They Might Have Gone Free with Modern Procedure

Title

They Might Have Gone Free with Modern Procedure

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