[CRIME & PUNISHMENT]. Stop the Thief! $50 Reward! Anderson, SC: N.p., [spring 1868].

8 7/8 x 12 1/8 in. letterpress broadside (offsetting, uneven edges with small chips); framed to 13 1/2 x 17 1/2 in. (not examined out of frame).

A reward broadside for a mixed race man named Bob Thompson who escaped "by jumping from the train between Alston and Littleton, S.C." and is described as a "mulatto, about 25 years old...blind in one eye...[and] considerably marked by small pox." The notice continues with Thompson's alleged crimes as a "notorious burglar and horse thief." Several South Carolina newspapers ran stories with similar copy to this broadside in February 1868, though most offer $40 as a reward. The increased bounty here, suggests a slightly later date in 1868, as he was apprehended in the spring of 1868, the Charleston Daily News reports on 1 June 1868: "The notorious Bob Thompson, at Anderson, indicted for horse stealing and larceny...and was sentenced to ten years and six months at hard labor in the penitentiary. One thief less at large." Thompson was released, however, in 1872 only four years into his sentence, upon receiving a pardon. It is revealed, with great astonishment by the newspapers, that the pardon was forged: "We are informed by some of the parties whose names were attached, that all the signatures to the petition of the pardon of Bob Thompson were forged. The signatures embraced nearly all the names of the most prominent merchants and citizens of Anderson County, and many were spelled wrong. Thompson has the reputation in Anderson, and elsewhere, of being a very dangerous horse thief as well as one of large experience in that line of rascality." (Charleston Daily Courier, 28 May 1872).

Property from the James Milgram, M.D., Collection of Broadsides, Ephemeral Americana, and Historical Documents