Alice Clement of the Chicago P.D.

"I'd rather pinch a crook than eat. It's the best game in the world."
~Alice Clement Faubel

While researching my earlier post about private detective Cora Strayer, I was delighted to find that a very similar woman was living and working in Chicago at precisely the same time. Sadly, like Strayer, this once well-known figure is virtually forgotten today.

Meet Alice Clement, the Windy City's first female police detective.

As is the case with Strayer, we know frustratingly little of Clement's early life. She was born Alice Bush in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1878. In 1895, she married a Leonard Clement, but the union eventually went sour, and she divorced him in 1914 on the grounds of "desertion and intemperance." In 1918, she wed a barber named Albert Faubel. The bride, a vocal advocate for women's rights, arranged for the ceremony to be performed by a female pastor.

Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1913. Clement is second from the left.

According to newspaper reports, Clement began working for the Chicago police force in 1909, patrolling department stores in search of pickpockets.  In 1913, she became a detective. Unfortunately, she left no record of what inspired her to take this highly unusual career move, but she soon made her mark on the force--and in the local newspapers. Clement was an ardent feminist who slept with a gun under her pillow and fearlessly tackled the most obstreperous wrongdoers. She was also a petite, attractive lady who loved stylish clothes and flashy jewelry--all of which she wore on duty--and never hesitated to use the power of her femininity. The press found the combination irresistible, hailing her as a combination of "fur, heels, and jujitsu." For some years, the papers were full of highly-colored accounts of her exploits, turning her into a Chicago household word, famed for her vigorous campaigns against "mashers." She was the equivalent of a muckraking journalist, focusing attention on social issues that had special relevance to women, such as sexual harassment, prostitution, divorce, and female suffrage. Newspapers across the country cemented her fame when they carried a serialized--and, alas, probably largely fictional--account of her adventures, written in the most purple prose of the day.

In 1916, the "Chicago Tribune" carried a front-page story describing what happened when "Officer 3428" encountered a teamster who was beating his horse:

When the brute, a Joseph Kournake, ignored Clement's order to stop abusing the animal, she gave him "a half-dozen swift slaps in the face" and hustled him into a police wagon. "Gee," Kournake later moaned, "that dame packs an awful kick in her left."

In 1919, Clement even wrote, produced, and starred in a movie where, naturally, she played herself. In "Dregs of the City," she was a police detective who rescues a naive country girl from "one of the more unhallowed of the south side cabarets," full of "countless devotees of hashish, bhang and opium." (Unfortunately, no copy has survived.)

Variety, September 1919

Some stills from "Dregs of the City, via Chicago Magazine

A typical tribute, emphasizing both her toughness and her sex appeal, appeared in the New York "Evening Telegram" on May 21, 1922:

Chicago's champion Sherlock Holmes wears petticoats, lace stockings, high-heeled slippers and pearl necklaces. She's forty-three years old and looks thirty. She is a grandmother, but looks like a sister of her youngest daughter. She sleeps with a gun under her pillow every night, travels with a set of shackles and handcuffs in her dainty overnight bag, has grappled with the desperate criminals of the Middle West, and has a reputation that a Canadian Royal Mounted Policeman would envy--she always "gets her man--or woman."

Mrs. Alice Clement Faubel, chicly arrayed in a modish Paris gown, her French slippers clicking sharply on the hardwood floor, and lace stockings disclosing shapely ankles, strolled into the office of Commissioner Carleton Simon, of the Narcotic Bureau. A straightening of bow ties, slicking down of patent leather hair on the part of the male population of the office and disdainful sniffs on the part of the feminine end occurred.

Seemingly unconscious of the disturbance, she passed into Commissioner Simon's office, and smilingly announced:

"I've come to take Stella Myers back to Chicago."

Even the Commissioner gasped. Stella Myers had eluded the police of virtually every city in the south, she had almost outwitted the cleverest man on New York's uniformed force. She had a reputation for desperate methods. Yet here was a smiling woman who expected to ride back to Chicago with her with no trouble.

"She's desperate," he gasped.

"I've come prepared," his dainty vis-a-vis answered, and, reaching down, she drew from her overnight bag a wicked looking gun, a pair of ankle bracelets, likewise a couple of wrist holders--the kind that lock.

"These go on her, and we don't sleep until I've locked her up in Chicago," she calmly answered. And then we knew why Alice Clement Faubel has the reputation of being the cleverest woman detective and policewoman in this broad and long country.

Of course she has quite a start on the average policewoman. She was the first of her kind, being appointed thirteen years ago, when a pair of trousers and burly back, to say nothing of swelling biceps and a nasty punch, were considered necessary adjuncts for a "cop." Chicago learned different first. The rest of the world has learned now, too.

Likewise Alice Clement (the Faubel has been added since then) was the first feminine Sherlock Holmes. An ability to remember faces and women's intuition carried out past the nth degree were responsible for her appointment. She cleaned Chicago of fake clairvoyants in record time, wiped out the school for thieves, where numerous Bill Sykeses taught scores of Oliver Twists how to accumulate other people's money and belongings, and has a reputation for having brought hundreds of girls back on the straight and narrow path after they have tried out the primrose road, only to find roses withering overnight.

"Why does a girl go wrong?" we asked Mrs. Faubel, as she sat in the apartment of a friend after a wearying day in court.

"Nine times out of ten it's her mother's fault," she answered firmly. "This sounds heartless, but it's a fact. For every ten girls that I have found living outside of the law nine of them have drifted into that way because mothers have been either too indifferent or too finicky to tell them what they're up against before they start out in life.

"Mothers in America today aren't retaining the confidence of their daughters. What else can you expect, then? Many mothers, especially the foreign born, are driving their girls from home because they take all their earnings and won't let them feel a certain amount of independence which every girl these days has a right to feel.

"Girls go wrong because they want pretty clothes and jewelry. "The easiest way" is no myth. You find it on every side. The girl who succumbs to it doesn't have to come from a lowly family. I have had them in the families of judges of the high courts, well-to-do manufacturers and business men.

"Prohibition, too, is driving women out of the paths of rectitude. Women wouldn't be seen going into saloons in the old days when saloons were open. Now they don't care where they go to get drink. Crime among women has increased since prohibition. Illicit drink is the cause. One sip of the moonshine or homebrew and a woman doesn't care what she does."

