Murder & Mayhem in Chicago's Vice Districts

Murder & Mayhem in Chicago's Vice Districts PDF Author: Troy Taylor
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625841116
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description
A trip through the history of the Windy City’s lawless districts where you could lose your money and your life—from the author of Haunted Illinois. From the very beginning, Chicago thrived on its reputation as a wide-open town. After the Great Fire, no part of the city was rebuilt more quickly than the vice districts, where bribed cops and brutal force emboldened professional wickedness to celebrate itself with gala events like the First Ward Ball, begun in honor of a madam’s pianist and often so crowded that passed-out drunks couldn’t even fall to the floor. Randolph Street was nicknamed Gambler’s Row because men gambled with their lives by visiting it. In Little Hell, guns and knives could be rented by the hour. In these seedy areas only put to sleep by Mickey Finn’s knockout drinks or Gentle Annie’s knockout punches, it is no wonder that Detective Woolridge kept seventy-five disguises, made twenty thousand arrests and was shot at forty-four times. Includes photos!

Murder & Mayhem in Chicago's Vice Districts

Murder & Mayhem in Chicago's Vice Districts PDF Author: Troy Taylor
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625841116
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 118

Get Book

Book Description
A trip through the history of the Windy City’s lawless districts where you could lose your money and your life—from the author of Haunted Illinois. From the very beginning, Chicago thrived on its reputation as a wide-open town. After the Great Fire, no part of the city was rebuilt more quickly than the vice districts, where bribed cops and brutal force emboldened professional wickedness to celebrate itself with gala events like the First Ward Ball, begun in honor of a madam’s pianist and often so crowded that passed-out drunks couldn’t even fall to the floor. Randolph Street was nicknamed Gambler’s Row because men gambled with their lives by visiting it. In Little Hell, guns and knives could be rented by the hour. In these seedy areas only put to sleep by Mickey Finn’s knockout drinks or Gentle Annie’s knockout punches, it is no wonder that Detective Woolridge kept seventy-five disguises, made twenty thousand arrests and was shot at forty-four times. Includes photos!

Murder & Mayhem in Chicago's South Side

Murder & Mayhem in Chicago's South Side PDF Author: Troy Taylor
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625841132
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
Lurking below the Loop, behind the industry-driven energy of Chicago, lies the mysterious criminal underworld of the South Side. Recounting criminal exploits of legends like Alphonse Capone, as well as lesser-known stories like the Car Barn Bandits, Troy Taylor captures the intricacies of the most infamous stories of Chicago's South Side. From the gruesome murders committed by the unassuming H.H. Holmes to the mysterious death of Marshall Field Jr., join Taylor as he revisits the South Side's prosperous middle-class days and vividly depicts the strange and horrific crimes that have cast new light on the character of these too often overlooked neighborhoods.

Murder & Mayhem on Chicago's North Side

Murder & Mayhem on Chicago's North Side PDF Author: Troy Taylor
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1614232989
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 119

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Book Description
The author of Haunted Illinois visits the criminal history of the Windy City neighborhood where mobsters and murderers plied their trades. In 1929, Chicago gangster Al Capone arranged a special St. Valentine’s Day delivery for his favorite arch enemies: a massacre. Seven North Side mobsters were left dead. Yet random killings and bizarre murders were not unfamiliar in Chicago. Tales of the city’s most violent and puzzling murders make this gripping work truly hair-raising: a deranged stalker kills his love object and then himself; a sausage maker uses the tools of his trade to rid himself of his wife; and a meticulous serial killer cleans his dead victim’s wounds before taping them closed. Through accounts dripping with mystery, gory details and suspense, Troy Taylor brilliantly tells the twisted history of Chicago’s North Side. Includes photos!

Gangland Chicago

Gangland Chicago PDF Author: Richard C. Lindberg
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442231963
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
This engrossing tale of gangs and organized criminality begins in the frontier saloons situated in the marshy flats of Chicago, the future world class city of Mid-continent. Gangland Chicago recounts the era of parlor gambling, commercialized vice districts continuing through the bloody Prohibition bootlegging wars; failed reform movements; the rise of post-World War II juvenile criminal gangs and the saga of the Blackstone Rangers in a chaotic, racially divided city. , Gang violence and street crime is endemic in contemporary Chicago. There is much more to the saga of crime, politics, and armed violence than Al Capone and John Dillinger. Gangland Chicago explores the changing patterns of criminal behavior, politics, gangs, youth crime and the failures of reform in its historic totality. Richard Lindberg takes the reader on a journey through decades of a troubled past to delve deep into the evolution of street gangs and organized violence endemic in Chicago. Small ethnic gangs organized in ethnic slum districts of the city expanded into the well-known organized crime syndicates of Chicago’s history. Gangland Chicago is full of stories of unchecked violence, lawlessness, and mayhem. Unlike other standard true crime accounts focused exclusively on the Prohibition era, this historical look-back probes the obscure and forgotten dark corners of city crime history. Lindberg details how both “organized” and “dis-organized” street gangs have paralyzed city neighborhoods and transformed the crimes of the Windy City from street thuggery and common ruffians protected and nurtured by politicians into a protected class is gripping. Gangland Chicago is a revealing look at the Chicago underworld of yesterday and today. This comprehensive volume is sure to entertain and inform any reader interested in the evolution of organized crime and gangs in America’s most representative city of the American Heartland.

