It had fallen to me, at the request of my two associates, to examine Judge Webster Thayer when he appeared before us at the State House. The evidence that he had been grossly indiscreet in his remarks off the bench was cumulative. I was amazed and incensed that any Massachusetts Judge could have been so garrulous. That he had talked he did not deny, but he declared under oath with convincing emotion that several of the accusations against him—notably that of having rehearsed a part of his charge to the jury—were untrue. When we came to consider the language of our Report, I was asked, as the one who ought to know how a judge should conduct himself, to suggest the words of censure. They were used, and if my associates felt a shade less outraged than I by his unseemly conduct, it was from a due sense of perspective.
Most of the new evidence that the defense had unearthed appeared to the committee inconsequential. The cap with the lining Gallivan had torn was dismissed as a trivial matter. Gould’s evidence added nothing new. Whatever affidavits Proctor may have signed later, “It must be assumed that the jury understood the meaning of plain English words, that if Captain Proctor was of the opinion that the bullet had been fired through Sacco’s pistol he would have said so, instead of using the language which meant that it might have been fired through that pistol.” This, of course, was an assumption Judge Thayer himself failed to make in his charge to the jury.
The committee did not mention Major Goddard’s report, but from an inspection of the Van Amburgh parallel photographs they were “inclined to believe” that Bullet III had come from Sacco’s pistol. They were impressed by its similarity to the obsolete cartridges found on Sacco. Thompson’s contention that this bullet was a substitute they considered preposterous:
Such an accusation, devoid of proof, may be dismissed without further comment, save that the case of the defendants must be rather desperate on its merits when counsel feel it necessary to resort to a charge of this kind.
They found it a telling fact that the two men were armed when they were arrested. “Carrying fully loaded firearms, where they can be most quickly drawn,” they observed, “can hardly be common among people whose views are pacifist and opposed to all violence.” That Sacco could have put his pistol in his belt and forgotten about it they found incredible.[30] Nor did they feel that the defendants’ radicalism explained all their lies. Lottie Packard’s whirlwind remarks, for all their flights, impressed them. “The woman is eccentric, not unimpeachable in conduct,” they concluded, “but the Committee believe that in this case her testimony is well worth consideration.”
To the militants in Europe the reports of Governor Fuller and of the Lowell Committee set the official seal on what even the Frankfurter Zeitung now referred to as a “political judicial murder.” Letters and cables to Fuller, to the Secretary of State, to the White House, poured in from overseas, a certain lack of information and spontaneity apparent in the fact that some of them were addressed to President Harding, four years dead. The Vatican expressed its hope that an appeal to the United States Supreme Court “may open the way to justice or clemency.” Former French Premier Edouard Herriot asked for a “measure of clemency.” Le Soir reacted to the decisions “with a sentiment of profound horror.” A past era echoed dimly when the Veterans of the Commune forwarded their protest. In Paris the police had forbidden all meetings, but in the Bois de Vincennes just outside the city a group of five thousand bannered militants paraded with linked arms behind Luigia Vanzetti. Luigia, passing through on her way to America, carried a banner reading: PARISIAN PEOPLE, SAVE MY BROTHER AND SACCO. THANKS.
The new wave of explosions caused alarm all over the United States. Extra guards were dispatched to the Summer White House in the Dakota hills. Federal buildings were placed under guard. The Army announced plans to move troops from Fort Meyer, Virginia, to Washington. Machine guns were posted around Fuller’s summer home at Little Boar’s Head. Harvard’s buildings were guarded. Yet Boston, on the Sunday the Lowell Report was made public, seemed calm, almost indifferent. Alfred Baker Lewis for the Defense Committee and Harry Canter for the Communists had each obtained a permit to hold a meeting at designated trees on the Charles Street Mall. On the Tremont Street side a band in the Parkman Bandstand offered rival attractions. Between five and ten thousand persons gathered on the Common that afternoon, no great number for a city with a surrounding population of over two million. Some were there who made a habit of sauntering on a summer Sunday afternoon, others came from curiosity or to listen to the band. The genuine sympathizers, mostly from the North End, were probably in a minority. Nevertheless Superintendent of Police Michael Crowley disapproved of any such meetings, and his feelings were reinforced by the bombings of two days before. A plump set-faced man in a panama with a turned-down brim, he waddled up the Mall to warn both Baker and Canter that if any disparaging remarks were made about Governor Fuller or the Lowell Committee, that would end the meetings.
In no time at all, Mary Donovan, standing on a platform with a banner reading “DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID TO THOSE ANARCHIST BASTARDS?”—JUDGE THAYER, proclaimed that Governor Fuller was a murderer. Crowley, raising his fat hand, announced that the meeting was suspended. Four mounted police edged their horses in and began scattering the crowd. Mary Donovan protested wildly: “This meeting must go on. I will speak for Sacco and Vanzetti. They are innocent men! They must not be murdered!” Crowley, in an attempt to be fatherly to a fellow Celt, observed that bastard was no word for a lady to use. It was no word for a judge to use either, Mary Donovan snapped.
As the core of the crowd began to mill about the speakers’ stands, while the others moved away, the bearded Edward James bobbed up, scarlet with indignation, to stutter: “Down with the police! Get at them, men!” After a scuffle four men were arrested, including Canter and a bloody-nosed James. Next day in police court James, in the true revolutionary tradition, refused to recognize the judge or reply to charges. He was fined seventy-five dollars, which he refused to pay until the judge offered him the alternative of ninety days on Deer Island. At first James announced that he was going to be a martyr. Then, as the glow of the barricades faded, he paid up.