People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1893 — GRAVE CHARGES. [ARTICLE]

GRAVE CHARGES.

Labor Leadan Haoed o a'Trial •t PKUbunrh, AeeoMd of Complicit, to tho PoUoning of Non-Uaioa Mon at Hiniitm. w Pittsburgh, Pa., Jan.. 11.—The trial of Hugh Dempsey, district master workman of the Knights of Labor, J. :M. Davidson and Robert Beatty, changed with poisoning non-union workmen in the homestead steel mill during last August, began here Thursday in a crowded courtroom. Beatty is accused of having arranged with Davidson and other cooks at the mill to administer the poison I which, it is alleged, Dempsey furnished. The charge of having procured and disbursed the money used in the furtherance of the schema y also put upon Dempsey. The cases grew out of the numerous cases of illness among the workmen in the Homestead mill At first those "stricken with the sickness showed all the symptoms of typhoid fever and were treated .by the physicians for that disease. But, after the first few days, the typhoid characteristics disappeared and the doctors were unable to diagnose the cases other than “poisoning from impure drinking water.” Numbers of the sick workmen were brought to Pittsburgh hospitals, where they were treated by prominent physicians of this city, yet six of the men suffering from the unexplained disease died and in all the other cases recovery was very slow. The Carnegie Steel company put their detectives at work to sift the matter to the bottom. The result of the detectives’ work was the unearthing of an alleged plot to poison the non-union men. The indictment under which

Beatty is being tried charges that Beatty administered deadly poison to W. E. Griffiths, an employe of the Homestead mill, his purpose being 4o murder Griffiths. The murder of Charles Glosser is also included. The trial itself, so far as it went for the day, did not reveal much if anything not already known to the public. But that there is a large-sized surprise in the background the counsel for the prosecution and a half dozen doctors and expert chemists know. It was thought that the witness through whom this mine is to be exploded would be on the stand, but this feature was finally postponed until to-day. This witness is no other than Capt. Hunt, the well-known analytical chemist He has been engaged for some time, at the instance of the prosecution,in searching for poisons in the remains of several Homestead workmen who had died under suspicious circumstances since last summer. Of course he refused to reveal anything as to the results of his examination, but it was learned from an authoritative source that arsenic in considerable quantities was found in one stomach at least, traces of croton oil in another and traces of arsenic and other mineral poisons in other bodies exhumed. The evidence of Dr. Cooper was pretty positive as to the poisoning by arsenic of one of the men who worked at Homestead. Dr. Cooper said after left the stand that he had no doubt at all that the man Spayde, whom he had treated, had been dosed with arsenic.