Category: Criminal Justice

Murder in the 19th Century: A Look at the History of Crime Investigations

A Series: Evolution of the Criminal Justice System

This article is part of a series examining the early workings of the criminal justice system before the modern age of police work. A version of it originally appeared in the summer 2022 issue of the Newsletter of the Salem County Historical Society.

As church bells rang out, calling people to worship on a peaceful Sunday morning in February 1874, horrifying news about a dreadful, mysterious murder in Lower Penn’s Neck spread across Salem County.  John Lloyd had discovered the battered, lifeless body of Abigail Dilks, his housekeeper, in the yard, soon after daybreak.  Stunned, he gave the alarm, sending a messenger to Salem for the coroner, the officer responsible for investigating suspicious deaths in the 19th century.     

Plan for gallows for treadway conicted of murder in Salem County.
The plan for the gallows in Salem County for the execution of Treadway (Salem County Archives, Court of Oyer & Terminer)

As news of the grisly homicide circulated, lawmen, neighbors, and people from adjoining areas dashed to the locality, about a mile south of Harrisonville.  First, they came in ones and twos, Coroner W. H. Lawson and Constable Hancock, arriving shortly after neighbors on foot and in carriages descended on the grizzly spot.  Soon Sheriff John Hires, Justice Wood, City Officers Gosling and Haines, Prosecutor Slape, and others reached the scene.1

Murder, any murder, is unsettling, but this bloody, baffling one was even more so–the circumstances surrounding the crime were shrouded in the deepest veil of mystery.  At this isolated place on a meadow about a half-mile from a neighbor, the middle-aged woman, her throat cut from ear to ear, was cold and dead on the lawn. She had been alone in the house Saturday evening as Lloyd and his hired hands went to Salem.

This tragedy, one unequaled since the Treadway murder almost 23 years earlier, alarmed everyone, and lawmen recognized it as a baffling case. Promptly, the entire 19th century Salem County Criminal Justice System started working the case, beginning an unremitting night and day effort to ferret out the perpetrator of the cruel assault. Since local law enforcement officers seldom handled complex, perplexing killings, they called in a private detective, a homicide expert from Philadelphia.

Coroner’s Inquest

Starting in the hands of the coroner, the investigation into the violent untimely death began immediately that Sunday morning in Lower Penn’s Neck. The constable rounded up good and lawful men to serve on the Coroner’s Jury, and Coroner Hancock swore them in.  Upon their oath, the panel swore they would inquire on behalf of the State of New Jersey when, how, and in what manner Abigail came to her death.2

The inquest followed the practices of the day, beginning with the jurors viewing the body and the crime scene. They carefully eyeballed it for marks of violence, taking note of the wounds, before retiring to the house to continue the inquiry. Seated inside, witnesses testified, and scant evidence was exhibited as doctors Waddington and Morgan conducted the postmortem on the kitchen table.

Home postmortem examinations were common in the 19th century, and a guide, Practical Pathology, published in 1883, included a section on how to do them:

A good firm kitchen table is to be placed in the room where the cadaver is lying. (If this cannot be obtained, the coffin lid or a door removed from its hinges and supported on a couple of chairs is a good substitute. The room should be well-lighted, and as large and air as possible; in a small room, the windows should be thrown wide open. A piece of stout mackintosh should be spread over the table. A couple of wash-hand basins must be procured, two empty pails, and a plentiful supply of water, hot and cold.3

After the autopsy, the physicians testified that her throat was cut sometime after she had been slain on Saturday evening, Feb. 13, 1874, either to create the impression of suicide or to make sure of her death.  They believed she had been slain elsewhere, and her body had been carefully placed in the yard as they found little blood and no indication of a death struggle.  There were also two stab wounds and marks on her neck and arms as if some person had tightly choked her, the physicians noted.4

The coroner’s jury then rendered its verdict: “The deceased came to a violent death at the hands of some person or persons unknown to this jury,” they swore upon their oath.

Investigating a 19th-Century Murder

Once New Jersey’s 19th-century equivalent of CSI or medical examiner determined the cause and manner of death, the lawmen had to find out who did it, as this judgment triggered a full homicide investigation.  So parties of men organized by Sheriff Hires started searching the farm and adjoining fields for weapons or other clues.  The body was taken to Mantua on Tuesday, followed by her relatives and a few friends who grieved deeply at the loss of one who but a short time since they left in health and happiness.

