(DO IT NOW scenario)
For example, the fact that the boy becomes a thief, or burglar, indicates in any or many things that disregard for the rights of others which is destructive to all law and order. Properly handled in the home he would have been amenable to all of these conditions.
Raise the child like a plant, care for it as you do for the rarest specimen of vegetation, bring it up in an atmosphere of love. Child raising and plant development are akin.
If the child has but the smallest trace of some characteristic you desire to develop, take hold of it, care for it, surround it with proper conditions and it will change more certainly and readily than any plant quality.
The child in nature and processes of growth is essentially the same as the plant, only the child has a thousand strings instead of but a few, as has the plant.
Where one can produce one change for the betterment ofthe plant one can produce a thousand changes for the betterment of the child.
Surround the child with the proper environment to bring out certain qualities and the result is inevitable.
Working in the same way as one does with the plant, the development of the individual is practically unlimited.
Take the common daisy and train it and cultivate it by proper selection and environment until it has been increased in size, beauty and productiveness at least four hundred fold.
Do our educational methods do as much for our children? If not, where is the weakness?
Have the child reared for the first ten years of its life in the open, in close touch with nature, a barefoot boy with all that implies for physical stamina, but have him reared in love.
Take the little yellow California poppy and by selecting over and over again the qualities you wish to develop you have brought forth an orange poppy, a crimson poppy, a blue poppy. Cannot the same results be accomplished with the human being? Is not the child as responsive?
The statistics show conclusively that the operation of the Juvenile Court is an advance step in the treatment of the young and helpless. It shows that not only are the dependents helpless, but that the delinquents are helpless to extricate themselves from a life of idleness and crime, for most criminals are made, not born, and the sooner time is devoted to changing the environments of the young, the sooner will be solved the problem of criminology.
Various claims have been put forth from time to time as to the State which was the first to inaugurate the Juvenile Court idea.
The Juvenile Court Law went into effect July 1, 1899, and immediately the Juvenile Court was established. The Judges of the Circuit Court assigned one of their members to preside in the Juvenile Court.
The law gave the court jurisdiction of all dependent and delinquent children who are under seventeen and eighteen years of age, and defines dependents and delinquents. The word "dependent" shall mean any child who for any reason is destitute or homeless or abandoned, or dependent upon the public for support, or has not proper parental care or guardianship, or who habitually begs or receives alms, or who is found living in any house of ill-fame or with any vicious or disreputable persons, or whose home, by reason of neglect, cruelty or depravity on the part of its parents, guardian or other persons whose care it may be, is an unfit place for said child, and any child under the age of ten years who is found begging, peddling or selling any article, or singing or playing any musical instrument upon the street, or giving any public entertainment, or who accompanies or is used in aid of any person so doing.
The word "delinquent" shall mean any boy under seventeen or any girl under eighteen years of age who violates any law of this State or any city or village ordinance, or who is incorrigible, or who knowingly associates with thieves, vicious or immoral persons, or who is growing up in idleness or crime, or who knowingly frequents a house of ill-fame, or who knowingly patronizes any policy shop or place where any gaming device is or shall be operated.
A boy of seventeen is at a period of life where he is neither a boy nor a man. In many cases he has the mind of the boy and the impulses of the savage; his ideals are force, and his ambitions that of the wild, erratic western rover. Why the wise head and steady hand of the court and probation officer should be withdrawn at this period is not explainable on any reasonable theory.
It may be contended that a boy of seventeen years is too advanced in the knowledge of crime, but it can also be contended that the boy of fifteen years is too old in crime. Just what standard can be used to find the responsibility of a boy when measured by his age and physical proportions I am unable to discover. The only just standard is mental capacity. The Judge and probation officers, who are familiar with the boy, know his parents or guardians and his environments, should be allowed to exercise their judgment as to the moral responsibility of the boy, for there are many boys at fifteen who are more responsible for their acts than others at eighteen.
In many cases where children were committed to an institution the parents were placed under the care of a probation officer and the number of failures to reform the parent are few.
In cases where the parents are responsible for the dependency of existence those parents mean well, but they are unfitted for the duties they have assumed. The father thinks he has fulfilled his whole duty to his family when he provides food, shelter and clothing; the mother thinks she has fulfilled her whole duty when she does her house work and attends to the mending and washing. The children are masters of both parents before the parents take cognizance of the actual mental state of the child.
What should be done when the boy's home is the case of his delinquency is to provide for him a place where every home impulse would be developed and where industry and economy would be practiced. He should live in this home under the jurisdiction of the court until he has reached his eighteenth year.
