From the Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia PA) 19 DEC 1922
5 MORE BARNS FIRED IN NIGHT BY ARMED GANG
Torches were applied to five barns in Chester and Montgomery Counties by firebugs last night and early this morning. All were burned to the ground at a total loss of approximately $100,000.
At one barn the incendiaries were discovered in the act of applying their torch and engaged in a gun fight. They escaped. Later in the night they were seen to flee from another barn which had been fired, and State police are of the opinion that all of the seven barns were fired by them.
The first of the fires occurred at the Gulph Mills Golf Club, near Conshohocken. At 3 o’clock this morning the firebugs completed their work. At that hour two barns at Perkiomen Junction and East Norriston were in flames. Other barns burned during night were at Wyndmoor and at West Chester. At the later place the barn of the State Normal School was destroyed. Two false alarms turned in during the fires from Eagleville and Lansdale added to the excitement of State police and firemen.
The first close glimpse of the firebugs, who have terrorized farmers of Chester, Montgomery and Delaware Counties by burning thirty-eight barns since early in October, was had last night at the Gulph Mills Golf Club barn. They are two white men and a Negro. They travel in a limousine.
George Peters, golf professional at the club, George Mathis, steward, and John Taylor, caddie master, engaged in a gun fight with the incendiaries, who took shelter behind the hazard at the seventh fairway on the Gulph Mills golf course and held back their pursuers until their Negro chauffeur maneuvered the automobile into a position where they could escape to it.
Mrs. Peters, wife of the professional player, heard the firebugs’ machine drive up to the barn and informed her husband. He hurried to the barn with a shotgun he had purchased only yesterday.
As he approached, three men came down the ladder from the hayloft. One, the Negro, jumped into the automobile and drove off without waiting for his companions. Peters fired both barrels of his shotgun at the other two. They ran toward the golf course.
They saw the two men running across the course and fired several shots. At the seventh fairway the firebugs got behind the hazard, which is somewhat similar to a trench, and returned the fire of the pursuers. Meanwhile the automobile had been driven on a road close to the fairway and stopped. They escaped to it and sped away in the direction of Conshohocken.
Loss by the burning of the golf club barn is placed at $20,000. Livestock was rescued, but many valuable mowers and other implements, used to keep the course in condition, were destroyed, along with a large quantity of expensive grass seed.
…… Armed Guards for Barns
Renewed activity of the firebugs within the last week, despite road patrols maintained in Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties by State police, has led to renewed efforts on the part of farmers to protect their property.
At the Delchester Farms, near Newtown Square, an armed guard of thirty men stands watch at the four barns from 6 pm to daylight.
On the estate of Issac H. Clothier, at Rosemont, the barn is being guarded by four men with orders to shoot first and investigate later in case prowlers are seen. One man is stationed on each of the four sides of the structure so that an approach to it without being discovered is considered impossible.
Hundreds of other farmers throughout the three counties have taken similar precautions and either stand watch themselves or employ others for that purpose.
From The Morning Post (Camden NJ) 19 DEC 1922
…. State police, called out by the Gulph Mills Golf Club fire, immediately threw out a cordon of troopers on motorcycles in an effort to overtake the firebugs’ automobile. As each new alarm came in during the night additional details were assigned to the various fires to conduct thorough investigations.
Aroused by the daring of the firebugs who have been spreading terror with the torch, the State troopers, to the number of 300, took up the chase for the incendiaries today with renewed vigor.
Officials of the fire and police departments in the territory over which the flames spread, convinced that an organized band is at work, spread the net as reports of the fires reached them. Despite the presence of several hundred State troopers patrolling the roads on motorcycles and vigilant committees of farmers throughout the district, the firebugs escaped the traps.