Mrs. Faubel has had years of experience in detecting shoplifters in the large department stores in Chicago. Women are more prone to shoplifting than men, she says, and women are not above teaching their children to aid in the "profession."

"Women will resort to the cleverest tricks in shoplifting," she recounts. "There was a placid looking woman of forty-five who had a rubber hand made for herself. Her other hand, kept under her long cape, would reach up on the counter and filch things off, dropping them into a bag concealed under her cape. In that way she made it appear her hands always were above board.

"We had a school for pickpockets in Chicago where the average age of the student was eight years. Children would stay out of school first to play hookey. Then they would see a chance to pick up some money and older thieves int he business world would send them out to pick pockets and bring in the money. Their average earnings were $18 to $20 a day. I cleaned out the gang of them."

Mrs. Faubel says she always works on the theory of giving the first offender a chance.

"Particularly with those children," she said, "they don't realize what they're doing. I have talked to them and shown them the error of their ways. If they fall after that, why, I can't help them. A girl who goes astray always should receive a helping hand.

"Ninety per cent of the girls who go astray are from small communities. Generally their parents will not allow them to have any money of their own, even if they go out and earn it. Independence is throttled and the girl goes out to make her own way. She will write home that she has a good job and is living with a girl friend.

"The hard part of it is when I go out to find her and see just what her job is--she is entertaining some man. It never would have happened if her mother had retained her trust and confidence."

Mrs. Faubel has made more than a thousand arrests this year. She has found a number of women aiding in stick-ups. She has been to every point of the country after missing girls. She has combed Chicago for them in answer to pleas from mothers in small communities in the middle West.

Stella Myers, whom she sought in New York, is wanted in Chicago for bond forfeiture and grand larceny. She is wanted in several mid-Western cities.

"The most fun I have had in my career, and I love it," said Mrs. Faubel, "was cleaning out the clairvoyants in Chicago. Incidentally, it was the most dangerous thing I ever did. It made me resort to a different disguise every day.

"By the way, I never wear the same costume twice in my detective duty, because I don't want to become known.

"I had my fortune told more than 300 times to get the goods on the fortune tellers. The most exciting was the case of Mona Allen. A rich widow, who had come to Chicago, was using up her estate at the rate of thousands of dollars a day.

"One day a $4,000 diamond ring disappeared, then some bonds, a large sum of money. I shadowed her. This particular day she was carrying a large turkey down the street.

"I contrived to get to the clairvoyant's home first and stood in the lobby. When she rang the bell and the servant saw who it was and opened the door, I slid in and into the clairvoyant's room.

"A pistol was stuck against my chest. I had my gun in my hand and dealt a blow to the hand that was holding the pistol. Then I rushed to the back door and unlocked it. There I had a trusty sergeant waiting for me. We made the arrest.

"We found that the woman had been made to believe her husband was calling her from the spirit land and demanded various gifts. The 'husband,' by the way, was merely the husband of the clairvoyant, who stood in the closet and called out at the right time.

"Don't I get frightened? Oh, no! I sleep with my gun under my pillow. I love my work and try to keep myself up to the highest point of efficiency. You say I don't look like a grandmother, but I am. It's by making companions of my daughters that I have managed to keep so young."

On one occasion, however, she was outwitted by her own daughter. ("Chicago Tribune," December 29, 1918):

Mrs. Alice Clement Faubel is Chicago's best known policewoman. Part of her daily work, a good part of it, is to keep lovelorn young couples from rushing into hasty marriages. She is the Nemesis of elopers. Scores of young folk are single today only because Mrs. Faubel tracked them down before they could get to the minister.

Ruth Clement is Mrs. Faubel's 20 year old daughter. Ruth wanted to get married. She and Charles C. Marrow, son of a former mayor of Parsons, Kansas, had it all arranged. But Marrow is in service, int he naval aviation corps at Penascola, Fla. Mrs. Faubel insisted there be no marriage until he was released.

Marrow came up to Chicago to spend the holidays near Ruth. Most everybody connected with the business of marrying people around Chicago knows Mrs. Faubel, so there seemed no chance for an elopement by Ruth and Charley. Mrs. Faubel felt perfectly safe.

Well, the "Tribune" chuckled, the young couple quietly got a license, "dodged the judges," and married at the home of a neighborhood minister. When Alice discovered the truth, she threatened to arrest her new son-in-law herself and send him back to his station. Happily, though, her fury gradually cooled, and, we are told, "everybody was having a good time around the Christmas tree at the Faubel home last night."

Clement was riding high until the Chicago police force got a new superintendent, Charles Fitzmorris. Unlike her previous bosses, Fitzmorris openly deprecated Clement's flamboyance and headline-grabbing ways. Fairly or not, he appears to have regarded her as a showboating lightweight, all style and little substance. He was particularly annoyed by "Dregs of the City." When Chicago's movie censor board banned any showings of the film, Fitzmorris piled on, growling that the picture "tended to give strangers false impressions of the city's dregs." Clement shot back that the women on the censor board "are catty. They think they've given me a black eye, but they haven't. I'll show it anyway."

Exhibitor's Herald, 1919

And she did. Clement got a three-month furlough, and displayed the film as part of a lecture tour, which was a smashing success.

Chicago Examiner, January 11, 1915

Osage County Herald, February 11, 1915

She did have her setbacks. In 1915, a man she had arrested for being a "masher" in a movie theater was acquitted at his trial. His defense was that he was the victim of a sting operation. He claimed that Clement had deliberately "annoyed" him by leaning closely against him and brushing her foot against his. After three minutes of deliberation, the jury decided they believed him. ("What should you expect from a jury of men?" the policewoman snorted.) Two years later, Judge William Gemmill dismissed a case against another "masher" Clement had arrested, asserting his belief that Clement was deliberately setting out to "entrap" innocent men by initiating flirtations with them. The judge accused the detective of going into theaters "for the sole purpose of finding a man who will rub knees with her." Clement was so outraged by the accusation that she threatened to file a defamation suit against him. "I will not rest until I have received a public apology from Judge Gemmill," she declared...I was put here to guard the girls of Chicago and I intend to do my part."

I do not know if she went through with the lawsuit, but there is no evidence Clement ever did get her apology. Clement dismissed all criticism of her methods, vowing to continue her efforts on behalf of girls who "disappear into the whirlpool and [are] never heard of afterward."

