Labor problems and tannery is sold

With their three children, Charles and his wife, Ella French Allen (1850 – 1927), descended from pioneering families in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Their children were Charles jr, Robert and Gertrude.

Family business

With his younger brother, Nathan R. Allen jr. (1855 – 1924), Charles Allen was the wealthy co-owner of a large family-owned tannery. The N. R. Allen Sons tannery had been co-founded in 1856 by their father, Nathan R. Allen, and a group of other Kenosha men. Nathan sr had located in Wisconsin in 1835, coming there from the Fulton, NY area. Charles was brought into the company in 1870 and Nathan jr in 1878. It was sometimes described as the largest independent tannery in the world. It originally focused on harness leather but by 1910 was known for glove leather. When the Allen family sold off their majority holdings in 1906 for $7.5 million it became one of 101 plants in the Central Leather trust, employing 1,200 workers.

Nathan sr and Mary Hale Allen had nine children. Of their first six, five were sons. Of those, three died in infancy, including Nathan's first namesake. Two of their four daughters died before their fortieth birthdays.

At her death in 1912, ninety-two years old and widowed for nearly two decades, Mary Allen was survived by only three of her children but she thought there were four.

She died thinking that her oldest boy Charles still lived and was unaware that her youngest boy, Nathan, her late husband's namesake, who in 1906 had been a trustee at Northwestern University and had in 1907 given $12,000 to Kemper Hall, a Kenosha college, had for two years brought attention, ridicule and shame to the family name with headlines in hundreds of newspapers throughout the country.

Enough of this gig

In 1909, while Charles negotiated with labor unions and strikers protested outside, three workers were shot. For a time the Wisconsin state militia was ready to head for Kenosha. To Charles the strike may have felt like a slap. Eight years earlier, before selling to the trust, he had voluntarily increased wages across the board at the plant by 8-10%, making it one of the highest paying tanneries in the industry. In 1909, however, he no longer had the unilateral authority to grant similar wage increases. Perhaps frustration over the uneven ratio of responsibility to authority contributed to his decision the following year to retire from the tannery business.

Smuggling incident #1

Retirement didn't bring much calm for Charles. In June 1910 his wife, daughter Gertrude, and two friends were returning from a five-week European tour when they were arrested by New York customs for failing to declare $3,000 - $5,000 in jewelry and apparel when they disembarked from the Lusitania. Ella first claimed they had nothing dutiable, then amended her declaration to $160. Customs officials began opening their nine trunks and found newly purchased gowns. The women were given another opportunity to declare their purchases, but when they stuck to the $160 story, female inspectors were called in for a more thorough search. On Ella was found a $2,000 pearl necklace and a $350 broach. On the other three were found six pieces of jewelry valued at $1,000.

Six degrees of separation

One of Ella's travel companions, who was also detained, was Carrie Briggs Creiger, wife of Dewitt Creiger jr. A city official and son of a former Chicago mayor, DeWitt had been appointed to sort and inventory belongings of Iroquois Theater victims. He would also be the last friend to see Charles Allen alive. (In his 1918 obituary, it was said Dewitt was related to the Allen family by marriage, but I failed to find the connection.) Months before his death, he was traveling in Munich with Robert W. Allen, youngest son of Charles and Ella, when WWI broke out. The men were taken prisoner for one day then released to return to America. Charles operated the Allen-A Knitting Mills hosiery business in Kenosha until 1938, then retired to a secluded life on a 3,000-acre estate in Michigan south of Charlevoix. He married a woman named Augustine while in France. At his death in 1949, his estate was valued at $3.8 million.)

Ella pled guilty to smuggling to judge Holt and paid a $100 fine ($2,700 today) plus the value of the jewelry in its country of origin and fifty percent duty.

In Ella's defense, her attorney said that since it was her first transatlantic voyage without a man, she did not know how to report items brought into the U.S.

Caught in a web

A report on jewelry smugglers apprehended during a six-week period in the autumn of 1909 in the NYC harbor revealed that over half were women. Ella and her friends were caught up in a no-fish-too-small campaign on the part of a new port collector - William Loeb jr. (1866 – 1937). He got the job because he'd been Teddy Roosevelt's dedicated secretary, but after less than a year of his excessive zeal at Customs, President Taft and others began urging Loeb to run for governor of New York or retire.

So many small fish were clogging their calendars that at least one judge who heard smuggling cases in New York during the Loeb years felt compelled in a ruling to make a point of distinguishing between amateur and professional smugglers:

"I will state again my view of what has come to be known as the anti-smuggling crusade in this city particularly. To my mind, there is a very great distinction between those foolish persons, largely women, and equally foolish men, who, when coming into this country as passengers, bring upon their persons or concealed in their luggage some articles of adornment for personal wear, and smuggling merchants. Of course, that is against the law, and therefore it is wrong, but I think that is a very different thing from a long-continued course of smuggling for profit; smuggling which is a part of the mercantile transaction in which it occurs, for that goes to the root of all honest business," said Judge Charles Merrill Hough (1858 – 1927)† when passing sentence on Allen Nathan.

Nathan played with fire

The Allen family was not done with smuggling problems.

In 1911, two years after Ella Allen stepped off the Lusitania,

fifty-three-year-old Nathan Allen, brother of Iroquois survivor Charles Allen, husband of Canadian native Ellen Jebb Allen (1871 – 1947), and a father of three children aged nine to sixteen, was accused of smuggling $150,000 in jewels, clothing, and artwork. The last leg in a costly trip to Europe, the crime came to the attention of Customs when his former mistress, a gold digger half his age, provided details to authorities as retaliation for his having withdrawn his affection and financial support.

