Joe
Lt. Colonel
Posts: 2,635
|
Post by Joe on Apr 3, 2020 19:44:34 GMT -5
It was very much like this one.. Friday evening and a clear, star-filled sky, with a very noticeable chill in the air. 84 years ago at this moment, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was dying in New Jersey's electric chair. This article by Robert Conway, with its strong photos and graphic drawings, brings to mind the countless days I spent viewing old copies of my local newspaper's accounts from a time just before the kidnapping, until well beyond Hauptmann's execution. A highly recommended experience for anyone, that helps to capture the pulse of the times. I don't know if there exists, such a graphic and well pronounced, first hand account of the event as this one. Thanks to Sue for first posting this article many years ago. www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/lindbergh-baby-kidnapper-electric-chair-1932-article-1.2170110
|
|
|
Post by Sue on Nov 16, 2023 12:05:58 GMT -5
I'm sure some of the witnesses to Hauptmann's execution would love to have taken pictures of the event on April 3, 1936.
If Tex McCrary had his way, might there have been photos taken of Hauptmann in the electric chair?
Tex McCrary, also known as John Reagan McCrary, Jr., was a journalist and became known for popularizng talk shows on radio and television. He was married to Arthur Brisbane's daughter in the 1930s. Brisbane was the editor of the New York Daily Mirror, and he attended the Flemington trial in 1935.
Author Sam Roberts, from a book published in 2022 called The New Yorkers: 31 Remarkable People, 400 Years, and the Untold Biography of the World's Greatest City:
"At the Mirror [McCrary] searched futilely for an inconspicuous half-blind citizen who he could hire, outfit with a glass eye containing a concealed camera, and insinuate as a witness to the execution of Bruno Hauptmann, the convicted kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby."
McCrary probably wanted to get a front cover execution photograph like the famous one of Ruth Snyder in 1928.
|
|
|
Post by lurp173 on Nov 16, 2023 13:11:07 GMT -5
Sue, I always thought that this was a photo of Hauptmann being strapped in the chair in Trenton.
|
|
|
Post by Sue on Nov 16, 2023 14:58:37 GMT -5
Hi lurp173,
Yes. I thought so, too!
It was the 1930s version of being photoshopped?
Is that correct?
I forget the story behind that picture!
Sue
|
|
|
Post by lurp173 on Nov 16, 2023 18:27:48 GMT -5
Thanks Sue. I never knew the story behind this "photo", but it did always look a little odd and questionable. I'll correct my Lindbergh photo album to reflect that this is not a real photo taken in the execution room.
|
|
|
Post by Michael on Nov 16, 2023 22:12:58 GMT -5
Thanks Sue. I never knew the story behind this "photo", but it did always look a little odd and questionable. I'll correct my Lindbergh photo album to reflect that this is not a real photo taken in the execution room. There are several sources that indicate it was not an actual picture taken inside the chamber. However, they did a helluva job on it. The biggest clue is that Hauptmann's head was shaved so they got the hair wrong. The Reporters really wanted to get a picture but Kimberling was on top of this. Everyone was searched including him. Elliot was approached with a bribe but declined the offer. Anyway, according to my notes, there's a copy of this picture in the Hoffman Collection located in Box 25. There might be an explanation found there as well but if so, I either didn't copy it or can't find it if I did. What I do have is from Daring Detective Magazine (June 1936) that includes this caption under the pic: This composite photo, made on a background of the death chamber at Trenton, reproduces the execution scene as nearly as possible from available descriptions.
|
|
|
Post by Sue on Nov 17, 2023 8:15:05 GMT -5
Thank you, Michael,for your post and the information about that odd picture.
Maybe Daring Detective Magazine designed it, and were the first to publish the "composite photo"?
|
|
|
Post by Michael on Nov 18, 2023 10:09:16 GMT -5
Thank you, Michael,for your post and the information about that odd picture. Maybe Daring Detective Magazine designed it, and were the first to publish the "composite photo"? Could be. I remember more sources but haven't been able to find them unfortunately. There's a Met Museum link that claims "John Wolters" was the Artist who created this. I tried to link it but it redirects and doesn't work.
|
|
|
Post by Sue on Nov 23, 2023 16:36:03 GMT -5
lurp173: Yes, the picture is quite odd, and I'm sure most people just automatically believed it was an actual photograph of the electric chair scene!
