Courts, Criminals and the CamorraTrain, Arthur Cheney
History
Courts, Criminals and the Camorra
Train, Arthur Cheney
Camorra; Criminals -- United States; Justice, Administration of -- United States
The reasons for these homicides were of every sort; police officers and
citizens were shot and killed by criminals trying to make “get-aways,”
and by negroes and others “running amuck”; despondent young men shot
their unresponsive sweethearts and then either blew out their own
brains or pretended to try to do so; two stable-men had a duel with
revolvers, _and each killed the other_; several men were shot for being
too attentive to young women residing in the same hotels; an Italian,
whose wife had left him and gone to her mother, went to the house and
killed her, her sister, her sister’s husband, his mother-in-law, two
children, and finally himself; the “Gopher Gang” started a riot at a
“benefit” dance given to a widow and killed a man, after which they
fled to the woods and fired from cover upon the police until eighteen
were overpowered and arrested; a young girl and her fiancé, sitting in
the parlor, planning their honeymoon, were unexpectedly interrupted by
a rejected suitor of the girl’s, who shot and killed both of them; an
Italian who peeked into a bedroom, just for fun, afterward rushed in
and cut off two persons’ heads with an ax—one of them was his wife;
a gang of white ruffians shot and then burned a negro family of three
peacefully working in the fields; a man who went to the front door to
see who had tapped on his window was shot through the heart; a striker
was killed by a twenty-five-pound piece of flagging thrown from a
roof; there was a gun fight of colored men at Madison, Wisconsin, at
which three were shot; a gang of negro ruffians killed and mutilated a
white woman (with a baby in her arms) and her husband; masked robbers
called a man to his barn at Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and cut his
throat; an Italian was found with his head split in two by a butcher’s
cleaver; a negress in Lafayette, Louisiana, killed a family of six with
a hatchet; a negro farmer and his two daughters were lynched and their
bodies burned by four white men (who will probably also be lynched if
caught); a girl of eleven shot her girl friend of about the same age
and killed her; several persons were found stabbed to death; a plumber
killed his brother (also a plumber) for saying that he stole two
dollars; a murderer was shot by a posse of militia in a cornfield; a
card game at Bayonne, New Jersey, resulted in a revolver fight on the
street in which one of the players was killed; bank robbers killed a
cashier at twelve o’clock noon; a jealous lover in Butte, Montana, shot
and killed his sweetheart, her father, and mother; a deputy sheriff
was murdered; burglars killed several persons in the course of their
business; Kokolosski, a Pole, kicked his child to death; and a couple
of dozen people were incidentally shot, stabbed, or otherwise disposed
of in the course of quarrels over the most trivial matters. In almost
no case was there what an intelligent, civilized man would regard as
an adequate _reason_ for the homicide. They killed because they felt
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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