[May 11, 1886]
It Will Be Shown at the Trial that Conspirators with More than Twenty Bombs In Their Pockets Were at the Haymarket Meeting—A Charge that Parsons Threw the Bomb—Some of the Lesser Conspirators in Court—The Relief Fund
State’s Attorney Grinnell was visited at his office yesterday by State’s Attorney Williams of Milwaukee and the two public prosecutors talked over their duties in prosecuting the rioters who took part in the recent outbreaks against law and order in the counties they represent. Mr. Grinnell expressed an unflinching determination to prosecute to the utmost extent of the law the leaders who precipitated the battles on Desplaines and Eighteenth streets and Blue Island Avenue. He said the evidence against these men was strong and satisfactory, but beyond saying that much he did not at present feel justified to speak, for he was not trying their cases in the newspapers. A policeman who has been admitted to all of the evidence-collecting councils of the officials confidentially informed a reporter for THE TRIBUNE yesterday that it was known that the Socialists in the Haymarket crowd had the night of the riot at least twenty bombs in their coat pockets. The officials also had positive evidence as to who threw the bomb, but the reporter’s informant refused to state whether or not the guilty person was one of the Anarchists under arrest. Another policeman said it was known that the bomb was thrown by Parsons. Those who know Parsons say the story that he threw the fatal bomb is incredible, because he is too much of a coward to do it.
The Victims.
At the County Hospital last night the patients were doing very nicely, all of those whose conditions were considered critical Sunday having improved so much that they were considered out of danger. The funeral services over the remains of the late Officer Flavin were held yesterday morning in St. Columbkill’s Church, whence carriages were taken to Calvary Cemetery, where the interment occurred. The pall-bearers were Officers Joseph A. Gilso, William Lohmeyer, James D. Johnson, and James Mackey from the Rawson Street Station, and Edmund Burke and Patrick Hannigan from the West Chicago avenue district. There was a profusion of floral offerings, among which was a cross of calla lilies from the officers of the Fourth Precinct, which tended to show the esteem in which the dead policeman was held by his fellow-officers.
More Trouble for the Arbeiter-Zeitung.
The Socialistic Publishing Society, which was organized to publish Spies’ Anarchist paper, the Arbeiter-Zeitung, failed to pay its rent in advance for May, while its editor was unavoidably detained away on account of his incarceration in jail, and yesterday Henry Fientye, the owner of the building, entered up a judgment on his lease in the Superior Court for the possession of his premises. In an affidavit filed by F.A. Henshaw, Fientye’s agent, Henshaw says that the lease was given from May, 1886, to May, 1887, and the premises were only to be used as a printing-office and composing-room; the rent being $1,300 a year, payable monthly in advance. The society, however, in violation of the covenants of the lease, and without the knowledge of the landlord, has kept stored on the premises highly explosive compounds of a most dangerous character, endangering the safety of the building and the lives of the tenants and injuring its reputation. With this affidavit was also filed one by Officer Duffy to the effect that the society kept stored on its premises highly dangerous explosive compounds in quantities sufficient to utterly destroy the building, and which were kept for the purpose of being used by certain lawless persons in feloniously destroying the property of the citizens of Chicago and the lives of the police force. These compounds greatly endangered the safety of the building and the buildings in the immediate neighborhood and imperiled the lives of the persons in the building.
The Police Letting Up
There was a certain relaxation in the operations of the police yesterday who are working upon the cases of the Anarchists. Pointers of all kinds were numerous, but when a Chinaman who keeps a laundry under the Arbeiter-Zeitung office took six officers over there to examine a mysterious room in the basement which proved to be nothing more than the bottom of the elevator shaft, the police concluded that line of work was about played out. The examination and cross-examination of the prisoners Fischer, Hirschberg, and Stange, as well as the thousand and one persons who were supposed to know something of their connection with the bomb-throwing, were finished yesterday afternoon. Lieuts. Shea and Kipley agree that their investigation has so far produced excellent results, and that it only remains to work out a few corroborative details to make the case against all the important prisoners a plain one. The idea appears to be that the Spies brothers, Fielden, Schwab, and Parsons, should he be arrested, can readily be convicted of being accessories before the fact. An interesting and vital statement from a party who was present at the time of the explosion, but whose name has been withheld, indicates that Fischer, Stange, and Hirschberg were the secondary actors, who undertook to do the work after it was planned and urged by the leaders. Of these three Fischer and Hirschberg were the most directly connected with the Arbeiter-Zeitung faction, and the former, the police claim, can clearly be proved to have known all about the bomb throwing, and either threw it or stood within reaching distance of the man who did.
Conspirators in Court.
Anton Hirschberg, an Anarchistic printer, said to have been connected with the Arbeiter-Zeitung, who was captured in his home at No. 60 Mohawk street last Thursday night by Detective Bonfield, appeared before Justice Meech yesterday morning charged with having participated in the haymarket riot and being one of an unlawful assemblage. Bonfield said that the police connected the prisoner with the printing of the circulars which called the assembly at the haymarket last Tuesday night. He was there at the time of the riot and received a shot through his cost. A continuance of the case was asked for and granted until the 18th, but in default of $6,000 bonds the prisoner was remanded to jail, very much against his attorney’s wishes, who declared that the would make a motion for a habeas corpus on the ground of excessive bail.