What is said of the boys is equally true of the girls, and, in many cases, more important. Where the father is directly responsible for the downfall of the girl, the girl should not be allowed to return to her parental home.
Some of Their Methods—Charlatans Have a Great Hold on the Poorer Classes of Big Cities, Much Alike—Schools of Crime Run Full Blast—Silly and Ignorant People Undone by Vicious and Wide-Open Fraud.
Some of Their Methods—Charlatans Have a Great Hold on the Poorer Classes of Big Cities, Much Alike—Schools of Crime Run Full Blast—Silly and Ignorant People Undone by Vicious and Wide-Open Fraud.
War against the swindlers, impostors and blackmailers who operate in Chicago under the guise of clairvoyants, trance mediums, astro-psychics, palmists, magicians and fortune tellers, of whom there are about 1,500 in Chicago, should be driven out of the city and never allowed to return.
There exist in Chicago a horde of these brazen frauds, who ply their trade in the most open and unblushing manner. Few of them are other than organized schools for the propagation of crime, injustice and indecencies that would make an unjailed denizen of the red light district blush to even mention. We particularly refer to the army of fortune tellers, clairvoyants, Hindoo fakers, mediums, palmists, hypnotists and other skillful artists, whose sole occupation is to rob and mislead the superstitious, foolish and ignorant. The business is a paying industry, realizing, it is said, an enormous sum of money every month in Chicago, all of which is obtained by false pretenses.
Here is a very large field for police investigation. The practices of these people are of the most demoralizing tendency. Can there be anything worse than holding out love potions to married women to compel other women's husbands to love them?Those dens of iniquity offer their services and even actually aid in the procuring of abortions, and in showing how and where a good haul can be made by robbery or burglary. They bring together the depraved of both sexes. Many of them are purveyors to our brothels and stews.
They flaunt their profession, their "spiritual mysteries," brazenly in public in our busy thoroughfares, even invading some of our hotels. They are the hotbeds of vice and crime, from the robbing of orphans to the deflowering of innocent girls. They fall into "trances" and call up spirits from the vaults of heaven, or elsewhere, to testify to their truth, and in the turn-up of an ace of spades they see a "dark lady" or a "dark gentleman" who is pining for you, and furnish the address of either.
Famous Artist's Explanation of Scientific Ghost Upper Row (left) Real Ghost. (right) Marx's Imitation. Lower Row (left) Fake Ghost & drawings by von Marx Showing Make upFamous Artist's Explanation of Scientific GhostUpper Row (left) Real Ghost. (right) Marx's Imitation.Lower Row (left) Fake Ghost & drawings by von Marx Showing Make up
Famous Artist's Explanation of Scientific GhostUpper Row (left) Real Ghost. (right) Marx's Imitation.Lower Row (left) Fake Ghost & drawings by von Marx Showing Make up
Why these panderers to depravity in all its most hideous forms are permitted to continue their depredations among every rank of society without attracting the attention of "reformers" or the grand jury is something beyond the ken of human knowledge. And as a block is a small cityful in some parts of the town, the reading of palms, the casting of horoscopes and the looking into seeds of time through the backs of a greasy pack of thumb-marked, tear-stained cards is a profitable calling. Perhaps it should be explained that the tears are not shed by the prophets of the tenements, but by the patrons who go to the oracle to learn if they are to be dispossessed next month or if their ambitious children will sometime learn a little Yiddish, so that they may talk with their own parents in their own homes, are sources of information for the settlement workers and others who try to learn the hopes and fears and ambitions, the real life of such places. But the fortune tellers are the real custodians of the Ghetto's secrets. In their little back rooms, some of which are cluttered with the trash that suggests the occult to the believer, someas bare as the room of a lodger who has pawned the last stick of furniture, they hear confessions that court interpreters never have a chance to translate, and listen to tales of hard luck that are never told to the rabbis.
Chair with open back stuffed with disguisesChair with open back stuffed with disguises
Chair with open back stuffed with disguises
(Drawing of costumes)
Supposed "Medium" Sitting in the Chair.Supposed "Medium" Sitting in the Chair.
Supposed "Medium" Sitting in the Chair.
But they don't use the mails to drum up trade, and they have no barkers at the doorsteps to cajole the credulous to step inside to learn what the future has in store for them. And so, in a legal sense, they are guilty of no fraud. They are not very serious frauds in any sense, for their tricks are harmless and their prognostications are vague as the weather predictions of an almanac and as probable as the sayings of the cart-tail orators who hold forth at the street corners in campaign time.
"About this time, look for cold winds, with some snow," sagely remarks the almanac writer, stringing the ten words of his prediction down the entire column of the month.