Titillation for all

It was a made-for-media situation with juicy aspects for every predilection. Smuggling, infidelity, men besotted, a pretty young adventuress, a wealthy man brought low, talk of an international smuggling ring, investment bankers, bank boxes, jewels, a mysterious, tragic death, luxurious lifestyles, mansions, courtrooms, avaricious investigators, and conniving detectives. Crammed into a film, the number of things going on might make it seem comical. As would be revealed over many months of newspaper investigations (in a time when fact-checking was time consuming and data was still in ledgers and on index cards), Nathan's infatuation with twenty-year-old divorcee Helen Fuld Dwelle (alias Helen D. Jenkins and Helen Field) resulted in his spending roughly a half-million dollars on gifts and her support over an eighteen-month period. The gifts included a large home with costly furnishings, a limousine, lingerie, pedigreed dogs, bronzes, and a $20,000 wine cellar (a half-million dollars worth of corks today). The support included multiple servants and a lavish lifestyle of champagne breakfasts — all in addition to Helen Dwelle's real passion — jewelry.

Who were Helen's parents?

Between Helen's distortions and a story so journalistically hot that it seems newspapers competed over column inches devoted to it, reporters were motivated to interject information with little to no verification. Add typographical errors and what you have is a mishmash that makes fact-finding a fool's errand. As the Fool responsible for this web page, I thus warn you that almost everything said here about Helen Fuld's Dwelle's childhood must be qualified as speculative. I've tried to note when I can't verify something with genealogical information or where what I found is squishy.

Though often described as a native of New Orleans and a southern belle, Helen was also described as a child from the east side of New York. It's not surprising then that some genealogy researchers - including me for a time - mistakenly connect her to NY dry goods merchant Seligman Fuld and his wife, Laura Henry. The confusion is easy because Seligman had daughters named Helen and Flora, and his Flora married a man named Sam Levy, as did Helen's sister. The Seligman Fulds, however, were straight-up folks who might have shunned a daughter for behaving as did the Helen Fuld of this story, rather than continuing to include her in family gatherings as did Seligman's family with their Helena. Additionally, Seligman Fuld did not have a daughter named Martha or Pauline, and their daughter Flora was never referred to as Flueretta or Florence.

Finally, after about forty hours of reading many dozens of newspaper stories over six years, 1906 – 1912, I came across a story in the June 30, 1911 issue of the Leader-Telegram newspaper in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, that gave clues to help me track down THIS Helen's origins.

Her parents, German immigrants, Solomon Fuld (1833 – 1875) and Fannie (probably Francis) Adler Fuld (1845 – 1906), met and married in Munich before emigrating to America, said Helen. Her father was a teacher of languages in New Orleans. (Thus far, I've found nothing to corroborate that claim.) Her mother's maiden name was Adler (not Adams as was reported in a few newspapers and given as the maiden name of one of her daughters at the time of death). Fannie Adler Fuld's father was Alexander Adler, a dentist to the "old Duke of Saxony," so said Helen. According to genealogy records, before settling in the south in the 1870s, the family lived in Baltimore, where Solomon worked as a photographer.

Helen had five sisters. One, Jenny Fuld Mayers, was the wife of a prominent businessman and politician in New Orleans — who probably kept as far away from Helen Fuld Dwelle as possible during the scandals. Nothing is known about another of the sisters, Pauline. The girls' mother, Fannie, lived with Jenny's family in 1900. Three of Helen's sisters played a role in her scandals:

• Flurette Florence L. Turnell (c1873 – 1950) was the wife of Charles A. Turnell, an attorney for the Chicago & Northwestern Railway. In a 1910 newspaper interview Charles Turnell emphatically expressed his/their estrangement from Helen, stating they hoped to never see her again. Florence told a newspaper reporter that Helen's tale of Florence having been present when she first met Nathan Allen was totally untrue. Florence traveled to Europe at the same time as Helen and may have been the sister who accompanied Helen's party on the shopping spree there. Florence and Turnell separated briefly in 1910, and they cited the Helen scandal as the cause. The marriage ended in divorce sometime after 1920. When marrying Turnell, Florence gave her maiden name as Adams, and one newspaper reporter quoted Charles as having said that Adams was Helen's actual maiden name. Adler: Adams. No cigar but close. After Florence's divorce from Turnell, she married a man named Weston, giving her mother's last name as Adler and her father's as Fuld. Maybe Florence was married to a man named Adams before marrying Turnell? Or maybe Fannie remarried a man named Adams after Solomon Fuld's death? It was common then for offspring to unofficially adopt the last name of a stepfather.
• Anna Fuld Mitchell Levy, wife of Samuel M. Levy, seemingly Helen's closest relative. Anna / Annie and Sam were on hand to attend Helen's wedding to Adolph Davis, though it didn't come off. Helen claimed to have sold the mortgage on the Bell house in NYC to them.
• Martha Fuld testified before the federal grand jury that she was along on the trip with Helen when Nathan took them to visit and touch the Tiffany pearl necklace. Helen later claimed to support two of Martha's children but refused to name them. I found no evidence that Martha married, but that doesn't mean she didn't have children. Given Helen's propensity to play fast and loose with the truth, she could have had a half dozen children.

Helen asserted that her mother died of a broken heart in December 1906 and, according to Helen, it was Helen's fault. More on that later.

Lee Allen Dwelle was a short-term victim.

