Suspicious Scholars

We have the 'What'  -- Max Eglau's murder
We have the 'Where'  -- art studio on 4th floor of school
We have the 'When'  --  afternoon of February 10, 1896
We need the 'Who', 'Why', and 'How' to solve the case.

     Superintendent David Greene found professor Max Eglau lying dead on the floor of his art studio.  He immediately sent for the doctor and police.  The investigators started that afternoon and continued into the night with no one permitted to enter or exit the building except for police or any person belonging there.  Coroner Fitzpatrick, who had arrived at 7:00pm, was in the studio where the murder occurred, assisting Captain Casey until 9:00pm.  All the day scholars were permitted to return to their homes at 8:30pm, except for three of the older pupils who were placed under arrest and locked up in the East 67th Street police station under suspicion that they, or at least two of them, may have been the murderers.
      The suspects were Peter Wolfe, aged 18, a blacksmith who resided at 414 E 66th St; Adolph Pflander, aged 16, also a blacksmith who resided at 7 Extra Pl; and Edward Eck, aged 18, a vendor who resided at 154 W 25th St.  The suspicion against Peter Wolfe and Adolph Pflander were aroused from the fact that they worked for Mr Eglau in the studio.  Adolph received 50 cents a month to clean paintbrushes but was replaced by Peter when he became ill.  Adolph returned to work and he exchanged words with Mr Eglau the Saturday before the murder.  The police would not say how Edward Eck was connected with the murder or why they suspected him.
     When the police examined the studios after the murder they found in the painting room, near an easel, where Mr Eglau had been at work on a painting, part of a bone cuff button.  In Peter Wolfe's pocket they found the other part of the same button.  Nothing in the painting room had been disturbed.  There were only a few drops of blood in the painting room and those were near the door leading into the room.  Mr Eglau was found lying on his back in front of the door leading to the painting room.  On the floor beside him lay a shovel (the kind used for mixing clay).  in the modelling room a heavy short stepladder was found overthrown and among the tables was another blood smeared weapon.  This was a piece of hard wood about 18 inches long, square on one end and rounded at the other and used as a pestle in working with clay.  Right beside the door leading into the painting room in the wooden wainscoting was found a deep fresh cut and two dents beside the door, one in the wood of the door frame and one in the plaster beside it.  Coroner Fitzpatrick believes the attack started here.  The first blow struck with the shovel, missed its intended victim and cut into the wainscoting.  Then blow after blow until Mr Eglau was down and that last fatal blow kept him down.  There was blood oozing from the cuts in his head and neck, which seem to have been made by the sharp edges of the shovel, and his nose seem to have been crushed by a blow from the wooden pestle.  The wounds which seem to have been made by the shovel consisted of a long deep cut in the left side of the neck, another smaller cut just above this one, and a long deep cut which reached to the bone, almost squarely across the back of his head.  In one place on the floor was a large blood mark.  On one side of this mark was the print of a bloody right hand, and on the other side a similar print of a left hand.  Mr Eglau's thumb and another finger on the right hand were broken.
     Coroner Fitzpatrick didn't think any of the regular 'inmates' (students who 'live' at the school) had anything to do with the murder.  He said that the front door of the Institution was usually left open so anyone could walk in and through the building.  He also said that there was a fire escape to the yard opening from one of the windows in the painting room.  Coroner Fitzpatrick believed that whoever committed this murder was concealed in one of the rooms when Mr Eglau arrived and attacked him almost immediately.  The coroner also said that the murderer either entered the room from the fire escape or left that way because the window was closed but not fastened.
     It had been ascertained that all three boys under arrest were in their places at the dinner table.  The coroner suggested to Captain Casey that he ascertain whether they could have had time to have gone to Mr Eglau's room and committed the murder between the times when they left their different classes and when they appeared in the dining room.
     Coroner Fitzpatrick believed that the guilty person (or persons)was someone who had been an inmate of the school and knew their way around the building.


