MARYLAND: In Worcester County

On his farm a mile outside of Stockton, Md., elderly Farmer Harvey Pilchard raised strawberries, potatoes, fruit. He was successful and well-to-do. One night last week he and Mrs. Pilchard sat listening to the radio. Someone knocked on the door. Mr. Pilchard shuffled over, opened it. From the darkness outside, a shotgun blasted into his face, killed him almost instantly. Three Negroes rushed in, demanded Annie Pilchard’s money. She gave them her pocketbook, turned and ran upstairs. With cool brutality, one of the Negroes shot her in the back.

Even so, she managed to stagger up to the attic, crawled out of a window to the steep roof. There she clung while her husband’s murderers ransacked the house, finally went away. All night she lay there, afraid they would come back. In the morning she was discovered, finally rescued by the Stockton Volunteer Fire Department. While Sheriff J. William Hall investigated, groups of enraged men started scouring Worcester County, searching Negro shacks, barns, cypress swamps.

One suspect was a Negro named Arthur Collick. Two days later two civilian possemen spotted him emerging from a swamp. With him were two women. The posse caught the women, but Collick escaped, plunging back into the cypress growth. The prisoners were Lillian Blake, Collick’s common-law wife, and her 14-year-old daughter Martha. The two were taken to the county jail at Snow Hill, locked up.

In Pocomoke City, George Selby, another Negro, was picked up. Mindful of the nearby Princess Anne lynching in 1933, officers whisked Selby over the county line. Rumor flew that he had been jailed at Snow Hill too. Outside the little red brick building a mob began to gather. “Turn the damn niggers over to us!” they yelled. They pushed over a fence, surged up and pounded on the door.

Out stepped Sheriff Hall, one hand on a gun butt at his hip. It was a situation few sheriffs would like to face. But he faced it. “You’ve always known me to play fair with you boys,” drawled he. “There’s only two women in there.” With calm deliberation he walked through the mob, got in a car, drove off. As he explained afterwards, he had been on duty 38 hours and he needed sleep.

Left to face the mob was Jailer Gerald Bowen, who decided that the best way to avoid trouble was to admit a few men to the jailhouse and let them see that Hall had told the truth. That was what he did. Still the mob did not disperse. Someone suggested that they get the women out and question them. They rushed to a window and began to hacksaw the bars. Inside, Lillian Blake and her daughter began to pray.

Through the wrecked window men wriggled, seized the two women, dragged them screaming from the jail, roared off in a cavalcade of 200 cars.

This was the report received by Colonel Beverly Ober, State police head in Baltimore. He ordered every available trooper into Worcester County, sent Lieut. Ruxton Ridgely and Sergeant William H. Weber with orders to save the Negro women “at all costs.” A member of Baltimore’s exclusive Bachelors’ Cotillion, twice married, good-looking Socialite Lieut. Ridgely spent his first honeymoon pursuing bootleggers, was famed for his exploits. No mob-fearer was Sergeant Weber, who was badly battered trying to stop the 1933 lynching. They flew to Salisbury, sped into Worcester County by car.

Meanwhile the mob had congealed in Stockton’s four corners, yelling at the Negro women, asking them “How would you like to have this [rope] around your neck?” Terrified Lillian Blake promised to lead them to her man’s hiding place. Someone pointed out that the two women, both barefoot, could walk faster if they were shod. A committee crowded into a store to buy shoes.

At that point Lieut. Ridgely and Sergeant Weber arrived. They grabbed the women, waded back through the non plussed mobsters, clubbing their way when someone tried to stop them. The report, later denied, was that they had fired one shot, pinked an oysterman in the hip. They stuffed the women into their car and drove away. By next morning one other Negro was in their custody—Charles Manuel.

As the search for Collick dragged on and a snowstorm wetted down mob spirit, tension in Worcester County relaxed.

Five days after the Pilchard murder, Collick, famished and tattered, ran plump into the arms of police. He and the other prisoners were safely transported to Harford County jail, on the other side of Chesapeake Bay.

Said State’s Attorney William G. Kerbin, commenting on the storming of the Snow Hill jail: “First we’ve got to find out who did it. … It is my job to prosecute the men arrested by the sheriff. Ask him.” No action could be taken until after the murder case was settled, explained Sheriff Hall, refreshed by his sleep. But “there has to be an investigation,” he pronounced.

“The people are demanding one.” Having narrowly escaped another discreditable lynching, Maryland quickly charged Collick and Selby with murder, Manuel with shooting with intent to kill.

Lillian and Martha Blake did not mind being held as witnesses. They grinned with pleasure over their new shoes.