BIO INFORMATION suggested by B. Helmer
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The Waco daily examiner., September 06, 1878
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Death of Henry Collins
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Today the form of Henry Collins the young man recently captured for
complicity in the Sam Bass robberies lies rigid in his narrow chamber
and his parents left with the remains this evening on the 4:30 train for Dallas from there to be taken to the old family burial ground on their farm west of Dallas for interment. The past two days he has been sinking slowly but surely. During the last few hours of his existence he seemed perfectly unconscious of approaching dissolution. He was carefully nursed by an aged mother, and the pitiful screams of that gray haired matron escaping from the doors of that prison house while
standing over the cold and clammy remains of her son were heart-rendering the extreme, No matter what may have been the past life of Henry Collins he was her son and dear to heart-strings, whose tension is now so painfully drawn by the inflexible hand of fate. The soul of Henry Collins passed to "the other side" at eight o'clock last evening and shortly after great crowds gathered about the jail yard fence, attracted there by the screams of Mrs Collins, when she found the last breath had left the body of her son. We have no comment to make on the guilt or innocence of Henry Collins. The grief of his parents is severe enough. The officers who arrested him and were compelled to wound him in the capture, did nothing more nor less than their duty The people are too well acquainted with the facts that led to the pursuit to need explanation at our hands at this time. Death the
great and final adjuster of all human ills has stepped in and stayed the hand of the, law and Henry Collins will be Judged by Him whose decisions and awards are infallible. Deputy U. S. Marshal Walter Johnson bought a fine casket costing fifty dollars at the expense of the government and in it properly and neatly arrayed in the habiliments of the grave, the remains of the young man were placed.
Dr. Saunders informs us that the probable cause of the young man's
death was embolism in the pulmonary vessels. The rush of blood to these Vessels, and consequent interruption in a proper circulation of the life current, frequently follow amputations of this kind. But without amputation of the terribly shattered limb Collins could not have lived until even this time. He maintained his innocence until the last moment he was able to speak.