Reflections & News About Working With the Past
As we mark the passage of a year since COVID-19 disrupted everyday life on Delmarva and the Nation, the Delaware State News, published an extensive piece about the connections between today and the pandemic of 1918. As journalist Noah Zucker examined the perspective in Delaware, I was interviewed a couple of times about how my research and how things were upended in 1918.
Here’s the link to the full article, Echoes of the Past: 100 Years Apart, Parallels in Spanish Flu and COVID-19.
Salem County was mainly a quiet, idyllic area in rural South Jersey, in the late 19th century. As the last twenty years of that serene era slipped by and the dawn of a new, bustling century neared, the pace was slow and steady. In this fine agricultural district on the Delaware River just above the bay, the main lines of highways had not penetrated, nor were there large towns. Thus, few newcomers arrived here to add to the county’s stable population throughout those final decades, the United States Census Bureau counting around 25,000 people in 1900.1,2,3
However, a spate of powerful forces that would fundamentally change part of the county was converging. Along the Delaware River, the area known as Penns Grove had grown gradually as city dwellers discovered the delightful spot for escaping the oppressive heat of summer at fashionable riverside hotels. As a result of development, the New Jersey Legislature incorporated the borough in 1894. 4,5
On the matter of the tranquil, relaxed nature of the county, one of the nation’s new professional groups, the American Association of Corrections (1919) took note, remarking that the agricultural district on the River, about 32-miles south of Camden, had no “serious problems of a social nature to meet until war was declared in 1914.”6
However, with World War I ripping distant Europe apart, an industrial boom commenced upending this serene, waterfront corner of New Jersey. DuPont’s Smokeless Powder Plant at Carney’s Point, which had mostly employed small numbers of local workmen until fighting erupted in Europe in 1914, was suddenly rushed, churning out orders for explosives, the Penn’s Grove Record reported. Because of unprecedented demand, Carney’s Point hummed continually, night and day, as workers at the growing manufacturing complex churned out product, freighters waiting at the dock to carry vital supplies back to the war-wracked continent.7
The “demand for carpenters, masons, operators, and workmen far exceeded the supply,” wrote Charles Harrison, in A History of Salem County, New Jersey.8 The local labor market was “drained to the last drop,” so from all parts of the United States and distant countries came skilled workmen and laborers in droves, knowing jobs awaited them here.
The little borough of Penns Grove, whose population in 1910 was less than 1,900 jumped to over 6,000 in ten years, an increase of almost 200 percent. In the rural area surrounding the powder plant, Upper Penns Neck Township, the population soared from 775 in 1910 to over 6,200 in 1920, an increase of over 700 percent.9
The surge spilled into Carney’s Point and Pennsville, the region becoming a hub of growth overnight as population skyrocketed and housing and barracks hastily went up. It was estimated that the plant needed 15,000 men in 1915. To accommodate the swelling labor force, practically every house had boarders, while the hospital building and Cove School were being used as bunkhouses. At the plant, construction of new buildings and railways were continually going on day and night, and lines of electric lights were erected by which to work at once the sun went down.10
By the late winter of 1915, the building rush at the “Carney Point Powder Works” continued around-the-clock, more land constantly being needed for industrial development. William Crispin, the tenant on the du Pont farm adjacent to Penns Grover formerly owned by Thomas Flanigan and later by Robert Kidd, had been notified to cease growing crops on his 150 acres. Likewise, Thomas Whitesell, a tenant on the du Pont Farm formerly owned by Edwin A. Vanneman and later by Dr. David Wiley had also been notified to cease growing crops on his 300 acre as it was needed for buildings to make and dry power.
Once this work was done, the DuPont Smokeless Powder work occupied more than a mile square mile of land, about 700 acres, making it “by far the largest powder making plant in the world,” asserted the Penn’s Grove Record 11
But people hadn’t seen anything yet, as Salem County’s equivalent of the gold rush hit. The United States entered the “Great War” in April 1917. By summertime, the “Carney’s Point Works had more than twenty-five thousand men and women toiling away around the clock, turning out powder for allied armies, according to Harrison in Salem County: A story of People.12 Thus, More people seeking jobs poured into the area.
Beyond the volatile nature of young, transient men with pocket-cash looking to have a good time after toiling away for a week in the dangerous occupations, this also brought in “a rough and reckless element,” as well as rough and tumble taverns and bars. “Boom town viciousness in all forms was rampant, “according to the 1919 Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Workers.13
Whatever the case, plenty of mischievous types frequented Penns Grove and nearby communities, making much work for officials. “The two cells in the [Penn’s Grove] Borough lockup were generally occupied, and men were often transferred to the Salem Jail, to make room for more unruly prisoners.”
The criminal justice system in the Borough and the County, grappling with the wave of lawlessness, was quickly overrun with wayward types from all over the nation and world. The Penns Grove mayor appointed “thirteen assistant marshals at the request of the Company.” Soon Du Pont formally established a police department, and Major Richard Sylvester, formerly of Wilmington, organized the force. In the ranks, 30 uniformed men and 14 mounted police officers guarded the plant, according to the Salem Sunbeam. Also, there were plainclothes detectives. The new police headquarters had a lockup, and Pennsville Justice of the Peace Duffy often held court there. 14
About the time newspapers were reporting on industrial expansion, county editors noted that a new Sheriff, A. Lincoln Fox, was sworn into office, along with his deputy Charles F. Pancoast 15. The new sheriff had to deal with an unprecedented crime wave that was terrorizing residents and was nowhere near cresting. He, along with troubled and perplexed prosecutors, judges, and magistrates, grappled with the problem of having a system designed for simpler times.
