Famous Pension Case

Springfield, 111., July 27.- It will be ! ' remembered that last Saturday "Bill" i "íewby or his doublé, was convicted of I resenting false affidavits and of [ , ury. The case in its entirety eclipses i he Tichborne claimant affair in the ' ivay of a human mystery. One day in the spring of 1S61, not long 1 after the fall of Sumpter, a body of ! irreen troops marched from their temporary barracks in Fairfield, Wayne ounty, 111., to the railway station and were whirled away to the front as fast as steam could carry them. They were the men of Company D, Fortieth Illinois volunteers, and they were mostly all, lank, rawboned fellows, Illinois farmers, with the brawn and muscle and the hardihood and ability to withstand exposure and privation essential to the successful soldier. Among them was one who was the brownest and the brawniest of the lot. His pame was William Newby, but his comrades n arms called him what he had always jeen called by his sturdy neighbors up n White county- "Bill" Newby. He was 35, and he was as likely a looking lian as one would find in almost the whole union army. When the líag ws fired on by the Confederates and President Ijincoln issued his cali for volunteers, "Bill" Newby, like the loyal citizen he was, put his farm in order, dssed his wife and six children goodbye, shouldered his musket and marched away with his friends and neighbors :o defend the Union. "Bill" Newby was a good comrade and brave soldier. He was immensely popular with the men of his regiment and when, during the bloody flght at Shiloh, the survivors of his company found him dead or dying on the battle field, and when, along with other victims of shot and phell, he was, as they supposed, dumped into a trench and forever buried from the sight of man, he was mourned with more than usual sincerity. He had been found on the field with a bullet through his head; if he was not already dead he was drawing his last breath, and his comrades looked upon him as a dead man. This was while the battle raged and men had little time to note the condition of those who had fallen. When the fighting had ceased and the smoke had cleared away and caring for the wounded and burying the dead was the order of the day, a number of bloody and discolored corpses were hastily buried, and it was supposed that the body of "Bill" Newby was among them. He was among the missing at roll cali and his name was in the gloomy roll of the dead transmitted to the North to spread grief and mourning throughout the land. But was "Bill" Newby dead? Was it his corpse that was buried in the common trench on the field of Shiloh? That is the intangible mystery of this case. "Bill" Newby's wife, Feriba who now sorrowfully believed hersel] his widow, in 1SC4 was granted a pension on account of her husband's death It amounted to $S a month, and for each of her children she received an additional pension of $2 a month unti the children came to the age of sixteen The pension for herself, that of $8, she drew until a few months ago. The circumstances of her surrendering o: this pittance Have to do with the mos interesting story, which is the subjec of this article. Feriba Newby never took another name. She remained, as she suppcsed, a widow and devoted her life to the rearing of her children. Twenty-eight years after the battle of Shiloh, in the spring of 1891, a poor crippled old man wandered into the town of McLeansboro, Hamilton county 111. He was a tramp and most wretchedly afñicted. There was a pitifu shambls in his walk and his head jerkec convulsively from side to side at every step. Three or four old soldiers were standing in the street, and as the olc man limped by, one of them said "That looks like 'Bill' Newby." Chang ed he was most pitifully, and there was little in common between this shambling, halting, insane old mendicant and the big and strapping fellow vho had marched with them nearly thirty years before; but there was something in his eye and in his voice ana a general reminiscence in his face am form that carried him back in their memory to the time of the early war They allowed the old man to wander on and he finally reached White countj and was admitted to the poor house. The old settlers looked up "Bill' Newby's sons and told them about the old tramp, and the sons obtained from their father's brothers a complete description of the scars and other marks which distinguished the anatomy of their father. Then they went to the poor house and found that the olc vagrant bore all the marks and scars enumerated in the description and tha they were in the identical spots as given. This was enough to satisfy the boys that the ragged old man was really their father, whom from their childhood they had mourned as dead, and they tried to persuade him to go home with them, but the old man, his shattered mind perplexed and disturbed by their attentions, refused to accompany them. Indeed, so fearful was he tbat he would be subjected to greater restraint than that imposed in the poor house that he ran away, but his sons followed him and took him home. They clothed him in decent garb, cui'bed his apparent ambition to go unwashed, unshaven and unshorn forever and forever, and when he was in as presentable condition as was possible under the circumstances, showed him to their relatives and all the old soldiers of the neighborhood. Without exception, all who had known "Bill" Newby in the vigor and strength of his manhood pronounced this poor, old, shattered wreek of a man to be the identiciil "Bill" Newby who had been left for dead on the battle field of Shiloh. His wife took him to her bosom as her long lost husband and his brothers sustained the theory that he was