 “Murder will out,” the Salem Sunbeam optimistically reported, as the “murderer has all humanity as detective on his tracks.”  But on all fronts, the 1870s criminal justice system struggled with mysterious cases.  They had none of the modern tools that are available today; there were no crime scene protocols to be followed, labs for analyzing the evidence, or depth of knowledge on how to handle a murder, the occurrence of which was infrequent for the rural South Jersey Officers.  In addition, the crime scene, trampled by the morbidly curious, was compromised, with no one taking care to isolate the place from gawkers. 

An 1888 topographical map of the vicinity of Salem. The arrows point to Harrisonville and Salem. The crime occurred about three-fourths of a mile south of Harrisonville. (Geological Survey of New Jersey, 1888, online at David Rumsey Map Collection.)

Tension hung over Salem County — a lone woman had been murdered, and there were no witnesses and scant evidence.  Who might have killed her?  Without any substantial leads, suspicion quickly turned to the “usual types,” the lawmen rounding up every imaginable suspect who might have had even the remotest connection to the victim.  Within days of discovering the carefully placed body, officers said they would crack the case.  They had taken several people into custody for questioning while chasing down dozens of unproductive leads.  It was a grueling process with little rest, but within a week, four suspects were locked in the county jail for grilling. 

As days passed to weeks and months, the authorities finally arrested William Sadler, a Black man who was one of John Lloyd’s hired hands.  When the June quarter session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer opened, Prosecutor Slape moved for a postponement because the state had not yet secured the necessary evidence.  Judge Van Syckle granted the request, setting it down for the October term.  A dozen witnesses in custody in jail were discharged on their recognizance.5

Trial

There was no concrete evidence against Salder, and he was speedily acquitted during the trial in October.  The Wilmington Daily Commercial reported that after Prosecutor Slape presented all the evidence, he “abandoned the case.” The judge charged the jury to return an acquittal verdict, saying there was not a single circumstance to connect the prisoner with the supposed murder.   “. . . This case is still wrapped in the most profound mystery,” the reporter noted.6,7

With Sadler acquitted, the mystery attending Abigail’s death was greater than ever, the Sunbeam observed.  The newspaper suggested that the county “offer a reward for information that might lead to the guilty party, which with the sum offered by the state ($600) might induce an accomplice in this great crime to divulge.”   

As one generation gave way to another, this unsolved Salem County cold case faded from memory. The killer was never found. No motive seemed to exist, and no one could provide the slightest information that might lead to a credible suspect.  Questions that had stumped law enforcement lingered for years, but those were forgotten in time. Still, the coroner’s verdict remained.  Abigail Dilks died at the hands of an unknown person nearly 150 years ago.

Evolution of the Crime Justice System

Certain foundational elements of Salem County’s Criminal Justice System have survived the passage of centuries and are used today to maintain peace and investigate crimes. But other parts are unfamiliar, so we are using this forgotten 1874 cold case to analyze these changes. 

In the late 19th century, investigations of complex crimes were primitive, with police having little or no experience in dealing with a baffling crime of this nature.  Because local officers were on their own when they were confronted with an inexplicable or high-profile homicide, it was common practice to turn to private detectives for help.  County officers did what they could to investigate a homicide, but their investigative tools were limited when there was no smoking gun or eyewitness to help crack the case.  So, Salem County frequently hired a private detective, someone more skilled in these crimes. 

murder convicts could be sent to gallos in Franklin County.
The gallows at the Franklin County Jail in Chambersburg, Pa

These detective agencies had resources that vastly exceeded the capabilities of the county’s top law enforcement officer, the sheriff.  They maintained networks of informants, could place undercover agents in the community, and kept records of known criminals.  Plus, they had some of the best “third-degree men” around, and they could stay the course until they had run down the offender and secured a conviction.  The sheriff, who had limited resources as the county’s top law enforcement officer, soon had to turn his attention back to overseeing the jail, serving warrants, providing court security, maintaining the peace, and handling sheriff’s sales.

