Friday, 5 November 1926 · Washington, D.C. (United States) · English

Evening Star

Mrs. Hall Almost in Tears as Mills Testifies at Trial
Death or Prison for All Who Dare Oppose Mussolini
Sesqui Enforces Ban

The Evening Star of November 5, 1926 carried Associated Press reports from three very different places. From Somerville, New Jersey, it followed the Hall-Mills murder trial. Jane Gibson, the eyewitness the State was counting on, was too ill to leave the Somerville Hospital. James Mills, husband of the murdered choir singer, calmly described the last time he saw his wife, and the usually composed Mrs. Hall seemed briefly close to tears. From Rome, the paper reported that Mussolini's cabinet had made plots against the premier, the royal family or the state punishable by death, and had set prison terms of five to more than 30 years for harming Italy by deed or propaganda. A short item from Philadelphia said the Sesquicentennial Exposition would close its sales buildings on Sundays to enforce a ruling by the state Supreme Court.

Translation

MRS. HALL ALMOST IN TEARS AS MILLS TESTIFIES AT TRIAL

SOMERVILLE, N. J., November 5. - Mrs. Jane Gibson was too sick to come to court today, but the Hall-Mills case went ahead without her. Mrs. Gibson, expected to testify as an eyewitness of the slaying of the minister and choir singer four years ago, was reported somewhat improved over her condition of last night, but there was no intimation from the Somerville Hospital when she will be able to testify, if at all. Mrs. Gibson has been unofficially designated as the State's star witness. James Mills, husband of the slain woman, Mrs. Eleanor R. Mills, testified just before the luncheon recess. He was calm and told his story of his last sight of his wife in a dispassionate voice. In contrast to the lack of emotion displayed by Mills was the first apparent slight penetration of Mrs. Hall's composure. As the church sexton told of the visits of Mrs. Hall to his house, with the news that her husband had not returned and to learn that his wife also had failed to come home, the rector's widow seemed on the verge of tears. She at once recovered her self-possession.

DEATH OR PRISON FOR ALL WHO DARE OPPOSE MUSSOLINI

ROME, November 5. - Sweeping measures to protect the Fascist regime from the activities of its enemies were approved today by the cabinet, sitting under the presidency of Premier Mussolini. The ministers adopted a provision making plots against the life, liberty and integrity of the premier and members of the royal family and plots against the government and state punishable by death. They also approved penalizing by imprisonment, varying from five to more than 30 years, any effort by an Italian or foreigner to injure Italy in fact or by propaganda.

SESQUI ENFORCES BAN.

PHILADELPHIA, November 5 (AP). - All buildings at the Sesquicentennial Exposition in which merchandise is sold will be closed on Sundays, the directors announced today. The action was taken to assure the strict enforcement of the State Supreme Court's ruling against Sunday

Context

Why the 1922 Hall-Mills killings came to trial in 1926

The Evening Star describes the Somerville proceedings as a trial over a slaying committed "four years ago," and the delay had a specific cause. After the 1922 murders, a grand jury was convened in November that year, but after five days of hearings it returned no indictment. The case came back in the summer of 1926, when the tabloid New York Daily Mirror announced new evidence across the front page of its July 16, 1926 edition. The paper's demands for action pushed the governor of New Jersey into reopening the case, and Governor A. Harry Moore ordered a second investigation and a trial in 1926. The trial opened on November 3, 1926, at the Somerset County Courthouse in Somerville. This dispatch of November 5 therefore describes only the third day in court, when the State was still calling witnesses such as the victim's husband.

Jane Gibson, the 'Pig Woman' the State was waiting for

The article calls Jane Gibson the State's unofficial "star witness," and later accounts agree that she was the prosecution's key witness. She was a pig farmer on whose property the bodies had been found, and she said she had seen the killings. On November 5 she was in the Somerville Hospital, and the AP could not say whether she would testify at all. In the end she did. Dying of cancer, she was carried into the courtroom on a stretcher, with a doctor and two nurses in attendance, and testified from a hospital bed rolled into the court room. Her story had changed depending on whether she told it to the police, to newspapers or at the trial. The defense portrayed her as uneducated and "crazy" and tried to ruin her credibility. On December 3, 1926, all three defendants were acquitted.

