kconley – Discovering the 1920s https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s Introduction to Digital History at Ramapo College Mon, 11 May 2026 16:28:11 +0000 en hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 The Leopold and Loeb Case https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/04/29/the-leopold-and-loeb-case/ https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/04/29/the-leopold-and-loeb-case/#respond Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:06:16 +0000 https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/?p=5761 Overview

The 1920s were an era of prosperity, optimism, change, and crime. Mob and gang violence, alcohol smuggling, and robbery were all prevalent in the United States, as well as a much darker, more violent crime: murder. The decade witnessed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, The Osage Indian murders, and several more violent crimes. Out of all the homicide cases and murderers, none came close to the level of audacity that Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold possessed. The ruthless cold blooded murder of 14 year old Bobby Franks on May 21, 1924 shook the country to its core. The case quickly became a nationwide ordeal, changed court sentences, and raised concerns regarding the youth of society.

Bobby Franks (Famous Trials)
Background

The entirety of the Leopold and Loeb case was very bizarre from the very beginning. Two teenage boys, Leopold, 19, and Loeb, 18, brutally murdered their young neighbor, seemingly for no reason at all. All three of the boys came from wealthy Jewish families and resided in Chicago’s Kenwood neighborhood within a walking distance from one another. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb seemed to have everything in life laid out for them.1 Despite this, the privileged teenage boys threw away their lives through a single act of violence.

The minds of Leopold and Loeb were complex, revealing, and utterly disturbed. Both boys were excellent scholars, but had something darker residing in their minds. Loeb was popular among his peers, and began studying at the University of Chicago at 14. However, he was also involved with drinking and gambling, and desired to become a “master criminal”.2 Additionally, he had always been obsessed with crime. He “read about crime, he planned crimes, and he committed crimes”, but he had never physically harmed someone.3 Leopold had graduated from the University of Chicago and had plans to attend Harvard Law School. Despite excelling academically, he was described as “arrogant” by people he encountered.4 Aside from law, Leopold was fascinated with psychology, especially with the works of Friedrich Nietzsche.5 Leopold “believed that legal obligations did not apply to those who approached ‘the superman’”, and brought his lover, Richard Loeb, into this mentality.6 In return, Loeb tied up Leopold in his crime schemes. When these two minds were put together, they became deadly. Historian Paula S. Fass asks the question of “why two rich, gifted boys would commit a murder embedded in the form of a ransom kidnapping”; a question that will likely never be fully answered.7 

Leopold (right) and Loeb in August 1924 (Wikipedia)

Together, the two boys desired to commit the “perfect crime” and the “crime of the century”. The premeditated murder of a random victim fit this criteria. “The two teenagers spent months discussing and refining a plan that included kidnapping the child of a wealthy parents, demanding a ransom, and collecting the ransom after it was thrown off a moving train as it passed a designated point”, and murder was crucial to get away with the crime.8 If murder was not involved, they risked being identified by their victim. Leopold and Loeb started planning this murder in November 1923, 6 months before it actually took place. They ruled against deciding who their victim would be beforehand, and instead opted to make it spontaneous.9 In the days leading up to the murder, they began to get their supplies together, including a chisel, which would be the murder weapon.10 Their last step was to rent a car the morning of the murder. 

Kidnapping and Murder
Map featured in newspaper (Hyde Park Herald)
“Map of the Scene of the Kidnapping and Murder of Bobby Franks” (Famous Trials).

Bobby Franks was walking home from Harvard School for Boys around 5pm on May 21 following a baseball game.11 At the same time, Leopold and Loeb were circling the area hunting for a victim. Leopold, who was driving the rented car, pulled up next to Franks and “asked him to get in the car to discuss a tennis racquet”, to which he complied.12 Loeb, who was in the back seat of the car, grabbed Franks, covered his mouth, and “struck the boy with [sic] several times on his head with a chisel”.13 Loeb then suffocated young Bobby Franks to death.14 Sometime between 5:15 PM and 9:30 PM, the boys drove to the Illinois/Indiana border to dispose of the body.15 Leopold and Loeb shoved Frank’s body into a culvert under a railroad, poured acid on his naked body, and returned to Loeb’s home to burn his clothing.16 

At 9:30 PM, Mrs. Franks received a menacing phone call from a man identifying himself as “George Johnson”.17 “Leopold told Franks that her boy had been kidnapped, but was unharmed, and that she should expect a ransom note soon”; the family received the note the next morning.18 The note reads: 

Dear Sir: 

As you no doubt know by this time, your son has been kidnapped. Allow us to assure you that he is at present well and safe. You need fear no physical harm for him, provided you live up carefully to the following instructions and to such others as you will receive future communication. Should you, however, disobey any of our instructions, even slightly, his death will be the penalty. 

1. For obvious reasons make absolutely no attempt to communicate with either the police authorities or any private agency. Should you already have communicated with the police, allow them to continue their investigation, but do not mention this letter.

2. Secure before noon today ten thousand dollars. This money must be composed entirely of old bills of the following denominations:

Two thousand dollars in twenty dollar bills, eight thousand dollars in fifty dollar bills. The money must be old. An attempt to include new or marked bills will render the entire venture futile. 

3. The money should be placed in a large cigar box, or if this is impossible, in a heavy cardboard box, securely closed and wrapped in white paper. The wrapping paper should be sealed at all openings with sealing wax.

4. Have the money with you, prepared as directed above, and remain at home after one o’clock P.M. See that the telephone is not in use.

“Leopold and Loeb Ransom Note: Northwestern Magazine.” Northwestern University. Accessed April 29, 2026. https://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/spring2012/feature/full-of-drama-sidebar/ransom-note.html.
Envelope containing ransom note addressed to Mr. Jacob Franks (Northwestern University).

