![[BROADSIDE]. The Life, Last Words, and Dying Speech of Cassumo Garcelli, Who was this Day...executed, for the willful, cruel and inhuman Murder of Mr. John Johnson...Translated by an adept in the Italian language. [Boston:] Printed and sold at the Printing-Office in Marlborough-Street [1783].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2004/NYR/2004_NYR_01450_0347_000(094810).jpg?w=1)
PROPERTY OF NATICK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
[BROADSIDE]. The Life, Last Words, and Dying Speech of Cassumo Garcelli, Who was this Day...executed, for the willful, cruel and inhuman Murder of Mr. John Johnson...Translated by an adept in the Italian language. [Boston:] Printed and sold at the Printing-Office in Marlborough-Street [1783].
Details
[BROADSIDE]. The Life, Last Words, and Dying Speech of Cassumo Garcelli, Who was this Day...executed, for the willful, cruel and inhuman Murder of Mr. John Johnson...Translated by an adept in the Italian language. [Boston:] Printed and sold at the Printing-Office in Marlborough-Street [1783].
Folio broadside, 17 x 13 3/8 in., edges uncut, a large woodcut (3 7/8 x 7 in.) at top depicting an execution, text printed in two columns, black-bordered (discreet stamp at top left corner, scattered stains, mainly to margins, a few tears and small losses at folds). VERY RARE: not in Evans or Shipton & Mooney; Bristol 5898 lists an imperfect copy at AAS; not in McDade.
MURDER MOST FOUL! Garcelli, born in Leghorn, Italy, relates that his parents "tried to check the natural viciousness of my nature," but he unwisely kept company with "gambling, lewd, ill-moral'd Fellows." He went to sea and later in Puerto Rico "committed the horrid crime of Murder, by stabbing a man." He escaped to Philadelphia with another ruffian named Prami. After Prami killed a boat captain in an ill-timed mutiny, the two thugs fled to Boston, where on 6 November, they were carousing together at a public-house. Prami "laid hold of a young Woman which occasion'd her to cry 'Murder.'" Johnson and others came to her assistance; in the affray he "received three stabs from me, and two from Prami." "I must confess I am willing to die," Garcelli concludes.
Folio broadside, 17 x 13 3/8 in., edges uncut, a large woodcut (3 7/8 x 7 in.) at top depicting an execution, text printed in two columns, black-bordered (discreet stamp at top left corner, scattered stains, mainly to margins, a few tears and small losses at folds). VERY RARE: not in Evans or Shipton & Mooney; Bristol 5898 lists an imperfect copy at AAS; not in McDade.
MURDER MOST FOUL! Garcelli, born in Leghorn, Italy, relates that his parents "tried to check the natural viciousness of my nature," but he unwisely kept company with "gambling, lewd, ill-moral'd Fellows." He went to sea and later in Puerto Rico "committed the horrid crime of Murder, by stabbing a man." He escaped to Philadelphia with another ruffian named Prami. After Prami killed a boat captain in an ill-timed mutiny, the two thugs fled to Boston, where on 6 November, they were carousing together at a public-house. Prami "laid hold of a young Woman which occasion'd her to cry 'Murder.'" Johnson and others came to her assistance; in the affray he "received three stabs from me, and two from Prami." "I must confess I am willing to die," Garcelli concludes.