The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1882-07-27

A correspondent writes: Sauntering uI
Broadway on the shady side onesafternoor
recently | met four murderers in The
course OF half an hours walk.
first encountered General Danie
sickles, who shot Barton Key In Washing
ton q good many years ago now. Or course
there was woman In it, and wondrously
handsome woman Mrs. Sickles was, too.
hadn't seen the General since the wintry
afternoon upon which poor Horace Greeley
was buried in Greenwood cemetery
Sickles limped up to the grave In compan!
with Thurlow Weed and Charles O'Conor
and ne looked then as il he might have
come to Greenwood TO stay. When saw
him last he looked as II he might be gooC
for twenty years yet.
About Union Square friend pointed ou'
TO me decrepit, worn-looking man as
Daniel Mcfarland, who shot Richardson
IN the old Tribune Office nearly twelve
wears ago. l wouldn't have recognized
him. although had the best opportunities
for observing him every day during his
trial in the Court Of General Sessions. That
Richardson murder was full OF dramatic
incidents. remember as IL 1t were yester-
day the death-bed marriage OF Abbey Nc
Farland TO the dying Richardson in the
Aston House. Henry Ward Beecher little
thought, when he ofiiciated at the cere-
mony, that every detail Of the scene would
be pictured WILDLY years afterwarj before
n crowded court, i'm which he himself
would be on trial for an offence similar to
that which Mcfarland charged against
Richardson. That was q dramatic Incl
dent, too, which occurred at the trial OF
Mcfarland when Colonel Charles 5.
Spencer withdrew his fierce denunciation
of Mrs. Calhoun rs procuress, and was
in turn denounced by John Graham, Nc
Farland's senior counsel, for deserving Il
man on trial for his life.
THE NEXT FIGURE
i'm the passing panorama Of murderers was
that of ED" Stokes, who shot jim Fisk
on the stairway opening from the ladies
entrance TO the Grand Central Hotel. He
was standing near the Hoffman House, IN
which he runs an aesthetic bar. Stokes is
the same oM-young man, with the curly
iron-gray hair, that he was when he stole
the purchasable affections OF Josie Mans
field from the dead partner OF Jay Gould.
He has, too, the same self-cOnfdent look
which did not desert him even on that
memorable night, when amid silence ap-
palling, i'm a reom, every inch OF which
sentenced to be hanged by the neck until
he was dead.
A little higher up Broadway. and within
a few yards OF JOhnson's pool-room, at
Twenty-eighth street, where he shot and
killed Tom Donohue, the Tammany mag
nate. / almost ran against John Scannell.
He is great sporting-man now, and at one
time was the hacker OF Rowell, the famous
English long-distance pedestrian. Many
people think still that it was Scannell him
SELF who shot his half-brOther Florence, and
that it was the uncertainty on that very
point which built up in him the desire to
kill Donohue, in order to rid his mind OF a
torturing doubt. The Scannells were pas
sionately attached to one another, and
both, although politicians OF the rougher
sort, were temperance men. The day OF
the shooting they went with crowd into
Donohue's saloon, on Second avenue, TO
break up q political caucus. row fol-
lowed, shots were fired, and Florence
Scannell was hit with bullet in the spine.
He lived for many months, wasting away
until at the time of his death he had been
reduced in weight from $50 pounds to
ninety pounds. John Scannell tried to
shoot Donohue several times, and often
openly declared his intention to kill him.
A plea OF emotional insanity, backed up
by morbid public sympathy, secured him
an acquttal. He was confined for few
months in lunatic asylum, but was given
his liberty when short-lived public memory
had for the time forgotten him. -Four MUIR
derers at liberty on Broadway seems q
startling thing at first, but | am entirely
within the bounds Of accurate statement
when i say that l could within the course
of half day find twenty murderers at
liberty In New York about whose guilt
there is not any less doubt than there i
about the guilt OF the four men L have
named.