One Summer: America, 1927

and more subdued. The familiar steps were repeated. The witnesses gathered anew. Elliott laid out his equipment. The clock was watched as the minutes slowly ticked by. At last the time came. Madeiros was selected to go first and came into the execution chamber in a semi-stupor – a consequence, bizarrely, of overeating. Charlestown solemnly observed the tradition of giving a condemned prisoner whatever he wanted for his last meal, and Madeiros had evidently gone to town. Elliott worked with brisk efficiency. Madeiros was strapped into the electric chair at 12:02 and declared dead seven minutes later.
    Sacco was next. He refused last rites and walked the seventeen steps from his cell to the execution chamber unaided, but was noticeably pale. As he was being strapped into the chair, he cried out in Italian, ‘Long live anarchy!’ then added in English, ‘Farewell, my wife and child, and all my friends!’ (In fact, Sacco had two children; the error was attributed to nerves.) An unfortunate delay arose at this point because the head covering he was to wear could not be found. As Elliott and other officials searched for it, Sacco continued jabbering nervous farewells to friends and relatives. The headgear was found wedged under Madeiros’s body on a stretcher in a corridor and was hastily retrieved and plonked on Sacco’s head.
    ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ Sacco called in a slightly startled tone at this. Finally, and quietly, he uttered the words ‘Farewell, mother,’ and the switch was thrown. He was pronounced dead at 12:19:02.
    Vanzetti, the final victim, also refused last rites. He had four more steps to traverse and proceeded with calmness and dignity. He shook hands with his guards, then turned to the warden, William Hendry, and shook his hand, too. ‘I want to thank you for everything you have done for me, Warden,’ Vanzetti said. Hendry was too overcome to reply. Then Vanzetti turned to the witnesses and in a clear voice and in good English said: ‘I wish to tell you that I am innocent, and that I never committed any crime, but sometimessome sin. I thank you for everything you have done for me. I am innocent of all crime, not only of this, but all. I am an innocent man.’ As an afterthought he added, ‘I wish to forgive some people for what they are now doing to me.’ He took the chair and sat calmly and silently as he was strapped in and his head was covered. A moment later the switch was thrown. ‘There was complete silence in the room, except for the crackling, sputtering sound of the current,’ Elliott wrote in his 1940 memoir, Agent of Death . Vanzetti was declared dead at 12:26:55, less than eight minutes after Sacco.
     
    In America, reaction to the executions was surprisingly muted. In New York, crowds received the news in ‘mournful silence’, according to the Times . In Boston, all was eerily subdued. People waited for official confirmation, then quietly dispersed into the night. To most people, further protests seemed pointless. Troops and police were stood down. By the next day, city life had returned to normal.
    Elsewhere it was a different story. Protests broke out across the world – in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Sydney, Berlin, Hamburg, Geneva, Leipzig and Copenhagen. Many demonstrations turned violent. Nine people were killed in Germany. In London, protesters and police clashed in Hyde Park. Forty people were injured, some requiring hospitalization. In Havana, the US embassy was bombed. In Geneva, rioters attacked the Palace of the League of Nations even though the United States was not a member, and broke windows in shops and hotels. In the confusion, shots were fired and one man was killed. In Berlin, New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, on a goodwill tour of Europe, was threatened with physical violence by the city’s communists. Nowhere for several days was it safe to be an American.
    The French were particularly impassioned. Parisians, who until recently had been turning out in joyous droves to greet Lindbergh, Byrd, Chamberlin and Levine, now poured through the streets of the city looking for Americans to beat up. Where Americans were scarce, the mobs turned on prosperous-looking natives. Patrons ofmany pavement cafés were assaulted and in some cases savagely beaten just for looking intolerably bourgeois. Several cafés were wrecked in pitched battles between customers and rioters. Elsewhere in the city, the roaming mobs turned on anything with an American theme – cinemas