East Liverpool Review, May 17, 1917

Daily Atlas, June 1, 1917

Unfortunately, Clement found herself being sucked into a whirlpool, as well. By the mid-1920s, the press was tiring of her, and her exploits began to disappear from the newspapers. Her flamboyance and yen for publicity may have antagonized some of her colleagues in the police force. In 1926, she was demoted from the detective bureau to the West Chicago police station. It was roughly the equivalent of being sent to Siberia. We do not know for certain why this was done. It has been assumed that this was done at the instigation of her enemies in the force, but her failing health may have been the real reason she was given a more low-key job.

For many years, she had kept a secret that was unknown to anyone outside her immediate family: She was a diabetic, and the illness was rapidly taking its toll. Not long after being sent to the West Chicago station, she was forced to take a sick leave. It proved to be permanent. She simply quietly wasted away until she died on the day after Christmas, 1926. She was only 48. Despite her striking role in Chicago police history, she was quickly forgotten by everyone except her husband and three daughters. Her descendants still treasure one of her few remaining legacies: an album full of yellowed newspaper clippings and photographs chronicling a time when Alice Clement was Queen of the Gumshoes and Terror of the Mashers.

[Note: Although Clement and Cora Strayer were contemporaries, and must have crossed paths at some point, surprisingly I have yet to find any record indicating that Chicago's two most memorable early lady detectives ever met. Oh, to be a fly on the wall if those two were ever in the same room together...]

Weekend Link Dump

It's Friday!

Do try to cheer up.

Here's the latest collection of links:

What the hell is this bird-killing grey goo?

What the hell did happen to this WWI battalion?

What the hell did these medieval monks see on the Moon?

What the hell did happen in Aurora, Texas in 1897?

What the hell is going on at Lake Baikal?

Watch out for the Big Cats of Kent!

Watch out for those levitating law books!

Yet another example of the dangers of being a teetotaler.

The man who buried himself.

Smelling for good health.

Did John Sagar poison his wife?

Know your hobgoblins!

Sophie Germain, an intuitive 18th century mathematical genius.

If we have ghosts to thank for modern civilization, the spooks have a lot to answer for.

An early 19th century Easter roundup.

BREAKING: Man not killed by meteorite.

Is the truth out there?

Humanity saved by an Anglo-Saxon Super-Haggis; or, everything medically old is new again.

The Monster of Florence, and the general hazards of dietrologia.

The legend of Lydia Taft: yet another reason not to trust Wikipedia.

An 18th century parachutist.

The Lascaux cave paintings: a star map?

A vaudeville actress' mysterious death.

Robert the Bruce in 3-D.

The fight over the Romanov bones goes on.

A Vizier writes a great "Screw you, buddy" letter to an Imam, 1826.

Some examples of people who have left their entire bodies to science.  Yes, of course Jeremy "Wax Head" Bentham tops the list.

How to make your umbrella less lethal.

On the other hand, of course...

Meet Miss Sanderson. She's here to serve tea and kick ass. And she's all out of tea. http://t.co/Ch1ucB8j2r pic.twitter.com/VZWNaLyJUr
— Undine (@HorribleSanity) March 31, 2015

Some April 1st "jolly japes."

That time the newspapers managed to kill Death.

The case of the violin-maker, the hidden Nazi treasure, and the coded musical score.

Spring-heeled Jack and the Monkey Man.

Frankly, I'd find a lamb-faced human much more terrifying.

How to be "conversable."

A 1909 chat with Galileo and Isaac Newton.

18th century female food riots.

Oh, just another Bulgarian Werewolf Poet.

Oh, just another Greek vampire infestation.

The screams of Ben Nevis.

Meet the Human Frog, fleeting Victorian sensation.

A mysterious carving in an ancient tomb.

Yet another scandalous Georgian elopement.

The dark side of the Georgian Era, as seen in the death of a young chimney sweep.

And, finally, since I know you've been all dying to ask me, "Undine, how the hell do I fake a nose injury?" here you go.

And we're done!  See you on Monday, when I'll present a companion piece to my earlier post about Cora Strayer.  It turns out that early 20th century Chicago boasted not one, but two colorful female detectives.  In the meantime, I wish you calm seas and a prosperous voyage.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

This tale of a medium who "saw" a murder comes from the "Illustrated Police News" for August 22, 1896:

Last month a man named David Thomas, who had for a short time been employed by Lord Winidsor as his estate carpenter, was found shot dead in a lonely spot on the roadside near Fairwater, a village not far from Cardiff. No trace of the murderer could he found, and no motive has been supplied for the foul deed.

David Thomas was, from all accounts, a quiet, peaceable fellow, well liked by his intimates, and happy in his domestic relations. He was a native of the little fishing village of Aberavon, in Cardiganshire, but he had lived in Glamorganshire for some years, and had married a respectable woman, a native of the Vale of Glamorgan. A few months ago he received the appointment of carpenter on Lord Windsor's estate. He then removed with his family to live in the little village of St. Pagan's, a few miles out of Cardiff. He had hardly settled down there when the tragedy took place. It happened on a Saturday night. He had given up work early and had come home to cut the grass in the little green in front of his cottage, and to tidy up his new home. Early in the afternoon he seems to have grown tired of the work, and went indoors. His wife asked him to take the children out for a stroll. He made no reply, and his wife, busy in another part of the house, did not pay much attention to his subsequent movements. She knows, however, that he washed and went upstairs to put himself tidy, and then went out--without the children.

He seems to have met a friend on the road, and went for a walk with him. They called at a public-house, and had a glass or two of beer. Then, about ten o'clock, they parted. Thomas was quite cheerful, and started for home at a brisk pace. He came presently to a lonely part of the road. A wayfarer heard a pistol shot and a scream, and presently he met a man who was hurrying away from the direction of the scream, and who wished him a gruff good night. Two hundred yards further on the traveler saw in the dim night the body of a man stretched out on the side of the road. He fetched assistance; the body was that of David Thomas. He had been shot about 100 yards behind, but he had not been killed outright. He had run in terror up the road, spouting blood as he went, and leaving a ghastly trail behind him.

But a weird story which is told in the Western Mail of Cardiff serves to lend that touch of horror to the tale which renders it more thrilling than any story which the most daring novelist would venture to create.

