100 Years Ago, Mayor Had a Ready Trigger Finger

Paul Thompson Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, left, being sworn in. It is not known if he is carrying a concealed gun in this photo.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign for stricter gun regulation might have been, well, gun shy about recruiting one of his predecessors, John Purroy Mitchel.

After all, Mitchel not only packed a pistol himself, he brandished it in front of City Hall when he was fired upon by a crazed 71-year-old man a century ago.

Two months after that incident, as Mitchel was returning to his Riverside Drive home from target practice upstate, his gun dislodged from its holster, struck the sidewalk with a thud and accidentally discharged, wounding one of his shooting partners â€" a prominent real estate developer and former Brooklyn state senator.

Mitchel, who was elected in 1913 at the age of 34, said he had carried a gun since succeeding Mayor William F. Gaynor, who was shot by a disgruntled former city employee in 1910. Gaynor died three years later of a heart attack, still suffering from the lingering effects of the wound.

Carrying concealed weapons without a permit had been banned in 1911 under New York State’s Sullivan Act. Within a few years, about 8,000 New Yorkers had carry permits, including Mitchel, who paid $1 for a permit issued by the Police Department.

The New York Tribune’s front-page coverage of the assassination attempt against Mayor Mitchel. Click to enlarge.

On April 17, 1914, he and several other officials entered a Police Department car in front of City Hall to go to lunch downtown, when a man identified as Michael P. Mahoney, an unemployed Irish immigrant, fired a bullet that missed the mayor, but wounded the city’s corporation counsel in the cheek.

“Mayor Mitchel himself, leaping up in the automobile, drew a revolver,” The New York Times reported. Mahoney was quickly wrestled to the ground by the police commissioner.

What was originally suspected as an anarchist plot turned out to be the act of a former blacksmith and carpenter who was recovering (and suing) after being hit by a falling brick from two floors up.

“The experience of the last administration teaches us that there are always a few crazy people in every community and no one can foretell what they will do,” Mitchel explained.

A 1914 New York Tribune cartoon invoked Mayor Mitchel’s would-be assassin to rail against the ease with which weapons could be carried in New York even under the Sullivan Law. Click to enlarge.

Asked about his actions, Mitchel said, “Certainly I drew a gun, for if there was another shot fired, I intended to be first.”

Mitchel believed his marksmanship had saved his life on an earlier trip to South America after he discovered that some of the porters employed by his party were ex-convicts. He slept with a revolver in his robe and took target practice daily to intimidate them.

In the West Indies, according to an article in The Century Magazine, Mitchel learned a lesson in crowd control during “an adventure with a tribe of aboriginal Indians, hostile to the diamond mines which his firm represented”:

“One day they surrounded him and his guide. The chief’s feathered headdress outlined against a large tree-trunk. Mitchel shot it, scattering feathers and tribe. This was brisker than parley and simpler than diplomacy. Doubtless it was more effective than either with frightened savages. And it showed Mitchel a quick method of handling a crowd.”

Mitchel was a staunch advocate for military preparedness before the United States entered World War I and trained upstate with other prospective officers. According to one account, he shot 24 out of 25 on the rifle range. He also created a civilian defense force whose 22,000 volunteers took revolver training so they could supplement the police force in case of an emergency.

But while he was hailed as a champion of progressive government, his experience with weapons was mixed, as was the experience of his father, James Mitchel.

Michael Miscione, Manhattan’s borough historian, recalled that James Mitchel, a captain in the Confederate army, was wounded four times. “You’d think John would have developed distaste for guns,” Mr. Miscione said.

In June 1914, former State Sen. William H. Reynolds, a developer with interests in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, was shot in the thigh when Mayor Mitchel’s gun fell to the sidewalk, snapping the safety lock and causing it to fire. The bullet exited Reynolds’s finger.

The incident was hushed up and the police learned about it only after it was reported in The Times.

After his defeat for re-election in 1917, Mitchel joined the military as an air cadet.

He died the following July during a training exercise when he fell from a plane flying 500 feet over Louisiana, apparently because he had failed to buckle his seat belt.