Another young woman thought that about 150 were killed. She said that her father maintained an office at Forty-third Street and St. Lawrence Avenue, which is in the Negro district. Another said:
If I remember correctly, about forty black and white people were killed and several hundred wounded, and there was a loss of several thousand dollars worth of property by fire. The chief information that impressed me was personal experiences. I witnessed one mob of 2,000 whites take a Negro on the West Side and burn him to death. The newspaper gave me my information of atrocities on both sides.
Another stated that he believed the number killed in the race riot in Chicago was about 275, and continued:
I base my guess on reports of the newspapers, i.e., the dailies of the city and particularly one weekly paper which in my opinion is entirely unbiased in such matters, the Weekly Socialist. I personally saw four Negroes lynched and shot to death.
It might be expected that a fairly balanced type of impression would come from university students. The effect of rumor stands out from the examination of this highly selected group. In exaggeration the word-of-mouth rumors led, followed by rumors circulated by newspapers and alleged first-hand accounts of eyewitnesses.
Rumors from policemen and relatives placed the average number of persons killed at 209, the largest average of the lot. This is significant when taken with the reports given in the foregoing pages which emanated from policemen. Undoubtedly their experiences were of such a nature as to make exaggeration easy and plausible. They were living in conditions far from normal, and their impressions were greatly magnified by the stress and the excitement of events. The out-of-town students were less affected by word-of-mouth rumor, and consequently their impressions showed the smallest average of persons killed.
Personal experiences show more vividly than anything else the unreliability of much of the testimony from observation that gives such frequent rise to rumor. One student said he saw a mob of 2,000 whites take a Negro on the West Side and burn him to death. Records show that only one Negro was killed on the West Side (Joseph Lovings). He was shot and stabbed many times, but not burned.[92] Another student "personally saw four Negroes lynched and shot to death." No Negroes were lynched in the riot.
2. THE BUBBLY CREEK RUMOR
A persistent rumor during the riot served to provide an explanation of the unaccounted deaths of the riot. It had plausibility and soon was accepted and even repeated on the floor of Congress in Washington as a fact. Bubbly Creek is a small branch of the Chicago River extending to the Stock Yards. Into it flows a great deal of waste from the slaughter houses. The surface of the water is thick with the scum of decomposed substances, hair, and trash. Bodies could be thrown into it and remain undetected for a long time. A rumor became current that bodies of riot victims were thrown into this stream. It became so persistent that efforts were actually made to discover them. Even when no bodies were found, the rumor did not weaken. Examples of how it cropped up in various ways are given:
A man told a friend of mine, I can furnish the name of that man; a man told him that he saw fifty-six bodies taken out of Bubbly Creek. [A juror in the coroner's inquest.]