You will receive a further communication instructing you as to your future course.

As a final word of warning, this is an extremely commercial proposition and we are prepared to put our threat into execution should we have reasonable grounds to believe that you have committed an infraction of the above instructions. 

However, should you carefully follow out our instructions to the letter, we can assure you that your son will be safely returned to you within six hours of our receipt of the money.

Yours truly, 

George Johnson19

A second note was to be placed on the train, but Mr. Franks never received this one. The 2nd note reads:

Dear Sir: 

Proceed immediately to the back platform of the train. Watch the east side of the track. Have your package ready. Look for the first LARGE, RED, BRICK factory situated immediately adjoining the tracks on the east. On top of this factory is a large, black watertower with the word CHAMPION written on it. Wait until you have COMPLETELY passed the south end of the factory – count five very rapidly and then IMMEDIATELY throw the package as far east as you can. Remember that this is your only chance to recover your son.

Yours truly,

George Johnson20

At around 12PM the next day, “Leopold (‘George Johnson’) called Jacob Franks, Bobby’s father, shortly before three o’clock to tell him a taxi cab was about to arrive at his home and that he should take it to a specified drugstore in South Chicago”.21 Mr. Franks, of course, refused to do so. A few hours before this call, unbeknownst to the killers or Mr. Franks, a laborer had discovered Bobby’s body.22 Bobby’s uncle went to confirm the identity of the body as soon as he heard the news.23 It was at the location of the body that a clue to the identity of the killer lay.

Linking Leopold and Loeb to the Crime
Nathan Leopold’s glasses (Famous Trials)

Little did he know, Nathan Leopold had lost a pair of eyeglasses at the site where he and Richard Loeb had dumped the body. This specific style of glasses “could be traced to a single Chicago optometrist, who had written only three such prescriptions, including the one to Leopold”.24 Investigators began meticulously questioning Nathan Leopold on May 23, and soon after, Richard Loeb.25 They confirmed each other’s alibis of driving girls around in Leopold’s car, but “state’s attorney Robert Crowe, heading the investigation, was skeptical”.26 Upon further investigation and leads from classmates, prosecutors got ahold of a set of notes from a typewriter that belonged to Leopold, and the flaws matched those of the ransom note.27 Leopold’s chauffeur attempted to defend him by saying the car “the boys claimed they had spent the night driving around with girls, had not left the garage on the day of the murder”.28 He had unknowingly destroyed both the boys’ alibis. 

On May 30, 1924, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were arrested for the murder of Bobby Franks.29 The following day, they both confessed to the murder, but neither would own up to actually killing Franks.30 

Trial

For the trial, “The Loeb and Leopold families hired Clarence Darrow and Benjamin Bachrach to represent the two boys”.31 Clarence Darrow was interested in the case due to the opportunity it gave him to “attack the death penalty, which he had called “an abomination”.32 Darrow had persuaded the boys to plead guilty to potentially avoid the death penalty. Professor Douglas O. Linder explains Darrow’s reasoning: 

“It was Darrow’s decision to change the boys’ initial pleas to the charges of murder and kidnapping from “not guilty” (suggesting a traditional insanity defense) to “guilty.” The decision was made primarily to prevent the state from getting two opportunities to get a death sentence. With “not guilty” pleas, the state had planned to try the boys first on one of the two charges, both of which carried the death penalty in Illinois, and if it failed to win a hanging on the first charge, try again on the second. The guilty plea also meant that the sentencing decision would be made by a judge, not by a jury”.33 

“Psychiatrists’ (“alienists”) phrenological assessments of Mr. Nathan Leopold and Mr. Richard Loeb as they appeared in The Chicago Tribune in the summer of 1924” (ResearchGate).

The defense worked around the testimony of 4 psychiatrists who interviewed the boys.34 The issue was that “the prosecution argued that psychiatric testimony was only admissible if the defendants claimed insanity”, to which the psychiatrists said mental diseases should be considered in the sentencing.35 The judge was convinced and allowed the evidence to be used. The entire trial, which Linder defines as a hearing due to the guilty plea, lasted a little longer than a month.36 The defense claimed that Leopold and Loeb suffered from “emotional immaturity, obsessions with crime and Nietzschean philosophy, alcohol abuse, glandular abnormalities, and sexual longings and insecurities”.37 Leopold was described as paranoid, delusional, and obsessed with Loeb; Loeb was called childish and called out for his lack of judgement.38 Psychiatrist Wiliiam White claimed that “Nathan would never on his own initiative have murdered Bobby Franks. . . And I don’t believe Dickie would have ever functioned to this extent all by himself”, so the two came together to commit the murder.39 The prosecution argued that neither boy was mentally ill.40 The Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology highlighted the fact that ”this is probably the first instance of the offer of elaborate psychiatric analyses as the basis for remitting the law’s penalty for a calculated, cold-blooded murder, committed by persons not claimed to be insane or defective in any degree recognized by the law as making them not legally responsible”. This aspect made the case revolutionary when it came to the court becoming less reliant on the death penalty.41 

Over the span of 12 hours on August 22, 1924, “Darrow argued that his clients should not bear full responsibility for their crime” due to several external factors.42 The basis of Darrow’s argument was that this murder happened due to “a series of infinite chances”; he claimed the boys were victims of nature.43 Darrow had also attempted to sway the jury away from a death sentence by expressing that the boys were too young to have to sit in jail awaiting execution.44

Attorney Robert Crowe stated “this was a premeditated crime committed by two remorseless defendants, and the appropriate punishment was obvious”, which he believed to be execution.45 After weeks of debating, Nathan Leopold and RIchard Loeb were sentenced to life in prison, mainly due to their age and the inability of the court to determine responsibility.46 

