11 November 1887

Execution of the Haymarket Anarchists

On 11 November 1887 the prison in Illinois is preparing for the execution of Parsons, Spies, Fischer, and Engel, the Haymarket anarchists. The Haymarket Affair started in May 1886 when a mass meeting was held in the Chicago Haymarket in the course of a strike for the eight-hour workday. When the police ordered the protest meeting to disperse, a bomb was thrown by an unknown person, killing several officers. Four anarchists were accused. The drawing in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper shows the scaffold, complete with a trap door. The balcony outside the cells was on the same level. At the back was a large box in which the hangman waited to release the rope for the trap door. At the execution Parsons could not be prevented from speaking his last words: "Let the voice of the people be heard!"

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