"Dominic Donelli, known as B.4104"

I spent some hours at the city archives, poring through old court records.

Dominic Donelli (born c. 1873) was an Italian immigrant, living in Philadelphia, speaking no English. He had a wife and five children and worked when he could as a laborer. He is one of my dead anarchists, and he in particular never stops bringing me new surprises. I got to know him better today.

One of the major stories of early Philadelphia anarchists is the "Broad Street Riot" of February 20, 1908. At the height of a depression, anarchist leaders held a meeting for unemployed men, with speakers addressing the crowd in several languages. Mostly Italians came, but the intended speaker for that language could not appear --another story thread starting there --and an out-of-town socialist took his place.

In the middle of a speech in English, someone waved a red flag with black pom-poms along its edge and yelled (in Italian), Let's march to City Hall and demand jobs! The organizers were taken off guard and tried to get everyone to stay put, since no such plan had been discussed by them. The city government simply had nothing to do with it, but hundreds of unhappy men filed out and went to Broad Street, then turned North. At Locust Street they were met by a squad of police on foot, horseback, and motorized bikes who beat the daylights out of scores of men and arrested twenty.

Yet another part of the story began a day later when two of the anarchist leaders who spoke at the meeting, Voltairine de Cleyre and Chaim Weinberg, were charged with incitement to riot. They were released on bail and acquitted four months later.

Half of those arrested at the police riot were Italian, the rest being of various other European extractions. The proceedings lasted about a week, and two men were acquitted, fourteen were fined $300 each, but four Italians were sent to prison. Of those last four, three were given sentences of 12, 18, and 24 months in the city jail.

That leaves Dominic Donelli. He was the only Broad Street arrestee who actually was an anarchist and the only one arrested while carrying a gun. He was charged with attempting to kill three different policemen (one by shooting at him) and "rescuing" another prisoner from police custody. Convicted on all counts, Dominic was sentenced to five years, which meant serving time at the state penitentiary.

What I discovered today is that after about a year in the prison, Dominic tried to kill himself and another inmate. He was put under close observation apart from the prison population and then was judged by the court to be insane. He was committed to the state asylum at suburban Norristown where he stayed for two more years. Finally in October 1911, Donelli was declared sane and released from custody, his sentence being finished by way of the standard commutation of the time. A well-known activist lawyer named Francis Fisher Kane was somehow involved, but I don't yet know where that will lead.

Other surprises from "Comrade Dominic" that I've been nursing for years are A) that two years before the riot on Broad Street, he was prevented in the nick of time by another anarchist from stabbing a police captain in the back when a meeting was being suppressed, and B) that ten years after the riot, during a bombing campaign by very secretive, revolutionary Italian anarchists, the home of Judge Robert Von Moschzisker --who sentenced Dominic but was not known to be unusually harsh or unfair --was targeted with a bomb on the front steps (without casualties).

All of these events took place in the context of the very widespread fear of Italians --especially Italian anarchists --in the United States, and that makes another set of story threads!

What did Francis Fisher Kane do for Dominic Donelli? Where did Donelli go after his release? Was he connected to the bombings of 1918-1919? What became of his wife and kids? So many dead anarchists, so little time.