Where the carcass is, there will the vultures be gathered together. It
is humiliating to human nature to record it, but it is nevertheless
true, that amid all the suffering and sacrifice, and heroism and
generosity that was displayed in this awful time, there arose some of
the basest passions of unbridled vice. The lust of gain led many
skulking wretches to rob and despoil, and even to mutilate the bodies of
the dead. Pockets were searched. Jewels were stolen. Finger-rings and
ear-rings were torn away, the knife often being used upon the poor, dead
clay to facilitate the spoliation. Against this savagery the better
elements of the populace sternly revolted. For the time there was no
organized government. But outraged and indignant humanity soon
formulates its own code of laws. Pistol and rope and bludgeon, in the
hand of honesty, did effective work. The reports of summary lynchings
that at first were spread abroad were doubtless exaggerated, but they
had a stern foundation of truth; and they had abundant provocation.
Writing on that tragic Sunday, one correspondent says: "The way of the
transgressor in the desolated valley of the Conemaugh is hard indeed.
Each hour reveals some new and horrible story of suffering and outrage,
and every succeeding hour brings news of swift and merited punishment
meted out to the fiends who have dared to desecrate the stiff and
mangled bodies in the city of the dead, and torture the already
half-crazed victims of the cruelest of modern catastrophes. Last night a
party of thirteen Hungarians were noticed stealthily picking their way
along the banks of the Conemaugh toward Sang Hollow. Suspicious of their
purpose, several farmers armed themselves and started in pursuit. Soon
their most horrible fears were realized. The Hungarians were out for
plunder. They came upon the dead and mangled body of a woman, lying upon
the shore, upon whose person there were a number of trinkets of jewelry
and two diamond rings. In their eagerness to secure the plunder, the
Hungarians got into a squabble, during which one of the number severed
the finger upon which were the rings, and started on a run with his
fearful prize. The revolting nature of the deed so wrought upon the
pursuing farmers, who by this time were close at hand, that they gave
immediate chase. Some of the Hungarians showed fight, but, being
outnumbered, were compelled to flee for their lives. Nine of the brutes
escaped, but four were literally driven into the surging river and to
their death. The thief who took the rings was among the number of the
involuntary suicides."
At 8.30 o'clock this morning an old railroader, who had walked from Sang
Hollow, stepped up to a number of men who were on the platform station
at Curranville, and said:--
"Gentlemen, had I a shot-gun with me half an hour ago, I would now be a
murderer, yet with no fear of ever having to suffer for my crime. Two
miles below here I watched three men going along the banks stealing the
jewels from the bodies of the dead wives and daughters of men who have
been robbed of all they hold dear on earth."
He had no sooner finished the last sentence than five burly men, with
looks of terrible determination written on their faces, were on their
way to the scene of plunder, one with a coil of rope over his shoulder
and another with a revolver in his hand. In twenty minutes, so it is
stated, they had overtaken two of their victims, who were then in the
act of cutting pieces from the ears and fingers from the hands of the
bodies of two dead women. With revolver leveled at the scoundrels, the
leader of the posse shouted:--
"Throw up your hands, or I'll blow your heads off!"
With blanched faces and trembling forms, they obeyed the order and
begged for mercy. They were searched, and, as their pockets were emptied
of their ghastly finds, the indignation of the crowd intensified, and
when a bloody finger of an infant encircled with two tiny gold rings was
found among the plunder in the leader's pocket, a cry went up, "Lynch
them! Lynch them!" Without a moment's delay ropes were thrown around
their necks and they were dangling to the limbs of a tree, in the
branches of which an hour before were entangled the bodies of a dead
father and son. After half an hour the ropes were cut and the bodies
lowered and carried to a pile of rocks in the forest on the hill above.
It is hinted that an Allegheny county official was one of the most
prominent in this justifiable homicide.
