20 Jun 1891 - Middletown Times-Press (Middletown, New York)

DECLARED INSANE - Mrs. Paul Halliday Examined by a Physician - The Stolen Team Recovered. Opinion of the Women at Her Home.

Mrs. Paul Halliday, alias Jennie Williamson, alias Lizzie Brown, was examined yesterday in Newburgh by Dr. L. E. Hanmore, who declared her insane. He cannot decide whether the affection is chronic or acute unless he obtains further information regarding the woman’s earlier life.

The team of horses obtained at the stables of Alanson Hallock have been recovered. John Glynn, the man who was with Mrs. Halliday during her escape, was taken along by Halliday and Van Allin Whitbeck when they started on the search for the lost team and was able to locate it. One of the horses was traded with James Scott, of Ulsterville. The other horse and the wagon were given to Joseph Wyatt, shoe place is near Burlingham. From the latter the traders received in exchange a horse and a old backboard wagon. Then they returned toward Newburgh. Near that place they fell in with a gypsy gang with whom they traded one of their horses for a gypsy’s horse.

The searching party obtained the horse and wagon in Wyatt’s possession, and the horse in Scott’s keeping was found. When the party was returning from Ulsterville, along the road from New Prospect Church to Pine Bush at the bridge over the Shawangank Kill, that marks the boundary line of Ulster and Orange counties, Glynn was arrested by an Ulster county officer at the instigation of Scott. At Newburgh the horse that had been traded to the gypsy gang was secured.

The problem now seems to be as to the disposition of the woman. The question hinges on the mental condition of the prisoner. Under Sheriff Goodale says in his 12 years of experience in dealing with all sorts and conditions of criminals that if this woman is feighning insanity she is doing it exceedingly well.

Mr. Halliday was in Newburgh again yesterday. He favors the theory that the woman has been in this country for years. He acknowledges that she has an accent to her speech that is peculiar to the speech of the natives of a certain county in the north of Ireland, and she displays a familiarity of the scenes of that locality that causes him to believe she is a native of Ireland. However, he remembers that she once betrayed a knowledge of “card cutting” or gypsy fortune telling, and this convinces him that she herself has been gypsy.

Mr. Halliday’s funds are exhausted. Mrs. Halliday’s money - she had a considerable sum - is in the keeping of the Recorder. Yesterday the man made an application to Recorder McCroskey for some of the money, but he was informed that it belonged to Mrs. Halliday and that he could have none of it from the court. Mr. Halliday then borrowed twenty-five cents from a liveryman with which to purchase his breakfast. He claimed the money at the court on the assertion that Mrs. Halliday had stolen it from him, but this claim was not allowed.

A gentleman near Walker Valley, who is well acquainted with Paul Halliday, was seen by a Times reporter this morning. He stated that Halliday’s wife told her husband how she had murdered his half-witted son. She had hit him in the head with an ax, cut his throat with a bread knife, and wrapped the body in a blanket, took it down stairs and sat fire to the house. From the time she first came there our informant says she was looked upon by the neighbors as a dangerous person.