This page was created by Anonymous.
Morris Werner assaulted
Werner was allegedly attacked early in the disorder, when it was still centered on Kress’ store. Around this time a crowd reportedly broke through the police perimeter around the store, and two other white men alleged they were attacked by Black men around this time: William Kitlitz in front of Kress’ store, and Maurice Spellman at 125th Street and 8th Avenue. All those men lived west of Harlem, relatively close to where they were attacked, so were likely regular visitors to 125th Street, to shop, seek entertainment or access public transport, on this evening caught up in the disorder. The area around 125th Street and 7th Avenue would continue to be the location of struggles between police and crowds until around 10:30 PM, and alleged assaults on white individuals for at least the next three hours, with three men and two women reportedly targeted.
Dr White treated Werner for a "stab wound," with no mention in the hospital admission record of where that wound was located. Werner then left for home, indicating that the injury was not serious enough to require admission to the hospital. The use of a knife in this assault was unusual; there was only one other stabbing in the fifty-four reported assaults in the disorder, the alleged attack on Edward Genest, distinguishing this violence from what occurred at other times. In the rest of 1935, knives were a favored weapon of those committing acts of violence, used in two thirds of the incidents prosecuted as cases of felony assault.
The hospital admission record is the only evidence of the assault on Werner. That he was not included in lists of the injured may mean he did not make a report to police. No one else injured in the disorder was recorded as having been treated at the Vanderbilt Clinic, which was well outside the borders of Harlem and some distance from Werner's home. It may be that the violence saw calls to ambulances from further afield than usual. Spellman, allegedly assaulted at around the same time was attended at a closer hospital, Sydenham Hospital at 123rd Street and Manhattan Avenue, near his home. Murphy and Kitlitz were allegedly assaulted in locations where they attracted police, who made arrests, creating legal records and helping those men appear in newspaper lists of the injured, and in Murphy’s case, newspapers stories. Werner, like Spellman, may have been caught up in the crowds, and to have received medical treatment without attracting police attention.