Wall Street Bombing of 1920 - FBI Files, Photographs, and Newspaper Coverage

Wall Street Bombing of 1920 - FBI Files, Photographs, and Newspaper Coverage

2,844 pages of FBI files, photographs, and newspaper coverage of the September 16, 1920, bombing of Wall Street in New York City.

At about noon on September 16, 1920, a man driving a horse driven carriage stopped in front of the United States Assay Office, across the street from the J. P. Morgan building in the heart of Wall Street. The driver got down and quickly disappeared into the crowd.

Within minutes, the cart exploded into a hail of metal fragments, killing more than 30 people and injuring some 300.

Immediately the New York City Police and Fire Departments, the Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Secret Service began their investigations. The Bureau of Investigation, the predecessor of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, interviewed hundreds of people who had been around the area before, during, and after the attack, but developed little information of value. The few recollections of the driver and wagon were vague and virtually useless. The NYPD was able to reconstruct the bomb and its fuse mechanism, but there was much debate about the nature of the explosive, and all the potential components were commonly available.

The most promising lead had come prior to the explosion. A letter carrier had found four crudely spelled and printed flyers in the area, from a group calling itself the “American Anarchist Fighters” that demanded the release of political prisoners. The letters seemed similar to ones used the previous year in two bombing campaigns fomented by Italian anarchists. The Bureau attempted to trace the printing of these flyers, without success.

Based on bomb attacks over the previous decade, the Bureau initially suspected followers of the Italian Anarchist Luigi Galleani. But the case couldn’t be proved, and the anarchist had fled the country. In the end, the bombers were not identified. The best evidence and analysis since suggest that the Bureau’s initial thought was correct, that a small group of Italian anarchists were to blame. But the case has never been declared solved.

(Sources: Federal Bureau of Investigation.  and The Hunt for the Red Scare Terrorist Bombers by Charles H. McCormick)

Content in this collection includes:

FBI Files

2,133 pages of United States Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation (BOI, the forerunner of the Federal Bureau of Investigation) files dating from September 17, 1920, to January 1924.

Files show that the BOI investigation began to stall when none of the victims turned out to be the driver of the wagon. The remains of the horse showed it was newly shod, however, investigators could not locate the stable where the work was performed. Investigators were able to find the blacksmith in October 1920, but he could not offer much information.

Bureau agents questioned tennis champion Edwin Fischer, who had sent warning postcards to friends, telling them to leave the area before September 16. He told police he had received the information "through the air". They found that Fischer made a regular habit of issuing such warnings, and had him committed to Amityville Asylum, where he was diagnosed as insane but harmless.

The BOI and local police investigation lead to occasional arrests, but in time no evidence supported any indictments.

The targets of most of the investigation were anarchists, communists, trade unionists, and members of the Galleanist group. The Galleanists, also called the Galleanisti, were followers of the anarchist Luigi Galleani. Galleani professed a message of heroic violence in the face of capitalist oppression. The Galleanists were believed to have been involved in a series of bombings that occurred between 1914 and 1919.


NYPD 1920 Annual Report

The 429-page Annual Report of the New York City Police Department for the year 1920, released on November 1, 1921. Mention is made of the September 16, 1920 bombing and separately repeated mention is made of the need to surveille anarchists, Bolshevists, and other “radicals.”

From the report, "The dangerous anarchistic elements have been under constant surveillance during the present administration, and in order to ensure that their movements and possible projects should receive adequate attention, a special squad was organized, and its services virtually devoted to them."

The report cites the need for secret police, stating, "During the next few years, at least this City will be the port of entry for many tens of thousands of immigrants, from all parts of Europe. Among them are bound to be a large percentage of malcontents, agitators, and virulent anarchists, thirsting for sensationalism and violence to shore up their insane propaganda and wicked doctrine, and to gain recruits and money through terrorism, and the perpetration of just such outrages as the explosion in Wall Street. Under our present laws, the only way that such holocausts can be prevented is to anticipate them through the medium of espionage, to be followed by prompt and drastic police action and a special body of men must be recruited and intensively schooled for this particular purpose, and none other."


Newspapers

The New York Times September 17, 1920

The entire issue of the September 17, 1920, New York Times with complete day after coverage of the bombing.


Newspapers - Nationwide

219 pages of full sheet newspaper pages from across the country, dating from September 16, 1920, to January 29, 1927, with news related to the bombing. The newspapers include:

New York Tribune (New York, NY)
The Sun and New York Herald (New York, NY)
The Evening World (New York, NY)
The Daily Worker (New York, NY)
Perth Amboy Evening News (Perth Amboy, NJ)
Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia, PA)
Washington Herald (Washington D.C.)
The Evening Star (Washington D.C.)
The Washington Times (Washington D.C)
The Bridgeport Times (Bridgeport, CT)
The Alaska Daily Empire (Juneau, AK)
Indiana Daily Times (Indianapolis, IN)
The Birmingham Age-Herald (Birmingham, AL)
Chickasha Dally Express (Chickasha, OK)
Alexandria Gazette (Alexandria, VA)
New Britain Herald (New Britain, CT)
Daily Star Mirror (Moscow, ID)
The Caledonian-Record (St. Johnsbury, VT)
Carson City Daily Appeal (Carson City, NV)
The Chattanooga News (Chattanooga, TN)
The Bismarck Tribune (Bismarck, ND)
Great Falls Daily Tribune (Great Falls, MT)
The Arizona Republican (Phoenix, AZ)
Albuquerque Morning Journal (Albuquerque, NM)
Tulsa Daily World (Tulsa, OK)


Photographs

31 news service photographs of the aftermath of the bombing from the Bain News Service, New York Worid-Tetegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, and Underwood & Underwood.