Walter Raleigh's attack at the Atsion mills

A stabbing at the mill proprietor's house

The West-Jersey Pioneer, a Bridgeton weekly, printed the following item on October 23, 1879, credited to the Camden Democrat: "On Tuesday evening last Walter J. Raleigh, son of Maurice Raleigh, proprietor of the Atsion mills, while crazed with drink attempted to murder his father's house keeper, Mrs. Edgar, by stabbing her. He was prevented from accomplishing his design by Daniel Robinson, foreman of the farms. Raleigh then turned on Robinson and stabbed him in several places, in one instance the knife striking a rib above the heart. Raleigh then attempted to drown himself by jumping into shallow water, but afterwards came out and was secured. He is unmarried and is about thirty years of age. The wounds of Mrs. Edgar and Robinson are severe and may result fatally."

The report is the only source used here for the event, and everything it asserts about the Raleighs — that Maurice Raleigh was proprietor of the Atsion mills, that Walter was his son, that he was unmarried and about thirty — rests on that single paragraph, which is itself a reprint. The dateline "Tuesday evening last" in a paper published Thursday, October 23, indicates the attack took place a few days earlier that week, though the exact date is not given more precisely than that.

An attack without a known resolution

No arrest, inquest, or court proceeding is mentioned in this report. No follow-up has been located, but the search behind that statement was limited: the remaining pages of this same issue were read, and keyword searches were attempted in the Chronicling America newspaper database and in the Burlington County Library's New Jersey Mirror index, without a hit. Later issues of the West-Jersey Pioneer have not been read page by page, and no court, coroner's or prison record has been consulted. Whether Raleigh was prosecuted, whether Mrs. Edgar and Robinson survived their wounds (described as "severe and may result fatally"), and what became of Raleigh afterward are all unresolved by the sources reviewed here. This is presented as a single contemporary report of an attack, not as a closed case.