A young girl, who is not yet 20, has been in the habit for some time past of attending seances held by the Cardiff Psychological Society. One night at a seance, while in a state of trance, she was seized with a strange convulsion. Through her lips came the words:--

" I--WILL--have--my--revenge.''

"Who are you, friend?" asked the interlocutor.

"David Thomas. I--was--shot."

This entirely unexpected answer was followed by sensational statements concerning the murder and the identity of the murderer. Some days after she was taken out to Fairwater--which she had never before visited--and re-enacted in a trance the scene of the murder. The story leaked out, and came to the ears of the Western Mail. Doubts were cast at once on the bona fides of the girl and the whole story. An offer was made to repeat the experiment in the presence of two Mail representatives. The offer was accepted, and one night this week, at ten o'clock, the little party met outside the Railway Inn, where poor David Thomas had had his last drink.

A start was made. The medium walked at an easy pace between a male and female friend, whose arms were linked. The night was very dark. The faint outline of the road ahead led always on towards a wall of blackness.

At last they came near Fairwater. Suddenly the medium spoke:-

"I see a pistol right in front of me--held towards me--it is a shiny one--there it is, held up--it has a large mouth."

Forty yards further on the medium spoke again. "Hark! I hear footsteps! I see a man!"

"Where?

"Right in front of us. There he is, creeping along under the hedge. He is keeping out of sight."

"What is he like? How is he dressed ?"

The medium described her vision very minutely. Her pace increased suddenly; she dragged her linked companions on with a lurch forward. The farmhouse where she first saw the phantom stranger was well passed. She was following him eagerly now.

A piercing scream came from the girl. A pressman sprang to her side and helped to prevent her body pitching headlong forward.

This was at the spot where David Thomas fell at the first shot.

"O--o--oh !"' moaned the medium, twisting her left arm round to the back, to a spot immediately below the shoulder-blade, as if in intense agony. Then, supported on either side, she staggered forward.

A light was struck to see her face. It was the hue of death. Her eyes were turned until the whites alone were visible.

"Let her go down! " Moaning, she was allowed to sink, and lay there prone. Her means expressed intense agony, and were like those of a man dying; blood gurgling in the sound; it was scarce conceivable a woman actually lay there.

"Speak, friend," said the interlocutor, and presently came the slow answer, a whisper: "David--T--T--Thomas."

"What do you want of us, friend ?"

"I--was-SHOT!" The tones of the voice were those of a man's.

"Who shot you ? "

A name was given.

"What do you want us to do, my friend?"

Slowly, distinctly, with relentless purpose came the answer. "I--will--have--my--revenge. He shot me."

Then the medium told them where the pistol had been bought by the murderer a year ago under an assumed name, and where the pistol would be found. All this while the poor girl lay prone on the roadside under the thin sinister telegraph pole.

Gradually she revived. "Look, look!" she cried, in a voice of horror, "look at the blood!"

"'Where?"

"Here--look! Look here!" indicating spots invisible to anyone else.

"Take me away," she shuddered, but before her frightened exclamation could be obeyed, her body suddenly stiffened. " He is there!" she said; with pitiful horror in her tone, but with her face expressionless and her eyes still white.

"What do you see?"

"The ghost."

Then the party returned, shaken in mind and surfeited with horrors.

Sadly, despite this spectral recreation of the crime, Thomas' seemingly inexplicable killing--which had a certain amount of contemporary fame as the "Fairwater Murder"--was never solved. In this world, at least. Perhaps his ghost managed to get his own vengeance.

The "Servant Girl Annihilator"

Jack the Ripper is an enduring monument to the powers of a good press agent. The anonymous fiend's lingering, and likely eternal, stature as history's most famous serial killer obscures the fact that he was hardly unique in his era. Just four years before Jack began his murderous spree in the East End, the women of Austin, Texas suffered through an equally brutal and mystifying reign of terror. And yet, this string of unsolved murders is relatively unknown.

On the night of December 30, 1884, a cook named Mollie Smith was lying asleep next to her common-law husband, Walter Spenser. Someone broke into their bedroom and knocked Spenser unconscious with an ax blow. When he finally, painfully came to, he saw that Mollie was gone. Her body was found lying in the snow behind the home of her employers. She had been raped, after which some heavy implement had been used to bash her head in. On May 6, Eliza Shelly, who was also a cook for a prominent Austin family, was found on the floor of her home. She had probably been raped, and an ax had nearly split her head in two.

On May 23, Irene Cross, another domestic servant, was attacked with a large knife which nearly scalped her. She briefly survived the attack, but was unable to give any information about her assailant.

In September 1885, another servant named Rebecca Ramey was sleeping quietly with her eleven-year-old daughter Mary. During that night, someone broke into her home, knocked her unconscious, and dragged Mary to a washhouse in the backyard, where the girl was raped and fatally stabbed in the head.

This crime was soon followed by a multiple attack, on Gracie Vance, her boyfriend Orange Washington, and Lucinda Boddy, a friend of Vance's who was unlucky enough to be a houseguest of the couple. As the trio were sleeping in a shanty on the property of Gracie's employer, someone came in and smashed Washington's head in with an ax. Boddy was then struck in the head and raped, but she survived the attack. The killer then forced Vance to her employer's stable, where she was raped and beaten on the head with a brick until she was dead.

Austin was naturally horrified by this series of baffling, gruesome killings, but as the victims had all been working-class African-Americans, the white elites felt little sense of personal peril. As if to mock this attitude, the killer soon shook them out of their complacency. On Christmas Eve 1885, Susan Hancock, a white woman who moved in Austin's most elegant society, was discovered by her husband in their backyard. As was the case with most of the earlier victims, she had been sexually assaulted, and then her skull had been crushed by an ax. Just one hour later, the naked body of a beautiful young socialite named Eula Phillips was found in the alley behind the home of her father-in-law, in Austin's most expensive neighborhood. Someone had dragged her from the house to this dark spot, raped her, and split open her head with an ax. Inside the home, her husband, Jimmy Phillips Jr., was found knocked unconscious. Their little boy, who had been in the bedroom with them at the time of the attack, was unharmed.

This slaughter of two of the city's most prominent citizens made all of Austin half unhinged. People gathered together in panic, scanning the headlines that screamed of this "horrible butchery." Men and women armed themselves to the teeth. Others, in the belief that such a savage and mysterious murderer must be some sort of demonic entity, spent their nights lighting candles and praying for divine protection.

