November 11, 1897
I found two messages when Nora and I returned from Mass at Immaculate Conception Church on North Park. One was a telegram from the General.
Failure Stop Returning home Stop.
I choked up. Nora wept when I showed it to her. The other was a scrawled note from Lucy Parsons.
Mr. fitzpatrick,
They would not permit the children and me to visit Albert last night. Other families were also barred. We will try again this morning.
Lucy Parsons.
I drank a cup of tea, ate a piece of toast, and dashed down to Michigan Street. Police and soldiers were everywhere, the latter with rifles and fixed bayonets. The guards didn’t want to let me into the jail, despite my press credentials. Fortunately for me. Chief Pemberton, in full uniform, appeared and waved me in.
“They will not let the families see the condemned men!” I shouted.
“I know, Ned. I know,” he said soothingly. “Everyone’s frightened. We have guards at the homes of everyone associated with the trial. Mounted troops in front of the Board of Trade. The city is under siege.”
“Why?”
“There is a rumor that twenty thousand armed Anarchists will storm the jail, release the prisoners, and blow up the courthouse and the jail.”
“Do you believe that?”
We walked into the first floor of the jail, which was filled with armed soldiers, milling about with apparently no clear idea of what they were supposed to do. The General will be horrified, I thought, at the use to which his troops have been put.
“Certainly not. Sheriff Matson, who is in charge of the execution, believes it, however. The bombs they found in Lingg’s cell have terrified them all.”
“Do you think there were really bombs there?”
He shrugged. “Schaack said there were.”
“And has frightened the whole city!”
“I’m afraid that’s what he wanted to do.”
“He has kept the families away from the condemned men!”
“He says they would smuggle in more bombs.”
“Do you believe that?”
He hesitated and sighed sadly.
“Certainly not, Ned. It’s all illusory, like everything Schaack does. Sometimes I think he deceives even himself with his Anarchist stories.”
I did not ask him, because I already knew the answer, why a mere Captain of Police could run the whole city of Chicago, eclipsing even his usual ally, Captain Bonfield.
The answer was that he had Marshall Field’s money behind him.
“They’ve been reciting poetry and singing hymns all night,” the Chief said as he showed me into the hanging yard, a roofed-over alley separating the jail from the courthouse.
“They all seem ready to die, eager even… it will be between eleven o’clock and twelve o’clock.”
I was filled with rage, grief and a sense of utter powerlessness. Unlike most of the crowd, I had witnessed an unjust murder by mass hanging once before. I did not want to endure the experience again. Yet it was my job to do so.
There were a couple of hundred people jammed into the yard. They were restrained from crushing against the gallows at one end of the yard by a cordon of armed police, Captain Schaack in charge.
Rumors raced up and down the yard like a prairie fire. Governor Oglesby had pardoned all of them. He had revoked the clemency of Schwab and Fielden. Spies had asked once more for clemency. Parsons had hung himself in his cell.
The appeal and the terror of a mass execution is that the victims are human beings just like us. One moment they are alive, breathing, thinking of their wives and children. The next moment they are pitiable corpses with broken necks, hanging at the end of nooses. To soften the terror of the experience, the sense that one could just as well be standing on the gallows with them, attempts are made to dehumanize them, to set them apart from the fortunate ones who are only watching.
Thus when Parsons, Spies, Engel, and Fischer appeared a little before noon, singing the “Marseillaise” they were clad in rough white shrouds and their heads completely covered by hoods. Each of them had a noose around his neck. Their legs were bound by straps and their arms bound by handcuffs. No egregious blunders would be permitted like those at Galway Jail when Myles Joyce and his fellows were hung.
They were lined up on the gallows and the nooses attached to the overhanging ropes.
“The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today,” Spies shouted.
I wonder if he and Nina had been permitted a last farewell.
Engel, Santa’s gray-haired little elf, shouted “Hooray for Anarchy!”
Fischer also shouted, “Hooray for Anarchy!” And then added, “This is the happiest moment of my life!”
Parsons had the last word, of course.
“Will I be allowed to speak, O men of America? Let me speak, Sheriff Matson! Let the voice of the people be heard!”
