A Drunken Gardner Runs Amuck and Finally Shoots Himself
Chicago, September 3 1890. – Crazed by liquor Wm. Sigert, a gardener, near Cross Park, put a tragic end to his existence tonight after terrorizing the entire neighborhood.
For several years Sigert has been a gardener and lived with his wife at the corner of Horn Avenue and Addison Street. This morning he visited the city as usual to sell vegetables. He returned in the evening gin an intoxicated condition. During the day he had bought a revolver, and with the weapon in his hand he entered his home and stood before his wife, who was holding her baby in her arms, raising the weapon to her breast, he was about to take her life, when Bertie Wilwack, the servant, came between them.
Being a buxom girl and possessed of nerve, she grappled with the infuriated gardener and succeeded in taking he weapon away.
Sigert then seized a butcher knife, which lay near, and holding it menacingly over the girl, he demanded the return of the pistol. Brave as the girl was, she threw down the revolver and ran screaming from the house.
The cries of the girl were heard by several men who were passing, and they hurried to her assistance. With bloodshot eyes, the madman stepped from the door of his cottage, and, with an oath, leveled his weapon at the breast of the foremost man. Three shots in quick succession were fired, one of the bullets passing through the coat sleeve of George Schultz. The sudden appearance of the gardener and his war like actions frightened the men who had come to the girl’s assistance, and they fled in every direction.
A great crowd had now gathered at a safe distance from the house, and the maniac quietly looked at them with the smoking revolver in his hand. Some one had taken the precaution to send in a call for the police. A few moments later the loud ringing of the gong was heard and the patrol wagon dashed through the crowd. Sigert watched the approach of the horses, and, raising the weapon above his head, he darted behind the house.
As the wagon stopped and the officers leaped to the ground, they heard a sharp report, and Sigert’s dead body rolled out at their feet. He had stood closed against the house on the opposite side from the direction in which the wagon was coming, and had sent a bullet through his brain. The police picked up the dead body of the gardener and carried it into the house. While at work in his garden about six weeks ago, Sigert had been prostrated by the heat, and has shown signs of it since.
Times Picayune – September 4, 1890
Transcribed and contributed by: Frances Cooley
