Mob Rule In New Orleans — Death of Charles

+DEATH OF CHARLES+

Friday witnessed the final act in the bloody drama begun by the three police officers, Aucoin, Mora and Cantrelle.

Betrayed into the hands of the police, Charles, who had already sent two of his would-be murderers to their death, made a last stand in a small building, 1210 Saratoga Street, and, still defying his pursuers, fought a mob of twenty thousand people, single-handed and alone, killing three more men, mortally wounding two more and seriously wounding nine others.

Unable to get to him in his stronghold, the besiegers set fire to his house of refuge.

While the building was burning Charles was shooting, and every crack of his death-dealing rifle added another victim to the price which he had placed upon his own life.

Finally, when fire and smoke became too much for flesh and blood to stand, the long sought for fugitive appeared in the door, rifle in hand, to charge the countless guns that were drawn upon him.

With a courage which was indescribable, he raised his gun to fire again, but this time it failed, for a hundred shots riddled his body, and he fell dead face fronting to the mob.

This last scene in the terrible drama is thus described in the _Times-Democrat_ of July 26: Early yesterday afternoon, at 3 o'clock or thereabouts, Police Sergeant Gabriel Porteus was instructed by Chief Gaster to go to a house at No. 1210 Saratoga Street, and search it for the fugitive murderer, Robert Charles.

A private "tip" had been received at the headquarters that the fiend was hiding somewhere on the premises.

Sergeant Porteus took with him Corporal John R. Lally and Officers Zeigel and Essey.

The house to which they were directed is a small, double frame cottage, standing flush with Saratoga Street, near the corner of Clio.

It has two street entrances and two rooms on each side, one in front and one in the rear.

It belongs to the type of cheap little dwellings commonly tenanted by Negroes.

Sergeant Porteus left Ziegel and Essey to guard the outside and went with Corporal Lally to the rear house, where he found Jackson and his wife in the large room on the left.

What immediately ensued is only known by the Negroes.

They say the sergeant began to question them about their lodgers and finally asked them whether they knew anything about Robert Charles.

They strenuously denied all knowledge of his whereabouts.

The Negroes lied.

At that very moment the hunted and desperate murderer lay concealed not a dozen feet away.

Near the rear, left-hand corner of the room is a closet or pantry, about three feet deep, and perhaps eight feet long.

The door was open and Charles was crouching, Winchester in hand, in the dark further end.

Near the closet door was a bucket of water, and Jackson says that Sergeant Porteous walked toward it to get a drink.

At the next moment a shot rang out and the brave officer fell dead.

Lally was shot directly afterward.

Exactly how and where will never be known, but the probabilities are that the black fiend sent a bullet into him before he recovered from his surprise at the sudden onslaught.

Then the murderer dashed out of the back door and disappeared.

The neighborhood was already agog with the tragic events of the two preceding days, and the sound of the shots was a signal for wild and instant excitement.

In a few moments a crowd had gathered and people were pouring in by the hundred from every point of the compass.

Jackson and his wife had fled and at first nobody knew what had happened, but the surmise that Charles had recommenced his bloody work was on every tongue and soon some of the bolder found their way to the house in the rear.

There the bleeding forms of the two policemen told the story.

Lally was still breathing, and a priest was sent for to administer the last rites.

Father Fitzgerald responded, and while he was bending over the dying man the outside throng was rushing wildly through the surrounding yards and passageways searching for the murderer.

"Where is he?"

"What has become of him?"

were the questions on every lip.

Suddenly the answer came in a shot from the room directly overhead.

It was fired through a window facing Saratoga Street, and the bullet struck down a young man named Alfred J. Bloomfield, who was standing in the narrow passage-way between the two houses.

He fell on his knees and a second bullet stretched him dead.

When he fled from the closet Charles took refuge in the upper story of the house.

There are four windows on that floor, two facing toward Saratoga Street and two toward Rampart.

The murderer kicked several breaches in the frail central partition, so he could rush from side to side, and like a trapped beast, prepared to make his last stand.

Nobody had dreamed that he was still in the house, and when Bloomfield was shot there was a headlong stampede.

It was some minutes before the exact situation was understood.

Then rifles and pistols began to speak, and a hail of bullets poured against the blind frontage of the old house.

Every one hunted some coign of vantage, and many climbed to adjacent roofs.

Soon the glass of the four upper windows was shattered by flying lead.

The fusillade sounded like a battle, and the excitement upon the streets was indescribable.

Throughout all this hideous uproar Charles seems to have retained a certain diabolical coolness.

He kept himself mostly out of sight, but now and then he thrust the gleaming barrel of his rifle through one of the shattered window panes and fired at his besiegers.

He worked the weapon with incredible rapidity, discharging from three to five cartridges each time before leaping back to a place of safety.

These replies came from all four windows indiscriminately, and showed that he was keeping a close watch in every direction.

