The Montgomery Advertiser
- BROADWAY SHARES HONORS WITH LANE IN HALL-MILLS TRIAL
- TAX REFUND PLANS PROVIDE FOR CUTS IN 1927 PAYMENTS
- STATE EXPECTED TO CLOSE CASE IN TRIAL OF FORMER FLAT TOP WARDEN
The Advertiser's front page on November 9, 1926, followed two criminal trials and a tax debate in Washington. From Somerville, N.J., it reported that testimony in the Hall-Mills murder trial of Frances Hall and her brothers had moved from De Russey's Lane to Broadway: a New York detective insisted, against vestryman Ralph Gorsline's earlier testimony, that Gorsline had told him he saw Henry Stevens in the lane, and another witness had seen the slain rector and choir singer together on Broadway in 1921. From Washington it reported that President Coolidge and Secretary Mellon had agreed on a credit of about 12 1/2 per cent on income taxes due in 1927, after Mellon argued that an immediate refund would be too costly to administer, while congressional leaders voiced doubts. In Alabama, convict Tom Wilson testified against former Flat Top warden Davis, describing an overheard telephone order to beat Knox and Knox begging for his life near the laundry vat where the state says he died.
Translation
BROADWAY SHARES HONORS WITH LANE IN HALL-MILLS TRIAL
From De Russey's Lane to Broadway, testimony moved today in the trial of Mrs. Frances Hall and her brothers, Henry and Willie Stevens, charged with murder. Another person who was in what seems to have been New Brunswick's most popular thoroughfare on the night of September 14, 1922, told of the persons and things he saw there. Two witnesses gained the information they reported in court on Broadway. A New York detective insisted, over the previous testimony of Ralph V. M. Gorsline, that the New Brunswick vestryman did tell him that he saw Henry Stevens in the lane, where the Rev. Edward W. Hall and Mrs. Eleanor R. Mills were slain. The other introduction of the Broadway locale was by a witness who saw the slain rector and choir singer together on Broadway in the roaring forties in 1921.
TAX REFUND PLANS PROVIDE FOR CUTS IN 1927 PAYMENTS
President Coolidge and Secretary Mellon ironed out the tax refund proposal of the executive today and agreed that it should be accomplished through a credit to the taxpayer of about 12 1/2 per cent on income taxes to be paid next year on this year's income. While the president was busy adjusting his tax saving plan with his secretary of the treasury, congressional leaders were expressing varying views which indicated clearly the plan did not meet with full approval at the capitol. Mr. Mellon accepted the proposal to take his surplus away from debt retirement but he convinced the president that the idea for an immediate refund of income taxes collected this year would be too costly from an administrative standpoint.
STATE EXPECTED TO CLOSE CASE IN TRIAL OF FORMER FLAT TOP WARDEN
Tom Wilson, Flat Top convict, Monday afternoon confirmed many important points in the state's contentions that Knox died while being ducked at Davis' orders. Davis told Cecil Houston, a "straw boss" in the mines, to send Knox from the mines to him, Wilson said. He heard Davis tell Houston to beat his brains out and send him to the warden. He said, when Houston told the warden he had already beaten Knox, he said send him on up, Wilson said. The witness said he heard that in a telephone conversation which he listened in on. He said he picked up the telephone from curiosity and chanced to hear this. Houston and Freeman beat Knox the day of his death, he said. He saw Knox led around the hospital to the laundry vat, where the state contends he met his death, and heard Knox begging for his life.
Context
Why a 1922 double murder was on trial in Somerville in 1926
The testimony in this dispatch came from a trial that took four years to arrive. New Jersey authorities were unable for four years to produce an indictment for the killings of the Rev. Edward W. Hall and Eleanor Mills on September 14, 1922. The case was revived in 1926 when the New York Daily Mirror, a new Hearst paper fighting a circulation war with the Daily News, led the press in demanding a reopening, and Governor A. Harry Moore ordered a second investigation and a trial. The trial opened on November 3, 1926, in the Somerset County Courthouse at Somerville, with Charles W. Parker and Frank Cleary presiding, so the Advertiser's report describes testimony given less than a week after the trial opened. The "lane" of the headline is De Russey's Lane, near the scene of the killings: the prosecution's key witness, Jane Gibson, a pig farmer on whose property the bodies were discovered, lived just off it. That is why the dispute the paper reports mattered. Whether vestryman Ralph Gorsline had told a detective he saw Henry Stevens in the lane went to the state's central task of placing the defendants at the scene that night.
How the defense answered the state and won acquittals
The prosecution contended that Henry Stevens, a retired exhibition marksman, fired the shots, which is why testimony placing him in the lane drew the attention it did in this report. The defense answered with witnesses who said Henry spent the night of the murders bluefishing on the Jersey shore. Defense attorney Clarence Case worked to destroy the credibility of Jane Gibson, the "pig woman," and three fingerprint experts could find no resemblance between the smudge on Hall's calling card and Willie Stevens's prints. After hearing 87 witnesses for the state and 70 for the defense, the jury deliberated for five hours, and all three defendants were acquitted on December 3, 1926. The Somerset County prosecutor's books still list the Hall-Mills case as unsolved, so the competing accounts in this dispatch, such as the detective's against Gorsline's, never led to a conviction.