Sometimes Helen's story was that she'd run away from home to follow an unidentified jockey on the racing circuit, but I've not found any elaboration on her jockey years. Not for lack of trying. A surprisingly complete background story makes no mention of a jockey. She reported that while she and her mother were traveling, she met a handsome young man with whom she slipped off to marry in Windsor, Canada, ten days later. Helen said it was in October 1901, but her husband said it was in 1898, and he is more apt to be correct. Aside from habitual carelessness with facts, during the burglary/smuggling controversy, Helen wanted to be perceived as a young innocent.

In Helen's words, "He was 26, handsome, and a graduate of West Point. His father was the owner of a big line of lake steamers that piled between Sandusky, O, and Detroit."  Not so much. Lee Allen Dwelle (1872 – 1942) was twenty-nine and a graduate of the Peekskill Military Academy in New York, not West Point. The shipping concern of his father, Benjamin Franklin Dwelle (1818 – 1903), consisted of fishing boats, a ship chandlery, and a tugboat named The Erie. (Benjamin was also a co-owner of the land upon which would someday be built the Cedar Point Amusement Park but he died and the property was sold long before the appearance of roller coasters or corn dogs.)

Rather than following in his father's footsteps, Lee chose instead to become a passenger and freight agent, first for the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis railway, then for the Louisville & Nashville railway, a job that required travel four to five days a week. His child bride was left at home with relatives, sometimes by herself. They lived with Lee's parents in Sandusky, other relatives in Detroit, and in Chicago in January 1902 at 4622 Indiana Ave. One day Lee came home to find Helen gone. She said his mother didn't like her. (That's the only statement of Helen's I can believe with a fair degree of certainty.) After her first desertion, Helen returned to live with Lee in Chicago until April 1902 for a short while at 55 University Place. He left her after twice returning home from the road to find her living elsewhere. He gave her money to return to her mother's home in New Orleans.

Lee was granted a divorce from Helena Dwelle on November 26, 1902, after presenting evidence to judge John Gibbons in Chicago that his bride of two years had improper relations on four specific dates with two men: Frank Arms and Henry F. Bennett.

Olive Gallie and Margery Littlejohn at the Potomac apartments house testified, saying that Gallie rented a suit to Helen, who identified herself as "Mrs. Frank Dwelle." Gallie later learned it was Frank Arms. Littlejohn, a hotel maid, said Helen introduced Arms to her as her husband. Littlejohn served breakfast to the pair every day for a month. (If so, Dwelle's description that he was traveling for his job 4-5 days a week is suspect. Did he leave Helen without means for sustenance? Was her infidelity actually a means of survival?) To Lee's divorce suit, Helen filed what was described as a "general denial" through her attorney's, Fry & Hyde, but she did not appear in court to defend herself.

Helen lived with Frank Arms for two months after the divorce from Lee Dwelle, then returned to Memphis and John Collins. One reporter who interviewed Helen later described Lee as "plodding," probably an apt description of her opinion of her first husband. A year after their divorce, Lee filed for bankruptcy. No way of knowing if Helen contributed to his financial problems, but it seems possible. Most men who came into Helen's life left it with emptier pockets. (There were two men named Frank Arms living in Chicago in 1902. One of them was a skilled billiards player. No clue if that was Helen's Frank.)

First sugar daddy, John R. Collins

The most low-profile participant in this story, John R. Collins (1858 – 1954), was described by Helen Fuld Dwelle as a lifelong friend of her family, an intimate friend of her late father, Solomon Fuld. (I failed to find corroboration of this in newspapers.) So trusted was he by her mother and sisters, Helen claimed, that they let him adopt her as a ward when she was a freshly-divorced fifteen-year-old. Reportedly Collins sent Helen to St. Agnes Academy in Memphis to study music for nearly two years. In Helen-speak, that probably meant closer to one year. Helen never saw a lily she could refrain from gilding. While attending St. Agnes, she reportedly boarded with a prominent unidentified family on upper Beal St.

After St. Agnes, from about 1904 &nash; 1906, Helen and Collins traveled around the United States. In a 1910 interview, she made a point of saying they'd had separate hotel rooms, perhaps forgetting that during 1906 trial testimony, she'd admitted she had lived with Collins as man and wife during that period.

What is known about John Collins?

Collins was the oldest of ten children born to James F. Collins (1826 – 1891) and Mary B. Metcalf Collins (1833 – 1907), of which only four survived as of 1900. His father had been a farmer in Hartford, Kentucky, where John and most of his siblings grew up.

John Collins began his career at Render, KY coal mines, later transferring to Central Coal and Iron in Central City, KY. By 1893, he was in charge of the Memphis office, and in 1897 he founded Southern Coal. At his death, Southern Coal had ten offices from Chicago to New Orleans as well as two mines in Delmar, Alabama, with homes in Chicago and Memphis.

Collins had two daughters the same age as Helen — Annabel and Catherine, born in 1885 and 1887. They were the daughters of him and his late wife, Catherine Hardwick (1859 – 1890), who died unexpectedly of tuberculosis. Aged three and five at the time of their mother's death, the girls afterward lived with John's mother in Hartford, KY, Mary Metcalf Collins, while John worked in Memphis and visited when he could. When Helen Dwelle spoke in 1910 of John's family turning against her, she may have referred to Annabel and Catherine.

A year before Collins hooked up with Nathan and Helen, he was selling acreage in Hartland, KY, possibly to raise money for Southern Coal. In the never-to-be-known category is the question of whether John Collins' involvement with Helen Fuld Dwelle and Nathan Allen was founded primarily on lust for Helen or on Nathan's fortune. (At the moment, I favor Nathan's fortune but gimmie a while to think on it, and I may change my mind.)

