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Show JACK SHEA AND I By William Marion Reedy. A dispatch in the Saturday morning papers an- nounced that Governor Major of iMiBsouri had paroled John Davis Shea, who was serving a life sentence for the murder of Policeman Patrick Doran, in St. Louis, in 1881. I was in the old Third district police station the night of that murder. There came a message spelled out in letters on a sort of clock-face by telegraph that Shea and some other prisoners had escaped from jail. -Shea was known as a desperate burglar. I had a special interest in him because one of his pals, Johnnie Cunningham, Cunning-ham, had been a neighbor and a Bchool chum of mine, and one of his sisters a very early sweetheart sweet-heart of mine. Cunningham had escaped with him. (Now, the police had Cunningham booked as a desperado, but T did not see him that way. At school he was strong in penmanship, and on Christian Doctrine. He was a gentle boy and kind. I remember that one morning when wo were serving mass at St. Bridget's church, he cried out suddenly kneeling at the altar that ho saw an angel standing by the priest, pointing where the apparition appeared. I cou.d not see it. And the priest, after the mass, reproved him for his fancies, but he persisted that he had seen the angel. Johnnie was adventurous and daring. He could run like a deer. He would lay in wait for the farmers coming down iCass avenue to the old Round Top market, and mount their wagons, taking watermelons, muBkmelons, tomatoes. In time there were rumors that he held up men on the street at night, taking their money. He was an expert till-tapper. He could leap over a counter lightly, open the money drawer and get away without much noise until the little bell which shopkeepers hung over their doors at that time, rang to announce his departure. Pursued, he always escaped, for he was especially swift, as well as soft footed. Likewise, he was expert in robbing the pie wagons of their sweets as they stopped before groceries and bakeries in Kerry Patch. But I knew him as a boy who delivered milk for his mother, in the region about Fourteenth and CFallon. Often I went with him on his rounds. He would lift and tilt the milk can while I held the pint measure and poured its contents into the housewives' measure and took the tin ticket therefor. I had played truant with him, and in winter when we tired of skating, we would go to a blacksmith shop to be near the fire, and the smith would make us help. Or we would burgle into stable lofts and nestle In the hay, so cops would not see us. He was a boy with a sweet smile and hu could c' up old bootlegs boot-legs Into long strips which he would plait beautifully beau-tifully into five-strand whips, with handles fairly fair-ly carved out of pieces of broom sticks. He was, as I have intimated, a pious boy. I remember remem-ber he believed a story about a man who was struck dead for swearing at his cattle. And he used to lend me Frank Leslie's Boys and Girls Weekly, which contained the interminable intermin-able and never-to-be-forgotten Jack Harkaway stories. Moreover, he could invent stories of adventure with Indians and pirates and tell them effectively to me and to his sister. He wore a shirt with a low roll collar, with fire engines In full career stamped on the cloth, a square coat with a broad collar, tight jeans trousers trous-ers with bell bottoms It was the hoodlum's fashion, though the word "hoodlum" hadn't yet come here from San Francisco. He could box, audi he wasn't afraid of bigger boys, and he always al-ways had spending mjoney plenty, though his mother was poor. Many's the licking I got for going with John- IFJBUHHHiHiii B nlo Cunningham and Ills pals. For ray parents B know of his reputation, and they couldn't see B him as a sort of hero-adventurer, as I did. I B recall Ills doing now and see them only as ad-VI ad-VI entures, as outcropping of romance, as mere dar-B dar-B ing play. If some ono had been ever atop of him, B with monition and a whacking he had not bell be-ll come tho desperado, the burglar, the highway-M highway-M man. I can seo now that in sheer ebullience he B loved to defy tho police and cscapo them by fleet-B fleet-B ness of foot. He fancied himself a Claude Duval, H a Dick Turpin 1 remember ho used to sing a B song of a highwayman called "Brennan on the B Mloor," who robbed tho rich and gave to the H poor. Ho had giaduated into a criminal, and K I into a reporter, at about nineteen. I had in-Aw in-Aw tervlewed him in jail and taken home, serrepti-V serrepti-V tiously, a note for him. I was glad that he had B escaped he was so fleet and fearless, and hand-M hand-M some. It was of him I was thinking when the j police sergeant read off the news of the escape, M and started to tho old Republican office to turn m in my copy. At Washington avenue I heard a B shot, a ringing of police clubs ond the street-curb M and shouts. I went up to Eighth street, and there B I found some officers around an officer lying on a M loading platform, dead. It was Pat Doran with B whom I often walked tho beat and chatted in the fl early morning. He used to glvo mo cigars that B -vero "too good to bo given to the sergeant." Jack fl Shea, fleeing from other officers, had run almost B into Doran's arms and killed him. B I "went back to the police station and had B barely arrived there when John David Shea was B brought in by other officers. Ho had been club-B club-B bed over the head and punched in the face. Blood B flowed down upon his lips' and ho licked it into his fl mouth with his tongue. And from the blood came B a strong odor of booze. Shea was very drunk. B Ho was sent back to a cell Ahere I got an in-B in-B tervlow from him for my paper. His talk was B maudlin. He "didn't know nothin,' " and "never B done nothin.' " He wasn't much more than a B boy. H Well .... Shea escaped from the jail B again and disappeared. He was discovered in B ' the Pennsylvania prison. He served there from 8 1883 to 1887. In October of the latter year he B was sentenced here to bo hanged. The case was fl appealed, he was tried again and convicted of jj murder in the second degree. He was sentenced HB for life. That case was appealed, and while the B appeal was pending, he escaped again. He was B found in prison in Ohio in 1894, brought here and B immured in the penitentiary in 189G. He has been B la prison since 1883 about 31 years. Now he B comes out a broken man. He was not so for- B tunate as was Cunningham, who was killed while B riding the bumpers in West Virginia shortly after B his escape. B I can't for the life of me, seo why it is that, B while Shea is coming out prison a wreck, I am B going off another case of parole you may call It E to Europe this week with a party of the best B fellows in the world, and with a pair of kidneys B done up by too great devotion to the absorption H of the local product that makes Mdlwaukee jeal- B ous. Shea was a boy much like me, and had a IB natural right to as much as I have had of tho B world. There was nothing In mo entitling me to B ' the good time I have had, while he was a pariah B and a convict. In tho matter of reckless ad- B venture, as a boy, I wasn't much, different frcm B, him. I know that I and Cunningham were much B1 of a piece mentally. It doesn't seem fair to the B Cuninghams and the Sheas. I'm quite sure that B I've been quite as bad, boy and man, as they BE were. The only thing I can see In which I had ft the best of them was In parents that kept tr"ck ' of me and paddled me when I went off upon ad- B venture. Shea has had the dregs of life; I've B had tho best of it and some dregs, too, at times. i . I'm not such a hell of a success, and I hope that I'm not surrendering now to tho pride that apes humility, but I can't see that each of us has "got what's coming to him." If that were true of me, I fear I should not bo much better off than Is John David Shea, whoso bloody head, bloated and bruised face on that night I interviewed him is still before mo as I wiite. As my good fortune was not my desert I am sure that his bad fortune can no more have been wholly his fault. In such a mood looking at life and its gifts to one and to another, who can refrain from thinking that life is verily "a tale told by an idiot." , But maybo I am too hasty in judging. Maybe May-be I anticipate. There may be something coming com-ing to mo that will make the balance as between be-tween Jack Shea and me more even. If not here, then hereafter. I don't know. Now, if I were John David Shea I should think I wonder what he does think of what life, or man, has done to him all these years? |