The Brooklyn Wife Murder.

Little Murders

 

(From The National Police Gazette, November 10, 1883)
 

The Brooklyn Wife Murder.  

 

A Saloon Keeper, Prompted by the Green-Eyed Monster,
Kills his Better Half.

 

The shooting of Mrs. Thomas Young by her husband formerly a clerk in the Internal Revenue Department, and latterly a saloon keeper and politician, has created much excitement in the city of Brooklyn. The affair occurred on Tuesday, Oct. 23. Husband and wife had quarreled for some days, and on the 20th ult. Mrs. Young, who was a woman of great personal beauty, left the conjugal roof and went to live with her mother, Mrs. Mary Cole, at No. 95 Tompkins avenue. On the 23d Young called at this place and asked his wife to return to live with him. She refused emphatically. To his further entreaties she said,

“You have often threatened to kill me, and I know you intend to do it now. You have a pistol in your pocket, and you have come here to kill me.”

Young said he had no such intention, and denied that he had a pistol. He then appealed to his mother-in-law, and asked if he could not go into a private room with his wife, so that they could talk the matter over. If he could see her alone, Young said, he could induce her to return to his home. Both mother and daughter objected. Young again denied that he had any murderous intention, but even while he was speaking his wife saw him draw a pistol from his pocket. She ran from a back room on the first floor, where they had been talking, toward a front room, but before she could escape Young fired directly at her, the ball entering her abdomen.

James McCabe, who lives in the upper part of the house, ran down stairs when he heard the shot. Seeing Young with a pistol in his hand and Mrs. Young lying on the floor. McCabe knocked the husband down and took the pistol from his hand, and held him until the arrival of Roundsman O’Reilly, of the Thirteenth Precinct. After the pistol had been taken from his hand, Young got down on his knees and begged his wife to say that he had not intended to shoot her. Mrs. Young could not speak, but her mother said that no such statement could be made truthfully, because she had seen Young take deliberate aim at her daughter. On the following day the latter died and Young was held to await the action of the grand jury. Jealousy was the cause of his trouble with his wife.

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Reprinted from "The Brooklyn Wife Murder." National Police Gazette 10 Nov 1883.