Greener pastures

Helen left Collins in 1906 for Adolph Davis (see panel below) just as she'd left Dwelle in 1902 for Collins and would leave Collins again in 1909 for Nathan Allen, all three times trading up to a man who could give more and better presents.

After the Davis engagement fiasco in 1906, Helen came back to live with Collins in Memphis rather than returning to New Orleans to live with her mother, who reportedly pled with her to do so. Helen later said she rebuffed Fannie's entreaties out of embarrassment at having brought shame to the family name in 1906.

Helen said she blamed herself for having killed her mother, recalling a dramatic story. Helen said she called her mother on December 23, 1907 (wrong year — Fanny died in 1906), and they were having a

pleasant telephone conversation when her mother dropped the receiver, too tired to continue talking. According to Helen, Fannie laid down to rest and died in a half hour. Emotional response was commonly accepted as a cause of death in the early 1900s, with grief, shame, heartbreak, anger, and fear among the oft-named murderers.

Red velvet swing

With Collins funding probable, Helen purchased a cottage at 180 East St. in Memphis and named it "Cozy Cottage" Reportedly she spent $20,000 having mirrors installed on floors, walls, and ceilings, along with a red velvet swing.

It sounds so suspiciously like antics attributed to actress Evelyn Nesbitthat I'm left wondering if Helen was a Nesbit wannabe or if enterprising journalists goosed the stories. It is interesting to note that in 1913 when many of Helen's household furnishings were sold at auction to settle debts, Evelyn Nesbit was one of the largest bidders.)

Helen's preference for wearing an abundance of jewels, labeled vulgar by some acquaintances, earned her the nickname "Queen of Diamonds." She refrained from making an indignant objection when one reporter repeated the characterization of her as an adventuress, so perhaps Helen enjoyed that image.

The name Jenkins was altogether fictional, derived from a character in a novel read by John Collins. Reportedly he applied it to Helen playfully, then she, he, and Nathan later adopted it whenever an alias was needed. An inside joke amongst the trio.

Once again, Collins introduced her to a new beau.

Collins needed capital for Southern Coal, his retail/wholesale coal business in Memphis on Madison St. His banker introduced him to Nathan Allen, who was flush with cash from the sale of the tannery. To Nathan Allen, Helen was introduced as John's sister. For the role they had in mind for him - that of a financier for Helen's rich lifestyle and John's coal mine — it would not do for John to be seen as a rival for Helen's affections. According to some reports, John and Helen showed Nathan a grand time in Memphis when he visited there to discuss investing in Collins' coal dealership. Helen admitted she'd felt obligated to Collins for his kindness to her in the early days of their relationship (c.1902 – 1905, St. Agnes Academy, etc.), so urged Nathan to invest heavily in Southern Coal. Nathan fell hard for the girl and apparently recognized that money and presents were the way to Helen's heart. According to Helen, he slid $300 in her handbag one night at dinner then every day thereafter.

After two weeks of Nathan's generous wooing, Helen told him she was soon leaving for New York to begin studying to become a nurse. Nathan insisted he would come to New York and help. At the Hotel Astor in NY, she later claimed to have been shocked that he booked only one room. Per Helen, he then showered her with so many diamonds and jewels that she agreed to give up the idea of nurses training and instead became his mistress in Chicago.

Helen's later recollection was that their romance began when Nathan was irresistibly drawn to her beauty and showered her in orchids.

House on Sheridan Road in Chicago

In Chicago, she went by Helen Dwelle Field, letting people assume she was related to the Marshall Field family. Her maiden name, Fuld, was sometimes Americanized to Field, but I've not found evidence of a familial relationship between Helen and Marshall Field. She stayed at the Stratford Hotel, where she was visited weekly by a man introduced as Mr. Jenkins, who could have been Collins or Nathan. Whoever it was, the hotel staff preferred Helen's tips to those from Mr. Jenkins.

In December 1908, Nathan bought a three-story red sandstone house at 6330 Sheridan Rd. for Helen, as well as a $14,000 automobile and a hired French chauffeur to go with the car. Some reports said the house cost $35k, others $50k (about $1 million today) with $22,000 to $25,000 additional for furnishings ($600k today). Two years later, in August 1910, Helen sold the house to Nancy E. De Spain for $23,000 plus the assumption of a $15,000 mortgage.

Excessive accessorizing with jewelry and expensive gowns continued to be Helen Dwelle's calling card. John Collins frequently stayed with her in the house on Sheridan Rd. and Nathan visited weekly. Helen would later claim to have had ten of them then, including two Japanese males, a French chef, and a French maid. They later recalled smiling and giggling behind Nathan's back when he exchanged pleasantries with Helen's dear brother John.

Shopping spree in Europe

On April 21, 1909, a party of six to eight boarded the

Kronprinzessin Cecilie headed for Europe. For the next two months, Nathan Allen, Helen Dwelle, John Collins, and four servants — a maid, cook, butler, and chauffeur — traveled through France and Switzerland. One of Helen's sisters, possibly Florence Turnell, was along on the trip until early May 1909. Much of their travel was in a limousine, stopping at hotels and celebrated restaurants, purchasing baubles, gowns, animals, and household décor as they went. There must have been a second car for some of the servants and luggage; too many people and belongings to fit in a single automobile. While most newspaper reports described John Collins as traveling with Nathan and Helen, a few said he traveled separately but met up with them regularly.

