100 years ago in the Record

Saturday, Aug. 17, 1918

The man whose body was found in the Poestenkill creek yesterday has been identified as Patrick Hooper of 2338 Seventh Avenue, The Record reports. Hooper’s death is just the latest tragedy for his family. His brother, American soldier James Hooper, was recently killed in action in Europe, while his son drowned earlier this summer in Watervliet. Hooper was living apart from his family in the Northern Hotel on River Street at the time of his apparent suicide. The body is identified by battalion fire chief William J. Cunningham, who is brought to Frank P. Hines’s undertaking parlor this evening by police detective Jack Lawrenson. The officer expected Cunningham and another man, William Murphy, to identify the body as a missing person named Killduff. “When they saw the face of the dead man they were startled,” the Sunday Budget elaborates, “It was not that of the man they were in search of, but that of one they knew as well.” Cunningham is a close friend of Hooper’s. Mrs. Hooper and two daughters subsequently corroborate Cunningham’s identification of the body, which is taken to her home. “It is believed that despondency, engendered by continual reverses led the man to take his own life,” our reporter notes. Hooper cut his own throat before jumping into the creek. An autopsy de- termined that he died from a combination of hemorrhaging and drowning. Cunningham and other friends tell reporters that the death of Hooper’s brother “told heavily upon him.”

No Clue Obtained

Investigators have been unable to track down the person or gang who broke into the Peerless store at Fulton and River streets early this morning. $375 worth of furs were stolen from the downtown establishment.

Second Precinct police captain James B. Shaughnessy suspects that the criminal element that comes upstate every summer for the Saratoga racing season is to blame for the robbery.

“I would not be surprised if it turned out that one of the track followers who got to Troy broke on the way to New York did the job,” Shaughnessy tells the Sunday Budget.

A Fulton Street window was broken shortly after 4:30 a.m. “Whoever did it … worked quickly,” Shaughnessy presumes, “as Officer Bell, on whose beat the store is, passed there at 4:30 a.m. on his way over the part of the post taking in the docks, and all was safe then. It was while he was on the docks the window was broken and the furs pulled out.”

Saratoga Springs has seen an unusually high volume of crime this season, despite wartime efforts to keep “loafers” off the streets.

-- Kevin Gilbert