, staggering
in the heat of the day but pressing on, he found no
surcease. And then, despite his efforts, hard work
brought no sleep at night. And he was alone with
his fear.
“I know the law’s got me,” he cried. “I know it can
hang me or put me in prison. But I had to do it. I
had to give myself up.
“And to think I never meant to kill him, only to
lay him out and make him let me alone!”
Then Charles Hyde cried, not the tears of blessed
relief, but the scalding tears of those who
must stand helpless and non-understanding before
grim-countenanced Fate.
* * * * *
A WAYWARD GIRL
_Chicago Herald_
They called her Mandy on the farm and they made
much of her.
She was the only daughter the Noyers had and
nothing was too good for her. So “dad” said--and
mother agreed.
Mandy didn’t realize how happy she was. She was
ambitious and wished to see the city. She had an
aunt in Chicago, Mrs. H. Bole, of 1856 Dolphin
street. Why couldn’t she go to Chicago, study
stenography and live with auntie?
Her parents didn’t like to have her go, but she
insisted. So they kissed her and sent her away.
She went to the Weston School at 175 North Wabash
avenue for some time--and then, last June, she had
a quarrel with her aunt and went to live at 1809
West Wilson street.
She made the acquaintance of Thomas Hazen of 4009
Jackson boulevard and Mandy quit the school. Only
she wasn’t Mandy any more. Her name was Thelma
Beyers.
Hazen and the girl, who is only 16 years old, were
arrested by Detective Sergeant George E. McCormick
and Mandy wept and told her story.
It had been a gay life, she said, fascinating and
swift.
But if mother and “dad” down in Siddon, Ill., will
forgive her she will go home and stay there for
good.
But Mandy is needed as a witness against Hazen
and five other young men for whom warrants were
obtained yesterday.
And she will have to appear against the proprietors
of the Congress Café, Charley West’s, the Café De
Luxe, the Delaware, and eight or ten other cafés
which sold her gin fizzes, highballs and other
drinks; and against the owners and proprietors of
eight or ten hotels that admitted her--a girl just
out of short skirts--without asking questions.
Then there is a woman of a good family on the West
Side who will be charged with contributing to the
delinquency of a minor.
So it will be a long time before Mandy can go home.
* * * * *
VIOLATION OF MANN ACT
_Kansas City Star_
Michael O’Rourke loved his wife and his two little
daughters and their little home. That was in
Airdale eight years ago.
Then one day Michael discovered something that
broke him up completely. His little girls’ mother
was not the kind of woman he had believed her to
be. It cost Michael more than outsiders could
realize, but he got a divorce. The court gave him
the custody of his daughters, Rosie and Maggie.
He brought them to Kansas City in an effort to
forget--and to get away from their mother. He put
them in St. Joseph’s Orphan Home, Thirty-first and
Jefferson streets, and went to work there himself
as coachman.
But the mother did not stay in Airdale. She
followed her children here and tried to take them
away from the home. Several times she tried it, but
the watch kept on the little girls was too close
and she did not succeed. At last, Michael, fearing
that sooner or later he would lose them, gave up
his job and took the girls away. Rosie, the elder,
did not want to go. Even in those days she was
attached to her mother.
Michael took Rosie and Maggie to Seattle, where he
put them in a convent. Most of his earnings went
to pay for keeping them there. After a year or two
he joined the navy and intrusted to Uncle Sam the
payments for their education from his wages as a
sailor.
The long voyages kept him from seeing them more
than once or twice a year and he fancied they
were forgetting him. That, and the difficulty of
providing for them on what he was earning, made
him desperate. He deserted the navy. He took his
daughters from the convent and made a home for
them.
One day when he was away at work a veiled woman
drove up to the cottage in a motor car.
“Why, it’s mamma!” exclaimed Rosie, and rushed to
greet her.
When the woman drove away, the girls and their
belongings went with her. Michael came home that
night to an empty house.
He found them in Airdale--in their mother’s house,
where the blinds were drawn all day long. He
started habeas corpus proceedings and got back the
younger girl, then 15 years old. Rosie had become
18 in the meantime and refused to leave her mother.