Aftermath

The two boys were held in Joliet Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois. Richard Loeb was killed here in 1936, and Nathan Leopold was released in 1958 due to his excellent behavior.47 Leopold then moved to Puerto Rico, where “he earned a master’s degree, taught mathematics, and worked in hospitals and church missions”.48 He passed away on August 30, 1971 following a heart attack.49 

Significance

Newspapers were critical to the entire incident, as well as the 1920s as a whole. Several newspapers provided the public with updated stories about a “sensational kidnap-murder”, provided “the prosecuting attorney with material assistance”, and gathered evidence that helped solve the case.50 James Mulroy and Alvin Goldstein, two journalists for the Chicago Daily News, received and “shared some of the reward money as well as the Pulitzer Prize for helping to connect Nathan Leopold, Jr., and Richard Loeb to the abduction and murder of Bobby Franks”.51 Daily papers ”published the confessions, interviewed the families and friends, and speculated about the nature of the “million-dollar defense” to be mounted by Clarence Darrow and his expensive psychiatric witnesses”; this turned into a type of entertainment for some, and turned this into a nationwide phenomenon.52 In addition to keeping the public updated on the case, the newspapers also did some strange things, which are now seen as immoral. “On May 23, 1924, the day the newspapers reported that Bobby had been kidnapped, they also contained a detailed description of his dead body”.53 To expose people, and potentially children, to such a disturbing scene was very odd. Despite this, the case would not have been solved without the contributions of press workers. 

The Leopold and Loeb case related to The Modern Temper by Lynn Dumenil in terms of psychology, beliefs, and human morality. Dumenil touches on the ideas of several individuals, including psychologist John B. Watson. Watson “described humans as hollow shells, formed by their environment, who responded to external stimuli”.54 Leopold and Loeb’s minds and behavior was shaped by the privileged environment that they grew up in, and this led them to believe they could get away with murder. Fiction writer Sherwood Anderson wrote “fashioned dark, brooding stories dealing with marriage, morality, and individuals destroyed by success”.55 It would be plausible to say that Loepold and Loeb were destroyed by the financial success of their parents and their own intellectual success. 

The murder of Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb would go down in history as “cautionary story about the dangers of modern youth”.56 The profiles of the killers were vastly different from those of a “typical” murderer. Their portrayals “set them apart and represented them as larger than life”, making the case even more sensational.57

Citations

  1. “The “Perfect Crime”: The Story of Leopold and Loeb and the Murder of Bobby Franks” ↩︎
  2. “The “Perfect Crime”: The Story of Leopold and Loeb and the Murder of Bobby Franks” ↩︎
  3. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  4. “The “Perfect Crime”: The Story of Leopold and Loeb and the Murder of Bobby Franks” ↩︎
  5. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  6. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  7. Paula S. Fass ↩︎
  8. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  9. “The “Perfect Crime”: The Story of Leopold and Loeb and the Murder of Bobby Franks” ↩︎
  10. “The “Perfect Crime”: The Story of Leopold and Loeb and the Murder of Bobby Franks” ↩︎
  11. “The Loeb-Leopold Murder of Franks in Chicago, May 21, 1924.”; Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  12. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  13. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  14. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  15. “The Loeb-Leopold Murder of Franks in Chicago, May 21, 1924.” ↩︎
  16. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  17. “The Loeb-Leopold Murder of Franks in Chicago, May 21, 1924.” ↩︎
  18. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  19. Nathan F. Leopold, Jr. and Richard Loeb, University of Minnesota Web Archive ↩︎
  20. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  21. “The Loeb-Leopold Murder of Franks in Chicago, May 21, 1924.”; Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  22. “The Loeb-Leopold Murder of Franks in Chicago, May 21, 1924.” ↩︎
  23. Paula S. Fass ↩︎
  24. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  25. “The Loeb-Leopold Murder of Franks in Chicago, May 21, 1924.” ↩︎
  26. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  27. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  28. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  29. “The Loeb-Leopold Murder of Franks in Chicago, May 21, 1924.” ↩︎
  30. “The Loeb-Leopold Murder of Franks in Chicago, May 21, 1924.” ↩︎
  31. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  32. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  33. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  34. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  35. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  36. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  37. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  38. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  39. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  40. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  41. “The Loeb-Leopold Murder of Franks in Chicago, May 21, 1924.” ↩︎
  42. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  43. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  44. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  45. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  46. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  47. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  48. Douglas O. Linder ↩︎
  49. “Nathan Leopold – Loeb, Murder & Death.” ↩︎
  50. Paula S. Fass ↩︎
  51. Paula S. Fass ↩︎
  52. Paula S. Fass ↩︎
  53. Paula S. Fass ↩︎
  54. Lynn Dumenil, 146 ↩︎
  55. Lynn Dumenil, 153 ↩︎
  56. Paula S. Fass ↩︎
  57. Paula S. Fass ↩︎

More Resources

For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Chicago– Simon Baatz (2008)

The Clarence Darrow Digital Collection

The Leopold and Loeb Trial: A Brief Account– Douglas O. Linder

PBS American Experience: “The Perfect Crime” (2016) (Documentary)

]]> https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/04/29/the-leopold-and-loeb-case/feed/ 0 1920s Visualization Blog Post https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/04/20/1920s-visualization-blog-post/ https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/04/20/1920s-visualization-blog-post/#respond Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:14:35 +0000 https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/?p=5611 The two chapters that I chose to focus on were “Political Problems of the 1920’s” (1964), and “American Life in the ‘Roaring Twenties” (1998). The article that I will referencing these chapters against is titled “Rethinking the 1920s: Historians and Changing Perspectives” by David J. Goldberg (2007). While the goal of both chapters are to inform people about the 1920s and the importance of it, they focus on different aspects of the decade. 