One miserable wretch who was caught in the act of mutilating a body was
chased by a crowd of citizens, and when captured was promptly strung up
to a telegraph pole. A company of officers rescued him before he was
dead, much to the disgust of many reputable people, whose feelings had
been outraged by the treatment of their deceased relations. Shortly
after midnight an attempt was made to rob the First National Bank,
which, with the exception of the vaults, had been destroyed. The
plunderers were discovered by the citizens' patrol, which had been
established during the night, and a lively chase ensued. A number of
the thieves--six, it is said--were shot. It is not known whether any
were killed or not, as their bodies would have been washed away almost
immediately if such had been the case.
A number of Hungarians collected about a number of bodies at Cambria
which had been washed up, and began rifling the trunks. After they had
secured all the contents they turned their attention to the dead.
The ghastly spectacle presented by the distorted features of those who
had lost their lives during the flood had no influence upon the ghouls,
who acted more like wild beasts than human beings. They took every
article from the clothing on the dead bodies, not leaving anything of
value or anything that would serve to identify the remains.
After the miscreants had removed all their plunder to dry ground a
dispute arose over a division of the spoils. A pitched battle followed,
and for a time the situation was alarming. Knives and clubs were used
freely. As a result several of the combatants were seriously wounded and
left on the ground, their fellow-countrymen not making any attempt to
remove them from the field of strife.
A Hungarian was caught in the act of cutting off a dead woman's finger,
on which was a costly ring. The infuriated spectators raised an outcry
and the fiend fled. He was hotly pursued, and after a half-hour's hard
chase, was captured and hanged to a telegraph pole, but was cut down and
resuscitated by officers. Liquor emboldened the ghouls, and Pittsburg
was telegraphed for help, and the 18th and 14th Regiments, Battery B and
the Washington Infantry were at once called out for duty, members being
apprised by posters in the newspaper windows.
One correspondent wrote: "The number of drunken men is remarkable.
Whiskey seems marvelously plenty. Men are actually carrying it around in
pails. Barrels of the stuff are constantly located among the drifts, and
_men are scrambling over each other and fighting like wild beasts_ in
their mad search for it. At the cemetery, at the upper end of town, I
saw a sight that rivals the Inferno. A number of ghouls had found a lot
of fine groceries, among them a barrel of brandy, with which they were
fairly stuffing themselves. One huge fellow was standing on the strings
of an upright piano singing a profane song, every little while breaking
into a wild dance. A half-dozen others were engaged in a hand-to-hand
fight over the possession of some treasure stolen from a ruined house,
and the crowd around the barrel were yelling like wild men."
These reports were largely discredited and denied by later and probably
more trustworthy authorities, but there was doubtless a considerable
residue of truth in them.
There were so many contradictory stories about these horrible doings
that our painstaking correspondent put to "Chall" Dick, the Deputy
Sheriff, this "leading question": "Did you shoot any robbers?" Chall did
not make instant reply, but finally looked up with a peculiar expression
on his face and said:--
"There are some men whom their friends will never again see alive."
"Well, now, how many did you shoot?" was the next question.
"Say," said Chall. "On Saturday morning I was the first to make my way
to Sang Hollow to see if I could not get some food for people made
homeless by the flood. There was a car-load of provisions there, but the
vandals were on hand. They broke into the car and, in spite of my
protestations, carried off box after box of supplies. I only got half a
wagon load. They were too many for me. I know when I have no show. There
was no show there and I got out.
"As I was leaving Sang Hollow and got up the mountain road a piece, I
saw two Hungarians and one woman engaged in cutting the fingers off of
corpses to get some rings. Well, I got off that team and--well, there
are three people who were not drowned and who are not alive."
"Where are the bodies?"
