The Devil's Gentleman

by Harold Schechter

  “Hello, old man,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

  Before Barnet could answer, he was seized with a spasm of sickness and had to dash for the bathroom, where he suffered another bout of simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea. Minutes later, he staggered back to bed, a ghastly pallor suffusing his face.

  Phillips checked his pulse, which seemed normal. He also examined Barnet’s throat. There was some inflammation of the membrane, though in Phillips’s professional opinion, “no more than would be present when a person was vomiting.”2

  Phillips concluded that Barnet was suffering from “an irritant substance in the stomach” and asked if he had eaten anything unusual.

  “It was that damned Kutnow’s Powder,” answered Barnet with a groan.

  He explained that, after overindulging in food and drink the previous evening, he had awakened at around eight that morning feeling unwell. As it happened, he had received a sample tin of Kutnow’s Improved Effervescent Powder in the mail two months earlier. Supposedly made of salts from the Carlsbad mineral springs, Kutnow’s—a competitor of bromo-seltzer—was promoted as a surefire remedy for “biliousness, sick headache, loss of appetite, sour stomach, constipation, drowsiness, nervousness, gout, jaundice, and rheumatism.” Potential customers could receive a free sample by sending in a letter with their name and address.3

  Barnet wasn’t sure why the little tin had been sent to him, since he hadn’t requested it. Still, as he was in the habit of treating his hangovers with Kutnow’s, he didn’t think twice about taking a dose. Almost immediately, however, he had gotten dreadfully ill.

  Phillips went downstairs to telephone a local pharmacy for some remedies. He then returned to sit with Barnet, who lay shivering beneath a heavy wool blanket when he wasn’t in the bathroom throwing up and voiding uncontrollably.

  After an hour or so, Phillips returned to his home, leaving Barnet in the care of Joseph Moore. Phillips checked on his patient two more times during the day. By 5:30 P.M., Barnet seemed greatly improved—so much so that, as Dr. Phillips would later testify, he saw “no reason to come again.”4

  Though the vomiting and diarrhea had abated by the following day, Barnet still couldn’t eat. Swallowing food was too painful. His throat was agonizingly sore. Even his tongue hurt.

  On Sunday, October 30, he went downstairs for the first time in two days and sought the advice of a friend, Colonel Austen, who suggested that Barnet get a second opinion from Henry Beaman Douglass, a fellow KAC member and prominent New York physician. A telephone call was promptly placed to Douglass’s home.

  A graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Douglass had interned for two years at Presbyterian Hospital, then studied overseas in Paris, London, and Berlin before returning to New York. In addition to his private practice, he served as adjunct professor of diseases of the throat at the Post-Graduate Medical College and assistant surgeon and pathologist at the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital.

  Within a half hour of receiving the call, Douglass arrived at the Knickerbocker Athletic Club. He found Barnet in the café with Colonel Austen. Leading the doctor into the adjoining reading room, Barnet explained what had happened on Friday after he had swallowed the Kutnow’s Powder.

  “I was a damned fool to take something that came in the mail,” he said. He then described his current symptoms—the burning throat and painful tongue.

  “Well, I can’t examine you here, old man,” said Dr. Douglass.

  Taking the elevator to the second floor, they proceeded to Barnet’s room, where Douglass peered into Barnet’s throat and saw (as he later testified) a “membrane on the right tonsil and uvula.” He immediately concluded that Barnet had a case of diphtheria.

  Leaving Barnet in his room, Douglass went out to a drugstore called Schoonmaker’s, where he purchased two culture tubes. He then returned to the club, took samples from Barnet’s tonsil, and departed again, this time for his lab in the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital.

  When the cultures were analyzed, they revealed “streptococci in large numbers,” though no evidence of “diphtheritic bacilli.” Nevertheless, Douglass remained convinced that Barnet had a mild case of diphtheria and treated him accordingly, with injections of antitoxin.5

  Over the next few days, Barnet—who was attended around the clock from that point on by two trained nurses, Addie Bates and Jane Callender—seemed to be in a convalescent state, though his tongue and gums continued to bother him.