"In a few years," says the fortune teller, solemnly, "you will have good friends and more money than you have now."
"If you vote for this man," shrieks the cart-tail orator, "rents will be lower and the street cleaner and you will get jobs. The other ticket stands for graft and greed. Vote for it if you want your children to run in the streets, because there is no room for them in the schools."
Like the spellbinder, the oracle frequently builds on the look-on-this-picture-and-then-on-that plan.
"This is a strong line," mumbles the palmist. "You will meet a man with blue eyes who will help you, but beware of a man with dark hair."
Sometimes the helper has light hair and the man to be avoided black eyes. But invariably the good friend of the future is blond and the devil is brunette. No seer would anymore think of changing that color scheme than the writer of a melodrama would dare stage a villain who didn't have hair and mustache as black as night. That prediction is one of the traditions of the art, and no future has ever been complete without the dark and the light men or the dark and the light woman, as the case might be.
One of the most famous of fortune tellers, a woman, died suddenly. She had been reading cards in the same house for forty years, and on the day of her funeral her house was crowded with mourners, whose future she had foreseen with so much shrewdness that not one of the 200 or more men and women who filed by the coffin, to view the body had any fault to find with the services she had rendered. On the contrary, they compared notes, each trying to pay the best tribute to the dead by telling the most wonderful story of her predictions.
"I was sitting right in this room at that table where the flowers are today," said one mourner, "and she said to me: 'You have an enemy. It is here on this card where you can see it plainly. But here is a friend, a tall, light man, who will come between you and your enemy. Put your trust in the tall, light man, but keep away from a dark man. There is a dark-haired woman who pretends to be your friend, but lies about you.'"
Compare that prediction of the oracle with this forecast of Daniel Defoe's famous deaf and dumb predictor, Duncan Campbell.
"To Mme. S——h W——d; I see but one misfortune after the year of 1725. A black man, pretty tall and fat, seems to wish you no good. Never tell your secrets to any such persons, and their malice cannot hurt you."
And that warning wasn't original when Mme. S——h W——d called at Duncan Campbell's lodging in London to learn what was what. No doubt it could be traced beyondDelphi. That's almost as safe a guess as to assume that Mme. S——h W——d was a Sarah Wood. She might have been a Wedd or a Weld, but that is doubtful.
So, although the seer of Randolph street and all the rest probably never heard of Duncan Campbell or Nostradamus, or of their predecessors at Delphi, they have kept the profession of forecasting remarkably free of innovations.
"This art of prediction," reads Defoe's Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell, "is not attainable any otherwise than by these three ways. 1. It is done by the company of familiar spirits and genii, which are of two sorts (some good and some bad), who tell the gifted person the things, of which he informs other people. 2. It is performed by the second sight, which is very various and differs in most of the possessors, it being only a very little in some, very extensive and constant in others; beginning with some in their infancy and leaving them before they come to years, happening to others in a middle age, to others again in an old age that never had it before, and lasting only for a term of years, and now and then for a very short period of time; and in some intermitting, like fits, as it were, of vision that leave them for a time, and then return to be strong in them as ever; and it being in a manner hereditary in some families, whose children have it from their infancy (without intermission) to a great old age, and even to the time of their death, which they even foretell before it comes to pass, to a day—nay, even to an hour. 3. It is attained by the diligent study of the lawful part of the art of magic."
Nowadays the prophets see to it that their miraculous power does not depart from them for any cause whatsoever until their own palms have been crossed with enough silver to enablethem to retire in comfort. A certain Fatima who told fortunes on Madison street for years removed her card from the front window and disappeared altogether. She had bought a farm up the state, where she is now living and raising fancy breeds of poultry. There is no mortgage on the farm, and the hens have grain three times a day.
Just which one of Duncan Campbell's three methods a certain practitioner uses is not apparent, but he was one of the most noted and successful fortune tellers, and his men patrons set more store by what he said than in the promises of the district leaders.
He has reduced his business to a fine system, and all the questions that anybody could possibly think of are set down in a book with numbers opposite them. And these books, printed in Yiddish, English and German, anticipate all the hopes and fears of the tenements. The questions, all of a strong local flavor, are all answered by the fortune teller off-hand for $1, notwithstanding the fact that they present some of the toughest problems that the philanthropists who support the Educational Alliance and the settlement houses have been trying for years to solve. To illustrate, take this group of questions under the general classifications "Home and Children":
The book printed in Yiddish shows the most wear. It is divided under these heads: "Travel and Letters," "Love and Marriage," "Home and Children," "Business," "Work," "Luck and Losses."
