Depraved

by Harold Schechter

  Chappell had acquired this unusual ability several years earlier while working for a contractor named A. L. Goode, who had rented an office at 513 State Street—the same building occupied by the Bennett Medical College. Goode later testified that “it was nothing unusual to see bodies brought to that building for dissection, and then the bones articulated.” Apparently, Chappell—a jack-of-all-trades with a quenchless curiosity about manual skills—had become fascinated with skeletal articulation and had managed to pick up some firsthand experience in the college anatomy lab.

  It had been years since Chappell had worked with anatomical specimens. He had begun doing odd jobs at the Castle in the fall of 1890, after answering an ad Holmes had placed in the papers. Six months later, Holmes broached the subject of the skeletons. When Chappell admitted that he did indeed have some practice at articulating human bones, Holmes led him upstairs to a dimly lit room on the second floor of the Castle.

  There, stretched out on a table, was a partially dissected cadaver. Chappell could tell that the corpse was that of a woman, though, to his eyes, it looked more “like a jackrabbit that had been skinned by splitting the skin down the face and rolling it back off the entire body,” as he later described it. “In some places,” Chappell went on to explain, “considerable flesh had been taken off.”

  Holmes offered to pay Chappell $36 to finish stripping the corpse of its flesh and to prepare the skeleton. Chappell—who evidently assumed that Dr. Holmes had been performing a postmortem examination on a deceased patient—readily agreed. That night, a steamer trunk containing the corpse was delivered to Chappell’s house by Holmes’s brusque, rawboned assistant.

  A week later, Chappell returned the cleaned and articulated skeleton to Dr. Holmes and collected his money, happy for the extra work.

  Holmes was happy, too. Within a week, he had transported the skeleton to the Hahnemann Medical College and sold it for nearly $200.

  The skeleton remained at the medical school for only a few months before it was appropriated by a surgeon named Pauling, who proudly displayed it in his private offices at home. The mounted specimen was indeed an exceptional object. In all his years of practice, Dr. Pauling had never seen a female skeleton that stood nearly six feet tall.

  She must have been a fine figure of a woman when she was alive, Dr. Pauling occasionally remarked to a visitor. Gazing at her bleached remains, he sometimes found himself wondering what it was—pneumonia? consumption? childbirth?—that had killed her.

  10

  The bride, after completing her education, was employed as a stenographer in the County Recorder’s office. From there she went to Dwight, and from there to Chicago, where she met her fate.

  —from the newspaper notice announcing Emeline Cigrand’s marriage, December 7, 1892

  Like other celebrity doctors, before and since, who have grown rich marketing revolutionary health regimens, Leslie Enraught Keeley owed his fame less to the proven virtues of his program than to his talent for self-promotion. Indeed, no evidence exists that his famous Keeley Cure for alcoholism (also known as the Gold Cure) was based on any research or experimentation whatsoever. Nevertheless, nearly a half million Americans eventually subjected themselves to the remedy. Many of them even managed to persuade themselves that the method really worked.

  Born in Ireland in 1834, Keeley grew up in New York, graduated from the Rush Medical School in Chicago, and settled permanently in Illinois after serving in the Union Army medical corps during the Civil War. In 1880, he proclaimed that he had not only identified the root cause of alcoholism but also invented a surefire cure.

  According to Keeley, problem drinking was a disease produced by alcoholic poisoning of the nerve cells. The remedy consisted of a strict dietary regimen accompanied by regular injections of “bichloride of gold.” Though Keeley never revealed the contents of this dubious potion, experts in the history of alcoholism have surmised that it was concocted of gold salts and vegetable compounds.

  Shortly after making his announcement, he founded the first Keeley Institute, a prairie sanitarium located in Dwight, Illinois, seventy-five miles southwest of Chicago. Keeley’s big break came in 1891, when the Chicago Tribune published a glowing series on his Gold Cure. Before long, thousands of alcoholics—desperate to break the hold of “demon rum” on their lives—began flocking to Dwight. Keeley was quick to capitalize on this publicity, sending “graduates” of the Institute (as they were grandiloquently called) on lecture tours around the states, creating a nationwide Keeley League whose detoxicated membership met in annual conventions, and even organizing the wives of former patients into a women’s auxiliary group, known as the Ladies’ Bichloride of Gold Club. By the turn of the century, every state in the union had at least one Keeley Institute.

