Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1893-07-07

business standing for one of his age had
been in the habit Of lodging in an old log
cabin in the lowlands west of the Wabash
during his excursions in the country. One
night the cabin was burned. Calcined
bones were found. Evidence was presented
that these might be the bones of the afore-
said young man, and so people said: poor
Jonesl What pity'
people said" so, but the life insurance
companies did not, for they saw on their
books the evidence that poor Jones" was
insured for a very large amount altogether
too large an amount for man with so few
dependent on him. They also had evidence
that poor Jones" had recently been asso-
ciating with some very suspicious charac-
tiers. The results need not be detailed-the
reading public is quite familiar with them.
The confession of "pal" soon brought out
the fact that Jones" was living quietly in
Chicago and that the whole affair was an
ingeniously contrived scheme to swindle
the life insurance companies.
OF course the uninstructed mass looked
on this as an entirely unprecedented affair,
and old men shook their heads and once
more got off that old saying which has been
| aggravate Seth, 1.-THE world is getting so
y
course, the old men were and are wrong.
The tricks on life insurance companies are
| as old as the business itself, and a little re-
Election will show how they were suggested
by still older tricks in divorce cases espe-
cially that trick which lawyers call ''perso.
nation" The once famous Kansas Indiana
| case Of Millerton versus Millerton will serve
as an illustration, and the general reader
| may find the outlines of it in Richardson's
Beyond the Mississippi"
Millerton left Indiana for Kansas in 1856
| nominally to laid in freedoms cause
really to get rid of his wife. Some may
say tits all the same," but let that pass
| When affairs in Kansas got settled, his wife
| rejoined him. Thereupon he planned g
! little scheme. Driving down to the river
one day with his wife and family, he con
WINGED them that the water was too high
for safe fording; therefore he would swim
| across carrying his summer clothes in g
bunch on his head), get what was needed
in Lawrence and swim back. His wife sat
and watched him reach the middle of the
Kaw. Then he suddenly threw up his hands
| and "sank to rise no more"-that is, he rost
| no more to her view.
| AS matter of fact, he dived and rose be
tween two logs on the Lawrence side
breathed awhile, dived and rose again in
| drift some rods down stream and thus b,
well calculated stages disappeared" Th'
funeral was we'll attended, and the be
reaved widow was almost reconciled to hel
| lot-women were scarce in Kansas in thos,
days and therefore in demand-when an ole
neighbor arrived from Indiana with tn,
news that Millerton was there in fine health
and disporting himself as gay widower
Mrs. Millerton fastened to her old home a
once and captured him in the very presenc
of a lady to whom he was engaged. Imag
nation must supply the details, for "hel
hath no fury like woman scorned."
If this and the like of this were all, W
could afford to laugh but there is an aw
fully dark side to the picture. In view o
the abundant evidence it is impossible t.
doubt that scores-yea, hundreds-of mos
atrocious murders have been committed t
secure life insurance money. And tn
heart sickening feature of it is that by tn
very nature of the case nearly all thes
murders have been done by poison, an
that poison administered by the neares
relatives-by the husband to the wife, tn
wife much oftener to the husband, anC
most horrible Of all, by the mother to tn
, sonl
1t is but few months since John Shan
of Princeton, N. j., died under circun
stances which compelled his physician
say and the coroner's jury to believe tha
he had been poisoned, and when an inques
was ordered the authorities were horrife
to find that the corpse had been disembov