Vintage Composite Photograph Commemorating the Chicago Haymarket Riot

N.p.: s.i., N.d. [ca 1893]. Original silver-gelatin photographic print, 6-1/2" x 8-1/4", on gray board mount, 10" x 12". Minor rubbing to mount at extremities and verso; print clear and unfaded, Very Good or better. Pencil captions on verso, identifying the five subjects in the photograph.

An unusual composite photograph, possibly created to commemorate the unveiling of Albert Weinhart's monument to the Haymarket Martyrs in Forest Home Cemetery, finished in 1893. The image pairs a photograph of the monument with an arrangement of portrait vignettes of the five Chicago anarchists: Louis Lingg, Albert Parsons, George Engel, August Spies, and Adolph Fischer, who were all convicted and condemned to death (Lingg committed suicide in his cell prior to his execution) on charges of detonating a bomb in Chicago's Haymarket Square in May of 1886. Despite scant evidence and many irregularities in the trial, the death sentences were carried out, making martyrs of the five condemned men and marking November 11, 1887 forever as a day of solemn remembrance in the American labor movement.

Apparently rare; we can trace no examples of this image at auction or in commerce, though, with trimmed vestiges of other prints visible at its margins, the photograph has the appearance of being a commercially-produced item, perhaps hastily created.