Still numbering in thousands, the marchers formed up again on the wide length of Tremont Street, linked twenty-five abreast from curb to curb. As they reached the corner of Park Street they began to put on their armbands, and suddenly the dark ranks were bright with scarlet. An occasional marcher would fall out. Others joined in from the throngs lining Boston Common. A fleet of taxicabs followed the marchers, ready to pick up the footsore at a flat rate of a dollar apiece to Forest Hills. Mike Flaherty, near the head of the procession, spotted Felix Frankfurter and his wife in a doorway near Park Street and beckoned to them. They joined with him as far as Boylston Street. At the corner of the Common, those who had carried the largest floral pieces began to tear them apart and strew the blossoms in the street before the oncoming hearses.
From Tremont Street through the slum miles of the South End and the Negro district the police at each intersection directed traffic into the now thinning ranks. Near Roxbury Crossing the hearses unaccountably speeded up to twenty-five miles an hour and were soon over a mile ahead of those on foot. Scrambling to catch up, the marchers broke ranks, many dropping out or taking to cabs. A hardy remnant of a few hundred red armbands reached the elevated station at Egleston Square within sight of Forest Hills and continued along Washington Street under the dripping el structure.
Up to this point the spectators had been impassive, but now, in the Irish Catholic district of Forest Hills, they turned hostile. Jeering faces filled the windows of the three-deckers flanking the el, and there were derisive shouts of “Guineas” and “Go home!”
The remaining marchers were passing the office of the Metropolitan Coal Company, a few hundred feet from the Forest Hills terminal, when the police charged them. No one knew why. At one instant the bedraggled armbanded figures were trudging along in the drizzle, at the next the police were flailing at them with their nightsticks, led by a furious sergeant wielding a heavy-handled umbrella. At the impact the ranks broke, most of the marchers bolting up Washington Street. The charging police seemed to go completely out of control. Anyone with an armband became a fair target. Men were dragged from the running boards of cars and beaten. Others trying to escape on foot were cornered in dead-end alleys. Dozens of fugitives burst into the yard of the Gulf Refining Company in a last attempt to dodge the swinging clubs. A Boston Post reporter, himself running, saw several men clubbed and kicked as they fell, and he caught a glimpse of a girl in a doorway, her face in her hands and her split chin dripping blood. The rain began to fall in torrents.
Not more than 150 marchers finally managed to work their way down side streets and back lots to join up on the other side of the terminal. When they arrived at the crematory on Walk Hill Street, a half-mile beyond, the hearses had already arrived, the coffins had been carried into the chapel, and the gates were locked.
Several thousand others who had come safely by car were waiting inside the grounds on the downhill slope in front of the chapel, watched impassively but without anger by the mounted police. The sodden, weary marchers could do no more than stand with bared heads while the cremation took place.
Only the committee and those closest to the defense were admitted to the small chapel. Luigia and Rosina chose to remain outside in the car. There was no formal service. Mary Donovan read five bitter paragraphs by Gardner Jackson, scarcely able to control her voice as she spoke the words over the coffins:
You, Sacco and Vanzetti, are the victims of the crassest plutocracy the world has known since ancient Rome.... And now Massachusetts and America have killed you—murdered you because you were Italian anarchists.... In your martyrdom we will fight on and conquer.
That was all. At 4:30 the coffins were placed in the retort chambers. The gates were opened, the hearses and the curtained limousines rolled away, the police reined in their restive horses as the crowd dissolved into small groups and individuals making their way unmolested along Walk Hill Street. Those who looked back saw a thin column of smoke rising from the crematory’s central chimney, black and unwavering against the low sullen sky.