The coroner handled the crime scene or death investigation.  For over three hundred years in New Jersey, coroners investigated unnatural or mysterious deaths.  When someone raised the alarm after discovering a corpse, this county official hurried to the locality to examine the death scene, gather evidence, and figure out how the loss occurred.  Colonists brought this grim job over from England, it being a part of ancient British jurisprudence.  While the duties waned as the centuries passed, the coroner primarily conducted a legal and medical inquiry to determine whether the loss of life came from foul play, suicide, accident, or natural cause.

Adhering to the same general practices handed down over the ages, he went to where the body was discovered to take charge of the remains.  There, he checked the corpse for signs of foul play, inspected where it was found, interviewed witnesses, followed up on leads, and sometimes sought expert testimony.   Once he completed the initial work-up of the case, he impaneled a jury to view the body.8

The coroner became a recognized officer of New Jersey counties in 1682, and the Constitution of 1776 provided for an elected coroner, the legislature providing for three in each county. His income was based on fees for services rendered, the officer receiving $5.00 for viewing a body, $3.00 for conducting an inquest, and $15 for burying a body in 1880.9,10

The candidate did not need to know anything about medicine – or law for that matter – as the only requirement was to be a freeholder.  While acceptable for the part-time nature of the post, the fee-based pay system did not make anyone wealthy in rural Salem County.  Still, it could be a stepping stone for higher political aspirations.

20th-Century Advances

However, in the 20th century, enormous advances in medicine, forensics, police procedures, and crime scene investigations provided death investigation capabilities far beyond what untrained officeholders and their juries could provide. On January 1, 1968, the corner system, which was still in existence in Salem and some other counties in New Jersey, was eliminated.  “Sponsors said it would pave the way for modernization of New Jersey’s ‘horse and buggy’ methods of investigating sudden and unexplained deaths.”  The coroners in Salem County at the time were Hubert T. Layton, Horace Anderson, and William B. Adams.  Layton and Adams were funeral directors, the Salem Sunbeam reported.11       

Eventually, this ancient English institution, the coroner and the coroner’s inquest faded from the criminal justice system as reliance on professionally trained police detectives and forensic experts made this part of British jurisprudence obsolete.

In conclusion, the investigation into the murder of Abigail Dilks in Salem County in 1874 highlights the evolution of the criminal justice system over the centuries. The case highlights the challenges of the 19th-century Salem County Criminal Justice System in solving complex cases and how limited their tools and resources were. Today’s criminal detection mechanisms involve modern scientific methods to help solve complex crimes. 

Endnotes
  1. “The Dilks Murder,” National Standard, Feb. 28, 1874[↩]
  2. “Murder in Lower Penn’s Neck, A Woman Found Dead With Her Throat Cut,”  The Sunbeam, February 20, 1874[↩]
  3. Woodhead, German Sims. Practical pathology. A manual for students and practitioners. Edinburgh: 1883[↩]
  4. “A Woman Mysteriously Murdered,” Savannah Morning News (GA), Feb. 28, 1874, p. 4[↩]
  5. “The Salem Murder,” New York Daily Herald, June 23, 1874, p 5[↩]
  6. “Acquitted of a Charge of Murder,”  Wilmington Daily Commercial, Oct. 24, 1874 p 4[↩]
  7. “Murder Trial,” The Sunbeam, Oct. 30, 1874, p. 3[↩]
  8. Lee, John Grigg. “Hand-book for Coroners: Containing a Digest of All the Laws in the Thirty-eight States of the Union,” 1881.[↩]
  9. Honeyman, Abraham Van Doren. “An Abridgement of the Revised Statutes of New Jersey: And of the Amended Constitution. United States,” Honeyman & Rowe, 1878.[↩]
  10. Lee, John Grigg. Hand-book for Coroners, 1881[↩]
  11. “Coroner System Replaced,” Salem Sunbeam, November 23, 1967. P. 1[↩]

The “Lynching Bee” — Coming to Terms

In a historical context, the term bee brings to mind social gatherings or events where a group of people came together to accomplish a task or achieve a common goal. Often called work bees or community bees, they were associated with quilting, barn raising, and spelling—activities where a crowd assembled to work for a purpose, share skills, and socialize with one another. These collective endeavors had a sense of community, teamwork, and common purpose, as the effort involved cooperative social undertakings.1

But while completing a study on lynchings for the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project in 2019, I discovered a disturbing association for the colloquial term. Newspapers often discussed lynching bees—occurrences where mobs conducted extrajudicial spectacle hangings for amusement. This contrasted with horrific, racially motivated violence inflicted on victims more quietly, often in the still of the night.  

