How to Abolish Murder.

In 1869 H. H. Bingham, agent of the Michigan State Prison, issued a pamphlet analyzing the effect of Michigan’s abolition of the death penalty some twenty-two years earlier.  In place of hanging, Michigan sentenced capital offenders to solitary imprisonment for life (though the longest anyone actually stayed in solitary confinement was five years). Bingham concluded that, though the number of criminal convictions in Michigan increased during that period “…there is no evidence in the increased convictions that there is an increase of crime beyond the ratio of increase in population.” In fact, the number of convicted murderers, as a percentage of total convictions, actually decreased.

About five years later the information in the pamphlet was summarized in a number of mid-western newspapers. Bingham’s conclusions were greeted with a good deal of skepticism as illustrated by this sarcastic editorial in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette:

HOW TO ABOLISH MURDER.

A correspondent writing from Michigan says the abolition of capital punishment in that State has diminished the murder rate. What an anomaly is human nature! Persons inclined to murder find that in Michigan they can not enjoy the privilege of being hanged for it; so they resolve they won’t play. Probably they go off to other States where hanging is allowed, to do their business. We presume that equally trustworthy statistics would show that murder has increased in the adjoining States since Michigan abolished Hanging. If this diminution of the terror of the penalty for murder has diminished murder in Michigan, it follows logically and morally that if she should abolish all penalties, murder would cease entirely in that State for want of encouragement. There are persons of equal intelligence of human nature who think that if the common people are permitted to see a public hanging, they will incontinently be seized with a propensity to go and murder somebody in order to play a star part in so attractive a spectacle.
 

---

Sources:

Collections of the Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan. Lansing: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Company, 1907.

"How to Abolish Murder." Cincinnati Daily Gazette 15 Oct. 1875.

51 Murder Mysteries in Two Years

The New York City newspaper, The World, printed this map in their July 18, 1897 edition, indicating the locations of 131 murders in the city during the previous 28 months. The accompanying story had some interesting statistics regarding New York’s murders. To an overwhelming degree, the killers who were captured received only minor sentences; only fifteen of the murderers were sentenced to death or to life in prison. And in fifty-one of the cases—more than a third of the total—the mystery was unsolved and likely to remain unsolved. The World assessed the situation this way:

Thus the murderer’s chances in New York, estimated from the experience of two years past, may be summarized about as follows:

Of capital punishment  ………………………………………… 1 in 18

Of life imprisonment    ………………………………………… 1 in 16

Of minor punishment   ………………………………………… 1 in 3

Of escape altogether …………………………………………… 1 in 3

Though the murder rate in New York City 1895 - 1897 seems high, according to Memoirs of a Murder Man by Arthur A. Carey—who was the head of New York’s Homicide Bureau during this period—of all the major American cities, only Los Angeles had a lower murder rate than New York. These were bloody times.


The World article lists all 131 of the murders and surprisingly, only one of them has already been covered at Murder by Gaslight—the murder of Domenico Cataldo by Maria Barbella. This is likely to change.


While there is little point in duplicating their entire list, a few selections from the unsolved mysteries may be interesting:

DARKEST OF THE MYSTERIES

• Henry Neumeister – Struck on head by an unknown person and killed at Columbus Avenue and One Hundred and First Street March 1895. A mystery.
• William H. Bower—Killed with a billiard cue at 1502 Lexington Avenue Feb.27, 1897. John Cotter accused of the killing, has never been arrested according to the entry in District-Attorney’s office.
• Michael Healy—Stabbed in the eye, Nov. 9, 1895, on Grove street with umbrella in hands of unknown person. Died from injuries. A mystery.
• Dennis Hurley—Killed, May 4, 1897, by brick thrown from roof of 210 East Forty-fourth street by unknown person.
• Prof. Max Eglau—Killed in the Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes. Lexington  Avenue and Sixty-Seventh Street. Feb. 10, 1896. Several of the pupils in the school were arrested on suspicion and discharged. The murder is still a profound mystery.
• Maggie Riley, alias “Diamond Flossie” Murphy—Killed at 228 West Twenty-fourth street, April 22, 1897. Strangled. Still a mystery.

---

Sources:

• Carey, Arthur A., and Howard McLellan. Memoirs of a murder man,. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1930.
• "Fifty-One ‘Murder Mysteries’ in Two Years." The World [New York] 18 July 1897: 28.