As their tour neared an end, Nathan and Collins are said to have devised the smuggling scheme, with Nathan taking the lead. Other reports attributed the strategy to Nathan's investment banker, Jules Bache. Either way, it doesn't jive with the image Helen presented elsewhere of Nathan as an old family man in a worn blue suit. Was he anxious to impress his new friends? Was Helen's description of Nathan's appearance inaccurate? Was he caught up in the giddiness of discovering a new side of himself?

A $10,000 pearl was said to have been concealed on Nathan's person when they landed on June 25, 1909, and he told deputy surveyor Joseph Sulzbach they had nothing dutiable. Nathan would testify in October 1911 that he paid $50-60 to each of three customs inspectors for winking when he brought $10,000 of jewelry and apparel into the U.S. without paying duty, telling them he would be staying at the Hotel Wolcott (other newspapers said it was the Breslin Hotel, in rooms 621-2). That evening one of the customs officials showed up to collect the bribe. (Other newspapers told a less likely story that four to five customs agents came to call on Nathan that night, not only to collect their bribe but to exchange the actual smuggled goods). Nathan later confessed to having smuggled $64,000 in all, including a $1,700 diamond pin, the Tiffany necklace (purchased at Tiffany's in London, not at Tiffany's in Paris and for $33,000, not $100,000 as published in newspapers and claimed by Helen), along with two pearl earrings for $5,000 each, two unset pearls for $9,000, a necklace for $3,500, as well as $6,800 worth of watches, sapphires, laces, and clothing.

Later that year, in October 1909, Nathan made a second trip to Europe, this time with his wife and children. Reportedly, during the second trip, the Tiffany necklace was returned, and a second more costly necklace was purchased and claimed upon reentry.

One newspaper later suggested, possibly after priming by Charles and/or his attorney, that the reason Charles's wife, Ella Allen, had been arrested in 1910 was because Customs was already on the alert and looking for Nathan, but that seems unlikely. If that were so and customs was so keen to catch him, how did they then miss Nathan when he disembarked from the Lusitania with a party of seven people, fourteen trunks and pet cages? Not exactly slipping quietly into the port. Bringing to mind another tale, told by customs special agent Richard Parr, that customs head William Loeb was coincidentally on the pier when the Allen group came through.

Things get crazy

Charles in charge

Nathan's absences and changes in behavior had, of course, not gone unnoticed by his wife, children, and siblings. His brother, Charles Allen, saw large bank drafts, presumably from joint business accounts, and knew something was seriously amiss. Confronted, Nathan had no choice but to fess up to Charles and his family. Nathan was reluctant, however, to believe that his sweetheart Helen Dwell and financial bud John Collins were only interested in his fortune. Nothing was said about Nathan's state of mind at having his bubble popped, but I think he must have been wounded and embarrassed. I'm also thinking, though, that Charles, and maybe Nathan as well, feared Nathan would return to Helen in a heartbeat if she crooked her finger. Belief in a woman's witch-like capacity to mesmerize was popular in the early 1900s. Nathan seems to have relied on his older brother Charles to learn the truth about Helen and then to help extract him from the relationship.

The age difference between Charles and Nathan is important due to what took place during the nine years before Nathan was born. Charles was six to seven years old when the first Nathan Allen jr. was born and died. For sure, Charles knew too about another dead brother, William, who had died in infancy before Charles was born. Charles was eight when the third Allen boy, Henry, died at birth or soon thereafter. That's three dead sons in ten years. By the time Nathan Allen jr #2 came along, everyone in the family, including nine-year-old Charles, would have felt ultra-protective of Dad's new namesake. As the oldest son, taking care of little brother Nathan was as much part of Charles's responsibility as was taking leadership of the family's tannery business when he became an adult and assuming control of it when their father died. When the tannery was sold, it was Charles who stayed on and remained responsible for daily operations. Though the tannery wasn't Charles's only business activity, after retirement, he had time on his hands. Fixing problems and taking care of the family was his job, and I suspect he took hold of Nathan's problems with verve.

Charles's first step as Nathan's fixer was to hire a detective agency to learn more about Helen and John Collins. The next step was to hire an attorney, W. S. Forest of Chicago. Then came emptying the joint bank deposit box shared by Nathan and Helen. Lastly, and maybe the most important step of them all, was to move Nathan beyond the reach of Helen. Nathan and his family were first furloughed to a family vacation home in Montana and, in October 1909, sent to Europe.

We've got this

In the fall of 1909, Charles and Nathan probably assumed they would be able to retrieve some portion of the monies Nathan had spent on Helen. Charles liquidated the contents of a joint bank safety deposit box at the Illinois Trust bank in Chicago that Nathan had set up for Jenkins. The box contained an oil painting they'd purchased at Knoedler's in Paris by Adolf Shreyer,‡ The Cavaliers (shown above), a pair of pearl earrings, a pearl and diamond necklace, 162 shares of stock in John Collins coal company, Southern Coal, that Helen appraised at $500 each, totaling $81,000 ($2.1 million today), and promissory notes totaling $45,000 ($1.3 million today) that John had issued to Nathan as surety on Nathan's investment in the coal mine and that Helen claimed Nathan had given her. Nathan's attorneys would later report that Helen owned only one of the Southern Coal shares, purchased for $500.

Romance ends

Around September 1909, the Helen-Nathan-John trio became estranged, probably due to Charles's intervention. Helen left Chicago and the house on Sheridan Road and moved to NYC. (She sold the house a year later.)

