Lou’s View – Jan. 14, 2016
Dead Man Floating
by Lou Bernard
It was September 21, 1903, and it started out like any other day for Mary McDermott of Lock Haven. Mary worked at the silk mill on North Fairview Street, and lived up around present-day 120, near Sugar Run. She was walking to work, the same as she did every day, along the railroad tracks, because safety was less important than shortcuts back then. Around where the college stands now, she looked down, and she saw it.
A dead man, floating in the water.
I suppose it’s belaboring the point if I add that it was a Monday.
“When near the culvert, a short distance above the Normal School, she glanced into the stream below and was horrified to see the body of a man lying face downward in the water,” reported the Clinton County Times on September 25.
Mary spotted the dead guy, and reacted in a perfectly reasonable fashion, given the circumstances. She screamed her head off. Local railroad employee J.E. Mason heard her, and came running to the rescue. Mason had been on duty all night, and was just headed home when he heard Mary scream.
Mason was smart enough not to touch anything, and to send for help. He notified his bosses, the railroad officials, and they made a call to local undertaker E.B. Waters, who had an office on Bellefonte Avenue. Waters attempted to contact the local coroner, William Shoemaker, who was out of town at the time. So they sent Alderman Edward Parsons instead.
Parsons looked things over, and decided he needed to empanel a jury to hold an inquest. This being early in the morning and in a spot that’s a little out of the way, he ended up selecting his jury from guys who had just shown up to get a look at the body. Joseph Saiers, Edward W. Fowler, Frank Bittner, and George Rohe were all guys who just happened to live in that neighborhood. Robert Martin was, in fact, a local constable. And Mason, who had been the first one to show up.
When they examined the body, they found out that he was a foreigner. And then Donald Trump built a wall around Lock Haven. (I’m kidding about that, though it is weirdly plausible.) The article says,”The body was found to be that of a stranger and a foreigner, clothed in working attire. He was of medium height and build, and had dark hair and thick lips.” (I just report it; I don’t judge.) “Beside him was found a satchel containing wearing apparel, a number of papers including pay envelopes of the Harbison-Walker Co., showing that he had been employed at both the Flemington and the Farrandsville Brick Works.”
They found the papers, and ten dollars and three pennies.
They also, on the papers, found a name: Berti Sinki.
Further investigation—Presumably conducted by this same crack team of guys who just happened to be nearby at the time—Revealed that Sinki was a Hungarian immigrant who still had a wife and children back overseas. He’d been working locally in the brick industry. Most likely, they decided, he’d probably been on his way to or from work, and slipped, falling into the water. Hitting his head on a stone, he’d knocked himself unconscious, and drowned facedown in eight inches of water.
Having come to the conclusion that it was an accidental death, the inquest was over by ten-thirty, and everyone went on with their business, having gotten their excitement for the day. And the jury was dismissed, having lasted exactly one morning like a sort of impromptu Neighborhood Watch program.
The newspaper reports that Sinki was taken to Waters’s office at 30 Bellefonte Avenue, across from Triangle Park. His body was prepared for burial and interred Tuesday morning, though the article doesn’t say where. At a wild guess, I’d think maybe the potter’s field in Highland Cemetery, though it could have been anywhere. Maybe they just stuck him in the basement. But that pretty much ended the incident.
Presumably, everyone went on with their lives after that. Except Berti Sinki. But it’s possible that Mary McDermott seriously considered getting a ride to work for a while. Especially on Mondays.
