Francis Henry Purnell

In the record (3)

1. 1893 · 1893-12-09

   "Fire lighters" work Sinepuxent Bay by night, blinding wildfowl with torches and clubbing them — and turn on the men who try to stop them.

   "The Sinepuxent Bay is infested at night during the ducking season with what is termed 'fire lighters'," the Messenger reported on 9 December 1893: men who "patrol the bay in their boats with lighted torches, blind the wild fowl and knock them in the head with clubs." The item is a report of an assault — Francis Henry Purnell and Ephraim Carey's boat was attacked — and it is the only piece of 1893 evidence the campaign has for how the winter economy of the bay actually worked when nobody from Baltimore was watching. The gunning season was the half of Ocean City's year that the resort literature never describes, and this is what it looked like.

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

2. 1895 · 1895-07-13

   Ocean City's three policemen are named in print for the first time — Albert Carey, Lemuel Mumford and William Purnell — wearing badges inscribed "Ocean City, Md."

   The Democratic Messenger of July 13, 1895 carries the item in its Ocean City notes: "[The policemen] are in the employ of Ocean City and not of the company. They are this year supplied with badges inscribed Ocean City, Md. The members of the police are Albert Carey, Lemuel Mumford and William Purnell." Three men is exactly the establishment the 1894 charter allowed: new section 156 A let the mayor, with the council's advice, appoint up to three regular policemen and as many specials as he thought necessary [fact:1894-charter-empowers-board-walks-and-police]. The distinction the paper draws — town men, not company men — is the point of the paragraph: the Sinepuxent Beach Company owned the beach, the Atlantic Hotel and most of the lots, and 1895 is the year the town put its own name on the badge. It also very likely identifies the "Policeman Carey" who arrested the two boys who robbed the bridge keeper's till in July 1894 [fact:1894-bridge-store-robbery-first-policeman].

   The Commissioners of Ocean CitySinepuxent Beach CompanyAlbert Carey

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

3. 1895 · 1895-08-21

   The seven drowned went down 'directly opposite the place where it is being urged to locate a life-saving station' — and Capt. Dunton said a station there might have saved them.

   The Smyrna (Del.) Times of 21 August 1895 places the disaster exactly and turns it into an argument: 'The distressing drowning accident in Isle of Wight bay, or Assawoman bay, as it is sometimes called, happened at a point 6½ miles north of Ocean City, directly opposite the place where it is being urged to locate a life-saving station... Captain Dunton, of the Ocean City lifesaving crew, says that if a lifesaving station had been there on Saturday last if not all of the lives lost might have been saved.' The campaign for that station was already seven months old. On 9 February the Messenger had run 'A NEW L. S. S. — Movement on Foot for Another Life Saving Station,' commending Francis Henry Purnell, Clerk of the Circuit Court for Worcester County, and W. Lee Carey for urging a new station on the coast above Ocean City in Washington; on 10 August the two men put the case to Superintendent Kemble of the Life-Saving Service himself, arguing that the work of the men at the existing stations 'is the most arduous in the service,' that men had quit from overwork, and that the stretch was 'the scene of many wrecks.' Kemble promised to make an examination of the beach. In October the paper reported that John Walter Smith was 'already using his influence to have another Life Saving Station erected along our coast.'

   United States Life-Saving ServiceCapt. Joshua J. DuntonW. Lee Carey

   Source · checked 2026-08-11