Using Voyant to create visualizations of the chapters are very revealing of their content and focus. The top 5 most frequently used words in “Political Problems of the 1920’s” (1964) are “new”, “states”, “united”, “American”, and “president”. The 5 most frequently used words in “American Life in the ‘Roaring Twenties” (1998) are “new”, “American”, “1920s”, “war”, and “life”. The 3 phrases that stand out the most between these two chapters are “president”, “war”, and “life”. These words, along with the titles, make the focus of the chapters clear: the government during the 1920s, and the experiences and effects of war on the average American citizen during the 1920s. “Political Problems of the 1920s” (1964) speaks a lot about the president, mentioning “president” 55 times, and “American Life in the ‘Roaring Twenties” (1998) only mentions “president” 4 times. The earlier focuses on the elite and the later focuses on the majority of the population. 

“American Life in the ‘Roaring Twenties’”
“Political Problems of the 1920s”

These two chapters can fit into the context of historiography discussed in the article by David J. Goldberg. Goldberg explains that “New works dealing with social and cultural history have supplemented the more traditional focus on political history to provide us with a fuller and more well-rounded portrait of a society where class, ethnic, racial, regional, political, and cultural divisions remained quite sharp”. 1The older of the two articles focuses on political history, and the more recent one focuses on social and cultural history. Newer works are starting to drift away from the traditional study of political history to focus on the lower areas of society. 

Knowing the time period in which historians are writing helps us to evaluate their information and sources more effectively. Being able to place their work in a timeline makes it easier to understand how they were influenced by changing understandings, morals, focuses, and ideas. Older history is not necessarily less professional than more recent history, but it is often outdated or supports older/outdated theories, beliefs, topics, and concepts. There are many works on various topics that are written in a way that our current times can understand in a comprehensible way, such as focusing on the everyday person, so that we can put ourselves in that position. When authors write in outdated styles, such as employing “great men” history in the majority of writings, it only focuses on the upper class people of the time, which can be very hard for readers to understand on a personal level. A very small population of people understand what it is like to be the president, but nearly everybody understands how it is to be a working class individual. 

Citations

Footnotes

  1. David J. Goldberg ↩︎

Bibliography

Chapters: “Political Problems of the 1920’s” (1964); “American Life in the ‘Roaring Twenties’” (1998) 

David J. Goldberg, “Rethinking the 1920s: Historians and Changing Perspectives” OAH Magazine of History, (July 2007), pp. 7-10.

]]> https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/04/20/1920s-visualization-blog-post/feed/ 0 The Modern Temper 4-6: Leopold and Loeb https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/03/27/the-modern-temper-4-6-leopold-and-loeb/ https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/03/27/the-modern-temper-4-6-leopold-and-loeb/#respond Fri, 27 Mar 2026 23:25:28 +0000 https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/?p=5468 Some aspects of the murder of Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb relate to themes brought up in chapters 4, 5, and 6 of The Modern Temper by Lynn Dumenil. These chapters discuss behavior, religion, beliefs, and psychology, all of which were huge factors behind the murder. On May 21, 1924, Leopold and Loeb carried out a murder that they had planned for months, but the motives were seemingly unclear. It was later revealed that psychology and beliefs were heavily influential to the crime, and psychology even saved them from the death sentence. 

Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold
Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold

Leopold and Loeb were both considered to be mentally deranged, but not insane. This fact brought up in court would spare their lives, as it was deemed to be inhumane to hang them. John B. Watson “described humans as hollow shells, formed by their environment, who responded to external stimuli”.1 The privileged environment in which Leopold and Loeb both grew up shaped them to believe that they were superior to everyone else and the rules of society didn’t apply to them.

Dumenil discusses fiction writer Sherwood Anderson, and the ideas brought up in his work. He “fashioned dark, brooding stories dealing with marriage, morality, and individuals destroyed by success”.2 One could say that Leopold and Loeb were destroyed by success. Their families were wealthy, they attended ivy league schools, and they lived in an upscale neighborhood, all of which fed into their mindset that they were superior humans. They also did not believe human morality applied to them, so they would be able to commit the “perfect crime” without being caught and without consequences. In one of Anderson’s stories, the main character “feels that ‘he himself wanted, more than anything else, to give way to the impulses within himself’”, which in Leopold and Loeb’s cases, was destructive and violent crimes.3 They had previously committed smaller crimes such as robbery and arson for the thrill of it, but they yearned for something more serious. A premeditated murder of a random victim would fulfill that adrenaline rush that they both so desperately needed and give into that impulse to feel powerful. 

Harry Emerson Fosdick “recognized that people shape religion to suit their needs”, which is what Leopold and Loeb seemed to have done.4 Although they both came from Jewish families, they picked up a different set of beliefs. They shared a belief in “the concept of the Übermensch – the superman who transcended conventional human morality – as explored by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche”, which is what drove them to murder.5 

Dumenil also brings up the fact that in Chicago, “recent immigrants resented black encroachment in their neighborhoods and resisted with force and violence”.6 Even though Leopold and Loeb weren’t recent immigrants and Bobby Franks wasn’t black, the murder occurred in Chicago. Leopold and Loeb were responding to something with force and violence, even if that something seemed to be nothing at all. This rise in violence in their community may have encouraged or inspired the murder, or made them feel that they had to respond with something even bigger. 

