Hellraisers Journal: Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers Were Unarmed When Murdered on Steps of McDowell County Courthouse

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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 6, 1921
Matewan, West Virginia – Widows of Hatfield and Chambers Speak Out

From the Baltimore Sun of August 5, 1921:

Hatfield Was Unarmed, His Widow Asserts
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Mrs. Chambers Declares That Her Husband
Also Was Without Weapon.

Matewan, W. Va., Aug. 4.-Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers, Mingo mountaineers, who were killed on the steps of the Courthouse at Welch, McDowell county, in a gun fight last Monday, were unarmed, their widow told newspaper men here today. Both Mrs. Hatfield and Mrs. Chambers accompanied their husbands to the court last Monday, where Sid, former chief of police at Matewan, was to have answered a charge of being the instigator of the “shooting up” of Mohawk, McDowell county, last year.

The widows said that they or their husbands did not anticipate trouble in Welch and that Hatfield locked his pistols in a traveling bag and Chambers laid aside his arms before starting for the Courthouse.

The women declared that C. E. Lively, Baldwin-Felts detective, charged with being implicated in the killings, boarded the train on which they were going to Welch early in the morning and followed them about the town until it was almost time for them to appear at the court. Mrs. Chambers, describing how she and her husband and Sid and his wife went to the Courthouse and started for the entrance, said:

I heard a shot fired. I turned and looked at Sid and he was falling. Then I looked at my husband and he was falling loose from my arm. The shooting then became general. I saw only two men shooting and they were C. E. Lively and a short, heavy-set man who wore glasses.

Mrs. Hatfield said that she lost consciousness while the shooting was going on. She charged Sheriff Bill Hatfield with negligence in not protecting her husband.

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[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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SOURCE
The Sun
(Baltimore, Maryland)
-Aug 5, 1921
https://www.newspapers.com/image/373390606/

IMAGE
Sid and Jessie Testerman Hatfield, Stt Str p14, Sept 15, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093407/1920-09-15/ed-1/seq-14/

See also:

Tag: Sid Hatfield
https://weneverforget.org/tag/sid-hatfield/

Search: widows hatfield chambers
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?state=&date1=1921&date2=1921&proxtext=widows+hatfield+chambers&x=12&y=11&dateFilterType=yearRange&rows=20&searchType=basic&sort=date

Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals
A Documentary History of the West Virginia Mine Wars
 -ed by David Alan Corbin
PM Press, 2011
(See Chapter VI for Testimony of Jessie and Sallie before Senate Investigating Committee.)
https://books.google.com/books?id=zHH7BgAAQBAJ

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Sid Hatfield-The Southern West Virginia Coal Wars
Written by David Grubb and Alan Johnston
Sung by Alan Johnston and Jessi Shumate