Justice C.J. White, recently of the Desplaines street court, occupied yesterday for the first time the bench of the West Twelfth Street Police Court. The docket, for that precinct, was a rather heavy and important one, and the manner in which the cases were disposed of seemed to give much satisfaction to the authorities there. The most important cases before him were those of three Anarchists named Vaclav and Hynek Dejmek and Frank Nowak. The brothers Dejmek were arrested Saturday last at their home, No. 614 Centre Avenue, and in their rooms were found quantities of materials for the manufacture of dynamite and nitro-glycerine, revolvers, bullets, other warlike materials, and a dynamite tube loaded and capped ready to be used for destructive purposes. Both of the Dejmeks have been in this country nearly seven years, Vaclav having been specially engaged in the circulation of local and foreign Anarchistic publications. They were booked on three charges each – for unlawful conspiracy, for assault with intent to commit murder, and for riot. On the first charge they were held in $1,000, on the second in $3,000, and on the third in $500 each, until the 14th inst. Nowak was held for conspiracy in $1,000 to the same date. All three are dark and sinister-looking, and, pretending not to be able to speak any English, deferred their defense. Daniel Place, the wild-eyed individual who lived on Van Buren Street and was arrested with Dejmek and others, and who while under the influence of liquor became possessed with the idea that he was an arch-conspirator, was also before Justice White. It transpired that Place’s tales of dynamite bombs were the creations of his distorted imagination. He was charged simply with “unlawful assemblage”—being present at the haymarket meeting—and his case continued with the others to May 14 under $700 bonds.
Vaclau Dejnek, Frank Nowak, Hynek Dejnek, and Anton Hirschberg were taken to the County Jail at 1 p.m. and given quarters in the boys’ department. Their first night in an American jail was spent in restless tossings on their small hard beds. At 9:30 last night John Harper, under the impression that the deputy stationed in the alley was getting a terrible beating, seized a heavy club and rushed out of the jail to aid him. He was disgusted when the bailiff on picket-guard in the alley told him that the loud noises of wrangling were made by two quarrelsome teamsters.
Hirschberg boarded at No. 60 Mohawk street with a family named Schmidt, who occupy the second flat. He is a Bavarian, about 28 years of age, and a printer by trade. He came to this country four and half years ago, locating in Chicago, where he has been ever since. Mr. Schmidt said Hirschberg had lived with him two years and a half, and was a very decent young fellow. He worked for the Arbeiter-Zeitung, and, if he had anything to do with the circular it was as a compositor, setting up the portion of the copy handed to him. Hirschberg was at the haymarket meeting, but Mr. Schmidt said he wouldn’t harm any one. The police searched his room, but found nothing which implicated him in any crime, and Mr. Schmidt couldn’t imagine why Hirschberg had been taken into custody.
Hidden Bombs.
About dark last evening some children who were playing under a sidewalk on Clyde Street, near Clybourn Avenue, found two bombs. The attention of a man was called to the fact, and he took the bombs to the Larrabee Station. Officers were sent to the place to hunt for more, but none was found. These bombs are made of a composition resembling lead, and are doubtless of the same kind as that thrown by an Anarchist at Tuesday night’s meeting, as pieces of the same kind of material were embedded in the flesh of some of the wounded policemen. The bombs are about three inches in diameter, a quarter of an inch thick, and weigh over a pound. A nut screwed onto a piece of iron fastened to the lower half, and piercing the upper half., keeps the two halves together, the edges fitting closely. A small hole in the side admits the fuse. The inside would hold three or four ounces of explosive material. When taken to the station the bombs were carefully handled, as it was supposed they might be loaded. But the unscrewing of the nuts disclosed that there was nothing in the interior, the surface of which was clean and shiny. Neither bomb had evidently ever been made ready to do its deadly work. Now that it is known that the Anarchists are “planting” the evidence of their crime a vigorous search will be made in all suspected localities, and it is expected that not only bombs and dynamite but guns and revolvers will be found concealed under sidewalks and in other out-of-the-way places.
Calls on the Prisoners.
Mrs. August Spies and Miss Spies visited the Spies brothers at the jail at 1 o’clock yesterday. They remained an hour, after which they took a Milwaukee avenue car for home, and did not come back. Fielden was allowed to come out of the body of the jail and visit with his wife in the jail office at 4 o’clock. Mrs. Fielden was accompanied by a fat man about 60 years old. Fielden talked long with his wife and twice he seemed touched by something she said. He looked crushed and spiritless and very unlike the agitator of last summer atop a new platform on the Lake-Front. There were in his face evidence s of fear as well as of distress and wearing. The fat man and Mrs. Fielden took a West Lake street car. Moses Salomon, the lawyer, was allowed an hour’s consultation with the Spies brothers, Schwab, and Fischer in the lawyers’ cage in the afternoon. Salomon left at 4 o’clock and Attorney Buettner spent the next half hour with the prisoners. All of the prisoners looked greatly worried and worn. Mr. Buettner was requested by August Spies to defend his brother Chris, and, if possible, to get him out on habeas corpus, August claiming that Chris had nothing whatever to do with the haymarket meeting.