On July 1, 1909, she took occupancy of apartment #203 on the eighth floor at the Hotel Lorraine in New York City, a suite consisting of a drawing-room, bedroom, bathroom, and private hall. It was a small hotel just two years old at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 45th street, about a block north of Delmonico's restaurant, accommodating about twenty apartments. Surely she did not still employ three servants in such a small space. She began calling herself Mrs. John W. Jenkins. Her removal to NY and adoption of Collins's first name as a husband point to her relationship with Nathan coming to an end and resumption of her intimate relationship with John Collins. Collins, however, soon became as unwilling as Nathan Allen to pick up her tab and was seen in the company of the private detectives representing Nathan.

Had Charles put an end to an investment in Collin's coal mine or threatened to do so? Did Collins finally realize he wasn't the love of Helen's life, just the longest-running chump? Perhaps while watching Helen operate on Nathan's wallet as she sashayed through Europe, John recognized that he and Nathan were wearing exchangeable shoes.

Enter Mary Russell

A mutual friend, William S. Foultz (1851 – 1912)§, of New Castle, PA, introduced Helen to a Yonkers lady, Mary L. Smith Russell (1866 – 1934). Around the time of their twentieth wedding anniversary, Mary and her husband, William A. Russell (1863 – 1930),** had had an argument, and Mary went to stay at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel until William apologized. Helen offered a sympathetic ear and persuaded Mary to move in with her at the Lorraine hotel where the rooms, said Helen, were larger and better appointed. For a month, the new BFFs enjoyed companionable trips to the opera, sumptuous dining, and automobile excursions. It is interesting to note that Helen was not so trusting of Mary as, to tell the truth about her relationship with Nathan, instead of telling Mary that Nathan was her wealthy husband who was traveling in Europe. Mary helped Helen with her correspondence, including letters to two children in Chicago (that Helen would later claim were nieces, daughters of her sister Martha) and several to Nathan Allen's bankers to plead for money. Charles and the attorneys were doing a good job of preventing Helen from having the opportunity to lure Nathan.

Eighteen months later, Helen detailed her first meeting with Mary. She said that Foultz invited her to join him and a friend, Mary, for lunch and a drive.  When Mary became chilly they stopped at Helen's apartment to get a wrap for Mary. Foultz remained in the car while Helen and Mary went inside (of course, else Foultz might have been an inconvenient witness to contradict Helen's story). Mary began crying about her marital problems and lack of money, so Helen invited her to move in. During the subsequent month, Mary's children sometimes visited. Helen invited them to stay for dinner and purchased a couple of gowns for the girls. The children said their father was far too angry to reconcile with Mary.

Jenkins heist

$125,000 in jewelry

The friendship between Helen Jenkins and Mary Russell crumpled under the weight of a robbery investigation. On Saturday, December 11, 1909, Helen went out for the afternoon and did not return until 5:00 pm. Mary did not join Helen on her outing but did leave the apartment twice during the afternoon. Upon Helen's return, as guests arrived for tea, Helen found her dresser drawers in disarray and realized the leather case containing her jewelry was missing. Helen claimed to have then called the hotel manager and asked him to contact the police. When he refused, she called Pinkertons and told her guests of the robbery. Some of them called their friend, an assistant district attorney, and he called the police department. When quizzed, Helen estimated the value of the collection at $300,000, making it one of the largest jewelry thefts in NYC over the past many years. Her apartment soon filled with detectives,†† including lieutenants Braun/Braum, Hyams, captain McClusky and inspector McCafferty from NYPD, as well as Pinkerton detective George S. Dougherty (1865 – 1931).

According to Helen, Dougherty shared his opinion with her that her friends had stolen her jewels. Several years after the robbery, Dougherty became convinced that Helen's jewels were stolen by a hotel thief named Rogers, but nothing more was said about that theory.

After learning what Mary told investigators, Helen chose to interpret Dougherty's assessment as an indictment of Mary Russell. Inspector McCafferty had a different take on things, however. Though investigating officers and Lorraine hotel personnel were instructed not to discuss the case, McCafferty eventually told the press that a "thorough and rigid" investigation was continuing but not into a robbery and that the value of the jewelry was
less than half the sum reported. It took about 20 seconds for the press to read between the lines and report that the burglary was suspect. Over the next few days, more newspapers covered the story of a faked burglary than had covered the story of a supposed actual one.

History shines brightly on Dougherty's career, but in the case of Helen's jewels, the legendary Pinkerton detective may have been another male taken in by Helen's beauty and charm. NYPD conducted a lengthy interrogation of Mary Russell, a forty-three-year-old woman described as pretty but plump. Armed with ample examples of Helen's financial problems, Mary gave her opinion that Helen was broke and had pawned the jewelry, including one instance in which Helen had asked Mary to pawn a piece of her jewelry, then inserted the pawn ticket in a letter to Nathan's bankers to strengthen her case that she needed money. Mary also later told police that she had seen Sutherland at the Lorraine Hotel on more than one occasion in the weeks just prior to the burglary. NYPD concluded the absence of forced entry was not an indication that Mary had left the door open when she left the apartment that afternoon but evidence that a theft had not taken place. They noted too that Helen had removed her jewelry from the hotel safe and had for several months chosen to instead keep them in her room, that she had not called the police to report the crime when the hotel manager refused to do so, and that she refused to supply a list to the police of acquaintances who had visited and had access to the jewelry. She hired an attorney in New York, Robert C. Morris, and later reported that John Collins and Pinkerton detective Dougherty were annoyed by her doing so.

