Tuesday, WBOC’s Delmarva Life asked me to stop by the Salisbury studio to talk about terrible railroad accidents and crimes, a time when murder and mayhem rode the rails on the Peninsula.
In the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, trains were the dominant form of transportation and unsettling accidents and violent deaths frequently disrupted excursions, dominating the headlines of newspapers and alarming the traveling public.
Since I kept encountering these horrific tragedies while investigating the past for community studies, I started exploring the dark underside of train travel, the unexamined stories of murder and mayhem on the rails, including cold-blooded killings, Jesse James-like train robberies, devastating explosions, and serious accidents.
As I studied them I developed a talk called Murder and Mayhem Rode the Rails. Here’s a link to information on the talk.
Murder & Mayhem Rode the Rails on Delmarva
Here are some links to blog posts about incidents in the region,
Railroads were the leading cause of violent deaths in 1907 and railroad accidents were common. This accident probably took place on the line between Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Friday I talked to WBOC’s Delmarva Life about the dark underside of history, the subject of a program hosted by the Wesley College Parker Library on Tuesday evening, Feb. 22, 2021.
This Delaware Humanities talk, “CSI: The Historical Edition,” considers some of the most disturbing, mysterious crimes from yesteryear, as it examines how lawmen from another era solved murders (or didn’t solve) their most horrendous cases.
Before the arrival of the modern age, an eyewitness or a “smoking gun” were usually what lawmen had to rely on as they struggled to bring a killer to justice.
This is the story of how a Delaware Police officer, Charles Schultz, was killed 130 years ago in a line of duty. The patrolman gave his life while serving the citizens of Wilmington. The tragic death caused a sensation at the time, but once he was lowered into his grave, memory faded into the mist of time, and the lawman was largely forgotten except for traces of the crime found in headlines in old yellowing newspapers at the Wilmington Library and public records at the Delaware Public Archives.
It seemed like a routine January night in 1891 as Officer Charles W. Schultz on his last night alive, trudged through the outlying part of his Wilmington beat, looking into alleys, trying doors, and peeping through store windows as he checked for troublemakers. While he crept quietly through the silent winter darkness, the midnight hour ticked slowly by. He kept his topcoat wrapped tightly around him to fight the cold since once the sun retreated the mercury plunged toward freezing. Near 21st and Tatnall streets, he observed two suspicious-looking men answering the description of safe-crackers thought to be in the area. The instant he called out halt, the strangers pulled out revolvers. As Schultz struggled to draw his weapon, the heavy winter garments slowing him down, two pistol shots shattered the quiet midnight hour, striking him in the stomach and grazing his head.
Wilmington police call box
The assailants escaped into the gloomy Delaware night while the wounded Schultz, weak and suffering painfully, stumbled along in the direction of his home. Cries of “I am shot” attracted the attention of George Aiken, who helped him to Dr. Shortlidge’s office. Someone telephoned police headquarters so several officers and the patrol wagon rushed to his aid while the doctor attended to him. Realizing the gravity of the patient’s condition, the doctor loaded the mortally wounded man onto the Paddy Wagon and rushed the patrolman to the Delaware Hospital.
Schultz could not provide much of a description of the culprits except to say that they were “rough, burly fellows,” and one was taller than the other, the Delaware Gazette reported. Chief Swiggett hastily put extra men on the street to search the rough and unfrequented parts of the city.
His wife, five small children, brothers, ministers, and others assembled at his death bed. The nurses and doctors watching over the fading man heard his “distracted ravings,” noted the Delaware Gazette. He spoke of his wife and children and of incidents of the fatal night. What rested heaviest on his mind was his wife and children. Death finally came to 37-year-old Officer Schultz at 5:10 p.m. Friday evening January 30, notes the city’s Death Register.
Hunting for the Murderers of Officer Charles Schultz
Wilmington officers continued hunting down the cold-blooded murderers involved in the deadly attack while newspaper editors worried that any possibility of identifying the assailants had vanished because of the “complete mystery enshrouding the few-known facts” of the terrible tragedy. The “only witnesses of this frightful crime were the victim and his assailants, and while the former’s lips are sealed in death, the latter have thus far succeeded in eluding arrest, leaving such meager clues as to admit only slight hopes of their speedy apprehension,” a paper wrote.
The lookout continued for days as squads rushed to Richardson’s Woods on the Newport Turnpike, the West Yard, the B & O Station, and other places but to no avail. As the sun faded on New Castle County one more time, officers on the day watch were detailed for extra duty with instructions to arrest all suspicious characters. And that they did for a number of arrests were made of tramps and others; however, one by one, they were all discharged. The only warm lead remaining developed Saturday when the chief received a telegram from that two men answering the description of the fugitives were lurking in that area. Officer Yates rushed to the Pennsylvania village, but when he got there, the men had disappeared.
Where the murder was committed, a sketch published Delaware Gazette Feb 5, 1891.
Authorities continued following leads and tracking down suspects, but the tangled trail kept leading them down paths to nowhere. Despite a wide search, some baffled investigators suspected the murders still lurked about Wilmington since it seemed almost impossible for the assassins to have escaped to another place, they asserted. All “cities and towns were notified of the shooting and reports from those . . . places indicated that no such men had been seen,” reported the Morning News. As the cold trail continued getting colder, Chief Swiggett received a telegram from Norfolk, VA, advising that authorities had two men answering the description. He jumped on a midnight train, but returned home empty-handed for this, like other leads, proved fruitless. The slayers remained at large.
Clues Faded
Steadily clues faded, but before it became a cold-case the Delaware Gazette and State News observed that the “assassination” constituted one of the “most cold-blooded, fiendish murders ever perpetrated” in Wilmington.
