Killed by their Landlord.

On December 30, 1865, Francis McGaghay noticed that the coal stove in his apartment at 597 Grand Street in New York City was not drawing well. He went up to the roof, tied a brick to a string, and lowered it down the chimney. He found the flue obstructed about eight or nine feet from the top. He went down to the apartment on the third floor, the floor above his, and asked if he could examine their flue. The girl who answered the door refused admission.

McGaghay’s mother, Rosa, and 4-year-old son, Francis Jr., also lived in the apartment. When Francis Sr. came home at 1:00 Sunday morning, he found his mother and son awake but groggy and nauseous. He comforted his son and then lay down on the bed with him. McGaghay did not wake up until 9:00 that night and found himself at a house on Monroe Street, with no idea how he had gotten there. A neighbor, Maria Congrove, had gone to the McGaghays’ apartment around 2:00 that afternoon and found Rosa and Francis Jr. dead. Francis, still alive, was taken out of the apartment.

A coroner’s jury convened on Monday and quickly uncovered the cause of the deaths. Dr. Beach, who performed the post-mortem examinations, found the lungs of both were congested and discolored. The stomachs were also congested, and the livers and kidneys were fatty. The right side of the child’s face was ecchymosed—discolored by bruising. The doctor concluded that both had died as a result of inhaling poisonous gas.

The Grand Street tenement was owned by Mrs. Eliza T. Hunter. She had recently made her son, Edwin B. Hunter, the agent in charge of the building. Anxious to increase his income, he wanted the McGaghays to move out so he could rent more space Bearup & Causker, a tinsmith renting on the same floor. Forty days earlier, he told them they had twelve days to move out. Rosa told him she had hired the place for life and would not move.

Hunter obtained a dispossess warrant but did not serve it. Instead, he told one of the residents, he intended to smoke them out. On the Thursday before the deaths, he brought a mason into the apartment on the floor above the McGaghays and had him insert a flat stone in the flue below the stove. When the mason asked why, he said it was none of his business. At the inquest, Hunter testified that he told the McGaghays not to build a fire as the chimney was stopped.  He acknowledged that he knew that the result would be; if they did not leave it would kill them.

The coroner’s jury returned the following verdict:

That the deceased came to their deaths by suffocation, by inhaling coal-gas, through the action of Edwin B. Hunter, in having a stone placed on the flue of the chimney leading from the room where the deceased resided, at No. 597 Grand Street, December 31^st, 1865.

Hunter was held on $3,000 bail while awaiting the action of the Grand Jury. His mother paid the bail. It is unclear whether the Grand Jury heard the case or indicted Edwin Hunter.

---

Sources: 

“The Case of Suffocation in Grand Street,” The New York Herald, January 2, 1866.
“From New York,” Janesville Weekly Gazette, January 3, 1866.
“The Grand Street Case of Suffocation,” New York Herald, January 3, 1866.
“The Grand Street Tragedy,” New York Herald, January 6, 1866.
“A Murder, Out of the Pale of Law,” Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, January 20, 1866.