He was about to continue when the trap fell.
There were a few cheers. Most of the crowd were silent, in horror or shame, or sickness I do not know. I suffered all those emotions but did not vomit, as much as I wanted to.
They had died, I tried to tell myself once I had fought myself out into the chill autumn air on Michigan Street, like brave men. Their part in the drama was over. Their story would go on and their brave deaths would be a high point in it.
The headline for my first story would read,
GALLOWS TRAP SILENCES PARSONS—FOR NOW
However before the day was over I had another story to write.
SCHAACK ARRESTS PARSONS WIDOW AND CHILDREN REMOVES THEIR CLOTHES IN SEARCH FOR BOMBS
CAPTAIN MICHAEL SCHAACK, WHO HAS been ruling Chicago like a military dictator, not only prevented the families of the condemned Anarchists from visiting their loved ones last night, he also barred them this morning. He even arrested Lucy Parsons, wife of Alfred Parsons, and her two children this morning when they tried for a last visit with Mr. Parsons. He then ordered that the woman and two children be taken to the Chicago Avenue Police Station, where their clothes were removed and they were searched for explosives at about the same time as the gallows trap was sprung on their husband and father. Naturally the searchers found no explosives.
Captain Schaack, who usually sees no need for explanations, insisted that this was merely a precaution against alleged Anarchist plots to blow up the Cook County Jail.
It is obvious now that there were no such plots. They existed only in Captain Schaack’s mind. Apparently there is no barbarity to which he will not sink in his passion for public attention.
Mrs. Nina VanZandt Spies, together with her loyal parents, also attempted to visit Mrs. Spies’s husband for the last time but were turned away by the police. Later, when it became known that the execution had been carried out, hysterical cries were heard from the VanZandt mansion.
Mrs. Spies at least was spared the indignity of being probed by the none too gentle hands of Captain Schaack’s police matrons.
“DID HE REALLY DO THIS?” my editor asked.
“Of course he really did it. You and the other editors have created a monster. He will never stop until you are prepared to stop him.”
“Maybe you’re right, Ned,” he agreed solemnly.
Someday stopping Schaack might sell newspapers.
Nora and I sat somberly in front of the fireplace that evening. We both sipped two glasses of Irish whiskey.
“I shall have nightmares tonight, Ned,” she said. “I suppose you will too.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“You shouldn’t have been there.”
“Yes, I should have.”
“You’re right as always.” She sighed. “God will take care of those men, even if they think they didn’t believe in Him.”
“I’m sure He will.”
“You will go to the wakes and the funerals?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And then?”
“I will resign before they can fire me.”
November 12
My first stop as I made the round of the homes of the victims today was the Parsonses’ apartment at 1120 West Grand Avenue, a third-floor walk-up in the poorest of neighborhoods. I arrived just as the body of Alfred Parsons was being delivered to his home.
WHEN THE STREET DOOR WAS opened, Mrs. Parsons was observed at the head of the stairs, dressed in a long black wrapper. Apparently she had rested little during last night for her eyes were swollen with much weeping. She was greatly excited when she realized that they were about to bring up her dead husband, and she immediately commenced weeping again. A committee went to her and endeavored to calm her, but she grew more agitated until they almost forced her into her apartment and locked the door. She would not listen to their entreaties, and one was left to see that she did herself no harm, while the others carried up the coffin and deposited it on two chairs in the little sitting room. The top of the casket was removed and the calm, pale features exposed.
All the time they were taking off the lid, Mrs. Parsons was struggling in the room adjoining and calling the name of her husband. Little Albert and Lulu, the fatherless children, stood together, crying and unnoticed in the corner of the room. When the chamber door was unlocked, the widow rushed out and threw herself bodily on the coffin. An hysterical cry escaped her lips, and the poor woman fell on the floor in a dead faint before her friends could catch her.
I REALIZED THAT I HAD been harsh on Lucy Parsons. She wanted her husband to be true to his vision, she wanted him to speak out with his life itself to tell the story of oppression and injustice to working people. She knew he would die when she suggested he return to Chicago from Wauconda, Wisconsin. She would not permit him to apply for clemency. Yet she loved him and would miss him forever. It is not up to someone like me to sort out such a tangle of emotions. I should have been kinder.
