Al Southwick: Sacco and Vanzetti and the Worcester connections
Al Southwick
The news stories about the Sacco and Vanzetti exhibit in the John Adams Courthouse in Boston brought me back to a day in October 1932. My father drove our old Essex slowly up Institute Road from Park Avenue and stopped at Beechmont Street. There we and others gazed at a wrecked house on the corner. It was the home of Judge Webster Thayer. It had been blasted by a bomb the night before. A policeman watched warily as we took in the scene.
The crime was never solved, but few doubted that it was retaliation for Judge Thayer’s role as presiding judge at the Sacco and Vanzetti case 10 years before. That case was an explosive episode with worldwide repercussions. When, after years of appeals, delays and newspaper frenzy, the two were finally electrocuted at the Charles Street Jail on Aug. 23, 1927, the funeral procession up Hanover Street in Boston was watched by thousands, many weeping, others probably cursing