H H HOLMES and Murder at Castle Holmes

(From the Odgen Standard – July 4, 1914)
Memory of Trap Doors, Secret Elevators and Stove, Wherein Bodies of Women Were Burned, Haunted Man for Nineteen Years.
A few weeks ago word was sent over the telegraphic wires that Patrick Quinlan had killed himself in his home at Portland, Mich. The telegram did not cause much of a stir. Quinlan’s name had been forgotten. A new generation is reading the newspapers, which nineteen years ago carried stories day after day for months about the remarkable murder system of H .H. Holmes, with whose name the name of Quinlan was linked.

Holmes Murder Castle

Quinlan proved his innocence. He showed that he was only an employee of H.H. Holmes, arch-murderer. He proved that he was Holmes’ janitor and caretaker of the Holmes Castle, 701 63rd St., Chicago, and nothing more. He admitted he had helped construct some of the secret trapdoors and had helped line some of the rooms with asbestos, which it is believed aided in deadening the sound of dying men, but Quinlan new nothing of the purpose of the traps he helped build, and had no part in the machinations of his chief.
Yet when the body of Quinlan was found lying in his room where he had taken poison, a note was found beside his body. The note said:
“I could not sleep.”
For nineteen years Quinlan could not sleep. At night he would wake with a start, and find himself covered with sweat, his friends say. He would call for help and when a light would be brought to his room or when the electric switch would be turned on he would recount how he was attacked while half asleep by strange hallucinations.
For nineteen years this man had been unable to sleep peacefully because of the awful experiences he endured during his employment by Holmes and during the period immediately after.
Holmes Castle was a three-story flat, looking more like an ordinary residence than like a castle. In that place it is believed four women, at least, were slain. It was the retreat of the man who also had killed men, women and children in Philadelphia, Toronto and Indianapolis.
The castle was built admirably for a murder shop. A dumbwaiter ran from the third floor to the basement and there were no connections with the dumbwaiter on the intervening floors. The conveyance was big enough to admit of a man riding upon it. On the top floor in one of the rooms was a gigantic stove. It was eight feet high and three feet in diameter. It was an ideal stove for the burning of a human body. A person could be thrown into the stove bodily and could be burned to nothing.
In the basement were quicklime vats. Bodies could be thrown in quicklime and consumed. The flagging in the basement could be torn up and bodies could be buried beneath the flags.
The trouble with the average slayer is that he does not know what to do with the body of his victim.
Finding of Body Starts Search
The finding of the body of the victim always starts the search for the slayer. If a man could dispose of the body he could slay on a wholesale plan and avoid detection. Holmes is believed to have built the castle with a view of hiding bodies of those he slew. He directed the work on the building. Quinlan was only an ordinary workman who did what he was told unhesitatingly. Quinlan never questioned the authority of the slayer. He never asked who the women were Holmes had visiting him. He never asked where they went when they disappeared. He was an ideal servant. Born in a small Michigan community, he went to Chicago to make his fortune. Chicago was about to have a world’s fair in commemoration of the discovery of America.
It was a good town to go to, thought Quinlan. An honest Irish young man, his only thought of making a living was by honest hard work. That is why he went to work for Holmes and worked so willingly and so faithfully. The other day when he drank the fatal potion he was middle-aged and broken in health. He looked as though he had been carried to the point of death by the ghosts of the slain women of the castle he helped to build.
It is said by some of his best friends that he often reproached himself for his part in the affair. He blamed himself for not suspecting Holmes and turning him up to the police. Yet he could not be blamed. Everything in Holmes Castle seemed to be right. There was no sign of murder there. Everything was quiet and still. The rooms were lined with asbestos and the dying victims never made a sound that reached the outside world. There at night in the dark house they met their death.
Some of them were asphyxiated, it is believed. Others were stabbed. Others were shot, according to the opinions of investigators. No one knows. Holmes knew and the victims perhaps could tell harrowing tales if they could talk, but they are gone and Holmes has been hung for his crimes, so in this world no one ever will know.
How many crimes Holmes devised no one can tell. The first thing to attract the attention of the world was the sudden, horrible death of B. D. Pietzel, a chemist, in Philadelphia. He died in such a manner that it seemed he had been making chemical experiments and had met with an accident when his chemicals exploded. Holmes, whose right name was Herman W. Mudgett, telegraphed to St. Louis to the home of Mrs. Pietzel and told her to come to Philadelphia and identify the body.
It is alleged that Holmes met Mrs. Pietzel and informed her the body was not that of her husband but that her husband had his life insured for $10,000.
“He’s safe in Canada,” Holmes told Mrs. Pietzel. “He had me frame up his body. It is so badly mangled by the explosion that no one can ever recognize it. You identify it and we’ll get the insurance. Your husband said for me to give you half and bring the other half to him.”
Mrs. Pietzel later confessed that she identified the body without believing it was that of her husband. She thought it was a big swindle game on the part of her husband and she entered into it readily. She brought her three children, Alice, Nellie and Howard with her. Alice was 15 years old. Holmes separated her room from her children and took them to Toronto, Canada.
Later the bodies of Alice and Nelly were found in the cellar of the building Holmes had occupied at Toronto.
Tip from Crook Revealed Holmes

Marlin Hedgepeth is the man who first directed attention to Holmes. Holmes was conducting the drugstore in St. Louis when he was arrested on a minor charge and placed in jail. There he met Marion Hedgepeth, noted as an out and out criminal. Holmes asked Hedgepeth to tell him the name of some St. Louis lawyer who could give him assistance in putting over an insurance swindle. Hedgepeth said he gave him the name. In return Hedgepeth was to get $500. This swindle was consummated. That is Pietzel was killed in Philadelphia in order to collect the insurance, but Hedgpeth got no money.
Then Hedgepath notified Chief of Police Harrigan of St. Louis that he had “the biggest insurance swindle case the police ever had to deal with anywhere, anytime in the world.”
He sent that message to Harrigan October 9, 1894. Pietzel had died September 3, 1894. That failure to deal squarely with Hedgepeth is doubtless what cost Holmes his liberty and life and checked his long career of crime. Police at once set out to hunt for him. The Philadelphia death of Pietzel had caused them some wonder, but the word from Hedgepeth made them doubly sure of crime. They trailed Holmes to Toronto, where the bodies of Alice and Nellie Pietzel were found. Later they found the body of Howard in Indianapolis and identified it as that of Howard, because of some peculiar playthings he had. His body had been burned in the stove and the bones alone were left intact.
Holmes was found in Boston and arrested. He was going under the name of Howard there. He was arrested July 14, 1895.
Mrs. Pietzel told her part in the affair and tried to atone by fighting for the conviction of the man who had made her a widow and slain three of her beautiful children.
In Chicago the record of Holmes was looked up. When he was under arrest in Philadelphia awaiting trial for the death of Pietzel word came from all parts of United States that Holmes, or a man answering his description, had taken women from their town and the unfortunates had never been heard from. From Fort Worth came the information that Miss Minnie Williams and her sister, Anna, had been led away by Holmes several years before and no one had ever heard of them. It was found that Miss Minnie Williams had entered Holmes Castle under the supposition that she was to be the wife of the arch-slayer. She sent to Fort Worth for her sister, Anna, to be a bridesmaid at the wedding.
The sisters had $60,000 worth of property in Fort Worth. They were induced to borrow heavily on the property and that is the last anyone heard of them. Minnie, the bride-elect, died before the wedding in Holmes Castle. Anna the bridesmaid-to-be, also died without ever having a chance to wear her bridal clothes. What happened to the bodies no one knows for certain. In the flue of the chimney, which led from the big stove on the top floor, hair was found. It is believed that the hair was that of the sisters as it corresponded to their hair. The theory was advanced at the time that the sisters were thrown into the stove and burned. The suction of the flue carried the hair up in the flue, where it remained as needed evidence against Holmes.
From Davenport, Iowa came another story of disappearance and Holmes name was linked with that too. Mrs. Julia Connor and her daughter where the missing ones.
Beautiful Woman and Daughter Lost
For more than three years prior to 1895, Mrs. Julia L Connor and her daughter, Pearl, had been missing from their friends in Iowa. Mrs. Connor had gone to Chicago with her husband and daughter to work in the drugstore conducted by Holmes. The drugstore failed and Holmes gave the property to Connor. Mrs. Connor was so taken with his generosity that she ceased to love her husband. She returned to Davenport and Connor obtained a divorce.
Then she returned to Chicago, ostensibly to open the boarding house in Chicago or the suburbs. She and her daughter never were heard of again. When Holmes was arrested in Philadelphia, relatives of Julia Connor claimed he killed her.
Many bones were found around Holmes Castle. He explained they were beef bones. He explained that the flat had been used as a restaurant during the World’s Fair at Chicago and that much meat was used there. He explained that the huge dumbwaiter was used to convey food. He explained that the asbestos was to make the house fireproof and to keep out cold.
He had an excuse for everything. He admitted he was crooked. He explained that he went to Toronto to smuggle furs into the United States. He admitted knowing all the women he was accused of murdering. He admitted knowingPietzel. He denied killing any of them. Damaging evidence against him were buttons of the women he was charged with killing, which were found in his castle.
But the defense of Holmes netted him nothing. He swung from the gallows for his crimes.