Researching Lynchings

My focus on researching racial terror lynchings started twenty-one years ago on the Lower Shore when the literature on these crimes was scant, and traces of this dark past were elusive. Of course, secondary literature and original research have advanced in recent years. However, in 2002, all I discovered during my literature review was Dr. Polly Stewart’s groundbreaking research at the Nabb Center. After she started teaching at Salisbury University in 1973, the folklore professor learned that lynchings took place in the area.

So, she started investigating these incidents, applying academic rigor to determine the facts, issues, and dynamics around the undocumented history2. The scholar encountered steep resistance to sharing this history, however. In those early years, Linda Duyer, a geographer, also did pioneering work building upon Professor Stewart’s investigations3.,4

lynching bee princess anne md
This postcard reads, “Looking for the negro, Princes Anne, Md.” Although undated and uncanceled, it is likely from a 1906 incident. A lynching did not occur that day as the judge sent the man to Salisbury. (personal collection)5

Using the work of these two forerunners, I began fieldwork in the communities. Of course, open access to digitized periodicals had not evolved, and the undertaking involved struggling to read old microfilmed newspapers at libraries in Crisfield and Prince Anne. My investigation also involved days of fieldwork–interviews and records searches in out-of-the-way places such as attics and basements of municipal buildings and courthouses. The phrase never caught my attention as I pieced together enough information to develop case studies for my courses on the history of criminal justice on Delmarva at the University of Delaware.

Lynching Bees

My understanding of associations with the term changed in 2019 while completing the Maryland Lynching Memorial investigation. As I dug into the Maryland Archive holdings–19th-century circuit court records, judgments, case files, correspondence, jury records, minutes, pardon dockets, police blotters, and a much broader array of digitized newspapers–this puzzling, troubling term shocked me. What is a lynching bee I mumbled as the first notice caused me to dig much deeper into late 19th and early 20th-century periodicals to determine if this was an outlier. Correspondents and editors often used this phrase, as it turned out.   

Here is a recap of the first 3 column inch narrative from the Midland Journal in Rising Sun, which brought the phrase to my attention. Following an attempt in Rowlandsville, a rural community near the Susquehanna River in Cecil County, the editor applied a larger font to the headline. On Christmas day 1907, an account of a drunken “lynching bee” at Rowlandsville appeared in city papers, the editor wrote. As villagers celebrated with a shooting match that turned into a booze fest, an African American named Webster was lying in a drunken stupor.

“In the spirit of fun (?),” he was suspended by the neck from the wagon bridge and left hanging until life was nearly extinct.” The editor added that the account created considerable commotion and “different versions of its authenticity circulated around the area. Some stated nothing of the kind happened while others said it was greatly exaggerated, but something of the kind did actually take place.”6

Understanding the term

A search of over 20 million pages at Chronicling America at the Library of Congress located 4,148 pages where a correspondent mentioned the phrase. For example, on March 31, 1900, the Baltimore County Union reported that Bel Air had a lynching bee. 

Using the idiom “lynching bee” to describe the horrific act of racial lynching was shocking. How could these appalling acts that terrorized generations of Black people be compared to other types of social bees? However, I had worked with this literature and the primary sources for decades, so I shouldn’t have been surprised as I knew about the shocking actions of jubilant spectators creating carnival-like atmospheres in many cases when any of these horrific acts occurred.

Note: Expanded from an article published in the newsletter of the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project.

Endnotes
  1. “Bee, n” OED Online, Oxford University, June 2022[↩]
  2. Ross Altman, “Polly Stewart – Lynching in Maryland,” FolkWorks”[↩]
  3. Linda Duyer, “The Complex Task of Writing History,” Delmarva African American History, December 31, 2018[↩]
  4. Linda Duyer. “Mob Law on Delmarva: Cases of Lynchings, near-Lynchings, Legal Executions, and Race Riots of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia 1870-1950.” Amazon, The Author, 2014 .[↩]
  5. Linda Duyer, “Looking for the Negro, Princess Anne, Md,” Delmarva African Amerian History[↩]
  6. “Rowlandsville Boozefest, Christmas Celebration at the Town on the Octoraro,” Midland Journal, Jan. 3, 1907[↩]

Researching First African American Police Officers in Atlantic City

I am investigating the nature of work for African Americans in the public sector during the Jim Crow Era, specifically in healthcare, local government, and public safety.  Drawing on archival research, interviews with local experts, and oral histories with tradition-bearers and pioneers who broke barriers, this research examines the opportunities, obstacles, and challenges for Black Americans before the passage of modern Civil Rights legislation.       

