Fort Wayne, Indiana, February 1901
Issac Slater was a bastard.
Not the kind of bastard that meant that his mom and dad weren’t married. No, he knew who his parents were.
His dad had joined up with the United States Army in 1862 to fight against the rebelling Southern states in the American Civil War. Maybe he wanted to fight to end slavery, or maybe he thought he was caught up in the patriotic fervor that was sweeping through the Union states. Maybe he just wanted to get away from his wife and two-year-old son, Issac.
Whatever the reason, he was there one day and gone the next, fighting for the northern cause until, finally, in 1865, his luck ran out.
During a bloody battle in North Carolina, Issac’s dad was shot in the arm. It must have been pretty bad, because the doctors could only do for him what they had done in an attempt to save the lives of many soldiers back then – they cut it off.
Amputation is the technical word, a clean, clinical word that doesn’t quite convey the terror that it inspired.
What really happened is that you were brought into a cramped, makeshift place – Sometimes a tent, sometimes a house that was taken to use as a hospital.
After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, bleeding and on fire from pain, the doctors and their assistants would finally come to treat you. They would check you over and do what they could. Sometimes they could treat the wound and leave a solider completely intact; other times the damage was so extensive that they had no choice but to remove the limb.
The bullets from the soldier’s muskets were deceptively brutal; soft lead slugs that tore through flesh and shattered bone.
Modern doctors later would have had a hell of a time putting that kind of wound back together, let alone Civil War doctors without the benefit of one-hundred and sixty years of medical advancements and knowledge.
Sometimes doctors would have some kind of painkiller, like ether. If the doctors had it, they used it. Soaking a cloth with the liquid, they would hold it over the mouth of the patient until they passed out. This was by far the more preferable method, easier for both doctor and patient.
However, other times the sheer number of wounded that poured into the makeshift field hospitals meant that sometimes the ether ran out before all the patients were treated. That meant no pain killers, meaning the patient had to feel every awful second.
Maybe Issac’s dad had ether, maybe he didn’t. Maybe the doctor held an ether-soaked rag to his mouth, and he drifted off into blissful unconsciousness. Or maybe a few able-bodied assistants held him down while the doctor quickly double checked the wound and got down to business.
Awake or not, the doctor would have used two different types of knives to cut through the flesh and muscle, and then a special saw to go through the bone. These men knew what they were doing.
They were educated and, more important, they were practiced. Many of them had done this procedure before, sometimes dozens of times.
Within a few minutes, the limb was severed, and the patient was sent somewhere to recover. Many soldiers survived their wounds, many did not.
Out of those who died from their wounds, infection was one of the biggest causes of death. The musket bullets would carry pieces of clothing and bacteria with it into the wound, grinding it deep into the tissues. There it would fester and allow infection to take root.
That’s what happened to Issac’s dad. He survived the amputation, but, as he lay there in a cot recovering from his ordeal, infection set in within his wound. With no antibiotics to help fight it, the infection soon ran out of control until, in the end, it took his life.
Like so many wives during those tumultuous years, the war left Issac’s mother a widow left to raise young Issac alone.
It may have been tough, but they made it through. Issac grew up, got a job, and took his first faltering steps into adulthood.
By 1883, he met Sophia Aubrey, a pretty young woman that he fell in love with. By the time they got married that year, he probably only knew his father from the stories that his mother told him.
By that time, he probably didn’t care much. He had grown up without his father’s guidance and influence. If he remembered anything at all, the memories were probably faded and broken at best.
Seven years later, Issac and Sophia had three children together – Bessie, Lloyd, and Velma. Issac was working as a wood turner at the Packard Organ and Piano Company, toiling for hours making rounded parts for the organs and pianos to be sold all over the country.
While Issac worked at a factory wood lathe, Sophia raised the children and worked out of their modest home as a seamstress.
For some families, this would have had all the makings of a warm, contented life. Working an honest job during the day, spending the evenings in a comfortable home surrounded by a loving family.
But Issac was a bastard.
While he had fallen in love with Sophia, Issac had also fallen in love with the bottle. He was an abusive, violent alcoholic who often took out his temper on his family. He drank away most of the family funds, making Sophia’s side job essential for bringing in enough money to support the family.
In late 1900 or early 1901, Issac lost his job with the Packard company. Instead of going out and finding a new job, Issac decided to use up most of what little money the family had on drinking.
He would go wherever he went to drink during the day, then return home at night to beat Sophia. If the children were close enough, he would take his temper out on them as well. Finally, Bessie and Lloyd took to hiding in their rooms to avoid their father.
Issac owned a .32 caliber revolver, which Bessie kept hidden in a drawer. One of Bessie’s biggest fears was that Issac would find it and, in a fit of drunken rage, shoot one – or maybe all -of them to death. Far better that she kept it hidden from him than the unthinkable happen.
