Wall Street Bombing

At noon on September 16, 1920, when clerks, receptionists, and brokers were heading for lunch, a horse-drawn cart exploded in front of the offices of J.P. Morgan & Co. at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in downtown New York City. Thirty people were killed instantly, more than 300 were injured, and several later died from their injuries. The noise was heard throughout lower Manhattan and across the East River in Brooklyn. The smoke-filled streets were covered with a layer of shattered glass, debris from the damaged buildings, and bodies; the chief clerk of J.P. Morgan, William Joyce, who had been seated near the front window, was decapitated. Junius Morgan, son of J. P. Morgan Jr., was wounded. The Stock Exchange across Broad Street was closed immediately.

The police and soldiers called in from Governors Island helped the injured, guarded the scene, and searched for evidence. The only evidence found, however, was two charred horse hooves and fragments of sash weights. The investigation ultimately confirmed that a bomb made with TNT and reinforced with sash weights caused the carnage.

Because nobody claimed responsibility for the bombing, the New York Police Department considered a number of possible motives. The assassination of J.P. Morgan Jr. was dismissed as a motive because he was in Europe. Another possibility was an attempt to rob the adjacent Subtreasury Building, where $900 million in gold bars was being moved that day. The bombing was ultimately decided to be an act of terrorism performed by “Reds”—anarchists and communist sympathizers—who wanted to shatter the symbols of American capitalism. A stack of anarchist flyers found in a mailbox a block away from Wall Street supported this theory. Suspicion fell on political radicals, communists, and anarchists of foreign origin—particularly Italians, Russians, and Jews. Although detectives visited every sash-weight manufacturer and dealer in America, as well as 500 stables in every town along the Atlantic coast, they had no success in finding the perpetrators.

Edwin P. Fischer, a lawyer, champion tennis player, and frequent inpatient in mental hospitals, was a suspect. He had predicted an explosion on Wall Street in mid-September in correspondence with friends and in conversations with strangers. On September 16, however, he was in Canada, and his premonition was interpreted by the authorities as the work of a lunatic's mind. Another strong suspect was an Italian, Pietro Angelo, who was connected to the Gimbel Brothers bomb plot of April 1919. Pietro produced an alibi, but he was deported to Italy nonetheless. The Secret Service and the FBI interrogated thousands of people and [Page 623]even arrested many radicals, but no one was charged with the crime, and the investigation was dropped in 1940. No memorial exists to commemorate the event, and Morgan has never repaired the damaged building's facade.