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BODY THEN IS BURNED ON LOT NEAR EDGE OF COLORED SETTLEMENT
Crowd Of 2,000 Applauds As Noose Tightens On
Bandaged Neck Of Murderer Of
While Employer
OFFICERS ON SCENE OFFER
NO PROTEST, WITNESSES SAY
Matthew Williams, Wounded By Self And Son Of
Victim, Taken From Hospital After Shooting
Of Daniel J. Elliott
Ritchie Hastening To City; Statement Due Today
[New York Bureau of The Sun] New York, Dec. 4—Informed of the lynching of Matthew "Williams, Salisbury (Md.) Negro, tonight, Governor Eitchie, who was the guest of the New York Virginians, said:
"I will leave New York on the midnight train for Baltimore and will be in Baltimore all tomorrow. I want to ascertain the exact facts with reference to this case before making any statement. If they are as reported briefly to me tonight I will have something to say, and something very emphatic to say.''
[Special Dispatch to The Sun] Salisbury, Md., Dec. 4—Matthew "Williams, Negro who killed Daniel J. Elliott, prominent box manufacturer and lumber dealer, in his office this afternoon, was hanged from a tree in the courthouse green here at 8.05 o'clock tonight. Twenty minutes later his body was cut down and burned on a vacant lot on the edge of Salisbury's Negro settlement.
A few minutes before 8 P. M. six men entered the Peninsula General Hospital, where Williams was under .treatment in the Negro ward for a self-inflicted pistol wound, lifted him from his bed and ordered him to walk with them to the street.
Thire more than 300 waiting men and women surrounded the 35-year-old Negro and walked with him to the courthouse green at Main and Division streets, three blocks distant. APPLAUD AS NOOSE DRAWS One of the crowd had obtained a rope while the mob was moving toward the green. Several men flung it over a limb of a tree, about twenty-five feet from the ground, and two others tied one end of it around the bandaged-swathed neck of the Negro.
The men holding the rope tugged the Negro about fifteen feet above the ground as the mob, which had grown to about 2,000, applauded.
NO PROTEST IS OFFERED The Negro was raised and lowered several times as the mob's shouts rose and fell. Finally the rope was secured and "Williams was left hanging.
He was suspended for about twenty minutes, as the mob, constantly swelling, looked on. Then several men stepped forward, slashed the rope and picked up the Negro's body, shouting to the mob to follow them.
G. Murray Phillips, Wicomico county Sheriff, ordered the men to drop the Negro's body, but he was brushed aside by the mob, which had started to close in.
They dragged the body to a lot on Poplar Hill avenue, within easy view pf scores of Negro homes, and, after drenching it with gasoline, set it afire.
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