BRUTALITY WHICH LED TO 2 SLAYINGS IS LAID 10 LORTON Shoemaker Submits Letter Charging Guards Beat Prisoner Unconscious. TISCHOFF’S OUSTER REPORT CONFIRMED 'robe Declines to Call Repre sentative Again as He Refuses to Reveal Accusers. » A lurid story of brutality and tor ire at Lorton Reformatory and the istrict Jail was related to the Board f Public Welfare Investigating Com littee today by Representative Fran 'S H. Shoemaker of Minnesota. At te conclusion of his testimony. W. W. Illlan. committee chairman, informed im he would not be called again as . witness. Shoemaker charged that the ordeal l the “post" at the jail changed a risoner into a raving madman, who iter killed two guards at the Leaven orth Penitentiary in a maniacal rage. * The District Jail and its officers nd guards are responsible for the lurder of those two men," Shoemaker iiouted. He read a letter, reputedly from ne of the 100 Lorton convicts sent o the Federal Penitentiary at At inta after the reformatory riots last Summer, telling of being chained ’.ude to the bars of a cell and beaten inconscious by guards. Last Sum ner's riots were attributed in the °tter to the prisoners being deprived f a meal because it was necessary o clear the dining hall when a guard .eat a colored prisoner there. Bischoff to Quit. ^ Meanwhile, recent reports that J. E. *3. Bischoff, business manager of Lor on. would be asked to resign were onflrmed today by authoritative ources at the District Building. The Lorton hearing brought out hat Bischoff had received fees for work done during off-duty hours irom concerns having business rela tions with the District. When asked about the matter to day, Commissioner George E. Allen stated he “was unalterably opposed" to the principle involved in such a practice. When asked what this meant as regards to Bischoff. Allen said "use your own judgment." Millan's statement that Shoemaker would not be recalled followed repeat ed refusals by the Minnesota Repre sentative to furnish the names of prisoners and guards, who. he said, had given him information to back up his sensational charges. "I will not give the name of a prisoner or guard until I receive writ ten assurances from this committee that these guards, some of them men with families, won't be thrown out on the street, and that the prisoners won't be subject to the torture of the punishment hole." Claims Promise Given. On a previous appearance before the committee. Shoemaker had been assured by Millan that any witnesses that he might produce would be granted complete immunity unless ac tually involved themselves in wrong doing. Millan took the position that j this assurance, which has been made ; part of the official record, is more ! binding than any letter could be. In the midst of his stories of tor- i ture Shoemaker paused to say: "I believe there is more brutality in the District Jail and at Lorton than in any other penitentiary in the United States. State or national.” j He said the prisoner driven mad at the jail was Carl Panzram. who since has been executed for the mur- ( der of a Leavenworth guard. ‘‘Panzram was given the third de gree and abused until he went mad every time he saw a guard. He was i hung up by the wrists to the torture pole, night after night, for eight hours j at a time. His wrists were manacled to the pole so that he was forced 1 forward upon his toes, and when he I could no longer endure that position had to hang by his arms. Then he was sent to Leavenworth. He should have been sent to a psychopathic ward when he was first placed in the jail.” Shoemaker said that while Panzrqm was at Leavenworth he frequently would imagine "Col. Peak and a crowd from the District Jail w'ere after him." Panzram was executed shortly ! before Shoemaker arrived at Leaven worth to serve a year's prison sen tence. The Col. Peak referred to is Col. William L. Peak, superintendent of Lorton Reformatory and formerly head of the District Jail. .^aiurs .mania mtuiarr. The letter from the Atlanta Peniten tiary purported to bear the signature of Erasmus Cecil Jenkins. It was dated March 12 of this year. The letter stated that Jenkins had been at Norton less than a month when prison guards beat him because he "could not do the work of two stevedores in ■ the laundry.” Jenkins named the following guards ! as those who beat him: Capt. Sanford, j now dead: Paul F. Pegelow, who is j now captain of the guards; William J. Bevers, now steward; Lester E. Me- ! Memamin, now mail clerk, and Wil liam Melnturf. The letter stated he was taken to No. 17 dormitory, which Shoemaker said is known as the “punishment | hole,” and there trussed to the bars by his arms and neck and beaten into insensibility. For two days Jenkins was allowed to stay there without food, Shoemaker charged, and then for eight more days was given daily only one piece of bread and a cup of muddy water. One of the guards who did the beating was quoted as saying that . Jenkins again would be beaten if he j told of what had happened. Blames Riots on Hunger. Last Summer’s Lorton riots were caused, it was stated in the letter, only because “the men wanted some thing to eat. They were tortured like rats in a trap, and for the same reason—because they wanted to eat.” The trouble had almost died down, the committee was informed, when five days later police were summoned from Washington to the reformatory. “They went through the dormito ries and seized 100 men and charged them with inciting the riots,” Shoe maker read from the letter. He quoted