  By Friday, November 4, Barnet’s mouth was still inflamed and his tongue ulcerated. Curious about the content of the Kutnow’s Powder, Douglass brought the sample tin (which Barnet had saved) to a chemist named Guy P. Ellison for analysis.

  No sooner had Ellison removed the cover of the tin than he detected the odor of bitter almonds, typical of “salt of cyanide.” Taking a tiny amount on the tip of one finger, he tasted it and found that the Kutnow’s had a “metallic, corrosive taste,” also characteristic of cyanide.

  Ellison then performed a series of tests on the powder—first adding hydrochloric acid, then iodide of potassium, and finally heating it slowly in a test tube. The results clearly showed that the Kutnow’s Powder contained cyanide of mercury.6

  When Douglass received the report, he decided that the sores on Barnet’s tongue and gums were probably “mercurial stomatitis”—an inflammation of the mucous membranes of the mouth produced by the ingestion of mercury. But that conclusion set off no alarm bells in Douglass, who saw no reason to alter his original opinion.

  It’s natural to wonder why—when Dr. Douglass found evidence that Barnet had ingested mercury and pharmacist Ellison discovered cyanide in the Kutnow’s Powder—neither of them suspected that the patient was the victim of foul play. The answer, bizarre as it seems, is that both mercury and cyanide, along with many other toxic substances, were standard medicinal ingredients in the late nineteenth century.

  The soothing syrups and aromatic bitters and revitalizing tonics so popular in that elixir-crazed period might have been utterly worthless, giving great-grandma a mild high while allowing whatever disease was killing her to run rampant through her system. But the medications prescribed by legitimate physicians were often no better, and in many cases far worse. American medicine in the post–Civil War era had not yet emerged from the Dark Ages, as even a cursory glance at the 1899 edition of the venerable textbook the Merck Manual makes alarmingly clear.

  It was a time when formaldehyde was routinely prescribed for the common cold, arsenic for asthma, strychnine for headaches, morphine for diarrhea—and mercury for everything from anemia to yellow fever. A woman with morning sickness might be treated with a heaping spoonful of belladonna, a constipated man with a cup of turpentine oil, and a colicky baby with a chloroform-soaked rag placed over its nostrils. Gargling with cyanide of mercury was a recommended cure for sore throats.7

  It was clear to Dr. Douglass that Barnet had consumed mercury. But then, so had millions of other Americans who customarily took calomel, one of the most commonly prescribed remedies of the time. In addition to its supposedly salubrious effects, calomel (also known as mercurous chloride) frequently produced ulcerations of the tongue, gums, and throat, caused teeth to fall out, and occasionally destroyed entire jawbones.

  In short, despite the absence of “diphtheritic bacilli” in the culture and the presence of cyanide of mercury in the Kutnow’s Powder, Dr. Douglass was absolutely convinced that the symptoms displayed by Barnet pointed to only one diagnosis: a case of mild diphtheria.

  22

  There had been no communication between Blanche and Barnet since their stormy confrontation several weeks earlier. But her ex-lover—the man who had awakened her to a “full realization of sex”—was always on her mind.

  During the first week of November, a dinner was to be held for General T. L. Watson, president of the New York Athletic Club. Roland was one of the organizers. Invitations had been issued to select members of rival clubs, including the Knickerbocker. Blanche
, who always enjoyed these affairs, became even more excited when she learned that Barney was on the guest list.

  She was keenly disappointed, therefore, when word reached her that Barnet was too ill to attend. She was also surprised. “I recalled how strong and vital he was, in what apparently perfect health,” she would record in her memoir. “I was anxious for more detailed news and called the club to make inquiries. They repeated only what I already had learned, that he was suffering from a serious attack of diphtheria.”1

  When Roland arrived at Alice Bellinger’s a short time later, Blanche rushed to meet him at the entranceway.

  “Barney is ill,” she cried. “Under the care of physicians at the club. Have you heard?”

  “Yes,” he calmly replied.

  “I want to send him flowers,” she said. “And a message.”