A German Reporter Rudely Awakened.
The peaceful morning sleep of Lieut. August Boecklin, night police reporter for the Staats-Zeitung, was roughly disturbed at 8 o’clock yesterday morning by the abrupt and unceremonious entrance into his room, at North Clark and Sedgwick streets, of five policemen in citizen’s clothes, who had rapidly ridden there on a patrol wagon in the expectation of seizing a Socialistic outfit. The startled reporter explained to the officers, all of whom knew him, that so far from being an Anarchist he was a hater of their creed, and the disgusted patrolmen left in haste. The owlish hours kept by the newspaper man and his habit of keeping himself aloof form his neighbors in that quiet spot had excited the keenest curiosity in a kinky-headed spinster who lived closed by, and it was she who reported to the police that she had discovered the deadly den of a dynamitard.
Stray Riot Items.
Only one death (that of Lewis) from gunshot wounds has yet been reported to the Health Department, aside from the policemen. It is believed that others who were shot Tuesday night have died. Several of the cemeteries will bury bodies on a physician’s certificate, not requiring a permit from the Health Department. Coroner Hertz could stop this by ordering the cemetery authorities not to do it. Unless this course is adopted the number of casualties will never be known officially.
Mrs. Schwab, the wife of the Anarchist, and Miss Spies, the sister of the Spies brothers, who are now confined in the County Jail, called on Sheriff Hanchett yesterday for the purpose of obtaining permission to see the prisoners at frequent intervals. The Sheriff told them they would be allowed to see the prisoners twice each week.
The Arbeiter-Zeitung was not issued yesterday, owing to their lease being canceled. They were preparing to move out of the building, No. 107 Fifth Avenue, but other quarters have not yet been secured. It is not likely that the paper will be issued again before a press has been bought, so as to make the paper independent of other printing offices.
The inquest on the body of Mathias Lewis, the shoemaker and supposed Socialist who was shot during the riot Tuesday evening, and who died Sunday at his home, No. 2307 Wentworth Avenue, was held yesterday, but nothing was developed further than the facts as set forth in yesterday’s TRIBUNE. Lewis leaves a wife and two children. The wife insisted that her husband was no Socialist, and Deputy-Coroner Kent and the jury accepted the statement, not caring much anyhow whether he was or not. The neighbors are of a contrary opinion, but, in the absence of proof, Mrs. Lewis entitled to the benefit of the doubt and any comfort she may get from it. As nobody has yet started a fund for the relief of either “innocent spectators” or out-and-out Anarchists, the matter is of the lesser importance. The jury found that the deceased died from a pistol-ball fired by some person unknown the night of May 4, 1886.
James Hagan, David Reed, and A. McKinley, three strikers from the Calumet Steel & Iron Company’s works at Cummings, were arrested at the latter place yesterday by Deputy-Sheriff Morgan on State warrants issued by Judge Garnett, sitting as a committing magistrate, on complaint of David Reed, a non-union employee of the company stated. The warrants charge them with riot, making threats, interference, and intimidation, and also disturbing the peace. The prisoners were brought before Judge Garnett at a late hour in the afternoon and held in bonds of $1,300 each. Bail was furnished. More arrest are to follow.
Anton Hradecny, editor of Lampecka, “The Lantern,” the Bohemian paper whose office was raided by the Twelfth street police Thursday last, went into that station last evening and gave himself up, saying that he was ready to answer all charges against him. What to do with him was for a while a question with the officers, but he was finally let go.
The lumber-yard employees have divided their association into seven sections, each section holding its own meetings and electing four delegates to a committee to confer with the Lumbermen’s Committee some day this week. Sections 1 and 4 met at Twentieth Street and Blue Island Avenue and at Twentieth Street and Hoyne Avenue respectively, but did nothing further than to elect their delegates. Section 3 met in the afternoon at Sach’s Hall.
The Executive Committee of the Retail Dry-Goods Clerks’ Association met at the Grand Pacific last night and arranged for a general meeting to be held at the hotel Friday evening , when an organization will be perfected. It has not been decided yet whether the organization will become a branch of the Knights of Labor or not. That matter will be discussed Friday night.
At the nailworks in Brighton Park the 300 employees were granted nine hours’ work at the old pay, and after a three days’ trial the men asked for eight hours’ work and nine hours’ pay. This the company acceded to, but some of the men objected, and there were fair prospects of a break and a stoppage of work. Yesterday, however, John Foley and J.D. Murphy of the Executive Board of District 24 visited the works and read the riot act to the strikers, with the result that all continued at work.