# Photographs, Descriptions and Records of Persons Charged with Violation of the Postal Laws, volume 2 (Post Office Department, 1916)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/podept-1916-album-vol2/

A 1916 Government Printing Office album for post-office inspectors. Its fraud section tags 23 entries '[BLACK HAND.]', recording federal sentences for mailing black-hand letters at Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Marion and Toledo, Trenton, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh and Clarksdale between 1910 and 1915.

The title page names the Post Office Department, Office of the Chief Inspector. Volume 1 of the album opens with a note that it was for the confidential and official use of post-office inspectors. Each entry describes one person charged, with a "History" file number, the offence and the outcome.

In the Internet Archive's OCR text of volume 2, 23 entries in the fraud section carry the tag "[BLACK HAND.]". They record federal sentences for mailing black-hand letters at Chicago (1912, 1914 and 1915), St. Louis (1912), Cincinnati (1912), Marion, Ohio, and Toledo (1910), Trenton, N.J. (1913), Salt Lake City (1914), Pittsburgh (letters from Wehrum, Pa., 1914) and Clarksdale, Miss. (1915), and one New York State sentence of 1915. Groups of entries are filed as their own pages: [Marion and Toledo](/items/podept-1916-marion-toledo-1910/), [St. Louis](/items/podept-1916-st-louis-1912/), [Chicago](/items/podept-1916-chicago-1912-1915/) and [Pittsburgh](/items/podept-1916-pittsburgh-1914/).

The album treats "black-hand letter" as a description of a kind of mail offence; the charges themselves were under the mail-fraud and conspiracy statutes. The album prints a photograph, Bertillon measurements and a physical description of each person. This archive does not reproduce or summarise those, and names no one from the album who is not already the subject of a court file filed here. Printed page numbers were read from the Internet Archive's OCR text and should be checked against the scan before they are cited. The Postmaster General's annual reports for fiscal 1907, 1908 and 1911 were searched for comparison and say nothing about Black Hand letters.

## Sources

- Internet Archive (digitised copy): https://archive.org/details/photographsdescr21916unit