Murder at Rocky Point Park:: Tragedy in Rhode Island's Summer Paradise

by Kelly Sullivan Pezza

  By 1911, Rocky Point Park had far less competition than it had in the past. Crescent Park was now the only other large public shore resort along the Narragansett Bay. Field’s Point had been driven out of business due to a government decision to enlarge shipping accommodations along the upper part of the waterway. It eventually became the site for a municipal pier and a sewage treatment plant. Vanity Fair and Boyden Heights closed down when the high cost of clams raised the price of their seafood dinners and reduced business.

  The Ferris wheel at Rocky Point was a favorite destination for those seeking a breathtaking view and thrills at the same time. Vintage postcard, courtesy Jules Antiques & General Store.

  Field’s Point, where Charles Lyon perfected the art of the clambake. Vintage postcard, author’s collection.

  Success didn’t come to Harrington without its obstacles, however. The deeply religious residents of Rhode Island not only had tried to stop the Sunday baseball games at the park but also felt that dancing on the Sabbath needed to be cut out. On Memorial Day weekend, police commissioner Patrick Quinn decided to go take a walk around Rocky Point. There, he spotted a police officer who had been detailed for duty at the park standing near the entrance of the pavilion dance hall. After engaging in conversation with the officer, Quinn learned that a dance was scheduled to be held at noontime. Quinn informed the officer, as well as park authorities, that no dancing would be allowed. Whether the event took place that day as planned, regardless of Quinn’s forbidding it, is not known. However, dancing at Rocky Point continued for decades.

  A new addition to the amusements that year was the Scenic Mountain Railway ride, built by Lamarcus Thompson, a slow-moving roller coaster that carried passengers through and over dark tunnels that replicated the Rocky Mountains. Measuring 150 feet longer than any other railway or roller coaster, it was the longest ride in all of New England.

  The Palm Garden, the Rivers of Venice, the Rattlesnake Den and an $8,000 organ that reproduced the effect of a sixty-piece band were a few more of the attractions amid the hundreds of rides, amusements and exhibits scattered over the grounds.

  Rocky Point’s scenic railway. Vintage postcard, courtesy Jules Antiques & General Store.

  L.B. Walkers “Diving Girls” provided park patrons with something to marvel at as they performed their amazing swimming and diving feats. Helen Kuntzler, a sixteen-year-old member of the group, swam from Patience Island to Rocky Point, a distance of four and half miles in one hour and fifty-three minutes. The following week, she swam to Rocky Point from Crescent Park.

  The dance hall filled up quickly on cool summer evenings when James J. Lamb and his musicians swelled the ballroom with melody. Only in his thirties, Lamb had begun taking violin lessons at the age of fifteen and organized Lamb’s Band & Orchestra at the age of twenty-two. He would provide popular entertainment for the patrons of Rocky Point Park on a regular basis for over ten years.

  The ball field remained a favorite destination of park visitors, and on July 16 of that year, shock befell a crowd of hundreds when a man was accidentally killed there. Private chauffer William Fort of Boston had driven his employer, William Hunter, and three of his friends to the park earlier that day to watch the ballgame. He had parked his automobile alongside several others in the tall grass not far from the entrance to the ball field. As the end of the game neared, Fort went to the car, started it up and backed out of the parking space. It was not until a witness informed him that he realized he had just run over a man. Fifty-eight-year-old Providence carpenter Hiram P. Bangs had lain down to take a nap in the tall grass near the field some time earlier, and his chest had been crushed by a rear wheel of Fort’s auto. Someone immediately told the officials at the ballpark what had just transpired, and the ballgame was stopped. A doctor was summoned and arrived quickly, but Bangs expired just three minutes later.

  Another accident resulting in death occurred at the park the following summer. A man named Thomas Martin and three of his friends, all from Taunton, Massachusetts, had come to Rocky Point that June day, intending to watch the ballgame scheduled to take place. The car Martin was driving was new, and he had yet to get used to its mechanisms. He turned into the parking area near the dance hall and attempted to back the car into a parking spot along the iron fence that served as a sea wall. However, when he reached down to pull the brake handle, he accidentally pulled the reverse handle instead, and the car catapulted through the twenty-foot-tall fence and spun up into a compete somersault before landing at the bottom of a rocky cliff.