With investigators unearthing nothing new the outrageous murder also started disappearing from headlines, but before it became a long-forgotten case in the annals of Delaware crime the editor of the Morning News noted some lessons from the tragedy. When the city installed police signal boxes officers began patrolling alone instead of in pairs since the city believed there would be no problem with summonsing aid from the police booths. That “order should be rescinded at once, especially in such lonely places as was patrolled by Officer Schultz,” the paper editorialized.
They also thought that the force was too small for the territory patrolled. “There are not more than eighteen officers on duty at night, and with the handful of men scattered from south Wilmington to outskirts of the Ninth Ward and from the West Yard almost to Edgemore, the only wonder is that more robberies and other crimes don’t occur.” Finally, the men should keep their guns where they can be reached instantly for if it is an undercoat, they might as well be without a weapon.
Officer Charles Schultz (Source: Delaware Gazette, Feb. 5, 1891.
When those two gunshots pierced the quiet air in the sleeping city on the Brandywine so many years ago, Officer Charles Schultz became another Delaware public servant to die on the job.
The City provided $500 to help the family of Officer Charles Schultz
After influenza struck Wilmington in the autumn of 1918, concerned officials at the New Castle County Workhouse struggled to keep the county prison from becoming a hot spot. In the tight cells and confined, overcrowded spaces at Greenbank isolation or what we today call social distancing was impossible. Thus, Warden Richard F. Cross and the workhouse physician, Dr. William H. Kraemer, took every possible precaution to keep the sickness outside prison walls, as the pandemic’s deadly toll spread in northern Delaware.
Nonetheless, as the contagion upended everyday life in Wilmington, Dr. Kraemer became apprehensive that the walls had been breached. During daily sick calls in late September, more inmates began showing up with sniffles, sore throats, deep coughs, and chest congestion. Diagnosing the symptoms in the cramped, poorly ventilated space behind bars, he steadied himself for a fight with the virus with the limited tools the medical profession made available to practitioners as there were no cures or vaccines.
The New Castle County Workhouse, a postcard from around 1911. (source: personal collection)
Then a prison guard, Archibald C Dorsey, came down with the flu. Suffering for three or four days, the 42-year old died at his home at 1330 French Street in Wilmington on September 29, 1918. Officer Dorsey was laid to rest at Cathedral Cemetery on October 2.1 A few days later newspapers mentioned that an outbreak had occurred at the prison, but the cases were generally mild.2
Flu Claims Victims at Workhouse
As the virus spread in Delaware, the courts continued sentencing convicts to the workhouse. One man, Jas. W. Roundtree, a foreman of a Baltimore shipyard, came to Wilmington early in October to see the superintendent of the local shipyard. Soon after arriving, he caught the attention of the police when he stole some women’s clothing. Officer Bullock hauled the man before the city court, which held him on $500 bail.
Shortly after the trial, Roundtree became “wildly delirious.” Instead of being a common thief, the Baltimorean had been out of his head, suffering from influenza. The police hurriedly decided not to jail him, but they could not find a doctor to come to the station to treat the delirious man. So, they sent the patient to the workhouse to receive care from the county physician. It was the only compassionate thing they could do.3
As October slipped painfully by an alarming surge in illnesses indicated that the virus was raging unchecked within the prison walls as inmates and guards fell sick. When Dr. Kraemer made his medical rounds on the afternoon of Friday, October 11, ten percent of the inmates were ill. He had forty-five ailing prisoners in cells, while the six most serious cases struggled to survive the infection in the prison hospital.
A registry of deaths at the New Castle County Workhouse (Source: Delaware Public Archives.)
By contrast, a month earlier on September 11, 1 percent of the inmates were sick, and there were no patients in the hospital. The rate of infections was far higher within the institution than in the general population of the city.4
These elevated conditions continued for a little over two weeks, and on October 16, the flu claimed the first inmate. Samuel Green, 33, died Oct. 11, an influenza-pneumonia victim. 5 Five days later, Nineteen-year-old Ernest Holly, serving a life sentence for a murder near Newark, perished at the workhouse on Wednesday night. October 16. Then on October 19, the disease took another victim, Rosero Malsese, 31. He was serving two months for highway robbery. This made the third inmate death at Greenbank during the pandemic.6, 7, 8
By October 21, Dr. Kraemer had good news for Warden Cross. The infections were clearing up rapidly at Greenbank, the few remaining inmates recovering. Plus, there had been no deaths nor any new cases at the workhouse in the past 24 hours.9
At least one more inmate, Frank Smith, perished. The 39-year-old sentenced on November 9, 1917, to three years died one year later after incarceration on Nov 8. 1918. Pneumonia associated with influenza was listed as the cause of death.
Gradually the suffering diminished at the county prison, but at least four people died during the outbreak. The previous year, only four inmates deaths occured during the entire twelve months.
Workhouse Opened in 1901
The New Castle County Workhouse was located at Greenbank, about six miles west of downtown Wilmington. The first prisoners arrived at the modern house of corrections on November 6, 1901. Designed for 350 inmates, World War I considerably accelerated the incarcerated population as Wilmington’s war industries boomed. “To guard and supervise in a safe and sanitary manner, a population at times nearly six hundred in an institution designed for three hundred fifty was obviously impossible,” Caldwell notes. “On December 1, 1918, five hundred forty-eight prisoners were crowded into the inadequate accommodations of the workhouse.”10
Medical Cases at the New Castle County Workhouse, 9/24/1918 – 10/27/1918 (Source: Workhouse Daily Activity Report, Delaware public Archives)
Endnotes
