|
Pinkerton man William Pinkerton was a friend of Will J.
Davis's partner and fellow theater syndicate
member
Al Hayman. In 1903 what may have previously
been an acquaintanceship between Pinkerton and
Will Davis blossomed into a deep friendship.
They worked together on developing a social club
in Chicago that year, and Pinkerton would remain
a steadfast friend of Davis for the rest of his
life. In the summer of '03 Pinkerton, Hayman and
two other men spent a couple of months touring
Asia. If Will J. Davis hadn't been pushing
through the completion of the Iroquois Theater,
he might have joined them.
The Chicago Riding and Driving Club
social club was located on the north side of
Fifty-first street at #773 between Vincennes and
Forrestville avenues. It was a 123-ft-wide lot
that extended back to Fiftieth court. Today it
is at the corner of Cottage Grove, a parking lot
for a strip mall with a Walgreens, Subway and
Cricket, etc. The original structure had been
built in the early 1880s and had served other
purposes before the Driving Club purchase,
including the Edward B. Smith's roadhouse, then
the Forrestville Club.† Pinkerton's organization
enlarged and remodeled the clubhouse, hiring
John P. Doerr's architectural firm to draw up
the plans for the project. John Doerr's
sixteen-year-old daughter,
Lillian Doerr would be one of the victims of
the Iroquois Theater fire.
On March 19, 1906 the club house was destroyed by
fire that started in the basement, thought to be by
the furnace - for the second time in six months, the
prior fire taking place in October, 1905. The
structure was rebuilt after the 1905 fire, not after
the 1906 fire.
Edward Smith bought it back, out of foreclosure, for
$40,000. The club reappeared in 1916 in a different
location.
"Revive the whipping post. Give each
holdup man caught a hundred lashes and do away with the light punishment now
meted out. The housebreaker should be treated the same as a murderer, for, if
surprised when he is seeking to rob, it's ten to one he will shoot and in as
many instances murder will result."
William A. Pinkerton Dec, 1899
|
|
In the six-degrees-of-separation category
The Doerr family was not the only one to cross paths with Davis relative
to the driving club, then again at the Iroquois
Theater. There was a dispute between Chicago's horse
race tracks that impacted the horse racing community
behind the Driving club. The attorney representing
one of the factions in the conflict was Robert E.
Cantwell. On behalf of his clients, Cantwell caused
the issuance of dozens of warrants a day for various
violations including child labor laws (bookies hired
young boys as runners). On December 30, 1903,
Robert's mother,
Ella Kavanaugh Cantwell, and aunt, Louise Kavanaugh
O'Donnell, were among the Iroquois Theater fatalities.
Between 1900 and 1904, Pinkerton ran four ads in Chicago
newspaper classifieds, offering a reward of $20 for finding his dog. The breeds
were a collie, Boston terrier, fox terrier and cocker spaniel. William and/or
his wife also bred and showed field spaniels and Yorkshire terriers, in March
1890, winning third-place with Gypsy in a Chicago show. We owned a Field Spaniel once. Sweetest, most joyful dog we ever had.
In 1914 when Davis retired from theater management, the occasion was marked by his
attendance at Queen of the Movies at the Illinois Theater. William A.
Pinkerton joined Davis in a box seat for the performance, along with
Benjamin Marshall, the architect of the Illinois and Iroquois theaters.
|
|
Discrepancies and addendum
* In October 1889 Pinkerton bet $100 that
telegrapher David Hyland could eat more lobsters
than lawyer Dr. Benson. Attorney Alfred S. Trude (one
of Davis's defense attorneys) put his money on
Benson. I found nothing more about the contest. At
death, Pinkerton left behind an estate estimated at
$1.2 million ($18 million today).
† The Driving club purchased the property in July
1903 for $40,000 and remodeled and enlarged the
structure to include a bowling alley, billiard rooms
and a library. The goal was to attract 1,000
members, and they had 75% before incorporation. That
winter, the club donated a trophy for a
harness-horse ice-racing program at Washington Park
to be held on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. On
March 19, 1906, a furnace fire destroyed the
clubhouse for the second time in six months. In 1908
Edward Smith bought back the property out of
foreclosure for $40,000. Scattered references to the
Driving club and its namesakes reappeared once each
in 1916, 1917, 1926 and 1934.
|