  All four men were thrown from the vehicle onto the rocks. Martin and two of his friends escaped with injuries: William Hartigan sustained a fractured elbow, Joseph Mahoney suffered a fractured left knee and Martin walked away with bruises. But another friend, Thomas Brady, who lived at 113 Winthrop Street, was pinned beneath the car. Harrington saw the accident and rushed with several other men to the scene. They were able to lift the car and extricate Brady, who was employed as a clerk at a meat market in Taunton, Massachusetts, but they could see that he was badly hurt. An ambulance was summoned, and Brady was transported to Rhode Island Hospital, where it was discovered that he had a fractured pelvis. He died four hours later.

  In 1912, Casey’s Fun Factory was added to the park grounds, offering twenty shows for the price of one admission, and entertainment at the Forest Casino, managed by John H. Thornton, included Jolly John Harrison singing old Irish ballads in his rough brogue and wood-shoe dancers Skinner & Woods. A costume contest in August brought lots of laughs, and the winner was John Roth, who was awarded a silver loving cup for donning a red, white and blue silk lady’s garment.

  The following year, the Shore Dinner Hall was expanded to allow comfortable seating accommodations for 2,500 people. It was open from noon to eight o’clock at night. Some of the delicious clams served there were brought in from sandy beaches in Maine, and others were supplied by John Henry Northup, an Apponaug fisherman who was in his sixties. Two different sized meals were available: the fifty-cent shore dinner and the larger seventy-five-cent dinner, prepared by Charles E. Lyon. Born on February 28, 1845, in Woodstock, Connecticut, the talented caterer had worked as a horse clipper until 1900. He went on to become a co-founder of the S.S. Atwell Catering Company, along with Gilbert Luter and Colonel Seagur Schuyler Atwell. Atwell was a well-known Civil War army commander and had long worked as a caterer, cooking up shore dinners on a regular basis at Field’s Point, a thirty-seven-acre park in Providence, which he began leasing in 1887.

  The beach at Rocky Point drew not only day visitors but also those who bought cottages so they could spend several weeks at the shore. Vintage photograph, author’s collection.

  The Atwell company was incorporated in 1907 “for the purpose of engaging in the business of conducting and furnishing shore dinners, catering to and owning, leasing, operating and managing hotels and restaurants, and of carrying on any business connected with or incident to any of the forgoing purposes.” In addition to regularly catering meals at Field’s Point, the trio and its staff did occasional catering at institutions such as the Oaklawn School for Girls. In 1911, Lyon took over the company and moved the entire staff to Rocky Point Park. He later passed away in New London, Connecticut, in 1932.

  Rocky Point’s scenic railway and massive organ. Vintage postcard, courtesy Jules Antiques & General Store.

  Rocky Point’s café and bandstand. Vintage postcard, courtesy Jules Antiques & General Store.

  A large advertisement ran in the local newspapers that summer for “Col. A. Harrington’s Rocky Point.” In addition to listing the many rides and attractions, Harrington went on to state, “I run Rocky Point so as to make a pleasure park where women and children can come without any escort, where they can enjoy plenty of harmless amusements without danger of molestation.”

  Running a successful amusement park like Rocky Point wasn’t all fun and games. On April 26, 1913, Harrington hired the beautiful twenty-nine-year-old pioneer female aviator and
airplane exhibitionist Ruth Bancroft Law to perform a show on the park grounds for three consecutive days. According to the contract, Ruth would exhibit her spiral flying stunts on May 30 and 31 and June 1 at the park’s ball field, making two flights per day and flying a total of thirty minutes per day, for a total of $1,200. Harrington was to pay Law $300 when she arrived at the park on May 30 with her specially constructed biplane and an additional $300 on completion of her performances each day.

  When Law arrived, Harrington handed over the first $300 payment. Law later rose up into the air to begin performing her aerobatics, but after just three minutes into her exhibition, a heavy gust of wind hurled the plane out of the sky and into a nearby automobile, damaging the flying machine. Obviously the show was over. However, when Harrington asked for the return of his money, Law refused, and a legal battle ensued.