Michael, I will check out a John Wolters search. Thank you.
52 people witnessed the execution, is that correct?
I remember reading a few detailed accounts of Hauptmann's execution. I can't recall who described what they saw on April 3, 1936, and then put it into words. As you say, security was tight and attendees of this event were searched. I wonder if journalists were limited in what they were allowed to report to the public? However,some writers had a lot to say.
I recently read that a graphic artist named Samuel Johnson Woolf was present in the execution room that day.
Woolf, in his autobiography entitled Here Am I, has a whole chapter called "Jersey Justice" devoted to his involvement in the Lindbergh case from the beginning. (pages 300-307)
He was at the Flemington trial and the Trenton death scene. He may also have been present in Hopewell soon after the kidnapping.
Woolf was an artist and journalist who would be credited with photographing two of the World Wars!
He had so many titles: war correspondent, painter, portraitist, magazine artist, illustrator, and he interviewed many of the famous personalities of his time.
Here Am I was published in 1941. I find these first-hand accounts so fascinating!
Woolf seems to have been at the Union Hotel with a cultured woman when Ed Reilly went to where they were sitting. He says that Reilly wore a "fur-lined coat" that made him look like "an old-fashioned Irish comedian." Reilly, quite the ladies' man, told the woman that she did not have to go through former Ambassador Jimmy Gerard to get a pass to the trial...he would take care of it all for her...
Hauptmann: "Before I saw [him] on the stand, I felt a certain sympathy for him."
"the carnival atmosphere surrounding the building...intensified my feeling for the prisoner."
The trial: "for the most part [BRH's] trial moved as undramatically as an adding machine."
"Two people occupied each chair...a small balcony was dangerously overloaded..."
As to Judge Trenchard: "half of whose commands could not be heard fifteen feet from where he sat."
Jafsie: "...proud as when he led a parade in the Bronx..."
Execution: "Once again we had to submit to frisking. Then we were admitted into a white-washed room..."
"Beyond the little door on our left a shuffling was heard, two clergymen entered, then, pushed and dragged by two keepers, came Hauptmann..."
I'll know a lot more when I get the book, so for now these are just some snippets.
Samuel Johnson Woolf Here Am I 1941
"...the Lord called Samuel: and he answered, Here am I." I Samuel 3:4
|
|
|
Post by Sue on Nov 24, 2023 12:06:03 GMT -5
Woolf was mainly known as S. J. Woolf. Here's the caption for the front page of the New York Daily News for April 4, 1936: BRUNO'S DEATH SKETCHED BY THE ARTIST WITH THE CAMERA EYE-- Scene at Trenton Penitentiary last night as the slayer of the Lindbergh baby, strapped in the electric chair, awaited the electric jolt that took his life. The artist, S.J. Woolf, attended the execution and made sketches in the death chamber. Another variation of the above NY Daily News caption reads: BRUNO'S DEATH SKETCHED BY ARTIST WITH CAMERA EYE.--Scene at Trenton Penitentiary as Lindbergh slayer received lethal shock. Artist S.J. Woolf made sketches in death chamber. Behind Bruno stands Robert Elliott, the executioner; man with hat (at left) is Warden Kimberling; beside him stands the Rev. D. G. Werner, Bruno's first spiritual guide. www.etsy.com/listing/1170079565/lindbergh-baby-kidnapping-bruno-electric
|
|
|
Post by Sue on Dec 10, 2023 15:56:02 GMT -5
Does anyone know for sure if film or photographs were taken of Hauptmann's execution? All witnesses who entered the death chamber were supposedly carefully searched for cameras, but did the State of New Jersey document the event with official pictures? A book author and newspaperman for the New York Daily News, John Chapman, claimed that a picture WAS taken by someone from the NY Daily News, but unfortunately? the photo did not capture an image of Hauptmann. "...special eyes were kept out for ankle cameras. Very few persons know, even today, that the News also got a picture of the Hauptmann execution -- but it did not show Hauptmann. The camera, whatever it was and wherever it was, had not been aimed quite right, and all the picture showed was the electric cable running from the ceiling of the death chamber to the chair. When I learned about the picture a few days later-- it was such a secret that few staffers knew it had been made -- I asked studio heads how it had been done. "We won't tell you," they said, "It's a good trick, and we'll save it for the next time." Tell it to Sweeney: The Informal History of the New York Daily News by John Chapman Page 101 1961 Here's a Wikipedia explanation for the phrase "Tell it to Sweeney." en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/tell_it_to_Sweeney
|
|
|
Post by Michael on Dec 11, 2023 21:38:53 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Sue on Dec 11, 2023 23:02:27 GMT -5
Thanks, Michael.
