The Doctor's Escape

1895

"The worst I was ever frightened," said Dr. E. D. Lucas, "was when called at midnight to attend a man reported to be in a dying condition. When I reached his bedside, he was dead and had been for several hours. His wife stood near seemingly calm, and when I told her that her husband was dead she said 'He is not dead. You are a physician, and you must cure him. If you do not, I will kill you!' I looked at her and saw that I was alone with a maniac. In her hand she grasped a pistol, and it was evident that she was determined to use it if I did not restore life to her husband. I knew that I must keep my self possession or all would be lost and felt his pulse, leaned over him as if listening to his heart beats and finally said: 'You are right. He is not dead, but must not be disturbed. He will awaken in the morning. As soon as he awakens give him this medicine,' and I poured some drops into a glass of water. Fortunately the woman was satisfied and allowed me to leave. It was a very narrow escape, and I felt relieved when the woman was taken to an insane asylum." — Cincinnati Enquirer.

Narrowly Escaped Death

New York, 1895

Mrs. Mary Johnson, aged 70 years, wife of Benjamin Johnson, of Jamaica, had a narrow escape from death Friday evening. Mrs. Johnson has been demented for some time. She wandered away from home and traveled as far as Mineola. About 8 o'clock, as the Oyster Bay train was approaching the depot she attempted to cross the track and fell, her body falling across the west bound track just beyond the line of the approaching train. She was unconscious when picked up, her body being badly bruised and her forehead cut.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, April 19, 1895, p. 8.

Miss Donohue Became Insane

New York, 1895

Miss Ella Donohue, about 22 years of age, of Manhasset, became suddenly insane Friday and in her frenzy smashed crockery and furniture in the house of her sister. She was examined by Doctor Hoag and pronounced insane.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Jan. 25, 1895, p. 1.

Sees Glare in Thug's Eyes; She Humors Him

1915

Felt He Was Insane, so Lay Still to Be Bound — Summons Police by a Moan

Suppose you were all alone in the house —
And the back door bell rang just about the time the grocer's boy usually came around for morning orders —
And instead of the grocer's boy a man stood there pointing a gun at you —
What would you do?
Scream? Run? Bang the door shut? Become paralyzed with fear? Try to grab the gun? Pray? Let the thief in?

CLEVELAND, Ohio, Dec. 16. — Pretty Lucille Hoyt, a 17-year-old high school pupil of this city, opened the door in her home to find a man pointing a gun at her.

Lucille says she just backed slowly away.

"As soon as I reached the dining-room door I intended to run and lock myself in the upstairs room," Lucille said.

"But the thief caught me in the dining-room. My impulse was to struggle, but as the burglar grabbed me by both shoulders and shook me, I knew by the glare in his eyes he was insane.

Lay Perfectly Quiet

"It flashed thru my head that some one had said the quieter you were with insane people the less violent they would be.

"So when the fellow threw me on the floor and grabbed a couple of card table covers to tie my wrists and ankles with, I lay like a dead person.

"Then he gagged me with a napkin. The knot was loose and the gag slipped down.

"But the man didn't notice. And he stepped right over the telephone that had fallen to the floor, and ran upstairs.

"I wriggled over to the phone, and just as I got it into my bound hands it buzzed.

Moans "Send the Police"

"It was my cousin, Mrs. B. A. Gilliland. I heard the thief coming down the stairs, so I just had time to say 'Send the police,' when in he rushed.

"He ran past me, cursing. Then I heard him lock the back door as he went out.

"I lay there waiting for the police and I kept thinking 'Where have I seen that face before?'

"Then I remembered he was the same man who had come to the back door to ask for a drink of water Monday. I was all alone, then, too. But he didn't try to get in that time."

The police broke thru the window to release the girl.

Slain By Naked Maniac

Iowa, 1900

James Fitzsimmons Dead, Three Others Injured

Cedar Rapids dispatch: Charles Mefford, a maniac, at 5 o'clock a.m. killed James Fitzsimmons, fatally injured John Drake, seriously and possibly fatally injured Mrs. James Fitzsimmons and then ended his own life.

Mefford was 20 years old and had been insane for a number of years. Two years ago he was in the Independence asylum for a short time, but escaped and was never returned. He was not generally considered dangerous. Saturday night about ten o'clock, while clad in nothing but a shirt, he darted out of his home, a raving maniac. He was seen two or three times between then and midnight, but the police failed to find him.

Shortly before 5 o'clock Reginald Andrews, the janitor at the Old Ladies' Home was awakened by crashing glass. The next moment Mefford stood before him. stark naked, swinging a neck yoke. He warned Andrews that his time had come and swung the neck yoke in an effort to brain him. The latter dodged and grabbed the weapon, threw Mefford on the bed and choked him until he begged for mercy.