  The scenic railway at Rocky Point Park. Vintage postcard, courtesy Jules Antiques & General Store.

  Entertainment in the sky was very popular with patrons of Rocky Point, and several aviators appeared in shows there above the sprawling park grounds. On June 30, 1913, Swedish-born Nels J. Nelson, a twenty-six-year-old “birdman” who resided in New Britain, Connecticut, arrived at the park with his new seventy-horsepower hydro airplane. Never having been exhibited before in Rhode Island, it entertained crowds throughout the Fourth of July weekend.

  Starting out on the beach in front of the Mansion House, Nelson’s plane raced across the water until it picked up enough speed to glide up into the sky. Three flights were planned, with Nelson leaving the grounds of Rocky Point at ten minutes past ten o’clock in the morning, circling the city hall, the fire station and the statehouse and returning back to the park at thirty minutes past ten. The crowds below went wild.

  Another famous aviator, Frank John Terrell, also gave a performance at the park that summer. The forty-five-year-old would be killed the following year when his Curtiss Pusher plane collapsed at five hundred feet in the air and plunged to the ground as he swerved to avoid hitting the audience gathered at the fairgrounds in Chesterfield, South Carolina. Terrell was buried in the wreckage and died immediately. Later that day, upon learning of the accident, his daughter sent a Western Union telegram to her aunt that read, “Papa killed today. Machine collapsed.”

  Rex Natator, the only man who had ever successfully swum the Niagara Rapids and who had made numerous attempts to swim the English Channel, was scheduled to swim from the Seekonk River boathouse to Rocky Point. As Natator had just recovered from pneumonia, it was expected to be a trying feat. Standing at just five feet, six inches tall and weighing just 130 pounds, Natator was able to expand his chest by eleven inches when he inhaled.

  That year, the park’s ball field became the site of the first automobile polo game ever played in New England and drew a crowd of over 2,500 people. The game featured four cars being stationed in the center of the field, with each carrying a driver and a polo player leaning out of the auto with a mallet. A ball was placed on the ground between the cars, and two Americans challenged two Canadians for the win.

  That same summer saw the addition of a new ride called the Scranton Coal Mine, which carried passengers through dark tunnels and down a deep shaft to view the work of coal miners in action. Twenty-seven Mexican burros had been imported from Mexico to pull the two-seated cars through the mine. The expense for this was great, and the trip from Mexico to Rhode Island took three months. Unfortunatly, five of the burros making the journey died before reaching their destination.

  The animals arrived in Providence in June with their owner, W.A. “Snake” King, a resident of Tampa, Mexico, who maintained about two thousand burros on his ranch, El Víbora. King’s journey through Mexico, Texas and on to Providence, Rhode Island, was life threatening. As he passed through the battlefields of a Mexican rebellion, he was forced to venture thirty-five miles off course to keep out of the line of fire. However, while on this route, as he attempted to pass through one town, he found its perimeters had been secured with live electrical wires to keep anyone from entering or exiting. The dead bodies of Mexican soldiers lay sprawled across the fields and the burros in his custody carefully paraded through them. During a stop to pick up supplies, King later related that he saw unspeakable scenes. As the government had taken control of the area, available food had become nearly nonexistent. Residents had been surviving on snakes for about two weeks.

  Upon delivering the animals to Rocky Point, King told Harrington that if he wanted any more burros in the future, he would have to go get them himself. At the park, the burros were trained to carry passengers through the mine by the act of tying bundles of hay to a stick suspended just in front of their mouths. In an effort to reach the hay, the burros would keep walking forward.

  Adding to the year’s summer fun, champion runner Bart Sullivan engaged in a relay race on the grounds, and Torrelli’s Dog and Pony Circus gave four open-air performances, starring six ponies, five dogs and the badly behaved Bessie, the mule. Any patron who wanted to try his or her luck at staying on Bessie’s back while she bucked around was invited to come up and give it his or her best shot. It was promised that anyone who could do so would win the mule as a prize.

