The White Horse Star, May 15, 1901

A Ghastly Find

Early Saturday morning a report was circulated around town that the body of a man had been found on the riverbank beneath the wharf of the W.P.&Y. Route, and crowds were soon flocking to the scene of the find. A STAR man joined the throng, but on arriving at the place indicated and looking over the edge of the wharf, down several feet to where the body lay, it was impossible to tell with certainty whether the rumor was correct or not, the only thing visible being the half of a boot or shoe sticking out of the sand and what appeared to be part of a pair of corduroy pants, the body being buried completely beneath the sand.

The discovery was made by Dave Quartermarsh and Rob McIntosh, who immediately notified the police, and a guard with two prisoners from the barracks were at once detailed to proceed to the place of the reported discovery and exhume the remains.

A coroner's jury had been impaneled in the meanwhile, the members of which took up their position on a scow close at hand and watched the men at their gruesome task. It was only a short time until all doubts were set at rest and the body removed from its bed of sand and slime and hauled up onto the wharf.

On examination of the body the coroner's jury found a gold ring on the third finger of the left hand on which were the words and figures "White Horse 1900”. In the pockets of his trousers was found a considerable sum of money. A receipt for royalty for chopping wood on the Big Salmon, which had been issued to Robert Byers by Corporal Lee, was also found in one of the pockets in the dead man's clothes.

Owing to the decomposed state of the face and head of the deceased it was impossible to recognize it, but at the adjourned inquest in the afternoon Miss Decker, of the Windsor hotel, and Mr. E.A. Morck of the British Yukon Navigation Co., identified the body as that of Frank Schlag, a German about 50 years old and about six feet in height. Schlag was in partnership last summer with two men named Byers and Dobbeck in the woodchopping business near the Hootalinqua, and about the 15th of last September the three partners came to White Horse and Schlag registered at the Windsor hotel. After coming to town he indulged freely in liquor and early on the morning of Sept. 21st was put out of the Windsor for creating a disturbance, and nothing more was seen of him until his body was discovered on the river bank.

The coroner's jury which had been adjourned until today at 5 p.m. met and took the testimony of C. Racine and A.C. Muller which closed the evidence. The coroner, Inspector Fitz Horrigan, in his charge summed up the evidence to the jury and explained the laws applicable to the facts in the case in a very concise manner, after which the jury retired and in a short time returned with the following verdict: "That the said Frank Schlag on the 11th day of May, 1901, was found drowned in the Fifty-Mile River at White Horse, Y.T., and that the said Frank Schlag had no marks of violence upon his person; but how or by what means the said Frank Schlag became drowned no evidence doth appear to the jurors.”

In Witness whereof, as well as the said Coroner's as the jurors aforesaid have hereunto set and subscribed their hands and seals the day and year first above written.

Fitz Horrigan,

Coroner in and for the Yukon Terr.

Robt. Lowe, foreman

C.A. Munro, J.C. Morton, Jno. Wilson, A.G. Preston, R.J. Burde