Then Andrews agreed to give him a bath, a suit of clothes and some breakfast, which apparently satisfied him. Rushing through the house, Andrews locked the twelve or fourteen old ladies in their rooms, notified the police by telephone, and then ran across the street, to the home of Joseph Drake for assistance.

Drake dressed, picked up a revolver, and they started out. As they did so Mefford, carrying an ax, was seen to plunge through a window in the home of James Fitzsimmons, about 150 yards away. As he entered the room Mrs. Fitzsimmons uttered a scream. Mefford swung the ax and brought it down toward her head. Her uplifted arm saved her life; the arm was broken in two places and she sustained a serious scalp wound. Mr. Fitzsimmons hurried to the aid of his wife and his skull was crushed with the ax, death resulting immediately.

The maniac then rushed into the room of Miss Katie, who escaped with a few scalp wounds. Starting down stairs he was met by Drake who snapped his revolver four times at the madman, each time upon an empty shell. Mefford grabbed the revolver, ran a few blocks and killed himself with the one load the revolver contained.

—Humeston New Era, Humeston, Iowa, July 4, 1900.

Sledgehammer Bandits Raid St. Paul Safes

1920

Also Steal 800 Quarts of Liquor From State Asylum

ST. PAUL, Minnesota — The band of "sledgehammer" bandits, after looting more than fifty safes in Minneapolis in the past month, evidently have begun operations in St. Paul by raiding three Como avenue business places.

The lock of a safe at the Great Lakes Coal and Dock Company was hammered open and $500 worth of Liberty bonds and $40 in cash was taken.

The same gang is believed to have hammered the lock from the safe at the Carnegie Dock and Fuel Company, and strong box in the office of a third Como avenue company.

That the "sledgehammer" bandits have a taste for good liquor as well as safes became apparent when nine of them in three automobiles made an informal call on the State asylum for the insane at Anoka.

Eight hundred quarts of liquor, used for medicinal purposes, packed in the refrigerator, were stolen.


Hens Laying for a Record

LINCOLN, Nebraska — Twenty-six hens laid 23 or more eggs each during February in the national egg-laying contest being conducted by the Nebraska agricultural experiment station. One hen laid 28 eggs. She is a Rhode Island Red, owned by M. C. Peters, of Omaha. Two others, both White Leghorns, laid 25 eggs each. Seventeen hens laid 22 eggs each.

Sane Woman Describes Her Experiences in Insane Asylum

1905

"Ordeals There Would Drive Any One Crazy"

NEW YORK, Dec 2. — "The best way to make a sane person demented is to send him or her to a lunatic asylum. It is death in life. Men and women with staring eyes look into yours and despite your certainty that your sanity is perfect, you suffer one of the most horrible sensations that a human being can have — you feel that the men who are watching you believe that behind your eyes lies the same distortion of intellect that is harbored by the heads which wag from side to side around you."

Mrs. Sara Dean Reid, bride of Capt. Albert Dean Reid, who is in the Tombs on a charge of bigamy, talked thus last night in Mount Vernon about her nerve-wrecking experience as an inmate of Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, from which she was released by order of Judge Platt, who, at the demand of her counsel, John M. Digney, had her sanity investigated. Mrs. Reid was placed in the institution at the request of her three brothers a few days after her marriage. The woman is heiress to a large estate.

"The most vivid imagination cannot conceive," said Mrs. Reid, "the horrors of an insane asylum. I felt as one might feel if suddenly transferred to another planet. Everything was strange. The voices were not human, the glances were full of terror, the treatment was brusque, and the life so mechanical and circumscribed that I am astonished I was not driven crazy myself.

"The one thing that helped me to fight off the impulse to shriek as the unfortunates around me did was writing. Day by day since a year ago I have jotted down my impressions of the awful place, and I shall some time publish a book on the subject.

"An insane asylum spells monotony. You rise in the morning, bathe, eat, walk, and, after the hours have worked themselves out with the dreariness of the ticking of a clock, you go to bed again while all around are mental wrecks. You cannot sleep. You never lose the consciousness that you are sane among the insane, that mad people who may at any moment rend the air with shrieks that will kill the slumbers you woo are almost within arm's reach.

"I was treated by the attendants just as if I were really insane. They watched me constantly. I could walk nowhere without having eyes following me. I could not go out without having two nurses, grim and reticent.

"About seventy insane people were in the ward to which I was assigned. There were all manner of lunatics, and when I tried to sleep at night the babble of their incoherent, senseless voices awakened me with a start.