These new developments in psychology shaped the way that the court handled the case, and spared the lives of two severely messed up individuals. Leopold and Loeb’s case was one of the first cases to incorporate psychology into the ruling. 

Sources:

Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American culture and society in the 1920s. United States: Hill and Wang, 2024. 

Scovell, Adam. “Leopold and Loeb: The Grisly ‘crime of the Century’ That Fascinated Hitchcock and Others.” BBC News, February 1, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240131-leopold-and-loeb-the-grisly-crime-of-the-century-that-fascinated-hitchcock-and-others. 

Featured Image: “Leopold and Loeb.” Wikipedia, March 20, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb.

Featured Image: Linder, Douglas O. “Nathan F. Leopold, Jr. (1904 – 1971).” Famous Trials. Accessed March 27, 2026. https://famous-trials.com/leopoldandloeb/1668-leopold.

Featured Image: Lybarger, Jeremy. “Reopening the Case Files of Leopold and Loeb.” The Paris Review, 2018. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/07/26/reopening-the-case-files-of-leopold-and-loeb/.

  1. Lynn Dumenil (146) ↩︎
  2. Lynn Dumenil (153) ↩︎
  3. Lynn Dumenil (153) ↩︎
  4. Lynn Dumenil (193) ↩︎
  5. Adam Scovell ↩︎
  6. Lynn Dumenil (255) ↩︎
]]> https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/03/27/the-modern-temper-4-6-leopold-and-loeb/feed/ 0 The Death of Harry Houdini https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/03/11/the-death-of-harry-houdini/ https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/03/11/the-death-of-harry-houdini/#respond Wed, 11 Mar 2026 18:28:10 +0000 https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/?p=5154 Overview

Entertainment involving performers was immensely popular in the 1920s, such as movies, theater, music, dancing, and sports. Perhaps the most famous performer was illusionist Harry Houdini. Houdini was a living legend, performing seemingly impossible death defying stunts and escape acts on a daily basis, leaving crowds speechless. Harry Houdini popularized escape acts and illusion as a form of entertainment that was distinct from magic shows, exposed frauds, and left behind a legacy many would do anything to achieve. Along with this legacy, he left behind a life of mysteries.  

Harry Houdini, born Erik Weisz in Hungary, moved to the United States when he was four years old in 1878.1 His father was a rabbi and had accepted a job offering in Wisconsin and had moved there earlier than Houdini, his mother, and his 4 brothers.2 The family moved to New York 9 years later, when Houdini’s father decided he was not making enough to support his family in Wisconsin.3 From an early age, Erik, nicknamed Harry, had an immense fascination with magic, especially with “French conjurer Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin”.4 Young Harry was so inspired by Houdin that he altered his last name to use as his own future stage name. He began his career at the age of nine in a local circus, alongside his brother, but he did not come into the public eye until his escape acts took off a few years later.5 When his father passed away in 1892, Houdini took it upon himself to provide for and support his family, and so he began touring.6 He worked his way up in the entertainment and stunt/illusion industry, and by the 1920s, Harry Houdini would have been a household name across the world.7 

Houdini escaped death thousands of times, escaping from straight jackets, jail cells, and handcuffs, sometimes underwater. He made the impossible possible, embodied a new type of superhuman, and fascinated everyone who came to see him perform. There did not seem to be a single situation that he couldn’t overcome. That was, until late October 1926, when Harry Houdini finally met his match. He “so often had seemed to thousands to be cheating the very jaws of death” but this time, he was unsuccessful.8 The chain of events leading up to his death were perhaps more mysterious than his actual death. 

Example of one of the deadly water stunts Houdini performed
[Houdini jumps from Harvard Bridge, Boston, Massachusetts] / John H. Thurston, stereopticons. (Library of Congress)

Prior to the main series of events leading up to his death, Houdini nearly severed his foot in his water torture cell trick in Albany on October 11, 1926, but emerged with just a fractured ankle.9 He visited the hospital several times, first to confirm it was fractured, then for treatments.10 He was advised to take time off from shows to allow his ankle  to heal and avoid making it worse or causing permanent damage.11 Like many other instances, he ignored this advice, and continued his shows. The continuing of these performances didn’t allow his body to heal his ankle and left his body and immune system significantly weakened.12 This lowered immunity made him highly susceptible to further infections and diseases. Even if he had been in good health, it was still not likely Houdini would have been able to survive the events that were to come. Contrary to popular belief, he did not actually die in his Chinese Water Torture Cell. This false cause of death was introduced in the 1953 movie titled Houdini, in which Houdini died within this cell.13 The truth about his death is much more complex than this Hollywood depiction of drowning. 

October 22: The Punch

Harry Houdini was scheduled to perform a show at the Princess Theater in Montreal on the evening of October 22, 1926. He was preparing and relaxing before the show in his dressing room, when a group of students came to visit him. One of the McGill University students, J. Gordon Whitehead, asked if it was true that he could “withstand hard blows without injury” to the abdomen.14 Houdini often boasted about the strength of his abdomen, and was very proud of it. Without warning, Whitehead punched Houdini as hard as he could in his stomach, reportedly multiple times, leaving him bent over in pain.15 Houdini tried to ignore the pain, as he had a show that evening, and one of the physically and mentally strongest men in the world could not show weakness to his fans. Houdini proceeded to perform the show in its entirety, despite suffering stomach cramps and pain throughout it. 