The day after Hancock and Phillips were killed, over five hundred of Austin's leading citizens gathered together to find some way to fight back against their invisible tormentor. Many plans were suggested, from using large lamps to light the city at night, to putting all Austin under lockdown, but no one could really agree on what to do. It was many years before the phrase "serial killer" would even be invented. Such an unprecedented, almost supernatural series of motiveless killings was beyond their comprehension.

As it happened, any action would be irrelevant. After the killings of the two high society women, the butcher of Austin vanished. It seemed as if having made his point that no one in the city was safe from him, he felt his work was done. However, the climate of fear and anger that was his legacy took years to fully dissipate.

Investigators continued to do their utmost to find the murderer, but the Austin police force of the day was clearly out of their league in dealing with a murder spree of this magnitude. Unfortunately, they were fixated on the theory that a black man must have committed the killings, which led to a long persecution of the city's African-American males. Virtually every black man in Austin was treated like a suspect. Race relations in Austin, which had, before the murders, been relatively progressive, quickly deteriorated, as many whites convinced themselves the bloodbath was proof that blacks were hopelessly uncivilized.

In January 1886, the hunt for the killer took a startling turn. The husbands of the last two victims, Jimmy Phillips Jr. and Moses Hancock, were arrested for the murders of their wives. The theory was that the two men had--utterly coincidentally--chosen the same night to kill their spouses in a way that would look like they had been victims of the murderer of the black servants.

Although the victim's spouse is traditionally the first prime suspect, the case against the men was ridiculously weak. The closest thing to hard evidence brought against Moses Hancock was a letter Susan had written him months before her death. It said that she loved him, but could no longer tolerate his drinking. The DA argued--with absolutely nothing to back it up--that on Christmas Eve, Moses got drunk, and in a rage butchered his wife to prevent her from leaving him.

As for Jimmy Phillips, the 23-year-old was quite the local playboy, a dissipated sort who enjoyed drink, playing the violin, and the company of the ladies. On a far darker note, he was said to be a mean drunk who abused his wife when he was under the influence. Eula--who had married Phillips in 1883, when she was only fifteen--was so miserable with her husband that she reportedly tried to induce an abortion when she was pregnant with their second child.

Eula Phillips

Another detail emerged about the Phillips marriage that must have really made Austin society gasp and reach for the smelling salts: In the months before her death, Eula had taken to regularly visiting Austin's most high-class house of assignation. The home, operated by a May Tobin, was a meeting place for expensive prostitutes and their clients, as well as adulterous lovers. The last time Eula visited Tobin's was on the very night she had been killed. It is not clear whether Eula visited the house because she was carrying on illicit love affairs, or if she had turned to prostitution to make some money independent of her husband's allowance.

May Tobin--no doubt to the secret horror of many of Austin's upper-crust--was said to have told nearly all she knew to the authorities, including the names of Eula's visitors. Among those names was William J. Swain, who was no less than Texas' state comptroller and a favorite to become the state's next governor. According to Tobin, several other prominent Texas politicians were among Eula's lovers. Rumor had it that Tobin was blackmailing many other influential men in exchange for her silence about their visits to her house.

Despite the scandalous revelations, the evidence presented against Phillips at his trial was, to say the least, weak. The prosecution argued that Eula, realizing that her husband had learned of her many infidelities, had armed herself with an ax for self-protection. Phillips raped her, after which she struck him on the head with her weapon. He seized the ax and used it to kill her. He then hauled the body into the alley, in the hope that it would be seen as the work of the servant murderer. The defense countered this theory by demonstrating that a bloody footprint found on the Phillips back porch could not have been made by their client.

Despite the dubiousness of the case against Phillips, the combination of powerful motive and his history of brutal behavior was enough to cause the jury to find him guilty of Eula's murder. However, six months after his conviction, the state's Court of Appeals overturned the verdict, citing lack of evidence. They ordered a new trial, but the DA evidently decided it was fruitless to pursue the case against Phillips, and he was released.

The trial of Moses Hancock was no more successful. After his daughter testified that her mother had never even shown him the letter that was, according to the prosecution, his main motive for murder, the case against him collapsed. There was a hung jury, and he too was set free.

Although various other men--most notably William Swain--were suspected of involvement in the killings, no one else was ever charged with perpetrating these singularly ugly and incomprehensible deaths.

Swain's once-invincible political career, unsurprisingly, came to an abrupt end as a result of the Eula Phillips murder. Moses Hancock and Jimmy Phillips both moved out of Austin and started new lives for themselves. The investigation into the crimes, as well as public interest in the string of deaths, eventually came to an inconclusive end. To this day, there are many researchers in Austin who are as obsessed with trying to solve their city's ghastliest crime as "Ripperologists" are with the Whitechapel killings. (Some have even argued--unconvincingly, in my opinion--that the two sets of murders were committed by the same person.)  The latest "solution" to the mystery came in 2014, when the television show "History Detectives" used modern forensic and psychological techniques to suggest the murders were committed by a young African-American cook named Nathan Elgin. In February 1886--shortly after the last of the murders--he was shot and killed by police while he was attempting to attack a woman with a knife. While Elgin is a plausible suspect, unfortunately, we will probably never know for certain if he was one of the 19th century most horrific killers.

We remain as baffled as our ancestors were in those grim days in the mid-1880s.

[Note: Contemporary news reports generally called the killings "The Servant Girl Murders."  However, writer William Sidney Porter--aka "O. Henry"--who was living in Austin at the time of the crimes, referred to the "Servant Girl Annihilators" in an 1885 letter.  In modern times, his more colorful name for the serial killer has stuck.]

Weekend Link Dump

Ever wonder what is more unsettling than having one cat just sit and stare at you?

Well, yes.  Exactly.

Let's go stare down some links:

Who the hell legally owned this goat?

What the hell happened to Michael Rockefeller?

What the hell is in the Russian sky?

What the hell are the Tjipetir blocks?

Watch out for those haunted furnaces!

Watch out for those gay deceivers!

Watch out for the Empress Josephine's shawls!

Gandhi's historic Salt March.

The still-puzzling Babes in the Woods murder.

If you were having a big night out in Manhattan in 1951, this is what you'd be doing.

A wonderful photo gallery featuring the dogs of WWI.

Varna Man, who really managed to take it all with him.

Thecla, who took chastity to whole new levels.

