Erich Von Stroheim's "Greed"
Greed's Missing Hours
My article on "Greed's" missing pieces.
Greed Reconstructed
The six hour reconstructed version.
Background
On various aspects of the story and film.
Greed Picture Book
Stills and photos from "Greed" and Von Stroheim's career.
Links
Silents, Von Stroheim, Pitts, Norris, San Francisco, et al.
 | Erich von Stroheim's 1924 epic motion picture "GREED" |
Twenty-Nine Fatal Wounds
Sarah Collins Slaughtered By Her Husband Because She Would Not Give Him MoneyHe Followed Her to Her Work a Kindergarten and Fulfilled His Oft Made Threat
Arrested While At Prayer
The Murderer Found by the Police While Kneeling in a Church --- The Victim Lives Long Enough to Tell Her Slayer's Name --- Her Life of Poverty and Toil for Her Children's Sake --- Collins Tried to Kill Her Once Before and Served a Term in Prison for It.
A brute named Pat Collins stabbed his wife to death in the Felix Adler Free Kindergarten yesterday morning
She was the janitress of the school, and he followed her there when she went to her work in the early morning. Two minutes after Collins entered the school when ran out again and escaped, and immediately she dragged herself down the stairs bleeding and dying and with the knife he buried to the hilt in the last gash. He had stabbed her more than thirty times.
She died in the Recieving Hospital half an hour later.
He killed her because she would not give him money and would not live with him. He had told her he would do it, and once before he attempted to kill her. He served a short term in jail for this attempt.
She knew he would carry out his threats, of she told the neighbors that some day he would surely take her life.
They were married nine years ago. He was an iron-worker, but soon have up his trade, and has been a common laborer ever since. He abused his wife almost from the start, and his treatment t of her became worse as the years went by. Whenever he got drunk he beat her, and is she did not give him money he knocked her down. They had a couple of children, both boys, and the mother had to support these as well as herself and her worthless husband.
Just about a year ago Collins got into a tantrum and tried to kill his wife with a razor. He did cut her rather severely, but she recovered. Collins was arrested for assault to murder, but when the case went to the Superior Court he got off with a conviction of simple assault. He was sent to the House of Correction for six months and the wretched wife had peace for that period.
She lived with her children in the rear of "Flannery's" a saloon and tenement house at 18 Tehama Street in two wretched rooms.
To her neighbors she was a marvel. They could talk of nothing else yesterday but her patience and her industry. She was janitress of the Occidental Kindergarten as well as the other.
The Felix Adler School is a charity kindergarten in the upper story of an old barn at the corner of Folsom and Second Streets. The Occidental is another school of the same sort on Second and Howard.
She could not earn enough to live on by keeping these poor schools cleans, so she took in washing. The wondering neighbors told of her life in these two rooms. Every morning she went to her work in the kindergarten. She had to finish that in time to dress the two boys and sent them off to school. Then she began on the washing. That was her life every day.
“And many’s the time I’ve seen her so dead tired at day that she couldn’t stand,” said Mrs. Flannery, who tends the bar at 18 Tehama Street. “All she did was to work and pray God that she’d be well enough to work the next day.”
Things are very squalid down in that part of town. Mrs. Collins slept and cooked and worked all in the same room.
There is bit a single cover on the bed, and that was ragged and threadbare. There was the look and odor of abject poverty everywhere. It was more like a picture of wretchedness in London than a room in rich San Francisco.
Like Kipling’s Badalia Herodsfoot who did in much the same way, Sarah Collins, took up with no other man while her own was in jail or otherwise away.
All she asked was for him to keep away and give her a chance to support her children.
Collins served out his time and wanted to come back to his wife, but she kept him away till last Friday. Then he came to see her. He had been out in the country picking grapes or tramping. Of coure, he wanted money, and she would not give him any.
He sat in her room with a knife in his hand, and alternately coaxed and threatened. He told her he would kill her, and though she heard him say it often, she thought that the time was near when he would carry out his threat, She left him talking to the children and appealed to some men in the neighborhood for help.
It is not customary to interfere between husband and wife in that part of Tehama Street, and they advised her to apply to the police for protection. She went into the Southern Police Station and was told to swear out a warrant for her husband’s arrest; but when she returned Collins was gone, so she did not bother about a warrant.
She went to her work as usual yesterday morning. A little before 8 o’clock a man ran up the steps that lead to the kindergarten. A track-cleaner, John Kelly, saw him go in. “He had hardly got inside,” Kelly says,” when I heard a woman scream. She only screamed two or three times and then the man ran out and started up to Harrison Street. Then he turned around and ran down Second toward Bryant Street.
Accusing Her Husband Then the woman appeared, dragging herself, or sliding from step to step. I ran to her and asked her what was wrong.
“Oh, my God! my man cut me,” she said. Then she asked me to rake her to the hospital. I took the knife from the wound in her neck. She asked me for it. “It’s what he stabbed me with,” she said.
“Who?” I asked.
“"My husband Collins."
The dying woman was taken in a patrol wagon to the Receiving Hospital. She asked for a priest, but before one came she was dead.
She was taken to the Morgue, and the doctors there made an autopsy. There were knife wounds all over her --- gashes in her breast, in her throat, on her head and her face. The doctors found over thirty cuts before the ghastly count was concluded, and stated that any one of the twenty-nine of them would have caused death.
The weapon the murdered used was an ordinary round horn-handled pocket-knife with a freshly sharpened blade about two inches long. She must have fought him hard while he was cutting her for the palms of bother her hands were gashed, showing that she caught the knife and tried to wrest it from him. There were fingermarks on her face --- he held her with one hand while he stained with the others, and the prints of his nails are plain on the dead woman’s cheek.
The little hatroom of the kindergarten showed what a struggle there had been. The walls were splashed with blood and the floors were covered with it. Some of the hooks for the children’s hats and coats were broken. The red stain extended out in to the hall and down the steps to the street, but the teachers of the kindergarten had the dreadful traces cleaned away before the children got there.
Mrs. Collins’ two little boys went to school as usual when their mother did not return, The youngest, five years old, attended the Occidental Kindergarten, the other, ten years old, went to the Tehama-street school. Both were taken in charge by the Youth’s Directory, and do not know even now of their mother’s terrible death.
Arrested While At Prayer. Collins was arrested about 10 o’clock in the sanctuary of St. Ignatius’ Church where he was sound on his knees engaged in prayer. Patrolmen Flynn and Foley got their clew as to the whereabouts of the man from a lot of young fellows who were sitting in a McAllister-street saloon about 9:30 o’clock when Collins entered the place. He called for a drink and invited the crowd to join him. Then he proposed a game of cards, which they refused to join. Collins then left the saloon saying:
“I’m going to the church and take the pledge.”
As he went out of the door one of the men said “I believe that is Collins,” and he ran over to the New City Hall station and notified the police.
When the policemen came upon Collins in the sanctuary one of them advanced, and laying his hand on the shoulder of the kneeling man asked him if his name was Collins.
“Yes,” was the reply. “What’s that to you.”
“Then I arrest you for the murder of your wife.”
Collins offered not resistance and was brought to the Old City Hall, where he was searched and afterward stripped of his outer clothing. He had one aclean shirt, but his underclothing was found to be covered with blood, and blood stains were found on his pantaloons. Collins refused to answer any questions except to say that he had not seen his wife since Friday. To all other questions he made the one reply: “That is my business.”
He was apparently sober and seemed to realize his position. He denied ever having had a knife of any sort, and refused to say a word about the killing of his wife or about the blood on his underclothing.
From The San Francisco Examiner
10 October 1893