On the night of February 19, 1901, Issac, who had been drinking for a week straight, overheard a conversation between Sophia and Lloyd.
Lloyd owned a banjo that he enjoyed playing, but something on it had broken. He was telling her that it was going to cost $2 to fix, which would be about $75 today.
Lloyd explained that he could pay for it; he had his own job after all. He knew that it was his money, but he knew the kind of financial situation the family was in. He knew that his father was drinking all the money away, and that the only thing Issac had really done to put literal food on the table that month was buy a sack of flour and a bag of potatoes.
He loved his banjo, but his money could be used to put food on the table or buy something for his infant sister.
Sophia wasn’t concerned. She told him that it was his money. He had earned it and had every right to buy something for himself.
Issac had been listening to this entire exchange, growing more irritated and angrier by the minute. He stormed into the room where Lloyd and Sophia were talking and began yelling at his son.
How dare he not want to use that money to contribute to the family? He was being selfish. He wanted to take that cash that could very well be used better on something else and use it to fix a damn toy.
Sophia quickly intervened. She gently told Issac that it was alright. They had her money coming in and Lloyd could fix his banjo. He had earned that money after all.
Issac anger flared into rage. He leaned in, screaming in his wife’s face, venting the full force of his anger.
Without warning, Issac struck Sophia hard across her face. In a heartbeat he grabbed her and threw her violently to the floor. He followed her down, straddling her stomach. Leaning forward, Issac seized Sophia by the neck, eyes wide with fury.
Sophia felt her air squeezed off as he slowly began choking the breath from her body.
She struggled, fighting as hard as she could. But Issac was bigger and stronger than she was, and the most she could do was loosen his fingers enough to try and take a few deep breaths. In those precious few seconds, she did the only thing that she could do – she screamed for someone to help her.
From her bedroom, Bessie heard her mother’s cry. She’d never heard her mother do that before. Terrified, she threw open the door of her room and ran through the house to her mother’s side. She yelled at Issac to stop, that he was killing her mother. Issac didn’t stop. He was too drunk and too angry to do that.
Desperately, Bessie tried to pry his hands loose from Sophia’s neck, but he was just too strong. She could barely manage to move his fingers. It seemed useless, hopeless. There was nothing that Bessie could do but sit and watch her mother die.
And then she remembered – the gun!
Scrambling to her feet, she ran through the house and tore the revolver from the drawer where she had hidden it. It felt heavy in her hands, yet strangely comforting. Without thinking, she ran back to Sophia.
Bessie didn’t bother to warn him. She had already pleaded with him, begged him to stop. He hadn’t. If she didn’t stop him, then no one else would. Bessie’s face was calm, but her hands shook slightly as she pointed the gun at her father and pulled the trigger.
The shot was deafening in the enclosed space of the house. With a startled cry, Issac rolled off his wife and slumped to the floor.
His back was on fire. As drunk as he was, Issac wasn’t sure what had happened. His world was a mix of searing pain and drunken confusion. He coherent enough for one clear, disjointed thought – he had just been shot.
For a moment, maybe he thought of his father, the soldier. His father, a hero of the battle of Bentonville, who his mother told him had died for his country. Had it felt like this when the rebels shot him?
The anger ran out of Issac like rain out of a gutter. He lay there, his face a mask of pain.
Sophia gasped for air as Bessie helped her sit up. She called out to Lloyd and told him to run to the nearest telephone he could find and call the police. The police arrived a short time later. Issac, bleeding and starting to sober up, was taken to a local hospital to receive treatment while Bessie was taken to the nearest police station for questioning.
The authorities there were amazed. For a 15-year-old girl that had just shot her own father as he tried to kill her mother, Bessie was remarkably composed. She confessed the whole story to them, calmly explaining how her father was a violent drunk who regularly beat her mother and occasionally her and her brother.
But this time he had gone too far, and Bessie had to stop him from killing Sophia. So, she shot him. Plain as that.
“If I had not shot papa, he would have killed mama, and I would not lose mama for anything,” Bessie told investigators.
Bessie had no guilt, no remorse. She knew that she had done the right thing, even if that meant being arrested and going to prison.
The police were touched by Bessie’s maturity and stoicism. They realized that it was her and her family who were really the victims here, not Issac. Instead of placing her under arrest, they told her to appear before a judge at court the following morning.
She thanked the police for their time and help, promised to appear in court the next day, and promptly went to check on her mother.
Meanwhile, at the hospital, doctors examined Issac’s bullet wound. The bullet had glanced off his shoulder blade and lodged in his back muscles. It might have been painful, but it certainly wasn’t going to kill him.
