Suicide or Murder - Prisoner commits suicide with encouragement of wardens, 1884
Suicide or Murder - Prisoner commits suicide with encouragement of wardens, 1884
unknown photographer
Franke Rande hangs himself [apparantly] from prison cell bars inscribed verso by Robert McClaughry, prison ‘reformer’
Joliet, Iowa, USA, 1884
albumen print photograph mounted on card, lable to verso with manuscript ink inscription
“I enclose photo of Rande [?] as we found him in his cell last Friday morning. The marks on his side and face are where he was wounded in the affray. He had the consent of every body here to take himself out of of the world in which he had never been any thing but a curse and a nuissence. Your Truly R W McClaughry”
200 by 95mm (7¾ by 3¾ inches).
[12121]
There are elements of the inscription that do leave it slightly open as to what extent the death was self inflicted.
The Rock Island Republican newspaper 6 March 1884 published the following: “Rande’s Last and Best // The ruffian hangs himself // The Illinois penitentiary rid of its most disgraceful Occupant, by his own hand. Joliet March 7, Chas Scott alias Franke Rande, the most cowardly ruffian that ever disgraced the annals of the West, hung himself in the Penitentiary this morning; thus avenging by his own hand to some slight degree, the list of bloody crimes of which he was the perpetrator, and ridding the Penitentiary of his odious presence, which was not only a standing menace to those in charge but a continual annoyance to other criminals there confined.
Robert McClaughry was a type of prison reformer, see :Frank Morn - Forgotten Reformer: Robert McClaughry and Criminal Justice Reform in Nineteenth-Century America, 2010
John Halwas: The Brilliant Bandit of the Wabash: The Life of the Notorious Outlaw Frank Rande, State Historical Society of Iowa 2011; Frank Morn - Forgotten Reformer: Robert McClaughry and Criminal Justice Reform in Nineteenth-Century America, 2010 ; Frank Hitchcock, A True Account of the Capture of Frank Rande, “The Notorious Outlaw”, 1897