The sexton husband and the 'Iron Widow'

James Mills was more than a bereaved husband. He was acting sexton at St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in New Brunswick and also worked full-time as a school janitor. The murdered minister, Edward Wheeler Hall, served the same church. That is why the AP calls Mills "the church sexton" and describes Mrs. Hall coming to his house after the two did not return. The paper's close attention to Mrs. Hall's composure matches the image the press had built around her. She was nicknamed "The Iron Widow" because of her stoic demeanor, so reporters treated even a moment when she nearly wept as news.

The assassination attempts behind Rome's death-penalty decree

The cabinet decision reported from Rome came after a series of attempts on Mussolini's life. On November 4, 1925, former Socialist deputy Tito Zaniboni was arrested for attempting to assassinate him, and historians believe that this plot was engineered by Mussolini's own administration as a pretext to consolidate power. Laws enacted in late 1925 already allowed the suppression of any opposition political organization. In 1926 the attempts multiplied. Violet Gibson fired a pistol at Mussolini on April 7 and grazed his nose, and the anarchist marble worker Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at his limousine at Porta Pia in Rome on September 11. On October 31 someone fired a shot at Mussolini as he rode through Bologna in an open car, and a 15-year-old boy, Anteo Zamboni, was lynched. That Bologna attempt, five days before this dispatch, led to the laws creating Mussolini's secret police.

The Special Tribunal created under the 'most Fascist' laws

The punishments approved in Rome needed a court to apply them, and the regime created one. The Tribunale speciale per la difesa dello Stato, the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State, was a special department of the Fascist government used to judge crimes against the regime. It was implemented through Mussolini's leggi fascistissime, the laws that consolidated the totalitarian regime. The tribunal was established in 1926 and abolished in 1943. The AP dispatch reports the penalties the cabinet adopted but does not say which court would impose them.

The Sesquicentennial Exposition's final weeks

The "Sesqui" of the headline was the Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition, the Philadelphia world's fair held to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It opened on May 31, 1926, and ran through November, so the Sunday closing announced on November 5 affected only its last weeks. The fair was already in serious financial trouble. Variety had called it "America's Greatest Flop," with a loss of $20 million by August 1926, and in 1927 the exposition, unable to cover its debts, was placed into receivership. According to the AP item, the directors closed the sales buildings on Sundays to enforce the state Supreme Court's ruling, even though the fair was already losing money.

Original

MRS. HALL ALMOST IN TEARS AS MILLS TESTIFIES AT TRIAL

SOMERVILLE, N. J., November 5. - Mrs. Jane Gibson was too sick to come to court today, but the HallMills case went ahead without her. Mrs. Gibson, expected to testify as an eyewitness of the slaying of the minister and choir singer four years ago, was reported somewhat improved over her condition of last night, but there was no intimation from the Somerville Hospital when she will be able to testify, if at all. Mrs. Gibson has been unofficially designated as the State's star witness. James Mills, husband of the slain woman, Mrs. Eleanor R. Mills, testified just before the luncheon recess. He was calm and told his story of his last sight of his wife in a dispassionate voice. In contrast to the lack of emotion displayed by Mills was the first apparent slight penetration of Mrs. Hall's composure. As the church sexton told of the visits of Mrs. Hall to his house, with the news that her husband had not returned and to learn that his wife also had failed to come home, the rector's widow seemed on the verge of tears. She at once recovered her self-possession.

DEATH OR PRISON FOR ALL WHO DARE OPPOSE MUSSOLINI

SESQUI ENFORCES BAN.

Source: Holding institution