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12 QUESTIONED IN SHORE PROBE OF LYNCHING
Attaches Of Hospital From
Which Negro Was
Taken Are Quizzed
LANE AND HIS AIDE ARRIVE FOR INQUIRY
Impeachment Of Judge
Bailey Demanded By
Labor Defense
By I'BANK B. KENT, JB.
IStaff Correspondent of The Sun]
Salisbury, Md., March 15—Clearing its docket of routine criminal cases during the morning session, the Wicomico county grand jury this afternoon called twelve witnesses as it opened an investigation of the lynching iast December of Matthew Williams, Negro.
At the beginning of the afternoon Session, Levin C. Bailey, State's Attorney, would not say whether any of the witnesses were called in connection with the instructions of Judge Joseph L. Bailey that the grand jury investigate not only the lynching, but determine the causes leading up to the murder of Daniel J. Elliott, the Negro's employer.
Lane And Aide Present
W. Preston Lane, Jr., Attorney-General, and G. C A. Anderson, Assistant Attorney-General, arrived shortly after noon and accompanied Mr. Bailey to the session. Mr. Lane has been instructed by Governor Ritchie to bring all the facilities of his department into play in the inquiry.
Judge Bailey said he had no comment to make on a telegram from Louis Berger, secretary of the International Labor Defense League, demanding that a committee of "poor white farmers" and Negroes be appointed to investigate not only the lynching but the grand jury itself. It was a matter to be referred to Chief Judge John R. Pattison, of the First Judicial Circuit, the jurist asserted.
Judge Pattison, at Cambridge, declined to make any comment on the telegram until he had conferred with Judge Bailey and Judge Robert F. Duer, his other associates.
Crimes Are Described
The Jynching occurred the night of December 4, after the Negro had shot Mr. Elliott to death as the latter sat in his office talking over the telephone. Williams fired a shot into his own chest and was wounded again by Daniel J. Elliott, Jr., as he staggered Into the lumber yard.
He was taken from the hospital and hanged to a tree on the Courthouse Square. The murder was the third crime within a few weeks in which Negroes were charged with wronging white persons.
102 Witnesses Listed
The State's Attorney has prepared a list of 102 witnesses to appear before the investigating body.
Those called today were for the most part physicians, nurses and other attaches of the Peninsula General Hospital, from which Williams was taken. Sheriff G. Murray Phillips was one of the principal witnesses in point of the time. He remained before the body or about an hour.
Other witnesses were Miss Helen V. Wise, superintendent of the hospital; Miss Florence S. Smith, dietician; Miss Myrtle Nock, supervisor; the Misses Mary Robinson and Myrtle Wright, nurses; Dr. R. M. Nock, Dr. J. McFadden Dick; Dr. Hunter R. Mann, Talbot Larmore, Miss Lillian Serman, and Severn W. Murray, of Berlin.
At the morning session the jury returned only eight indictments, compared with sixty-three at the last. It adjourned at 5 o'clock to reconvene at 9 A. M. tomorrow.
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