|
Ghoul!
1904 newspapers around the country reported that a
nineteen-year-old bookbindery employee, Frank Uhler,* had been
arrested and confessed to stealing a 4-1/2 carat
diamond ring valued at $800 ($20k adjusted for
inflation) from the hand of an Iroquois Theater fire
corpse in a wagon.
And a brothel patron!
The story was replete with details. The victim was an elderly
male, and the wagon waited outside Jordan's Funeral
Home. Two weeks after the fire, on January 19, 1904,
Uhler reportedly tried and failed to sell the ring
at a river area brothel (called a "levee resort").
The prostitute to whom the ring was offered was
suspicious about the low price and reported it to
the police. Uhler meanwhile had the stone reset and
gave the ring to his sister, Annie Uhler.
He confessed!
He was arrested by police detective John Biddinger taken to the
Harrison street station, where he reportedly
confessed. The ring was then retrieved from his
sister and turned over to city custodian Dewitt
Cregier (the fellow who inventoried Iroquois
Theater victim possessions found at the theater and
morgues ). At Uhler's arraignment before circuit
court judge John K. Prindiville two days later,
Uhler denied having made a confession, and since a
prosecutor failed to appear, Prindiville dismissed
the case.
Well, not so much
Didn't happen.
Worst Uhler was guilty of was trying to open a slot
machine. No dead bodies, no ring, no brothel, no
confession. Of course, when it was later reported
that Frank was not a ghoul, after all, the story
only appeared in Chicago papers, though the Chicago
Trib did give it a front-page position.
Newsboy had the ring
As it turned out, a newsboy named James Boyle found the ring on
the sidewalk in front of Jordan's funeral home. He
went inside and reported his discovery to a
manager.
|
|
The manager took Boyle's name, did not take
possession of the ring, and reported it to the
police. They went to Boyle's house, retrieved
the ring, and it was returned to the victim's
family. No arrests were made.
Playing the slots
Back to Frank Uhler.
The night of the Iroquois Theater fire, he was arrested at the corner
of Wabash and 15th by Biddinger and another police
detective when they saw him trying to open a "slot
machine."† The following morning, the case was
dismissed in Prindeville's court because a
prosecutor didn't appear.
Reporters put the newsboy's discovery of a ring
together with Uhler's arrest and acquittal, then
added a brothel, an honest prostitute, a reset ring,
and a gift to a sister to produce a juicy ghoul
story.
It seems possible the brothel, ring resetting, and
gift to a sister were not made up whole cloth and
had some grains of truth, with either the newsboy or
Uhler, but the details are probably forever lost. It
sounds like the kind of story that would have caused
some laughter at the police station and courthouse,
but I am betting Uhler, and his family weren't
chuckling.
After his fifteen minutes of notoriety
Frank J. Uhlir (1884-) was one of six children born to Chicago
saloon-keeper Jacob Uhlir and Katrina Uhlir, both of
whom died in 1903. Katrina died in March, cause of
death unknown; Jacob died in September of an
accidental kitchen range gas leak. The family,
including the parents and four of the children, had
emigrated from Pisek, Austria, in 1883; the last two
kids, including Frank, were born in the United
States. By 1900 the children were grown and worked
in a variety of trades, including a machinist,
butcher, tailor, and painter.
There were several men named Frank Uhler / Uhlir in
Chicago then. If I have the right man, in 1913, he
married a woman named Bessie Blazek. By the 1930s,
they owned their home in the village of Stickney,
Illinois, and he worked as a salesman for a bread
company. No evidence that they had children.
|
|
Discrepancies and addendum
* Spelled Uhler in 1904 newspapers and in the 1900 U.S. Census, but I
think the family spelled it as Uhlir. The name was
also spelled Euler sometimes. In 1896 a J. Uhlice
got a building permit for a structure at 824 W. 19th
St., the same address as Jacob Uhlir's at death.
Uhlice - Uhlir. Possibly the same fellow, living in
a two-story flat with a store on the ground floor -
probably for a saloon.
† The newspaper report was not specific about the
type of machine with which Uhler was accused of
tampering. In 1903 any device requiring the
insertion of a coin into a slot was sometimes
referred to as a "slot machine," including machines
that in modern times are called "coin-ops" or
"vending machines," for dispensing gum, candy, and
cigars, as well as pay telephones, jukeboxes,
one-arm bandits, etc.
That Chicago law enforcement was keeping an eye on
such machines was demonstrated in January of '03
when the city brought indictments against one
hundred thirty-five saloons and cigar store owners.
(Interestingly, one of those was a
saloon operator named Louis Witz, who turns up in
another of the ghoul stories.) To circumvent
anti-gambling laws, nickel machines were labeled as
paying out a cigar for every nickel inserted. That
let gambling machines pretend to be cigar dispensers
that gave out random cash prizes. Users had little
interest in the low-quality penny cigars.
|