19th century actress stars in her own romantic comedy.

Iceland goes to Hell.

A defense of Katherine Howard, Henry VIII's most disparaged wife.

Let's face it, we'll never stop arguing about Richard III.

A witch has second thoughts about a curse, 1877.

A post combining two of my favorite things:  Cats and P.G. Wodehouse.

An Arkansas fairy alliance against the Bakka Bird.  And things got only weirder from there.

On the hazards of humanizing dolls, yesterday and today.

A Tudor poisoning mystery.

The dos and don'ts of a Regency masquerade ball.

Avoiding "the crafty, the wicked, and the designing" while visiting Regency London.

A pagan's guide to celebrating spring.

And there we go for this week!  See you on Monday, with the tale of a still-mysterious, and relatively little known, Jack the Ripper of 19th century America.  In the meantime, here's a bit of Bach:

Book Clipping of the Day

This account of the world's longest nap comes from Sabine Baring-Gould's "Yorkshire Oddities":

At Laycock, two miles west of Keighley, at a farm called "The Worlds," lived a close-fisted yeoman named Sharp, at the end of last century and the beginning of this. He carried on a small weaving business in addition to his farm, and amassed a considerable sum of money. The story goes that on one occasion old Sharp brought a piece of cloth to the Keighley tailor and told him to make a coat for him out of it. The tailor on measuring the farmer pronounced the cloth to be insufficient to allow of tails to the coat, and asked what he was to do under the circumstances. "Tho' mun make it three laps,"—i.e., any way. The expression stuck to him, and till the day of his death the name of "Three Laps" adhered to him, when it passed to his still more eccentric son.

This son, William Sharp, for a while followed the trade of a weaver, but was more inclined to range the moors with his gun than stick to his loom; and the evenings generally found him in the bar of the " Devonshire Inn " at Keighley, the landlord of which was a Mr. Morgan. Young Three Laps was fond of chaffing his boon companions. On one occasion he encountered a commercial traveller in the timber trade, and began his banter by asking him the price of a pair of mahogany "laithe" (barn) doors. The traveller, prompted by Mr. Morgan, drew him out, and booked his order. After some weeks the invoice of mahogany barn-doors, price upwards of £30, was forwarded to William Sharp. Young Three Laps was beside his wits with dismay, and had recourse to Mr. Morgan, and through his intervention the imaginary mahogany barn-doors were not sent. 

The barmaid of the "Devonshire" was a comely, respectable young woman, the daughter of a neighbouring farmer named Smith. William Sharp fell desperately in love with the girl, proposed, and was accepted. The day for the wedding was fixed, and the young man went to Keighley Church at the appointed hour to be married. But the bride was not there. At the last moment a difficulty had arisen about the settlements. Mr. Smith could not induce Old Three Laps to bestow on his son sufficient money to support him in a married condition, and the two old men had quarrelled and torn up the settlements.

The blow was more than the mind of William Sharp could bear. He returned to "The Worlds" sulky, went to bed, and never rose from it again. For forty-nine years he kept to his bed, and refused to speak to anyone. He was just thirty years old when he thus isolated himself from society and active life, and he died in his bed at the age of seventy-nine, on March 3rd, 1856. 

The room he occupied measured nine feet long and was about the same breadth. The floor was covered with stone flags, and was generally damp. In one corner was a fireplace which could be used only when the wind blew from one or two points of the compass ; the window was permanently fastened, and where some of the squares had been broken, was carefully patched with wood. At the time of his death, this window had not been opened for thirty-eight years. The sole furniture comprised an antique clock, minus weight and pendulum, the hands and face covered with a network of cobwebs; a small round table of dark oak, and a plain unvarnished four-post bedstead, entirely without hangings. In this dreary cell, whose only inlet for fresh air during thirty-eight years was the door occasionally left open, did this strange being immure himself. He obstinately refused to speak to anyone, and if spoken to even by his attendants would not answer. All trace of intelligence gradually faded away; the only faculties which remained in active exercise were those he shared with the beasts. 

His father by his will made provision for the temporal wants of his eccentric son, and so secured him a constant attendant. He ate his meals regularly when brought to him, and latterly in a very singular manner, for in process of time his legs became contracted and drawn towards his body, and when about to eat his food he used to roll himself over and take his meals in a kneeling posture. He was generally cleanly in his habits. During the whole period of his self-imposed confinement he never had any serious illness, the only case of indisposition those connected with him could remember being a slight loss of appetite, caused apparently by indigestion, for two or three days—and this, notwithstanding that he ate on an average as much as any farm labourer. He certainly, physically speaking, did credit to his food, for though arrived at the age of seventy-nine years, his flesh was firm, fair and unwrinkled, save with fat, and he weighed about 240 lbs. He showed great repugnance to being seen, and whenever a stranger entered his den he immediately buried his head in the bed-clothes. About a week before his death his appetite began to fail; his limbs became partially benumbed, so that he could not roll himself over to take his food in his accustomed posture. 

From this attack he seemed to rally, and no apprehensions were entertained that the attack would prove fatal, till the evening before his death. 

However, during the night he rapidly became worse, and expired at four a.m. on Monday, March 3rd, 1856. 

Shortly before he expired he was heard to exclaim— "Poor Bill! poor Bill! poor Bill Sharp! "—the most connected sentence he had been known to utter for forty-nine years.

He was buried in Keighley Churchyard on the 7th of March, amidst crowds who had come from all parts of the neighbourhood to witness the scene. The coffin excited considerable attention from its extraordinary shape, as his body could not be straightened, the muscles of the knees and thighs being contracted. It was an oak chest, two feet four inches in depth. The weight was so great that it required eight men with strong ropes to lower it into the grave. It was thought to weigh with its contents 480 lbs. 

