LUNATIC HAD CANCER, ACQUAINTANCE SAYS
Operated Upon in Richmond, Va., and later Went to Free Hospital, Penniless.
Special to the New York Times.
WASHINGTON, April 18. - J.R. McCullogh, a compositor in the
Government Printing Office, living at the Berwick Apartments, 3,308 Fourteenth
Street, Northwest, Washington, a letter from whom was recovered from Thomas W.
Simpkin or Shelley, who shot up St. George’s Church in New York City today, said
to
THE NEW YORK TIMES correspondent tonight that he had only known Shelley for
several months during the latter part of 1919, when they were both employed as
printers at the same establishment at Richmond, Va.
“I knew Thomas W. Shelley,” said McCullogh, “several months last
year when he worked as a compositor in Richmond for the Baughman Stationery
Company, where I was also employed. Shelley came to Richmond about last August,
as near as I can recall. He obtained work at the establishment named. He was
delicate looking and soon after coming there complained of pains in his abdomen.
He was taken to a hospital in Richmond, the name of which now escapes my mind,
and was operated upon for cancer of the intestines. He remained at the hospital
about a month until his money gave out. Then, having no funds and being a
stranger, he went to the Sheltering Arms Hospital in Richmond, a free
institution. He was still there when I left Richmond on Jan. 2 to come to
Washington, where I had obtained employment in the Government Printing Office. I
do not know anything of his antecedents other than that he told me he was
originally from England, that he had been around the world and that he came to
Richmond, he said, from New York City. He was between 40 and 50 years of age and
said he was a widower. As he was a stranger in Richmond and soon ran out of
funds, I sympathized with him and visited him from time to time in the Richmond
hospitals.
“When, after the holidays, I had moved to Washington, Shelley wrote me several
times, telling me of his condition and lack of funds. I answered his letters. In
one of his letters he asked me to obtain the address of C.B. Miller, and mail it
to him. I looked up this name in the telephone book and, finding that Mr.
Miller’s address was given as 1,921 S Street, Northwest, I sent the letter to
Shelley at Richmond, giving him that information. I wrote several other letters
to Shelley at Richmond, including one last week, asking about his condition, but
received no further reply and wondered whether he had died as a result of his
illness. I do not know Mr. Miller, whose address Shelley wanted, and did not
know Shelley before he came to Richmond. So far as I know, he did not use the
name of Simpkin while in Richmond.”
Clarence B. Miller, whose address McCullogh sent to Shelley, was a member of
Congress from the Eighth Congressional District of Minnesota in Sixty-first,
Sixty-second, Sixty-third, Sixty-fourth and Sixty-fifth Congresses, and is now
Secretary of the Republican National Committee. His home is at 1,921 S Street,
Northwest, Washington. Miller was a candidate for re-election to the Sixty-sixth
Congress in 1918, but was defeated by William L. Carss, an Independent, who was
a locomotive engineer on the Duluth, Mesaba & Northern Railway at the time of
his election to Congress, and is a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.
Ex-Representative Clarence E. Miller of Minnesota, when informed by THE NEW YORK
TIMES tonight of the Shelley case, said that he could not recall the man and did
not know why Shelley should have asked McCullogh for Miller’s address.
“I cannot recall any man by the name of Thomas W. Shelley,” said Mr. Miller.
“If, after obtaining my address, he wrote to me I do not recall it. I shall be glad
to look up my records when I reach my office tomorrow morning to ascertain
whether they contain any communication from Shelley.”