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Struck Perhaps to Death-1876

GUNN, REDDINGTON, WAPLE, MCCLUSKY, MCCLOSKY, TIERNEY, SULLIVAN, COSGROVE

Posted By: CHERYL MOONEN (email)
Date: 6/23/2018 at 19:04:18

Dubuque Daily Times, Tuesday, May 30, 1876, Dubuque, IA, Page: 4

Struck Perhaps to Death

One of those cases which shock a community and spread misery over many families, occurs Sunday morning before daylight. A party of young men had been drinking rather freely, and at the hour of three in the morning found themselves on the street opposite First Ward schoolhouse. One of them, Felix Gunn, undertook to take James Tierney, who was strongly under the influence of liquor, to his home. He said that two young men, Michael McClusky and James Reddington, set upon him and beat him. When he parted from them and entered his own house, he says they came after him and they went out again, when one of them struck him on the head with some instrument, but what exactly what he could not say. Justice Cantillon came upon him and procured his statement Sunday morning, which he made, believing himself to be in the presence of death. Dr. Waples was called to see the young man in the morning after he received the blow. He found a fracture of the skull above the external angular process of the frontal bone. Fortunately for the young man this was the safest place that he could be struck in that region of the skull. A ridge exists, within which a hollow is separating the outer from the inner skull. The outer skull is fractured, but the doctor failed to discover by his probe whether the inner skull was fractured or not. He thought that he discovered some indication that it is, but did not wish to risk fatal results by using the probe too much. Such a blow as the young man received, a half an inch above or below, must have proved fatal, for the skull is translucent and is not formed to resist a blow, particularly below, unless it is very tender. The Doctor found his patient bleeding very profusely in consequence of the cutting of the temporal artery, and staunched the blood with much difficulty. The wound was one and a half inches long, and admitted his finger nearly its full length under the skin. The wound is not a clean cut. The Doctor is of the opinion the blow struck with some blunt instrument- such as a stone or a slung shot. He says the wound will not necessarily produce death, as far as he is able to judge at the present, although they are very dangerous.

Our reporter called at the home of the wounded man yesterday and found him in a backyard near Bluff and Jones in a little cabin, stretched upon a bed evidently suffering. His head was very much swollen and it appeared a difficult task for him to talk, for which reason he was not disturbed. His mother states that after the first quarrel and her son had been beaten, he entered the house and the young man, with whom he had quarreled, came over to the house and demanded of her son to return one of their hats. He said he had not the hat, and for the purpose of scaring them away, he went out and told them he would shoot them, when one of the men struck him with the tumble below. The young man does not appear to know which struck him, but his father said it was McClosky.

McCloskey says that Tierney refused to go home with Gunn, and he started with him himself. This, he says, provoked Gunn, who became angry, and stuck Tim Sullivan, one of the party, twice; struck at a young fellow named Cosgrove with a poker, and struck him with a bottle or a slung shot, after which he knocked him down and held him under until the poker was taken from him. He denies striking him with any weapon.
The wounded man is the last of seven children with aged parents yesterday was the anniversary of his twenty-first birthday and he had been making many calculations of having a celebration of the event. Instead of that he is stretched upon a bed which may prove his death bed, another victim – just at the door of manhood – of the frightful doings of intemperance.


 

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