Death on a Silver Platter

Abstract

Around six o’clock on the evening of September 22, 1943, John F. Noxon Jr., a prominent attorney in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and a “crippled” polio survivor, telephoned his family’s pediatrician to come at once. His six-month-old son, Lawrence, who had Down syndrome, had apparently entangled himself in wires and had received a terrible electrical shock. When the doctor arrived, he found the dead “mongoloid” baby dressed in a wet diaper, lying on a silver platter. A few days later authorities arrested “crippled” Noxon for the murder of “mongoloid” Lawrence. For the next five years, the citizens of Massachusetts and the nation followed in their newspapers the trials, verdict, death sentence, appeals, pardon, and parole of this “mercy killing.” The Noxon murder trials of 1944 highlighted the interconnections of disabilities, masculinity, and “mercy killing” in World War II North America.