500 See Man Hanged

500 foreigners are “invited” to watch Felix Radzius, a Polish man, get hanged for his murder of a woman and her child.

Pottsville, Pa., May 27.-- In order that they may go among their countrymen and impress upon them the enormity of the crime of murder and the punishment that the law of this country calls for, 500 Slavs, Hungarians, Poles, Italians, Russians, Lithuanians, and other foreigners were invited to attend the execution here of Felix Razius, a young Pole, convicted of the murder of a woman and her child at Shenandoah six months ago. The hanging took place in the yard of the Schuylkill county prison. The execution was not a public one in the sense that every one who went to the jail was admitted, but the sheriff was quite liberal in the distribution of tickets, and the foreigners, who were all eager to see the hanging, took all they could get, and long before the time set for the opening of the jail gates, they swarmed about the place. The idea of having present representatives of the various foreign elements in this section of the coal region originated with Sheriff Clay Evans, who thought the story of the execution, as told from the lips of the foreigners, would have a salutary effect in curbing the murderous tendency of some of the lawless element. Just before the march to the scaffold Radzius made a complete confession of the Shenandoah murders and confirmed the information the police had that he had been guilty of committing a murder in Russian Poland. Radzius said he killed a man in his old home three years ago and that he fled to this country to avoid arrest. He appeared to be greatly relieved after admitting his crimes and walked with a firm step between two priests to his death. As the prisoner stepped into the yard there was a stir and a buzz of talk that made him start slightly and he glanced hurriedly over the big throng that hemmed him in, he gave no sign of recognition to any, however, as he walked through walls of humanity to the gallows...

“500 See Man Hanged,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed May 12, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/563.