Above, from the August 1912 edition of Cartoons Magazine, are cartoons by Charles Bowers and others — concerning corruption in the New York City Police Department in general, inspired by the case of police officer/criminal/convicted murderer Charles Becker (click on his name, to read about his case).

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read their captions.

The Becker Scandal reached international notoriety. Cartoons involving it stretch across six months of Cartoons Magazine.

I’ve so far rarely mixed the contents of multiple issues into a single posting. That now changes. All five months worth of cartoons covering the 1912 NYPD Scandal, are in this one posting. The impetus for doing this, frankly, is to squeeze what would have been multiple postings, into one, so as to make available space for postings from other source material, especially up through the Presidential Election. However, as this allows for more depth per posting, in addition to opening up space for greater variety of material, I may well continue this practice beyond early November.

Below, from Cartoons Magazine‘s September 1912 issue, the initial public outrage grows even stronger, as the Press — and its cartoonists — take up the call for reform. Cartoonists in the below page include H.T. Webster, W.A. Rogers, and Oscar Cesare.

The above & below pages are also from September 1912. Cartoonists include: (above) “Tad” Dorgan, Rube Goldberg, and Boardman Robinson; (below) Robert Satterfield, Harry J. Westerman, William Charles Morris, Charles Bowers, and J.E. Murphy.

The cartoons above & below are from the October 1912 issue. Above, from the German comic weekly, Berlin Kladderadatsch, showing the international scale that the police scandal had reached. Beneath, cartoons from New York and around the country. Included artists are Charles Bowers (again), and Alfred West Brewerton.

Above, by T.E. Powers, New York City mayor Gaynor Much, on the beat ignoring crime (from October 1912).

Below (November 1912), Chicago joins in with its own police corruption. Cartoons by Luther D. Bradley and John T. McCutcheon.

Becker’s conviction, above (November 1912) and below (December 1912). Cy Hungerford, Spencer, Charles MaCauley, and Oscar Cesare, above. Cesare again, and Robert Minor, Jr., below.

Finally, Cartoons Magazine was still hilighting Backer’s conviction in its January 1913 issue, in the pages below.

Doug Wheeler

ElectionComics CartoonsMagazine191210 James E. Murphy