"Was He a Man or a Monster?" is an exhibition by the New York State Historical Association and the Cooperstown Graduate Program, about the merchandising and sensationalizing of murder and violence in the nineteenth century.
The plate for the image above reads:
Confessions and execution of the pirates Gibbs & Wansley: on Ellis' Iland in the harbour of New-York on 22d April 1831, under the direction of Thos. Morris, Esq. U. States Marshal. An interesting account of their lives will be found within, but the individual crime which brought them to the gallows was the murder of the captain and mate of the brig Vineyard at sea bound from New Orleans to New-York