rolled beyond the reach of the flames and was thrust back again.
After life had become extinct, more fuel was piled over the corpse and it was almost entirely consumed. The mob then dispersed, leaving the fire still burning. Toward morning a drizzling rain began to fall, and the smouldering fire was extinguished.
This lynching was incited apparently by a sermon
that was preached at Wilmington, by the Rev. Robert
A. Ellwood, a friend of the girl's father, and a highly-respected man in the community. As this is a typical
case, and of marked historical value, when taken in
connection with what I have attempted to set forth in
the present volume, I here reproduce other facts commented on by the New York American of above date. I do not now recall what happened to any of the
mob after they had committed the deed. The State
made a strong showing, however, to bring them to
justice. This was printed in the American: —
Wilmington, Del., June 23. — This old city is
deeply stirred by the deplorable burning at the stake of
George White, the negro who slew Helen Bishop,
the pretty seventeen-year-old daughter of the Rev.
E. A. Bishop.
So intense is the interest in the tragic deed that today more than ten thousand men, women, and children journeyed for miles through rain and mud to the scene of the burning.
Throngs of the fair sex surround the smoldering embers of the funeral pyre. Some hurled on more wood to keep the fires going so as to reduce to dust the remnants of the negro's body, while boys and girls snatched pieces of fuel from the fire as souvenirs of the mob's violence.
It was learned today that the Governor received a telegram at 11:30 o'clock last night from J. Newlin Gawthrop, president of the trustees of the New Castle