Michael took Maggie to St. Louis and put her in
a convent there. Up to this time the government
officials had not troubled him and he had almost
forgotten that his desertion was still hanging over
him. But someone told, and Michael was arrested. He
was convicted and taken to the naval prison in New
Hampshire.
A short time later a woman in a motor car stole
Maggie from the convent. This time there was no one
to follow them.
Yesterday in Airdale a house was raided by
government officers. Rosie and Maggie were found
there. Their mother, who is known now as Mrs.
Pearl Perkins, was arrested. She was charged with
transporting Rosie from Seattle in violation of the
Mann Act. She will be arraigned before the United
States commissioner in Springfield today.
Rosie has gone far on the path her mother led her.
Maggie was rescued from the same life in the nick
of time.
Michael, in his cell, can only wonder what has
become of them.
* * * * *
CAPTURE OF ESCAPED CONVICT
_Chicago Inter Ocean_
Every evening at 5:33 a fast train whizzes through
the mining town of Denville, Ill., favoring the
little, box-like station with a derisive flirt of
its tail car as it takes a curve. Every evening at
5:30, except when infrequent duties interfere, it
is the custom of the village constable of Denville
to saunter up to the “deepo” and solemnly watch the
flyer pass. Once, they say, a pretty girl waved to
him from a Pullman window.
George Brown, station agent at Denville, knows the
constable’s time as well as that of the train. When
he thought it was getting pretty near the hour for
the appearance of constable and flyer yesterday
afternoon, he looked at his watch. It was 5:20
o’clock.
The station agent was particularly anxious to see
the constable, for he had real news to relate. A
short time before, answering a ring at the station
telephone, he had been informed by the deputy
warden at Joliet penitentiary that Matthew Starn,
a life convict, with two coldblooded murders to
his discredit, had escaped from the prison and was
believed to be headed in the direction of Denville.
“He’s a cool hand and a mighty desperate man,”
warned the warden. “Don’t take any chances with him
if you see him.”
A few minutes later, while Brown was straining his
ears for the distant sound of the flyer’s whistle
and his eyes for a glimpse of the constable, a
man wearing an ill-fitting, rough, all-enveloping
garment of blue and a blue cap of the same
material, walked into the station.
“When is the next train to St. Louis?” he asked,
his eyes boring into Brown’s.
The station agent had instantly recognized the odd
garb of the man before him as the Joliet uniform.
He fought to keep his tone even and casual as he
replied:
“Can’t get out tonight.”
Brown turned away, pretending to consult a time
card hung behind the wicket. Really he was looking
out the window, hoping to see the familiar form of
the constable.
“Well, ain’t you curious about me?” demanded his
visitor. “How do you think I got here?”
“Beat a freight, I suppose,” Brown hastily guessed.
“That’s against the rules, but I always have a
lot of sympathy for a man like you. What’s your
trouble?”
“Broke!” said his visitor, tersely. “I ain’t had
nothing but hard luck these last five years.”
In the distance the whistle of the flyer tooted.
The man in blue eyed a stack of bills in the open
cash drawer.
“I don’t know whether to beat it or to--to visit
a while with you,” he murmured, glancing at the
station door, and then back again at the cash
drawer.
Brown consulted the time card again--and looked
out the window, inwardly breathing a prayer. Sure
enough, there was the constable, trudging down the
road toward the station, a bit behind schedule but
not speeding to make up lost time.
“I guess you--you’d better--stay!” said the agent.
Brown went through a few tense moments after that
remark, that he said later he wouldn’t experience
again “if they made me president of the road.”
The constable took up his stand, not on the station
platform, as usual, but a couple of hundred feet
away. Stolidly he watched the flyer pass, then
looked undecidedly toward the station. He seemed to
be debating whether or not to forego his routine
visit with the agent. Twice he turned his back and
started away, only to halt, wheel and resume his
meditation. A Niagara of sweat coursed down Brown’s
cheeks as he waited. The man in blue was standing
close to the wicket, still peering into the drawer.
