# Post Office album (1916), volume 2: Chicago black-hand letter sentences, 1912 to 1915

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/podept-1916-chicago-1912-1915/

Entries 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.

Entries in volume 2 of the Post Office Department's 1916 album (printed pages about 309, 346-347 and 410-411) record federal sentences for mailing black-hand letters at Chicago. Two men were sentenced on 12 January 1912 to five years at Leavenworth for letters sent in November and December 1911. One man was sentenced on 28 February 1914 to five years at hard labour in the "Illinois State penitentiary at Joliet" and a $1,000 fine for letters mailed in 1913; the entry does not explain the state prison. Paul Mennite and Pietro Mecca were each sentenced on 16 August 1915 to five years at Leavenworth for letters mailed in April and May 1915 (History file 28050).

The Mennite and Mecca entries correspond to the National Archives case file ([NAID 49550600](/items/nara-49550600-us-v-mecca-mennite-1915/)). The entries list "Blackhand Society" and "Blackhand" as aliases for them; those are the album's entries and are not treated here as names the men used.

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.

## Sources

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