Though Holmes paid for his misdeeds with death, Quinlan suffered much more than he. He was arrested with Holmes but freed. When he went back to his Michigan home he found himself the center of eyes. Everywhere he went he was stared at or else he felt he was stared at. While the rest of the world forgot Holmes, the little town where he lived always rehearsed the story.
No wonder the honest Irish janitor finally picked up a piece of paper and wrote, “I could not sleep.” No wonder that after writing that simple line which told the story of nineteen years of suffering and horror, that he took poison and ended it all.

Thugs and Human Vultures (1889)

(From the New York World – June 3, 1889. This is a story of the aftermath of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania Flood of 1889, which killed 15,000 people.)
Some of Them Meet Deserved Death While at Their Nefarious Work

Last night a party of farmers, who had organized themselves as a patrol at Sang Hollow, came upon thirteen Hungarians who were sneaking along the edge of the subsiding waters, depredating and robbing even the dead bodies which were revealed by the receding tide.
One of them in his eagerness to secure a ring from the hand of a woman wrenched the ringer off.
Farmers, armed with guns, attacked them and they fled. Three escaped, but four were driven into the water and were drowned.
Two miles below Curranville a posse of five stalwart railroad men found two wretches cutting the earrings and rings from the bodies of two women.
“Throw up your hands or we’ll blow your heads off!” yelled the leader of the posse.
The vultures, surprised in their ghastly work, obeyed with blanched faces.
They were searched and in the pocket of one was found the tiny finger of a little child bloody and torn. It was encircled by two rings.
A crowd had quickly gathered and there went up a cry of “Lynch them! Lynch them!”
The infuriated mob closed in upon the cowering wretches, and in two minutes their bodies were dangling from a tree nearby – a tree in which the bodies of a dead father and son were found entangled when the waters subsided Saturday morning.
In Johnstown scores of thieves have congregated. They are rifling the wrecks of houses, though fifty officers from Pittsburgh and Allegheny City have been sworn in as deputies by the Cambria County Sheriff and are exerting all their powers to maintain order.
At midnight three thieves were discovered in the act of breaking open a safe in the cellar of a wrecked building. An effort was made by the police to capture them, but they escaped in the darkness.
One of them hurled a stone at the posse, and Special Officer Thomas Morris received a severe wound on the head.
At Kernville a wretch was discovered rifling dead bodies, and the infuriated citizens strung him up and left him for dead. He was cut down by unknown parties, and his body, dead or alive, was spirited away.
Ex-Mayor Chalmer Dick, of Johnstown, came unexpectedly upon a ghoul who was removing the rings from the fingers of a dead woman.
He shot the fellow with his revolver and the wounded man fell forward into the water and was drowned. He was a Pittsburgh crook.
W.C. Hagan, of Pittsburgh, this morning shot a Hungarian dead as the latter was trying to cut a diamond ring from a lady’s finger.

I suppose that what this story tells us is that no matter how many years the human race are here, that in times of adversary, there will always be people who will rob the dead and the dying!

FBI (Bonnie and Clyde)

Bonnie and Clyde
Clyde Champion Barrow and his companion, Bonnie Parker, were shot to death by officers in an ambush near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana on May 23, 1934, after one of the most colorful and spectacular manhunts the nation had seen up to that time.
Barrow was suspected of numerous killings and was wanted for murder, robbery, and state charges of kidnapping.

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Champion Barrow

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), then called the Bureau of Investigation, became interested in Barrow and his paramour late in December 1932 through a singular bit of evidence. A Ford automobile, which had been stolen in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, was found abandoned near Jackson, Michigan in September of that year. At Pawhuska, it was learned another Ford car had been abandoned there which had been stolen in Illinois. A search of this car revealed it had been occupied by a man and a woman, indicated by abandoned articles therein. In this car was found a prescription bottle, which led special agents to a drug store in Nacogdoches, Texas, where investigation disclosed the woman for whom the prescription had been filled was Clyde Barrow’s aunt.
Further investigation revealed that the woman who obtained the prescription had been visited recently by Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and Clyde’s brother, L. C. Barrow. It also was learned that these three were driving a Ford car, identified as the one stolen in Illinois. It was further shown that L. C. Barrow had secured the empty prescription bottle from a son of the woman who had originally obtained it.
On May 20, 1933, the United States Commissioner at Dallas, Texas, issued a warrant against Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, charging them with the interstate transportation, from Dallas to Oklahoma, of the automobile stolen in Illinois. The FBI then started its hunt for this elusive pair.
Background

Bonnie and Clyde met in Texas in January, 1930. At the time, Bonnie was 19 and married to an imprisoned murderer; Clyde was 21 and unmarried. Soon after, he was arrested for a burglary and sent to jail. He escaped, using a gun Bonnie had smuggled to him, was recaptured and was sent back to prison. Clyde was paroled in February 1932, rejoined Bonnie, and resumed a life of crime.
In addition to the automobile theft charge, Bonnie and Clyde were suspects in other crimes. At the time they were killed in 1934, they were believed to have committed 13 murders and several robberies and burglaries. Barrow, for example, was suspected of murdering two police officers at Joplin, Missouri and kidnapping a man and a woman in rural Louisiana. He released them near Waldo, Texas. Numerous sightings followed, linking this pair with bank robberies and automobile thefts. Clyde allegedly murdered a man at Hillsboro, Texas; committed robberies at Lufkin and Dallas, Texas; murdered one sheriff and wounded another at Stringtown, Oklahoma; kidnaped a deputy at Carlsbad, New Mexico; stole an automobile at Victoria, Texas; attempted to murder a deputy at Wharton, Texas; committed murder and robbery at Abilene and Sherman, Texas; committed murder at Dallas, Texas; abducted a sheriff and the chief of police at Wellington, Texas; and committed murder at Joplin and Columbia, Missouri.
For more information:

Later in 1932, Bonnie and Clyde began traveling with Raymond Hamilton, a young gunman. Hamilton left them several months later and was replaced by William Daniel Jones in November 1932.
Ivan M. “Buck” Barrow, brother of Clyde, was released from the Texas State Prison on March 23, 1933, having been granted a full pardon by the governor. He quickly joined Clyde, bringing his wife, Blanche, so the group now numbered five persons. This gang embarked upon a series of bold robberies which made headlines across the country. They escaped capture in various encounters with the law. However, their activities made law enforcement efforts to apprehend them even more intense. During a shootout with police in Iowa on July 29, 1933, Buck Barrow was fatally wounded and Blanche was captured. Jones, who was frequently mistaken for “Pretty Boy” Floyd, was captured in November 1933 in Houston, Texas by the sheriff’s office. Bonnie and Clyde went on together.