His right hand was in his hip pocket.
Brown dared direct his gaze out the window no
longer. He stood silently watching his blue-clad
visitor, waiting to see what would be in his hand
when it came from the bulging hip pocket.
Then the station door opened. In it stood the
constable. He took in the significance of the blue
figure as Brown’s sinister visitor wheeled, and
the Denville police revolver, rusty with age, but
loaded, flashed from his pocket.
“Hands up!” remarked the constable.
Ten minutes later Matthew Starn, escaped “lifer,”
who had worsted the restraining walls of Joliet,
was held securely a prisoner in the amateurish
village calaboose.
Starn, who is 26, shot and killed two Joliet
business men, who had the misfortune to resist him
when he robbed their stores. The “five years of
hard luck” had been spent in prison, where, despite
his criminal record, he became a “trusty” through
good conduct in the penitentiary. At 7:30 o’clock
yesterday morning he was given a message to deliver
outside the prison walls. When he did not return
within an hour two posses of guards, deputies and
policemen started on his trail and word was flashed
through the surrounding territory. Denville is
about twenty miles southeast of Joliet.
* * * * *
STORY OF ESCAPED CONVICT
_Chicago News_[B]
[B] By Ben Hecht.
Lockup Keeper O’Malley brought him out of the cell
in the detective bureau and he stood in the sun,
blinking--a little man with brown eyes and a sober,
deadly sober face.
“A fella wants to see you, George O’Brien,” said
Lockup Keeper O’Malley, and left the little man, an
escaped “lifer” from Joliet, standing against the
cell wall and blinking. The sun that came through
the dirty basement window fell full on his face and
he stood staring into it, twisting his felt hat in
his hands.
“They’ll take me back in the morning,” said the
little man, as if he were talking to himself, as if
he were repeating something he had sat up all night
in his cell thinking about. “And I won’t see her. I
want to explain to her. Good God.”
It was a prayer. The little man’s throat trembled,
the muscles of his face quivered and his eyes
glistened in the sun.
Four days ago the little man was married, after
three months of liberty. Fourteen years lay behind
him when he walked away from the honor farm at
Joliet. He told the story himself, the whole story
without any omissions. But first he said again:
“I don’t care so much about going back; I’m used
to the life down there. But they’ll put me in
solitary, with a ball and chain on my feet, and I
won’t be able to see her for six months--if I don’t
see her before they take me back.”
Tears came now and rolled over the drawn face of
the little man and his voice was so low that the
listener had to bend down to hear.
“She didn’t know about my being an escaped lifer,”
he went on. “I couldn’t tell her. I was afraid. She
was the first woman who smiled at me after fourteen
years--when I got my job--and she was like an angel
to me.
“I want to see her and tell her--so’s to let her
know all about it. I’ll tell it to you, and, if I
don’t see her, print it in your paper just as I
say--so’s she can know.”
The little man seized his listener’s hand. He
couldn’t talk, but he clung to the hand until his
voice cleared, and then he said: “So she’ll know I
was trying to live straight--so she’ll not think I
was all wrong.”
So here’s your husband’s story, Mrs. O’Brien, the
story he never told you because you seemed like
an angel to him and he was afraid of losing you.
They’ll tie ball and chain on his feet and seat
him in a cell for six months and then they’ll take
the ball and chain off and let him live inside the
walls the rest of his life. Never mind that. He
said he didn’t care if he could only get this story
to you, so that you wouldn’t think rotten of him,
Mrs. O’Brien.
“If I could only see her for a minute,” he
murmured, and then he went on as he had promised.
“I was a kid,” he said, “about 17, and I had a
good home. But I fell in with a lot of fellows who
weren’t any good. And one of them--Larsen--planned
to hold up somebody. He got me to get a gun for him
and we both went out. The gun was half cocked and
it went off in the holdup and the man was killed.
I was standing away at the time. I was a kid. They
sent us both up for life. That was in 1901. And I
lived in the prison until July. D’ye understand?