  The original sanitarium in Dwight, however, remained the hub of his empire, attracting drunkards by the thousands. And among the many patients who checked into the Institute in the spring of 1892, hoping to rid themselves of their ruinous addiction, was Benjamin Freelon Pitezel.

  Since a stay at the Institute was not cheap by the standards of the day—$100 for the full, four-week program—it seems likely that Pitezel’s treatment was subsidized, if not paid for entirely, by his employer, H. H. Holmes. That Holmes was ready to foot the bill for such a costly procedure is a mark not only of the close personal relationship that the two men had established by then, but also of Pitezel’s invaluable worth as Holmes’s accomplice and tool.

  When Pitezel returned to Englewood in early April 1892, he appeared to be a different man, a walking testimonial to the truth of Keeley’s claims—sober, well-groomed, and healthier than he’d looked in years. But like many other presumably gold-cured alcoholics—whose high rate of relapse eventually destroyed Keeley’s credibility—he found it impossible to stay on the wagon. Within a few months of his return from Dwight, he looked every bit as seedy as he had before he’d left, and his breath smelled as strongly of drink.

  Even so, Holmes may well have felt that his investment in Pitezel’s failed reformation had not been entirely wasted. For Ben had brought back something else besides his short-lived sobriety.

  He had brought back a description of Emeline Cigrand.

  She was (so Pitezel reported) a tall, shapely blonde whose beauty was a match for Julia Conner’s. If anything, Emeline Cigrand was even lovelier. After all, when Holmes had met his former mistress, she was already twenty-seven and twice a mother. But Emeline Cigrand was pristine—a dewy twenty-four-year-old whose innocence was nearly as palpable as the perfume of a flower.

  A native of Lafayette, Indiana, Emeline had worked for a year as a stenographer at the Tippecanoe County Recorder’s office before going to work at Dwight in July, 1891. She had been there for less than a year when Pitezel checked in. Captivated by her beauty, he struck up an acquaintance with the young woman and did his best to dazzle her with his importance. He represented himself as the partner of Dr. H. H. Holmes, one of Chicago’s most prominent businessmen. Emeline, who had never visited the great metropolis—indeed, had never been to a city bigger than Lafayette—was suitably impressed.

  Back in Englewood, Pitezel rhapsodized about Emeline to Holmes, who wasted little time in luring the young woman to his Castle.

  Within a week of Pitezel’s return, Holmes wrote to Emeline, offering her a job as his private secretary at a salary of $18 per week—a 50 percent increase over the wage Dr. Keeley was paying her. In May 1892, the young woman bid farewell to her friends at Dwight and journeyed to Englewood, where she rented a room in a boardinghouse only a block away from the Castle.

  Holmes set about seducing her with his usual energy and determination. He bought her flowers, took her sight-seeing in the city, treated her to pretty trinkets—hair ribbons, a tortoiseshell comb, a cameo brooch—at Marshall Field’s. Soon, he was squiring her to the theater and springing for costly dinners at fashionable downtown restaurants. They spent Sunday afternoons strolling around Englewood or bicycling in t
he park. Emeline took to the new sport with such enthusiasm that Holmes presented her with her own Pope two-wheeler.

  By the middle of the summer, she had become his mistress. Even a casual observer could see that (as one of the Castle’s tenants later testified) “the relations between Holmes and Miss Cigrand were not strictly those of employer and employee.”

  Apart from such testimony, little is known about the details of their affair, though circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that, by early fall of 1892, she expected him to marry her. Indeed, he appears to have encouraged her to communicate the happy news to her relatives and friends. However, he insisted—presumably for complicated legal reasons involving his divorce from Myrta—that she refer to him by an alias: Robert E. Phelps.

