Publication information
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Source: Boston Evening Transcript
Source type: newspaper
Document type: article
Document title: “Mobbing and Effigies”
Author(s): anonymous
City of publication: Boston, Massachusetts
Date of publication: 20 September 1901
Volume number: none
Issue number: none
Pagination: 7

 
Citation
“Mobbing and Effigies.” Boston Evening Transcript 20 Sept. 1901: p. 7.
 
Transcription
full text
 
Keywords
Leon Czolgosz (hanged, burned, etc., in effigy); McKinley assassination (public response: Brookline, MA); McKinley assassination (public response: Boston, MA); lawlessness (mob rule: Boston, MA); anarchism (public response); lawlessness (mob rule: Cambridge, MA); Emma Goldman (hanged, burned, etc., in effigy); Henry Greenfeld.
 
Named persons
Leon Czolgosz; Emma Goldman; Henry Greenfeld.
 
Notes
The identity of Henry Greenfeld (below) cannot be verified.
 
Document

 

Mobbing and Effigies

 

Local Disturbances in Several Places, Though the Police Had to
Interfere Only Once

     As darkness gave way to dawn Thursday morning those who were abroad on the streets of Brookline might have seen a weird-looking object hanging high in air [sic] near the corner of Harvard street and Aspinwall avenue. It was a dummy representation of Czolgosz, the assassin, dangling from a telegraph pole. The figure bore the inscription, “Czolgosz—Down with Anarchy,” and no attempt was made to remove it until a patrolman came along and took it to police headquarters.
     In South Boston two effigies of the assassin were put out. About 9.30 last night a crowd of men and boys set one up in East Ninth street and touched a torch to it, and the fire department was unnecessarily called out to extinguish the flames. Another effigy was attached to the feed wires of the Boston Elevated Road on Dorchester avenue and before it was removed it was the subject of much abusive language and a target for more material things.
     A barber shop which was opened for business on Cambridge street, this city, caused more or less excitement. The Italian proprietor was waited upon by a committee of barbers who asked him to close his place at 10.30, as the others were doing, and he was about to consent when someone outside raised the cry that the man was an Anarchist and should be lynched. Instantly there was a howling mob who might have done violence to the barber. A patrolman came along at this time and dispersed the crowd.
     At the Brookline street transfer station in Cambridge a fruit pedler [sic] attempted to do business during the day. About two o’clock a crowd gathered and threatened to wreck the place, so the owner closed his doors for the remainder of the day.
     Near the corner of Salem and Cross streets, North End, two effigies of Emma Goldman and Czolgosz dangled in the air for two hours Thursday night. A big crowd gathered and jeered and threw stones, and finally, someone cutting the rope by which they were suspended, the small boys made short work of the sawdust stuffed figures.
     A crowd on Chelsea street, Charlestown, last night thought they had an Anarchist and for a time the life of Henry Greenfeld, thirty-eight years old, was made miserable. An ambulance was called and the man was taken to the police station, where it was found that he had several cuts about the head and his body was badly bruised.
     Czolgosz, in the form of a scarecrow-like effigy, was roughly handled by a crowd of boys at the corner of Congress avenue and Park streets, Chelsea, last night. The boys expressed the intention of hanging the effigy to a telegraph pole, but the police interfered and took it from them.

 

 


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