Lou’s View – Feb. 5, 2015
The Flemington Crime Wave
by Lou Bernard
When you think of crime, Flemington, Pennsylvania is not the first place that usually comes to mind. Detroit, sure. New York City, of course. I think Reading is the murder capitol of Pennsylvania, and in my opinion, the simple fact that New Jersey exists is a crime. But Flemington, no. Nobody generally views Flemington as exactly a hotbed of criminal activity.
But there was this one night. It was after midnight on Friday, June 19, 1896.
The Clinton Democrat ran the story the week after, under the headline “Bold Burglars.” They talked all about a crime wave that hit Flemington, for some reason, that night.
“Bad burglars were rather daring and aggravating in their persistence and boldness at Flemington Friday morning,” the Democrat said. “They visited several dwellings on robbery intent, and notwithstanding the fact that they were frightened away from several places they did not leave the town until they had been in many of the houses.”
They began with the Lindemuth residence, on James Street. J.Z Lindemuth was a merchant, so he was a logical target. The break-in was unsuccessful, however—Mrs. Lindemuth and her daughter seem to have been night owls, so they heard the burglars, and screamed, which frightened them away.
From the Lindemuth house. Not from Flemington altogether. They stuck around for a while, and seem to have stayed mostly on the south end of town, down near the bridge. (I’m sitting here, tracing this out on a map like on TV.) From James Street, they ran down to Canal Street, where they tried breaking into a series of homes. Gabriel Stiver, a farmer; J.B. Furst, a lumberman; and David Florus, a blacksmith were all victims of break-ins, but reported nothing missing.
Witnesses reported four men in the group, traveling through town and attempting to break into homes. Initially, this was blamed on a band of traveling gypsies, who were sort of the scapegoats for everything back in those days. The police pretty much just went,”Yep. Gypsies,” and called it a night.
The burglars, however, were still at it. Up until this point, nothing had been taken. But that was about to change. The next place they hit was the home of William Stitzer, a local teamster. (Which strikes me as a close shave for the burglars—Weren’t the teamsters the guys who made Jimmy Hoffa disappear?) At the Stitzer home on Canal Street, they stole ten dollars, a gold watch, cushions, and rugs.
As if that wasn’t random enough, they then went around the corner to Frederick Street, where they stopped at the home of James Bodle. There, they took a razor and several pairs of stockings, for some reason.
The night ended with an incident at the home of W.B. Foresman on High Street. Foresman was a senior partner in a nearby flour mill, the Foresman and Kelsey Mill. He had money, he had investments, and he had every desire to protect them. Which is why he also had a gun.
Foresman heard the burglars trying to get in through his window. Foresman, who was apparently Flemington’s answer to Clint Eastwood, went out on his porch with a gun and fired at them. There were four men, and two of them seemed to be armed, too. They fired back at Foresman as they ran, and everyone seemed to wind up remarkably un-shot, like an eighties episode of The A-Team. That seemed to cool off the burglars’ enthusiasm for breaking into homes considerably.
The police, afterward, reassessed their stance on the break-ins, deciding that they were more likely to have been done by locals. “It is now believed that the burglars are parties who live nearer Flemington than the gypsies,” the Democrat reported.
After that, things calmed down. Life got back to normal. I couldn’t find any record of the police making an arrest, so as far as I can tell, the burglars got away with their loot. It teaches us an important lesson—Lock up your cushions and stockings. You don’t want to have to shoot anyone.
