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1896: Bartholomew “Bat” Shea, political machine ballot-stuffer
ExecutedToday.com ^ | February 11, 2014 | Headsman

Posted on 02/10/2021 8:56:53 PM PST by CheshireTheCat

On this date in 1896, during a driving Adirondack snowstorm, Bartholomew “Bat” Shea was electrocuted at New York’s Clinton Prison for a political murder two years prior.

This was the great boom time for machine politics, corrupt political patronage networks doling “spoils” like jobs and benefits to members who in turn maintained a party’s stranglehold on an electorate. These flourished in an industrializing America’s burgeoning cities; Troy, N.Y., at 60,000-plus in the 1890s (it has fewer than that today), was one of upstate New York’s prime industrial centers, and home to a municipal machine rooted in Irish Catholic immigrants and bossed by Democratic U.S. Senator Edward Murphy.

Machine politics were a major bone of contention in the Progressive Era, and certainly in the Troy elections of 1894. The ballot that year would decide Troy’s mayor, and as per usual the Murphy machine meant to stuff the box for its handpicked candidate.

On March 6, 1894, a group of Murphy “repeaters” (so called for their intent to vote repeatedly) including “Bat” Shea and (he’ll figure momentarily) John McGough approached a Thirteenth Ward polling place.

Republican poll watchers Robert and William Ross awaited them — armed, and expecting trouble. They had sparred with the Murphy machine at the ward caucus a few days previous.

“In a twinkling,” went a press report, “clubs and revolvers were flourished. Many shots were fired and when the fight closed it was found that Robert Ross had been fatally shot, that his brother, William, received a bullet in the neck and that Shea and McGough, who fled from the scene, had each been slightly wounded.”

This bloodshed, profaning as it seemed a sacred pillar of the polis, aroused a passionate if opportunistic response from Republicans, anti-machine reformers, and Troy’s Protestants....

(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: ballotstuffer; politicalmachine

1 posted on 02/10/2021 8:56:53 PM PST by CheshireTheCat
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To: CheshireTheCat
"Clinton Prison"

How fitting

2 posted on 02/10/2021 9:01:27 PM PST by Fido969 (,i.)
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To: CheshireTheCat

They used to kill people for election fraud?


3 posted on 02/10/2021 11:24:03 PM PST by Mr. Blond
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To: CheshireTheCat; Fido969

Fitting choice for today. Clinton prison is interesting detail.


4 posted on 02/10/2021 11:35:10 PM PST by cyn (an appeal to Heaven)
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