His wonderful marksmanship never failed him for a moment, and when he missed it was always by the narrowest margin only.

On the Rampart Street side of the house there are several sheds, commanding an excellent range of the upper story.

Detective Littleton, Andrew Van Kuren of the Workhouse force and several others climbed upon one of these and opened fire on the upper windows, shooting whenever they could catch a glimpse of the assassin.

Charles responded with his rifle, and presently Van Kuren climbed down to find a better position.

He was crossing the end of the shed when he was killed.

Another of Charles's bullets found its billet in the body of Frank Evans, an ex-member of the police force.

He was on the Rampart Street side firing whenever he had an opportunity.

Officer J. W.

Bofill and A. S.

Leclerc were also wounded in the fusillade.

While the events thus briefly outlined were transpiring time was a-wing, and the cooler headed in the crowd began to realize that some quick and desperate expedient must be adopted to insure the capture of the fiend and to avert what might be a still greater tragedy than any yet enacted.

For nearly two hours the desperate monster had held his besiegers at bay, darkness would soon be at hand and no one could predict what might occur if he made a dash for liberty in the dark.

At this critical juncture it was suggested that the house be fired.

The plan came as an inspiration, and was adopted as the only solution of the situation.

The wretched old rookery counted for nothing against the possible continued sacrifice of human life, and steps were immediately taken to apply the torch.

The fire department had been summoned to the scene soon after the shooting began; its officers were warned to be ready to prevent a spread of the conflagration, and several men rushed into the lower right-hand room and started a blaze in one corner.

They first fired an old mattress, and soon smoke was pouring out in dense volumes.

It filled the interior of the ramshackle structure, and it was evident that the upper story would soon become untenable.

An interval of tense excitement followed, and all eyes were strained for a glimpse of the murderer when he emerged.

Then came the thrilling climax.

Smoked out of his den, the desperate fiend descended the stairs and entered the lower room.

Some say he dashed into the yard, glaring around vainly for some avenue of escape;

but, however that may be, he was soon a few moments later moving about behind the lower windows.

A dozen shots were sent through the wall in the hope of reaching him, but he escaped unscathed.

Then suddenly the door on the right was flung open and he dashed out.

With head lowered and rifle raised ready to fire on the instant, Charles dashed straight for the rear door of the front cottage.

To reach it he had to traverse a little walk shaded by a vineclad arbor.

In the back room, with a cocked revolver in his hand, was Dr. C. A.

Noiret, a young medical student, who was aiding the citizens' posse.

As he sprang through the door Charles fired a shot, and the bullet whizzed past the doctor's head.

Before it could be repeated Noiret's pistol cracked and the murderer reeled, turned half around and fell on his back.

The doctor sent another ball into his body as he struck the floor, and half a dozen men, swarming into the room from the front, riddled the corpse with bullets.

Private Adolph Anderson of the Connell Rifles was the first man to announce the death of the wretch.

He rushed to the street door, shouted the news to the crowd, and a moment later the bleeding body was dragged to the pavement and made the target of a score of pistols.

It was shot, kicked and beaten almost out of semblance to humanity....

The limp dead body was dropped at the edge of the sidewalk and from there dragged to the muddy roadway by half a hundred hands.

There in the road more shots were fired into the body.

Corporal Trenchard, a brother-in-law of Porteus, led the shooting into the inanimate clay.

With each shot there was a cheer for the work that had been done and curses and imprecations on the inanimate mass of riddled flesh that was once Robert Charles.

Cries of "Burn him!

Burn him!"

were heard from Clio Street all the way to Erato Street, and it was with difficulty that the crowd was restrained from totally destroying the wretched dead body.

Some of those who agitated burning even secured a large vessel of kerosene, which had previously been brought to the scene for the purpose of firing Charles's refuge, and for a time it looked as though this vengeance might be wreaked on the body.

The officers, however, restrained this move, although they were powerless to prevent the stamping and kicking of the body by the enraged crowd.

After the infuriated citizens had vented their spleen on the body of the dead Negro it was loaded into the patrol wagon.

The police raised the body of the heavy black from the ground and literally chucked it into the space on the floor of the wagon between the seats.

They threw it with a curse hissed more than uttered and born of the bitterness which was rankling in their breasts at the thought of Charles having taken so wantonly the lives of four of the best of their fellow-officers.

When the murderer's body landed in the wagon it fell in such a position that the hideously mutilated head, kicked, stamped and crushed, hung over the end.

As the wagon moved off, the followers, who were protesting against its being carried off, declaring that it should be burned, poked and struck it with sticks, beating it into such a condition that it was utterly impossible to tell what the man ever looked like.

As the patrol wagon rushed through the rough street, jerking and swaying from one side of the thoroughfare to the other, the gory, mud-smeared head swayed and swung and jerked about in a sickening manner, the dark blood dripping on the steps and spattering the body of the wagon and the trousers of the policemen standing on the step.