On November 22, 1933, a trap was set by the Dallas, Texas sheriff and his deputies in an attempt to capture Bonnie and Clyde near Grand Prairie, Texas, but the couple escaped the officer’s gunfire. They held up an attorney on the highway and took his car, which they abandoned at Miami, Oklahoma. On December 21, 1933, Bonnie and Clyde held up and robbed a citizen at Shreveport, Louisiana.
On January 16, 1934, five prisoners, including Raymond Hamilton (who was serving sentences totaling more than 200 years), were liberated from the Eastham State Prison Farm at Waldo, Texas by Clyde Barrow, accompanied by Bonnie Parker. Two guards were shot by the escaping prisoners with automatic pistols, which had been previously concealed in a ditch by Barrow. As the prisoners ran, Barrow covered their retreat with bursts of machine-gun fire. Among the escapees was Henry Methvin of Louisiana.
The Last Months

On April 1, 1934, Bonnie and Clyde encountered two young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas. Before the officers could draw their guns, they were shot. On April 6, 1934, a constable at Miami, Oklahoma fell mortally wounded by Bonnie and Clyde, who also abducted a police chief, whom they wounded.

The FBI had jurisdiction solely on the charge of transporting a stolen automobile, although the activities of the Bureau agents were vigorous and ceaseless. Every clue was followed. “Wanted notices” furnishing fingerprints, photograph, description, criminal record, and other data were distributed to all officers. The agents followed the trail through many states and into various haunts of the Barrow gang, particularly Louisiana. The association with Henry Methvin and the Methvin family of Louisiana was discovered by FBI agents, and they found that Bonnie and Clyde had been driving a car stolen in New Orleans.
On April 13, 1934, an FBI agent, through investigation in the vicinity of Ruston, Louisiana, obtained information which definitely placed Bonnie and Clyde in a remote section southwest of that community. The home of the Methvins was not far away, and the agent learned of visits there by Bonnie and Clyde. Special agents in Texas had learned that Clyde and his companion had been traveling from Texas to Louisiana, sometimes accompanied by Henry Methvin.
The FBI and local law enforcement authorities in Louisiana and Texas concentrated on apprehending Bonnie and Clyde, whom they strongly believed to be in the area. It was learned that Bonnie and Clyde, with some of the Methvins, had staged a party at Black Lake, Louisiana on the night of May 21, 1934 and were due to return to the area two days later.

Before dawn on May 23, 1934, a posse composed of police officers from Louisiana and Texas, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, concealed themselves in bushes along the highway near Sailes, Louisiana. In the early daylight, Bonnie and Clyde appeared in an automobile and when they attempted to drive away, the officers opened fire. Bonnie and Clyde were killed instantly.

“Machine Gun” Kelly and the Legend of the G-Men

“Machine Gun” Kelly and the Legend of the G-Men
Before 1934, “G-Man” was underworld slang for any and all government agents. In fact, the detectives in J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation were so little known that they were often confused with Secret Service or Prohibition Bureau agents. By 1935, though, only one kind of government employee was known by that name, the special agents of the Bureau.

George “Machine Gun” Kelly
How this change came about is not entirely clear, but September 26, 1933, played a central role in the apocryphal origins of this change.
On that day, Bureau of Investigation agents and Tennessee police officers arrested gangster George “Machine Gun” Kelly. He was a “wanted fugitive” for good reason. Two months earlier Kelly had kidnapped oil magnate Charles Urschel and held him for $200,000 in ransom. After Urschel was released, the Bureau coordinated a multi-state investigation, drawing investigative information from its own fie

G-Man (short for Government Man) is a slang term for Special agents of the United States Government. It is specifically used as a term for a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, its first known use in America was in 1928. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for the American usage is 1930 from a book on Al Capone by FD Pasley.

The phrase may have been inspired by its use in Ireland during its War of Independence, 1919-’21 to refer to the members of G Division, a section of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. G division was a plainclothes political policing unit that specifically dealt with tackling Irish separatists during the war.^[1][2]

In FBI mythology, the nickname is held to have originated during the arrest of gangster George “Machine Gun” Kelly by agents of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), a forerunner of the FBI, in September 1933. Finding himself unarmed, Kelly supposedly shouted “Don’t shoot, G-Men! Don’t shoot, G-Men!”^[3] This event is dramatized in the 1959 film The FBI Story and this dramatization is referenced in the 2011 film J. Edgar. The encounter with Kelly is similarly dramatized in the 1973 film Dillinger.

With the popularity of film noir and gangster films during the 1940s and 50s, “G-Men” became a popular slang term for the FBI.

ld offices as well as from other police sources, as it identified and then tracked the notorious gangster across the country.
On September 26, “Machine Gun” Kelly was found hiding in a decrepit Memphis residence. Some early press reports said that a tired, perhaps hung-over Kelly stumbled out of his bed mumbling something like “I was expecting you.” Another version of the event held that Kelly emerged from his room, hands-up, crying “Don’t shoot G-Men, don’t shoot.” Either way, Kelly was arrested without violence.

The rest is history. The more colorful version sparked the popular imagination and “G-Men” became synonymous with the special agents of the FBI.

FBI Part3 (fingerprints continued)

Using fingerprints to catch the guilty and free the innocent was just the beginning. The lawlessness of the 1920s got the nation’s attention, and a number of independent studies—including the Wickersham Commission set up by President Herbert Hoover in May 1929—confirmed what everyone seemed to already know: that law enforcement at every level needed to modernize.
One glaring need was to get a handle on the national scope of crime by collecting statistics that would enable authorities to understand trends and better focus resources. Taking the lead as it did in many police reforms in the early twentieth century, the International Association of Chiefs of Police created a committee to advance the issue, with Hoover and the Bureau participating. In 1929, the Chiefs adopted a system to classify and report crimes and began to collect crime statistics. The association recommended that the Bureau—with its experience in centralizing criminal records—take the lead. Congress agreed, and the Bureau assumed responsibility for the program in 1930. It has been taking this national pulse on crime ever since.

Charles “Lucky” Luciano
The third major development was a scientific crime lab, long a keen interest of Hoover’s. After becoming Director, he had encouraged his agents to keep an eye on advances in science. By 1930, the Bureau was hiring outside experts on a case-by-case basis. Over the next few years, the Bureau’s first technical laboratory took root, thanks in large part to a visionary special agent named Charles Appel. By 1932, the lab was fully operational and soon providing scientific examinations and analysis for the Bureau and its partners around the country.
This trio of advances came just in time, as the crime wave that began in the 1920s was about to reach its peak. By the early 1930s, cities like St. Paul, Minnesota, had become virtual training grounds for young crooks, while Hot Springs, Arkansas, had turned into a safe haven and even a vacation spot for the criminal underworld. Al Capone was locked away for good in 1931 (thanks in part to the Bureau), but his Chicago Outfit carried on fine without him and would actually experience a resurgence in the coming decades. The “Five Families” of the New York Mafia were also emerging during this period, with “Lucky” Luciano setting up the “Commission” to unite the mob and “Murder, Inc.” to carry out its hits. Prohibition was ultimately repealed in 1933, but by then, the Great Depression was in full force, and with honest jobs harder to come by than ever, the dishonest ones sometimes seemed more attractive than standing in soup lines.

Employees of the “Ident” division in 1929. The Bureau began managing the nation’s fingerprint collections five years earlier.

By 1933, an assortment of dangerous and criminally prolific gangsters was wreaking havoc across America, especially in the Midwest. Their names would soon be known far and wide.
There was John Dillinger, with his crooked smile, who managed to charm the press and much of America into believing he was nothing more than a harmless, modern-day Robin Hood. In reality, Dillinger and his revolving crew of gunslingers—violent thugs like Homer Van Meter, Harry “Pete” Pierpont, and John “Red” Hamilton—were shooting up banks across America’s heartland, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars and murdering at least one policeman along the way.
There was Clyde Barrow and his girlfriend Bonnie Parker, an inseparable, love-struck couple who—partnered at times with the Barrow brothers and others—were robbing and murdering their way across a half dozen or so states.
There was the ruthless, almost psychopathic “Baby Face” Nelson, who worked with everyone from Roger “The Terrible” Touhy to Al Capone and Dillinger over the course of his crime career and teamed up with John Paul Chase and Fatso Negri in his latter days. Nelson was a callous killer who thought nothing of murdering lawmen; he gunned down three Bureau agents, for instance, in the span of seven months. And there was the cunning Alvin Karpis and his Barker brother sidekicks, who not only robbed banks and trains but engineered two major kidnappings of rich Minnesota business executives in 1933.