Every day was the same, every night was the same,
and I lived in the prison for fourteen years. D’ye
understand? And they made me an honor convict.”
The little man laughed.
“I saw fellas come for worse things than I’d
done--regular criminals--and get out, pardoned. And
they’d come back again--and get out. And I lived
in the prison. Fourteen years. All the time I was
young. Every day was the same. And I dreamed of
gettin’ out. But they wouldn’t pardon me. I never
knew any politicians. I was only a kid when they
sent me up.
“And every night was the same. Good God. I wanted
to get out. I wanted to live. I knew I was
straight. There was nothing wrong with me. I was
only a kid when it happened. And I learned in the
prison. It was fourteen years.”
The little man’s face was shaking and his hands
trembled as if they were on fine springs.
“So one day I walked out. I was an honor convict.
I broke my pledge. But I knew, I knew I could be
straight. And I wanted to live. Every day was the
same down there. Tell her that,” said the little
man. “You can write it better’n I can talk it. But
get it to her--I was only a kid when they sent
me up--and every day was the same and I wanted
to live. Then I got out. I went to Lakeside and
boarded. My brother knew, but didn’t tell. He gave
me a chance. I got a job. They didn’t ask me for
references. It was with the American Motor Machine
Company. The fella looked at me and hired me. I
worked. They raised my pay after I’d been there a
month. I was livin’ straight.
“And then I met Sarah Wilson. She worked in the
office. I used to dream of women--of some one like
her--and she liked me, even though I am a little
fella. Aw say, she was an angel. If I could only
see her for a minute--to tell her.”
The little man was shaking all over.
“We got married four days ago,” he went on, “and I
had it all planned. Nobody was goin’ to know about
me bein’ a lifer. I was goin’ to forget it myself.
Say, I was happy.”
A rare smile came into the little man’s face.
“Say, I had a home--a home.”
The smile changed and he laughed in a peculiar way.
He laughed until Lockup Keeper O’Malley looked up
and said: “Cut it out!” And then he went on talking.
“I had it all planned--every bit. I was a good
worker, had a job in the stockroom. I was going
to live with her. Last night she called me out of
the kitchen. I was fixing the sink. I came out all
smiling. I liked company and she said there was
someone to see me.
“I came out. God. I’ll never forget. I came out in
my slippers--say, they were waitin’ at the door,
six of them. And they took me away. They didn’t let
me talk to her. They took me away and I won’t see
her again--if she don’t hurry up and come. They’ll
take me down this morning. But I don’t care if
you’ll print this story--say, I don’t care. I’m
used to it. Only get it over to her--God--and I’ll
pray for you.”
“George O’Brien!” called a voice down the stairway.
“He’s here,” said Lockup Keeper O’Malley. Two men,
one of them the parole agent, came walking down
the steps. “They’re takin’ me back,” whispered the
little man. The two men walked over to him. One of
them dangled a pair of handcuffs.
* * * * *
SUICIDE OR ACCIDENT
_New York Mail_
With gas pouring from an open jet in a bathroom
adjoining his sleeping room, Frederick H. Herman,
the indicted ex-president of the Universal Reserve
Life Insurance Company, was found dead in his bed
to-day at his home, 851 East Seventy-eighth street.
He drew his last breath just as his family entered
the room.
Members of Mr. Herman’s family scouted the theory
of suicide, declaring that his death was purely the
result of an accident. The police reported the case
as a “supposed suicide from gas poisoning.”
Coroner Acritelli, after making an examination of
Mr. Herman’s room, said that death undoubtedly had
been due to accidental gas asphyxiation.
The coroner said that his physician, Dr. Weston,
would make an examination of the body this
afternoon, and that an inquest would be held later
this week.
Dr. Ralph Wilson, of 836 Madison avenue, who was
summoned immediately, declared that the gas in the
room was not enough to have caused death alone,
and that Mr. Herman had died from a combination of
heart trouble and gas inhalation.
Mr. Herman, said Dr. Wilson, also had been a
sufferer from diabetes, and in his weakened
condition was not so able to resist the influence
of the gas as a man in normal health.
