A Balance of Probabilities.

The morning of December 11, 1859, eleven-year-old Priscilla Budge carried a cup of tea to her mother’s bedroom, where she found her mother, lying on the bed with her throat cut. Mrs. Budge was known to be mentally unstable and her husband, the Reverend Henry Budge, immediately declared that his wife’s death must have been suicide. The coroner’s jury agreed and Mrs. Budge was soon buried—a quick conclusion to an unpleasant event. But as it turned out, it was not the conclusion, just the opening argument of a debate that would go on for years.

Joseph Sherer.

Little Murders:

From Defenders and Offenders:

Joseph Sherer.

"Two human forms, one that of a young man, the other that of a girl, the latter cold in death, the former in death’s agonies, each weltering in blood, that had streamed from deadly wounds; a revolver empty and harmless, now that its fatal work was done. This was the ghastly sight that met Police Captain Davidson of Albany, N. Y., on the night of June 16, 1888, when one of the doors leading into a bedroom on the second floor of an eating house on William Street, had been broken open. The man’s name was Joseph Sherer, and the woman’s Lizzie McCarthy. Investigation revealed the fact that Sherer shot Lizzie, who was his sweetheart, because she refused to marry him, and then shot himself."

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Defenders and offenders. New York: D. Buchner & Co., 1888.

An Unfortunate Organization

Phrenology, the theory that a person’s character is determined by the size and shape of his head, was quite popular in America during the 1850s. A phrenological analysis of Reuben Dunbar in 1851 found him to be excessive in Destructiveness, Combativeness, Aqusitiveness, Secretiveness and Firmness, while being deficient in Self-esteem and Philoprogenitiveness.  He had “an unfortunate organization” in which his moral faculties were not sufficiently large to balance his animal propensities. While the phrenologist professed scientific objectivity in the analysis of Dunbar’s head, she may have been  somewhat influenced the fact that, at the time, Reuben Dunbar was charged with murdering his two young stepbrothers to protect his inheritance.