  Using Alice’s telephone, Blanche called Thorley’s Flower Shop and ordered a “huge box of shaggy chrysanthemums.” “They seemed more appropriate for a man,” she writes in her memoir. “They lacked cloying perfume and possessed a sort of rugged beauty.”

  She also wrote a letter to Barnet. Enclosing it in an envelope, she called a messenger, who conveyed it to Thorley’s, where it was placed inside the flower box. The letter read:

  I am distressed to learn of your illness. I arrived home Saturday. I am so exceedingly sorry to know that you have been indisposed. Won’t you let me know when you are able to be about? I want so much to see you. Is it that you do not believe me? If you would but let me prove to you my sincerity. Do not be cross any more and accept, I pray you, my very best wishes.

  YOURS, Blanche

  Blanche waited to hear back from Barnet. But she never received a reply.2

  The flowers were not delivered until early the following day, Monday, November 7.

  Barnet was asleep when they arrived. When he awoke, his day nurse, Addie Bates, told him that he had received a big bunch of lovely chrysanthemums, along with a note.

  Barnet asked her to read it to him. Addie proceeded to do so. When she was done, he closed his eyes and, in a voice barely above a whisper, said, “I wonder how she knew I was ill?”3

  Two nights later—at around 4:00 A.M. on November 9—Barnet awoke from a troubled sleep and struggled out of bed.

  He had been growing weaker by the day and seemed so unsteady on his feet that his night nurse, Jane Callender, urged him to lie back down at once.

  Barnet refused. Despite the sponge baths he had been receiving, he felt unbearably filthy and was determined to give himself a thorough washing. Above the objections of Miss Callender, he made his way to the bathroom and shut himself inside.

  When he emerged a half hour later, he barely had the strength to make it back to his bed.

  Alarmed at his condition, Nurse Callender telephoned Dr. Douglass, who arrived at the Knickerbocker in short order. A brief examination of Barnet was all Douglass needed to see that his patient was in the throes of heart failure.

  Barnet’s brother, Edmund, was immediately summoned to his bedside. At Edmund’s urging, two other physicians were called in for an emergency consultation. Each examined Barnet in turn. Each confirmed Douglass’s grim diagnosis.

  Barnet clung to life for another ten hours. His death, late in the afternoon of Thursday, November 10, 1898, was officially attributed to a weakened heart caused by diphtheria.4

  A memorial service for Henry Crossman Barnet was held at the Church of the Ascension on Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street in Manhattan at 2:00 P.M. on Saturday, November 12. A tearful Blanche was among those in attendance.5

  Exactly one week later, she took part in another ceremony. On Saturday, November 19, 1898, at the Church of Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, Roland Burnham Molineux—as he had long vowed to do—took Blanche Chesebrough for his lawful wedded bride.6

  23

  When Joseph Pulitzer purchased the New York World in May 1883, a typical front page consisted of a half dozen columns of densely packed type, unrelieved by illustrations or eye-catching headlines. Viewed from a slight distance, the page resembled a solid block of gray print, so dreary in appearance that the layout was referred to as a “tombstone.”1

  The content was equally numbing. On May 10, 1883—its last day under the ownership of the financier Jay Gould—the World ran page-one stories on the recent nominations submitted to the Board of Aldermen, the forthcoming dedication of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the election of the executive committee of the American Cocker Spaniel Club. Little wonder that the paper had a daily circulation of fewer than twelve-thousand copies and was losing $40,000 a year.2

  All that changed the moment Joseph Pulitzer got hold of it. An immigrant, Pulitzer saw himself as a champion of the weak and oppressed. The World, as he conceived it, would be a paper “dedicated to the cause of the people rather than to that of the purse potentates.” In an early editorial, he laid out his goals, a ten-point program that included “punishing corrupt office holders,” along with levying taxes on luxuries, inheritances, large incomes, monopolies, and “privileged corporations.”3

  His method of achieving these lofty aims was to appeal to his readers’ lowest instincts. After all, he reasoned, the best a publisher could do was to “go for a million circulation, and when you have got it, turn the minds and the votes of your readers one way or the other at critical moments.”4 And the most effective way to reach that million circulation was by printing the kind of wildly sensationalistic stories that ordinary people have always gobbled up.

