Chicago has approximately 70 abandoned cemeteries that we know of, the best-known of which is probably the old City Cemetery, where Lincoln Park is now. It wasn’t the largest of them (there were later burial grounds at Dunning and on the southwest side that have FAR more unmarked graves still beneath the ground), but it…
Tag: courthouse/gallows
The Chicago Frankenstein Experiment, 1882
I spoke with The RedEye this week about haunted Chicago spots, and an article on their webpage today speaks about about the site of the gallows. Here’s a classic story from the site: In the 20th Century, executioners in many parts of the world modernized the process by which convicts were hanged. Weights and measurements were…
Carl Wanderer’s Last Song
Carl Wanderer photographed by the Chicago Daily News (expanded and updated from an older post after watching the first episode of Fargo. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say it reminded me a little of this guy’s story) One day in 1920, Carl Wanderer came up to a drifter on Madison Street and told…
Hangman’s Death Certificates
My, the things one finds on genealogy sites! More and more records come online all the time. Death certificates have never been THAT hard to get, but you normally have to pay to get them from the state archives, and I’m pretty cheap. In cases of hangings, I already know the cause of death, after…
Death Penalty Banned in Illinois
FATAL DROP: TRUE TALES OF THE CHICAGO GALLOWSUntold stories of hangings in Chicago from 1840 – 1927$2.99 on kindle Don’t have a kindle? Use the FREE Kindle app for PC, mac, iphone, ipad, android, blackberry, etc! Gov. Quinn is expected to sign a bill that will abolish the death penalty in Illinois last week. Let’s…
A riot we can be proud of!
We’ve had our fair share of riots in Chicago, from the beer riots on the Clark Street Bridge in the the 1850s to the riots at the chaotic Democratic convention of 1968. Most of them look like dark blots on our city’s history. But in 1854, we had a riot of which we can still…
The Strange Tale of the Cardinella Gang: Part 2
Sam Cardinella himself scared the hell out of the guards, who had seen everyone do everything twice. The county physician later said “If I were superstitious, I would say there was something satanic about it.” Others would later describe him as “a human spider, crawling the city, spinning a web of death, and sending boys…
The Strange Tale of the Cardinella Gang: Part 1
Fatal Drop: True Tales from the Chicago Gallows. Click for info! We’re telling short versions of a few of the tales here on the blog this week! In December, 1920, Nicholas “The Choir Singer” Vianna was hanged in the old Cook County jailhouse on Illinois Street. His hanging was a bizarre present for his 19th…