Some of the questions make interesting reading and supplementary to the reports and papers of the various Hebrewcharity organizations. One of the more recent of these reports gave statistics of desertions of wives, and "other women" was put down as the cause in a large number of cases.
The first question in the fortune tellers book under "Travel and Letters" is, "Where did my husband elope to?" The identity of the other woman in the case seems to be secondary in importance to the whereabouts of the deserter.
Under "Love and Marriage" are these questions, among many others:
Those who are in doubt about work have many questions to select from, the list starting off like this:
A lady-figure is undoubtedly a cloak model.
Under "Business" some of the questions are:
Under "Luck and Losses" are:
The deviser of these books keeps his office in a rear tenement open from early morning till late at night, and there is generally a roomful of anxious patrons awaiting their turns.
At a single sitting, price $1, the man or woman who wants to know may select three questions. She puts the number corresponding to the questions on a slip of paper. The numbers do not run in regular order through the book or through any section of it.
The slip of paper is kept concealed by the questioner, and later on, when she is in the actual presence of the oracle, she writes those numbers again on another slip of paper, hidden from the fortune teller by a book cover. She also writes her name on two pieces of paper, which she places in two Bibles, opened at random by the fortune teller after she has named any three words she happens to see on the page.
Then the books are closed, the soothsayer tells his customer what her name is (he is not often absolutely accurate in that part of the game), and then he begins to talk about the past and future in such a rambling, comprehensive way that he is almost sure to hit upon, directly or indirectly, the questions she has in mind. If he is too far off the trail he asks the woman from time to time if she understands him, and from her replies and questions gets a further clew as to just which three questions she had selected from the lists. Then the rest is simple.
Lively Fight Before the Officers Succeed in Making Arrests—One of the Number Set Upon and Severely Beaten Before Aided—Spectators at the Seance Take Part and the Row Becomes General—Search of the Premises Reveals a Systematic Plan to Deceive—Anger of the Dupes Turns to Chagrin at the Revelations Made by the Police.
Lively Fight Before the Officers Succeed in Making Arrests—One of the Number Set Upon and Severely Beaten Before Aided—Spectators at the Seance Take Part and the Row Becomes General—Search of the Premises Reveals a Systematic Plan to Deceive—Anger of the Dupes Turns to Chagrin at the Revelations Made by the Police.
September 2, 1906, Catherine Nichols, Sarah Nichols and Jennie Nichols, 186 Sebor street, fake exponents of materialization of spirits and general "spook" grafters, were arrested, the seances raided and the game closed, by Detectives Wooldridge and Barry.
The scene of the raid was a brick building at 184 Sebor street, which is just east of Halsted and a block south of Harrison street.
The medium arrested was Miss Jennie Nichols, who, with her mother, Mrs. Catherine Nichols, and her sister, Sarah, had been gleaning a harvest of dollars from guillible residents, mostly of the West Side of the city, during the last two years. The establishment of the Nichols family occupies parts of two buildings, the mother and her two daughters living at 186 Sebor street, next door to 184. On the second floor of the latter address was located the hall which they used for their public seances.
The raid was made on the authority of a warrant which was applied for by Miss Muriel Miller, a young woman who was induced by the blandishments of other mediums to come toChicago from her home in Portland, Ore. Miss Miller, who is employed in a barber shop in Clark street, is slightly deaf. She became interested in Spiritualism, and thus came in touch with the Nichols' outfit.
"SPIRIT PICTURES" OF WOMEN HELD AS BOGUS MEDIUMS, AND SCENE SHOWING FIGHT BETWEEN PUGILISTIC SPOOKS AND DETECTIVES. CATHERINE Nichols, JENNIE Nichols"SPIRIT PICTURES" OF WOMEN HELD AS BOGUS MEDIUMS, AND SCENE SHOWING FIGHT BETWEEN PUGILISTIC SPOOKS AND DETECTIVES.CATHERINE Nichols,JENNIE Nichols
"SPIRIT PICTURES" OF WOMEN HELD AS BOGUS MEDIUMS, AND SCENE SHOWING FIGHT BETWEEN PUGILISTIC SPOOKS AND DETECTIVES.CATHERINE Nichols,JENNIE Nichols
She had written to another Chicago medium, and received letters in answer signed "Professor Venazo."
It was explained to Miss Miller that the wonderful cures which the medium professed to be able to make were brought about while the patient was in a trance. In a letter which had been turned over to the police, "Professor Venazo," which isthe name with which an accomplice of certain Chicago mediums signed such communications, explained that because of stress of business it would be impossible to undertake to cure Miss Miller of her deafness unless she was prepared to put up at least $50 in cash.