The discovery was made by Mrs. Herman at 5.30 a. m.
She slept in a room alongside that of her husband.
On awaking she smelled gas and went to Mr. Herman’s
room to investigate.
Adjoining the bedroom is a bathroom, the door of
which was open. The gas was coming from that room.
Mrs. Herman hurriedly summoned the butler, who went
into the bathroom and found that the valve of a
pipe leading to a small gas heater was open. This
he shut off.
Dr. Wilson was telephoned for, but before he
arrived Mr. Herman was dead. Two or three minutes
after Mrs. Herman entered her husband’s room his
son, Frederick R., went there in response to his
mother’s call. He found his father propped up in
his bed just breathing. At the elder Herman’s side
lay an opened magazine and his eyeglasses.
Windows were thrown open and an attempt made to
revive Mr. Herman but it was unsuccessful.
The gas was carried to the heater by a pipe that
led from the wall. There were two valves on the
pipe, one near the wall and the other near the
heater.
The family declares that the lower valve had been
turned off, but that the one at the wall was on
full and in some way the gas had succeeded in
escaping.
John L. O’Brien, the personal counsel for
Frederick H. Herman, was notified of his client’s
death and arrived at the house shortly after. Mr.
O’Brien saw reporters who called at the house,
explaining that members of the family did not care
to be interviewed.
Mr. O’Brien denied that Mr. Herman committed
suicide. He said that the circumstances surrounding
his death made it appear that it had been
accidental.
“Mr. Herman’s death was purely accidental; of that
I am convinced,” said Mr. O’Brien. “He was not
worried by the civil litigation in which he was
engaged with the receivers of the Universal Reserve
Life Insurance Company, and he long ago became
satisfied that he would never be brought to trial
for the criminal indictment that was hanging over
his head in connection with the alleged misuse of
money to influence legislation at Albany.
“If it had been Mr. Herman’s plan to take his life
by gas he would have gone about it differently.
The gas in his own room was turned off, and it is
reasonable to assume that if he had had suicide in
mind he would have turned on the gas in his room.
“He was fully twenty feet away from the gas heater
in the bathroom and there was a constant current of
air flowing between the two rooms.
“There was some trouble with the furnace, and Mr.
Herman, who likes his room warm, had turned on the
gas in the bathroom. Air was coming from the open
furnace register.
“It is evident that Mr. Herman had been reading,
had gone into the bathroom and turned off the valve
near the heater, had then returned to bed, read a
while, and finally turned out his own gas.
“He went to bed at 11.30, and must have remained up
reading through the night.
“I had never seen Mr Herman more optimistic than
he was in the last few weeks. He had been busily
engaged with me in preparing for litigation in
connection with the Universal Reserve Company
affairs. He had no financial troubles that I know
of. His family life was most peaceful and happy.”
Mr. Herman’s bedroom was on the second floor,
directly over the parlor. Other members of his
family slept on the same floor and the servants on
the floor above.
Mr. Herman’s son, Frederick R., his daughter-in-law,
Ethel, and the latter’s mother, Mrs. William Wilson
of 961 Columbia Avenue, Worcester, Mass., were in
the house. Mrs. Wilson had come to New York to spend
the holidays with her daughter and son-in-law.
Dr. Wilson, on being questioned by reporters, said:
“The case appeared to be purely accidental. The
gas was escaping from the stove, and from all
appearances, after Mr. Herman had turned off the
gas, he accidentally turned it on again. Mr. Herman
had a weak heart, and the gas undoubtedly affected
him more quickly than it would a person with a
stronger heart.”
Dr. Wilson said that shortly before 6 a. m. he
called up the coroner’s office to report the death,
and a clerk there told him to notify the police.
This was done, according to the physician, and
a policeman from the East Sixty-seventh street
station arrived at the house.
An ambulance was also sent to the residence,
although, according to Dr. Wilson, he had told the
police that he was a physician and that Mr. Herman
had been dead for some time.