  The Forest Casino had advertised an exciting bill for the season. Beulah Ballas was scheduled to perform her well-known southern songs and African American melodies, and comedian Frank Dobson would take the stage. Blackface comics Kelly & Davis had shows coming up, as did character comedian Nellie Fillimore and soprano Isabella Hackley.

  One of the Forest Casino’s most popular performances that year was given by Mademoiselle Emerie, a Parisian trapeze artist who was well known for her shockingly provocative shows. Emerie would begin her performances on the stage, dressed in full evening garb. A male assistant would then bring her a glass of wine, which she would drink before pretending to become intoxicatingly carefree. She would climb the ladder that led to the trapeze and begin disrobing while she sailed through the air. Her shows were said to be sidesplitting entertainment, and she always ended each performance clad only in tights. Other performances were given by the Bush Devere Trio, which starred cornet and violin player Billy Bush, and Clinton & Beatrice, who put on an exhibition of fancy rifle shooting.

  High-wire acts on the grounds always garnered large audiences. These included the Savolas, a pair of trick-riding bicyclists known as “the two demons” who always dressed in their customary devilish costumes.

  On Labor Day weekend 1913, several contests were held for the enjoyment of visitors, with prizes awarded at different attractions in the park. The Scenic Railway was giving away a Mexican burro and saddle. The Scranton Coal Mine was awarding two tons of coal to a lucky winner. A barrel of flour could be won at the Forest Casino, a barrel of onions and a barrel of potatoes at the Democrat Inn and a gold watch and graphaphone at the dance hall.

  Despite how well business was going, Harrington soon found himself in court once again. That October, he appeared with his attorney at the Rhode Island Superior Court to give testimony concerning an event that had occurred in the summer of 1909. One of the park’s patrons, William A. Rice, claimed that he had been assaulted and wrongly confined on the park grounds by a park constable who was also an off-duty Warwick police officer. He was asking to be awarded $10,000 in damages. Harrington argued that Rice had been creating a great deal of noise and causing a disturbance, so it had become necessary to arrest him and take him to the park’s confinement cell, which Sprague had previously constructed on the property for holding inebriated patrons. Despite Harrington’s arguments regarding Rice’s alleged inappropriate behavior, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiff.

  The ravages of yet another fire occurred on May 4, 1914, when, just after five o’clock in the morning, a man working on the grounds saw smoke billowing out of the window of the penny vaudeville building. A bucket brigade was quickly formed, and the Conimicut Fire Company was summoned, but the blaze continued on for several hours, destroying the vaudevill
e building, the peanut stand, shooting gallery, fishpond and two unoccupied stands. Most of the concessions that were ruined were owned by a Canadian man named John B. Nash, who spent over half a century in the amusement park business. As poor luck would have it, he suffered the greatest part of the $12,000 to $15,000 loss. While much of it could be rebuilt, that which could not bore its sad damage. The many beautiful shade trees that lined the midway were permanently blemished with scorch marks. However, business went on as usual.

  The newly constructed Motor Drome, a large motorcycle racetrack set at a forty-degree angle, proved very popular with visitors. In June, a racing performance was given there by European champion Daredevil McFee and Seymore Blockder of Australian racing fame. During the thrilling show, an employee who wasn’t aware that a race was taking place opened a trapdoor beneath the track that hit the front wheel of McFee’s motorcycle. As McFee had been driving at a speed of seventy miles per hour, his cycle veered sharply, and he was thrown violently to the ground. The racer did not get up for several moments, and many feared he was badly injured. But he came away from the accident with nothing more than a few bruises.

  Crowds turned out for popular shows such as the one put on by the Balton Troupe from Paris. A group of aerial performers, it consisted of five women and one man. With their trapeze erected to the right of the Mansion House, they performed amazing stunts that had the crowd gasping. One of the female performers, who was extremely heavyset, hung from the trapeze by her knees, forty feet above the ground. In her hands, she held the end of a rope that was secured on the other side. A series of trapezes was suspended from the rope, and the other aerialists performed their feats on them.