The letter stated that if she would send to "Professor Venazo" $100 the medium would undertake to go to her home and cure her there. If she did not wish to pay that much money she could come to Chicago, pay the medium $50, and be cured "while in a trance."
Detectives Barry and David Carroll were detailed to assist Wooldridge in serving the warrants and making the raid.
Barry and Carroll planned to effect an entrance to the "seance." Inspector Revere was informed and asked to give a detail of six officers, who, headed by Detective Wooldridge, went to the hall on Sebor street. Barry and Carroll had preceded them and succeeded in convincing Jennie Nichols, who was the master of ceremonies, that they were interested in spiritualism and desired to witness the materializations.
When they went to the hall, Detective Barry walked in and found twenty-eight or thirty others there before him. Jennie Nichols was busy arranging the spectators in seats. She took a great deal of care about placing them. Carroll and Barry entered and signed their names on the register. This was a book in which everyone who is admitted to a seance is requested to place his name and place of residence. Barry signed as "John Woods"; address, 142 Ashland boulevard.
When the seance opened Jennie Nichols conducted those who were in the hall through the main room and the one at the rear, before which the curtain was placed. Everything was all right, so far as Detectives Barry and Carroll could see. The cabinet from which the spirits were to come stood acrossone corner, and opposite it was a door leading into one of the two rooms in the rear of the hall.
They examined the cabinet and the rooms carefully, but found everything all right. After they had been through everything the doors were locked and they returned to their seats, Miss Nichols making some other changes in the arrangements of the seats, and then the place was darkened.
When the place had been made almost entirely dark, Jennie Nichols, the medium, began pacing back and forth in front of the curtain. She rubbed her hands over her head and eyes a number of times, and began to chant: "Come, O queen, O queen."
When she began to call on the "queen" the spectators began to get excited. Most of them appeared to be thoroughly familiar with the proceedings, and several of them said: "Oh, I hope it's the king."
Then the medium pulled a cord which was attached to a light enclosed in a sheet-iron case, the one small opening of which was covered with several thicknesses of green tissue paper. When she pulled the string the room became darker than ever.
Before she began her incantations the medium had requested everyone present not to cross their feet, and to try to assist her to bring the spirits before them. She said that it would probably not be possible to bring a spirit for everybody, but that if all helped her, the spirits wanted by many in the audience would surely appear.
Then she asked them all to sing "Nearer, My God, to Thee," which they did, and after a few more passes over her temples and in front of her eyes the spirit began to move. The detectives could see it, and they began to think they had been wrong in thinking there was nothing in spiritualism. It certainly appeared real. First one form would glide back and forth in front of the curtain, then an entirely different onewould appear. Altogether there were spirits of about ten men and children materialized.
As the apparitions moved slowly in front of the curtain, in the spectral light which made it impossible to detect more than a faint outline of the form, women rushed forward crying out that it was their husband, or their child, that they saw. They stretched out their hands to clasp the forms of their departed, but Jennie Nichols and her male assistant would take them by their hands and tell them they must not touch the spirit or it would fade away. You could get within six inches of the figures, and peer into the faces as they passed to and fro, but everyone was restrained from attempting to touch them. In the ghostly light of the room the closest inspection could not determine that the figures were frauds, so clever were they disguised.
While the detectives were waiting for the materialization, a woman they knew entered the room. Barry put his handkerchief up to his face for fear she would recognize him. They wanted to know what was the matter with him, and Barry said that he guessed he had something in his eye. They wanted to take it out, and he had to put his handkerchief away. He thought he was discovered, but the woman, Mrs. Ella Hoobler, 319 West Madison street, said nothing about him. After they had arrested the Nichols woman, Mrs. Hoobler told Barry she had recognized him when she first entered the room, but she thought he was "bug" in the game, and said nothing.
After about ten materializations of husbands and children had keyed the spectators up to a high pitch, Mrs. Hoobler asked for the spirit of her daughter, Helen. In a few minutes the figure of a young girl, clad in white from head to foot, appeared before the curtain.
"Oh, Helen, my Helen!" Mrs. Hoobler exclaimed, rushing to the apparition. "Oh, mamma!" came the answer in a shrill falsetto voice.
Medium's Paraphernalia Seized by Police in Raid.Medium's Paraphernalia Seized by Police in Raid.
Medium's Paraphernalia Seized by Police in Raid.
Jennie Nichols and the big assistant seized Mrs. Hoobler's hands just as she was about to clasp what she believed to be the spirit of her daughter in her arms.
"You must not touch it," Jennie Nichols told her, "or the spirit will go away."