Do you think the State of NJ took pictures of Hauptmann's execution?
Is photographing the prisoner during the procedure part of electric chair executions, information officials are not obligated to share with the public?
|
|
|
Post by Michael on Dec 12, 2023 10:32:19 GMT -5
Thanks, Michael. Do you think the State of NJ took pictures of Hauptmann's execution? Is photographing the prisoner during the procedure part of electric chair executions, information officials are not obligated to share with the public? No, definitely nothing official. It’s always possible a guard was paid to turn their head to a certain person but that would have been a huge risk for them. But then again, they had one in the tower giving them the signal that it was over. Not on the same level, of course, but people are people and it can happen. Also, times were different back then. For example, women were not allowed to witness an execution.
|
|
|
Post by Sue on Dec 13, 2023 12:32:25 GMT -5
I guess you can't blame people for trying! Maybe after all the close scrutiny and warnings, they ought to be applauded for at least attempting to get a picture?!
|
|
Joe
Lt. Colonel
Posts: 2,635
|
Post by Joe on Dec 29, 2023 9:14:45 GMT -5
This excerpt is from James Davidson's excellent book, 'When The Circus Came To Town.'
In March of 1936 she (Dorothy Kilgallen) wrote a long article about the Hauptmann trial for "Inside Detective Magazine":
"I am writing this on the eve of Bruno Richard Hauptmann's doom, and by the time my story appears in print he may have died in the chair for the kidnapping of Baby Charles Lindbergh.
No criminal ever deserved more to die.
He was justly convicted and justly condemned.
I have talked to Hauptmann. I have interviewed him several times during the course of the trial for the crime of the century. I sat behind him the courtroom at Flemington every day for six weeks, watching him closely, listening to every word of testimony from the witness stand. And I am convinced the silent German carpenter is a killer without conscience, a man with cold blood and steel nerves and limitless daring."
Source: Inside Detective. March 10, 1936 "Guilty As Hell", page 4
|
|
|
Post by Sue on Jan 27, 2024 11:06:16 GMT -5
This 1936 Inside Detective article looks very interesting.
Dorothy Kilgallen was one of several people who said they interviewed Hauptmann.
Kilgallen, and her father James L. Kilgallen, wrote extensively about the Lindbergh case. They were heavily involved with the reporting.
I am surprised that Dorothy did not include the Lindbergh case in one of the chapters of her 1967 book, Murder One.
|
|
|
Post by Sue on Jan 27, 2024 12:15:23 GMT -5
The following passages are attributed to Henry Ladd Smith, from a 1936 publication:
"The Hauptmann execution picture is the nearest thing to the old 'composograph' that has been seen for a long time. Incidentally, it is an excellent example of this type of photography. Were it not for the fact that Hauptmann's head appears unshaven (whereas in reality it was shaved for the electrodes) the picture might be mistaken easily for the real thing. This picture appeared in the Milwaukee Sentinel on the morning of April 4, 1936, the day after the execution. It is a fake of the first class, although it was mentioned in the underlines that the picture was 'especially posed.'"
"The justification on the part of editors was that cameras were banned at the execution but that interested readers had a right to [know] how the climax of this all-absorbing case ended. The excuse seems a little flimsy. On the other hand, no great harm was done by the picture. It is not particularly distasteful and really is news-worthy. Because of the great interest in the case, perhaps we should not censure this picture too much. It does, however, represent the type of news picture that can be abused so easily. For that reason it is to be frowned upon."
Newspaper Photography Henry Ladd Smith 1936 University of Wisconsin-Madison
|
|