THE ARREST AND HOW IT WAS EFFECTED.
We give the account of the arrest in the words of Officer Nevins:
Captain Smith and myself left the city on Thursday, in the twelve o’clock train of the Long Shore Railroad, for Stonington and Providence. The same afternoon we arrived at Stonington, and went on board the Stonington boat Commonwealth, to make inquiries for a sailor man, his wife, and child. The boat arrived that morning about two o’clock, and of course our only chance of getting trace of the murderer was from the officers of the boat. We heard of several women and children, but they did not answer the description; so we waited until nine o’clock that night, when Mr. Howard, the baggage-master, arrived in the Boston night train. He gave us information of two or three different women who stopped on the route between Stonington and Boston. The description of one man, woman, and child, who stopped at Canton, Massachusetts, was so near, that on the arrival of the boat from New York, at two o’clock on Friday morning, we left in the train which carried forward her passengers. On arriving at Canton, however, we found that the woman was not the one we were in search of, so we immediately returned to Providence, being satisfied that the murderer could not have taken the Stonington route. In Providence we called upon Mr. George Billings, detective officer, who, with several other officers, cheerfully rendered us every assistance. We drove around the city to all the sailor boarding-houses, and to all the railroad depots, questioning baggage-masters and every one likely to give us information, but could get no satisfactory clew, so we concluded they had probably come by the Fall River route, and Captain Smith went down to the steamboat Bradford Durfee, to make inquiry there. The deck hand remembered that on the previous morning a sailor and a little sore-eyed woman and child came up with them, and asked him if he knew any quiet boarding-house, in a retired part of the city, where he could go for a few weeks. He told him he did not, but referred him to a hackman, who took him off to a distant part of the city. The hackman was soon found, and at once recollected the circumstances, and where he had taken the party. It was then arranged, to guard against accidents, that the hackman should go into the house, and inquire of the landlady if this man was in, pretending that two of the three quarter dollars which he had given him were counterfeit. He went there, and the landlady told him that the man was not in, but would be in that night. Arrangements were then made for a descent upon the house at two o’clock on Saturday morning. At this hour I knocked at the door, and at first the landlady did not seem inclined to let me in. I told her I was an officer who had arrested the hackman for passing counterfeit quarters, and as he had stated that he got them from the sailor, I had come to satisfy myself of the truth of the story. She opened the door, and we went up to this man’s room, some seven or eight of us, and found him in bed, apparently asleep. I woke him up, and he immediately began to sweat—God, how he did sweat! I charged him with passing counterfeit money, because I did not want his wife to know what the real charge was. We got his baggage together, and took him with it to the watch-house. I searched him, and found in his pocket the silver watch, since identified as Capt. Burr’s, also, his knife, pipe, and among the rest, two small canvas bags, which have since been identified as those used by the captain to carry his silver. In his pocket-book was $121, mostly in five and ten dollar bills of the Farmers’ and Citizens’ Bank of Brooklyn. There was no gold in his possession. I didn’t take his wife’s baggage, and I felt so bad for her that I gave her $10 of the money. Poor woman! as it was she cried bitterly, but if she had known what her husband was really charged with, it would have been awful. I took the $6 from the landlady that he had paid in advance, because I didn’t know but the money might be identified. When we got him to the watch-house, I told him to let me see his hands, for if he was a counterfeiter, and not a sailor, as he represented, I could tell. He turned up his palms, and said, “Those are sailor’s hands.” I said yes, and they are big ones, too; and then I told him I did not want him for counterfeiting, and he replied, “I thought as much.” So I up and told him what he was charged with, and he declared upon his soul that he was innocent, and knew nothing of the matter, and was never on the sloop. I don’t think his wife knew anything about it. Some time before he had picked up a yacht, and was to get $300 salvage, and when he came home so flush with money he told his wife he had got the prize money. I asked him if he would go on to New York quietly with us, or stay in jail ten or fifteen days for a requisition. He said he would go with us, and we started at 7 o’clock in the morning. He behaved so coolly and indifferently that I at one time almost concluded we had mistaken our man. At the New London depot there was an immense crowd of people waiting to see the prisoner, and, when we went through the crowd, they cried out, “There’s the murderer; lynch him—lynch him!” I told him that I would shoot the first man who touched him. At every station after that, as we came through there were large crowds curious to see the prisoner.