This enormous influx created the perfect storm, as the area around Carney’s Point teemed with newcomers. Sheriff Fox warned the Board of Freeholders that this was a crime wave of epic proportions. Stories of criminal mayhem, gangsters, and all sorts of marauding bands filled the weekly newspapers in Pennsville, Penns Grove and Salem as lawmen, judges and prosecutors confronted an overwhelming wave of theft, violence, drunkenness, and general mayhem.
Squire John K. Duffy of Penns Grove knew this first hand, the brunt of the Salem County crime wave falling upon his shoulders. “In the early days of the boom his job kept him rather busy: for ex-convicts, tramps and bums of various descriptions struck town expecting to enjoy the fullest pleasure of personal liberty,” the Survey reported.
At the Du Pont camps and villages, wayward types encountered the company security patrol and in Penns Grove they ran up against the municipal police force. The borough was proud of its five-man force, a favorable light shining on the lawmen when the crime wave hit. But above all the disorderly element learned to fear Squire Duffy. “He can lay a man out as well as if he were a trained barrister, and his favorite penalty for disorderly characters”: was to give them ten minutes to clear town, the Survey remarked in 1916.16
Penns Grove was entitled to a second justice of the peace, but no one “pressed forward to divide the honors,” so Mr. Duffy monopolized justice in Penns Grove and vicinity. Finally, after having worked with “the unruly day and night since the powder boom” began, he decided to take a well-deserved winter vacation in Florida in 1917, the Salem Sunbeam reported.17
As for the county jail, and tiny municipal lockups something had to be done to ease overcrowding if the outbreak of mayhem was going to be contained. Newspapers reported that 1914 was one of the most “criminalistic years on record.” In one quarter session of the county court, the judges heard 93 cases, a third more than the previous year. The Salem Jail had 258 commitments in 1914, 617 for 1915, and 742 in 1917.18
Taking into consideration the magnitude of the problem, resilient Salem County was ready to cope, in a practical sort of way. Freeholders, realizing in the spring of 1914, that the overcrowded conditions at the jail were out of control, contemplated enlarging the prison at a cost of $30,000.18
As the elected leaders assessed the cost Sheriff Fox had another idea. A new New Jersey law passed in March 1915 offered a solution as it permitted county road camps.19 Thus, the top lawman presented a plan for a portable jail, a “workhouse” with bunks for 16 men and a dining room and kitchen. At night the superintendent and guard slept in the dining area on cots that were lowered from the ceiling. Thomas F. Waddington, the former chief of police in Salem, had developed this unique facility.
This seemed to be a cost-effective solution to the problem of inmate overcrowding. The experiment started on July 11, 1915, with eight prisoners, Supt. Waddington and a guard. Originally the portable prison was at the almshouse, but it was eventually moved to Daretown, where it was placed on wheels, twelve horses being required to move the building. It moved from job to job about the county as projects were completed and new ones tackled. The maximum number of prisoners up to 1919 was twenty-five. After a few years, it was decided to locate the camp permanently at the Freisburg-Yorktown Road and Commissioner’s Pike.
This experiment in corrections reform came along just as the county was grappling with another costly problem, converting dirt roads and timber bridges to modern highways for automobiles. Thus, judges started sentencing prisoners to the road camp to do manual work on the roads, rather than serving jail time. According to the Society of Social Workers, the portable road camp was the first of its kind established in the State and it was also credited with being the first in the United States.
The unparalleled Salem County crime wave waned once the war was over but through good times and hard times, the camp continued for about a quarter-of-a-century. During the Great Depression, many vagrants deliberately had themselves committed so as to make the camp their winter home. This occurred mainly during the low ebb of the economic crisis when the population of the camp would rise in winter and fall in summer.
In the late 1930s, the Freeholders were considering abandoning the camp, but the final closure didn’t take place until July 1943. With the number of prisoners committed to road work decreasing steadily, the Board of Freeholders finally decided to close this practical experiment in penal reform. Although the matter had been under consideration for years, and at least one time the elected leaders deadlocked in a vote to close it, the dwindling number of inmates made it impractical to continue the operation. There were two prisoners there when the camp closed (Sunbeam, 1945).
The Salem Sunbeam wondered how a rise in the jail population would be met in the future. The county’s prison policy remains where it had always been: “take care of the current year; let the future take care of itself,” the editor remarked 20
The Salem County Executioner and His Grim Task
Note
Originally published in the Quarterly Newsletter of the Salem County Historical Society, Summer 2017
EndnotesThe Harford County Lynching Memorial Committee had prepared to hold a remembrance and soil collection event at the end of March , but the the pandemic disrupted outreach plans. And with community engagement put on hold for an undetermined period, the committee decided to launch a blog as a way to keep people informed about its research, plans and activities.
The committee was established in March 2019. The purpose of this group is to memorialize the victims of this difficult era in the County.
Here’s the link to the new weblog. https://harcomlmp.blogspot.com/
From Truth First, the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project newsletter, April 2020
“Renewed interest in the history of racial terror in the US is reflected in the quickening pace of scholarship on the subject, included here in Maryland. Recently, two independent researchers have made significant contributions to the body of knowledge about racial terror lynchings in the State. . . .”
