The Misses Franklin, of Glenn Falls, Conn., armed with pistol and axe, put a burglar to flight minus two fingers. 

Two girls frustrated a burglary the other night at the home of Col. Daniel Franklin, a retired merchant of Glen Falls, a thriving village four miles north of Plainfield, Conn. Col Franklin was away. The only persons at home were Mrs. Franklin who is an invalid, and her daughters, Emma and Matilda. They were startled some time after midnight by the noise of somebody breaking in at the rear of the house.

Emma took a revolver from the bureau, Matilda got an axe, and together they stole downstairs just in time to find a big ruffian climbing into a window.

The burglar had one hand on the sill. Matilda raised the axe and quickly brought it down on the hand, while Emma fired two shots. With a cry of pain the burglar dropped out of sight.

A light was struck in a few moments, and underneath the window were found two fingers which had been cut off near the hand.

The pistol shots aroused the neighborhood and search was made fore the burglar, but no trace of him was found.

Reprinted from National Police Gazette, December 10, 1892

How a too presumptuous shoe dealer’s attention to a female customer was resented by her male escort. [more]

What Happened to a Clerk who Tried a Pair of Shoes on a Girl.

A young man and a very pretty girl entered a shoe store in Chicago one afternoon last week. She was lately from a New England seacoast town, noted for its institutions of learning and intolerance of anything like impropriety. Her cheeks had still the color peculiar to Eastern girls. The clerk advanced briskly, and with his sweetest smile inquired her wants. She wanted a pair of high-button boots, and, having selected a pair to her liking, seated herself in a little place partitioned off for the purpose, to try them on. Her escort stood at a little distance, looking through the window into the street. The clerk was all attention. He sat down beside the girl, and proceeded to put on one of the boots. She looked a little astonished when he sat down beside her, and a moment later she uttered an exclamation of such unmistakable indignation that her escort sprang forward, and, seizing the clerk by the collar, kicked him clear across het room into a case of rubber shoes, which stood half empty.

“Take that you scoundrel,” cried the exasperated student from Yale, tossing a box of shoes on top of the clerk, “and see if you can’t wait on a lady without insulting her.”

The clerk, too much scared to move, lay doubled up in the box, when the proprietor came quickly forward.

“Call the patrol and have that man arrested,” cried the clerk feebly, as he saw his employer approaching. “He assaulted me; he’s a dangerous man.”

“Yes,” retorted the student, as he piled two more shoe boxes on the whimpering clerk, “call the patrol and have this bundle of garbage dumped into some vacant lot.”

The proprietor apologized to the young couple and assisting the humiliated clerk out of the shoebox, told him to put on his hat and leave the store.

Reprinted from the National Police Gazette, December 29, 1883.