Just 12 hours after Dillinger’s death on July 22, 1934, Harold May of the Reliance Dental Manufacturing Co. created this death mask of Dillinger’s face at the Cook County Morgue in Chicago to demonstrate the quality of the company’s plaster. People sought to remember the deceased in many ways, but death masks were uncommon at this point in history.
Although the creation of a death mask seems bizarre, the FBI case files describe an even stranger scene at the morgue: “Every politician and his friend in Chicago crowded into the morgue for the morbid purpose of viewing Dillinger’s remains....[G]reat confusion existed at the morgue [for] several days, inasmuch as there were thousands of people who attempted to gain admission to view Dillinger’s body.”