December 5, 1886

YOUNG FINN’S JEALOUSY.
He Tells His Adored to Call at a Hotel,
Where She Finds Him Dead.

NEW YORK, Dec. 5.—Thomas F. Finn registered at the West Side Hotel, Sixth avenue and Fifteenth street, on Friday evening, and got a room for the night. When it was entered yesterday morning he was found lying on his bed with a bullet hole in his breast and a discharged revolver in his hand. He had been dead for hours. A letter addressed to the landlord of the hotel stated that he was going to take his life, and asked that in case he failed to make a good job of it, he should be sent to the New York Hospital.

Finn was twenty years old, and has been a head messenger for the Mutual District Telegraph Company. He committed suicide through jealousy of the attentions by young men to a girl named Kitty Daly, twenty years old, who works in Stein’s silk factory. The suicide left a note which read:  “K.D. has been the cause of this. She will understand all. Finn.”

The girl says she knew him since childhood. For a year past the couple have kept company. She refused to marry him once, but kept up the acquaintance. He was of a very jealous disposition. He met her on Friday by appointment, and said he had intended to kill her and himself, but Father Wall, of St. Agnes’ Church, had been trying to dissuade him, so he had told the priest that he would let the girl live, but made no promise about himself. Upon leaving her he told her to call at the West Side Hotel next day. She went there yesterday and learned his fate.

From the Collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
The 1886 Morbid Scrapbook