The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-01-28


The community is at present in the midst
Of series of shocking murders which seem
at underlined intervals to sweep over the face
of our civilization, darkening il with tinge
of blood Homicide appears for while to
be epidemic, and men talk gallows philosophy
with tinge of ferocity in sentiment which
indicates all the more how the blood-spjlling
mania seizes mankind in some form or other,
whether under the form of murder or killing
for murder. Two days ago a wretch named
Bolts expiated the shooting of ''Pet" Halsted,
in Newark-moving cause, jealousy. In Cali
fornia woman, Mrs. Fair, is under sentence
for killing man who was about to return to
long~neglected, much-injured wife; jeal-
ousy was the cause here, too. Stokes killed
Fisk-cause, jealousy indirectly not Stokes
but Fisk's jealousy. Two days ago, within the
very hour that the murderer Bolts was hurried
out of the world, girl of eighteen-a Mrs.
Hyde-shot her seducer dead. Yesterday,
in front Of St. Mary's Roman Catholic
Church, German, named Henry Hepner,
deliberately shot and killed his own son, and
cases move out into CHASTITY prominence,
with some hellish distortion of the divine pas
sion, love, at their root. If gallows medicine
is the only specific for this epidemic of MUIR
der, why is it so rarely administered
AT the time that the crimes surge in upon
society each murderer and murderess is
hanged in imagination, and there only. When
the homicide fever passes away for while the
murder virus seems to leave the public mind
too, and the criminal is forgotten with the
crime. The jealousy murders. or those
founded on sentiment, no matter how morbid,
flabby or maudin, always find their apollo
gists among decent people, who never saw
the gashed, ridded or jellied corpse of the
victim. These people illustrate the mania by
applause Of the murder.
The theory of murder mania is true also
Of the more brutal classes of the crime, such
as the car-hook murder, or those that arise
out of vulgar brawls in the dens of vice.
Awakening unanimous condemnation at the
time, they pass into oblivion, and the example
idea of the law is frustrated. While in most of
the murders which come to light the slayer is
found at once or clearly traceable on
account of the incidents of passion which
were part Of the murdered beings life, there
is the class Of murder which is the accompa-
niment of robbery. The failure to trace this
class of criminal is notorious and deplorable
commentary on the efficiency of the police,
whose sensibilites alone appear to be in no
way quickened by the sudden increase of
crime. The Rogers and Nathan murders are
as much wrapped in mystery now as at the
time of their committal, and the murder of the
unfortunate Professor Panormo, couple of
nights ago, seems as If about to be sent to
keep company with the other two mockeries
of our system Of detection of crime, as they
all three shake our belief in the police as a
protective or preventive force. There must
be no effort spared to bring the assassins of
Panormo to justice but the ignorance, sloth
and laundering Of the Brooklyn police give
us little hope of this result. As in the Rosen-
zweig case, some Of the most important links in
the chain of evidence have already been
worked up by the press writer's, and If the So
called detectives will only follow the trail pub
lie vengeance may yet be satisfied.
THE STEAMER HORNET, after q very
"checkered career" arrived in Baltimore on
Friday night She left Port au Prince. where
she had been so long blockaded by Spanish
war vessels, under the convoy of the
United States frigate Congress, but
parted company with tho latter
in heavy gale During her adventurous
cruise in the West Indies Spanish war vessels
and the elements seem to have been leagucd
to accomplish her destruction. And now that
sha has at last reached the haven of safety