Harold A. Littledale

Littledale reported "medieval" conditions with some prisoners chained to walls in "dungeons" and given bread and water twice a day.

He documented illegal overcrowding, abusive work conditions (with legally mandated pay withheld from the prisoners) and poor food.

[3] Within two weeks of Littledale's reports appearing in the press the New Jersey legislature empowered Governor Walter Evans Edge to set up a Prison Inquiry Commission.

It supported all but two of the eleven recommendations made by Littledale in his reports and noted that the prison labor system was an almost complete failure.

At one point, his tank was disabled in action and Littledale remained with it long enough to douse it with gasoline and set it afire to prevent its capture by the Germans.

His exposure of neglect led to a Congressional investigation, during which Littledale was threatened with a summons for contempt of the Senate for refusing to disclose his sources.

In 1927 he managed to secure the first reported interview with Commander James Fitzmaurice who had flown the Bremen to make the first successful east–west transatlantic flight by an airplane.

Littledale beat many other reporters to the story by securing use of the only telegraph line from La Malbaie, near to where Fitzmaurice had landed.

Littledale received spinal injuries that left him a wheelchair user; Eddie Rickenbacker, who later became chairman of the airline, was also among those injured.

The couple had a son, Harold Junior (living in South Harwich, Massachusetts), and two daughters: Irene (Littleton, Colorado) and Rosemary (Norwich, Vermont).