  Throughout the fall, Emeline corresponded frequently with her friends back in Dwight, gushing over her husband-to-be—his kindness and generosity, his wealth and position, his fine manners and gentlemanly ways. For their honeymoon, he intended to take her to Europe. To her younger sister, Philomena Ida, Emeline confided that her intended was the son of an English lord, whom they planned to visit during their trip. Possibly, they might even settle permanently abroad.

  Early in October 1892, Emeline’s cousins, Dr. and Mrs. B. J. Cigrand, visited Chicago and, shortly after their arrival, paid a call on Emeline. Her fiancé was not present, but she spoke warmly of his virtues. Though considerably older than herself, he was, she insisted, a “fine gentleman,” “very wealthy,” who had treated her with unstinting kindness. To give them a sense of his accomplishments, she took them over to the Castle, showed them the first-floor shops, and led them up to the main office on the third floor.

  As it happened, Dr. Cigrand was not as impressed as Emeline had hoped. Indeed, he could not help noticing the poor construction evident throughout the interior. The winding staircase in particular struck him as a particularly shoddy piece of work, and he commented on the bad lumber it had been built with. Emeline, though put out by his response, said nothing.

  The wedding of Emeline Cigrand and H. H. Holmes—planned as a strictly private, civil ceremony—was scheduled for the first week in December. Sometime in early November, Holmes presented Emeline with a dozen white envelopes and asked her to address them to her closest relatives and friends. He intended to have formal marriage announcements printed up, he explained, which he would mail out immediately after their wedding. Emeline sat down at once and penned the addresses in her fine, flowing hand.

  She had no conceivable way of knowing, of course, the true purpose of Holmes’s request, which did not become evident until much later. But in retrospect, its significance is clear.

  By the time Holmes asked her to fill out the envelopes, he had already decided to kill her.

  Why did Holmes want Emeline Cigrand dead? Like Julia Conner, she may well have known too many of his secrets, having served as his private secretary for over six months. There is also reason to think that Emeline had pressured Holmes into proposing by threatening to leave him. And Holmes was not a man who took kindly to threats.

  Or perhaps Holmes’s decision to do away with his young mistress signified nothing more than this: he simply felt the urge.

  Sometime during the first week of December—probably on the sixth—Holmes, who was working in his office, called Emeline to his side and asked her to fetch a document from the walk-in vault next door. While Emeline searched for the papers in question, Holmes walked up to the vault, swung the heavy door shut, and spun the lock. Then he pulled up a chair, pressed his ear to the steel door, and listened intently as her shock turned to panic and, finally, to pure, primal terror.

  As the minutes passed, his excitement grew so acute that he undid his trousers, exposed his rigid member, and masturbated into a pocket handkerchief until—having spent himself repeatedly—he sank back, sated, in the chair.

  On December 17, 1892, Emeline’s family friends received her handwritten envelopes in the mail. Inside, they found a card, printed with a simple inscription:

  Mr. Robert Phelps

  Miss Emeline Cigrand

  Married

  Wednesday, December 7th

  1892

  Chicago.

  Emeline’s hometown newspaper had already taken note of her good fortune. Ten days earlier, the paper had published the following item under the headline “Miss Cigrand Weds Robert E. Phelps”: “The bride, after completing her education, was employed as a stenographer in the County Recorder’s office. From there she went to Dwight, and from there to Chicago, where she met her fate. She is a lady of great intelligence and has a charming manner and a handsome appearance. She is a lady of refinement and possesses a character that is strong and pure. Her many friends see that she has exercised good judgment in selecting a husband and will heartily congratulate her.”

  It is striking—and grimly ironic—that the writer of this notice chose the phrase “met her fate” to refer to Emeline Cigrand’s fiancé, the fictitious Mr. Phelps. Emeline had indeed met her fate in Chicago, though not in the sense that the writer intended.

  It is impossible to say whether the young woman was already dead by the time this newspaper announcement appeared, though the oxygen supply in the sealed vault must surely have run out by then—particularly given the high respiration rate induced by uncontrolled hysteria. As Holmes later indicated, from the moment the full horror of her situation finally sank in, Emeline’s frenzied cries and pleas continued for hours without letup. In any event, Emeline Cigrand was never seen alive again.

