Homicide

At a meeting in a Chinese mission, a collection is being taken up, “Contributions received here to save the foreign devils.” Five accompanying vignettes show how the United States is viewed by the Chinese, including “Kentucky feuds,” “Burning Negros at the stake,” “Labor riots,” “Anti-Chinese riots,” and “New York City government” where the Tammany Tiger is shaking down a citizen. A sign on a wall in the mission states, “Help the Heathen.”

comments and context

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1900-11-21

President Roosevelt informs Ray Stannard Baker the District of Columbia is better off than the rest of the country regarding homicides. The president includes a copy of a letter from United States District Attorney Morgan H. Beach to William Loeb listing the number of homicides, acquittals, and convictions in the District of Columbia during the past ten years, and adds his own handwritten note that there were no lynchings.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-01-05

Creator(s)

Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919

After careful consideration, President Roosevelt has decided not to interfere in the case of Benjamin G. Hill and explains his reasoning.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-07-25

Creator(s)

Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919

President Roosevelt does not want to commute the sentence of Benjamin G. Hill, who was convicted of murdering his wife. He will defer Hill’s execution and go over the evidence again if Attorney General Knox still favors clemency.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-07-18

Creator(s)

Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919

President Roosevelt will not take action in the Hill case because he does not sufficiently doubt the question of sanity.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-07-22

Creator(s)

Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919

United States Attorney Beach submits statistics about the number of homicides and convictions for homicide in the District of Columbia during the past ten years to William Loeb.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-01-04

Creator(s)

Beach, Morgan H. (Morgan Hawley), 1861-1938

George F. Murray recently shot and killed James German for having “caused the infidelity of his wife” while he was away on business. Murray will stand trial in Kettner tomorrow. Prior to this incident, Murray was a valuable officer in the mounted police service, and had previously served as a Rough Rider during the Spanish-American War.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-03-18

Creator(s)

Unknown

Former President Roosevelt walks away from the figure of a woman labeled “Progressive Party” who has been stabbed with a knife labeled “Declination.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1916

Creator(s)

Barclay, McKee

Print shows the spirit of an executed murderer rising to Heaven as a minister wipes clean the “Blackboard of Crime” on which are “Murder, Arson, [and] Robb[ery]” with the “Sponge of Absolution” as “years of sin [are] wiped out in ten minutes.” Meanwhile “the wife of the victim experiences Hell on Earth” at a cemetery in the upper left, and “the ‘unprepared’ victim” descends to the flames of “Purgatory” accompanied by devils.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1882-06-28

Creator(s)

Keppler, Joseph Ferdinand, 1838-1894

The ghost of Winfield Scott Hancock sits on a throne in a banquet hall. Samuel J. Tilden pushes a frightened Charles A. Dana, as Macbeth, toward Hancock. Dana makes wild statements while waving around a note for $5000.00. A chalice has fallen to the floor, spilling “Harmony.” Samuel S. Cox, as a court jester, sits on the floor next to the throne with “S.S. Cox’s Joke Book” at his knee. The room is filled with courtiers, among them Thomas A. Hendricks, Grover Cleveland who has fallen backwards onto John Kelly, Thomas F. Bayard, Samuel J. Randall, David Davis, Henry Watterson, Abram S. Hewitt, Hubert O. Thompson, George Hoadly, and Benjamin F. Butler. All seem to be sitting in judgment of Dana. Caption: MacBeth-Dana–“Never shake thy gory locks at me! I’ll bet you Five Thousand Dollars thou canst not say I did it!!”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-08-29

Creator(s)

Gillam, Bernhard, 1856-1896

A woman wearing a red dress, holding money, stands between the “Health Department Bureau of Licences and Inspection” and an opening in a wall labeled “Graft.” In a cut-away showing the scene behind the “Graft,” the man (probably a plainclothes officer) who collects the money through the opening in the wall is passing money to a uniformed officer, who in turn passes the money to a large hand (probably that of a politician) entering the frame from above. It is a wild scene with a woman lying on a table, the body of a man stabbed to death beneath the table, a man rolling dice, others drinking, and a shooting taking place in the background. While the woman in red hesitates, the implication is that she has no choice but to pay the graft. Caption: She is here. Man is responsible for her. His laws against her and her traffic but afford opportunity for police extortion. You know this. You may wince at the idea of “regulation,” but is not regulation preferable to the vilest forms of graft? Of two evils, must the greater be chosen?

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1913-01-15

Creator(s)

Grant, Gordon, 1875-1962

At center, Samuel Gompers stands on a platform, pointing to a sign with a whip labeled “Expulsion.” The sign states “To Organized Labor / Defend your persecuted brethren. Put up, or lose your union card.” He is holding a hat into which union members, entering from the left, are depositing money. To the right, behind Gompers, the money, in the form of “Dynamite,” drops through a hole in the top of the hat to the platform where union thugs grab it. Beyond them are explosions labeled “Organized Murder.” Caption: What went into it and what came out of it.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1912-02-07

Creator(s)

Keppler, Udo J., 1872-1956