A number of policemen were tried yesterday before Commissioner Manierre, but the only case having public interest was that of Sergeant Lucien P. Field, of the Fifth precinct. From the evidence it appeared that on the night of the 14th inst. Mrs. Ann Slavin was sitting on her stoop at No. 460 Washington street, when her daughter Mary, aged four years, who was with her, was struck in the face by a firecracker thrown by some careless boy and very severely wounded. She instantly went with the child in her arms to several drug stores in search of relief for it, but without success, and was finally sent to the Leonard street police station by a policeman she met, and there found Sergeant Field in command, and asked for surgical aid for her child. Field carelessly answered that their surgeon lived away uptown, and instead of telegraphing for him finally sent the woman out with an officer in search of Dr. Kennedy, who is not a police surgeon. He was out, however, when they arrived, and, the officer abondoning then her, Mrs. Slavin wandered about with her wounded child until a citizen conveyed her to the Seventeenth precinct station house, where she promptly obtained the surgical attention which should have been obtained at Fifth. Field had no defense except to state that he did ask the woman to sit down and wait until he could send for a surgeon, but that she, being very much excited, refused. The case was sent to the Board, with a recommendation that Field be dismissed.
New York (New York) Herald, June 23, 1870.
Copyright © 2004 Larry Slavens. All rights reserved.