Atlantic City is one place I have included in the study. There a large, vibrant Black community contributed to the growth, development, and culture of the resort. As a result, the city had more public-sector employment opportunities. But it was far from equitable as Black people struggled to break through the barriers of discrimination and segregation. This complicated history is a perspective I am working to understand as I contextualize the opportunities in the public sector as Jim Crow lost its hold over the country.    

As Black Americans held a variety of government and nonprofit positions along the Jersey Shore, this has led me to ask about the first police officers, firefighters, nurses, and doctors.  Noting those who went first is crucial to understanding the forces at work. The published literature, especially the Northside by Nelson Johnson, is of immense help in understanding the healthcare professions and firefighters.

However, law enforcement needs more research as this part of the history of policing is largely unexplored. When did the first Black officer receive his appointment? What was his life story? After he broke the color line, what struggles did he face? These are some of the questions under consideration as I research the first cohort of early pioneers in police work.

Atlantic City Police Department around 1900
Members of what is believed to be the Atlantic City Police Department pose for a photographer, probably around the turn of the twentieth century. There are two African American policemen in the image. (Source: Bob Ruffolo)
Chief Harry C. Eldridge, Atlantic City Police Department, 1906
The Atlantic City Daily Press published this photo of “Chief Harry C. Eldrige, who died on May 4, 1906. (Atlantic City Daily Press, May 5, 1906)

This line of inquiry led me to Princeton Antiques Book Service in Atlantic City. The proprietor, Bob Ruffolo, was of immense help. He has an expansive collection of 20,000 local images and a vast knowledge of the past along the Jersey Shore. In the collection, he had this photograph of police officers, which he thought was from Atlantic City around the turn-of-the-twentieth-century. Standing in the uniformed ranks are two Black police officers.

I am still working on comparing this picture with other images from the force around that time, but only a few surviving images exist.  So I will keep at this. However, in the old microfilm reels at the Atlantic City Library, I located an image of Chief Harry C. Eldridge. He passed away in 1906. There appears to be some likeness to the chief in the group photo.

Finally, the Atlantic City Free Public Library (ACFPL) identified the first Black female police officer. In 1924, Margaret “Maggie Creswell became a seasonal officer and in 1927 she became a permanent member of the force. According to the library, she was the first female officer in the city and the state. Office Creswell retired in 1964.

Salem County Cold Case

Salem County Cold Case, an 1874 murder
An article about a Salem County Cold Case, a murder in 1874, published in the Salem County Historical Society Newsletter.

While studying the array of officials who made up New Jersey’s 19th-century criminal justice system, I often pore over aging coroner’s reports, trial transcripts, and police blotters. While doing that in South Jersey, I came across an unsettling Salem County Cold Case, the murder of Abigail Dilks in 1874.

From the beginning, the mystifying case stumped 19th-century lawmen and prosecutors. They swept the fields and marsh for evidence and interrogated the “usual types,” but the investigators failed to find a motive. Also, no one provided even the slightest information that might lead to a credible suspect, so the killer escaped.

The questions that stumped law enforcement lingered for decades, but those faded as one generation gave way to another. Still, the coroner’s verdict remains in the aging book of inquests at the Salem County Clerk’s Office. Abigail Dilks died at the hands of an unknown person in a lonely area of Lower Penns Neck near Harrisonville nearly 150 years ago.

Since true crime stories and unsolved mysteries are popular these days, I wrote a piece about this horrendous murder for the summer 2022 edition of the quarterly newsletter of the Salem County Historical Society. The case had mostly been lost in the recorded histories and written records of Salem County.

The arrow on this 1876 map for Lower Penns Neck Township shows the location of the murder. (Source: Atlas of Salem & Gloucester Counties, New Jersey by Everts & Stewart, 1876, from the West Jersey History Project West Jersey History Project –  Maps from the Everts and Stewart Combination Atlas Map of Salem and Gloucester Counties – 1876 )