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hanged without the shadow of a doubt. As it was, it required all his
political and family influence to get him clear in one of the cases, and
cost him not less than ten thousand dollars to get clear in the other.
One of these men he had notoriously been threatening to kill for twelve
years. The poor creature happened, by the merest piece of ill fortune,
to come along a dark alley at the very moment that Baldwin's insanity
came upon him, and so he was shot in the back with a gun loaded with
slugs.
Take the case of Lynch Hackett, of Pennsylvania. Twice, in public, he
attacked a German butcher by the name of Bemis Feldner, with a cane, and
both times Feldner whipped him with his fists. Hackett was a vain,
wealthy, violent gentleman, who held his blood and family in high esteem,
and believed that a reverent respect was due to his great riches. He
brooded over the shame of his chastisement for two weeks, and then, in a
momentary fit of insanity, armed himself to the teeth, rode into town,
waited a couple of hours until he saw Feldner coming down the street with
his wife on his arm, and then, as the couple passed the doorway in which
he had partially concealed himself, he drove a knife into Feldner's neck,
killing him instantly. The widow caught the limp form and eased it to
the earth. Both were drenched with blood. Hackett jocosely remarked to
her that as a professional butcher's recent wife she could appreciate the
artistic neatness of the job that left her in condition to marry again,
in case she wanted to. This remark, and another which he made to a
friend, that his position in society made the killing of an obscure
citizen simply an "eccentricity" instead of a crime, were shown to be
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