Chapter I: Front Matter

This eBook is dedicated to the memory of Joe Cooper

Charles Chapin’s Story

Written in Sing Sing Prison

“The mighty gates of circumstance
Turn on the smallest hinge,
And oft some seeming pettiest chance
Gives our life its after tinge.”

With an Introduction by
Basil King

G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

To Her Who Ever Beckons
To Me from Afar

“Oh, how dark and lone and drear
Will seem that brighter world of bliss,
If, while wandering through each radiant zone,
We fail to find the loved of this.”

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

“The defendant was indicted on September 18, 1918, for murder in the first degree, in that he had killed his wife Nellie, with a pistol, by shooting her in the head. At the time of the killing defendant was, and for several years prior thereto had been, the city editor of the New York _Evening World_. He is sixty years of age. He and his wife whom he killed had been married for thirty-nine years, and the uncontradicted testimony is to the effect that their relations had been singularly devoted.”

The tragic and unusual case of Charles E. Chapin, now serving a term of life imprisonment in Sing Sing, will be well remembered by newspaper readers. The paragraph quoted above is from the report of a Commission which passed upon the sanity of the defendant.

At the time of the tragedy Mr. Chapin wrote a letter to a newspaper associate in part as follows:

“For some time I have been conscious that I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I have fought against it continually, but the pains in my head grow more acute, and I realize now that the time is fast approaching when I will collapse entirely. I dread to think of passing the remainder of my life in a sanitarium so I am doing the only thing I can think of to escape such a calamity. I know how wrong it is, but I cannot go on suffering as I have for months. It takes greater courage than I possess. I have tried to think out what is best to do, and cannot bear the thought of leaving my wife to face the world alone, so I have resolved to take her with me.”

The defendant then went to Prospect Park, a revolver in his pocket, intending to end his life. In a newspaper he saw the headline, “Charles Chapin Wanted For Murder.” Going to the nearest police station, he gave himself up.

That, in brief, is the story of the tragedy which terminated the career of the author of this book.