A gentleman who visited Old Three Laps before his death has given the following account of what he saw :— 

"If you chance to go a-skating 'to the Tarn,' and want a fine bracing walk, keep on the Sutton road about a mile, and you will come to an avenue of larch, not in a very thriving state, but sufficient to indicate that some one had an idea of the picturesque who planted the trees, although the house at the top of the avenue has not a very attractive appearance. You have now reached 'World's End,' and save here and there a solitary farm, with its cold stone buildings and treeless fields, there are few signs of life between you and the wide and boundless moors of Yorkshire and Lancashire. On the opposite hill, right up in the clouds, is 'Tewett Hall,' the residence of a Bradford Town Councillor. He alone, in this part, seems to follow Three Laps' ancestors' plan of planting, and in a few years we may expect to see a fine belt of timber on the verge of the horizon, a sight that will cheer the heart of some future Dr. Syntax when in search of the picturesque. At this place Three Laps 'took his bed,' and in a little parlour, with a northern light, the sill of which is level with the field, the floor cold and damp, and meanly furnished, it was my privilege to see Three Laps some twenty-five years ago. To gain admission we had some difficulty; but with the assistance of the farmer and a tin of tobacco to the nurse, who was an inveterate smoker, we were shown into his bedroom. As soon as he heard strangers, he pulled the bed-clothes over his head, which the nurse with considerable force removed, and uncovered his body, which was devoid of every vestige of body-linen. A more startling and sickening sight I never saw. Nebuchadnezzar rushed into my mind. Three Laps covered his face with his hands, his fingers being like birds' claws, while, with his legs drawn under his body, he had the appearance of a huge beast. He had white hair, and a very handsome head, well set on a strong chest. His body and all about him was scrupulously clean, and his condition healthy, as his nurse proudly pointed out, digging her fist furiously into his ribs. He gave no signs of joy or pain, but lay like a mass of inanimate matter. It struck me at the time that his limbs were stiff; but a neighbour of his, who after his dinner stole a peep into his bedroom window, told me that he found him playing with his plate in the manner of a Chinese juggler, and with considerable ability. On my informant tapping the window, he vanished under the bedclothes.

"Such was the life of the strange man who for love of a woman never left this obscure room for nearly half a century."

Old Three Laps: Heartbroken lover, or simply England's laziest SOB? Your call.

The Morristown Ghost; or, Beware of Goblins Bearing Gifts

"Her figure ’fore me. Now I ha’ ’t--how strong
Imagination works! how she can frame
Things which are not! methinks she stands afore me,
And by the quick idea of my mind,
Were my skill pregnant, I could draw her picture.
Thought, as a subtle juggler, makes us deem
Things supernatural, which have cause
Common as sickness."
-John Webster, "The White Devil"

Whether we acknowledge it or not, many of us have a deep-seated yearning to believe there are such things as ghosts. Many people have an even more fervent desire to believe there is such a thing as easy money. Put those two wishes together, and you're almost guaranteed to have the public flocking at your door. One of the best illustrations of this is the curious case of Ransford (or Rainsford) Rogers and the Morristown Ghost. Rogers, a native of Connecticut, was a schoolteacher in New York state. He was poor and only semi-literate, but he had, in the words of a later biographer, "the power of inspiring confidence...very affable in his manners and had a genius adequate to prepossess people in his favor...very ambitious to maintain an appearance of possessing profound knowledge"--a polite way of saying he was a born grifter.

Our story had its origins in a legend Morristown, New Jersey residents had long cherished regarding nearby Schooley's Mountain. It was said that during the Revolutionary War, Tories had buried for safekeeping large sums of money in the mountain, which had never been reclaimed. Over the years, a number of efforts had been made to find this treasure, but they all failed due to the "hobgoblins and apparitions" who were guarding the horde. This area of New Jersey was notable for a fervent belief in witches, ghosts, fairies and the like. Rogers, as we shall see, found a novel way to make use of both these local traditions.

In 1788, he "providentially" made the acquaintance of two men from New Jersey who were hoping to find someone to help them uncover this lost Tory treasure. What was needed, they said, was someone who could negotiate with these troublesome hobgoblins, someone "whose knowledge descended into the bowels of the earth, and who could reveal the secret things of darkness."

Rogers promptly assured them that he was just the man they were looking for. In short, he proposed to lead the good citizens of New Jersey on a supernatural treasure hunt.

By August of that year, he had relocated to Morristown. He brought with him a crony (named, with a nice touch of irony, Goodenough,) to help him with this elaborate plot. As many locals had for years been dreaming of finding the Tory gold, Rogers had no difficulty gathering together a band of about forty suckers like-minded gold-seekers, who became known as the "Fire Club," or simply "The Company." These were, we are told, Morristown's most honorable citizens, "honest, judicious simple church members." The Company included an "eminent jurist," two justices of the peace, two doctors, and a retired colonel.

Rogers gathered his comrades together and "communicated to them the solemnity of the business and the intricacy of the undertaking and the fact that there had been several persons murdered and buried with the money in order to retain it in the earth." He likewise informed them that those spirits must be raised and conversed with before the money could be obtained. He declared he could by his art and power raise these apparitions and that the whole company might hear him converse with them and satisfy themselves there was no deception. This was received with belief and admiration by the whole company without every investigating whether it was probable or possible." When Goodenough secretly accentuated Rogers' oration with some spooky rappings on the walls and ceilings and a sepulchral cry of "Push forward!" everyone was convinced that in this humble New England pedagogue, they had found themselves a genuine sorcerer.

Despite his lack of education, Rogers had somehow obtained some basic knowledge of "chymistry," which allowed him to convincingly pass himself off as someone gifted with deep supernatural powers. He concocted a chemical brew which he buried in the earth. After a few hours, the mixture--apparently some sort of crude gunpowder--would "break and cause great explosions which appeared dismal in the night and would cause great timidity." One night, Rogers and Goodenough secretly laid out in a field a design showing "a great variety of paths--circular, elliptical, square, and serpentine...That evening, when the dupes themselves saw these fanciful paths, they were convinced that a thousand men could not have performed the task...and they unhesitatingly ascribed it to demoniac power." These "uncommon curiosities" convinced even the most skeptical that Rogers was in communication with the Dark Side, and made his group "anxious to proceed."

One night in November 1788, the group convened in some local woods reputed to be haunted. They gathered in a circle, the scene lit only by some candles that cast "a ghastly, melancholy, direful gloom through the woods." Suddenly, they heard "a most impetuous explosion from the earth" nearby. Flames rose from the blast site, "presenting to the eye many dreadful objects." Hideous groans, presumably from ghosts, could be heard. Rogers declared that although these restless spirits were invisible to the rest of the group, they were speaking to him of the immense treasure they were guarding.