October 23 & 24: severe pain and show

The next morning, Houdini boarded a train from Montreal to Detroit, where he had a show on the night of the 24th. By the time he had arrived, the pain had significantly worsened. After he got settled in his dressing room, a local physician was called due to growing concern and declining condition. After laying his hand on Houdini’s stomach, he diagnosed him with appendicitis.16 At some point his appendix ruptured, releasing toxins into his abdominal cavity, requiring emergency surgery.17 Houdini decided to push  through the pain, despite needing emergency surgery, and gave his final performance of his life on October 24, 1926, at the Garrick Theater in Detroit, Michigan.18 Some spectators described this performance as “disappointing”, as Houdini had made several mistakes.19 After discovering that Houdini was performing with a ruptured appendix, fans “realized that Houdini had given his life to perform for his admirers right up to the last minute”.20 After finishing the 2.5 hour long show, the pain became more severe and unbearable, but surgery would not be performed until the following afternoon.21 Apparently, instead of undergoing emergency surgery, Houdini decided to call his doctor back in New York to get a second opinion, a decision that would soon turn out to be deadly.22 

Visualization of where the appendix is located
Your appendix is a small, tube-shaped organ that sticks out from your cecum. It’s located in the lower right side of your abdomen. (Cleveland Clinic)
October 25: 1st surgery, October 28: 2nd surgery

On October 25, Harry Houdini underwent an operation to remove his appendix at Grace Hospital.23 When his abdomen was opened up, it was discovered that it was filled with pus and severely infected.24 Because the surgery was so delayed to work around the show schedule, the toxins from his ruptured appendix had already seeped into his bloodstream, resulting in full body poisoning and sepsis.25

Dr. Arnold Van de Laar, a surgeon in Amsterdam, explains “at first, the pus can be contained by the surrounding intestines, but in the next stage the appendix dies off locally and bursts. Feces and intestinal gases are then released into the abdominal cavity. The patient experiences a sudden increase in the pain in the lower right of the abdomen, which then spreads throughout the whole abdomen and becomes so severe that it is no longer possible to say exactly where it is coming from. This is the stage of life-threatening peritonitis”, which is exactly what Houdini experienced.26 

On October 28, Houdini had to undergo a second surgery to rinse out his abdomen from any remaining pus in an attempt to further remove and contain toxins, but the efforts to save his life came too late.27 The toxins had already poisoned his entire body, which was essentially a death sentence. The next three days would have been filled with hopelessness knowing there was nothing else that could be done to save him, and it was only a matter of time until his body gave up.  

October 31: Houdini’s death

Harry Houdini met his unfortunate demise on the afternoon of October 31, 1926. After being in Grace Hospital for about a week, “Houdini whispered to his brother, Theo, ‘I’m tired of fighting…guess this is going to get me’”.28 Aware that he had very little time left, he took one last look at his wife before closing his eyes and leaving this world at 1:26 pm.29 Despite escaping every impossible situation, he could not escape his death. Houdini passed away alongside two people who had an immense impact on his life and career. His official cause of death was listed as “diffuse peritonitis streptococcal”, a severe abdominal infection caused by his ruptured appendix.30 This would have been an agonizingly slow and painful way to go, especially knowing that there was nothing else anyone could do to save him. 

Harry Houdini's funeral
UNITED STATES – NOVEMBER 04: Casket of Harry Houdini being carried to hearse. (Photo by George Schmidt/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

Even though the punch to Houdini’s stomach did occur a little over a week before his death, some doctors do not believe it had any correlation to his death, while others believe it directly caused it, so it became a topic of debate.31 It is unknown if he was suffering from appendicitis prior to the punch and it just made the pain more severe, if the punch ruptured an already inflamed appendix, or if it had caused the appendicitis. 

Significance 

Aside from his career of performing  illusions and stunts, Houdini dedicated a major part of the last years of his life to debunking fraudulent spiritualists and mediums. Spiritualism, the practice of attempting to make contact with the dead, was at an all time high following the end of World War I, with distraught grieving family members attempting to contact deceased loved ones. Houdini reportedly “had little patience for anyone who claimed to be in possession of supernatural powers”, and denied claims that he had supernatural powers that assisted him and allowed him to perform these escape tricks.32 It was thought that towards the end of his life, Houdini “seemed to find more satisfaction in his successful exposure of imposture and fraud” than in his performances, supported by the fact that he “offered a $10,000 reward to any psychic who could present “physical phenomena” that could not be explained rationally”.33 He even went as far as to testify “before Congress in support of legislation that would have criminalized fortune-telling for hire and ‘any person pretending to … unite the separated’ in the District of Columbia”, or in other words, make it illegal to profit off fortune telling in Washington, DC.34 His whole thought process behind this was that he was keeping “mediums” and “spiritualists” from trying to make a profit off grieving people. There was even talk for a time where people were speculating that angry spiritualists had a role in his death, some of which took credit for killing him.35 To these spiritualists, Houdini was a direct threat to their careers, so having a role in his demise would have been an accomplishment. While he believed it was fake, Houdini was not so much against people practicing these kinds of things as he was people claiming it was real and doing it for money. These practices targeted vulnerable people, which he felt was immoral. Houdini’s death allowed these spiritualists, whether or not they were fraudulent, to continue their practices for a personal profit. 

Ironically, for 10 years after his death, his wife attempted to contact him through a seance on the anniversary of his passing. He had apparently told her that if there was a way for the dead to communicate with the living, he would do all that he could to reach her after he had died.36 His wife, Bess, hosted annual seances every single year for 10 years hoping that one time he would come through. After the 10th seance, Bess stated “‘Houdini did not come through. … I do not believe that Houdini can come back to me, or to anyone”, putting an end to the hosted seances.37 Although Bess stopped, people still perform Halloween seances in an attempt to contact Harry Houdini from beyond to this day. 

