Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-03-19
A LONESOME DEATH
MAURICE o,RE4G4y TAXES 4 SOIL.
T4RY FLIGHT TO THE BEYOND.
:" Died From Old Age and Lack of Care"
Was tho verdict--A "Globe. Reporter
Visits His Cherries Home---StranRe Fate
of the O'Reagan Children..-A Life Whose
Happiness Must Have Consisted In II.
Ending.

About Z 80 yesterday morning, VIM. Twifert
a laborer residing on the declivity of Dayton's
bluff, near Fourth street, knocked at the door
of the shanty on the corner of Fourth and
Commercial streets, the domicile of another
laborer, named Maurice O'Reagan. Receiving
no response, Twifert opened the unbarred door
proceeded to the inner apartment, and found
OReagan stark and stiff in deaths embrace.
The coroner was notified, an inquest was held.
and a verdict of died from old age and lack
of care" was rendered.
Of course, a GLOBE reporter visited the scene
of O'Reagans sudden demise. The shanty il
situated upon the arid sand bordering on Trout
Brook, which debouches Immediately east of
the depot of the st. Paul & Duluth
railroad. The house, clap-boarded structure.
consists of only two rooms. The Giving room
is meagrely furnished with a good-sized, but
tolerably well-worn, cooking stove three
benches, instead of chairs, table, q rickety
old fashioned bureau, and movable cup
board. The furniture of the inner room, used
for sleeping purposes, is equally scanty. While
there is no actual squalor of poverty, there is
wonderful plenitude of dirt.
| The deceased, aged between 70 and rs years,
was widower, his wife having died about the
year 1870, and since that time he has been his
own and his children's domestic. A strange
fatality seems to have pursued OReagan's
family. There were born to him eight chill
dren, of whom three died in Ireland during
| their early childhood. OF the five remaining.
| three have met with sudden deaths. One per
ished by drowning, another was killed by
boiler explosion, a third met death in railroad
accident, while the whereabouts of the eldest
is unknown. Thus the deceased only had one
son, it may be said who was living, and he is
a locomotive fireman on the bridge train of the
st. Paul and Duluth railroad, and the nature
of his pursuits ID such that he is frequently
absent from st. Paul as much as six weeks at a
time. To all intents and purposes, therefore
O'Reagan may be affirmed to have lived alone,
cooking his own food, feeding his fowls and
doing odd jobs of labor when he could secure
them. Occasionally he would take o spree for
} day or two, and then jog soberly along for a
period. On Friday week he was seized with a
for day or two, but he
recovered from that, and on Friday last, at
P. NJ, when his son, who always lived with his
father during his occasional visits to the city,
left him, the old man in his usual health
and was supplied with comparative plenty of
provisions. He was last seen alive on Sunday
evening at o'clock, being then in his custom
airy health and spirits.
The son was Immediately telegraphed TO,
, and arrived yesterday afternoon, and the abov.
facts were gathered from him by The GLOBE
reporter and from the evidence at the inquest
ihucPeaoeAI u " 1scdEiu olu aye. tutIe Cal
i. be little question but that death was hastenec
l by the neglect. naturally creeping upon one o.
his years, in providing properly cooked victual
q for himself, as, after day of hare
T labor, he would content himsel
with cold victuals, SO the neighbor
said, and this procedure must have told in tn
D course of years, even upon his iron constitu
y ton. There does not appear to have been an.
culpability on the part of the son, whose op
I portunities for labor, like those of his father
were extremely intermittent, and the neighbor
I testify that he afforded what pecuniary aid b
- could to his aged parent. The deceased wa
8 possessed of the honse and lot wherein he lived
but he had no money. The jurors of the in
e quest donated their fees for his burial, an
It when THE GLOBE reporter visited the plac
: again last night, O'Reagan was decently lai
7 out in respectable coffin.