CHICAGO,
Oct. 30 -- It could be the perfect Halloween treat -- or trick -- for that
person who already has everything else: a gallows.
About to
be auctioned is the gallows that was built to hang anarchist labor organizers
convicted in the Haymarket Affair in the late 19th century. It continued to be
used for decades to hang some of Chicago's most infamous criminals.
Since 1977
the gallows has stood in a Wild West theme park run by two history-buff
brothers in small-town Union, Ill. Before that it had languished, disassembled,
in the basement of Cook County Jail in Chicago.
The
gallows would have been destroyed after Cook County discontinued hanging in
1927 if it were not for a fugitive named "Terrible Tommy" O'Connor,
who escaped from death row in 1921, four days before his scheduled execution
for killing a Chicago policeman. The gallows was preserved so O'Connor's
sentence, which specified that he be hanged, could be carried out should he
ever resurface. Theories held that O'Connor returned to his native Ireland to
fight the British, fled to Mexico or became a Trappist monk. His tale is the
basis of the films "The Front Page," "His Girl Friday" and
"Switching Channels."
There were
at least 40 hangings on the gallows, done in the hallway between cellblocks at
the jail so other prisoners could watch. Famous executions included those of
Patrick Prendergast, a journalist hanged in 1894 for assassinating Chicago
Mayor Carter Harrison, and Johann Otto Hoch, a serial killer who used aliases
to marry and then murder at least 50 women. He was hanged in 1906.
"It
must have been pretty solemn, standing there in a dingy cellblock with the
other prisoners watching," said Mike Donley, 54, proprietor of Donley's
Wild West Town, where the gallows sits next to a faux frontier village.
"It's pretty spooky to imagine."
The
gallows was replaced by the electric chair in 1927. In 1977 a judge ordered the
gallows sold. Mike Donley and brother Randy Donley placed the sole bid after
seeing a newspaper ad for the gallows auction. They trucked the apparatus to
the small museum they had started to showcase their father's collection of
antique phonographs. In 1986 the museum made international headlines when it
exhibited what may have been Adolf Hitler's photo album, purchased from a World
War II veteran.
Mike
Donley said he has had inquiries from both private collectors and museums about
the gallows.
Libby
Mahoney, chief curator of the Chicago History Museum, said the museum is
interested in adding the structure to a permanent exhibit on the Haymarket
Affair, which takes its name from a May 4, 1886, labor rally in Haymarket
Square at which a bomb was thrown, resulting in the deaths of eight police
officers. The eight men accused of the bombing were widely considered to have
been convicted for their oppositional political views. Four were hanged.
"This
was a momentous event in not just Chicago history but national labor
history," Mahoney said. "It's still a contested issue."
James
Acker, professor and co-founder of the National Death Penalty Archive at the
State University of New York at Albany, said most Americans do not know that
hanging is still legal in Washington state and New Hampshire, as an alternative
to lethal injection, and was only recently outlawed in Delaware. It is still a
major form of execution in other parts of the world, including the Middle East
and Japan.
"Most
people associate it with the Wild West," he said. "It resonates with
the 19th century and cowboys, and there's also the very negative association
with extrajudicial lynchings in the South."
Acker said
he hopes whoever ends up buying the gallows displays it appropriately.
"This
could be a legitimate mechanism for preserving a bit of this country's history
with the death penalty, so future generations will be able to look back on
these practices and make whatever judgments they will," he said. "But
there's also the risk something like this could be cheapened, vulgarized or
marketed for whatever entertainment value it might have."
Jane T.
Bohman, executive director of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death
Penalty, said she hopes the gallows auction gets people thinking about the
death penalty in general.
"It's
interesting that this comes at the same time there is considerable controversy
over lethal injection," she said. "The gallows are kind of a jolt
from the past, when executions were public. Now we have this idea that they're
supposed to be painless, which is also kind of contradictory since they're
supposed to have a deterrent effect."
Bidding
for the gallows, which begins on Nov. 20 and closes Dec. 6, will start at
$5,000. Brian Marren, vice president of acquisitions for Mastro Auctions, said
other historic items started at that price have gone for more than $100,000.
Marren
said the fact that only the Donleys and the county government owned the gallows
increases its value. "It's a one-of-a-kind item," he said.