The last seance (1936) hosted by Bess Houdini in an attempt to contact Harry
Bess Houdini sitting in a chair with her business manager, Edward Saint, standing on her left holding handcuffs, and two men standing on her right, during a seance, in 1936, in an effort to contact the spirit of Harry Houdini. (Library of Congress)

Chapter 2 of The Modern Temper by Lynn Dumenil, titled “Work and Consumption”, discusses the aspects of society in the 1920s that allowed Houdini to become so popular. The 1920s was a decade that “embrace[d] leisure, consumption, and self expression”.38 This rise in popularity of leisure activities expanded Houdini’s audience into both the upper and middle class of the United States. People had more extra money to spend on things that they enjoyed, which for many was going and watching performances.39 Without this societal change, Houdini’s career would not have become nearly as successful as it did.

Harry Houdini was one of the most iconic and remembered performers of the 1920s. His role in the entertainment industry defined a new type of entertainment and performance. Additionally, his career showed the immense role that entertainment had in society, the grief that came after WWII, and the popularity of leisure activities during the 1920s. He had immense talent and ‘“a wondrous power that he never understood”, as well as a passion for debunking fraudulent spiritual practices.40 Other people had done stunts and escape acts, but not to the level that he did. He was doing hundreds of shows a year, sometimes performing multiple times a day, all across the world. He gained immense fame from these impossible escapes and became a household name and an entertainment, illusionist, and escape icon for the next century. 

Citations

  1. Evan Andrews ↩︎
  2. “Harry Houdini (1874-1926)” ↩︎
  3. “Harry Houdini (1874-1926)” ↩︎
  4. Evan Andrews ↩︎
  5. “Harry Houdini (1874-1926)”, Evan Andrews ↩︎
  6. “Harry Houdini (1874-1926)” ↩︎
  7. Evan Andrews ↩︎
  8. “On This Day” ↩︎
  9. “On This Day” ↩︎
  10. “On This Day” ↩︎
  11. “On This Day” ↩︎
  12. “On This Day” ↩︎
  13. John Cox ↩︎
  14. “On This Day”, “Did Houdini Really Die After Being Sucker Punched?” ↩︎
  15. Evan Andrews ↩︎
  16. Arnold Van de Laar ↩︎
  17. Arnold Van de Laar ↩︎
  18. “Harry Houdini: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center.” ↩︎
  19. Arnold Van de Laar ↩︎
  20. Arnold Van de Laar ↩︎
  21. “On This Day” ↩︎
  22. “Did Houdini Really Die After Being Sucker Punched?” ↩︎
  23. “On This Day”, “Houdini in Detroit.” ↩︎
  24. Arnold Van de Laar ↩︎
  25. “Houdini in Detroit.” ↩︎
  26. Arnold Van de Laar ↩︎
  27. Arnold Van de Laar ↩︎
  28. “Houdini in Detroit.” ↩︎
  29. “Houdini in Detroit.” ↩︎
  30. “Houdini in Detroit.” ↩︎
  31. “On This Day”, Arnold Van de Laar ↩︎
  32. “Houdini’s Magic”, Evan Andrews ↩︎
  33. “Our Point of View”, Evan Andrews ↩︎
  34. Bryan Greene ↩︎
  35. “Did Houdini Really Die After Being Sucker Punched?” ↩︎
  36. Bryan Greene ↩︎
  37. Bryan Greene ↩︎
  38. Lynn Dumenil ↩︎
  39. Lynn Dumenil ↩︎
  40. “Houdini’s Magic” ↩︎

More Resources

Great Escapes By Joan Higbee https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/970224/houdini.html

Harry Houdini: An Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/pdf/01275.pdf

The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini by Joe Posnanski

The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini by Ruth Brandon

]]> https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/03/11/the-death-of-harry-houdini/feed/ 0 The Modern Temper chapters 1-3 and the death of Harry Houdini https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/02/18/the-modern-temper-chapters-1-3-and-the-death-of-harry-houdini/ https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/02/18/the-modern-temper-chapters-1-3-and-the-death-of-harry-houdini/#respond Wed, 18 Feb 2026 23:07:49 +0000 https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/?p=5006 Harry Houdini’s death most directly relates to the major chapter ideas of chapter 2 of Lynn Demenil’s book The Modern Temper, “Work and Consumption”. Dumenil describes the consumption patterns of the 1920s as something that “embraces leisure, consumption, and self expression”, and “Americans had more money and leisure”, leading to the rise of entertainment as a leading form of consumption. 1
Consumption in this case refers to the act of purchasing items, engaging in recreational activities, or any type of leisure activity. One of the types of consumption in the 1920s was various kinds of entertainment now available to the working class.  

One of the most popular forms of entertainment that emerged was theater. Houdini performed the majority of his shows in theaters, which was one of the most popular locations and forms of entertainment at the time. Televisions were not yet a household item around the time of Houdini’s death, so thousands of people would go to theaters to see him perform his death defying stunts. 

When Houdini was examined by a doctor in Detroit, he was told he would need emergency surgery to remove his ruptured appendix, which would mean cancelling his show the evening of October 24. He decided to have the operation done the next day, but this delay caused the toxins from his appendix to enter his bloodstream, ultimately leading to his untimely death. One could say Houdini died for the sake of entertainment. He had the choice between a performance and a life saving procedure, and he chose to delay the surgery in order to perform.2

Fitting Houdini’s death into the historical context makes it clear just how demanding the entertainment industry was if he was willing to risk his life to perform a 2.5 hour long show. Entertainment was all the rage and Houdini was one of the greatest performers, so viewing his death from this perspective makes it clear that it would have been devastating to the industry. 

The 1920s was a decade of progress and change, which included cultural representation within entertainment. “Jewish performers were heavily represented in various forms of entertainment”, Harry Houdini being one of them.3 Not only was Houdini Jewish, he was also an immigrant from Hungary, which touches upon the themes of immigration discussed in chapter 1, “Public and Private Power”. 