The rising popularity of the FBI’s “G-men” spawned hundreds of toys and games.

Welcome to the World of Fingerprints (FBI Part 2)

We take it for granted now, but at the turn of the twentieth century the use of fingerprints to identify criminals was still in its infancy.
More popular was the Bertillon system, which measured dozens of features of a criminal’s face and body and recorded the series of precise numbers on a large card along with a photograph. After all, the thinking went, what were the chances that two different people would look the same and have identical measurements in all the minute particulars logged by the Bertillon method?

THE Will West and William West Case

There should be very few people in the identification field who do not know the story of Will and William West, two inmates at Leavenworth Penitentiary, shortly after the turn of the century.  In its purist form, the story is as follows:

When he was received at Leavenworth, Will West denied previous imprisonment there, but the record clerk ran the Bertillon instruments over him anyway.  He knew the reluctance of criminals to admit past crimes.  Sure enough, when the clerk referred to the formula derived from West’s Bertillon measurements, he located the file of one William West, whose measurements were practically identical and whose photograph appeared to be that of the new prisoner.

But Will West was not being coy about a previous visit to Leavenworth.  When the clerk turned over William West’s record card he found it was that of a man already in the Penitentiary, serving a life sentence for murder.  Subsequently the fingerprints of Will West and William West were impressed and compared.  The patterns bore no resemblance.

Some authors have elaborated on the story, perhaps in an effort to make to a more interesting tale.  Browne and Brock , alleged that upon taking the fingerprints of the two inmates, William West’s prints were primarily loops and Will West’s were primarily whorls.  In fact, the primary classification of the former was 13/32 and that of the latter was 30/26, therefore, each had seven whorls and three loop type patterns.  Like other writers, Browne and Brock also confused the warden and the records clerk at the penitentiary as one and the same person when they were actually father and son.  One is also compelled to point out that Browne and Brock also misspelled the name as McClaughty.

Faulds  presented an entirely different story in his account of the incident, retaining only one inmate’s name.  Faulds stated that William West had been arrested in Kansas as a murder suspect and shortly afterwards another man with the same name and Bertillon measurements had been arrested on a minor offense.  After taking both men’s fingerprints, the authorities identified the second man as the actual suspect and the first William West was cleared.

Chapel  stuck to the basic story, but added a dialect to Will West’s dialogue with the records clerk,  The dialect may have seemed appropriate to someone familiar with some of the questionable radio programs of the 1930’s, but the subservient attitude  conveyed would hardly fit anyone from the Indian Territory in the early 1900’s.  None of the other accounts of the incident included this racial bias.

A search of the literature on fingerprint identification reveals that the alleged Will and William West case was not reported in print until Wilder and Wentworth’s account in 1918 (26).  Please note that of the twenty–six books and articles listed in the bibliography, eighteen were published prior to the release of Wilder and Wentworth’s book and none of the eighteen mention the West case.  Of particular note is that two of the items listed , were by the records clerk who took the Bertillon measurements and the fingerprints of Will and William West, but who never mentions the incident.  One is immediately struck with the thought that a pioneer in the establishment of fingerprint identification never attached much significance to a case in which he played a very important role.  Perhaps the case was not as important as we have been led to believe?

Background Facts

It has been well established that Will and William West were both incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary, Leavenworth, Kansas, between 1903 and 1909.  Their similarity in appearance and Bertillon measurements is also well documented.  When one considers the facts and chronology of the case, however, there is ample reason to doubt the significance of the case with respect to the establishment of fingerprint identification in the United States.

Major Robert W. McClaughry was warden of the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, from 1 July 1899, to 30 June 1913.  Major McClaughry was a remarkable man in the history of identification in the United States.  In 1887, as warden of the Illinois State Penitentiary, Joliet, he and his records clerk, Gallus Muller, introduced the Bertillon system into the United States and Major McClaughry was instrumental in the adoption of the system by the Wardens Association of the United States and Canada in the same year .

A reading of the literature reveals Major McClaughry to be a man of the highest principles and integrity.  Although he was a prime mover in the acceptance of the Bertillon system, he did not hesitate to convert to a better system when he learned about the fingerprint system of identification.

Major R.W. McClaughry’s son, M.W. McClaughry, was the records clerk at the U.S. Penitentiary, Leavenworth, at least during the period from 1901 to 1905.  These dates are verifiable from published facsimiles of the Bertillon measurement cards and the fingerprint cards of Will and William West .  M.W. McClaughry attended the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, where he met and was a student of Sergeant John K. Ferrier, of Scotland Yard, who instructed many Americans on the fingerprint system.

Upon M.W. McClaughry’s return from St. Louis, Major R.W. McClaughry wrote the U.S. Attorney General, on 24 September 1904, requesting permission to install the fingerprint system at the penitentiary.  On 2 November 1904, the Attorney General authorized installation of the new system, but prior to this, during October 1904, Sgt. Ferrier visited the penitentiary at Leavenworth, and gave instruction on the fingerprint system (19).  It appears the awareness of fingerprint identification by the authorities at Leavenworth came long after Will West’s arrival.

M.W. McClaughry took the Bertillon measurements of William West on 9 September 1901, and those of Will West on 4 May 1903 .  He was also the clerk to take the fingerprints of both men on 19 October 1905 .  In the two articles he authored , M.W. McClaughry makes no mention of Will and William West, an indication that he attached no significance to their simultaneous incarceration while he was the records clerk.

During the annual conference of the International Association for Criminal Identification at Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1916, the local paper published an article about the conference and which contained a brief history of fingerprint identification .  One of the sources of information for the article was A.J. Renoe, who was then the records clerk at the penitentiary.  No mention was made of Will and William West in this article, but two years later Wilder and Wentworth cite Renoe as a source , as did Faulds .

Inasmuch as none of the early authors, including M.W. McClaughry who was directly involved, make any mention of Will and William West, their significance in the establishment of fingerprint identification in the United States must be questioned.  It makes a nice story to tell over port and cigars, but there is evidence that it never happened.

It is not necessary to use a fable to illustrate the value of the fingerprint system.  The work and dedication of pioneers in the identification field attests to a better story.  England is not only the home of the scientific basis of fingerprint identification, but it was, through Sgt. John K. Ferrier, the source of its acceptance in the United States.  Pioneers, as Major R.W. McClaughry, should be recognized for their readiness to accept new and improved systems of identification.

Chronology of the Will and William West Case

1887 — Bertillon system first established in the United States at Illinois State Penitentiary, Joliet, by Major Robert W. McClaughry, warden, and Gallus Muller, records clerk.

1899 — Major Robert W. McClaughry appointed warden of the U.S. Penitentiary, Leavenworth, Kansas, by President William McKinley.

1901 — William West received at the Leavenworth Penitentiary and his Bertillon measurements were taken by the records clerk, M.W. McClaughry.

1903 — Will West received at the Leavenworth Penitentiary and his Bertillon measurements were taken by the records clerk, M.W. McClaughry.

1904 — Records clerk of the Leavenworth Penitentiary, M.W. McClaughry, meets Sgt. John K. Ferrier of Scotland Yard at the St. Louis World’s Fair and learns of the fingerprint system of identification.

September 24th, Major R.W. McClaughry wrote to the U.S. Attorney General requesting permission to install the fingerprint system at the Leavenworth Penitentiary.

During October, Sgt. John K. Ferrier visited the Leavenworth Penitentiary and give instructions on the fingerprint system.

November 2nd, the U.S. Attorney General authorized Major R.W. McClaughry to install the fingerprint system.

1905 — October 10th, M.W. McClaughry, records clerk, fingerprinted Will and William West.

