Plot 98: John H. Stillman

John H. Stillman was born on May 10, 1874 in Boston, Massachusetts to Charles F. Tillman, a marketman from Washington, D.C., and Mary E. Tillman. Mr. Stillman had wool black hair and dark black eyes, was just shy of 5’7”, and was a Protestant. By 1880, his mother had died, and he and his father were living in a boarding house in Cambridge. He worked as a laborer before his incarceration at the Massachusetts Reformatory on September 19, 1891, and again on July 13, 1899.

When committed to the Reformatory for the first time, the Commissar’s Office wrote that “he probably did not commit the crime [for which he was incarcerated], but said so in order to be sent away. Nothing was found to connect him with the crime but his own statement.” He died there of tuberculosis at 10:45 P.M. on June 10, 1900. He was 25 years old.