UNITED STATES – NOVEMBER 04: Casket of Harry Houdini being carried to hearse. (Photo by George Schmidt/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)4

More directly related to Houdini’s death is the amount of newspaper coverage it received. National news coverage was starting to overshadow local news among major newspapers, which can be applied to the coverage of Houdini’s death.5 From October 22 to November 5, 1926, 5,009 different newspapers mentioned his name, with the highest coverage state being California with 385.6

Overall I feel that this chapter highlighted the importance of entertainment within consumer culture during the 1920s and heightened my understanding of my topic in context. These points made throughout the chapter make it easier to realize just how important Harry Houdini really was and how much of an impact his death would have made across the world. 

“Casket of Harry Houdini Being Carried to Hearse.” Getty Images. Accessed February 18, 2026. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/casket-of-harry-houdini-being-carried-to-hearse-news-photo/97296032.

  1.  Lynn Dumenil. The modern temper: American culture and society in the 1920s. United States: Hill and Wang, 1995. (57)
    ↩︎
  2.  Arnold Van de Laar . “The Death of an Escape Artist: Harry Houdini – the History Reader.” The History Reader, May 29, 2025. https://www.thehistoryreader.com/historical-figures/death-escape-artist-harry-houdini-appendicitis-surgery/
    ↩︎
  3.   Lynn Dumenil. The modern temper: American culture and society in the 1920s. United States: Hill and Wang, 1995. (81)
    ↩︎
  4. “Casket of Harry Houdini Being Carried to Hearse.” Getty Images. Accessed February 18, 2026. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/casket-of-harry-houdini-being-carried-to-hearse-news-photo/97296032.
    ↩︎
  5.  Lynn Dumenil. The modern temper: American culture and society in the 1920s. United States: Hill and Wang, 1995. (73)
    ↩︎
  6.  “Historical Newspapers from 1700s-2000s – Newspapers.ComTM.” Newspapers.com. Accessed February 18, 2026. https://www.newspapers.com/search/results/?date-end=1926-11-05&date-start=1926-10-22&keyword=harry%2Bhoudini. 
    ↩︎

]]> https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/02/18/the-modern-temper-chapters-1-3-and-the-death-of-harry-houdini/feed/ 0 The 1920s in My Mind https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/01/21/the-1920s-in-my-mind/ https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/01/21/the-1920s-in-my-mind/#respond Wed, 21 Jan 2026 23:11:02 +0000 https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/?p=4796 I am not super familiar with the historical events or the culture of the 1920s, and the only film/media representation that I am familiar with is the Great Gatsby. I know that the 1920s are known as “the roaring 20s” due to the fact that WWI had just ended, so the economy was thriving, and it was prior to the Great Depression. I have only ever really seen the celebratory side represented in pop culture, such as the huge parties in the Great Gatsby, rather than the problematic side, like prohibition and gang violence. Although I have not seen it portrayed in popular media, I am aware of events such as the excavation of King Tut’s tomb, the bombing of Wall Street, and the passing of the 19th amendment. 

When I think about the 1920s, I think of several different fashion elements that define the era. For men, I picture suits being worn as an everyday outfit including a brimmed hat. For women, I immediately think of Flappers with elaborate outfits, lots of feathers, and other decorative pieces. Long necklaces, mid length dresses, and new unique makeup was also in style. Short hair was also very popular, accompanied by headbands and hats. As far as the makeup goes, I think of small lips with a pointed cupid’s bow, dark eyes, and thin downturned eyebrows, as well as the use of color. The women of this era come across as very doll-like, which is similar and different from previous decades. All of these factors play into the creativity and self expression of the decade. 

Lucas-Pritchard, and Lucas Monroe. [Alla Nazimova.]. ca. 1920. Museum of the City of New York (MCNY).

Alla Nazimova– Pritchard, Monroe (ca. 1920).

After searching “the 1920s” on Google images, nearly every picture was of a person. Women can be seen with short curled/waved hair, mid length dresses, hats, fur coats, long layered necklaces, bracelets, heels, dancing, and wearing distinctive makeup. Men are not shown wearing anything other than suits or trench coats, and many are either wearing or holding hats. Their hair is very neat and short, and they rarely have facial hair. I also noticed that even young children are dressed very formally, which I think shows the extent to which people were dressing their absolute best. 

Scene from the 1924 silent film "Sherlock Jr."

‘Sherlock Jr.’ (1924), Doherty.

It is clear that the “roaring” 1920s held huge progressive power, but also led to massive failure. This decade started off as a huge prosperous and progressive era, following the end of WWI. There was a new found sense of freedom and creativity, and the economy was doing very well, so people had money to spend. Nationalism seems to be very prominent, with pictures of men, women, and children celebrating while waving American flags. In addition to waving flags, there are several pictures of people waving signs in protest, some of which read “we want beer” (a response to prohibition) and “votes for women” (in favor of the 19th amendment). 1929 ended with the stock market crash and the Great Depression, putting a stop to the fun and freedom. 

Citations

Doherty, Thomas. “100 Years Later, Revisiting Buster Keaton in the Multiverse.” The Hollywood Reporter, August 29, 2024. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/buster-keaton-sherlock-jr-history-1235985615/. 

Lucas-Pritchard, and Lucas Monroe. [Alla Nazimova.]. ca. 1920. Museum of the City of New York (MCNY). https://jstor.org/stable/community.16075989.

]]> https://dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu/discovering1920s/blog/2026/01/21/the-1920s-in-my-mind/feed/ 0