Murder victim. A former carriage blacksmith who became a New York City Metropolitan policeman, Edward Struck was originally from New Brunswick, NJ. He was a widower in his late 30's and the father of six children when he wed 17-year-old tailoress Lydia Danbury---later to become infamous as the Victorian era serial killer Lydia Sherman. He had met his teenaged bride, a pretty brunette with large blue eyes and a luminous complexion, at the Methodist church in New Brunswick which they both attended. Born farther south in Burlington, NJ, she had been orphaned at nine and consequently raised by an uncle. If she had seen the marriage as a quick escape from an unpleasant home situation, she would soon be disappointed. Within a year of the wedding she'd borne the first of their seven children, and was beset with both financial difficulties and domestic responsibilities that would have daunted a woman of twice her years. Never-the-less she was apparently a good helpmate. After the death of their firstborn, Josephine, in infancy, the Strucks moved to the Yorkville section of Manhattan and from thence to Elizabeth Street, where Edward continued to work in the carriage trade. In January 1857 he was appointed to the Metropolitan Police Force, a job he had long wanted, and the family found more spacious rooms on 125th Street in Harlem. A few years later he was dismissed from the force on charges that he dawdled in coming to break up a deadly barroom brawl. Vigorously denying the charge with its implication of cowardice, he was not without his supporters, but his attempts to be reinstated failed. Unemployed and despondent, he attempted to take his life. Although a former superior suggested treatment at an asylum, his wife found it more expedient to free herself from their marriage of over twenty years by poisoning him with arsenic, her modus operandi for subsequently freeing herself from their six surviving children and two subsequent husbands, among other victims. By the end of the year 1864 the couple's remaining children, aged 9 months to 18 years, had joined him in Trinity Cemetery in upper Manhattan. His widow, Lydia, subsequently married and murdered Dennis Hurlburt, then Nelson H. Sherman, who also shared a similar fate.