The Devil's Gentleman (49 page)

Read The Devil's Gentleman Online

Authors: Harold Schechter

BOOK: The Devil's Gentleman
8.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

5. Ibid., p. 60.

6. Klaus, pp. 277–78.

7. Scott, p. 61.

8. Ibid.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1. Klaus, p.11.

2.
New York World,
February 11, 1899, p. 2.

3.
New York Journal,
February 22, 1899, p. 2.

4. Scott, p. 58.

5. Ibid., p. 59.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid., p. 61.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., p. 64.

10. Ibid.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

1.
New York Journal,
February 10, 1899, p. 3.

2. Klaus, p. 10.

3. Pejsa, p. 57.

4. Ibid.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

1.
New York Journal,
February 10, 1899, p. 2.

2. Subsequent quotations in this chapter are taken from Scott, pp. 65–77.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

1. All quotations in this chapter are taken from Scott, pp. 80–86.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

1. “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love,” in
The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,
Volume XI, trans. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1957), p. 183. In Freud’s experience, psychical impotence was—next to “the many forms of anxiety”—the disorder that most frequently drove men to seek psychoanalytic help. Unsurprisingly, he traces this disturbance to unconscious incestuous wishes.

2. Pejsa, p. 71.

3. Luc Sante,
Low Life
(New York: Vintage Books, 1992), pp. 126-28. Also, see George Chauncey,
Gay New York
(New York: Basic Books, 1994), pp. 33–40.

4. See Stephen Crane, “Opium’s Varied Dreams,” in
Stephen Crane: Prose and Poetry,
J.C. Levenson, ed. (New York: Library of America, 1984), pp. 853–59.

5. Scott, p. 63.

6. Ibid., p. 67.

7. Ibid., pp. 87–88.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

1. Klaus, p. 302.

2. Ibid., pp. 312-13. Also see
The People of the State of New York, Respondents, against Roland B. Molineux, Appellant. Case on Appeal from the Court of General Sessions of the Peace, in and for the county of New York. Court of Appeals of the State of New York
(New York, 1901), pp. 3222–25.

3. See advertisement in the
New York Sun,
September 24, 1899, p. 6.

4.
People of the State of New York, Respondents, against Roland B. Molineux, Appellant,
p. 3265.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

1. Klaus, pp. 315–16.

CHAPTER TWENTY

1. All quotes in this chapter are taken from Scott, pp. 92–95.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

1.
New York Morning Journal,
January 9, 1899, pp. 1–2.

2. Klaus, p. 135.

3. One of the many ads for Kutnow’s can be found in the
New York Journal,
April 30, 1899, p. 3.

4. Klaus, p. 138.

5. Ibid., p. 202.

6. Ibid., p. 206.

7. See
Merck’s 1899 Manual of the Materia Medica, Together with a Summary of Therapeutic Indications and a Classification of Medicaments: A Ready-Reference Pocket Book for the Practicing Physician
(New York: Merck & Co., 1899).

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

1. Scott, p. 98.

2. Ibid.

3.
New York World,
January 9, 1899, p. 2.

4. Ibid.

5.
New York Times,
November 12, 1898, p. 7.

6. “Brooklyn Society,”
Brooklyn Eagle,
November 30, 1898, p. 5. The current Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, located uptown at Fifth Avenue and Ninetieth Street, was not built until the late 1920s. Roland chose to be married in the original church partly because it was close to his club and partly, no doubt, for his usual snobbish reasons, since it was frequented by the city’s elite.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

1. Ezra Bowen, ed.,
This Fabulous Century: 1870–1900
(New York: Time-Life Books, 1970), p. 166.

2. George Juergens,
Joseph Pulitzer and the New York World
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 6 and 51.

3. Bowen, p. 168.

4. Ibid.

5. Juergens, pp. 51–52.

6. John D. Stevens,
Sensationalism and the New York Press
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 70.

7. Juergens, pp. 67–69.

8. Denis Brian,
Pulitzer: A Life
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001), p. 74.

9. Ibid., p. 55.

10. W. W. Swanberg,
Citizen Hearst
(New York: Scribner’s, 1961), p. 41.

11. Ibid., p. 47.

12. Ben Procter,
William Randolph Hearst: The Early Years, 1863–1910
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 41.

