16 Sep: New York’s First Terror Attack
The Wall Street bomb, outside JP Morgan’s headquarters, killed 38 people and seriously injured 143 more on 16th September, 1920. It was the biggest terror attack in New York City until 9/11.
The blast shattered windows, overturned vehicles and sent fragments of metal and glass flying through nearby buildings. J.P. Morgan himself was safely on holiday in Scotland, but his son Junius Morgan was among those injured. Mostly, the victims were clerks, stenographers, messengers, and porters caught in the lunchtime rush.
Investigators reconstructed much of the bomb and questioned hundreds of witnesses, but crucial physical evidence was lost when the scene was cleared overnight. Suspicion quickly fell on Italian anarchists, but nobody was ever charged with the crime.
In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly discover the writings of Luigi Galleani, whose newspaper Cronaca Sovversiva advocated revolutionary violence; consider how the event fed into a wider climate of repression during the First Red Scare; and reveal where New Yorkers can still see the pockmarks left by the explosion more than a century later…
Content Warning: bomb injury detail
Further Reading:
• ‘Wall Street bombing: New York’s deadliest terror attack before 9/11 happened 100 years ago. No one was ever convicted’ (CBS News, 2020): https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wall-street-bombing-new-york-terror-attack/
• ‘Wall Street Bombing 1920’ (FBI): https://www.fbi.gov/history/cases-and-criminals/wall-street-bombing-1920
• ‘New York Treasury Bombed AKA Bomb Outrage On Treasury In New York’ (British Pathé,
1920): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfGdXO6_X0Y
#NewYork #Crime #Shocking #20s