What Coolidge and Mellon were doing with the 1926 Treasury surplus
The tax plan in this story was a way of disposing of a Treasury surplus that Time put at $300,000,000 in a report dated November 22, 1926. Coolidge's first suggestion had been a 10 or 12 per cent refund on income and corporation taxes payable in 1926; Time calculated that 90 per cent of income taxpayers would have received refunds of only 11 cents to $1.69. The Advertiser reports Mellon persuading the President that an immediate refund would be too costly to administer, and Time presents the resulting proposal as Mellon's own: crediting the surplus to income taxes payable in 1927. Mellon framed it as a balance between debt retirement and tax relief, saying he did not believe in paying the public debt "to the undue burdening of productive industry." The congressional doubts the paper mentions had a partisan side, since the Democratic plan was to use the surplus for a general downward revision of tax schedules. According to Time, the White House spokesman then appealed for non-partisan consideration of tax relief and said he was inclined to favor the Mellon plan.
Flat Top as a prison mine in Alabama's convict-lease system
The warden on trial ran a prison attached to a coal mine. Between 1875 and 1928, the state and counties of Alabama profited from a form of prison labor known as the convict-lease system. More than 95 percent of county prisoners and 90 percent of state prisoners were African American, and whipping was the accepted norm for punishment. The Flat Top Mine Prison stood roughly 20 miles northwest of Birmingham, and Sloss-Sheffield used convicts at its Flat Top mines until Alabama outlawed the practice in 1928. This is the setting of Tom Wilson's testimony as the paper reports it: a "straw boss" in the mines, beatings by men working under the warden, and orders passed by telephone between the mine and the warden.
How James Knox's death bore on the end of convict leasing
Historians link Knox's death to the end of the system. The City of Birmingham's historical account names James Knox as a convict from Mobile who died at Flat Top, and says many historians argue that his death helped quicken the end of convict leasing in Alabama. According to that account, the autopsy showed he died of heart failure, with poison injected after death, and investigators concluded that his fatal injuries came from being whipped with a steel wire and immersed in hot water. The Encyclopedia of Alabama records that in 1924 the death of a prisoner tortured by being lowered into a vat of boiling water prompted an investigation. Wilson's testimony about the laundry vat is part of the state's version of those events as presented in court. Alabama abolished the convict-lease system on June 30, 1928, the last state in the nation to do so, some five years after Florida.
Original
BROADWAY SHARES HONORS WITH LANE IN HALL-MILLS TRIAL
From De Russey's Lane to Broadway, testimony moved today in the trial of Mrs. Frances Hall and her brothers, Henry and Willie Stevens, charged with murder. Another person who was in what seems to have been New Brunswick's most popular thoroughfare on the night of September 14, 1922, told of the persons and things he saw there. Two witnesses gained the information they reported in court on Broadway. A new York detective insisted, over the previous testimony of Ralph V. M. Gorsline, that the new Brunswick vestryman did tell him that he saw Henry Stevens in the lane, where the Rev. Edward W. Hall and Mrs. Eleanor R. Mills were slain. The other introduction of the Broadway locale was by a witness who saw the slain rector and choir singer together on Broadway in the roaring forties in 1921.
TAX REFUND PLANS PROVIDE FOR CUTS IN 1927 PAYMENTS
President Coolidge and Secretary Mellon ironed out the tax refund proposal of the executive today and agreed that it should be accomplished through a credit to the taxpayer of about 12 1-2 per cent on income taxes to be paid next year on this year's income. While the president was busy adjusting his tax saving plan with his secretary of the treasury, congressional leaders were expressing varying views which indicated clearly the plan did not meet with full approval at the capitol. Mr. Mellon accepted the proposal to take his surplus away from debt retirement but he convinced the president that the idea for an immediate refund of income taxes collected this year would be too costly from an administrative standpoint.
STATE EXPECTED TO CLOSE CASE IN TRIAL OF FORMER FLAT TOP WARDEN
Tom Wilson, Flat Top convict, Monday afternoon confirmed many important points in the state's contentions that Knox died while being ducked at Davis ' orders. Davis told Cecil Houston, a " straw boss " in the mines, to send Knox from the mines to him, Wilson said. He heard Davis tell Houston to beat his brains out and send him to the warden. He said, when Houston told the warden he had already beaten Knox, he said send him on up, Wilson said. The witness said he heard that in a telephone conversation which he listened in on. He said he picked up the telephone from curiosity and chanced to hear this. Houston and Freeman beat Knox the day of his death, he said. He saw Knox led around the hospital to the laundry vat, where the state contends he met his death, and heard Knox begging for his life.
Source: Holding institution