For an afternoon New York stood still in shock. (Library of Congress)
On September 16,1920, a terrorist attack on Wall Street killed 38 people, becoming the bloodiest aggression on U.S soil until the Oklahoma City bombing 75 years later. The perpetrators left a horse-drawn carriage with 100 pounds of dynamite along with iron weights on the corner of Wall and Broad streets.
That particular spot stood in front of J.P. Morgan and Company, one of the largest financial institutions in the world. The U.S. Sub-Treasury and Assay Office were located across the street, while the ever-busy New York Stock Exchange was just down the road. Despite many years of investigation by police and the Bureau of Investigation (forerunners of the FBI), the bloody crime remained unsolved. Here’s the story of 1920’s Wall Street bombing.
The Wall Street bombing was one of the first terrorist attacks ever perpetrated in New York City.
Noon, September 16, 1920
Whoever planned the horrific bombing set the explosion for the daily lunch hour rush. As the last church bell struck noon, the massive explosion sent chaos reigning for blocks. A witness to the madness, Andrew Dunn called it, “That was the loudest noise I ever heard in my life. It was enough to knock you out by itself.”
Model T Ford were thrown aside in the blast. FBI
Raining Death
In fact, the explosion was powerful enough to derail a streetcar a full block over. Deadly shrapnel whipped from that fateful corner 34 floors high! One unlucky soul, 24-year-old clerk William Joyce, died at his desk, struck by wreckage.
John F. Kennedy’s father, Joseph, a stockbroker, was also thrown off his feet from the concussive blast. Another witness told the New York Sun, “I saw the explosion, a column of smoke shoot up into the air and then saw people dropping all around me, some of them with their clothing afire.”
Anyone standing near the horse drawn bomb was vaporized.
At The Scene
Reporter George Weston described the carnage thusly, “Almost in front of the steps leading up to the Morgan bank was the mutilated body of a man. Other bodies, most of them silent in death, lay nearby. As I gazed horror stricken at the site, one of these forms, half-naked and seared with burns, started to rise. It struggled, then toppled and fell lifeless into the gutter.”
The concrete jungle over 100 year ago. George Grantham Bain Collection
Mayhem On Wall Street
Immediately, NYPD and Red Cross nurses rushed to the scene, administering whatever aid they could. 30 people died instantly from the explosion, another eight would succumb to their injuries in the following days. At first, the motive of the attack was unclear.
Some claimed it was retribution for J.P. Morgan’s profiteering during World War I but most of the victims were young stenographers or clerks, not fat cat bankers. Morgan Jr. himself was actually thousands of miles away in Scotland during the bombing.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote, “There was no objective except general terrorism. The bomb was not directed against any particular person or property. It was directed against a public, anyone who happened to be near or any property in the neighborhood.”
Clean up of the attack, regrettably, began almost immediately.
Enduring Americans
While the Stock Exchange naturally closed, the hiatus did not last for long. The very next day it reopened “to show the world that business will proceed as usual despite bombs,” according to the New York Sun.
Unfortunately, in that rush to resume business as usual, clean-up crews swept away potentially vital pieces of evidence that could have greatly aided investigators. Thousands of New Yorkers gathered on that portentous spot to sing “America the Beautiful” along with the National Anthem.
A lack of understanding of forensics helped the perpetrators. (RTE)
The Investigation
The day after the attack, fliers were found in the Financial District's mailboxes that read: “Remember, we will not tolerate any longer. Free the political prisoners, or it will be sure death for all of you. American Anarchist Fighters.” Apparently, the letters mirrored those disseminated the year prior during a string of bombings in other U.S cities.
The manner in which the bombing was carried out, a horse and carriage loaded with dynamite and heavy metal weights to maximize fallout, resembled the work of Galleanists. It was a group of anti-government Italian anarchists led by Luigi Galleani. However, the government had deported Galleani the year prior.
By the next day people were back in work in slings and bandages.
An Unsolved Mystery
Ultimately, many years of investigation only turned up dead ends. The strangest of those failed leads was undoubtedly the story of Edward Fischer. Supposedly, the mentally ill tennis champion warned people to stay away from Wall Street in the days leading up to the attack. In his words, he received these warnings “through God and the air.” Investigators dropped any potential charges but did commit him to a psychiatric ward. The 1920 bombing of Wall Street was never solved.
