This Day in History: American politician and lawyer Clement Vallandigham died on this day (June 17) in 1871. Vallandigham was representing a defendant, Thomas McGehean, in a murder case for killing a man in a barroom brawl in Hamilton, Ohio. The lawyer attempted to prove that the victim, Tom Myers, had actually accidentally shot himself while drawing his pistol from a pocket while rising from a kneeling position. Clement Vallandigham selected a pistol he believed to be unloaded, he put the pistol in his pocket and enacted the events as they might have happened. However, while demonstrating this he fatally shot himself in the stomach.
This however proved his point, and his client was acquitted. His client, Thomas McGehean, was shot and killed in a saloon four years later.
This was not the strangest accidental death by gun in the Victorian era. In 1881, a man called Birchall asked his servant Hague to retrieve a revolver at his home. Hague found the gun on a table and lifted it to his face for closer inspection, and unfortunately shot himself in the mouth. A commotion set in and another servant picked up the gun to demonstrate what just happened only to die in the same manner.
In July 4 2019, Zafer Kuzu from Turkey, in a ruse to escape community service, strapped two pillows on his back and asked a friend to shoot him with a shotgun, hoping the pillows would reduce the shot's power. He died!
See my blog listing for this here.
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