Thomas M. McDade notebooks, 1950s-1962
Using These Materials
- Restrictions:
- The collection is open for research.
Summary
- Creator:
- McDade, Thomas M.
- Abstract:
- Titled "American Murders 1675 - 1900 A Bibliography of American Murder Trials and Cases by Thomas M. McDade," these six black three-ring notebooks are a typed working draft of The Annals of Murder: A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on American Murders from Colonial Times to 1900, published in 1961 by the University of Oklahoma Press. The draft contains McDade's manuscript revisions, additions, and notes, as well as a few laid-in library call slips and suggested corrections sent to McDade after the release of the publication.
- Extent:
- 6 volumes
- Language:
- English
- Authors:
- Collection processed and finding aid created by Cheney J. Schopieray, November 2024
Background
- Scope and Content:
-
Titled "American Murders 1675 - 1900 A Bibliography of American Murder Trials and Cases by Thomas M. McDade," these six black three-ring notebooks are a typed working draft of The Annals of Murder: A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on American Murders from Colonial Times to 1900, published in 1961 by the University of Oklahoma Press. The draft contains McDade's manuscript revisions, additions, and notes, as well as a few laid-in library call slips and suggested corrections sent to McDade after the release of the publication. Each volume bears one or more ownership stamps: "Thomas M. McDade / 83 Purchase Street / Purchase, New York" and/or "Thomas M. McDade / Scotland Yard / Purchase, New York."
While the notebooks are undated, they are all the same size and form; one has "Handbook for Salesmen of General Foods Sales Co., Inc." gold-colored text on the cover. Thoms M. McDade began working for the company in 1946 and moved to Purchase, New York, in 1956. He received funding from the University of Oklahoma Press for the project through the Ford Foundation in the 1950s.
The working draft is arranged alphabetically by the name of the perpetrator/s of a capital crime, or victim/s name if the perpetrator's name was unknown—the same arrangement as the published bibliography. Most of the sheets in the notebooks contain a description of a crime, bibliographical entry, and/or sources or locations where copies of the book/pamphlet/broadside/etc. could be found.
Laid in and stapled in items include communications or notes that postdate the 1961 publication of the volume. One, for example, is a May 31, 1961, postcard sent to McDade giving a collation of John T. James' The Benders in Kansas (1913). Another example is a 1962 postcard from the New York Historical Society offering a correction to bibliographic entries 819 and 820, stating that they should both read the "life of Miss Ellen" and not "life of Miss Helen."
Other materials laid into the volumes include bookplates of the Law Library at the University of Missouri, filled-out library call slips, notes of sermons looked at by McDade at the American Antiquarian Society, and more.
- Biographical / Historical:
-
The following are biographical notes on Thomas Mario McDade (1907-1996) are drawn largely from Jennifer L. Behrens' biography and bibliography of his writings: "Beyond the Annals of Murder: The Life and Works of Thomas M. McDade" in Law Library Journal 111, no. 3 (2019): 281-306.
- 1907 July 2: Born.
- Childhood spent in Brooklyn, New York; graduated from the City College of New York with a degree in accounting.
- 1931: Graduated from St. John's College School of Law.
- 1933: Admitted to practice law in New York.
- 1934: Secured position as special agent with J. Edgar Hoover's Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
- 1938: Concluded service with the FBI.
- 1938-1942: Went to work as a lawyer for Bigham, Englar, Jones and Houston.
- 1940 March 16: Married Beatrice Marion Clifford (1910-2004).
- 1941: Birth of son Jared C. McDade.
- 1942-1945: Served in the U.S. Army during World War II in the Control Division in Washington, D.C., under Gen. Brehon Somervell, and in the Southwest Pacific Theater.
- 1946: Birth of daughter Innes Fergus McDade.
- 1946: Began work as an accounting manager for the General Foods Corporation, rising to the position of Controller for the organization in 1953.
- Between 1949 and 1988, Thomas M. McDade contributed fiction, non-fiction, and bibliographical writing to a variety of mystery, detective, true crime, book collection, history, and other publications. His first work in this period was "Let Me Help You with Your Murders," printed in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (September 1949). McDade's writing appeared in New Colophon: A Book-Collector's Miscellany, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, American Book Collector, Baker Street Journal, Minnesota History, New York Historical Society Quarterly, Westchester Historian, New York Folklore, Armchair Detective, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and a number of edited books.
- 1956: The McDade family moved into a home in Purchase, New York, which became known in (and outside) the community as "Scotland Yard."
- 1961: Publication of Thomas M. McDade's bibliography The Annals of Murder: A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on American Murders from Colonial Times to 1900 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961).
- 1972: Retired from General Foods Corporation.
- 1992: Moved from Purchase, New York, to Southbury, Connecticut.
- 1996 March 2: Died at the age of 88.
- Acquisition Information:
- 2024. M-8335 .
- Arrangement:
-
The collection is in alphabetical order, as arranged by Thomas M. McDade.
- Rules or Conventions:
- Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS)
Related
- Additional Descriptive Data:
-
Related Materials
The William L. Clements Library's James V. Medler Crime Collection consists of more than 900 pamphlets, books, broadsides, and manuscripts, collected over a period of 30 years by James Vincent Medler of Brooklyn, New York. [Please search the Library catalog for "James V. Medler Crime Collection."] James V. Medler, retired from the printing and lithography trade, had long been fascinated with crime literature, particularly coverage of actual events, and had himself published some examples of the genre under a pseudonym in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Establishing close contacts with a few dealers, he had carefully and quietly built a magnificent collection of American crime literature dating from the mid-eighteenth century up to the early 1900s. The Clements Library has continued to acquire materials to add to the Medler collection. Thomas M. McDade's The Annals of Murder provides descriptions of many of these items. The catalog records for the printed works in the Medler collection include McDade numbers, while variants and titles not represented in McDade are identifiable by the phrase "Not in McDade".
McDade, Thomas M. The Annals of Murder: A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on American Murders from Colonial Times to 1900. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961. The Clements Library holds multiple copies of this title, including one frequently annotated by catalogers in the library's Book Division. The catalog record for the title is located here: The Annals of Murder.
Bibliography
Behnrens, Jennifer L. "Beyond the Annals of Murder: The Life and Works of Thomas M. McDade" in Law Library Journal 111, no. 3 (2019): 281-306.
"General Foods Picks M'Dade As Controller," in The Daily Item (Port Chester, N.Y., July 29, 1953): 2.
"Personals and Social Notes," in The Daily Item (Port Chester, N.Y., November 1, 1946): 12.
Smith, Patterson. "Thomas McDade and The Annals of Murder" in AB Bookman's Weekly (Clifton, N.J.: AB Bookman Publications): 1613-1623.
"Thomas M. McDade: former FBI agent," in Mount Vernon Argus (White Plains, N.Y.): 6.
Thomas Mario McDade. U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Subjects
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Contents
Using These Materials
- RESTRICTIONS:
-
The collection is open for research.
- USE & PERMISSIONS:
-
Copyright status is unknown
- PREFERRED CITATION:
-
Thomas M. McDade Notebooks, William L. Clements Library, The University of Michigan