Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877: Read in the Senate and House of Representatives May 23, 1878Pennsylvania. General Assembly. Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877
History
Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877: Read in the Senate and House of Representatives May 23, 1878
Pennsylvania. General Assembly. Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877
A. I suppose ten or fifteen of those men gathered around us, and wanted
us to let him go.
Q. Did you arrest all of those who undertook to take McCall's part?
A. They did not use any violence at all. McCall appealed to them, and
asked them not to allow him to be arrested, that they were there for
the purpose of preventing the trains from running, and that they were
not surely going to allow him to go to the watch-house, but there was
not a man of them that attempted to interfere with the officers. The
only interference was some stones thrown from the hill-side around. I
saw some of them thrown, and most of them by boys.
Q. I understand, after you returned from the lock-up, you found the
crowd still assembled at Twenty-eighth street?
A. Yes.
Q. How large was it then?
A. It was increased then, I estimate, to about the number of two
hundred people, women, and children, and boys, and men.
Q. What were they doing at that time?
A. They were just standing around there chatting and talking among
themselves. The excitement was still increasing.
Q. No effort was made to start the trains from that time until three
o'clock?
A. When those men came from the office--the second force--Mr. Watt went
up to Torren's station. I believe there was no person there that
appeared to make any effort to do anything. Mr. Fox, the chief of the
Pennsylvania railroad police was there, and I was under his
instructions to do anything he wanted done. From that time, until I
left, no effort was made on their part to run out trains east. There
was an attempt made after I left to run trains out, but of course I did
not see that.
Q. Did you command the crowd to disperse?
A. We undertook to keep the crowd off the tracks, but our force was not
sufficient. As soon as we would get one track cleared, they would come
in on the other. It would have required at two or three o'clock--it
would have required a hundred men to clear the tracks, and do it
effectually, and I did not have the necessary force to do it with. They
appeared to loiter around there talking, and the crowd kept on
increasing.
Q. Did you get any further instructions after you returned to the city
and reported to the chief of police?
A. I got no further instructions, I remember, from the chief; he
instructed me to turn the force over to officer Fowler, and report at
the city hall.
Q. Do you know, of your own knowledge, what were the movements of the
police force there during the balance of the day?
A. During the balance of the day the force was increased to, I think,
at Twenty-eighth street, thirty men--twenty-five or thirty men--during
the evening. They remained on duty all night.
Q. Was there any effort made to run out trains during the afternoon of
Thursday?
A. I believe there was.
Q. Were you not on an engine, and were you not driven off?
A. I was not; the officers can be got here that went on that engine.
Q. Will you tell us who they were?
A. Officer Saul Coulston and officer Robert Fowler.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account