Amongst my good old friends is Joe Dillabough, for years on the Chicago press. Joe is Canadian born, but drifted to Chicago in the early ’80’s and was the first cub reporter of the Times. What he doesn’t know of the seamy side of life in that great city is not worth knowing. When Joe was taken ill some years ago, we sent him out to the Canadian Rockies to recuperate, and incidentally to tell the world of the magnificence of the scenery around and about them, and how it enthralled the prominent people from the east. Joe’s first dispatch was about the unfortunate disappearance of a bishop and several priests from some outlandish country, the name of which I have forgotten, in a chasm at Banff, and of their timely rescue by Manager Mathews, of the C.P.R. hotel. It appeared in the Montreal evening papers and on going to Toronto that night I sat beside a stranger while the berths were being made up when he casually remarked that: “This is a queer story in to-night’s paper—this rescue of the bishop and priests from a chasm at Banff.” I asked in what particular way was it queer, and he said he came from that far-away land and they never had a bishop there. And I said, “Oh, Joe.”
Then the next dispatch was about the drowning of a large number of Indians in Lake Louise, while crossing the ice on their way to a potlach. It was widely published. I wrote Joe that there were no Indians in that locality, and if there were, they would not cross the lake but follow the trail around Lake Louise, but if they did cross the ice, they couldn’t possibly drown for the ice was a couple of feet thick. Joe naively replied that there were some of the most elegant liars in the Rocky Mountains he had ever known. My experience is that these talented descendants of Ananias are not altogether confined to that scenic region.
Nearly a generation ago the art of alliteration was worked to death in sensational headings. The Times was easily first in this particular, and one fine morning shocked and startled the community by its blasphemous caption “Jerked to Jesus,” which appeared following the hanging of a murderer who was himself the medium for the suggestion. The copyreader was Clinton A. Snowden, then one of the bright young men on the Times’ staff. Snowden went to Tacoma about 1892. It was he who hit upon the plan of sending George Francis Train, the great national crank, around the world on a 60-day tour, “Tacoma to Tacoma,” to beat the record of Phineas Fogg, the Jules Verne character in “Around the World in Eighty Days.” By the same token Train was the original of Fogg in the Verne story. It will be recalled that Nellie Bly, a Canadian newspaper woman working in New York, set out to out-do Train’s record and beat it by a day or so. Nellie was a Brockville girl or from one of the towns near there. Train, by the way, was a financial genius in his younger days and the real father-promoter of the Union Pacific Railway. He introduced “trams” in London and Australia.
Several Gory Sequences.
The celebrated Cronin case was one of Joe’s assignments, and it was one of the most cold-blooded murders in the country’s annals. I am only referring to it, because one of the scenes was laid in Winnipeg. Dr. Cronin was an earnest and honest patriotic Nationalist, and belonged to the notorious Camp 20. Suspecting that the immense sums of money contributed to the “Cause” were being stolen by the “Triangle,” which controlled the Camp and diverted the funds to the Triangle’s personal benefit, he openly denounced Alexander Sullivan, its chief, and, strenuously as they tried to silence him, he still continued to openly charge them with theft. They could only quiet him by getting him out of the way, and he was lured to the Carlson cottage one night and foully murdered. Pat McGarry, Frank T. Scanlan and other friends visited the newspaper offices and told of their suspicions. They were right. John M. Collins, a Camp 20 member, then a traffic cop at Lake and Clark Streets, identified Martin Burke at Winnipeg. John later became chief of police at Chicago. He died of pneumonia a couple of years ago. George Hubbard, chief in 1889, who sent Collins to the ’Peg, recently died in Florida. Alex. S. Ross, assistant chief in ’89, who brought Burke back to Chicago, died some years ago. He was a brother of Duncan C., the great athlete, and Wm. J. Ross, now of Fort William, and former superintendent of bridges, C.P.R., under John M. Egan. Detective John Broderick, who worked up the case in Winnipeg, died a few years ago, and George A. H. Baker, assistant states-attorney for Cook County, committed suicide in Chicago by strangling himself with a trunk strap.
When Alex. Sullivan, head of the Triangle, died at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Chicago, Joe covered the story for the Tribune. He was the son of a British Army Officer, once stationed at Fort Amherstburg, Ont., and was born there. The Cronin murder has been followed by many tragedies on both sides, or factions. It was John Fleming, an ex-policeman, who tipped to Joe the scoop that John Sampson (“Major”) had been offered $100 by Dan Coughlin (Big Dan), a Chicago city detective, to slug Cronin and that tip led to Dan’s connection with the case and to Joe’s story of his hiring of the white horse from Pat Dinan, the liveryman, which was used when Cronin was lured to his death in the Carlson cottage. Dan became a fugitive from justice following the bribing of jurors in an Illinois Central Railway civil court action, and he died in Honduras. He was led into the bribery case by Pat O’Keefe, special agent for the Illinois Central Railway, and formerly in the same capacity for the C.P.R. under Supt. J. M. Egan, in Winnipeg. O’Keefe and Aleck Ross, years before going to Chicago, had been partners as whiskey detectives in and around Rat Portage, Ont. They had quarrelled up there over a pair of rubber boots and remained enemies for years in Chicago until they were brought together in Mel Wood’s saloon on Clark Street, where they shook hands and made up, renewing an old and fast friendship.
Martin Burke was captured by Chief of Police McRae through information give by Alex. Calder and his son Arthur, who had sold him a ticket through to Ireland. Burke’s assumed name was John Cooper. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and nearly every one connected with the case came to a tragic end.
Stead and Hinky Dink.
It was through another Joe—Joe Page, that great Canadian baseball promoter—that I met the notorious “Hinky Dink,” who has been an alderman of Chicago for years and years and has remained one notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of the reform element to defeat him. His real name is Michael McKenna, and his first ward colleague in the council 20 odd years was “Bath House Jawn”—John J. Coughlin. The Dink really is a square little man and became a great pal of W. T. Stead, when he was here getting material for his book, “If Christ Came to Chicago.” On that visit Stead lived among the hobo fellows and, with them, actually was a “white wing,” pushing a broom in the streets that he might get color for his story. Hinky’s special claim for popularity is that he never goes back on “the boys;” no matter at what hour of the night or early morn he arises to go bail for any poor unfortunate in the police toils, and it is said that never has he been deceived by those he has helped out of a hole. His saloon is now closed, the landlord having raised his rent to an exorbitant sum.