Death of Robert Cunningham. .

 

Last Saturday, afternoon Robert Cunningham, who has been living in Edgerton for the last three months, bade his wife and little ones good-bye, saying that he had some business to look after in Olathe and that he should return on the local evening train, but if he missed that, that he would surely return on an early freight. Little did either of them think of death or that he should be a corpse within thirty-six hours. Upon coming to Olathe, he transacted his business, and having some leisure time before the train came he started around to see some of his old friends. He was accompanied by a stranger, whom he introduced to several persons as Mr. ---, from Paola. Between five and six o'clock he met Marshal Easdale to whom he introduced his friend. They had been drinking some, and in a sort of a bantering way and to show Easdale how well he was prospering, Cunningham pulled out of his pocket a twenty-dollar gold piece and some seven or eight dollars in silver, at the same time asking him whether he got many of them now-meaning the gold piece. Easdale told him to be careful of his money and left him in front of the Patrons' Bank. During the evening, Cunningham and his friend visited various places and, judging from their actions, semed to be indulging in something stronger than water. He was seen last on the streets about ten o'clock by Marshal Easdale, who advised him that he better go to bed.

In the meantime he and his friend went to the Fort Scott depot, where the friend disappeared, and Cunningham, after trying to board a passing freight train for Kansas City, was found lying on the track by the night watchman, who made him get up and go away. This was a little after twelve o'clock, and the next that the watchman of him was when he was brought into the waiting-room all mangled aud bleeding and more dead than alive. Whether he was knocked off while persisting in boarding the train, or run over while lying on the track, is difficult to decide, as the railroad men are very reticent and Cunningham's mind would naturallv be rather confused.

A messenger was sent after Doctors Williams and McKinley, and a telephone message sent to Marshal Easdale to bring a carriage for a man who had been badly hurt by the cars. Easdale took the carriage and Dr. Julien, and hastened to the scene of suffering. The Doctors found Cunningham's spinal column broken at the seventh vertebra, between the shoulders, and his body paralyzed from there down. The car-wheels had passed over the instep of the left foot and the right ankle, crushing them both into a jelly, and besides these, he had several severe though not fatal cuts on the back of his head. He was conveyed to Dr. Julien 's office, as the hotels were all full, and the Doctors, realizing it was for the best, told him that he had not long to live, probably not twenty-four hours at the outside.

He was apparently conscious, recognizing everyone, and took the intelligence that he could not live with the utmost composure. His wife was sent for and the scene when she came, with her three little helpless children, was heartrending in the extreme. Everything possible was done to relieve his sufferings and prolong his life. He died about 2 o'clock Monday morning, and was buried in the Olathe cemetery that afternoon.

 

Olathe Mirror

July 7, 1887

Page 3, col 4