1918 — First published mention of the Will and William West case.

Not great, of course. But inevitably a case came along to beat the odds.
It happened this way. In 1903, a convicted criminal named Will West was taken to Leavenworth federal prison in Kansas. The clerk at the admissions desk, thinking he recognized West, asked if he’d ever been to Leavenworth. The new prisoner denied it. The clerk took his Bertillon measurements and went to the files, only to return with a card for a “William” West. Turns out, Will and William bore an uncanny resemblance (they may have been identical twins). And their Bertillon measurements were a near match.
The clerk asked Will again if he’d ever been to the prison. “Never,” he protested. When the clerk flipped the card over, he discovered Will was telling the truth. “William” was already in Leavenworth, serving a life sentence for murder! Soon after, the fingerprints of both men were taken, and they were clearly different.
It was this incident that caused the Bertillon system to fall “flat on its face,” as reporter
Bureau fingerprint experts at work in 1932
Don Whitehead aptly put it. The next year, Leavenworth abandoned the method and start fingerprinting its inmates. Thus began the first federal fingerprint collection.
In New York, the state prison had begun fingerprinting its inmates as early as 1903. Following the event at Leavenworth, other police and prison officials followed suit. Leavenworth itself eventually began swapping prints with other agencies, and its collection swelled to more than 800,000 individual records.
By 1920, though, the International Association of Chiefs of Police had become concerned about the erratic quality and disorganization of criminal identification records in America. It urged the Department of Justice to merge the country’s two major fingerprint collections—the federal one at Leavenworth and its own set of state and local ones held in Chicago.
Four years later, a bill was passed providing the funds and giving the task to the young Bureau of Investigation. On July 1, 1924, J. Edgar Hoover, who had been appointed Acting Director less than two months earlier, quickly formed a Division of Identification. He announced that the Bureau would welcome submissions from other jurisdictions and provide identification services to all law enforcement partners. The FBI has done so ever since.

The FBI and the American Gangster,1924-1938-Part 1

The FBI and the American Gangster,1924-1938
The “war to end all wars” was over, but a new one was just beginning—on the streets of America.

It wasn’t much of a fight, really—at least at the start.

On the one side was a rising tide of professional criminals, made richer and bolder by Prohibition, which had turned the nation “dry” in 1920. In one big city alone— Chicago—an estimated 1,300 gangs had spread like a deadly virus by the mid-1920s.

Al “Scarface” Capone in a 1929 mug shot

Al “Scarface” Capone in a 1929 mug shot
There was no easy cure. With wallets bursting from bootlegging profits, gangs outfitted themselves with “Tommy” guns and operated with impunity by paying off politicians and police alike. Rival gangs led by the powerful Al “Scarface” Capone and the hot-headed George “Bugs” Moran turned the city streets into a virtual war zone with their gangland clashes. By 1926, more than 12,000 murders were taking place every year across America.

On the other side was law enforcement, which was outgunned (literally) and ill-prepared at this point in history to take on the surging national crime wave. Dealing with the bootlegging and speakeasies was challenging enough, but the “Roaring Twenties” also saw bank robbery, kidnapping, auto theft, gambling, and drug trafficking become increasingly common crimes. More often than not, local police forces were hobbled by the lack of modern tools and training. And their jurisdictions stopped abruptly at their borders.

Attorney General

Attorney General
Harlan Fiske Stone
In the young Bureau of Investigation, things were not much better. In the early twenties, the agency was no model of efficiency. It had a growing reputation for politicized investigations. In 1923, in the midst of the Teapot Dome scandal that rocked the Harding Administration, the nation learned that Department of Justice officials had sent Bureau agents to spy on members of Congress who had opposed its policies. Not long after the news of these secret activities broke, President Calvin Coolidge fired Harding’s Attorney General Harry Daugherty, naming Harlan Fiske Stone as his successor in 1924.

A good housecleaning was in order for the Bureau, and it came at the hands of a young lawyer by the name of J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover had joined the Department of Justice in 1917 and had quickly risen through its ranks. In 1921, he was named Assistant Director of the Bureau. Three years later, Stone named him Director. Hoover would go on to serve for nearly another half century.

nationalacademy,.jpg

The first graduates of the Bureau’s training program for national police exectives, the forerunner of today’s National Academy, in 1935. Since then, the National Academy has graduated more than 41,000 officers from 166 countries.
A young J. Edgar Hoover

A young J. Edgar Hoover
At the outset, the 29-year-old Hoover was determined to reform the Bureau, quickly and thoroughly, to make it a model of professionalism. He did so by weeding out the “political hacks” and incompetents, laying down a strict code of conduct for agents, and instituting regular inspections of Headquarters and field operations. He insisted on rigorous hiring criteria, including background checks, interviews, and physical tests for all special agent applicants, and in January 1928, he launched the first formal training for incoming agents, a two-month course of instruction and practical exercises in Washington, D.C. Under Hoover’s direction, new agents were also required to be 25 to 35 years old, preferably with experience in law or accounting.

When Hoover took over in 1924, the Bureau had about 650 employees, including 441 special agents. In five years, with the rash of firings it had just 339 special agents and less than 600 total employees. But it was beginning to become the organized, professional, and effective force that Hoover envisioned.

One important step in that direction came during Hoover’s first year at the helm, when the Bureau was given the responsibility of consolidating the nation’s two major collections of fingerprint files. In the summer of 1924, Hoover quickly created an Identification Division (informally called “Ident” in the organization for many years to come) to gather prints from police agencies nationwide and to search them upon request for matches to criminals and crime evidence.

 

It was a vital new tool for all of law enforcement—the first major building block in Hoover’s growing quest to bring the discipline of science to Bureau investigations and scientific services to law enforcement nationwide. Combined with its identification orders, or IOs—early wanted posters that included fingerprints and all manner of details about criminal suspects on the run—the Bureau was fast becoming a national hub for crime records. In the late 1920s, the Bureau began exchanging fingerprints with Canada and added more friendly foreign governments in 1932; the following year, it created a corresponding civil fingerprint file for non-criminal cases. By 1936, the agency had a total reservoir of 100,000 fingerprint cards; by 1946, that number had swelled to 100 million.

This is a follow up article about the Iroquois Theatre disaster.

This is a follow up article about the Iroquois Theatre disaster.

On December 30, 1903, hundreds of adults and school children gathered in the “fireproof” Iroquois Theater in downtown Chicago for a Holiday performance of a play starring popular comedian Eddie Foy. Little did they know that the theater would turn into a blazing deathtrap, leading to the deaths of hundreds of people and creating a haunting that is still being experienced today!
Perhaps the greatest and most devastating fire in American history occurred in Illinois in October 1871. Known as the “Great Chicago Fire”, it wiped out most of the old city, killed hundreds and left hundreds of thousands homeless and destitute. But the city of Chicago has known many tragedies over the years and this would not be the last of the horrific fires to claim lives in the Windy City.

