The Mysteries of Mary Tobin.

Mary E. Tobin.

Thomas W. Armour, janitor of the Clifton Boat Club, Clifton, Staten Island, on May 12, 1889, found the body of a young woman washed up on the rocks near the club. She was about 30-years-old, five feet five inches tall, with a light complexion and a plump figure. She wore a gold ring with stones in a cat’s eye setting and several pieces of black jet jewelry. The only other object found on the body was an Episcopal prayer book. The body was fully clothed, and Coroner Hughes found nothing to indicate foul play. Decomposition had set in, and the coroner determined that the body had been in the water about eight days.

Though badly decomposed, friends and relations identified the body as that of Mary E. Tobin, who had been living for the previous two years in West New Brighton on Staten Island. She had been the office assistant of Dr. S.A. Robinson but had resigned on April 13 and was last seen in West New Brighten two days later.

Mary had planned to visit her family in Franklin, Pennsylvania, whom she hadn’t seen in two years, after first stopping to visit a friend, Mrs. McKenna in Brooklyn. She packed her belongings in two trunks and sent one to Franklin and the other to Brooklyn. Mary left on April 15 but never arrived at either destination.

With a Knife in His Heart.

Patrick S. Donovan, better known as “Snip,” began drinking champagne after the first race at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, New Jersey, on August 6, 1893. The wine continued to flow as he watched the day’s races and Donovan appeared to be in a jovial mood, but he may have been trying to drown his sorrows. “Snip” Donovan was a successful and well-known horse trainer, but he had recently been discharged from the stables of Pierre Lorillard in a dispute over training methods. Donovan was also having a run of bad luck in his betting. In spite of his problems, witnesses agreed that Donovan had been in a good mood throughout the day.

After the last race, Donovan wanted to keep drinking so he and John Chew, a stable hand who worked for Lorillard, hitched up a buggy and went to Oceanport. Chew, the more sober of the two drove the horse. They drank for several hours in Oceanport then went to the Monmouth Hotel near the track and had some more. Those who saw them that night said the men appeared to be on friendly terms, but, sometime after midnight the mood changed. Donovan had been drinking heavily, while Chew drank only three bottles of beer. Chew was ready to leave the hotel, but Donovan wanted to stay for another drink.

Lewis Wolf Webster.

Perry Harrington and his wife, Maria, were spending a quiet evening at their farmhouse in Geneva, Ohio, on December 18, 1884, when the door burst open, and a masked man boldly entered the house. He pointed a cocked revolver at Mr. Harrington and demanded his money or his life. Seeing that he and his wife were at the mercy of the intruder, Harrington went into an adjoining bedroom to get his money. 

After hearing the man speak, Mrs. Harrington said, “I think I know you.”

“You do, do you?” he responded and fired the pistol hitting her in the left arm. As he did so, the handkerchief fell from his face and she saw to was Lewis Webster, the man she suspected. Mrs. Harrington ran to the kitchen, and he fired again hitting the same arm. She rushed out to the street and with blood streaming from her wounds ran to a schoolhouse some 40 yards away from where an entertainment was in progress. 

Society Well Rid of Him.

Edward Hovey, aged 22, was an idle, dishonest, violent man with dissolute habits, living in New York City in 1882. His occupation was painter, but as of April of that year, he had been unemployed for four years and had been sentenced to Blackwell Island three times for petty theft. During Hovey’s second prison term, his wife, Lizzie, decided that she had had enough.  She took their little daughter, who was sick with scarlet fever and went to stay with her 19-year-old sister, Fanny Vermilyea and her husband Jerome in their apartment on 38th Street. The landlady, Mrs. Burns, had a small grocery and candy store on the first floor and gave Lizzie a job there.

When Hovey got out of prison, he tried to get Lizzie back, and when she refused to have anything to do with him he threatened to take her life. Whether or not he was serious, he did not have time to act; soon after he was arrested for stealing a coat and was back on Blackwell Island.