Jenkins as saying “these men were tortured and then sent to At lanta.” The letter ended with the state ment: “I am constrained to have my say even if it costs me my life.” The remainder of this morning’s bearing was devoted principally to clashes between Shoemaker and Mil- | Un concerning Shoemaker * refusal to Old “Myth” of Irish Discovery Of America Is Based on Fact Mysterious “Island of Brazil” on Pre Colurnbus Maps Indicates Explor ers Had Made Trips Here. BY THOMAS R. HENRY. Did the Irish discover America? Every St. Patrick's day is revived the story of the half legendary St. Brendan who, after an angelic revela tion, sailed westward to the Islands of the Blessed in a boat of stone. A myth, it is argued, usually is an ac cretion around a core of fact. But actually the Irish can present a very good circumstantial case for having been in the mouth of the St. Lawrence River at least 700 years be fore Columbus sighted San Salvador, and two centuries before the Norse settlement in Vineland. The evidence centers around the mysterious "Island of Brazil," shown on old Irish maps in about the position of Newfound land. During the fifteenth century this was included by Italian and Spanish mapmakers in their depic tions of the North Atlantic. Colum bus probably possessed one of these maps. John Cabot was looking for 'Brazil" when he discovered North America. Maps Are Accurate. Some of these maps portray very accurately the land surrounding the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There was nothing to prevent the old Irish map makers putting any imaginary islands they pleased in the Atlantic. But to have presented the configurations of the land and the islands so accurately without first hand information would have been a miracle almost compar able to St. Brendan's stone boat. As for the name Brazil—now pre served in the name of the great South American Republic—it might have been the combination of two Norse words meaning “beautiful spot,” or it might have been derived from a com mon old Irish family name appearing variously as Brazil. Bersil, O'Brazil. O'Brassil and O'Breasail. Perhaps the real discoverer was a ship captain named O'Brassil and the first name of America was “O'Brassil’s Land.” All the evidence was summed up for the American Geographic Society a few years ago by William H Bab cock. who concluded: “Prom the evi dence at hand it seems likely that Newfoundland and the neighboring shores were visited very early by Irish-speaking people, who gave it the commendatory name of Brazil.’ ” The evidence, he says, is about as good as that for the much later voyages of the Cabots. No Written Records. Unfortunately, the Celtic navigators left no written records. TJie only verbal evidence is in some Norse ref erences, 200 or 300 years later, to ; "Vineland. Markland and Great Ire- | land." all presumably close together on the North Atlantic coast of the New World. Almost as strong as the positive is the negative evidence for the dis covery of North America by Irishmen. It would have been stranger if they had not. They were the nearest of all Europeans to the New World. They were skillful and daring navi gators, who were forerunners of the Norsemen in mastery of the Northern seas. It Is an established fact that they discovered and colonized Ice land. The earliest Norse settlements there were built over the ruins of Irish churches. As was later the fate of the Vikings, boats bound for the Northern colony must occasionally have been caught by adverse winds and carried westward—to Greenland, to Newfoundland, perhaps to Cape Cod. If the Irish left any settlements on the North American coast they van ished without any trace—yet there would be a high probability that they did so, for they were essentially a missionary people in those days and would have neglected no opportunity to carry the cross to a people living In darkness. The claims of St. Brendan also are dispased of in the American Geo graphic Society report. Asked Secret Land. Tire fifteenth century book of Lis more, recently discovered, but com piled from much older sources, says, "he desired to leave his land and coun try, his parents and his fatherland, and earnestly besought to Lord to give him a land secret, hidden, secure, de lightful, separated from men. Now after he had slept on that night he heard the voice of an angel from Heaven, who said to him: ‘Arise, Oh Brendan, for God hast given thee what thou soughtest, even the land ol promise.’ And he goes alone to Sliab Daische, and he saw the mighty, turbulent ocean on either side, and then he beheld a beautiful, noble island, with trains of angels rising from it.” First, according to this account, he set sail in a hide-covered boat. Fail ing to make headway, he turned back and soon set out again in a large, wooden vessel with a crew of GO men. He came to an island in the sea of darkness, where he was greeted by a strange figure—“all his body was full of bright, white feathers, and It was almost the speech of an angel that he had.” Now. it is concluded.