The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1888-05-05 00:00:00

" Mrs. Moreland,
"31 or 51, Monroe Street,
"Mobile, Ala."
,

It was her intention perhaps to enclose the letters in
this envelope, and it is supposed that through an over-
sight she left it on the floor undestroyed. Miss Bull
then turned her attention to killing herself. She
removed her clothing and arrayed herself in her night
garments. Some of her skirts she used to curtain the
windows with. Others she tore up, and with old
neNispapers and bits of rags she caulked the windows
and doors all about the apartment. The screwdriver
stood her in good stead for this work. When all was
completed to her liking she took the implement and
stepped up to the two gas jets in the room, one on
either side of the dressing case, loosened the screws
confining the cocks, and let the cocks drop on to the
floor. Then she went to bed to die. When the door
was burst open the next day the woman was stone
dead. She had .apparently fallen asleep painlessly,
On , a little stand, near the dressing case, stood a
bouquet of partially withered hot-house roses. On the
mantel were two bottles of medicine. One was a
proprietary medicine for nervousness, which was put
up in Philadelphia. In a pocket-book on the dressing
case was found the sum of 20do11ars. The dead woman's
poem's dwelt almost wholly upon convent life. Some
of them were incomplete, and others voluminous.
Several of them had evidently been torn out of a large
notebook.

A MURDERER'S FATHER'S
GRIEF.

Samuel N. Brooks, the father of "Maxwell," the
murderer of Preller, has issued a long and fervent
manifesto addressed "To the American people." In
the course of this appeal he says : "I have left
'Sunny Bank,' my once happy home in old England,
I have left the broken-hearted mother and sorrowing
children, I have come across the Atlantic Ocean to
implore for myself and for them that the Govenor of
the State of Missouri will exercise this power, con-
ferred on him by law, and commute the terrible sen-
tence, of death hanging over my child, and I make
this lappeal to the public to ask you to assist
us in obtaining this relief. It is impossible that
he I uld have committed that murder. He is
inca able of it; it was not in him. It was foreign to
his ery nature. We, his father and mother, who
hay seen and watched over him from his infancy
up, know him and his disposition and his character
better than anyone in the world, and we know that
he did not murder his companion, Preller. When we
say we know he did not murder him, we mean so far
as auy other than God and the accused can have any
knowledge on the subject. That he was indiscreet
and foolish—aye, lamentably so—in undertaking to
perform an operation upon his companion, as he
did, we are ready to admit. We do not seek to
exonerate him from blame in the matter, but we do
not think his life should be forfeited for an offence
he did not and could not have committed. Nothing is
more probable and likely than that he did attempt to
perform an operation on Preller, for, though educated
as a lawyer, and not as a physician at all, it was the
most natural thing in the world for him to attempt
the operation, for he was always given to experi-
menting with chemistry and medicine, and he brought
over to this country with him a regular doctor's
outfit, including medical books, instruments, and
drugs, and he was foolish enough to think himself
competent to use them. It was as much like him
and as natural to him to undertake to treat Preller as
it Was unlike him and altogether impossible for him
to attempt to murder him.
BU