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 31st, 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.
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