You’ve probably heard of H.H. Holmes — “The Devil in the White City, according to Erik Larson’s 2003 novel” — Chicago’s reported first serial killer who murdered young women during the World’s Fair of 1893.
Three years earlier — when the city was awarded the fair over New York and St. Louis — it was another killer who inspired one of Chicago’s most secretive clubs. His name: Jack the Ripper. The group: The Whitechapel Club.
“It is claimed that, should a man in a state of inebriety penetrate the recesses of the club not having been warned of what he was to encounter, he would instinctively rush out, hire a cab, and drive to the Washingtonian Home (a rehabilitation facility),” the Tribune reported in 1890.
In this treat from the Tribune’s archives — originally written by June Sawyers for the “Way We Were” column published on July 20, 1986 — learn about these men who spent their days chasing stories and nights communing with the macabre.
Other Vintage newsletters for Halloween
- Retro recipes for Halloween from Mary Meade’s archives
- Ghost stories from Chicagoland
- Unearthing the lives of Graceland Cemetery’s lesser known residents with Adam Selzer
- Celebrate spooky season — with a cemetery walk before Halloween
- How Svengoolie has evolved as the city’s iconic ghost host
- Will ‘Halloween’ ever really end? How the Tribune reviewed each horror flick in the series.
- Skull-duggery — the city’s infamous bones
Humor in Chicago journalism has a long and prestigious pedigree. As early as the 1840s, local readers enjoyed the biting wit of the comic writer’s inventive mind. The tradition reached its zenith during the 1880s and 1890s, when the likes of writer and poet Eugene Field, columnist George Ade and “Mr. Dooley” creator Finley Peter Dunne established Chicago’s reputation as a vibrant literary and journalistic town. (Other members included Brand Whitlock, U.S. minister to Belgium during World War I; John T. McCutcheon, Tribune cartoonist; Hyde W. Perce, realtor; Charles Goodyear Seymour; Richard Baldwin; and Wallace Rice, who created the design for the Chicago flag.)
This “golden age” of Chicago journalism found expression in the many drinking establishments and social clubs of the day. One of the most notorious was the Whitechapel Club, a newsmen’s hangout off an alley near the newspaper offices on North Wells Street (also known as Newspaper Alley or Newsboys Alley, opening out of LaSalle Street, between Madison and Washington streets).
The origin of the club’s name is the stuff of journalistic legend. One day, when the group was gathered in the back room of Henry Koster’s saloon at 173 W. Calhoun Place (named for the city’s first printer and newspaper publisher), a newsboy dashed in yelling, “All about the latest Whitechapel murder!” Inspired by that reference to the district popularized by the grisly crimes of London’s Jack the Ripper, Charles Goodyear Seymour, a Chronicle of Chicago reporter and the club’s first president, raised his stein of beer and chortled: ”Here’s to the Whitechapel Club! That’s the name for our club!”
In its lifespan of less than six years (1889-1894), the club — even during its heyday — never had more than 90 members. Dunne, whose fictional Mr. Dooley raised the eyebrows and social consciousness of the Evening Post’s readers, was an early member. Field, the city’s first nationally known humorist, was an occasional visitor. Newsmen from the city’s 11 newspapers made up most of the membership, but there were also lawyers, doctors, musicians, politicians and a clergyman or two.
The Whitechapel was most renowned for its gleefully morbid obsession with death. Skulls — including one nicknamed “Dutch Charlie” — and a hangman’s noose adorned the club’s walls and ceilings. A huge coffin-shaped dining table, its lid embellished with large brass nails that each bore a member’s name, dominated the main assembly room. “Leave Everything Behind, Ye Who Go Hence,” was the club motto.
Both members and guests were required to adhere to a code of honor.
”Brains, honor, courage and humor were the necessary qualifications for membership,” recalled reporter William Hay Williamson in a 1929 article in the Chronicle of Chicago. One steadfast rule of the club was that ”a gentleman never gets drunk.”
The club ”roasted” members and visitors alike, poked fun at the inflated personalities of the day and staged outrageous pranks such as the one that welcomed the visiting members of the Clover Club of Philadelphia, who were invited ostensibly to advise their hosts on the formation here of a similar club.
When some 50 Cloverites showed up one hot midsummer night resplendent, as was their wont, in formal evening attire, they were surprised to see that the Whitechapel men, seemingly more concerned with comfort than decorum, were all coatless. The surprise turned into alarm when, suddenly, after a furious pounding on the door, uniformed policemen burst in announcing, “You’re all under arrest!” Every man not in his shirtsleeves was hauled into police wagons, which then drove away through the bumpiest cobblestoned streets of what is now the Loop. The alarm, in turn, changed into embarrassment when the Philadelphians were dropped off not at a prison door but the main entrance of their hotel.
Then there was the bizarre funeral rite held in honor of Morris Allen Collins, who had taken his own life to show he had no fear of death. Seeing in Collins a kindred spirit and complying with his last wish, the Whitechapel men made plans to cremate him. Late on the night of July 16, 1892, 13 members took Collins by train to Miller Station, Indiana, and then by wagon to the dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan. There, as the aurora borealis danced against the black sky, Collins’ Grecian-robed corpse was cremated. For 5 ½ hours, the pyre burned while Shelley’s poetry filled the air. It was the Whitechapel Club’s finest moment. (After observing the ritual, club founder/member Hugh Blake Williams also requested Whitechapelites attend his cremation at Graceland Cemetery after he died in 1911.)
But the club’s glory was short-lived, its life snuffed out by one of its own members. A “brilliant and courageous” man, that member turned out to be a crook who robbed the club “blind” and “plunged it into debt.” (The club was sued in 1893 for $200 to cover the cost of “groceries, fruits and wines” and $500 “to recover money said to be due on liquor, cigars and kindred articles.”) Rather than borrow money to pay the debt, the Whitechapel men paid it off themselves and ”with laughter and jests” decided to call it quits, thereby ending a unique chapter of Chicago history.
A plaque honoring the memory of the Whitechapel Club was dedicated and hung in the barroom (then named Whitechapel Pub) inside the LaSalle Hotel in 1942. The hotel was demolished in 1976 and 2 North LaSalle was built in its place. The alley on Calhoun Place still exists.
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