AUTOMOBILE VICTIM DEAD

The New York Times
May 4, 1900

Dr. Baruch Explains the Fatal Accident to B. G. Stanford.

His Care for the Injured Man and His Distress—The Grief of the Aged Father.

Benjamin G. Stanford, who was run over by the gasoline automobile of Dr. Herman B. Baruch near the Hotel Majestic, at Central Park West and Seventy-second Street, where the physician has his offices, Tuesday, died from his injuries, in Roosevelt Hospital, yesterday morning.  His left thigh was crushed, and he did not rally from the shock significantly to permit of the amputation which the hospital surgeons intended to resort to as the only hope of saving his life.

Charles Matthews, twenty-six years old, Dr. Baruch's colored servant, who was running the automobile, was arrested and released on bail at the time of the accident.  He was immediately rearrested as soon as Mr. Sanford's death became known and was put under bonds of $1,500 by the Coroner.

Mr. Sanford was said by the hospital authorities to be forty-four years old, and was for two years prior to December office manager for W. P. Eager, a Governor of the Consolidated Exchange, whose place of business is on the third floor of 57 Broadway.  They had a disagreement at that time, but since then he had been speculating through Mr. Eager with considerable success, though Mr. Eager said his estate was probably of small value.  He was the only son of A. G. Sanford, long ago President of the First National Bank of Nashville, but of late years supported by his son.  They boarded together at Worthington, near Ardsley, on the New York and Putnam Railroad, and it was the younger man's custom to come by train with his bicycle to the One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street terminus and make the rest of his way to Mr. Eager's office on his wheel, while his father, who had nominal employment there, made the journey by train.

Mr. Sanford, the father, who is eighty years of age, sat rocking himself ceaselessly in his grief at the office yesterday afternoon.  "Don't call them automobiles!  Call them abominables!  Call them that for me!" he repeated over and over again.

Dr. Baruch, who is well known among the younger practitioners of the city and a son of Dr. Simon Baruch, took the accident very much to heart.  He hired a private room at the hospital for the wounded man and visited him twice a day.  As he was so low, he never spoke to him about the accident, confining himself to questions about his physical condition.  Dr. Baruch made this statement in regard to the affair yesterday:

"Tuesday morning I left my home at 51 West Seventieth Street to make a professional call up town.  I had left word for the automobile to follow me to my patient's house.  The boy tells me that he was running up on the trolley tracks and was on the right side of the road.  When he reached a point twenty-five feet north of the north corner of Seventy-second Street, still being on the north-bound track, he noticed a heavy meat truck going down the avenue on the asphalt.  As he came abreast of it, still going very slowly, a bicyclist darted out from behind the truck and struck the automobile on the left side.  The wheel was upset and the man tried to cling to the automobile, but he fell, and before the boy could stop the machine one wheel had passed over him.

Mr. Eager said yesterday that Mr. Sanford was a graduate of Yale, that he was married, and that his domestic life had not been happy.  He was childless.  Old Mr. Sanford insisted that his son was only thirty-five years old.

Mr. Eager visited the injured man at the hospital late Wednesday afternoon.  Mr. Sanford seemed to have a premonition that death was upon him, for he gave him minute information concerning his business affairs and turned over to him his private papers for safekeeping.