Murder Scrapbooks

About Sam Howe

Sam Howe was born in Shelbyville, Ohio on October 16, 1839. In his youth, he worked as a wheelwright before enlisting in the army and eventually came to Colorado. Here, he began to establish a life for himself; he moved to Denver and joined the city marshals, which would later become the Denver Police Department.

Sam dedicated himself completely to his work with the Denver police. Seemingly drawn more toward solving mysteries than enforcing the law, Sam found his place on the force as part of the detectives' department. For almost all of his 47 years of service, Sam combed through up to five newspapers a day and clipped every crime-related article he could find. These clippings would find their way into his growing collection of scrapbooks and each given a unique stamp. This method of organization became the first attempt at record-keeping in the early days of the Denver police department and proved to be invaluably useful. His work was so useful, in fact, that lawmen from neighboring states would often request access to them in order to track down information about out-of-state criminals who may have fled to Colorado.

Sam kept up his record-keeping and served the Denver police loyally until his retirement in 1921 at the age of eighty-one. He left behind a method of record-keeping that was used and copied by Denver lawmen for years.

His scrapbooks do not only capture a specific time in Colorado history; there are glimpses of the man himself within their pages. Scribbled notes in the margins, personal photographs, and his manner of writing in the murder book all give readers an impression of who Sam Howe was and how his mind worked. Photographs of his wife and the beloved people in his life are endearing touches to the otherwise harrowing stories contained in his books. It was also clear that he was very fond of Roxy, the detective department's mascot and resident cat. Sam included every article written about Roxy in his scrapbooks, many of which tell the story of the Detective Chief's bond with the feline.

History Colorado Collection, MSS.199.42.51

About the Collection

2 murder books

The scrapbooks compiled by Sam Howe use a system of numbered stamps assigned to each individual article. In general, the stamps increase sequentially with each book. There are a few exceptions to this, the first murder book and some of the later article books being some examples. Murder Book 1 organizes its entries by case number, but does sometimes include related article stamps to allow readers to cross-reference the cases with the article books.

As far as utilization goes, someone could look up a name or type of crime in an index and be able to find all of the corresponding stamps related to that entry. They could then cross-reference the stamps with the scrapbooks and find newspaper clippings related to the name or crime listed in the index. Fast forwarding to the modern day, researchers may utilize the ledgers in the same way, but with the convenience of the ledgers being digitized and searchable via volunteer transcriptions and OCR technology. Those interested in specific people, events, crimes, or mysteries that occurred in Colorado during this time may very well find what they're looking for in the Sam Howe collection. Additionally, many major global events that made it to the papers are included in Sam's ledgers, such as the sinking of the Titanic and the trial of H.H. Holmes.

Collectively, the scrapbooks document a time of tremendous growth in the region. Subjects in the collection include the development of race as a concept, socio-economic status and class, sexuality, anti-immigration attitudes, murder patterns, crime trends, and activities blamed for "deteriorating society’s morals" such as gambling, liquor, and prostitution. The collection is unique in that the content includes personal information about the individuals listed, while also offering insight into the development of modern policing from a “keeping the peace” mentality to methodological crime fighting. Howe’s clippings detail everything from the subjects major to petty crimes while documenting the race, age, class, and gender of reported criminals and victims.

History Colorado Collection, MSS.199.27

About the Project

This project mainly includes three types of scrapbooks--index books of names and numbers, newspaper article books with numbers, and murder books with numbers and other case information such as photos. Please visit the above links to work on the other transcription projects.

The indexes will need to be manually transcribed in their entirety, as they are hand-written. The article books will be largely transcribed via OCR, but the stamp numbers need to be manually transcribed as the OCR may not be able to accurately read them. Ensuring that the stamps are accurately captured will help uncover the connections between the ledgers and allow them to be used in the way they were intended.

History Colorado Collection, MSS.199.6.23