Just as one woman received a severe blow in the face, Conductor Thomas J. Boyce, of No. 108 East One Hundred and Twenty-first street, who is known on the road as “Scrappy Tom,” jumped into the fracas and hit straight from the shoulder.
“Beat him up,” yelled the gang, and they all jumped on “Scrappy Tom.”
“Come on, all of you,” he roared, his fighting Irish blood aroused. One, two, three of the brawlers hit the dusty mat, and finally Boyce reached Adolph and landed hard on his jaw.
The fight ranged up and down the car, with Boyce taking care of the entire gang. Three or four women who had fainted and fallen to the floor were trampled upon.
Windows were raised throughout the train. Yells of “Murder!” “Police!” alarmed the Bronx. The motorman started his whistle going, and this tipped Policemen Wilson and Dempsey, of the Morrisania station, who lay in wait at One Hundred and Sixty-sixth street.
The crowd that was bunched there prevented their making more arrests and furnished a means of escape to Weiss’s “pals.”
Pieces of hats, feathers, ribbons and lingerie were scattered from end to end of the car. A number of the women had not revived, and Mrs. Arthur appeared to be in a critical condition. A hurry call was sent to Lebanon Hospital, and Dr. Singer, hastily treating the others, hurried Mrs. Arthur to the institution. He said she was in a dangerous hysterical condition.
The line was tied up for half an hour by the riot.
Weiss looked as though he had stayed in the ring twenty rounds with Bill Papke. His face was unrecognizable.
“I never knew that any of these conductors could fight,” he sputtered through swollen lips, as he was led to a cell.
“Over in the old country,” said “Scrappy Tom,” as he watched the ex-champion led to a cell in the Morrisania station, “I used to throw a couple of lads like you over my head before breakfast just for an appetizer.”
Walter H. Hammond, a well known business man of Jersey City and a brother of Colonel Robert A. Hammond, was shot and instantly killed yesterday afternoon in the Pennsylvania Railroad Company’s ferry house at Jersey City. Peter Grew, a man he had befriended, was arrested as the slayer of Hammond.
Mr. Hammond was about to have his luncheon in the restaurant in the railway station, on the second floor. He had ascended the stairs and turned toward the restaurant, when he was confronted by Grew, to whom he made a cheery remark. Without a word in reply, the police say, Grew drew a revolver, which he carried in his coat pocket, and fired at him. The bullet entered the left temple and ploughed into the brain. Two more bullets were fired into his body after he fell.