Excited to be able to join in a short NF collection again! And again indulging my fascination with digging around the New York Times archives. This one is the detailed report of a murder trial from one of the very first issues of the NYT in September of 1851. I hope it's not too deadly dull for everyone else; I found the minutiae of the (fairly mundane) crime and trial fascinating since it's not something you normally see in "big" histories and probably the only time all of these participants were noticed by the press in their whole lives.
Also, as a retired cop, I was also very entertained by how completely similar the actions of the participants and witnesses at the scene were to my own experiences 150-some years later, right down to the perpetrator being all bluster as he's being taken to jail and then begging the officer to just kill him once he realizes he's locked up. Been there, done that, plenty of times! Anyway, here it is:
"The Murder Trial of James Sullivan" by anonymous from the New York Times, September 24, 1851
https://librivox.org/uploads/knotyouraveragejo/snf072_murdertrialjamessullivan_anonymous_cm_128kb.mp3
26:58
source:
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1851/09/24/443417382.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
If the PL-er cannot see the link, let me know and I can email a copy of the PDF!
A couple of notes: I slightly renamed the article, which was originally headlined just "The Murder Trial" because that's a commonly used headline and who knows, I might want to read another murder trial article at some point and will need a headline that differentiates. Hope that's okay.
There's a section where the image is dark and somewhat smeared but I did the best I could. If the listener thinks that the text reads differently and it changes the story at all I'll happily re-record.
Also, the one attorney's name changes in the course of the article from "Buckley" to "Bulkley" but I decided to be consistent and keep it as Buckley, so that was a slight change from the text. There was also a sentence that repeated exactly, so I assumed that was a misprint and only read it the once.
Thanks!
Colleen