LEWES FISHERIES
LUCE BROTHERS & S. S.
BROWN, COMPANY
The Wilmington Evening
Journal of Tuesday, June 19, 1894 calls the Luce
Brother & S. S. Brown
Company's fishery a “fish house nuisance”.
The question of fish
houses or no fish houses hangs on among the people of
Lewes that is a haven
of refuge for storm tossed vessels.
Opponents to the
Connecticut enterprise on the bay beach near the Government Pier
are discouraged by Judge
Wales's refusal to grant an injunction to closed it down.
But they are not hopeless
and are seeking a legal channel to redress their
grievances.
The fish houses are not
connected to any local business men and are odorous
branches of the Connecticut
fish works., therefore called Yankee. The work conditions are
filthy and only Negroes
are hired to do it under charge of white superintendents.
The men who man the boats
are better paid and white and from New England and
north, and far removed
from the filth of the shore works. There is an investment of from
$200,000 to $250,000 , in the fish plant and boats. The payroll
amounts to maybe $15,000. One Lewes cater made $800 from the
Yankees last season.
Farmers and butchers
benefit with sale of local vegetables and meat. Local store
keepers do not profit.
It cannot be denied that
the stench is very disagreeable and nauseating, more so when the
wind is east or northeast.
Local fishermen say the fish house take their bread and butter from
them.
Dr. Joseph B. Lyons,
retired physician, feels the fish house is objectionable, odors,
flies might cause an
epidemic.
Dr. W.P. Orr, of the
Marine Hospital regards the odor prejudical to the community
health. Flies are problem
at the Marine Hospital.
Ephraim Richardson, Dr.
Orr, William Teal,a majority of the Board of Health, backed
by 129 citizens declared
the fish house a nuisance and asked the the land not be released.
We were turned out and
three others put in.
A. L. Burton and Robert
Arnell, Lewes Board of Cmmissioners, opinion was that the
fish houses were not only
'not a nuisance' but a source of revenue to the town and it's
people.
Abstract: 06/26/18 by
Harrison H, Wilmington Evening Journal, June 19, 1894.
Tuesday, January 24, 1893, Wilmington New Journal reports the ice in the bay and the breakwater is heavy but the mile weather is causing it to break up. Sunday, steamers moving about at the government pier put the large ice masses in motion which carried away 50 foot or more of Luce Brothers & S. S. Brown's piers during the night.
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