"There is one prayer I have added to those I learned in childhood, and it is 'God keep the sane from the asylums.' "

Mrs. Reid will not return to her brothers. She has decided to live at Mamaroneck, for a time, as the guest of the Rev F. F. Gerran, rector of St. Thomas' Episcopal Church.

Insane Man Threatened to Kill Restaurant Keeper

Lincoln, Nebraska, 1920

Threatened to Kill Restaurant Keeper

Man Under Arrest Knew How to Use Gun

Told a Physician That He Intended Shooting Up the Place During the Evening Meal Hour

When two deputy sheriffs and a deputy United States marshal dropped into a South Tenth restaurant during the supper hour Tuesday evening and gazed curiously around and then consulted in whispers with the proprietor, cashier and other attaches, interest upon the part of everyone in the place became quickly apparent. The patron who had been but a moment before busily engaged in the mastication of a chop turned quickly upon his high stool and gazed with suspicion upon his neighbors on either side. Soon everyone in the long room as well as those in the kitchen to the rear had been apprised of the fact that an insane man had threatened to appear and shoot up the place and that the officers were looking for him.

The crazy man failed to reach the restaurant, but had he arrived it is thought he would have found it necessary to content himself with shattering dishes and coffee urns with his bullets, as it became speedily apparent there would have been no human targets in sight. As a wise general has at all times a line of retreat available, so has the long headed proprietor of a bean bureau who has been warned that armed invasion is imminent. So everyone from the boss to the dishwasher was prepared to duck and decamp at the first indication of hostilities. One well known lawyer gulped down what was in his mouth, slid from his altitudinous perch and throwing a bill at the alert cashier, vanished through the front door. He is said to have reached his office in record time.

But the madman came not. Deputy Sheriffs Anderson and Moore and Deputy United States Marshal Carroll went from the restaurant to the room which he had been occupying at 1448 0 street and there found him. He is named in the insanity complaint which had been lodged against him in the office of the clerk of the district court as M. L. Munger and during the afternoon he had called at the office of a physician and announced his intention of shooting up the restaurant.

He assured the doctor that the people at the place had been taking his meals, were determined to kill him, and had been putting poison in his coffee. It was his intention to go there at supper time, and upon the slightest indication that there was anything wrong he would kill everyone in the place. As soon as the man had left his office the physician reported the matter to the proper officers and steps were taken to place Munger under restraint. The deputies first visited the restaurant and after ascertaining that the slaughter had not as yet taken place, they went to the room of the demented man.

A knock at the door was responded to by Munger, who was at once taken charge of. The man had in his possession a large automatic revolver with a box of shells, and in his room was also a rifle with ammunition. He was very friendly with the officers, but insisted upon forcing cigarets upon Deputy "Bob" Anderson. He frankly assured that officer that the "pills" would lull him, that being the end avowedly aimed at. He was convinced that Anderson had a large family and carried life insurance and he thought that "he would be worth more dead than alive." Munger was locked up in the county jail and it was thought he would be given a hearing before the insanity commission some time during the day.

Nothing was learned by the officers of the family or antecedents of the unfortunate man, who claims to be a mechanic and an inventor. He had in his room a suit case, lined with sheet iron and fastened with five locks, and it was stated his patent is kept in this receptacle.

—The Evening State Journal and Lincoln Daily News, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 25, 1920, page 3.

Father of Luikart Babies Sues Wife

1920

BRINGS DIVORCE ACTION IN A MICHIGAN COURT

Charges Mate, Who Poisoned Little Girls, Was Believer in "Sex Antagonism"

DETROIT, Mich. -- Roy E. Luikart, father of Shirley and Edna Luikart, whom the mother, Mrs. Hazel Luikart of Royal Oak, attempted to poison last September, has brought divorce action in the Circuit Court, it became known. Mrs. Luikart is held in the Ionia Hospital for Criminal Insane.

The bill of complaint says the mother was much in the company of a Royal Oakman, who had promised to take her to Europe just before she tried to end the lives of her daughters.

Thought "Women Were Toys"

According to the bill of complaint, Mrs. Luikart became a devotee of the philosophy of "sex antagonism." The husband says she told him "women were the toys and playthings of men, that men never suffered, and that she had made all the sacrifices and he had made none."

The bill reviews the poisoning case, and how Shirley and Edna were saved by being taken to Dr. Carter in Chicago, where they attracted the sympathy of the entire country. Luikart alleges that on the day of the poisoning Mrs. Luikart and the man he names had an appointment, which the man failed to keep.

Mother Named in Suit

The Royal Oak man is made a party to the court proceedings. Two other co-defendants are Alexander Zora, stepfather of Mrs. Luikart, and Mrs. Luikart's mother.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 3.