The poor, almost frantic woman kneeled before the apparition. Barry thought it was time to get busy, and he whispered softly to Carroll: "Watch out, there's going to be a pinch." Then he threw on the flashlight and whistled for the squad outside to come in.
Just as he did this the "spook" in front of him looked so realistic that for the life of him he couldn't decide whether he was going up against a real spirit or not. But he took a chance and grabbed for it. Even when he had hold of it and knew it must be flesh and blood, it seemed so slimy, with the white stuff rubbed over it, that he felt his hair rising.
Just about that time the medium outfit got busy. The big man who had been helping Jennie Nichols hold the hands of the people who were trying to grab the spirits of their dead hit Barry over the head with some sort of a club that knocked him to the floor. Jennie Nichols put out the light entirely, grabbed Barry's flashlight and began pounding him over the head with it. They went to the floor in a rough and tumble scrimmage, the crowd on top of them, yelling and screaming.
In the next room Carroll was busy, too. He got hold of Mrs. Catherine Nichols, the mother, who had been helping with the show, and he was beset by spectators who were incensed because the seance had been broken up.
When Detective Wooldridge and his detail broke down the doors of the hall and made their entrance into the place it was pitch dark, and they had to strike matches before they could separate the combatants.
After a semblance of order had been restored in the placethe premises were searched, and a most astounding outfit of disguises discovered. Before this development the spectators, who had been held in the place, were very angry with the officers, saying that they had been attending the seances for the last two years; that they knew Jennie Nichols as a medium had shown them the spirits of their dead. When the officers produced Sarah Nichols, to whom Detective Barry had held when he seized the "spook," they discovered that she had been wearing a pair of sandal slippers with felt five inches thick for soles; a pair of men's black trousers and the white shroud and painted picture face of a young girl.
Attached to a pole in front of her was a paper head, around which was a white shroud four feet in length. Those in attendance believed this image to be the spirit of a believer's dead relative. The "medium" had "spook" images of men, women and children, and could produce them as circumstances demanded. The light was turned up, and the contemptible imposition on credulity was exposed to twenty-six dupes, who had been paying $1 apiece for the privilege of attending meetings of the "spook" grafters for years. It was the greatest exposé of "spooks" that has been made in many years. A wagon load of masks, wigs, false whiskers, tin horns, gowns with safety pins in them, skulls and skeletons with cross-bones to match, were seized.
At the station the women refused to talk. Sarah Nichols, the "spook," had donned a house dress before she was taken to the station. Jennie Nichols, the "medium," was dressed in a neat black gown of rich material. The mother appeared in a black skirt and a white shirtwaist. The latter is a gray-haired woman apparently about 50 years old. She wept copiously. Sarah Nichols also wept. In the scrimmage after the arrest her ear had been injured, and it was bleeding when the trio was booked at the station.
Jennie Nichols was the most composed of all. She held apalm leaf fan in front of her face and above it twinkled a pair of shrewd blue eyes. As she and her relatives were led from the private room at Harrison street she even laughed, although her mother and her sister were in tears, and her victims were denouncing her for having robbed them, through their credulity, of hundreds of dollars, which many of them could ill afford to lose.
A "spook" sat on the bench with Justice Prindiville. He made ghosts walk and graveyards yawn.
The "spook" was Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge.
When Miss Sarah Nichols, "the ghost," Miss Jennie Nichols, "the trance medium," and Mrs. Catherine Nichols, mother of the other two known as the "overseer," appeared in court to answer to charges of obtaining money by false pretenses through spiritualistic seances, Detective Wooldridge crowded to the center of the stage.
He bore a great board, on which were tacked white shrouds, grinning skulls and cross-bones, the costume of an Indian, and other instruments of the medium's trade.
"For the benefit of the public at large," he said, addressing the court, "I ask permission to expose the methods of these fake spiritualists."
The permission was given, and "Spook" Wooldridge took the wool sack.
He lit the punk with which the mediums were wont to light up the skull. He burned incense. He put on a white gown.
"This is Carrie's garment," he said, pointing to where "Ghost" Carrie, twenty-four years old and buxom, stood.
He went through the whole performance, save the grease paint. He started to daub his face with the stuff, which gave a ghostly hue, when the justice interrupted:
"You needn't dirty your face, Friend Spook. You've scored your points already." The "Spook" had, indeed.
Despite the exposures, many women and a few men who had come to hear the cases, expressed their devotion to the persons arrested and to the "cause."
They finally became so demonstrative that Justice Prindiville ordered the court room cleared of the "devotees."
"This is not a matinee, a spiritualists' meeting or a circus," said the Justice. "Let the devotees meet in the outer hall."