 Another terrible blaze occurred at the Iroquois Theater on December 30, 1903 as a fire broke out in the crowded theater during a performance of a vaudeville show, starring the popular comedian Eddie Foy. The fire was believed to have been started by faulty wiring leading to a spotlight and claimed the lives of hundreds of people, including children, who were packed into the afternoon show for the holidays.
The Iroquois Theater, the newest and most beautiful showplace in Chicago in 1903, was believed to be “absolutely fireproof”. The Chicago Tribune called it a “virtual temple of beauty” but just five weeks after it opened its doors, it became a blazing death trap.
The new theater was much acclaimed, even before it opened. It was patterned after the Opera Cominque in Paris and was located downtown on the north side of Randolph Street, between State and Dearborn. The interior of the four-story building was magnificent, with stained glass and polished wood throughout.
The lobby had an ornate 60-foot-high ceiling and featured white marble walls fitted with large mirrors that were framed in gold leaf and stone. Two grand staircases led away from either side of the lobby to the balcony areas as well. Outside, the building’s front façade resembled a Greek temple with a towering stone archway that was supported by massive columns.
Thanks to the dozens of fires that had occurred over the years in theaters, architect Benjamin H. Marshall wanted to assure the public that the Iroquois was safe. He studied a number of fires that had occurred in the past and made every effort to make sure that no tragedy would occur in the new theater. The Iroquois had 25 exits that, it was claimed, could empty the building in less than five minutes. The stage had also been fitted with an asbestos curtain that could be quickly lowered to protect the audience.
And while all of this was impressive, it was not enough to battle the real problems that existed with the Iroquois. Seats in the theater were wooden and stuffed with hemp and much of the precautionary fire equipment that was advertised to have been installed, never actually made it into the building. The theater had no fire alarms and in a rush to open the theater on time, other safety factors had been forgotten or simply ignored.
The horrific events began on a bitterly cold December 30 of 1903. A holiday crowd had packed into the theater on that Wednesday afternoon to see a matinee performance of the hit comedyMr. Bluebeard. Officially, the Iroquois seated 1,600 people but with school out for Christmas break, it is believed there was an overflow crowd of nearly 2,000 people filling the seats and standing four-deep in the aisles. Another crowd filled the backstage area with 400 actors, dancers and stagehands hidden from those in the auditorium.
Around 3:20 p.m., at the beginning of the second act, stagehands noticed a spark descend from an overhead light, and then some scraps of burning paper that fell down onto the stage. In moments, flames began licking at the red-velvet curtain and while a collective gasp went up from the audience, no one rushed for the exits. It has been surmised that the audience merely thought the fire was part of the show.
Although in his dressing room, applying his final makeup for the act, Eddie Foy heard the commotion outside and rushed out onto the stage to see what was going on. He implored the audience to remain seated and calm, assuring them that the theater was fireproof and that everyone was safe. He signaled conductor Herbert Gillea to play and the music had a temporary soothing effect on the crowd, which was growing restless. A few moments later, a flaming set crashed down onto the stage and Foy signaled a stagehand to lower the asbestos curtain to protect the audience. Unfortunately though, the curtain snagged halfway down, leaving a 20-foot gap between the bottom of the curtain and the wooden stage.
The other actors in the show remained composed until they too realized what was happening. Many of them panicked and several chorus girls fainted and had to be dragged off-stage. The audience began to scream and panic too and a mad rush was started for the Randolph Street exit from the theater. Foy made one last attempt to calm the audience and then he fled to a rear exit. With children in tow, the audience members immediately clogged the gallery and the upper balconies. The aisles had become impassable and as the lights went out, the crowd milled about in blind terror. The auditorium began to fill with heat and smoke and screams echoed off the walls and ceilings. Through it all, the mass continued to move forward but when the crowd reached the doors, they could not open them as they had been designed to swing inward rather than outward. The crush of people prevented those in the front from opening the doors. To make matters worse, some of the side doors to the auditorium were reportedly locked. Many of those who died not only burned, but suffocated from the smoke and the crush of bodies as well. Later, as the police removed the charred remains from the theater, they discovered that a number of victims had been trampled in the panic. One dead woman’s face even bore the mark of a shoe heel.
Backstage, theater employees and cast members opened a rear set of double doors, which sucked the wind inside and caused flames to fan out under the asbestos curtain and into the auditorium. A second gust of wind created a fireball that shot out into the galleries and balconies that were filled with people. All of the stage drops were now on fire and as they burned, they engulfed the supposedly noncombustible asbestos curtain and when it collapsed, it plunged into the seats of the theater.
The scene outside of the theater was completely normal and most accounts say that the fire was burning for almost 15 minutes before any smoke was noticed by those passing by. Because there was no fire alarm box outside, someone ran around the corner to sound the alarm at Engine Co. 13. Things were so quiet in front of the Iroquois though that the first firefighters to arrive thought it was a false alarm.
This changed when they tried to open the auditorium doors and found they could not — there were too many bodies stacked up against them. Another alarm was sounded as the firemen tried to get into the building. They were only able to gain access by actually pulling the bodies out of the way with pike poles, peeling them off one another and then climbing over the stacks of corpses. It took only ten minutes to put out the remaining blaze, as the intense heat inside had already eaten up anything that would still burn. The firefighters made their way into the blackened auditorium and were met with only silence and smell of death. They called out for survivors but no one answered their cry.
The gallery and upper balconies sustained the greatest loss of life as the patrons had been trapped by locked doors at the top of the stairways. The firefighters found 200 bodies stacked there, as many as 10 deep. Those who escaped had literally ripped the metal bars from the front of the balcony and had jumped onto the crowds below. Even then, most of these met their deaths at a lower level.
A few who made it to the fire escape door behind the top balcony found that the iron staircase was missing. In its place was a platform that plunged about 100 feet to the cobblestone alley below. Across the alley, behind the theater, painters were working on a building occupied by Northwestern University’s dental school. When they realized what was happening at the theater, they quickly erected a makeshift bridge using ladders and wooden planks, which they extended across the alley to the fire escape platform. Reports vary as to how many they saved, but it’s thought that it may have been as many as 12, although it’s also believed that at least seven people fell to their deaths from the “bridge”. Others say that many times that number jumped from the ledge or were pushed by the milling crowd that pressed through the doors behind them. The passageway behind the theater is still referred to as “Death Alley” today, after nearly 150 victims were found piled here — stacked by the firemen or having fallen to their fates.

The “bridge” created by the firemen to get people out of the burning building When it was all over, 572 people died in the fire and more died later, bringing the eventual death toll up to 602, including 212 children. For nearly five hours, police officers, firemen and even newspaper reporters, carried out the dead. Anxious relatives sifted through the remains, searching for loved ones. Other bodies were taken away by police wagons and ambulances and transported to a temporary morgue at Marshall Field’s on State Street. Medical examiners and investigators worked all through the night.
The next day, the newspapers devoted full pages to lists of the known dead and injured. News wires carried reports of the tragedy around the country and it soon became a national disaster. Chicago mayor Carter Harrison, Jr. issued an order that banned public celebration on New Year’s Eve, closing the night clubs and making forbidden any fireworks or sounding of horns. Every church and factory bell in the city was silenced and on January 2, 1904, the city observed an official day of mourning.
Someone, the public cried, had to answer for the fire and an investigation of the blaze brought to light a number of troubling facts. The investigation discovered that two vents of the building‘s roof, which had not been completed in time for the theater’s opening, were supposed to filter out smoke and poisonous gases in case of a fire. However, the unfinished vents had been nailed shut to keep out rain and snow. That meant that the smoke had nowhere to go but back into the theater, literally suffocating those audience members who were not already burned to death. Another finding showed that the supposedly “fireproof” asbestos curtain was really made from cotton and other combustible materials. It would have never saved anyone at all. In addition to not having any fire alarms in the building, the owners had decided that sprinklers were too unsightly and too costly and had never had them installed.
To make matters worse, the management also established a policy to keep non-paying customers from slipping into the theater during a performance — they quietly bolted nine pair of iron panels over the rear doors and installed padlocked, accordion-style gates at the top of the interior second and third floor stairway landings. And just as tragic was the idea they came up with to keep the audience from being distracted during a show. They ordered all of the exit lights to be turned off! One exit sign that was left on led only to ladies restroom and another to a locked door for a private stairway. And as mentioned already, the doors of the outside exits, which were supposed to make it possible for the theater to empty in five minutes, opened to the inside, not to the outside.
The investigation led to a cover-up by officials from the city and the fire department, who denied all knowledge of fire code violations. They blamed the inspectors, who had overlooked the problems in exchange for free theater passes. A grand jury indicted a number of individuals, including the theater owners, fire officials and even the mayor. No one was ever charged with a criminal act though. Families of the dead filed nearly 275 civil lawsuits against the theater but no money was ever collected. The Iroquois Theater Company filed for bankruptcy soon after the disaster.
Police & fire investigators began looking into the cause for the fire and the reasons for the huge death toll.
The Iroquois Theater Fire ranks as the nation’s fourth deadliest blaze and the deadliest single building fire in American history. Nevertheless, the building was repaired and re-opened briefly in 1904 as Hyde and Behmann’s Music Hall and then in 1905 as the Colonial Theater. In 1924, the building was razed to make room for a new theater, the Oriental, but the façade of the Iroquois was used in its construction. The Oriental operated at what is now 24 West Randolph Street until the middle part of 1981, when it fell into disrepair and was closed down. It opened again as the home to a wholesale electronics dealer for a time and then went dark again. The restored theater is now part of the Civic Tower Building and is next door to the restored Delaware Building. It reopened as the Ford Center for the Performing Arts in 1998.
But this has not stopped the tales of the old Iroquois Theater from being told, especially in light of more recent — and more ghostly events. According to recent accounts from people who live and work in this area, “Death Alley” is not as empty as it appears to be. The narrow passageway, which runs behind the Oriental Theater, is rarely used today, except for the occasional delivery truck or a lone pedestrian who is in a hurry to get somewhere else. It is largely deserted, but why? The stories say that those a few who do pass through the alley often find themselves very uncomfortable and unsettled here. They say that faint cries are sometimes heard in the shadows and that some have reported being touched by unseen hands and by eerie cold spots that seem to come from nowhere and vanish just as quickly.
Could the alleyway, and the surrounding area, actually be haunted? And do the spirits of those who met their tragic end inside of the burning theater still linger here? Perhaps, or perhaps the strange sensations experienced here are “ghosts of the past” of another kind — a chilling remembrance of a terrifying event that will never be completely forgotten.