My guess is that Helen reported the pawn as a theft out of vanity to explain why the Queen of Diamonds was suddenly so distressingly bare of jewels. Disinterest from the police subsequent to Mary's interrogation, with perhaps an indiscrete word from Dougherty to Helen about the gist of Mary's remarks to the police, led to Helen implying to newspaper reporters in January 1910 that the thief was a society woman from Yonkers. That veiled accusation fooled none of the parties involved and led to a newspaper interview with Mary and William Russell, by then reconciled. The result was that details about Helen's financial woes were exposed that might otherwise have remained hidden in police notes. Along with Mary's opinion of Helen's lack of education and garish tastes. In the tit-for-tat newspaper mudslinging that ensued, Helen found the opportunity to tell newspapers that she grew tired of Mary's unrefined ways and had asked her to do so four days before the robbery. Helen tucked in the missive that some of her sophisticated friends had declined to include Mary in social activities (thus explaining why Mary was not with Helen the afternoon of the burglary — making her suspect #1). That surely angered Mary, but she'd sunk a deeper arrow, I think, with her description of Helen's desperate financial situation and scheming. The tone of newspaper stories began to change a bit about this time, with increasing references to Helen's duplicity and less acceptance of Helen as a victim. I wonder what Helen hoped to get from Mary when she invited her to move in. She claimed her motivations were entirely altruistic, but that would be out of character. All evidence points to Helen having been an opportunist. Maybe she had her eye on Foultz's pockets and thought Mary would increase the opportunities for contact with the banker.

Could Helen have been planning a pretend heist weeks in advance, recognizing that if all suspicion was to be diverted from herself, she needed someone else living in the apartment to accidentally leave a door open? Is it possible that Nathan's detectives (Sutherland) and/or John Collins were in on the theft?

Jewelry recovered

Charles hired the Mooney & Borland Detective Agency‡‡ in Chicago, and a divisional manager, William J. Sutherland (c1863-1936), was assigned to the case. Helen later told a newspaper reporter that so and that when the story of the theft appeared in newspapers he'd send a dozen telegrams offering his assistance in recovering the jewelry.

According to Helen, Sutherland urged her to fire the Pinkerton detectives and hire him instead, which she did. She dismissed a claim by Mary Russell that Sutherland was seen lurking about the halls at the Lorraine Hotel a week before the burglary. It appears Helen was aware of Sutherland's association with the Allen family and Collins but did not see his assisting her as a conflict of interest. Helen claimed that she, NY Lieutenant Braun/Braum, one of her sisters, and her attorney, Morris, traveled to Chicago to identify her jewelry, where they were joined by John Collins. They went to Sutherland's home, where Sutherland and Collins urged her to accept a settlement and end the robbery investigation. The group then went to Mooney & Boland to identify the diamonds. There were loose stones in the collection, and stones were missing from the settings. According to Helen, Sutherland said they would need to retrieve the missing stones from a man named Koshock who had purchased them for $4,500, a price Helen considered far below their value. To connect with Koshock, they would have to employ a law firm headed Williy, one who knew how to reach Koshock's lawyer, a man named Davis, to whom they would have to pay 10% of the value of the stone.

As Sutherland told the story, with the release signed by Helen, he had then engaged William B. Soule of Soule Secret Service to make the actual retrieval. Four of Soule's detectives (Rohan, Kehoe, Bock, and Barry) set up surveillance in a hotel room adjacent to that of the primary suspect, Charles Rosenthal, at the Saratoga Hotel. The detectives bided their time and eavesdropped until they overheard a conversation involving a jewelry transaction. The detectives broke into the room and arrested Rosenthal as well as Paul Korshak and his brother-in-law, Jay Harris. Korshak and Harris were twenty-five years old. Nearby was a table strewn with jewels and notes with math calculations. Twenty-five diamonds were recovered from Rosenthal and rings from Korshak. Harris admitted most of the notes were his. Rosenthal denied theft but admitted to being on parole, having just served a three-year sentence for a 1908 burglary in Elmira, New York. Some newspapers later reported that Rosenthal was the man who stole the jewels from Helen's apartment. He was said to have been working as a waiter at a restaurant in New York City, the Little Hungary Cafe on East Houston St., that Helen often frequented. Helen drank too much wine, and the restaurant owner told Rosenthal to escort her home in a cab. A few days later, he went back and took her jewelry case. He then made connections with the Chicago dealers.

Korshak said he dealt in enlarged crayon portraits and jewelry. His brother-in-law, Harris, lived in Detroit and had only recently come to Chicago from Palm Beach, FL, to work for Korshak at the crayon portrait studio. Korshak's brother, an attorney, posted his Paul's bail. Paul followed Max's advice and refused to discuss the case further. On Helen's trip to Chicago with her attorney, Braun, etc., Soule did not press charges. The case against Paul Korshak was dropped on March 18, 1910, by judge Crowe and the same was expected with the cases against Rosenthal and Harris. Soule bought the jewelry back from the trio for an unreported sum.

Helen returned to New York and, a few days later, was notified that the jewelry had been recovered. She went to the Mooney & Boland agency with Sutherland, Collins, Morris, and Braun. There were still lost stones and missing stones. Helen said she was told that the recovered jewelry had been appraised at $120,000, and a $72,000 settlement was agreed upon. From that, $41,000 was deducted to pay the $12,500 commission to Davis, $4,500 to Koshock, and expenses. Helen was paid $31,000, and in March 1910, she used it as the down payment on a house in New York on 86th St. Supposedly judge McEwen (of Chicago?) then came to Helen's home on 86th and gave her an additional $1,500 for gems that weren't recovered.

A story in a Boston newspaper stated Rosenthal cased the Lorraine, stole the jewelry, kept it hidden in Philadelphia for three months until interest died down, then contacted his Chicago sources to find a buyer.