Fifty women, of all ages and many conditions of life, stood with mouths wide open and eyes bulging as Wooldridge went through his performance. They were the victims of the Nichols women.
Jennie Nichols and Sarah Nichols were fined $100 each.
To conclude the record of the day, Detectives Wooldridge and Barry, accompanied by two officers from the Cottage Grove station, visited a seance given by Clarence A. Beverly and Mrs. M. Dixon at Arlington hall, Thirty-first street and Indiana avenue. The officers bought tickets and awaited the performance. After a lecture on psychic problems by "Dr." Beverly and a programme of music rendered by children, "Dr." Dixon took the rostrum and went through a series of clairvoyant discoveries.
Among the things which she professed to predict while in her "trance" was a prognostication which had not a little to do with the developments of the evening. After she had pointed out a number of persons in the audience and told what they had done or should do, she discovered Wooldridge and singled him out.
"I see a man with glasses who has his hands crossed over his knees," she said. "I am governed by the spirit of John Googan, an Irishman. He gives you a message," pointing toWooldridge, "and says that whatever John orders must be done."
At this Wooldridge, arising from his seat, advanced to the rostrum.
"John Collins, chief of police, says, Mrs. Dixon, that I am to put you under arrest under a state warrant charging you with receiving money by a confidence game. I also have a warrant charging the same offense against Clarence A. Beverly. Dr. Beverly, please come forth."
Dr. Beverly presented himself, and both he and Mrs. Dixon were taken to Harrison street, where strenuous efforts on their behalf on the part of "Dr." Harry H. Tobias, spiritual mental healer, with offices at 118 East Thirty-third street, and others, failed to procure them bonds.
The arrest of Beverly and Mrs. Dixon was made on a warrant signed by Miss Miller, who had entered into correspondence with them from her home in Portland, Ore. The fee in Chicago was to have been $50, according to the letters she received from the mediums, as in the preceding instance. She borrowed money to come to Chicago, and had but $25 to pay the "healers." When she received no benefit from their treatment she made complaint and was threatened with violence, she alleges. Thereupon she laid her case before Chief Collins, resulting in the raid and the closing up of this place.
Thus did the sleuth a-sleuthing vanquish the ubiquitous "spook," the "ghost," the "spirit," the re-incarnation, the Mahatma, the "sending," and all the hosts of the immaterial world, whose immaterialism was being converted into good hard material cash by the producers of the evanescent shapes from beyond the veil.
Thus did Clifton R. Wooldridge and his able assistants make "spooking" a dangerous business in Chicago.
Hugo Devel prefers being hanged to living with his wife.
Unable to escape her in any other way, lacking the courage or nerve to kill himself, and shuddering at the idea of life imprisonment with the woman he had promised to love and cherish, he confessed to a murder he did not commit, and was ready to go upon the gallows or to penal servitude for life in the stead of the real murderer.
He'd rather be hanged than live with his wife.He'd rather be hanged than live with his wife.
He'd rather be hanged than live with his wife.
Now he is free, and miserable, and in his home at Lubeck, in Germany. He is envying Franz Holz, who is awaiting the gallows.
Devel admits sadly that he had a double purpose in wanting to die on the gallows. First, that he would escape his wife; and, second, that, by being hanged he would make it improbable that any other man should meet his fate—not his fate on the gallows, but his fate in having wedded Frau Devel.
The case, which was cleared up by the Hamburg police, furnished a problem that would have defied the cunning of Sherlock Holmes and all his kindred analysts. Briefly stated, the facts in the case, which is the strangest one ever given to a detective department to solve, are these:
A few months ago a certain Frau Gimble, of Munich, was cruelly murdered by a man. The evident motive of the deed was robbery, and that the crime was planned and premeditated there was sufficient evidence. Every clew and circumstance pointed to Franz Holz. He was known to have been at or near the scene of the murder shortly before its commission. He knew the woman, and had knowledge that she kept a considerable sum of money in her home. He was known to have been without money for days prior to the murder, and immediately after the deed, and before the body was discovered, he had appeared with a quantity of money, made some purchases, bought drinks for acquaintances, and then disappeared.
The police were on his trail within a short time after the finding of the body of the murdered woman. Holz had fled toward Berlin, and a warning was sent in all directions, containing descriptions of the fugitive.
The awfulness of the deed attracted the more attention because of the locality and the ruthless and cruel manner of its commission. While the police were making a rapid search for the fugitive Holz, Hugo Devel, a well-to-do tradesman in Lubeck, surrendered himself to the police of his home town and confessed that he, and not Holz, had committed the crime. Devel had been in Hamburg at the time the crime was committed. His confession, which destroyed all the evidence and all the theories implicating Holz, staggered the detectives.