*St. Brendan had a genesis common to folk heroes —he was the unification in one leg endary figure of a great many early Irish missionaries and navigators who were seeking continually new fields for the sowing of the gospel and in the course of their voyages touched upon mast of the East Atlantic archi pelagas—the Azores, the Madieras. the Canaries. There is little doubt that they actually made settlements on some of these Islands. POLICEMAN WILL FACE SECOND LIQUOR TRIAL First Precinct Private Already Suspended on First Intoxi cation Charge. Prvt. James P. Day, first precinct, who was fined $25 by the Police Trial Board earlier this week for intoxica tion, again will face the tribunal on a similar charge, Thursday night Day was arrested after he was alleged to have been 1 found under the influence of liquor ! while on duty in the 600 block of North Capitol street. He deposited $10 collateral and forfeited the money when he failed to appear in Police Court yesterday. He has been sus pended. Last Sunday. Day, according to his superior officers, was found intoxi cated at his home. He was suspend ed and tried by the trial board, with the resultant fine. produce witnesses to give further facts. Millan repeatedly asked the witness if he had anything further to reveal. “I've a great deal more informa tion," Shoemaker replied, "but it will be better to produce it before the District Committee of the House or a special investigating committee. If I ; get no results there I will go to the President of the United States.” tviaence in iteserve. At another time he said. ‘‘I have in reserve—plenty. So that if this com mittee comes in with an adverse re port it may be able to whitewash Barnard, but it won't make a monkey out of Shoemaker.” Shoemaker charged the committee with neglecting to examine properly the witnesses who have appeared be fore it. He said this neglect was probably due to ignorance of the facts. The committee had refused a previous written offer by Shoemaker to act as its examiner. “I want you to understand, Mr. Shoemaker.” Millan said, "that this committee has no intention of recall ing you. If you have further infor mation we want you to give it now. The day is before us and this is the time for you to say whatever you have to say.” Shoemaker produced two letters, which he said were written by Bisch off. in support of his charges of Ir regularities at the District Reforma tory. He also alleged that Charles Sawyer, superintendent of the ship yard at Occoquan work house, built his home in Occoquan village with bricks he had transported from the work house at government expense. Denies Knowing Rheem. The first witness today was George E. Muth, patent attorney, with offices in the Press Building. Shoemaker had informed the committee he was given information that Muth said he attended parties in Washington at which Edmund D. Rheem, former Washington broker now serving a seven-year prison term, also was a guest. Muth denied he knew Rheem. Two District officials were the only witnesses yesterday. They were Marion C. HargTove, District purchas ing officer, and Charles H. Kidwell of the District auditor’s office. Practice Held Improper. Hargrove said he would consider improper the practice of purposely breaking up requisitions for supplies into $25 lots so as to avoid the legal requirement for competitive bidding. Bischoff had informed the committee he did this as an emergency measure in at least one instance. Hargrove said any institution could secure approval for a $100 emergency order just as easily as for a $25 order. Kidwell said former Superintendent of Lorton A. C. Tawse collected more than $150 In donations from Wash ingtonians to support the reformatory foot ball team and then did not ac count properly for all the disburse menU of this sum. UTILITY HEAD ASKS O.C. SUBWAY STUDY Riley E. Eigen Suggests Forming Engineer Commit tee to Consider Plan. Organization of a committee of en gineers in Government service to study the desirability and feasibility of development of a subway system in Washington wras suggested today by Riley E. Eigen, acting chairman of the Public Utilities Commission. Eigen said he would discuss the matter Monday with Maj. John C. Gotwals. associate member of the commission. Eigen said he was aware of the difficulties involved in the financing of a subway for street car transportation, but thought the time was ripe for a study of all phases of the question. He suggests that there be a com mittee of engineers from the Utilities Commission, the Engineer Depart ment of the District government and the National Capital Park and Plan ning Commission. He proposed that engineers of the Capital Transit Co. be invited to consult with such a joint group. Commissioner George E. Allen re cently suggested informallj^he thought construction of a subway might be a desirable project for employment of hundreds of unemployed persons here, if the financing can be arranged. Of ficials are wondering if a grant might be obtained from the Public Works Administration for such a project. REPORT $1,000 GIFT IN SYMPHONY DRIVE Campaign Workers Beveal Total as $31,000, With $60,000 as Goal. A contribution of $1,000, bringing the total thus far pledged to $31,000, was reported yesterday at a meeting of the five campaign teams seeking to raise $60,000 to sustain the National Symphony Orchestra through its con certs of next season. The meeting was held in the home of Mrs. James Clement Dunn. The largest amount taken in was by the team of which Mrs. Carey H. Brown is chairman. Other members of the group include Mrs. Goring Bliss, Mrs. William A. Borden, Mrs. Franklin Ellis. Mrs. Walter Gawler, Miss Valerie Padelford and Mrs. Ar mistead Peter. Mrs. Walter Bruce Howe, campaign chairman, urged the workers to more intensive efforts, since $29,000 remains to be secured in two weeks. Efforts are being made to enlist the co-operation and support of or ganizations, as well as individuals. CIVITANS HOSTS TO BOYS :