Delaware Humanities has selected a new program I have been researching for inclusion in the speaker’s bureau and visiting scholar programs. The lecture, “Life in the Past Lane; Delaware Roads,” encourages people to get off the highway and enjoy some of the State’s most scenic, cultural and historic roads — along with the surrounding landscape and resources.
Here’s the description of the program:
With the arrival of modern, high-speed highways, many of Delaware’s scenic routes and the small hamlets and villages clustered around those old corridors are overlooked. This talk explores the character, ambiance, and history of some of these lesser-traveled roads today. These historic roadways are much more than just a line on the map. So come along for an enjoyable trip. You will hear intriguing stories about waterfront towns, agricultural communities, and country hamlets and villages, where discovery awaits you.
Come along and find your road in this talk. Along the way, we will explore science byways, old historic corridors, and the connections between the past and today.
Travel was difficult in mid-March 1923 as this automobile travels along. The road connects Kirkwood and Tybouts Corner. (Source: Delaware Public Archives)
In My Memory Oldsmobile, by Edward Gus, 1905 (Source: Historic America Sheet Music, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University)
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
The Wilmington Police Department grappled with the unprecedented challenge of maintaining service after the Spanish influenza slipped into Delaware in the autumn of 1918. In normal times, the 127-person force patrolled streets, preserved peace, operated the lockup, investigated crimes, collected dog taxes, and maintained the fire and police telegraph. However, early that autumn, as the contagion spread and the death toll mounted, common crime plummeted, the virus driving people off the streets as the Board of Health closed public places. This included taverns and saloons, typical hotspots for troublemakers.
Bookings at the city lockup tumbled by late September as wayward types, along with everyone else, stayed away from crowds. Nevertheless, although work instigated by pickpockets, muggers, run-of-the-mill thieves, and similar lawbreakers declined, the force maintained a vigilant watch as conservators of the peace. Adding to this, patrolmen had to help stamp out the spread of the contagion and provide relief to the stricken.
A Wilmington Police Officer is at his post, sometime around 1910 to 1919. (Source: Wilmington Bureau of Police Facebook Page — https://bit.ly/3mffNdw
With sickness falling “like a black pall,” striking thousands in the City, as the death rate increased by leaps and bounds, the Board of Health ordered the closing of public places. That October 2 edict also shuttered 167 saloons. But it allowed the wholesale liquor stores to say open as they were not congregating places. That changed on October 11, when Chief George Black requested the shuttering of these outlets. Drunkenness was excessive, which with the police force handicapped by sickness, was a difficult matter for the force to handle, the chief explained. 1
As officers patrolled the streets, making arrests for disobeying anti-spitting measures and other public health orders, the virus spread in the ranks. Dozens became ill, their numbers having already been thinned by about 30 men because of the war. At the same time, headquarters continued getting calls from people who could not secure undertakers to remove dead bodies from their houses. 2
At the peak of the pandemic, the police patrol wagon carried influenza victims to the emergency hospitals around Wilmington. Always on the go, the wagon transported 822 patients in September. During the first three weeks in October, when the raging disease was at its worst, the two crews of the “machine” worked, day and night. At times the demands on the patrol crews taxed them to the utmost, and Patrolman Robinson, one of the officers, worked day after day with a high temperature. When he arrived home one night after a long shift, he collapsed in his yard and was carried to his room, ill with the disease. Although he recovered, he passed the virus along to his family.
Wilmington Police on the Front Line
One member of the force, Patrolman John Jack Riley, died from the ailment. On his last watch (September 25), Officer Riley escorted World War I draftees to the railroad station, but when he returned home he found that his wife was stricken. While caring for her, the policeman fell ill, passing away on October 3, at his home at 9 South Jackson Street. The police band planned to honor the lawman by playing funeral music during the procession to the cemetery, but the Board of Public Health orders prevented that arrangement. Nevertheless, thirty members of the force went to the Riverview Cemetery.3
In assisting the Board of Health, Police Surgeon George W. K. Forrest and City Physician Allan W. Perkins attended to victims whose relatives or friends called the police for help. One night the police kept the city physician on the move until daylight attending victims. Police Surgeon Forrest reported that he had treated 32 patrolmen and six prisoners stricken with influenza.
Wilmington Police Department arrests, 1917 – 1919; (Source: Annual Report of the Wilmington Department of Police; Delaware Public Archives)4
To add to the troubles of the lawmen, at least fifteen men detained behind bars in the lockup became ill. These victims were carried out by the patrol wagon crew and hurried to one of the emergency hospitals.
While the rank and file were doing this work, Chief of Police Black’s office was besieged with telegrams and phone calls from relatives of those stricken from other cities asking for information about them. In many cases, those who died here had wives or mothers in other cities, and it rested on the police department to get word to those who had been bereaved to break the news to them.
Saloons Thrown Open
Toward the end of October, the situation eased so the Delaware Board of Health lifted the ban on public assembly at 1 a.m. Sunday, October 27. The reopening of taverns had to wait until Monday – this marked twenty-six days that the board kept saloons shuttered. However, a great deal of thirst had accumulated, as from early morning until late at night that Monday, John Barleycorn held sway in the City for the first time in nearly a month.
Once saloonkeepers threw open the doors, people crowded around the bars. This rush was apparent anywhere one looked downtown, the spectacle of intoxicated men on streets being a common one. Officers booked over 100 lawbreakers in the lockup before midnight. The authorities likened the situation to the days when the powder plants at Carney Point were in the making, and the patrol wagons were loaded up with intoxicated men at the boat wharves.
While these scenes unfolded, the police patrol wagon, which had remained idle for a couple of weeks took on a new lease on life. For a while it was thought that the “little patrol [wagon],” which had been undergoing repairs during the slump in business, would have to be placed in operation. But Patrolman Harry Foreman, the mechanic, not anticipating any rush in business, did not have it ready to roll. 5
After Wilmington’s barrooms opened, another problem developed. In Chester, Philadelphia, and other nearby places, the quarantine was still in place, so thirty people flocked to Wilmington. This influx of visitors seeking liquor was a menace to public health and morals, to say nothing of a nuisance as there were more intoxicated men on the streets than others. Consequently, Chief Black issued an order closing Wilmington’s saloon at 7 o’clock every night until these nearby places lifted the quarantines 6
That end of October holiday — the time for ghosts and goblins — came around about this time, as police struggled with the liquor trade. Then ”Halloween Flu” hit Wilmington, the News Journal remarked., as Chief Black banned parties and public revelry. Nobody was to blame for it, the paper explained. It was simply too risky.
Despite the order, bands of young people in costume appeared on Market Street but quickly found that the police were not joking when they ordered all false faces to come off and advised the clowns and other “fantastics” to go home. Confetti and ticklers were suppressed as soon as they put in an appearance too and the police also put the quiet on any undue noise and carnival frolicking. It left many young people wishing the happy days were back when Wilmington used to have big Halloween parades with bands and decorated fire apparatus and all the fixing.
Finally, with the emergency waning in late October and sick officers returning to duty, the City’s law enforcement agency started return to its regular routine.
In the autumn of 1918, the officers who were able to remain on duty did excellent work as guardians of peace and public health. When these men entered the ranks, they knew they would face risks in the rough and tumble parts of Wilmington, but they never expected to have to struggle with helping to stamp out a deadly virus during a global pandemic.
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
