BANDITS’ RAID ON CHINESE RAILWAY ENGLISHMAN KILLED.
KIDNAPPED AMERICANS.
It now appears from Reuter’s telegrams from Pekin and Shanghai that in the extraordinary raid by 1,000 Chinese bandits on an express train at Lincheng, in Shantung Province, between Pukow and Tientsin, briefly reported in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, one Englishman, a Mr. Joseph Rothman, was killed. Of the 300 passengers stated to have been kidnapped, a number are Europeans and Americans, but the exact total of those carried away is not yet known, though an unconfirmed report places the figure at twenty-seven. A British subject named Rowlatt, manager of the Reiss Company at Tientsin, is believed to have been captured. More than a dozen Americans were kidnapped, including Miss Lucy Aldrich, who is Mr. John D. Rockefeller junior’s sister-in-law, and her French maid, Mr. Scripps (proprietor of the United Press), and two army officers.
Telegraphing from Washington yesterday, Reuter states:
“The first report on the Shantung railway hold-up forwarded to the State Department by the American Minister in Pekin, Mr. Schurman, indicates that the situation is apparently serious and menacing to the maintenance of good relations between the United States and China. It is understood that Mr. Schurman has already made informal representations to the Pekin Government on his own responsibility, and it is expected that he will be instructed by the United States Government to pursue the most vigorous course to secure the release of the prisoners unharmed.”
The Tientsin-pukow railway is a Government line about 628 miles long. Lincheng, the scene of the outrage, is near the southern border of Shantung Province, 374 miles from Tientsin. It is chiefly important as the junction of a short railway which connects it with the coal district of Ihsien.
MISS ALDRICH’S FATE.
A Washington telegram says that the State, Department is without confirmation of the cables from Pekin reporting the capture of Miss Lucy Aldrich, sister of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, jun., and of Mr. John Powell, the Chicago Tribune correspondent, and 150 other passengers on the Tientsin-pukow train. It is not believed here that either the Pekin or the Canton Government is in any way responsible for the bandit attack which resulted in the capture of American citizens, but the incident confirms the report that Wupei Fu’s control of the Northern Provinces of China is weakening. Mr. Winthrop Aldrich, a New York lawyer and brother of Miss Aldrich, said to-day that his sister commenced her tour of the world last October in care of the Standard Oil Company’s agents in various parts of the world, and unless he hears from the agents in China he cannot accept the report that his sister is held to ransom. Miss Aldrich and her party were last heard of from Yokohama, Japan, but she was due in China this month. The lady is very wealthy in her own right, her father having left an estate estimated at £6,000,000 for division amongst his widow, now dead, and their seven children.
ANOTHER DEATH.
Later reports regarding the train outrage at Lincheng state that M. F. Elias, one of the passengers on the train who was thought to have been captured, is now believed to have been killed, but up to the present no confirmation of this report can be obtained.