 

Jack the Ripper in America (1891)

Jack the Ripper in America (1891)

(From the McCook Tribune (McCook, Nebraska) – May 1, 1891)
NEW YORK – “Jack the Ripper” is believed by the police to have at last come to this city. Yesterday morning in the East River Hotel the body of a wretched woman was found with her abdomen horribly cut and her bowels protruding. Her name is not known. The resort in which the body was found is one of the lowest in the city. It is located on the southeast corner of Catherine and Market streets. The woman was known about the neighborhood has one of the half-drunken creatures who hang about the low resorts of Water Street and Riverside. She came to the hotel last night in company with a man who registered as Knickloi and wife. The couple were assigned to a room on the upper floor and went to bed at once. Nothing was seen or heard of them during the night. No cry or unusual noise was heard. This morning the attendant rapped at the door of the room occupied by the couple. There was no answer and he rapped again with no better result and finally broke in the door. A horrible site met his gaze. On the bed lay a woman in a big pool of blood. She had been dead for hours. Her abdomen had been fairly ripped open with a dull, broken table knife that lay in the pool of blood.
The viscera had been cut, and from appearances a part was missing. The woman’s head was bandaged. A cloth had been tied about her neck and face, but whether for any foul purpose or to hide any other traces of murder the attendant did not wait to see.

 

 

An American Suspect

One of the more talked about recent Jack the Ripper suspects is Dr Francis Tumblety whose name was suggested by Inspector Littlechild.

Prior to and during the Jack the Ripper Murders, Chief Inspector John Littlechild (1847-1923) was head of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Irish Branch – a post he held from 1883 and 1893.

Although Littlechild (as far as is currently known) had very little to do with the Jack the Ripper investigation itself, as a high ranking police officer in the Metropolitan Police he most certainly would have had frequent contact with the likes of Dr. Robert Anderson and Chief Inspector Swanson.

In 1913 the journalist George Sims was sniffing around for information on a Jack the Ripper suspect. He duly wrote to John Littlechild to ask if he had any knowledge of a Dr. D. being suspected of having committed the Whitechapel Murders.

Sims was evidently referring to ripper suspect Montague John Druitt, whose name (or at least hints of it) had been circulating through police circles for the previous fifteen or so years.

Littlechild wrote back to say that he had never heard of a Dr D. ever having being mentioned as a suspect. But he then went on to suggest a suspect who, in England at least, had not been mentioned up to that point. Littlechild wrote:-

“…amongst the suspects, and to my mind a very likely one, was a Dr T [who] was an American quack named Tumblety.”

He then went on to inform Sims that Tumblety had been arrested for “unnatural offences,” that he had been remanded on bail, that he had subsequently jumped bail and escaped to Boulogne, after which nothing was ever heard from him again. Indeed, according to Littlechild:-

“…It was believed he committed suicide but certain it is that from that time the ‘Ripper’ murders came to an end.”

Dr Francis Tumblety had been arrested and charged with acts of gross indecency with a number of males on 7th November 1888. As Littlechild stated in his letter to Sims he had been remanded on bail, which he did indeed skip and then he had headed for Boulogne.

However, contrary to Littlechild’s assertion that he disappeared and probably committed suicide, Tumblety was most certainly heard from again. Having made it to Boulogne, Tumblety sailed to New York and, on landing, soon had the American press hot on his trail in relation to his possible connection to the Whitechapel murders.

From the moment of his arrival in New York the New York Police Department also took an interest in him and Tumblety was kept under surveillance by Inspector Byrnes of the New York Police.

Questioned by journalists as he kept watch on Tumblety’s lodging about whether or not Tumblety would be returning to London to be question about the Jack the Ripper murders, Byrnes responded that, “…there is no proof of his [Tumblety’s] complicity in the Whitechapel murders, and the crime for which he was under bond in London is not extraditable.”

According to the New York Times, Inspector Byrnes:-

“…laughed at the suggestion that he was the Whitechapel murderer…”

A claim often made to back up Tumblety’s possible involvement in the Jack the Ripper Murders is that he is known to have collected medical specimens, including uteri.

But there is scant evidence to suggest that he ever did. The allegation that he did was made by Col. C. S. Dunham to the Williamsport Sunday Grit in which he mentioned being a guest at a dinner at which he had witnessed Tumblety fiercely denounce “…all women and especially fallen women.”Dunham went on to mention that Tumblety had then taken his guests to his office where he showed them a dozen or more jars containing the uteri of every class of women. 

But Dunham’s veracity is, to say the least, questionable. He himself was a known confidence trickster, who only made his claims after press allegations had linked Tumblety to the Whitechapel Murders. It is, therefore, highly possible, if not likely, that he made the story up in order to cash in on Tumblety’s sudden notoriety.

Another oft quoted piece of evidence against Tumblety is that people who knew him thought he was the killer. Again this is mere hearsay. Some of them might have thought so, but others were adamant that he wasn’t.

One woman who most certainly didn’t think he was capable of his crimes was his New York landlady Mrs. McNamara, who was quoted in the New York Herald as saying that “Dr. Tumblety…is a perfect gentleman. He wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

The case for Tumblety’s involvement in the Jack the Ripper Murders is a fairly weak one. Moreover, there is no concrete evidence that he ever visited Whitechapel, and he most certainly bore no resemblance to descriptions given by those who may have seen the face of the killer.

There is no evidence that he was ever violent – a view with which even Littlechild concurred as, in his letter to Sims, he states that Tumblety was “not known as a “Sadist” (which the murderer unquestionably was).”

Furthermore, three years after receiving Littlechild’s letter George Sims wrote his own autobiography and made no mention of Tumblety’s having been Jack the Ripper but stuck to his original belief in his Dr. D. theory.

The final nail in the coffin of the case against Francis Tumblety is that the Metropolitan Police themselves don’t appear to have considered him a viable suspect. Had they thought him responsible for the Jack the Ripper murders it is unlikely that they would have released him on bail. Even if they had, his whereabouts were known to their New York counterparts who could have arrested and extradited him at any moment.

The reason Francis Tumblety was not arrested in New York and extradited to England to face charges over the Jack the Ripper crimes can only be that he had been ruled out of any involvement in the Jack the Ripper murders.

