The Floorwalker Clippings 26/84
New York Times, New York, March 6, 1916.
Occupied one room apartment with stove, tubs and bed,
New York 1914, New York Public Library
„Follow him along the street, yelling, ,Charlie Chaplin!‘“
Editorial content. „HIS CHAPLIN WALK CAUSE OF A MURDER
80-Year-Old Italian, Ridiculed by
Boys Because of His Gait, Kills Their Father.
VICTIM HAD STABBED HIM
Garibaldi Veteran Takes Down Ancient Blunderbuss
to Slay His Assailant.
It is more than fifty years since Pasquale Caruso fought with
Garibaldi, and more years than that since the old
bell-mouthed blunderbuss that he brought over with him from
Italy was fired in anger or otherwise. But last night
Caruso and the blunderbuss both got into action, and as a result
Joseph Certona, an Italian contractor, is lying dead
in his home at 1,400 Sixty-six Street, Brooklyn, with half his
head blown off.
Caruso and Certona were neighbors in the Italian
settlement that lies midway between Bath Beach
and Borough Park. Caruso says he is 76 years old, but his
children say he is eighty. He is a plasterer by trade,
but lately rheumatism has so crippled him that he has been
able to work but little. This same rheumatism has
affected his gait so that that boys on the neighborhood
have been calling him Charlie Chaplin; and that
nickname is responsible for the killing, according to the story
that Italian interpreters dragged out bit by bit from
Caruso in the Bath Beach police station last night in the presence
of Deputy Commissioner Leon. G. Godley, Assistant
District Attorneys Conway and Wilson, Inspector John Coughlin,
in charge of the Brooklyn Detective Bureau, and Captain
O‘Connor of the Bath Beach station.
Boys Called Him ,Charlie Chaplin.‘
Yesterday evening, Caruso said, he was walking up
Sixty-six Street, toward his home, at 1,402, when
a crowd of boys began to gather on his trail and to follow him
along the street, yelling, ,Charlie Chaplin!‘ Charlie
Chaplin!‘ More than once he turned and shook his fist at them
and called down down curses on them, but the boys
stayed with him, hooting and jeering, stirred only to ridicule
by his awkwardness as now and then he turned
and tried to drive them away.
Two of the boys in the crowd he recognized as Certona‘s;
and when Certona himself, a stout man in the early
sixties, appeared at the corner of Fourteenth Avenue and
Sixty-six Street, Caruso stopped him and began
to pour out a denunciation of the boys who were making fun
of him and an appeal to the father to keep his own
sons out of the crowd. Certona was unwilling; the protest turned
into an argument, and, according to Caruso‘s story,
one of the Certona boys presently threw a brick at him. This
enraged him, and as he turned again to the father
and demanded that he keep his boys within bounds Certona
drew a knife and stabbed Caruso in the jaw.
The old man slipped away and limped into the hallway
of his home. Back on the wall in one of the rooms
was the old blunderbuss. He took this down, and somehow
managed to load it while the blood was streaming
down his face. Then with the huge, unwieldy weapon in his
hand he went out again into the hallway, where
he found Certona waiting.
Fight Again in the Hallway.
As Caruso appeared Certona leaped upon him again.
He whipped out the knife and cut him across the
left eye; the two men wrestled together, and the younger and
healthier got the better. Caruso was flung down
on the floor of the hallway, and Certona, furious, bent down
over him and struck at him again with the knife.
The blade missed and Caruso got the old blunderbuss into
position and pulled the trigger.
There was a booming explosion that resounded through
the neighborhood like the report of a bomb. Three
different patrolmen of the Bath Beach Precinct – Cross, Herrschaft,
and Pittscher – heard it on their posts and ran to the
spot, where a cloud of pungent smoke drifting out of the hallway
and a group of frightened boys huddled silently
together across the street told them what had happened.
They found Certona lying dead in the entry,
his head shattered, and down in the basement they came upon
Caruso, who had hobbled down the stairs and barricaded
himself in against the possible vengeance of Certona‘s relatives.
At sight of the policemen he surrendered readily enough,
and the old man and his old gun were taken to the Bath Beach
Station, where Dr. Mensch of the Coney Island Hospital
bound up his wounds. He was badly but not dangerously hurt.
When he is arraigned this morning in the
Coney Island Court some of the witnesses will be the boys
who yesterday evening called him ,Charlie Chaplin.‘“
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