Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime

Record

Case file

1916

Internet Archive (digitised copy)

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

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.

Date
1916
Kind
case-file
Source
Internet Archive (digitised copy)
Retrieved
2026-10-12
Rights
Published by the Post Office Department, Office of the Chief Inspector, and printed by the Government Printing Office in 1916. A United States government work, public domain in the United States under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The Internet Archive record reads "Not in copyright. The Library knows of no copyright restrictions on this item."

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, St. Louis, Chicago and Pittsburgh.

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.

itemPost Office album (1916), volume 2: the Marion, Ohio, black-hand letter conspiracy, sentences of 29 January 1910 at ToledoEntries in the 1916 Post Office album record sentences passed at Toledo on 29 January 1910, from two to ten years, for 'conspiring, with others, to obtain $10,000 by means of black-hand letter mailed at Marion, Ohio, June 7, 1909'.itemPost Office album (1916), volume 2: St. Louis black-hand letter sentences of 3 July 1912Three entries in the 1916 Post Office album record sentences passed at St. Louis on 3 July 1912, of eighteen months, two years and five years at Leavenworth, for mailing black-hand letters at St. Louis in January and February 1912.itemPost Office album (1916), volume 2: Chicago black-hand letter sentences, 1912 to 1915Entries in the 1916 Post Office album record federal sentences at Chicago for mailing black-hand letters: two men in January 1912, one in February 1914, and Paul Mennite and Pietro Mecca on 16 August 1915, each to five years at Leavenworth.itemPost Office album (1916), volume 2: black-hand letters from Wehrum, Pa., sentences of 8 May 1914 at PittsburghThree entries in the 1916 Post Office album record that three men were sentenced at Pittsburgh on 8 May 1914 to five years each in the Eastern Penitentiary at Philadelphia for mailing black-hand letters at Wehrum, Pa., in March 1914.itemPhotographs, Descriptions and Records of Persons Charged with Violation of the Postal Laws, volume 1 (Post Office Department, 1916)Volume 1 of the 1916 Post Office album includes scattered black-hand letter cases, among them a Philadelphia sentence of 1914 in a scheme the entry says targeted wealthy Armenians, showing the term used for mail extortion outside Italian communities.