However, the doctors might have wished that it would have been bad enough to shut him up. The pain had probably sobered him up some, but Issac was still completely, absolutely drunk.
When the police arrived to talk to him about the shooting, he told them that it was none of their business. He didn’t need to talk to them. This was family business, and they sure in hell weren’t family.
The police had dealt with him before. They knew that he was a nasty, mean drunk. The police ignored him and kept on with their questions.
Issac told them to screw off. He and his family were just fine. This isn’t any of their business. They had a great relationship. Go harass someone else.
The investigators were unimpressed. Knowing that his injuries weren’t life-threatening, they charged Issac with assault and battery and placed him under arrest. He was transferred from the hospital to the hospital wing of the county jail.
The next morning, the Allen County Sheriff, G.W. Stout, went to talk to Issac. By this time, he had sobered up. He wasn’t mean, wasn’t angry. All of that had just kind of washed out of him.
Sheriff Stout had dealt with Issac before. This wasn’t his first run in with the law. When Issac was sober, he was fine. No problems. But when he knocked back his first drink, Issac got real mean. He would lash out at anyone, whether it was someone in the barroom or his own family.
Stout sat down next to Issac. He took a long look at him and then got right to the point. Stout wanted to know if Issac was going to get out and hurt his daughter.
Issac looked over at the sheriff. He said that he wasn’t.
How about your wife?
No, not her either. And before you ask, I’m not going to touch the boy.
Stout sighed, then stood up and left.
Later that morning, Issac stood before a court judge. Bessie came with Sophia.
Before the assembled authorities, Bessie told her story again, just as composed as she had been the night before.
Stout didn’t want to let Issac free. It would only be a matter of time before he started drinking, and then it would be business as usual. He’d take his hands to someone, probably his family. This time, though, he might really hurt them bad, maybe even kill them. It had taken little Bessie with a revolver to stop him this time. Would anyone be able to stop him the next?
Thankfully, Issac couldn’t afford bail and was taken back to jail to await his trial.
On March 16, 1901, Issac was charged with assault and battery and sentenced to a $5 fine and thirty days in jail.
When he got out, Sophia and Lloyd were waiting for him. Bessie was not.
She had had enough of her father and his drunken rages. She left the house and started her own life.
By the end of October, Sophia finally had enough as well.
On a brisk fall morning she once again sat in front of a courtroom and told them how Issac had come home drunk and thrown a book at her. When he missed, he tried to kick her. When he failed to hit his mark again, Issac had angrily ordered his wife and son to leave the house.
When Lloyd gave his testimony, he told the same story.
Issac said that the only thing that happened was that he and Sophia had an argument. He said that she had been nagging at him about one thing or another, and he shouted back at her. He explained that his family didn’t treat him well, that they disrespected him as a man and as the head of the household.
They just wanted to make sure he stayed in jail.
The judge fined Issac $5 and told him that he would suspend the jail sentence if Issac stayed away from the house.
Sophia told the judge that was fine by her. She was done with Issac. She was finished with his abuse and drunkenness. She filed for divorce soon after.
Bessie, Lloyd, and Sophia went on to live long lives. Issac took his own life in 1917.
There were no grand funerals, no fanfare. He was not hailed as a war hero who gave his life in service of his nation.
Instead, he faded quietly away from the world, leaving only a legacy of pain and regret behind him.
Daughter Shot Him. The Star Press, 2/19/1901
A Domestic Tragedy. Fort Wayne Daily News, 2/19/1901.
Shot By His Daughter. The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, 2/19/1901
Daughter Not a Murderess. The Star Press, 2/20/1901
Original data: Find a Grave. Find a Grave®. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi.
Year: 1900; Census Place: Wayne, Allen, Indiana; Roll: 359; Page: 3; Enumeration District: 0047
Indiana Archives and Records Administration; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Indiana, U.S., Death Certificates, 1899-2011; Year: 1917; Roll: 02
Original data: Indiana, Marriages, 1810-2001. Salt Lake City, Utah: FamilySearch, 2013.
Slaters in Court Again. Fort Wayne Evening Sentinel, 10/21/1901
He Carried Guns. Fort Wayne News, 10/21/1901
About the Court House. Fort Wayne News and Sentinel, 10/22/1901
About the Court House. Fort Wayne news and Sentinel, 10/22/1901, p. 6
Slater is Punished. Fort Wayne Daily News, 3/16/1901
George Slater Hangs Himself at Infirmary. Fort Wayne News and Sentinel, 12/3/1917
Hangs Himself in Cell at Infirmary. Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 12/3/1917
Backus, Paige Gibbons. Amputations and the Civil War: Surgery in the Civil War Era. American Battlefield Trust, 10/19/2020