This plan had not reached its full growth when nipped. But the disruption of the army and navy had been under way for several years and had reached such gigantic proportions that the military service was in danger of complete disorganization.
Thousands of men were mulcted of their pay monthly. Desertions followed these wholesale robberies. The war department could not find the specific trouble. Post commanders and battleship commanders were instructed to investigate.
The army investigation, confirmed after the raid and arrests, showed that the whole army had been honeycombed with corruption by these companies. Express books and registered mail return cards showed that most of the goods were sold to soldiers and sailors.
Detective Wooldridge Secures Evidence in Novel Way.
In August, 1890, complaints had been made at the Stanton Avenue Police Station for several weeks concerning the establishment of a disorderly house at 306 Thirty-first street, but try as they would uniformed officers were helpless so far as securing evidence enough to convict was concerned. Wooldridge at that time a uniformed man, was put in plain clothes and detailed on the case. One of the great stumbling blocks in the way of the police had been the high basement under the house, which made it impossible for any one to look in the windows of the flat without the aid of the ladder. As the presence of a ladder would arouse suspicion, the problem of viewing the inside of the flat was a difficult one.
One thing the other men on the case had overlooked. This was the presence of a beam jutting out from the top of the building to which a rope, pulley, and barrel were attached, used as a means of lowering garbage and ashes from the second floor to the alley. Wooldridge saw the possibilities of the rope and barrel trick. Attaching to the rope a vinegar barrel with holes bored in it at convenient intervals, he awaited an opportune time, curled up in the barrel, and had himself drawn up to the level of the windows by two officers. The lowering and raising of the barrel being a customary thing in the building, excited no suspicion in the minds of those in the flat, and Wooldridge, with his sleuth's eye at one of the holes, saw what served to drive the place out of existence and secure the conviction of its keeper.
Acts as Vendor of Fighting "Chickens."
One of the last exploits of Detective Wooldridge before his completion of the twenty years of service, was the breaking up of the cock-fighting mains, which infested Chicago during the latter part of 1906 and the early part of 1907.
The story savors of the burlesque. Wooldridge obtained information as to the whereabouts of a cock-fight which was to be pulled off. Then he sought out and purchased a pair of decrepit old roosters, that would not fight an English sparrow, bundled them into a sack and started for scene of action. Arrived in what he knew to be the neighborhood of the fight, he declared that he had been sent to deliver some "fightin' chickuns." He was directed to an old, abandoned building. Here he was admitted and left the antique roosters. Then he said he was going for more birds. Instead he went for a patrol wagon. And that was the end of the chicken fight.