13. Swanberg, p. 43.

14. Ibid., p. 193.

15. Ibid., p. 49.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

1. Sidney Kobre,
The Yellow Press and Gilded Age Journalism
(Tallahassee: Florida State University, 1964), p. 62.

2. Among the staffers he stole away was cartoonist R. F. Outcault, creator of the enormously popular comic strip “The Yellow Kid,” starring a bald, jug-eared slum urchin dressed in a yellow nightgown. In retaliation, Pulitzer hired another cartoonist, George Luks, to continue producing “The Yellow Kid” for the
World.
The competing garishly colored comic strips supplied the name that would forever be associated with Hearst and Pulitzer’s brand of newspaper sensationalism: “yellow journalism.”

3. Swanberg, p. 68.

4. Ibid., p. 66.

5.
New York Journal,
December 29, 1895. See Kobre, p. 73.

6. Swanberg, pp. 124–25.

7. In this sense, our obsession with knife-(or ax-or chain-saw-) wielding psychos—as well as with scalpel-wielding TV medical examiners—is the flip side of our fantasy that our bodies can be made indestructible through exercise: a grim reminder from the unconscious depths that, no matter how many crunches we do, we are made of all-too-perishable flesh.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

1. Roger Lane,
Murder in America
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1997), p. 320.

2. Mark Regan Essig,
Science and Sensation: Poison Murder and Forensic Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America.
(Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Cornell University, January 2000, p. 5.)

3.
New York Sun,
March 3, 1899;
New York World,
March 11, 1899;
New York World,
March 16, 1899;
New York World,
April 2, 1899;
New York World,
April 7, 1899.

4. Edward H. Smith,
Famous Poison Mysteries
(New York: The Dial Press, 1927), p. 30.

5. Ibid., p. 31.

6. Ibid., p. 22.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

1. Klaus, pp. 151–70;
New York World,
February 10, 1899, p. 2.

2. Mrs. Adams’s other child, her adult son, Howard, also lived there occasionally, though at this time he was in Connecticut, nursing a broken leg. See Klaus, p. 221.

3.
New York Evening Journal,
December 12, 1898, p. 2.

4. Klaus, pp. 258-69. There is a slight discrepancy between the testimony of Harry Cornish and Florence Rodgers. According to the latter, she called for Cornish’s help
after
her mother had collapsed. Cornish testified that he had just reached the bathroom when Mrs. Adams collapsed “like six foot of chain.”

5.
New York World,
February 10, 1899, p. 3.

6. Klaus, pp. 51–56;
New York Herald,
February 16, 1899, p. 2;
New York Journal,
February 16, 1899;
New York World,
February 18, 1899.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

1. Klaus, p. 157.

2. Ibid., p. 183.

3. Ibid., p. 158.

4. Ibid., p. 128.

5. Ibid.

6.
New York Sun,
February 24, 1899, p. 2.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

1.
Evening Journal,
December 28, 1898, p. 2.

2.
New York Journal,
“Gave Poison to a Dozen to Kill One,” December 27, 1898, p. 1.

3.
New York Journal,
December 29, 1899, p. 1.

4.
New York World,
December 29, 1898, p. 1.

5.
New York Journal,
December 29, 1899, p. 2;
New York World,
December 19, 1899, p. 2.

6. Jürgen Thorwald,
The Century of the Detective
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), p. 14.

7. Ibid., p. 19.

8. Ibid., pp. 53–54; Jackson Morley, ed.,
Crimes and Punishment: A Pictorial Encyclopedia of Aberrant Behavior
(London: BPC Publishing, 1974), Vol. 9, pp. 128–29.

9. Thorwald, p. 100.

10. Louis Menand, “She Had to Have It,”
The New Yorker
(April 23 & 30, 2001), pp. 62–70, and Russell R. Bradford and Ralph B. Bradford,
Introduction to Handwriting Examination and Identification
(Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1992), p. 2.

