PUBLISHED JUNE 2022
A Shocking True Story of a Sensational 1921 Murder and Trial
The setting is Western Pennsylvania rural communities and mill towns in the early 1900s. The life and times are described through memories and records of the "star" witness to the murder. The courtroom scene and characters are told through actual trial testimony and excerpts from local newspapers.
Tell Me More About the Murder Trial and the Setting
An unexpected conclusion from Frank’s Bear Cave, which featured a 1921 murder trial, is the realization that the United States experienced more changes during 1917-1921 than in any five years since. The introductory chapters describe the early 1900s rural setting, through the experiences of one family. Since all individuals cited are deceased, the content is based on written and verbal memories passed down through the family, verified by public records to the extent possible.
At 1:00 am, April 3, 1921, an intruder in Frank Harvey’s Butler County, Pennsylvania, farmhouse opened a life-changing chapter in his life. The murder he witnessed led to a sensational trial, “The Commonwealth vs. Henry A. Blakeley." The trial and its resultant testimony, motions, and appeals dominated local news from April 1921 through Blakeley’s execution in October 1922.
The setting of the book was a unique period in American history. When the U.S. entered WWI in 1917, our factories had already been producing military equipment since 1914 to supply the Allies. By Armistice Day on November 11, 1918, the war had claimed an estimated 40 million lives. Then, our last pandemic – the Spanish Flu – took upwards of another 50 million lives, reducing the global population by nearly three percent.
On the domestic front, the Eighteenth Amendment ratified in January 1919, made alcohol sales illegal, thus giving rise to moonshine and organized crime. The nineteenth Amendment ratified in August 1920, gave women the right to vote and serve on juries. Automobiles were coming onto the scene in the late teens and early twenties, yet farmers and timbermen were still using centuries-old horse-drawn technology.
With refrigeration not yet commonplace, the expanding population of mill workers who kept the factories humming in our nation’s industrial centers needed fresh farm produce. The virgin forests of the northeastern U.S. were being harvested for the lumber needed for new homes in the cities and mill towns. People coped with the 1918 influenza pandemic and industrial accidents without health insurance or welfare assistance, depending primarily on assistance from their families, friends, churches, and local social institutions.
The introductory chapters describe the early 1900s rural setting, through the experiences of one family. As all of the individuals cited are deceased, this content is based on both written and verbal memories passed down through the family, verified to the extent possible by public records. Excerpts from the complete 1921-22, "Trial Book" of over 1000 pages and newspaper articles tell the story of the murder trial.
The murder trial is told verbatim through selections from the original typewritten trial manuscript. More than seventy witnesses from many walks of life provide us with vivid images of the day and times through their unredacted words, slang, and local expressions. Courtroom decorum of the day included a news report from the failed attempt at retrial regarding interruption by the 1921 World Series.
Witnesses for the prosecution left little doubt that the defendant was profane, mean-spirited, mentally unstable, and guilty of murder. A verdict of first-degree murder was an automatic death sentence in Pennsylvania in 1921. Thus, the defendant’s attorneys pulled out all stops trying to convince the jury and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that the murder was not first-degree.
They failed. It took the jury only four hours to find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the lower court's sentence. Nonetheless, the wide variety of defense witnesses provides a fascinating look into life and times, a century ago The defense attorneys called more than forty witnesses, including the defendant’s children, local drunks, and distinguished physicians, attempting to prove the witness was acting in self-defense and/or was unaware of his actions due to intoxication, insanity, or being in an epileptic coma.
Henry Blakeley met his demise by electric chair on October 2, 1922. His body was unclaimed by the family and Blakeley was interred in the prison cemetery. He left behind photographs that he had taken for his friends and a final letter that prison officials refused to release, “due to its extremely vile language."
About the Author
Glenn Harvey had a long career as his photo would indicate.
His career publishing experience was with technical information. After leaving science teaching for technical writing, he moved into the business side of publishing and association management. This led to becoming a publisher of industry consensus standards, archival engineering and scientific journals, and trade and consumer magazines.
He was enthralled at family gatherings by hearing stories related by his father, aunts, and uncles about the "Blakeley Murder" witnessed by their father. This "mostly non-fiction," historical novel was inspired by locating the original 1921 trial manuscript, his lifelong historical interest, and the similarity between the world's two most recent pandemics - Covid-19 and the century-earlier Spanish Flu.
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