[Scrapbook of materials relating to the murder of Jewish peddler Jakey Marks.]

Tunkhannock, Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, ca. 1892. Scrapbook (24 x 15.5 cm) utilizing the pages of a 19th century bank directory[?], later black hack-job duct tape spine with original gilt-stamped brown leather covers. 216 pp. mainly of newspaper clippings, 5 mounted letters and 1 pencil note, 8 pp.; 2 mounted tickets.

A scrapbook of materials relating to the 1892 murder of the Pennsylvania peddler Jakey Marks by two other Jewish peddlers. Included are four letters by the Rabbi who visited the murderers, addressed to the defendants’ attorney; one letter and a note by defendant Harris Blank to his attorney; newspaper clippings relating to the murder, trial, and execution of the men; and their attorney’s ticket to the double hanging. Also included are newspaper clippings relating to other local crimes, featuring another ticket to a hanging. The scrapbook was apparently compiled by the defendants’ attorney. 72 pp. of clippings (from The Democrat, The Telegram, etc.) relate to the Marks murder.

In 1892, two Jewish peddlers, Harris Blank and Isaac Rosenweig, murdered fellow peddler Jakey Marks, while the three traveled together in rural Pennsylvania. Four letters included here were written by Rabbi Adolph Radin of New York to James W. Piatt, the lawyer for the defendants, and concern Radin’s upcoming visit with Blank and Rosenweig. A Visiting Chaplain of the New York Board of Jewish Ministers, Radin was a noted reform Jewish rabbi and a writer on topics such as prison work and life, and contributed articles to the Jewish Gazette of New York. Piatt and Radin’s correspondence begins here with a letter sent by Radin on 13 April 1893, asking Piatt how he could be of service to his clients and whether the laws of Pennsylvania would permit him to see the men. He also asks Piatt whether he has submitted an application to the Governor of Pennsylvania “to commute his or their sentence in imprisonment for life? Is there any hope for them?”

In a letter dated 13 May 1893 Radin tells Piatt he will introduce himself to him on Tuesday morning, which appears to be the first time Radin met with the two murderers—only 5 days before their execution on the 18th. In this letter, Radin writes: “Allow me to thank you in the name of humanity for the generosity and kindness you have manifested in the defense of your unfortunate clients. I know that they were very poor, as you pleaded. It is, therefore, not more than right that I shall offer them my consolations in the last days of their young life.”

In another letter included here, dated 11 May 1893, Harris Blank addresses Piatt from jail. While signed by Blank, a note on the page indicates the letter is in Rosenweig’s hand. It reads in full:

Please inform me if you answered to the Rabby on his letters of the 13th + 5th inst. + what was the reason that you have not answered at once to the Rabby on his letter of the 13th. You didn’t tell me about the letters neither (?) Please, if possible call to see me sometime to-day. Respectively, H Blank.

A note from Blank to Piatt, written on a small scrap of paper, reads in full: “Dear sir, if you have got time to come up I would like to see you if you please. Harris, Blank.”

Included here is a clipping from the New York Times featuring an interview with Radin that touches on his interactions with the murderers:

[Blank and Rosenweig] asked for me and I went to them, but I refused to go alone. I have good reasons for such a refusal. These two had a dread of the ignominious death, to which they were doomed, and tried in every possible way to get the means of suicide. They asked me to provide them with poison. They begged hard that I give it to them. I knew the desperation of their feelings, and I was afraid that, if I visited them alone, they might kill themselves either then or afterward.

Also included here is Piatt’s ticket to the hanging, which is signed by Wyoming County Sheriff, C. S. Knapp. Opposed to capital punishment, the Rabbi was not in attendance for the execution. One clipping, entitled “Sheriff’s Attractions,” notes the abundance of applications to the double hanging, which “outshines in attractiveness to the general vulgar mind in a greater force any attraction that P. T. Barnum ever exhibited beneath a canvas.” It appears at least 450 individuals were admitted to the hanging. The article reports that “those of our citizens who were privileged and went to see Wall [another murderer] hung will not have the cheek to ask again and embarrass the sheriff who may have to tell them that the rest of the county must have a chance.” A handful of newspaper clippings make the dubious claim that Blank and Rosenweig’s execution was just the second instance of capital punishment in Wyoming County, in addition to supposedly being the first ever execution of a Jewish American.

The newspaper clippings concerning the Marks murder are preceded by 22 pp. of clippings (from Scranton Times, The New Age, The Daily Times, etc.) relating to the trial and execution of one Charles Wall, who murdered his wife. Wall apparently danced a jig in his cell before being taken to the gallows and remarked to the sheriff, “I could hang forty men and not worry about it.” One article concerning Wall’s execution is colorfully titled, “Wall Danced Before He Was Jerked Into Eternity.” Included here is a ticket to Wall’s hanging, issued by Sheriff Knapp. The rest of the scrapbook comprises 122 pp. of newspaper clippings and papers relating to local crime, events, law, and so on.

A notable figure among American rabbis in working with incarcerated Jews, Adolph Moses Radin (1848–1909), was a social worker who appears to have been born in either Poland or Lithuania. Beginning his rabbinical career in Prussia and Poland, he emigrated to America in 1886 and became a rabbi in Elmira, New York. After being appointed visiting Jewish chaplain of the State Reformatory in Elmira, he took a position as rabbi of the Congregation Gates of Hope in New York City. In 1890, Radin was assigned chaplain of all New York and Brooklyn penal institutions—a position he held until his death. A fervent philanthropic fundraiser and Zionist, he apparently regarded his finest accomplishment to be the founding of the Russian American Hebrew Association. Four years prior to his death, Radin ascended to the pulpit of the People’s Synagogue of the Educational Alliance, through which he served immigrants in Manhattan. In 1893, Radin published Asirei Oni u-Varzel, which reported on Jews held in New York prisons; he was also a contributor to various Hebrew, German, Polish and Jewish-American publications.

REFERENCES: Gale, Thomson. Radin, Adolph Moses. Encyclopaedia Judaica (2007) at encyclopedia.com

CONDITION: Some pages missing but these appear on the whole to have been removed before this volume was pressed into service as a scrapbook; bit of text at ends of sentences in three Radin letters covered with paper tape, but with no serious loss of sense; piece of clear tape along edge of ticket to Blank and Rosenwieg execution and through mid-section of Blank note; moderate chipping and creasing to the pages as one might expect of a scrapbook; volume ugly, contents worthy.