* * * * *
NOTE.--_The different points of view from which the
same facts may be told in news stories are very
well shown in the two following examples._
SUICIDE
(1)
_New York World_
Facing starvation, Victor Schwartz and his wife,
Louise, a respectable old Swiss couple, committed
suicide yesterday by inhaling illuminating gas
in their rooms back of a small confectionery and
stationery store, which they carried on at No. 85
Arnold street, Williamsburg.
Each was sixty-seven years old. They had made
careful preparations for their deaths. Every hole
and crevice in their sparsely furnished rooms had
been plugged with paper and rags, and in several
places tacks had been driven into the woodwork to
make sure that neither the rags nor paper would
become dislodged. It was this hammering on Sunday
night which caused neighbors to wonder what the old
couple were doing, as they always retired before 10
o’clock.
When the Schwartzes rented the store and two rooms
back of it eight months ago for $12 a month, they
told neighbors that three years before their only
child, a daughter of thirty-one years, had died.
They said they had never recovered from the shock.
Business during the summer had been very poor, and
of late Schwartz and his wife had a hard struggle
to get along. The woman frequently told neighbors
that she believed their misfortune would soon end.
On Sunday evening Schwartz and his wife distributed
much of their stock in the store to the children
in the neighborhood. It is evident that they had
decided on suicide.
Mrs. Rose Black, who has a grocery adjoining the
Schwartz store, and Mrs. Kate Weck, a second floor
tenant, heard the couple hammering in their rooms
up to midnight Sunday, and yesterday at daybreak
the two women were the first to detect the odor
of illuminating gas from the Schwartz apartments.
Policeman McCaffrey, of the Hamburg avenue station,
was called in and, forcing an entrance, found
Schwartz sitting dead in a chair in the kitchen,
fully dressed. He had one end of a rubber tube in
his mouth, the other end of which was fixed to an
open gas burner. The woman lay dead on her bed in
a night dress with a rubber tube in her mouth,
fastened to another open gas burner. Ambulance
Surgeon Sibbel, who came from the German Hospital,
said the couple had been dead several hours. On
a small card was a request that Edward Black be
telephoned for at “421 Thirty-eighth street.” A
dime lay on the card to pay for the telephone
message. In the room was found 67 cents. The bodies
were removed to the Brooklyn Morgue.
(2)
_New York Times_
“Auntie Schwartz” was the way in which Mrs. Louise
Schwartz soon came to be known to the children of
the neighborhood when she and her husband, Victor,
each of them 67 years old, opened a small candy and
stationery store at 85 Arnold Street, Williamsburg,
about eight months ago.
Her small customers just kept the business going
in the little shop, but it was a penny business,
and when the rent of the store was raised recently
from $12 to $15 a month, “Auntie” Schwartz almost
despaired of continuing to make a living. Her face
grew sad and careworn, and one day, when one of
her little customers was grieving over the loss
of a pet doll which a dog had chewed up, “Auntie”
Schwartz did not console her with a cheerful word
and a chocolate drop or two, as she was wont to
do. Instead she took her on her lap and told of
the little girl she had lost three years ago. She
did not explain that her “little girl” had been
31 years old, and that she had helped greatly in
making a living for the old folks, who were now
staggering under the burden of age, increased rent,
and a precarious trade. The old people seemed
always oppressed by the sadness of the loss of
their only child.
Day by day recently the children noticed that
“Auntie” Schwartz was less cheerful that usual.
Their elders seldom visited the little store, and
so none who might have helped knew that old Victor
Schwartz and his wife were almost starving to
death, or that the old couple were slowly making up
their minds to end their troubles together.
So it was that the children were the first to
discover yesterday that the little store was not
open for business when they passed it on their way
to their first day at school, and “Auntie” Schwartz
lost many pennies which her small customers had
intended to expend for lead pencils and erasers.
“Auntie” Schwartz had called them all in on Sunday
evening and had distributed among them all her
small stock of candy, telling them that she would
have a full new stock for the beginning of school.
