Martha Lincoln was working at a film archive in Chicago when I asked her to be my researcher. Martha was on her way to graduate school. She wanted to study anthropology. In the meantime, she agreed to scout the public records and newspaper archives I’d need to write this book.
For six months, Martha sent me dispatches from Chicago. Then, in June 2004, as Martha searched databases at her computer in Chicago, and I trolled the Web, sitting in my office in Amherst, we both stumbled on a site that made our jaws drop.
A writer, lawyer, and legal scholar named Leigh Buchanan Bienen, on the faculty at the Northwestern School of Law, had just launched a site called the Chicago Historical Homicide Index (http://www.homicide.northwestern.edu). The site had taken Leigh and her staff years to build. It was—and is—unprecedented.
Based on more than eleven thousand homicide cases, entered, by hand, in logs maintained by the Chicago Police Department, from 1870 until 1930, Leigh’s Homicide Index is an interactive, searchable treasure trove of information, not just about the crime of murder but about the world in which that crime was embedded. Like a watering hole or a salt lick or a bird feeder, the site quickly attracted a variety of visitors: historians, legal scholars, sociologists, anthropologists, urban geographers; scholars interested in race, class, and gender relations; scholars interested in public health. . . . Within its first year, 250,000 people had visited the site. Eventually, I had the chance to meet Leigh and thank her for her work. Leigh and I became colleagues, then friends. As I wrote each chapter of this book, I sent it to Leigh; I asked her to critique it. I am in her debt.
In July 2004, I moved to Chicago to research the sources Martha had found. That meant reading microfilm. I lived in a single room, facing an alley. Every day, I woke up before dawn, came back late every afternoon. Each morning, I’d stand with the same group of homeless men, outside the doors of the Harold Washington Public Library, waiting for the guards to let us in. Once they did, we’d surge past them, up the escalators; many of us were headed for the same place: the library’s Newspapers and Periodicals reading room. We all wanted the same thing: a place to sit for the rest of the day.
The Harold Washington Library’s microfilms were old—brittle, scratched, and torn; some were misfiled, some were missing. The machines that displayed and made copies from the films were heavily used; they were often in disrepair. Reading microfilm, even under the best circumstances, is never easy. I’m very grateful to the clerks, research staff, and repair staff who helped me. In particular, I want to thank: Margaret Kier, then unit head of Newspapers and Periodicals; William Cliff, a senior clerk in the archive’s reading room; Frankie Palerico, a repair and service tech who fixed what he could, when he could.
During the months I read microfilm at the Harold Washington, the only online service that could access and search old issues of the Chicago Tribune was an imperfect instrument vended by a company called Newsbank. Newsbank’s results were hit and miss—when and if it produced results. Access to Newsbank and its searches was available only to research librarians. The public’s demands on them were so constant and the results produced by Newsbank were so inconsistent, I want to make particular mention of those professionals who found the time to help me: Jesus Calprepra, Christian Matera, Susan Puterko, and Lynn White. My thanks.
All this text-driven research existed only because of the Chicago Daily News photographs I first saw posted online by the Chicago Historical Museum. (The entire Chicago Daily News collection can be seen on the Library of Congress’s American Memory Web site. Go to: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/ichihtml/cdnhome.html.) Robert Medina, rights and reproductions coordinator at the museum, gave me excellent advice and assistance throughout the course of my research and writing. Robert’s cordiality and kindness, his goodwill, helped make this book possible. My thanks to him, his staff, and to the museum they serve.
Other than the homeless men I saw every day and the Mexican grill crew who worked in the chicken joint where I liked to eat, I didn’t know many people in Chicago. One of the people I did know—had known for years—was a very public person named Ira Glass. Ira is the host of a nationally broadcast radio show called This American Life. Ira and his producers collect and tape other people’s stories; they edit the stories, then group them around themes: ideas or questions or situations or encounters that everyone listening to Ira’s show—maybe two million people at a time—recognizes. Droll, sweet, sad, tragic, grand, quotidian. True. Ira loves Chicago. He works relentlessly. He and I talked now and then. I told Ira what I was discovering. He was suitably skeptical. Eventually he came to believe me. I want to thank him for his skepticism, his kindness, and his support.
I also want to thank Ira for introducing me to a fellow named Tim Samuelson. Tim is the cultural historian for the city of Chicago. Tim knows the city’s past and present, its neighborhoods and buildings, its citizens and their histories. He knows the city, talks about it, understands it as if Chicago was a grand, sprawling novel, never completed, always in draft form. As I’d write each chapter of this book, I’d ask Tim where a place was located, what type of people lived there, who had come and gone from it. Tim saved me from many mistakes: misspellings, false attributions, erroneous conclusions. What errors remain exist only because I didn’t have the wit to ask Tim the right questions.