  Not many weeks after her disappearance, the LaSalle Medical School became the owner of a new anatomical specimen: a fine female skeleton acquired from Dr. H. H. Holmes.

  11

  There was one strange thing that troubled me; amid the occupations or amusements of the fair, nothing was more common than for a person—whether at a feast, theatre, or church, or trafficking for wealth and honors, or whatever he might be doing, and however unseasonable the interruption—suddenly to vanish like a soap bubble, and be never more seen of his fellows.

  —Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Celestial Railroad”

  A century later, the quincentennial of Columbus’s landmark voyage would be marked by dissension and controversy. The master seaman would be portrayed, not as a heroic pioneer—“The Admiral of the Ocean Sea”—but as a brutal invader whose misguided expeditions brought enslavement, despoliation, and disease to the native inhabitants of the Americas.

  In 1892, however, the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the New World was a cause for unqualified celebration. And the United States, surging with pride and strength and ambition, intended to commemorate it with the most spectacular bash the world had ever witnessed.

  The idea for a World’s Columbian Exposition had begun taking shape in the late 1880s. By the last year of that decade, four cities, each eager to host the extravaganza—New York, Washington, St. Louis, and Chicago—were vying hotly for the honor. But the brash Midwestern metropolis, determined to assert its claims to cultural superiority, ultimately carried the day. Supported by a $5-million kitty, a coalition of public-minded businessmen and financiers launched an aggressive lobbying campaign on behalf of their city. On April 25, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed a bill designating Chicago as the site of the Exposition. “America’s coming-of-age party” would be staged on the shores of Lake Michigan.

  To Eastern elitists, Chicago was a provincial upstart, the symbol of the nation’s raw, commercial energies, colossal but crude—“hog butcher to the world” (as Carl Sandburg later described it). Cynics predicted the worst. A world’s fair that reflected the host city’s brazen spirit was bound to be an embarrassment—a huge, vaunting display of American vulgarity.

  The skeptics fell silent when the organizers called upon the country’s most eminent architects, painters, sculptors, landscapists, and engineers to design the Exposition. Schooled, for the most part, at Paris’s École des Beaux-Arts, the participants shared a co
mmon ideal of harmony, order, and grandeur. “Look here, old fellow,” exclaimed the renowned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens after one planning session. “Do you realize that this is the greatest meeting of artists since the fifteenth century?”

  Gaudens’s heady belief that he was taking part in a grand aesthetic venture turned out to be fully justified. Within two years, he and his collaborators—among them the great environmental designer Frederick Law Olmsted, muralists John La Farge and Elihu Vedder, sculptor Daniel Chester French, and architects Daniel H. Burnham and Richard Morris Hunt—created a dazzling exhibition that astonished the world and had a lasting impact on the look of American cities.

  On a stretch of boggy shoreline, seven miles south of central Chicago, a glorious vision took shape—a dream city of classical grace and proportion, constructed (or so it seemed) of the purest white marble. Work officially commenced in February 1891 with the clearing, filling, and grading of the land. Construction of the first of the glittering exhibition halls was under way by July of that year. All told, seven thousand laborers toiled heroically to meet the October 1892 deadline.

  To Chicagoans, this miraculous architectural feat—the erection, in less than two years, of an entire utopian city on a six-hundred-acre plot of swamp—was yet another demonstration of their city’s remarkable vigor and determination, a confirmation of its quintessentially American character. “During the storms of summer, through the frosts of winter,” declaimed Daniel H. Burnham, chief of construction for the fair, “the little band of American boys ran the race for victory with Father Time, and won it.”

  Burnham had every reason to be proud, though his claim was a little overstated, since the fair was still unfinished on Dedication Day, October 21, 1892. Even so, the ceremonies were a smashing success. The festivities began with a spectacular, ten-mile-long military parade that passed through the city to the fair site. An estimated 800,000 people turned out to cheer as marching bands played, flags waved, cavalry-steeds pranced, and dignitaries rolled by in their carriages of state.