Sep 24, 2020 - Sale 2546

Sale 2546 - Lot 82

Price Realized: $ 1,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(CRIME.) Early local wanted poster for Charles 'Pretty Boy' Floyd. Illustrated poster, 7 1/2 inches square, on glossy stock, signed in type by Bruce C. Pratt; horizontal mailing fold, contemporary ink annotations, laid down on slightly larger blank police intake card, with 3 related newspaper clippings laid down on verso. [Bowling Green, OH?], late 1931
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Additional Details

This poster was printed on glossy magazine stock, but appears to be blank on verso. Its main text is in the form of a $1000 reward notice issued by Bruce C. Pratt as sheriff of Wood County, OH. Floyd had fatally wounded a police officer in Wood County on 16 April 1931. The photograph and fingerprints were obtained from a police circular issued in neighboring Toledo, OH, where Floyd had been arrested on 20 May 1930. This copy was received by an unknown police department, where it was mounted on a standard blank intake card. On verso, three clippings on Floyd were later added in 1932 and upon his death in 1934. 3 notations were added in black ink to the poster: the fingerprint codes at the upper right, a note reading "over" directing us to the clippings, and finally a note closing the case: "Shot and killed at East Liverpool, Ohio Oct. 22, 1934."
The Floyd case was a national obsession in the early 1930s, and his 1933 F.B.I. poster is sometimes seen on the market. However, we have traced no other examples of this earlier local reward poster. We do know it was reproduced in the Oklahoma News on 22 December 1931, which makes sense as Floyd robbed several Oklahoma banks in late 1931. Sheriff Pratt returned to Oklahoma City to distribute more posters in May 1932. A very similar poster (from a new setting of type) was published in the June 1932 Finger Print Magazine, page 19, again by Sheriff Wood. After this point, Floyd's crimes became so numerous that presumably the Wood County sheriff's office deferred to the feds and let J. Edgar Hoover take control of the investigation.