She collapsed into my arms when I tried to console her. “Ned,” she sobbed, “you were always on our side!”
I’m not really sure that I was.
My next stop on this day of wakes was at 630 North Milwaukee Avenue in the Wicker Park district, where so many of the German immigrants, rich and poor alike live, where some of the most beautiful homes built since the fire exist but a stone’s throw from some of the most miserable hovels. The wake for Engel and Lingg took place in the back room of Engel’s toy store.
In my story I wrote:
The door of the little cigar and toy store which Mrs. Engel had managed since the arrest of her husband was draped in mourning. A red-faced man with white mustache stood on a box in the center of the door and separated those going in from those going out.
In the back room lay the bodies of Louis Lingg, the suicide, and Engel. They were in their coffins and no one was permitted to take more than one look as he passed along.
Hardly one out of twenty who go into the Engel store to view the remains speak their minds in English. The babble on the sidewalk was sometimes loud enough to be heard far down the avenue. People came from all directions, men, women and children. Every street car from across the bridge and from the extremes of Milwaukee Avenue deposited several people who rushed and pushed and swore to get a place in line… Now and then a detective from the central station or from Chicago Avenue loomed up, but he came and went so as not to attract attention. If the men knew that Bonfield’s spies heard every excited threat that they are uttering over the dead bodies of their heroes there might be trouble. Often a very excited man would raise his hand and utter fearful oaths in German. Often the names of Bonfield and Schaack could be distinguished in their rantings.
These men and women are not Anarchists. They are friends and neighbors and Germans and workers who do not want to tear the city apart but are angry at what they see as a blatant miscarriage of simple justice. At least twenty thousand of them passed through his sad and simple little toy store today. One of Santa’s bravest elves is dead, murdered as these people see it.
BECAUSE THEY RECOGNIZED WHO I was, the people at the bier permitted me more than a single, quick look at Lou Lingg’s body. He was not wearing Elise’s gold cuff links.
Out on Milwaukee Avenue I was hot with rage despite the damp and cool November air. Schaack had stolen the cuff links that were supposed to be buried in the ground with Lou Lingg. Whatever it takes and no matter how long it takes, I told myself, Schaack would pay for being a ghoul, a grave robber, a thief of the innocent love of a poor peasant girl from Germany.
Over our second Irish whiskey that night, Nora asked me, “How are you going to undo Schaack and Bonfield, Ned?”
“I don’t know Nora. I must wait for the proper opportunity. When the tide turns, as it will, there will be plenty of opportunity. Somehow we must collect the evidence against them all. Perhaps one of the Chicago papers will reconsider what happened. Otherwise, I will write an article for Harper’s. I may do both.”
She nodded, wise woman that she is, knowing that I was too sick with grief and rage to think clearly on what had to be done.
November 13
The Daily News asked me to cover the funeral. Why not, I was riding out there anyway.
The cortege began up in Wicker Park, picking up bodies one by one, then worked its way over to Grand Avenue to add the Parsons casket to the five other hearses.
As the rain poured down on us we crossed under the Chicago River in the Desplaines Street Tunnel and then to the railroad station. There were thirty cars waiting to take us out to Waldheim. The grief and the rage in the air were thick, like heavy curtains hanging from the sky. The rain beating against the roofs of carriages sounds like a heavenly dirge.
The procession was constrained to cross the river at Desplaines Street Tunnel, just a few blocks above the Haymarket, because it was forbidden to pass through the central business district. Mayor Roche, who had succeeded Mayor Harrison, perhaps because Harrison had spoken for the defense during the trial, had feared, perhaps with some reason, that the cortege might turn angry as it passed near the fashionable downtown clubs. In one of them, Marshall Field and his cronies were sipping their brandies and smoking their cigars in a celebration of their triumph over the hated Anarchists and laying plans for further triumph over the immigrants in the city.
At the Wisconsin Central station at the end of Wells Street, thirty cars waited on the tracks for the special train out to Forest Park. Timmy Hardiman greeted me with an umbrella to lead me to the compartment in which my mother and father, two of my sisters and one of my brothers, Nora, and Josie were waiting for us.
