143 Years Ago
The May 10, 1882 Colorado Transcript provided this cautionary tale:
Last Wednesday night Mr. and Mrs. Watt. Cunningham, who reside in North Golden, in the vicinity of the Omaha House, were awakened from their slumbers by a noise that very greatly indicated the close proximity of an intruder upon their domestic seclusion. Mrs. Cunningham first heard the noise and aroused her husband with an emphatic shake and the dreadful information that a man was concealed under the bed.
Mr. Cunningham is a practical sort of a man and was at first inclined to discredit his wife’s statement, but a few moments careful listening brought to his ears the unmistakable heavy breathing of some one directly beneath them. He was in a dilemma. To jump out and face the intruder with his battery of small arms seemed to him sheer madness, while to remain in bed was to leave the bold bad burglar master of the situation.
While thoughtfully debating his precarious location his wife raised the siege by leaping out of bed and rushing into an adjoining room. Procuring a hatchet and a gun, and finding her husband already engaged in a scuffle with the burglar she entered into combat with a spirit and bravery of a modern Joan of Arc. The intruder was soon overpowered, secured and his life probably saved by Mr. Cunningham, who, with great difficulty, restrained Mrs. Cunningham from dispatching him then and there.
The article goes on to say that they contacted the town’s night watchman, who put him in jail, where he would remain until the next session of the district court. “In the mean time he will reflect upon his misconduct from the other side of the bars of Jefferson’s tomb of justice.”