President McKinley is Dead! (1901)

President McKinley is Dead! (1901)

(From the St. Paul Globe – September 14, 1901)
Passed Away at 2:15 This Morning

Mrs McKinley

MILBURN HOUSE, Buffalo, September 14 – President McKinley died at 2:15 AM. He had been unconscious since 7:50 PM. His last conscious hour on earth was spent with his wife to whom he devoted a lifetime of care. He died unattended by a minister of the gospel, but his last words were a humble submission to the will of the God in whom he believed. He was reconciled to the cruel fate to which an assassin’s bullet had condemned him and faced death in the same spirit of calmness and poise which has marked his long and honorable career. His last conscious words, reduced to writing by Dr. Mann, who stood at his side when they were uttered, were as follows:
“Goodbye, all; goodbye. It is God’s way. His will be done.”
His relatives and the members of his official family were at the Milburn house, except Secretary Wilson, who did not avail himself of the opportunity. Some others of his personal and political friends also took leave of him. The painful ceremony was simple. His friends came to the door of the sickroom, took a longing glance at him and turned carefully away. He was practically unconscious during the time. But the powerful heart stimulants, including oxygen, were employed to restore him to consciousness for his final parting with his wife. He asked for her and she sat at his side and held his hand; he consoled her and bade her goodbye. She went through the heart-trying scene with the same bravery and fortitude with which she has borne the grief of the tragedy which ended his life.
The immediate cause of the president’s death is undetermined. His physicians disagree and it will possibly require an autopsy to fix the exact cause. The president’s remains will be taken to Washington and there will be a state funeral. VIce-President Roosevelt, who now succeeds to the presidency, may take the oath of office wherever he happens to hear the news. The cabinet will, of course, resign in a body, and President Roosevelt will have an opportunity of forming a new cabinet if he so desires.
The rage of the people of Buffalo against the president’s assassin, when they learned tonight that he was dying, was boundless.
Kept Up by Oxygen
Before 6 o’clock it was clear to those at the president’s bedside that he was dying, and preparations were made for the last sad offices of farewell from those who were nearest and dearest to him. Oxygen had been administered steadily, but with little effect in keeping back the approach of death. The president came out of one period of unconsciousness only to relapse into another. But in this period, when his mind was partially clear, occurred a series of events of profoundly touching character. Downstairs, with strained and tear-stained faces, members of the cabinet were grouped in anxious waiting. They knew the end was near and that the time had come when they must see him for the last time on earth. This was about 6 o’clock. One by one they ascended the stairway – Secretary Root, Secretary Hitchcock and Attorney General Knox. Secretary Wilson also was there, but he held back, not wishing to see the president in his last agony. There was only a momentary stay of the cabinet officers at the threshold of the death chamber. Then they withdrew, the tears streaming down their faces and the words of intense grief choking in their throats. After they left the sickroom, the physicians rallied him to consciousness, and the president asked almost immediately that his wife be brought to him. The doctors fell back into the shadows of the room as Mrs. McKinley came through the doorway.
Wife Held His Hand
The strong face of the dying man lighted up with a faint smile as their hands were clasped. She sat beside him and held his hand. Despite her physical weakness, she bore up bravely under the ordeal. The president, in his last period of consciousness, which ended about 7:40, chanted the words of the hymn, “Nearer My God to Thee,” and his last audible conscious words as taken down by Dr. Mann at the bedside, were “Goodbye, all; goodbye. It is God’s way. His will be done.” Then his mind began to wander, and so he completely lost consciousness. His life was prolonged for hours by the administration of oxygen, and the president finally expressed a desire to be allowed to die. About 8:30 the administration of oxygen ceased and the pulse grew fainter and fainter. He was sinking gradually, like a child, into the eternal slumber. By 10 o’clock the pulse could no longer be felt in his extremities, and they grew cold.
Awaiting the End
Below stairs the grief-stricken gathering waited sadly for the end. All the evening those who had hastened here fast as steam and steel could carry them, continued to arrive. They drove up in carriages at a gallop or were whisked up in automobiles, all intent upon getting here before death came. One of the last to arrive was Attorney General Knox, who reached the house at 9:30. He was permitted to go upstairs to look for the last time upon the face of his chief.
Rev. C. D. Wilson, a Methodist minister of Tonawanda, New York, who was the president’s pastor for three years at Canton, called at the residence to inquire whether his services were needed, but did not enter the house. Another Methodist minister, who has a church nearby, remained at the Milburn residence for two hours in the belief that his services might be desired. At 9:37 Secretary Cortelyou, who had been much of the time with his dying chief, sent out formal notification that the president was dying. But the president lingered on, his pulse growing fainter and fainter. There was no need for official bulletins after this. Those who came from the house at intervals told the same story – that the president was dying and that the end might come at any time. His tremendous vitality was the only remaining factor in the result, and this gave hope only of brief postponement of the end. Dr. Mynter thought he might last until 2 AM. Dr. Mann said at 11 o’clock that the president was still alive and probably would live an hour. Thus minutes lengthened to hours, and midnight came with the president still battling against death. At this midnight hour the Milburn house was the center of a scene as animated as though it were midday, although a solemn hush hung over the great crowd of watchers.
The entire lower part of the house was aglow with light and the many attendants, friends and relatives could be seen within moving about and occasionally coming in groups to the front doorway for a breath of air. In the upper front chambers the lights were low and around on the north side, where the chamber of death is located, there were fitful lights, some burning brightly and then turned low.
Secretary Root and Secretary Wilson came from the house about midnight and paced up and down the sidewalk. All that Secretary Root said was: “The end has not come yet.” Despite the fact that vitality continued to ebb as midnight approached, no efforts were spared to keep the spark of life glowing.
Dr. Janeway Arrives
Dr. Janeway, of New York City, arrived at the depot at 11:40 o’clock. George Urban was waiting for him and they drove at a breakneck pace to the Milburn house. He was shown to the president’s room at once and began an examination of the almost inanimate form. Secretary of the Navy Long arrived at the Milburn house at 12:06 o’clock. This was his first visit to the city and he had the extreme satisfaction of seeing the president alive, even though he was not conscious of his visitor’s presence. Secretary Long was visibly affected.
Vice-president Roosevelt had been notified early in the day of the critical state of affairs. There was no longer a doubt that in the approaching death of the president a complete change in the executive administration of the government would ensue. When Mr. Roosevelt would take the oath of office was only a matter of conjecture.
President Arthur took the oath of office at 2 AM after the death of Garfield, and in that case Justice Brady, of New York, administered the oath. There is no requirement that the oath should be administered by a justice of the United States Supreme Court, although that procedure is adopted when circumstances permit.
Without unseemly haste the members of the cabinet will tender their resignations, and the new president will then be free to initiate his own policy and choose his own cabinet.
There is little possibility tonight that Mr. Roosevelt will get here. Ansley Wilcox, who entertained the vice-president when he was here last, said that the best information he had was that Mr. Roosevelt would be here tomorrow morning, and not until late in the morning. He said that the vice-president would be unable to reach a railroad station much before 4 o’clock tomorrow morning, and that would bring him here about noon tomorrow. Mr. Wilcox said in explanation of Mr. Roosevelt’s being so far out of touch:
“The vice-president was at all times optimistic and when he went away was absolutely positive that the president would recover, and that the convalescence would be rapid. He certainly never expected today’s sad occurence.”
Extremities Turn Cold
Shortly after midnight the president’s breathing was barely perceptible. His pulse had practically ceased and the extremities were cold. It was recognized that nothing remained but the last struggle, and some of the friends of the family who had remained through the day began to leave the house, not caring to be present at the last struggle.
Such an intense state of anxiety existed among the watchers that rumors gained frequent circulation that death had already occurred. The arrival of the coroner gave rise to one such rumor, and a flood of groundless dispatches was sent saying that the end had come. These were speedily set at rest by an official statement from within the house that the reports of death were groundless and that the president still lived.
Coroner Wilson said that he had been ordered by the district attorney of the county to go to the Milburn residence as soon as possible after the announcement of death. He had seen a reputable local paper issued with the announcement that the president died at 11:06 PM, and had hurried up so there would be no delay in removing the body. He was very much chagrined when Dr. Mann met him at the door and told him that his services were not required and that he would be notified when he was wanted. Dr. Mann said that the president was still alive and that Dr. Janeway was examining the heart action. There was really no hope, but they did not desire gruesome anticipation.