"Ain't the river handy there? I went down to Sang Hollow on Sunday, but
I went fixed for trouble that time. When I got into the hollow the
officers had in tow a man who claimed he was arrested because he had
bummed it on the freight train. A large crowd of men were trying to
rescue the fellow. I rode into that crowd and scattered it. I got
between the crowd and officers, who succeeded in getting their man in
here. The fellow had been robbing the dead and had a lot of jewelry on
his person. I see by the papers that Consul Max Schamberg, of Pittsburg,
asserts that the Huns are a law-abiding race, and that when they were
accused of robbing the dead they were simply engaged in trying to
identify some of their friends. Consul Schamberg does not know what he
is talking about. I know better, for I saw them engaged in robbing the
dead.
"Those I caught at it will never do the like again. Why, I saw them let
go of their friends in the water to catch a bedstead with a mattress on
it. That's the sort of law-abiding citizens the Huns are."
Down the Cambria road, past which the dead of the river Conemaugh swept
into Nineveh in awful numbers, was witnessed a wretched scene--that of a
young officer of the National Guard in full uniform, and a poor
deputy-sheriff, who had lost home, wife, children and all, clinched
like madmen and struggling for the former's revolver. If the officer of
the Guard had won, there might have been a tragedy, for he was drunk.
The homeless deputy-sheriff, with his wife and babies swept to death
past the place where they struggled, was sober and in the right.
The officer was a first lieutenant. His company came with that regiment
into this valley of distress to protect survivors from ruffianism and
maintain the peace and dignity of the State. The man with whom he fought
for the weapon was almost crazy in his own woe, but singularly cool and
self-possessed regarding the safety of those left living.
It was one o'clock in the afternoon when a Philadelphia _Press_
correspondent noticed on the Cambria road the young officer with his
long military coat cut open, leaning heavily for support upon two
privates. He was crying in a maudlin way, "You just take me to a place
and I'll drink soft stuff." They entreated him to return at once to the
regimental headquarters, even begged him, but he cast them aside and
went staggering down the road to the line, where he met the grave-faced
deputy face to face. The latter looked in the white of his eyes and
said: "You can't pass here, sir."
"Can't pass here?" he cried, waving his arms. "You challenge an officer?
Stand aside!"
"You can't pass here!" this time quietly, but firmly; "not while you're
drunk."
"Stand aside!" yelled the lieutenant. "Do you know who I am? You talk to
an officer of the National Guard."
"Yes; and listen," said the man in front of him so impatiently that it
hushed his antagonist's tirade. "I talk to an 'officer' of the National
Guard--I who have lost my wife, my children and all in this flood no man
has yet described; we who have seen our dead with their bodies mutilated
and their fingers cut from their hands by dirty foreigners for a little
gold, are not afraid to talk for what is right, even to an officer of
the National Guard."
While he spoke another great, dark, stout man, who looked as if he had
suffered, came up, and upon taking in the situation every vein in his
forehead swelled purple with rage.
"You dirty cur," he cried to the officer; "you dirty, drunken cur, if it
was not for the sake of peace I'd lay you out where you stand."
"Come on," yelled the Lieutenant, with an oath.
The big man sent out a terrible blow that would have left the Lieutenant
senseless had not one of the privates dashed in between, receiving part
of it and warding it off. The Lieutenant got out of his military coat.
The privates seized the big man and with another correspondent, who ran
to the scene, held him back. The Lieutenant put his hand to his pistol
pocket, the deputy seized him, and the struggle for the weapon began.
For a moment it was fierce and desperate, then another private came to
the deputy's assistance. The revolver was wrested from the drunken
officer and he himself was pushed back panting to the ground.
The deputy seized the military coat he had thrown on the ground, and
with it and the weapon started to the regimental headquarters. Then the
privates got around him and begged him, one of them with tears in his
eyes, not to report their officer, saying that he was a good man when he
was sober. He studied a long while, standing in the road, while the
officer slunk away over the hill. Then he threw the disgraced uniform to
them, and said: "Here, give them to him; and, mind you, if he does not
go at once to his quarters, I'll take him there, dead or alive."