In September 2004, I came back to Amherst with eighty pounds of documents. Within a few months, I realized that the time I’d set aside to master the material, then write about it, was inadequate. I’d been on the faculty at Hampshire College for years; the college had granted me paid and unpaid leave to research and write this book. The time the college had granted me was generous but the book had its own ideas about when it would be done.
In Amherst I was working the same hours I’d worked in Chicago: up before dawn, back late in the afternoon. Six days a week. Writing this book was like riding a horse that had never been ridden: if I stayed in the saddle, I’d crack my back; if I fell off or jumped, I’d break my skull. The horse didn’t care: it wanted to get away.
The college decided to let me ride. The book took eighteen months to finish. I could never have done it if two people at Hampshire hadn’t given me the time I needed. I want to thank Aaron Berman, the college’s dean of faculty; I also want to thank Bill Brayton, the dean of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts, the place that is my academic home.
In the early stages of the writing, I asked colleagues of mine at Hampshire if they’d be willing to read sample chapters, then tell me what they thought. I felt like a cook testing recipes. Jim Miller and Eric Schocket read a few chapters; Steve Weisler read many more. Everything they said was helpful—I’m grateful to them.
As I made my way through the documents I’d brought back from Chicago, I’d notice gaps in the information. Fortunately, between the time I sat and read microfilm at the Harold Washington and the time I was back in my office in Amherst, trying to write this book, an information service company called Pro Quest had launched an online, keyword searchable database for what it called “The Historic Chicago Tribune.” Pro Quest’s service was easy to use and accurate—qualities that the Harold Washington’s Newsbank service didn’t have. Pro Quest’s service wasn’t free; at first, only a few public libraries in the Chicago Metro Area subscribed to it. One of those public libraries was in Skokie, Illinois.
For the first fourteen months of my writing, I’d make long-distance phone calls to Skokie’s reference desk. Each time I’d explain my project, then ask the librarians to search Pro Quest’s Tribune database using a specific name and specific dates. I’d ask the librarians to please e-mail PDF files of whatever articles they found. The librarians at the reference desk in Skokie were very kind—patient, forbearing, and helpful. I want to thank them by name: Bruce Brigell, Skokie’s coordinator of information services; the librarians, Gary Gustin, Michaela Haberkern, Cheryl Sachinoff, and Pam Weinberg. The information they sent me—the articles and citations—were of critical importance. I thank them for their help and their goodwill.
I must confess: I never learned how to type. When I was fourteen, my parents enrolled me in a secretarial class taught by nuns. I passed the course—but every book I’ve ever written, I’ve written by hand. Libby Reinish typed this one. My thanks.
None of this—the research, the phone calls, the typing, the writing—would have been possible if I hadn’t been married to Lisa Stoffer. Lisa underwrote this project. She worked a high-stress, high-stakes job, while I spent two years of my life sitting in small, single rooms, writing about seventy-year-old murder cases. I had saved some money before I began this project. Hampshire College and W. W. Norton helped pay some of the bills. But I could never have afforded to write this book—we could never have afforded for me to write this book—if Lisa hadn’t said, “OK, I believe in you. I’ll help. We can manage. This is worth it. “
Lisa not only tolerated my obsession, she shared it. Read what I wrote, talked about it, critiqued it. There are ideas folded into this book, narrative strategies and moral architectures, that exist only because Lisa told me what she thought.
There are two other people responsible for this book.
First: Jim Mairs, my editor at W. W. Norton. I wrote every chapter because I knew Jim would read it. Every month, I’d send Jim an installment and he’d reply, quickly and emphatically. It was as if I were the publisher and he was the one and only subscriber to a very strange sort of periodical news service. What fun we had! We had the same, dark sense of humor; we shared the same sorrow for the same dreadful and despicable things. We were both beset by the same sort of ruefulness and impatience. We also loved many of the same things: cars in Jim’s case; cars and guns in mine. Best of all, we both loved the photographs. Jim and I have done three books together. Perhaps we have a future.
Finally, I want to thank Carl Brandt. Carl is a distinguished literary agent. I’ve been his client since 1985. When I told Carl I was headed for Chicago, he put me in touch with his daughter: she knew every coffee shop, laundromat, and bookstore in the neighborhood where I’d found a room. After reading just the first few chapters of this book, Carl understood everything: “This is just like Wisconsin Death Trip” he said. “Expanded, updated. Opened up. But it’s the Death Trip” Thank you, Carl.