November 11 Friday – From MTNJ 3: 346n145:

“On 11 November 1887, after one of the most celebrated of American political trials, four of seven condemned anarchists were executed by hanging for their alleged complicity in the 1886 Chicago Haymarket bombing, where seven policemen were killed. Two defendants had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment and the seventh, Louis Lingg, committed suicide in prison the day before the scheduled execution…. A quarter of a million people lined the route of the funeral procession, and a monument was commissioned for the grave site. Prominent among the mourners was Vassar-educated Nina Van Zandt, the daughter of ‘well-to-do residents of Philadelphia’ (New York World 12, November 1887), who had married defendant August Spies by proxy after a courtroom romance.”

From Sam’s notebook on the affair:

L..       in place of flowers, hymns, proxy-marriages, conversions, scaffold-eloquence, shrine (grave) pilgrimage, (date made a public holiday) — this was the reason they changed hanging to insult, humiliation &c — —  Sense of ridicule is bitterer than death & more feared — met commit suicide daily to escape it. (Lingg.) [346]. Note: for an excellent treatment of Howells’ role in the Haymarket case, See Goodman & Dawson’s bio of Howells, p.276-89.

Sam also entered: Nov. 11, noon, balance of 11,297.21 [348].