They Might Have Gone Free with Modern Procedure

- Title
- They Might Have Gone Free with Modern Procedure
- Subject
- Charles Julius Guiteau, John Wilkes Booth, heredity
- Description
- 1924 illustration by Albert Reid depicting the spirits of presidential assassins John Wilkes Booth and Charles Julius Guiteau. The tagline "they might have gone free with modern procedure" is a reference to the then-popular practice of determining mental illness via family history, informed by eugenic conceptions of heredity and degeneration. According to this logic, these two assassins would not have been executed in "modern times" because psychiatrists would have identified them as "insane" and therefore incapable of understanding the nature of their actions, becoming institutionalized in asylums instead of executed by the state.
- Creator
- Albert T. Reid
- Source
- Collection: Charles Guiteau Papers
Folder: Oversize (Prints & Photographs Collection)
File: "They Might Have Gone Free with Modern Procedure"
Find in our collection under the call number FIC2012.003.006. - Date
- 1924
- Rights
- Bell Syndicate
- Format
- Illustration, ink on paper
- Language
- English
- Type
- Caricature illustration
- Original Format
- Illustration, ink on paper
- Text
- THE SHADES. - "What a pity they didn't have alienists and sob lawyers in our day"
THEY MIGHT HAVE GONE FREE WITH MODERN PROCEDURE
Citation
Albert T. Reid, “They Might Have Gone Free with Modern Procedure,” Oskar Diethelm Library, Weill Cornell Medical College, accessed February 9, 2025, https://oskardiethelm.omeka.net/items/show/360.