“It was just twenty-five minutes past 3 o’clock when the affair commenced. I had just dismissed school, and with my assistant, Miss Grace Coyle, was on the porch. Marie Sharkey, a 12-year-old pupil, was near the porch. Miss Coyle and I were attracted first by the deputies marching to a position about three hundred yards from the school house almost directly in front of it, and a few yards on the far side of the highway along which the strikers marched. The deputies came on an electric car, left it near the road, and marched to an open place two hundred yards from car track. There they were drawn up in front of a crescent with the horns toward the road. The strikers made their appearance soon after, marching down the road towards the Lattimer breaker. They were in orderly array, six abreast, carrying a small American flag. Two small boys, one 7 and the other 11, sons of one of the strikers, were in the van, walking hand in hand several feet in advance of the men. After the shooting I found these two little fellows lying side by side dead, pierced by at least a dozen bullet wounds. As the strikers approached the deputies Sheriff Martin left his men and advanced toward the on comers who stopped upon his command. I saw the Sheriff talking vigorously to them and then he read the riot act. The strikers crowed around him to the number of at least a hundred, but I do not think he was knocked down, as he asserts. Finally I saw him pushed aside into the ditch at the side of the road and then the strikers swept toward Lattimer and in a minute or two were in front of the deputies. As the van confronted the armed men Samuel Price, or Hazleton, who had volunteered his services, stepped out in front of his line, whereupon one of the strikers cried ‘you, too, damn you!’ Price did not reply with words, but leveled his rifle at the strikers and fired. Almost as if Price’s shot was the signal, came the crash of the volley from the other men. The strikers were dazed for a moment, and then fled in every direction, most of them toward the school house. I thought one volley would suffice to disperse the strikers. It did, but it was not sufficient to satisfy the deputies. They no longer fired in volleys, but one after another, taking careful aim and firing to kill, and with deadly effect too, for man after man dropped as he ran for safety, screaming with fright. I saw men who had hidden behind trees and fences during the first fusillade leave their places of concealment only to be deliberately shot down. One man, wound in both legs and sitting upright, was shot through the back and killed. The shooting occurred for ten or fifteen minutes. I am sure it was more than ten.”
- Charles Guscott, a school principal who witnessed the event from several hundred yards away, report to the Philadelphia Inquirer on September 12, 1897
- Charles Guscott, a school principal who witnessed the event from several hundred yards away, report to the Philadelphia Inquirer on September 12, 1897