Chicago’s First Crime King: Michael Cassius McDonald

Chicago’s First Crime King: Michael Cassius McDonald PDF Author: Kelly Pucci
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1467140554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
"Michael Cassius McDonald arrived in Chicago as a teenage scam artist who quickly sketched a blueprint for running the city through its criminal underworld. Chicago's original mob boss, he procured presidential pardons, stuffed mayoral ballot boxes, and operated the town's plushest gambling parlor. But he was also a philanthropist who befriended Clarence Darrow, employed Theodore Dreiser, promoted the World's Fair, and funded the Lake Street L. His scandalous private life mirrored the truth of his career, with more than one marriage mired in a love triangle and a murder trial. Kelly Pucci charts the rise of Chicago's first kingpin."--Provided by publisher.

The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: A-De

The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: A-De PDF Author: Wilbur R. Miller
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1412988764
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 2713

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Book Description
This comprehensive and authoratative four-volume work surveys the history and philosophy of crime, punishment, and criminal justice institutions in America from colonial times to the present.

The First Vice Lord

The First Vice Lord PDF Author: Arthur J. Bilek
Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing
ISBN: 9781581826395
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
THE FIRST VICE LORD is the story of the life and death of Big Jim Colosimo and Chicago's infamous segregated red-light district--the Levee. For the first time, the true story is told of the colorful characters who peopled the Levee from the time of the Columbian Exposition to the Roaring Twenties, clearly the most colorful period in Chicago's history. The product of five years of research through Chicago daily newspapers, magazines, and periodicals, and books on the city's history, it documents the story as it occurred, with all of the sights, sounds, and smells of that lusty, unruly era. THE FIRST VICE LORD is the story of an immigrant Italian lad who grew up in the tenements of Chicago, where he worked first as a lowly street sweeper, then as a brothel operator and vice lord, and finally as the owner of the most famous restaurant of his day. His story is told against the backdrop of an open red-light district so famous it was known to the crown heads of Europe.

Murder & Mayhem in Chicago's Downtown

Murder & Mayhem in Chicago's Downtown PDF Author: Troy Taylor
Publisher: History Press Library Editions
ISBN: 9781540234414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
In the company of author Troy Taylor, pull off the trick of coming back alive from some of Chicago's most infamous one-way rides." Meet the deadly womanizer Johann Hoch, who would propose to a woman within twenty minutes of meeting her and then poison her within a week. Follow "Terrible" Tommy O'Conner as he eluded the gallows for more than fifty years, until the city finally grew "tired of waiting" and dismantled them for the final time. Learn how even flower shops and cathedrals weren't safe from gangland violence, and relive the tragic fire at the Iroquois Theatre, where a "fireproof" curtain was made of cotton and did little to stop the blaze that killed more people than the Great Fire of 1871."

Chicago Portraits

Chicago Portraits PDF Author: June Skinner Sawyers
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810126494
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
The famous, the infamous, and the unjustly forgotten—all receive their due in this biographical dictionary of the people who have made Chicago one of the world’s great cities. Here are the life stories—provided in short, entertaining capsules—of Chicago’s cultural giants as well as the industrialists, architects, and politicians who literally gave shape to the city. Jane Addams, Al Capone, Willie Dixon, Harriet Monroe, Louis Sullivan, Bill Veeck, Harold Washington, and new additions Saul Bellow, Harry Caray, Del Close, Ann Landers, Walter Payton, Koko Taylor, and Studs Terkel—Chicago Portraits tells you why their names are inseparable from the city they called home.

Sinister Chicago

Sinister Chicago PDF Author: Kali Joy Cramer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493059602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
The bone-chilling breeze off Lake Michigan carries unnerving whispers of days gone by. Sinister Chicago chronicles the unknown, unusual, or otherwise unexplained events that have occurred in Chicago’s short history. Author Kali Joy Cramer uncovers the sinister foundations of Chicago’s urban legends and unravels the facts around its most notorious murder cases. She looks below the superficial stories of Chicago’s most infamous characters and chronicles the tragic accidents that left their mark on the city.