History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.Johnson, Willis Fletcher
History
History of the Johnstown Flood: Including all the Fearful Record; the Breaking of the South Fork Dam; the Sweeping Out of the Conemaugh Valley; the Over-Throw of Johnstown; the Massing of the Wreck at the Railroad Bridge; Escapes, Rescues, Searches for Survivors and the Dead; Relief Organizations, Stupendous Charities, etc., etc., With Full Accounts also of the Destruction on the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers, and the Bald Eagle Creek.
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!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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