This so diminished the income of the Cook County wolves that a panic ensued, which incensed the ever-irritable element and finally swelled into anarchy, consummating in the Haymarket Riot, in 1886, in which several officers were maimed or killed, and for which a few of the chief conspiring anarchists were executed, and thus civilization was restored.
Good men were then selected for responsible positions, while the dirty constables and rotten, self-elected magistrates, who held courts in extreme corners of the county, where victims were summoned to appear, only to find that judgment had been rendered against them, were at last stamped under the heels of decency.
Mr. Story, editor of the Chicago Times, who had amassed a large fortune, as the story ran, became infatuated with a feminine spiritual medium, who acted both as advisor and architect in the construction of a marble mansion on Grand Boulevard, whose apparent cost would have been four times his capital. The warmth of the medium did not offset the chill of old age, and becoming weary, he laid down the burden of life and the mansion was never completed.
Philip Hoyne was perhaps then the most noted criminal lawyer in Chicago, and this was the story of how he first became famous.
A man had been arrested for horse stealing who had no lawyer and the judge appointed Hoyne, then a young man, to defend him.
"What shall I do for him?" inquired Hoyne.
"Clear him if you can," said the judge.
Hoyne took the prisoner into the ante-room, used for counsel, and said to him:
"Mr. O'Flerity, did you steal the horse?"