In 1918, there was a scandal around Chicago’s classy hotels: employees were accused of using “Mickey Finn” powders to knock their wealthy customers out, so that they could be robbed. In the 1920s and 30s you heard the term used for knock-out drops given to boxers by people trying to fix fights. Around the same…
Tag: detective work
Frances Carrick, a Chicago Trans Woman Accused of Murder in 1923
This is the story of Frances Carrick, a transgender woman accused of murder in Chicago in 1923.
The Grave of Big Thunder: A Deep Dive
The exposed corpse of Big Thunder, which was an Illinois tourist trap in the 1830s. A deep dive into first hand accounts.
Minnie Wallace and the Ravenswood House of Mystery
When you’re 49 and talk a teenage girl into marrying you, and then she kills you and takes all your money… it’s kinda on you, bro. Minnie was only 16 when she left her home in New Orleans to marry 49 year old J.R. Walkup, the mayor of Emporia, Kansas. A month after the wedding…
Girl in Glass: The Inez Statue at Graceland Cemetery
Lots of new information on the history of Inez, Graceland Cemetery’s famous “Girl in Glass.”
The Story Inside the Getty Tomb
(the following is cross-posted from the Cemetery Mixtape page, which also includes a podcast!) Every year, thousands of people walk past the landmark Getty tomb in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery to admire the architecture. Designed by Louis Sullivan, it’s perhaps the most perfect example of Sullivan’s style. Almost no one who sees it realizes that inside…
Uncollected Frederick Douglass Speech Discovered
I love research. I feel like Indiana Jones when I’m digging around in a box crumbling paperwork at the legal archives. And, though it’s a lot easier to search old newspapers that have been digitized, it’s more of an adventure to browse the microfilm reels. For one thing, it’s the closest you can get to…
Was John Stone Chicago’s First Serial Killer? (podcast)
John Stone was the first murderer hanged in Chicago – and suggested the murder wasn’t his first. An “oral history” of his Chicago crime.