  He lost no time in putting his plan into action. The very first issue of the World edited by Pulitzer featured front-page stories on a New Jersey fire that claimed the lives of a half dozen people; the last hours of a convicted killer who had beaten his wife to death in a drunken rage; the public execution of another murderer, a hard case named M’Conkey who went to his death cursing his jailers; a deadly lightning bolt that killed a man on Long Island; and a dynamite attack by Haitian rebels that left four hundred victims dead or wounded.5

  The following days brought more of the same: headline stories about human sacrifices performed by religious fanatics; a little boy killed when his pony stumbled and fell on top of him; a smallpox scare in Hoboken; a killer tornado in Kansas; plus assorted homicides, suicides, holdups, beatings, and even a grave robbery.6 By the following March, a typical week brought such attention-grabbing headlines as A CHILD FLAYED ALIVE; A BRUTAL NEGRO WHIPS HIS NEPHEW TO DEATH IN SOUTH CAROLINA; STRANGLED BY ROBBERS; DIED A DESPERADO’S DEATH; A LADY GAGGED IN A FLAT; and QUINTUPLE TRAGEDY—AN ENTIRE FAMILY ANNIHILATED BY ITS HEAD.7

  The very look of the paper underwent a radical alteration. Headlines now stretched over several columns or were splashed across the entire top of the page. And there were cartoons, caricatures, lurid illustrations, and other voyeuristic visual aids. Not only were grisly murders reported in graphic detail; they were diagrammed so that readers could picture the horrors more clearly. When, for example, a New York City clergyman named Klemo slashed his wife to death in their fourth-floor apartment, then cut his own throat and hurled himself from the window, the story was accompanied by a drawing of the crime scene with a helpful alphabetical key:

  A—Door stained with blood; B—Window stained with blood from which Klemo leaped; C—Bed covered with blood; D—Table set and covered with blood; E—Chair in which Mrs. Klemo sat; F—Sink in which knife was found; G—Pool of blood.8

  Soon, Pulitzer had added a Sunday supplement, providing readers with such uplifting Sabbath fare as “a long treatise on weapons used to commit murder in recent years, including a nail, a coffin lid, a red-hot horseshoe, an umbrella, a matchbox, a window brush, and a tea kettle” “an account of the careers of two Vienna cutthroats who had specialized in courting lonely women and then murdering them” “a description of life in the death house at Sing Sing” a “thrilling narrative of cannibalism at sea” and the supposedly true-life tale of an English explorer thrown into a pit of vipers by “fiendish” Afri
can tribesman.9

  Pulitzer’s sensationalistic strategy succeeded beyond all expectation. By March 1885, the World had a daily circulation of more than 150,000 copies—an astonishing tenfold increase in less than two years. That figure would double again before the end of the decade.

  The age of yellow journalism had arrived.

  Before his expulsion from Harvard in 1886, William Randolph Hearst—pampered heir to a mining fortune—had served as the business manager for the college humor magazine the Lampoon. The experience had awakened in the aimless young man a keen interest in journalism. Studying the various dailies from New York and Boston, he found himself enthralled by Pulitzer’s newly reinvigorated World. Everything about it—from its crusading zeal to its shameless sensationalism—filled him with admiration. “If a man can be in love with a newspaper,” declares his best-known biographer, “Hearst was downright passionate about the World.”10

  As it happened, Hearst’s father, George, owned a paper himself. In 1880, the elder Hearst—a shaggy-bearded ex-prospector who had struck it rich in gold, silver, and copper—had purchased the San Francisco Examiner as a propaganda tool to advance his political ambitions. Though George would eventually get elected to the United States Senate, the paper was a financial disaster, losing more than a quarter-million dollars during the years he controlled it.11

  George’s boy, Willie, thought he could do better. While still in college, he wrote a letter to his father, insisting that the Examiner could turn a profit by imitating publications like the World—“that class [of newspaper] which appeals to the people and which depends for its success upon enterprise, energy, and a certain startling originality.” Illustrations were important, too, since they “attract the eye and stimulate the imagination of the lower classes.”12