11.
New York Evening Journal,
December 29, 1899, p. 1.

12. See, for example, the lead story on page 1 of
The New York Herald,
December 29, 1899, which declared that the poison was most probably sent to Cornish by a “woman inspired by jealousy.” Also
The New York Times,
December 29, 1899, p. 1.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

1. Klaus, p. 158.

2. Arthur Carey,
Memoirs of a Murder Man
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1930), p. 45.

3.
New York Journal,
December 30, 1898, p. 1.

4.
New York World,
December 30, 1898, p. 3.

5.
New York Evening Journal,
December 29, 1897, p. 2.

6.
New York World,
December 30, 1898, p. 2.

7.
New York Herald,
December 30, 1898, p. 4.

8. Ibid.

9.
New York Times,
December 30, 1898, p. 1.

10. Ibid.

11.
New York Herald,
December 30, 1898, p. 5.

12. Ibid., p. 3.

13.
New York Journal,
December 30, 1898, pp. 1–2.

14.
New York Times,
December 30, 1898, p. 2.

15. Klaus, pp. 154 and 159;
New York Herald,
February 18, 1899, p. 1.

CHAPTER THIRTY

1.
New York Journal,
December 31, 1898, pp. 1 and 2.

2. Carey, p. 1.

3. Ibid., pp. 2–9.

4. Ibid., pp. 38 ff.

5.
New York Journal,
December 31, 1898, pp. 1 and 3;
New York Herald,
December 31, 1898, p. 1;
New York World,
December 31, 1898, p. 1; Klaus, pp. 179–80; Carey, pp. 76–77.

6.
New York World,
December 31, 1898, p. 1.

7.
New York Journal,
December 31, 1898, p. 1;
New York Herald,
December 31, 1898, p. 1;
New York World,
December 31, 1898, p. 2.

8.
New York Times,
January 1, 1898, p. 2.

9.
New York Journal,
December 31, 1898, p. 2.

10.
New York Herald,
December 31, 1898, p. 4.

11.
New York Herald,
February 24, 1898, p. 4.

12.
New York World,
January 1, 1898, p. 1.

13. Ibid., p. 2.

14. Brian Burrell,
Postcards from the Brain Museum
(New York: Broadway Books, 2004), pp. 135–39.

15.
New York World,
January 2, 1898, p. 2.

16.
New York World,
January 1, 1898, p. 2.

17. Chauncey, pp. 170–73.

18.
New York World,
January 1, 1898, p. 1.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

1. Scott, p. 103.

2. Pejsa, p. 100.

3. Scott, p. 104. The material in this chapter, including all dialogue and direct quotes, is from Scott, pp. 104–10.

4.
New York World,
January 2, 1899, p. 3.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

1. Klaus, p. 312;
Brooklyn Eagle,
January 3, 1899, p. 16.

2.
New York World,
January 3, 1899, p. 2.

3. Ibid.

4.
Brooklyn Eagle,
January 3, 1899, p. 16.

5. Ibid.

6.
New York Herald,
January 3, 1899, p. 4.

7. Klaus, p. 7.

8. Scott, pp. 111–12.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

1.
New York Sun,
January 1, 1899, p. 12. Carey, p. 77.

3.
New York Journal,
January 3, 1899, p. 3.

4. Carey, p. 78.

5.
New York Herald,
January 3, 1899, p. 4.

6.
New York Journal,
January 6, 1899, p. 1.

7. Carey, p. 81.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., pp. 81–82; Klaus, pp. 212–14.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

1.
New York Journal,
January 4, 1899, p. 1.

2.
New York World,
January 2, 1899, pp. 1 and 3.

3. At the coroner’s inquest into the Adams murder, Roland freely admitted that he was friendly with Connors and his wife. See, for example,
New York World,
February 15, 1899, p. 2. For more on Connors, see Sante, especially pp. 125–30.

4.
New York Journal,
January 4, 1899, p. 2;
New York World,
January 4, 1899, p. 2.

5. Carey, p. 80.

6. Ibid.

7.
New York Times,
January 5, 1899, p. 1.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.;
New York Herald,
January 5, 1899, p. 1.

10. For more on the “murder squad,” see Swanberg, pp. 124–25.

11.
New York Journal,
January 5, 1899, pp. 1 and 2.

12. Ibid., p. 1.

13.
New York Herald,
January 7, 1899, p. 2.

14. Ibid.;
New York World,
January 7, 1899, p. 2.

Other books

Hot Water by Sir P G Wodehouse
The Moment She Knew by Christine Farrey
Collide by Christine Fonseca
The Silence of Murder by Dandi Daley Mackall
Mojo Queen by Sonya Clark
Westward Hearts by Melody Carlson
Dangerous Waters by Toni Anderson