in reality the lost one. Recently, however, two of his sisters have broken away from this belief and now denounce the old man as a fraud and a pretender. Restored to home and family and friends, the next step was to obtain for the aged veteran the pension which would righteously be his were he really "Bill" Newby. The minie ball which pierced his head at Shiloh had not only rendered the soldier a helpless cripple, but had also dethroned his mind. On this account the pension would be large and with arrears would amount to about $20,000. This was accordingly applied for. The pension authorities discovered that the widow of "Bill' Newby had for years drawn a pension. This was decidedly suspicious. Special agents were put to work upon the case, with the result that a legal proeeeding involving a most rem&rkable state o.f affairs was begun. The agents of the' pension bureau, after a searching investigation, came to the conclusión that an attempt was being made to perpétrate a fraud upon the government of the United States and caused the arrest of the putative "Bill" Newby on an i:idictment covering four points. "Rickety Dan" Berrton now stepped into this most remarkable story. The government detectives declared on the witness stand that the old man who has been put forward as the' medium of extracting $20,000 f rom the treasury of the United States is not "Bill" Newby at all, but "Rickety Dan," who was bom up in the Tennessee mountains in 1S45. He was born a cripple and has come through life with a limp and hob: ble, which has earned him the sobriquet ! of "Rickety Dan." The Bentons moved to Illinois soon after his birth and settled on a farm. "Rickely Dan" grew up a poor, deformed creature, whose physical imperfections were no greater than those of his mind. Oíd man Benton died, and after a protracted struggle with poverty Dan and his mother went back to Tennessee. F.ut times were no better there ihan in Illinois, and poverty no less formidable an enemy, and "Rickety Dan" soon jecame an inmate of the poor house. ?his way of living became in time second nature to liim and he migrated 'rom one almshouse to another until, counting the span of his whole life, he íad become acquainted with the interors and the rules and regulations of sixty-five of these institutions. In 1S77, "Rickety Dan" feil in the way of the greatest temptation which had ever invaded his life. His eye allghted ipon a fine span of Tennessee horses, which he at once p.ppropriated as his own, and down he went to the Tennessee penitentiary for sixteen years. A 'ew years later Dan escaped from privón and went straight home to see his mother. But oíd Lem Sawyer, who had inown him all his life, saw and recognized him and toted him back to prison. In 1889 Dan was discharged from prison and resumed his patronage of the poor houses. In 1S90 he was one of ihe charges of the Mount Vernon, 111., poor íouse. At the same time Carroll NewDy, a brother of "Bill" Newby, was an inmate of the almshouse, but no evidence has been brought forward to show that the two penstoners ciaimed each other as long lost brothers. From this almshouse "Rickety Dan" wandered off to HcLeansboro, Hamilton county, and from that timo on his liis:ory is identical witii that of "QiU" Newby, brought back from the dead by some strange interveniion oí providence to end his days among his friends and people and to chüm a pension of $20,000. The theory of the prosecntion in this singular case was that "Bill" Xewby was really killed at the battle of tíhiloh and that his bones have been ciust these many years. They claim that poor, oíd, half-witted "Rickety Dan" was simply the tooi of a designing plot to fleece the people of the United States of a comfortable sum of money, and they wanted to know if the putative "Bill" Newby is not the original "Rickety Dan," when and where and under what circumstances did "Rickety Dan" drop out of the life of this earthly sphere? On the other hand the defense contended that the old cripple with the shattered mind is the only and original "Bill" Newby. They admitted that for years he has been known as "Rickety Dan" Benton and they held that it devolved not upon them to exploit the ultímate fate of "Rickety Dan." According to their story "Bill' Newby, shot through the head and left for dead on the battle field of Shiloh, was gathered up by the confederates after the battle and carried to Andersonville prison, where he was known as "Crazy Jack." They produced witnesses who swear that the defendant is the identical "Crazy Jack whom they saw, moaning in agony, drag himself to the fetid pool of the prison and drink of the stagnant water. Finally rejeased from prison, "Bill" Newby, or "Crazy Jack" permanently crippled in mind and body by the cruel wound in the head received at Shiloh, was, according to the story of the defense, taken to Florida by a relative and there cared for for several months. At last he wandered away and was sent to a poor house. Gradually working his way up through Tennessee, he was mistaken by some one who had known "Rickety Dan" for that person, and, finding it convenient to answer to that name, he adopted it as his own. From this time on he becomes identified with the "Rickety Dan" of the prosecution, penitentiary experience and all. The trial of this strange case occupied nearly two weeks and aroused the most intense partizanship in the minds of the throng that packed the court room. It is undeniable that local sympathy was overwhelmingly with the Newby family and the Democrat's dispatches last Sunday morning told how narrowly the government's officers escaped being mobbed by the crowd when the court g-ave its verdict that Bill Newby was a fraud and a swindle.