Murder
Fort William was the site of the first public trial by European Americans in Oregon. In 1835, the post’s gunsmith, Thomas J. Hubbard, attacked and killed the fort’s tailor in an argument over a young Native girl. The naturalist John Kirk Townsend was appointed magistrate, although he was a friend of Hubbard's. The jury acquitted Hubbard when they ruled the death was justifiable homicide. This verdict was likely the result of evidence that the tailor had alcohol-induced rages.
Read more about this topic: Fort William (Oregon)
Famous quotes containing the word murder:
“It was a hot afternoon and I can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along the street. How can I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spiering’s Lizzie (1985)
“Then tell, O! tell, how thou didst murder me.”
—Thomas Campion (1567–1620)