The ghosts, he related, were willing to reveal the hiding places of the money...if the price was right. Before the Company would be allowed to see the treasure, they would each have to pay the spirits £12 in silver or gold. It apparently did not occur to anyone to ask what use incorporeal beings would have for cold cash, because, we are told, members of the group positively fought over "who should be the first in delivering the money to the spirits." A number of these worthies went into debt in order to pay their ghostly bribes. The spirits also declared that the group must "acknowledge Rogers as their conductor, and adhere to his precepts; and as they knew all things, they would detect the man that attempted to defraud his neighbor."

This spectacular demonstration of ghostly power so cowed the assembly that they looked to their leader "for protection to defend them from the raging spirits; and after several ceremonies Rogers dispelled the apparitions, and they all returned from the field wondering at the miraculous things that happened, being fully persuaded of the existence of hobgoblins and apparitions. By this time they could revere Rogers, and thought him something more than man."

The bundle of money was left under the stump of a tree, where the "spirits" instantly scooped it up, lest their pigeons have second thoughts about being plucked.

By March 1789, Rogers' flock was naturally impatient to see a return on their investment, and they became increasingly insistent that the treasure of Schooley's Mountain should be excavated. In reply, the ghosts advised them to simply put all their trust in Rogers, and to follow him implicitly in all things.

Delays, however, could only be made for so long, and Rogers finally was forced to name May 1st as the great day when the ghosts of Schooley's Mountain would lead them to the treasure. On the night of April 30, the Company assembled in an open field outside of town to await instructions from the Great Beyond. Two "ghosts" appeared some distance away, in a very angry temper. They delivered a sharp lecture to the group, accusing them of bad conduct and violating their vows of secrecy. They closed their furious harangue by declaring that as punishment, they were delaying--perhaps indefinitely--permission for the Company to excavate the loot.

The Company was understandably disappointed by this setback, but their faith in their leader was unshaken. Perhaps they felt they had gone too far to turn back now.

Encouraged by his success, Rogers began to cast his ghostly web farther. With the help of two friends, he pulled much the same stunt in another town near Morristown, this time relying on "spirit writing" to communicate with the ghosts. Late one night in June of 1789, Rogers wrapped himself up in a white sheet and rode over to one of his candidates for Company II. He summoned the man by rapping on his doors and windows, announcing that he was a ghost come not to haunt the man, but to enrich him. He explained that he was "in charge of an immense treasure." He would like to give this wealth to some local organization, but he could not do so until certain upstanding church members banded together to take charge of the money.

The gentleman he visited ate his story up. The man gathered together all the other men the "ghost" had named as suitable guardians of the treasure, and all twenty-six of them happily forked over their twelve pounds each. After all, they told themselves, it was an investment that would soon pay off big. Rogers led them in a series of seances where they received many encouraging "notes" from the spirit world.

It did not end well, however. The menfolk were entirely under Rogers' spell, but their wives were a good deal more skeptical.

As part of Rogers' rituals designed to fill his flock with the proper fear and respect of the ghosts, he had pulverized some animal bones, and gave them to one of his new Company, "declaring that it was the dust of their bodies, and each man must have some of the powder in a paper sealed, as a token of the spirits’ approbation, and that he was one of the company. This powder was to be kept secret, and no one touch it upon his peril." One of the group, Alexander Carmichael, accidentally left his paper in his house, where it was discovered by his wife. She opened it, and when she saw the contents she "feared to touch it supposing it to be witchcraft: She went immediately to the priest for advice--he, not knowing its composition was unwilling to touch it for fear it might have some operation upon him.

“When her husband discovered what she had done, he was much terrified, declaring she had ruined him forever, in breaking open that paper. This made her more solicitous to know the contents; and she declaring not to divulge anything, he told he: the whole proceedings; she insisted on it they were serving the devil, and thought it her duty to put an end to such proceedings."

This setback should have inspired Rogers and his co-conspirators to just take their ill-gotten gains and run. However, by now they were thoroughly drunk with power and had an arrogant confidence in their continued success, and they carried on as before.

Alas, even the best scams must one day come to an end, and the Morristown Ghost was no exception. As it happened, it was Rogers' own careless stupidity that caused the downfall of his little enterprise. One night when he performed his ghost impersonation for the benefit of one of his followers, he made the mistake of having too much to drink beforehand. His "spirit costume" was put on more carelessly than usual, and he made a few unghostly sort of errors in his conversation. The lady of the house grew suspicious of their spirit visitor, and spied on him through one of the windows, and saw enough to confirm her worst suspicions.

After the "ghost" had left, she asked her husband "My dear, do spirits wear shoe buckles? Those were very like Ransford Rogers' buckles!"

The couple traced Rogers' footprints to the fence where he had tied his horse, and then traced the animal's hoofprints to the schoolteacher's home, and then to the stable of the horse's owner, where they found a discomfited Ransford Rogers. The game was well and truly up.

Rogers was arrested and thrown in prison. However, like any good con man, he asserted his complete innocence so vehemently and convincingly that one of his True Believers put up his bail money. Rogers rewarded this confidence in his probity by immediately fleeing town. After being arrested a second time, we are told he "acknowledged his faults and confessed." After unburdening his conscience, Rogers "absconded, and under the auspices of Fortune saved himself by flight from the malice of a host." His cohorts in fraud seem to have gotten away completely. The two Companies had between them given Rogers some $1300, "none of which was ever recovered by the unfortunate and humbugged company."

Despite this narrow escape, our hero had developed an irresistible taste for crime. The next we hear from him was nine years later. In York County, Pennsylvania, a man named John Dady was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for swindling a number of people through various faux-supernatural means. Among his accomplices was a man calling himself "Rice Williams," who turned out to be none other than Ransford Rogers. True to form, this slipperiest of fish somehow managed to escape the long arm of the law, and subsequently disappeared from history. Although his ultimate fate is unrecorded, it seems virtually certain that he continued to pull different swindles, in different towns, under different false names.

It's hard to keep a good ghost down.

[Note: The tale of the Morristown Ghost is preserved in several contemporary pamphlets. The most famous account was written in 1826 by a prominent almanac maker named David Young. However, the earliest, most detailed exposé was published by an anonymous author in 1792. It is an extremely rare pamphlet, as most of the copies were bought up and destroyed by the son of one of Rogers' dupes, who was understandably anxious to bury this embarrassing proof of his father's gullibility. Many students of this case believe this pamphlet was written by Ransford Rogers himself, squeezing one last bit of fun and profit out of his most famous escapade.

I'd like to think this was the case.]