Word: chapman
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...fortnight ago, when, with the customary exception of the Christian Science Monitor and a few others, every newspaper of any dimensions cast of the Mississippi set aside one or more columns a day on Page 1 for glowing accounts of the trial, at Hartford, Conn., of one Gerald Chapman for the murder of a New Britain, Conn., patrolman...
This story was particularized, emphasized, dramatized, sentimentalized, moralized and painstakingly advertised for eight days by newspapers good, bad and indifferent. Chapman's picture appeared time and again: "Picking his jury. . . . Answering prosecutor. . . . Talking with counsel. . . . Eating lunch." And the "color" paragraphists described him: "Master criminal mind. . . . Intellec- tual desperado. . . . Misguided genius. . . . Stoic sinner. . . . Finely modeled head of a thinker.* . . . Artistic hands...
...When Chapman was finally sentenced to hang, the editorial pages wound up the affair with: "Served him right," "Thus always with malefactors," "Now will you be good," "A splendid example of American justice," and similar sentiments reminiscent of the great days of Harry K. Thaw, Nicky Arnstein and "Lefty Louie...
...newspapers been asked to state journalistic precepts by which they were actuated in making the Chapman case of first-page impor- tance, the most honest replies they could have given would have been in effect...
When Gerald Chapman was sentenced last Saturday for the murder of Patrolman Skelly, "strong men cursed and women wept" over his fate, according to all news reports. To the citizens of Hartford where he was tried for his New Britain offense. Chapman was a vivid figure, a notorious bandit, a popular hero whose name was one to conjure with. Eighteen years of crime, the gigantic New York mail robbery, and the cold-blooded shooting of Officer Skelly only added to the glory of his name. The papers played up to him, the people applauded him. When he is hanged next...