These news articles would have interested our ancestors, and most likely were topics of discussion...the "big news of the day" so to speak.  We have limited knowledge of how they lived on Walworth Street, but we do know that Catherine Smith shared a room with her sister (Alice McCabe and her husband) and a brother (Terence McCabe).  And when Bridget, Owen and John came in 1850, this room on Walworth Street was the home to 7 people.  We also know that the parlor and Kitchen on the main floor was shared by all the tenants...up to four groups of families would live in a single two story wood frame home.  So, major events that hit the Brooklyn newspaper about events along Walworth would certainly be topics of discussion.