28 Jun 1894 - The St. Johnsbury Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, Vermont)
Mrs. Halliday has just been sentenced, to Monticello, N.Y., to die in the electric chair, having been found guilty of murder in the first degree. Her career involves a remarkable story of crime, as will be seen by the following:
Mrs. Halliday’s maiden name was Eliza Margret McNally. She was born in the County Antrim, Ireland, thirty years ago, and came to this country with her parents in 1867. Fifteen years ago she married Charles Hopkins. Upon the death of Hopkins about two years after their marriage, she married Artemas Brewer, a veteran and a pensioner, who died within a year. Her next venture was Hiram Parkinson, who deserted her within a year. She then married (Parkinson being still alive) George Smith, a veteran and a commrad of her second husband, Brewer. In a few months she tried to kill Smith by giving him a cup of poisoned tea. Failing in her design she fled to Bellows Falls, Vt. Here she fell in with and married Charles Playstell, the only one of her husbands who could be called young. She was next heard of in Philadelphia, in the winter of 1888. She started a little shop, which, after having insured it, she burned, together with the houses of her two neighbors. For this crime she served two years in the Easton penitentiary. Her next appearance was in Newburg, where she met and married Paul Halliday, a farmer living at Burlingham, Sullivan county, about twenty miles from Newburg. She soon eloped with a neighbor. In Newburg her companion deserted her and she was arrested. Her counsel entered a plea of insanity, and she was sent to an asylum. She soon induced her husband to secure her release. Shortly after her return from the asylum the Halliday house was burned, and an idiotic son of Halliday’s perished. In August, 1893, Paul Halliday disappeared. The women said he had gone away; but the neighbors, one day when she was away from home, made a search of the premises. They did not then find Halliday; but in the barn, covered up with hay, were the bodies of two women, which were afterwards found to be those of Margaret McQuillan, the wife and daughter of Thomas McQuillan of Newburg. A few days afterwards the body of Paul Halliday was discovered under the floor of the house. Mrs. Halliday was placed in the county jail. For a long time after her arrival she refused to eat, and it became necessary for the jail physician to force liquid food through her nostrils. In November she tried to strangle the sheriff’s wife. A few days later she tried to set fire to her clothes. In December she tried to hang herself wit the binding torn from the bottom of her dress. On December 15 she came near finishing herself by gashing her throat and arms in a terrible manner with glass broken from her cell window. For the last three months it was necessary to keep her chained to the floor.