RESULTS OF THE AMERICAN DIVORCE LAW

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 114, 14 April 1870, Page 6

RESULTS OF THE AMERICAN DIVORCE LAW

The New York papers of the 16th and 27th of November report a crime which has caused great sensation in America. On the evening of the 25th, Mr. Albert D. Richardson, a correspondent of the New York Tribune was shot in the abdomen by Daniel M'Farland, a lawyer, while standing in the Tiibune publication office. He is in a very critical condition, and his recovery is doubtful. The coroner has held what in America is called an ante-mortem examination into the circumstances of the case. In answer to the usual questions in such cases, Mr. Richardson stated that he resided at Woodside, N. J. ; he was unable to say whether he would die of his wounds or not, and announced that he had some hope of recovery. He then proceeded to make his statement as follows :—": — " About 5 o'clock yesterday afternoon I stepped into the "Tribune" office and asked for my letters ; at that moment I first saw Daniel M'Farland behind the counter, pointing a pistol at me ; he seemed to me to have come from behind somewhere ; he fired instantly and simultaneously with the first glance I got of him ; the muzzle of the pistol in M'Farland's hands was, I think, about four feet from me ; the ball entered my stomach (abdominal region) ; I came out of one of the, north Park-row doors, and went upstairs into the editorial rooms, where I laid down on a lounge and asked that a surgeon be sent for ; Dr Swan and other physicians came, and I I was afterwards removed here." The jury found the following verdict: — That the said Albert D. Eichardson came to his wounding by a pistol in the hands of Daniel M'Farland, on the 25th November, 1869." The coroner accordingly issued a commitment for M'Farland, who has been lodged in the Tombs. A friend of the assassin supplies an explanation, and what he intends as an excuse, for the crime in a letter to the papers : — "Yesterday at 3.45 o'clock, Mr. M'Farland was at my office, in a dreadful state of excitement bordering on insanity, and with tears, he informed me that his wife had obtained either in Indiana or Illinois a divorce, without his knowledge, and had married Eichardson, and they were living together as man and wife in New Jersey, and that Eichardson was selling his real estate there, so aa to avoid the execution that must be issued on the judgmenthe expected to recover agaiust him in their pending suit for damages, and that he understood that Eichardson meant to go to California and live there. I tried to pacify him, and advised him at once to commence an action against Eichardson, and abide the decision. He did not seem to understand my meaning, but appeared to me and my clerk to be in a perfect state of frenzy, and in that state he left my office." The next, and most disgraceful scene, was the marriage of the dying man with the seduced wife, for by the law of New York she was' still the wife of M'Farland. This ceremony, which we can only regard as a gross outrage on human and Divine law, was performed by no less a man than Henry Ward Beecher, assisted by the Eev. N. M. Field, D. D., ed'tor of the New York Evangelist, and the Eev. Mr. Forthingham, a leading Unitarian clergyman, Horace Greely being present.