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Lot 365

Sale 945 - Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts, Including Americana
Lots 1-307
Nov 9, 2021 4:00AM CT
Lots 308-687
Nov 10, 2021 4:00AM CT
Live / Chicago
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Estimate
$800 - 1,200
Price Realized
$2,000
Sold prices are inclusive of Buyer’s Premium

Lot Description

[CRIME]. The Confession & Dying Words of Samuel Frost, Who is to be Executed this Day, October 31, 1793, for the Horrid Crime of Murder. Worcester, MA: [Isaiah Thomas] Mr. Thomas's Printingoffice [sic], [1793].


Broadside (visible area 458 x 388 mm). Woodcut of a public hanging top left, text printed in four columns within black borders. (Some small losses affecting borders or letters repaired verso along old folds, some minor staining.) Matted and framed (unexamined out of frame). 

RARE BROADSIDE PRINTED BY ISAIAH THOMAS

In Samuel Frost's confession, he readily admits to killing his father (a crime for which he was acquitted), and admits to killing Captain Allen (the crime for which he will be executed).  About his early life, he says: "My mother is dead; I always regarded her, and ever thought my father had no affection for her, and that he used her ill; this induced me to kill him, which deed I executed on the 23d of September, 1783;...My mother died when I was about fourteen years old, and I always supposed her death was occasioned by the bad treatment she received from my father." The broadside also includes others' accounts of Frost. 

Evans records three versions of this rare broadside, two of wihch include a poem after Frost's life story (not present in this issue). Evans 22521; Sabin 105351.


From the Private Collection of Richard Cady

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