Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1875 — Caught in His Own Trap. [ARTICLE]

Caught in His Own Trap.

A hoary old villain of Newark, N. J. —William Cunningham by name—was adroitly caught in his own trap, which he had set for the murder of his own poor old wife, who had brought him thirteen children. Cunningham had money and he found a poor fellow, Norwood Hatfield, who had none, but who needed some to help his two brothers out of a bad scrape. Cunningham’s money approached Hatfield's needs at first by stealth, and then came: boldly out and pointed the way to a murder. Cunningham wanted his wife assassinated, and put the job in Hatfield’s hands. Hatfield was not that kind of a man, at least not for so small an amount as Cunningham was willing to give for the perilous work. He listened to him, though, and agreed to make him a widower; but be let the police into the secret while the plot was coming to a head in Cunningham’s brain. Hatfield was advised by the Chief of Police to go on with the business up to the moment of execution. At first it was arranged that Cunningham should leave his back door open on a certain night, by which Hatfield was to enter the house, kill the old woman in her bed, and bind and gag him so that he could not be suspected. On second thoughts that looked rather odd, and Cunningham, himself, was much too near the prospective scene of blood to feel pleasan t contemplating it. It might, besides, give the law a hitch upon him. He abandoned that plan as impolitic, if not impracticable, and concocted an alibi which would place him clear outside of suspicion. Hatfield was shown over the house in the old woman’s absence to see how the land lay and feel at home when he should visit it by himself. It was arranged that the murder should be done at seven o’clock in the morning. Cunningham was to leave the house inno - - cently at 6:30, and take the train for Bloomfield, and return innocently to Newark at 8:30. That strategic movement weuld safely bridge him over the bloody chasm. The officers were on the watch. Cunningham left his home at the appointed moment, and hastened to the railroad. An officer entered the house ana asked Mrs. Cunningham to go with him to the police'headquarters. She was questioned about ner life with her husband, and stated that they w - ere not living happily together. He had not spoken tt> her for the last three months, and about a year ago he had tried to poison her. Although her husband was a man of means he allowed her only two dollars and a half a week to provide for the house. While this examination was in progress an officer was at the depot awaiting the arrival of the 8:30 train from Bloomfield. Cunningham came, according to programme, and was arrested. When the policeman put' his hand on Cunningham’s shoulder, and before a word had been spoken, Cunningham askfed if anything had happened at the house. The officer gave him no satisfaction, and he at once took it for granted that his wife had keen killed. He spoke of her as dead —foully murdered—during his absence, and moaned and groaned in legitimate style. He proved a good actor but a bad tragedy plotter. He thoroughly convicted himself before he was told that his wife was not killed according to contract. This news astounded him. He was locked up forexamination, and at last accounts did not know how the case stood. It would not be safe for him to go home now, and it is not likely he will have the pleasure of contributing two dollars and a half a week for the maintenance of his family any more. A more cowardly old scoundrel probably does not live.—St Louis Republican. A New Yorker visiting this city remarks that the philosophic thought of Boston is common even among the streetcar conductors. He instances the conductor, who, on ringing the bell, the other evening, at a dark side street and being rewarded for stopping his car by presently seeing a fat woman struggle up out of the impenetrable night, remarked as he started the car again: ‘I, had an intuitive perception that she was coming out there.’’— Boston Transcript. The * symptoms of small-pox are: First, a chill, then violent nausea, pain in the head and aching in the bones. On the third day the eruption appears on the forehead and about the face in scattered pimples that feel when the finger is passed oyer them as though a bead or the head of a pin Wereimb edded in the skin. . •