Meantime, Mrs. Kate Weck and Mrs. Rose Black, who
live above the store, were puzzled by the odor of
gas which permeated their apartments. At last the
women traced it to the store, which they found
closed and locked. The gas came from the two living
rooms which the Schwartzes occupied behind their
store, and Mrs. Weck and Mrs. Black finally got
Policeman McCaffrey of the Hamburg Avenue Station
to smash down the door.
The policeman and the women found the old man
seated in a chair in the kitchen, a gas tube
clutched between his teeth, the other end of which
was made fast to a gas jet. He was dead. In the
little bedroom they found also the body of Mrs.
Schwartz dead like her husband from the gas which
she had inhaled. Like him, too, she had tied the
tube around her head, so that it should not slip
from her mouth.
A search of the rooms showed that the old couple
had been in the most abject poverty. Only 67 cents
was found in the flat.
* * * * *
SUICIDE
_Milwaukee Sentinel_
CHICAGO, Ill., March 3.--Emma Johnson died on
Monday. She was the grave faced little seamstress
from La Crosse, Wis., who used to sit every day
near a dingy window at 42 Wilson avenue, plying
her needle in silence, wearing an expression like
that of a nun. And every one said she “looked so
peaceful.”
But the coroner’s jury found that the little woman,
in whom no one would have suspected deep emotion,
had been tempestuously in love, that she had not
been able to win the man she wanted, and that she
had sat there at her seams, “praying for strength
to wait for a natural death.” She did not want to
kill herself. But she did.
She went to the home of Mrs. Jennie Nelson, 4212
North avenue. Mrs. Nelson’s brother, William
Larson, is the man she wanted to marry. He “was
fond of her, too,” as Mrs. Nelson said, “but his
health was poor and he did not want to marry for
the present.”
Emma Johnson turned on the gas and died. She left a
letter, in which she said:
“Dearest Friends--When you have read this I have
crossed the bar. Ambition, energy and strength have
deserted me and every hope and dream is shattered.
Death is the only relief. I have called upon heaven
to save me from myself--to send me a natural death.
I don’t want to die like this. I want to live and
be happy, but that is not to be.
“I’ve had my hell here, but it is hard to go like
this, hard to bring this sorrow upon my folks,
bitterly hard.
“For the one who has driven me to do this I feel
only love, and if I am permitted to enter heaven I
shall wait for him.
“Perhaps he will love me then; he will feel bad
about this, but help him understand that I forgive
all, and I hope some one else will be to him what I
never could, a joy and a comfort, and that she may
make him happy as I had hoped to do. I wish I could
look upon the faces of my dear father and brothers
and sisters again. I can’t still the voice in my
heart. I haven’t the strength. Forgive me and pray
for me. Only another lost soul.”
* * * * *
SUICIDE OF SCHOOL GIRL
_Chicago Tribune_
Rose Lubin’s younger brother, Max, wanted help
with his “home work” last night. Rose, who is 16,
is proud of her standing at the head of the eighth
grade in the Winfield school.
“I can’t do my own work and yours, too,” she told
Max. “I’ve got enough to keep me busy till bed time
and I’m not going to lose my marks on your account.”
Max went to his father and the father went to Rose.
“If you don’t help your brother I’ll take you out
of school,” said Lubin.
Whereupon Rose changed her mind about the manner in
which the nickel she had earned in the afternoon
was to be spent. She bought acid with it, returned
to her home at 951 West Fifteenth street, and drank
the poison.
Rose will not be at school today. Perhaps she will
never go back. She is in the county hospital.
Physicians there fear she will not recover.
* * * * *
CAUSE OF ATTEMPTED SUICIDE
_New York Evening Post_
Mary Stober, eighteen years old, of 951 East
135th Street, who tried to kill herself last week
(Friday) because she has no piano, is home again
from the Lincoln Hospital, and is starting in to
live again in a world where no hope is, since she
cannot have a piano.
