The State Journal

How a Woman Shut Her Eyes and Waited to be shot by Her Husband.

John Wilson, as the New York Sun tells the story, has for more than a year lived with his family in the third story of 145 Bleecker street. He is forty-one years old, and his wife is ten years younger, and pretty. They have four children, the eldest of whom is a boy of seven. Wilson is sober and industrious, but his jealousy of his comely wife amounts to a mania.

The neighbors in the building say that he has no ground for his jealousy, and Mrs. Wilson says that she loves him too well to be untrue. He has of late been a night watchman on a steamboat wharf. At 1 o'clock yesterday morning he went home and told his wife that he intended to kill her and himself.

"I was sitting in a chair," says Mrs. Wilson, "and there wasn't any way of defending myself. I was certain I was going to be killed, and oh, how I dreaded the shot!" I seemed to think of a hundred things in a second. "My husband took a revolver out of his pocket, and then I shut my eyes. I didn't scream or say a word, but just sat still with my eyes shut, expecting to be shot." The revolver went off once, and I was surprised that I couldn't feel the bullet hit me. I didn't know but I really was shot and didn't feel it for some reason or other." Then another barrel went off, and then another, till five shots had been fired. My oldest boy, who was abed, cried when the last one went off; and then I opened my eyes. I tell you it's awful, waiting that way to be shot."

Wilson had not shot at his wife, but at himself. One bullet went into his stomach, one into his hand, two into the wall, and the fifth, striking a knife in his pocket, glanced off and wounded the boy slightly in the head. The alarmed tenants called a policeman and the father and boy were taken to Bellevue Hospital. Mrs. Wilson was with her husband yesterday, seemingly solicitous for his recovery, which is considered certain.