-these facts taken from the New York City newspaper, The Sun.

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1896-02-11/ed-1/seq-1/;words=Max+Eglau?date1=1896&rows=20&searchType=basic&state=New+York&date2=1896&proxtext=max+eglau&y=16&x=18&dateFilterType=yearRange&index=5

Max is Dead !

     On Monday, February 10, 1896 at 2:15pm, Max Eglau's art students waited for his arrival.  When the professor did not appear after a few minutes the superintendent David Greene went to Mr Eglau's studio to look for him.  The elderly artist was lying on the floor dead.  It was a bloody mess.  Messengers were dispatched to nearby Mount Sinai Hospital.  The doctor arrived and declared that Mr Eglau had been dead for at least 45 minutes.  He had been killed sometime between 12:05pm and 1:30pm.  The time of Mr Eglau's arrival at the school was confirmed by Dwight L. Elmendorf, the chemistry teacher whose classroom was located immediately under the painting room.  Mr Elmendorf dismissed his class at 12:00pm and was walking downstairs as Mr Eglau was walking up, they met on the stairs.
     Sergeant Hussey along with detectives Keating and Collins arrived from the E 67th Street police station located only half a block away.  The investigation was under way.  All the outer doors were locked and guarded and the entire building searched for some type of evidence which might lead the investigators to the murderer or murderers.  The search continued until 8:30pm when the day students went home.  The Institute for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes is a residential school for boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 14 but anyone older than 14 can take classes as a day scholar. 
     Assisting with the investigation were Acting Captain Casey, Detective Sergeant Weller and Detective Sergeant McCarthy.  Coroner Fitzpatrick, who arrived around 7pm joined Captain Casey in the room where the murder took place and assisted with the investigation.  He came out after 9pm and described his findings.
     The room where the murder was committed was on the fourth floor of the building on the 68th Street side.  Here, on the top floor of an extension of the main building, are two large rooms which were used as studios by Mr Eglau.  Each room is lighted from the top by skylights and by windows.  There is only one entrance to these two rooms from the main hall of that floor.  The room on the east side of the extension was used as a studio and a classroom for teaching modeling in clay.  The room to the west was a studio and a classroom for painting.  The first room which was for modelling had about five or six long tables where the pupils worked.  At the other end of this room, beside the door was a box in which the clay was wet and mixed, and beside that was a sink.  Between these and the tables, and opposite the door into the painting room, was a clear space.  It was in this clear space the the artist,  Professor Max Eglau was found dead.  Evidence showed that there was a struggle.

A Canvas for Murder

     In a previous post entitled 'See No Evil, Hear No Evil', I had mentioned a murder taking place in the school that my great-grandmother attended.
     While searching the internet for any information about Josie's school, I came across an article about an artist named Max Eglau who was murdered at the Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf-Mutes.  It was actually just a snippet of an article from the New York Times.  I tried to view the full article but it wouldn't come up; maybe it was too old?  I was curious to know when this horrible event occurred.  Was my great-grandmother in the school when it happened?  I needed to know more.  I searched and searched the internet for any information about Max Eglau.  I mostly found art galleries featuring his work but I did find a few more 'snippets' of articles regarding the murder.  I was a bit frustrated but determined to learn who Max was.
     I finally located news about the murder from historic newspapers at the Library of Congress and will write about this tragedy over the next few days.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

"Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."   -Mark Twain


     Thomas Braidwood was a teacher whose school was located in Edinburgh, Scotland then he relocated to London,England.  Mr Braidwood changed his vocation from teaching the hearing to teaching the deaf and renamed his building 'Braidwood's Academy for the deaf and Dumb'.  This was the first deaf school in Britain and taught the combined method which was speech and sign.
     Colonel William Bolling of Cobbs,Virginia was influenced by his father to begin an American school for the deaf.  His siblings (two deaf brothers and a deaf sister) were educated at the Braidwood's school and he had a son who was deaf.  John Braidwood, grandson of Thomas and also a teacher for the deaf came to America to start a school in one of the larger cities such as Baltimore or NY.  When Colonel Bolling heard that Mr Braidwood had come to America he invited him to his home in Virginia.  The colonel established the very first deaf school in the United States in March of 1815 in Cobb,VA which was located near Petersberg. Mr Braidwood ran the school and also ran into debt with the local merchants in Petersberg. He fled to the north and the school closed in the fall of 1816.
     While Colonel William Bolling was starting a school in Virginia, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet at the request of Mason Fitch Cogswell was headed to Europe to learn a method of teaching deaf students.  Mr Cogswell's young daughter, Alice was deaf and he had asked Mr Gallaudet to help her.  Mr Gallaudet studied under Laurent Clerc and in 1816 they returned to America.  Thomas Gallaudet, along with Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell co-founded an institution for the education of the deaf in North America.  The 'Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of deaf and Dumb Persons' located in Hartford, CT opened its doors in April of 1817.  Mr Gallaudet was the principal of this school which became the first permanent deaf school in America and over time had its name changed to the 'American School for the Deaf'.  Mr Laurent Clerc was America's first 'deaf' teacher of the deaf and was responsible for bringing OFSL (Old French Sign Language) to America, where it would play a large part in the development of American Sign Language (ASL).
     On the 10th of September in 1851, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet died.  In 1853, the New England Gallaudet Association of the Deaf was founded to address concerns regarding the eduction of deaf children, discrimination, and a general lack of public understanding about deafness.
     In 1864, Bernard Engelsman, a teacher from Vienna, founded the 'Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes' located in Manhattan, NY.  This was the first pure 'oral' school in America.  Oralism is a method of speech training and lipreading which forbids the use of sign language.  Alexander Graham Bell was in support of oralism rather than the manualism (sign language) method of teaching.
     On the 11th day of December in the year 1894, my maternal great-grandmother, Josephine Duper was born.  Josie was born healthy but at some point in her very, very young life (before age 5) was afflicted with Scarlett Fever causing her to lose her hearing.  According to the 1900 U.S. Federal Census, at the age of 5, Josephine Duper is listed as a 'pupil' of the Institute for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes.  Ten years later, she is still in that school but the wording on the census is different.  In 1910, my great-grandmother is an 'inmate', not a 'pupil'.  Although Josie was in a school that focused on oralism, she also knew sign language.
     In January of 1911, a fire broke out in the school but luckily no one was hurt and everyone remained calm.  http://www3.gendisasters.com/new-york/2372/new-york%2C-ny-deaf-dumb-institute-fire%2C-jan-1911?page=0%2C0
Another tragedy struck this school 15 years earlier. In February of 1896, an artist named Max Eglau was murdered.  I will write about that in an upcoming post.  I recently discovered a book by Victoria Thompson entitled 'Murder On Lexington Avenue which takes place at this school. I just ordered it and can't wait to read it. http://victoriathompson.homestead.com/lexington-mys.html
     The Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes is now the Lexington School & Center for the Deaf and is located in Queens, NY.  The school that was located on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan was beautiful.  They don't make buildings like that anymore.
     After researching and writing this blog post I seriously want to enroll in a sign language class.

Bolling Hall Built before 1799. Organized education for the deaf in America had it's origins here when William Bolling brought Scottish teacher John Braidwood in to teach his two deaf children. His success led to the establishment of the nation's first formal school for deaf children. It is on the Virginia Landmarks Register. Photographed 16 Oct 2007 and Contributed by George Seitz

The Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, Hartford,CT








American School for the Deaf, Hartford, CT





This is the school that my great-grandmother, Josephine Duper attended. Isn't it beautiful? I love the architecture.

The Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf-Mutes- NYC 1883

The Manual Alphabet