To dream every night that you have a piano and
“play just grand,” and then wake up to hear the
alarm clock buzzing six o’clock; to forget where
you are, and half close your eyes and pretend
that the movements your fingers are making are on
a piano, instead of having something to do with
the bobbin of a machine in an embroidery factory;
to hear beautiful music suddenly in the midst of
your work, and listen, startled and ecstatic, for
a moment until it is lost in the endless whirring
of the machines--these things, if you have never
done them, may seem a certainty that Life is, after
all, very splendid while there is such a thing as
imagination, and that the gray of it is woven full
of unexpected and vivid threads of color.
Or it may impress you as deliciously funny that the
lack of a piano can seem tragic, if you have a big
enough view of tragic things to see that some of
them are greater. But to this girl, who does them
every day and night of her life, they are simply
the things which have twice made her try to kill
herself, the reason why she is “disgusted, always
disgusted,” as she says, very simply.
Mary Stober has a pale, strong face, with a
stubborn chin and a wistful smile, very gray eyes,
light brown hair in a bang on her forehead, and
very red lips. She looks very young and very
determined and very wistful and somewhat sullen.
Her hands are red and rough and square-fingered
from hard work.
She was dusting one of the rooms this morning in
the soggy apartment house of which her mother
is janitress, and where they and the six other
children live and pay half-rent. She goes back to
the factory on Monday. She sat down in one of the
innumerous chairs to tell her story, fingering
the grimy dust-cloth with her red fingers, which
are never quiet for a minute. Her mother stood up
through the recital--the little German mother who
speaks English only brokenly, who wears a little
shawl over her head while she sweeps down the long
flights of stairs and who used to play the piano
herself when she was a girl in Germany--and looked
at Mary with a worried, gentle, almost heartbroken
look.
“When I was ten--that was when I stopped school and
went to work--I thought always about when I would
be eighteen and a grand piano player,” Mary began,
fingering the dust-cloth. “Then I was eighteen
and I didn’t have a piano yet, and I was almost
crazy. Eight years I have worked, and I haven’t got
anything yet. And what’s worrying me now is where
we’re going to go. We can’t stay here. Other places
we’ve been we’ve had coal and things, and our money
could all go for the food and clothes. But now
we’ve got to pay for a stove and coal.”
She and her sister, who is nineteen and who can
play the piano by ear when she can find one to
play--Mary herself can only play with one hand by
ear, and “people don’t like to hear that kind o’
playing,” she says--and the oldest brother, are the
only ones who make money. Mary makes seven dollars
a week. All of these details, which she tells
simply, go to show that there is little hope for
a piano. The little, crumpled mother from behind
the chair she is leaning on says, in her broken
way, that a piano is not so easy to get, and looks
hopelessly at her daughter.
“Then we got phonograph, but she only cry every
time he play,” the mother said.
“I can’t bear to hear it,” interrupted Mary. “I’d
rather play myself.”
And so finally the brother took the phonograph
away, about a month ago, since it only made the
girl more miserable than ever.
“And in every house I go to,” she said, “there is
a piano. And one girl comes to the factory, saying
she can play grand, and her father wants her to
play in a cabaret. She’s only sixteen, too. I can’t
be happy,” she finished simply. “I can’t be happy.
And it gets my goat when anybody laughs. And every
single night I dream I’ve got a piano and play so
nice, and every day at work I imagine I am playing.
All I want to do is to play a piano. I don’t want
clothes. If I have good clothes the girls would
want me to go out with them, and I don’t want to go
out. It is only trouble comes of it. All I want to
do is to stay home and play the piano.”
All the family like music, it seems, “but none of
them but me would die for it,” she says. “And my
father hated it. He wanted me only to work, day
and night to work, since I was ten. But he’s gone
away now. They took him away--Randall’s Island.” It
was when the father was home, though, and earning
a little now and then, that the phonograph, which
proved a doubtful blessing, was made possible.
Mary Stober says, and her chin looks very square,
that she knows she could pay for lessons--she
would walk to the factory instead of riding and go
without lunch--if she only had a piano to practice
on at home.
It was a mixture of lysol and iodine that she took
last week--the only things she could find. “I don’t
care what I take,” she says, “if I can’t get what I
want. Eight years I’ve worked and I haven’t gotten
anything yet.” It was last August that she tried
before to kill herself.