Within these walls of the Bucks County Prison, just inside the Main Gate, lived the sheriffs of Bucks County who maintained order and supervised punishment including death. On July 19, 1914 James Linzi was the last of two men hanged here and in Bucks County. Sheriff Charles M. Meredith, a Quaker opposed to capital punishment, was praised in newspaper accounts for efficiency though he turned his back as his deputy sprung the trap. Linzi had confessed to murdering his pregnant wife, was convicted by a jury and sentenced to death by Judge Wm. Ryan in spite of the efforts to spare his life of his court appointed lawyers, Webster Grim and his assistant, Arthur M. Eastburn, who both attended the hanging. Sheriff Meredith began a newspaper dynasty and the lawyers' law firms, two oldest in the county, both legal dynasties, continue. The sheriff's publisher son, Charles M. Meredith, Jr., became president of the Bucks County Historical Society and Mercer Museum where the gallows may be seen today across the street.
This tablet is a 2017 gift of Charles M. Meredith III, grandson of the Sheriff, newspaperman and former County Commissioner and of his friends J. Lawrence Grim, Jr. and son Gregory E. Grim, grand & great-grand nephews and law firm members of the lawyer Webster Grim and a former trustee & a trustee of the James A. Michener
Art Museum.
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