Mob Rule In New Orleans — A Gray-Haired Victim

+A GRAY-HAIRED VICTIM+

The bloodthirsty barbarians, having tasted blood, continued their hunt and soon ran across an old man of seventy-five years.

His life had been spent in hard work about the French market, and he was well known as an unoffending, peaceable and industrious old man.

But that made no difference to the mob.

He was a Negro, and with a fiendishness that was worse than that of cannibals they beat his life out.

The report says: There was another gang of men parading the streets in the lower part of the city, looking for any stray Negro who might be on the streets.

As they neared the corner of Dauphine and Kerlerec, a square below Esplanade Avenue, they came upon Baptiste Thilo, an aged Negro, who works in the French Market.

Thilo for years has been employed by the butchers and fish merchants to carry baskets from the stalls to the wagons, and unload the wagons as they arrive in the morning.

He was on his way to the market, when the mob came upon him.

One of the gang struck the old Negro, and as he fell, another in the crowd, supposed to be a young fellow, fired a shot.

The bullet entered the body just below the right nipple.

As the Negro fell the crowd looked into his face and they discovered then that the victim was very old.

The young man who did the shooting said: "Oh, he is an old Negro.

I'm sorry that I shot him."

This is all the old Negro received in the way of consolation.

He was left where he fell, but later staggered to his feet and made his way to the third precinct station.

There the police summoned the ambulance and the students pronounced the wound very dangerous.

He was carried to the hospital as rapidly as possible.

There was no arrest.

Just before daybreak the mob found another victim.

He, too, was on his way to market, driving a meat wagon.

But little is told of his treatment, nothing more than the following brief statement: At nearly 3 o'clock this morning a report was sent to the Third Precinct station that a Negro was lying on the sidewalk at the corner of Decatur and St. Philip.

The man had been pulled off of a meat wagon and riddled with bullets.

When the police arrived he was insensible and apparently dying.

The ambulance students attended the Negro and pronounced the wounds fatal.

There was nothing found which would lead to the discovery of his identity.