Although apparently saved from a remarkable network of circumstantial evidence, and no longer wanted for the murderof the Gimble woman, the German police reasoned that Holz, if he had not fled because of that crime, must have fled because of some other crime. So the department, which has a name a couple of feet long, which in English would mean, "the department for finding out everything about everybody," kept on the trail.
Meantime the police of Hamburg got possession of Devel and examined him. From the first they were uneasy. He confessed that he murdered the woman to get her money, and beyond that would not tell anything. It is not customary for the police to insist that a man who confesses that he is guilty of murder shall prove it, but there were facts known to the police which made them wonder how it was possible for Devel to have killed the woman. They used the common police methods, and made the prisoner talk. The more he talked the more apparent it became to the police that he was innocent, although he still claimed vehemently that he, and he alone, killed the Gimble woman.
Some of his statements were ridiculous. For instance, he did not know what quarter of the city the woman lived in. He did not know how she had been murdered. He said he climbed through a window and killed the woman. When pressed, he said the window was the dining-room window. In view of the fact that she was killed while working in a little open, outdoor kitchen when murdered, the police became satisfied that Devel was not the man, and ordered the pursuit of Holz resumed by all departments.
The case even then was a remarkable one, and one which would have defied any theoretical detective. The police proved that it was impossible that Devel should be confessing in order to shield Holz—first, because he never knew Holz; and second, because the police had informed him that the real murderer was in custody, in order to discover a reason for his confession. It was suspected that Devel was partly insane andseeking notoriety. Everything in his life refuted that idea. He was a quiet, orderly citizen, who seldom read newspapers, and who neither was interested in crime or criminals. He owned a small business in Lubeck, attended to it strictly, drank little, and apparently was as sane as any one.
The case worried the police officials. The absolute lack of reason for Devel's confession stimulated their curiosity. He was held in custody for weeks, and then the police gave up in despair, and, as Holz had been arrested and had confessed to everything, the release of Devel was ordered. The order of release proved the move that revealed the truth. When he was told that he was free to return home, Devel broke down and begged the police to keep him in prison, to hang him, to poison him, but not to send him home.
In his agony he confessed that the only reason he confessed the murder was that he desired to get hanged, and that he preferred hanging to life with his wife.
The hard-hearted police set him free—literally threw him out of the prison, and he returned to his wife in Lubeck. The following day he resumed charge of his business.
An English correspondent visited Devel in his shop and made certain inquiries of him regarding the case. As the hanging editor would say, "the condemned man was nervous." He was afraid his wife would read what he said, but the correspondent finally got him to tell.
"I desired to be hung," said Devel, mournfully. "Life is not worth the living, and with my wife it is worse than death. If I had been hanged no other man would marry my wife, and I would save them from my fate. Many times have I planned to kill myself to escape her. That is sin, and I lack the bravery to kill myself, besides. If they will not hang me I must continue to live with my wife."
Devel states, among other things, that these are the chief grievances against married life in general, and his wife in particular:
These things, he said, made him prefer to be hanged to living with her.
Incidentally Holz, who is awaiting execution, expresses an earnest desire to trade places with Herr Devel.
There is no accounting for tastes.
While passing through the Fair, one of the largest retail dry goods establishments in Chicago, Detective Wooldridge noticed one of the cleverest shoplifters that ever operated in Chicago, Bertha Lebecke, known as "Fainting Bertha."
She was standing in front of the handkerchief counter, where her actions attracted Wooldridge's attention, and he concluded to watch her. She called the girl's attention to something on the shelf and as she turned to get it Bertha's hand reached out and took a half dozen expensive lace handkerchiefs, which disappeared in the folds of her skirt.
The act was performed so quickly and with such cleverness that it would have gone unnoticed unless one were looking right at her and saw her take the handkerchiefs.
From the handkerchief counter she went to the drug department, where she secured several bottles of perfume. As she was leaving this counter she met a Central detective who had arrested her before for the same offense. He stopped a few yards from her to make some trifling purchases. She, thinking he was watching her, left the store.
From the Fair she went to Siegel-Cooper's, another large dry goods store several blocks away. Detective Wooldridge followed her. She was seen to go from counter to counter, and from each one she succeeded in getting some article.
As she was leaving the store she was placed under arrest by Detective Wooldridge and taken to the Police Station.
When she was arrested she fainted, and a great crowd gathered around her, and many of the women cried and implored Detective Wooldridge not to arrest her, but he would not be moved by any of them to let her go free.