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| Chaos at the Rush Street Bridge (JWB collection) |
You get stuck in traffic on a Friday at 5:00 in the
afternoon, and you would swear that things couldn’t get any worse. But the truth is that things could be a
whole lot worse, and in the early days they were. There was virtually no way across the
river to the north except the Wells Street Bridge or the Rush Street Bridge, and surface transportation
consisted of cable cars that were prone to frequent breakdowns and crossed the
river by means of narrow tunnels at LaSalle and Washington Streets.
I was doing some research the other day on an artist’s
colony that sprang up on Burton Place in the late 1920’s. The street was originally named Carl
Street, and it was populated as early as the Chicago Fire of 1871. I ran up against the name of an early
resident of Carl Street, an unfortunate soul by the name of Henry S. Holden,
who resided at No. 9 Carl Street.
Mr. Holden and Chicago’s primitive cable car system met on the morning
of Monday, February 19, 1894, a deadly encounter for Holden.
Conductor John Bambor presented the facts at the Coroner’s
inquest on Thursday, February 22, 1894.
As the cable car came down Wells Street, headed south, the gripman,
William J. Linch yelled to him that the brake chain on the car had broken. A repair wagon was summoned, and the
car met the wagon at Ohio Street.
The cable car was pulled around to LaSalle and Illnois where the grip
was raised so that the car could be pulled west on Illinois to Wells Street.
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The original power house for the LaSalle Street Cable Cars, formerly
Michael Jordon's, now The LaSalle Power Co. at 500 N. LaSalle |
The horses were unhitched, and the car was allowed to go on
under its own momentum until it reached the switch at LaSalle Street. The car had not yet come to a full stop
when Linch tried to stop it with the track brake. Either the forward progress was too fast or the brake failed
completely, and the car began to roll toward the LaSalle Street tunnel. The speed increased as the car got
closer to the tunnel, and the passengers left on board began to panic.
According to the Chicago Tribune’s account of the accident, “The passengers inside the
car saw that something was wrong and with visions of a tunnel horror in their
minds they made for the door with all possible speed.” Bambor tried to block the door,
but the surging mob was too much.
Two women jumped off the car as it neared the entrance to
the tunnel. A third, Mrs. C. D. Coddle, jumped just as the car
reached the entrance to the tunnel and was thrown violently against the lamp
post just outside the tunnel entrance, receiving “injuries about the hips.”
At that point poor old Henry Holden lost his nerve.
Here’s how The Trib
described what happened next, “As the car started down the steep incline it
gathered speed with each foot of ground and dashed into the cavern at a rapid
rate. Holden seemed to lose his
presence of mind as the train leaped along. He sprang upon the rail of the platform, poised there a
moment to get his balance, and as the car reached the place where partition
divides the two car tracks he leaped into the air. At this point the track makes a slight turn. As the man jumped the car swerved, his
head struck on the stone wall with terrific force, and his body fell back
across the track.”
It would be bad enough if the whole thing had ended there,
but there was more to come. As the
story continues it’s interesting to note the difference in reporting style between
1894 and today . . . “The train, propelled by the momentum down the north
incline, ran several hundred feet up the south incline and started back again
with sufficient force to carry it past the spot where Mr. Holden lay, crushing
him into a shapeless mass. Both of
his arms were broken, the top of his head was cut off, and small pieces of
clothing and flesh littered the track for a number of feet.”
Henry Holden was a wealthy dealer in gas-fixtures and a
stockholder in the Northwestern Tile Company. He had been in business since before the Chicago Fire. He left a widow and a five-month-old
child. His brother-in-law took
charge of his body. Although the
conductor and gripman were arrested, the Coroner’s inquest found them innocent
of any negligence in the unfortunate accident.
And that should have
been the end of it.
But there was more to come.
It seems that a week before the accident one Michael Kenna,
a saloonkeeper, began suit against Holden for bigamy, claiming that Holden had
married a woman in New York in 1867 and then had come to Chicago and married
the second woman, the widow on Carl Street. Holden was arrested and posted a bond of five thousand
bucks.
The accident happened on Monday. On Tuesday Mrs. Katherine Holden, the New York wife of
unfortunate Henry, authorized an Undertaker Sigmund to inter the body. Another north side undertaker showed up
at the morgue with authorization to remove the body to the No. 9 Carl Street
address. Since the New York
relative identified what was left of Henry, the Coroner released the body to
her.
At the Coroner’s inquest a Mrs. Hannah Barrett testified
that Mr. Holden was her father, was born in England, and was about
59-years-old. “I last saw him
alive thirteen years ago in New York City. He had not lived with my mother for thirteen years,” she
said.
Then the New York widow was called. She testified, “We were married in New
York in 1857, and ten children were born to us. Seven of them are now alive. Mr. Holden deserted me seventeen years ago in New York, and
three months afterward my last child was born. I have been blind for twenty-seven years—since the riot in
New York. Two years after my
husband left he began to write monthly letters to me. Each month he sent me $20 until four years ago, when he
began to send me $25, which he continued until last month.”
At this point an administrator was appointed for Mr. Holden’s estate, which was
estimated to be worth in excess of $10,000.
But . . . can you believe it? It doesn’t end there!
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What Carl Street looks like today as
Burton Place (JWB, 2011) |
Over two years later, The Trib reported on January 10, 1896 that a J. H. Holden, the proprietor of
the Chicago Silver torpedo works, residing at No. 9 Carl Street, the heir to
the inheritance left by his dear old decapitated dad, believed that he was the
victim of a conspiracy formed between Mrs. Holden No. 3 (!), and
one Pat Colbert.
The night before Mr. Colbert’s wife had informed J. H. that
her husband was gunning for him.
While Holden was at the Bell Restaurant at No. 122 West Madison Street,
Colbert entered and headed for the young man. Holden hot-footed it out the rear door and went to the
Central Police Station. Finding no
one there he knew, he returned to the restaurant where Mrs. Bell, the
proprietor, informed him that Colbert had indeed brought a revolver with him
and would have shot Holden except that a customer came between the two of them.
Holden headed out to the DesPlaines Street Station “under
great excitement” where he explained that he had left his wife in tears at the
home of a Mrs. Kenney, who “he claims is a sister of ‘Hinky Dink,’” (That would
be Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna, the 5’ 1” First Ward Alderman who had begun his
career selling newspapers at the age of ten and grew up to control the saloons,
the gamblers, the pimps and the whores of the most notorious ward in the city.)
Can the story that began with a broken-down cable car get
much stranger?
Holden told the police that he had come to Chicago from New
York two years earlier, leaving his mother and sister behind, discovering upon
his arrival in the Windy City that his father had married a third wife.
It was Holden who had sworn out the warrant back in 1894 and had his
father arrested for bigamy.
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| "Hinky Dink" Kenna |
After the cable car accident, the elder Holden’s fortune,
which by 1896 amounted to $80,000, went to the son and the New York wife,
evidently Wife No. 2. Wife No. 3,
according to J. H., had “made many overtures to obtain a portion of the
estate.” When her efforts proved
fruitless, according to the heir of the Holden fortune “she made threats to
obtain a portion of the estate at any rise.”
And that was the end of it. There is not another report in The Chicago Tribune of the family or the inheritance. Just a guess, but I have to think that with his
name plastered all over the paper, Hinky Dink Kenna quickly made the whole
affair “go away.”
At a cost, maybe, of a couple ducats to the First Ward Ball
in consideration of his efforts.
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