Despite the grimness of the day, I could not help but note that Timmy was already considered a member of the family.
Beware lad, once this family gets a hold on you, it will be hard to escape.
All the women were dressed in black My father and Tim wore black armbands on their dark suits. Even I for once had given up my white suit and was dressed in funereal black.
Normally, if one gathers that large a portion of my family together, the result is a riot of fun and laughter. Not on this day, however. At my mother’s suggestion we said the Rosary all the way out to Forest Park
“They may not have been Catholics,” she said, “but God loves them as much as He loves us. Maybe more.”
My mother constantly wandered near the limits of heresy, God bless her. Sensitive to what this situation might mean to Nora, she kept her strong arm around my wife throughout the train ride.
Gradually the rain diminished and then stopped, just as we pulled into the small station on Des Plaines Avenue in Forest Park
“There’ll be much confusion as they move the caskets to the hearses and the crowds to the waiting carriages,” my father observed. “We should wait here till the confusion is over. We really don’t belong with them. In their present mood they might resent us.”
“Not if they recognize Ned, Grandpa General,” the irrepressible Josie said. “Too bad he didn’t wear his white suit.”
Desperate for something to break the tension, the family laughed more at that sally than it merited.
Naturally, the General had contracted for a special carriage for his family. Naturally, one had to look at it carefully to know that it was special.
We stood at the back of the crowd, astonishingly anonymous for the General’s family. The wives and children around the gravesites were crying loudly. We could hardly hear the funeral oration by Captain Black. However, we could pick out his theme. He had not known any of the five men before the trial. He had taken on the case because of his conviction that everyone had the right to a proper legal defense. He had come to know them during the trial and to admire them. While he did not agree with their philosophy and sometimes winced at their rhetoric, he had learned to respect their integrity and their goodness. There was not a mean or violent strain in any of them. They were completely innocent, the victims of an irresponsible and vicious criminal procedure of which Chicago would always be ashamed. They had sacrificed their lives for their beliefs. In some ways their courage had reminded him of that of Jesus.
“Hmf,” said my father.
“Hush,” said my mother.
We walked by the mourners, expressing our sympathies. Both Nina Spies and Lucy Parsons embraced me. Under other circumstances there would be many comments about this from my family, not the least from Josie.
However, we rode back in silence.
I jotted down my story on the return trip.
BLACK COMPARES DEAD MEN TO JESUS.
One might as well end on a strong note.
For the moment, it’s over.
February 1, 1888
It wasn’t over for very long.
Last night, Nora and I were reading in the parlor and Josie was playing the piano, an activity at which she had become very skilled.
The doorbell rang. We had excused Annie early for an evening with her young man.
“I’ll get it.” Josie bounced up from the piano bench.
“She’ll always be grateful to you, Ned,” Nora remarked. “She’ll never be able to do enough for you.”
“Nonsense,” I said, knowing full well it was true.
She appeared a few moments later with a tall, handsome man.
“Mayor Carter Harrison to see you, Uncle Ned. I knew it was him because he was riding his white horse.”
The Mayor strode into the room, shook my hand vigorously and kissed Nora’s hand.
“And this charming and witty young woman, I believe, is your niece Josephine.”
“My real name is Josie, Josephine is my nickname.”
“Unless I am mistaken, Miss, ah…”
“Philbin,” I filled in the name.
“I have seen you at certain events with young Master Timothy Hardiman.”
“I remember the name, but I can’t quite recall the face.”
“Josie, I think you and I had better withdraw. His Honor and your Uncle Ned have serious matters to discuss.”
“Not at all, not at all, Mrs. Fitzpatrick. The matter is very simple indeed. Despite your generosity I don’t deserve the title anymore. In truth I would like it back for at least one more term. In order to further that goal I have bought today the Chicago Times. In particular I want to report on police corruption. I have hired Mr. James West to be editor and Mr. Joseph Dunlop to be city editor. I assume, Ned, that you share my respect for those two men?”
“Best editors in the city.”
“The three of us discussed other staff today. We decided unanimously that the first one we wanted to hire was Edmund James Fitzpatrick Jr.”