Bell House of Mystery

The house was a five-story mansion at 39 West Eighty-sixth Street on the upper west side of Manhattan, purchased from Caroline Elebash Harned, wife of Bedell H. Harned (who was secretary to Frank J. Gould, son of robber baron Jay Gould), for $30,000 plus the assumption of a large mortgage. Designed by John Hemmenway Duncan (1854 – 1929), Louis Valentine Bell (1853 – 1925) took title in 1901.§§ Reportedly, the Bell house was nicknamed the Mystery House because there were sliding panels, hidden rooms, and elevators. Foreclosure proceedings were started in 1910 when Helen failed to pay a $10,000 mortgage installment. When authorities arrived to serve foreclosure notice, they discovered that Helen had stripped the house of its light fixtures and sent them to an auction house and claimed to have sold the house to her sister, Annie Levy of Portland, Oregon. This is the same sister who accompanied Helen during her 1906 exploits with Adolph Davis.

Helen would later recall having a large staff of servants in the 86th street house, but given her impoverishment at that point, it is unlikely. After being evicted, Helen moved often, probably chased by creditors. In two years, she lived at the Wellsmore, Great Northern Hotel, Prasada, and Hotel Woodward. Litigation ever her choice of weapon, Helen sued the seller of the house, saying that the price asked was too high.

Nathan arrested for smuggling

Richard Parr rides again

Meanwhile, the case of the stolen gems had caught the attention of William Loeb's take-no-prisoners Customs department, specifically that of one Richard Parr (1865 – 1921)***, a deputy surveyor. Described as a secret agent of the government, Parr had previously drawn attention for his take-down of the American Sugar Refining Co. (He called attention to the presence of a spring that caused inaccurate weights.) Parr may have been eager to again demonstrate his sleuthing skills and to collect another large reward from Uncle Sam — he was reportedly paid a $100,000 bounty in the great sugar caper. Parr was known to loan money on occasion. That was his pathway to Helen, who without Nathan's support was becoming desperate for cash, pawning her possessions and borrowing money from loan sharks, trying to repay them at $300/month. Purportedly he was introduced to Helen by a man named Graff. Parr initially loaned Helen $1,000 and took her furs as collateral — a full-length mink, an ermine, and a sealskin coat, muffs, and fittings. He would later assert that initially, he was unaware of the smuggling, and Helen was unaware he was a government agent. Helen may have been clueless, but as Parr told the story at other times, he suspected smuggling the first time he saw the jewel robbery story in the newspaper. As they became chummy, she mentioned the smuggling and provided Parr with enough details to check the duty papers and verify that only $100 in dutiable items was declared, with belongings valued at $8,000 before sailing to Europe. The story went that when he then revealed to Helen his role at the Customs department, she wept and reluctantly decided to roll over on Nathan. One of the many problems with that story is that in another telling, Parr claimed to have told his wife all about his pretend-romance with Helen before it started and to have sallied forth with her blessings. Wife didn't agree to him romancing Helen for the return from a mere $1,000 loan. If the wife knew about the pretend affair in advance, it was because Parr knew from the outset, or had a pretty strong suspicion, that there was a smuggling case to be exploited. When his wife later had a miscarriage, he blamed it on an anonymous caller who told her all about his romance with Helen, the romance she supposedly already knew all about. If there was anyone in this whole story who told the truth, I didn't find him or her.

Over the next two years, Parr claimed to have paid off $30,000 worth of pawn tickets for a portion of Helen's jewelry, clothing, and household possessions. She would later say that initially, their agreement gave her the opportunity to repurchase her belongings but that she had since given him a bill of sale and waived all rights to the items.

Newspaper descriptions of the smuggled and/or stolen jewelry varied over the months, but a detailed list of twenty-eight pieces appeared in a Kentucky newspaper (see picture) that was probably based on information supplied by Parr.

The priciest item in the lot was the $100,000 pearl necklace purchased from Tiffany's in Paris. (That in later court testimony would be substantiated as a $33,000 necklace that came from Tiffany's in London.) Some background on that necklace: Helen claimed that in London, shortly before their return to the U.S., they met at the Savoy Hotel in London with J.S. Bache of New York, a long-time broker of Nathan's. She claimed to have given it to Bache along with a $10,000 pair of pearl earrings. According to Helen, a few weeks after her return to New York, after she had asked Nathan several times about the necklace, he took her to the banking house of J. S. Bache & Co., at 42 Broadway, to see the necklace and earrings. Her sister Martha went along, and they each briefly held the jewelry. Helen said that for some reason, they were not permitted to take the jewels away and she had not seen them since. She thought she should sue Nathan to recover them. She said Nathan bought a costly pearl necklace and $10,000 earrings for his wife at the same time. Helen claimed to have worn the Tiffany necklace only twice during their European travels. Nathan's detectives said Helen had smuggled the necklace in herself though Nathan gave her $10,000 to pay duties on it. It was documented to have been returned to Tiffany's before the smuggling case came to trial. The likelihood of Jules Bache risking everything to play the role described by Helen seems slim. Nathan and Charles were good customers of the Bache firm but not big or important enough to put it all on the line for petty theft with so many witnesses.

Before the case came to an end, Parr several times puffed up and told the press about Nathan and Bache heading a vast $15 million international smuggling ring that was shared with Bache banking customers when they imported items to the U.S. When newspaper reporters contacted Bache for a comment, they were told that Nathan Allen maintained a large account of around $1 million with Bache and referred all other questions to their attorney, Henry Wollman. Wollman said the Tiffany necklace had been returned to Tiffany's. Upon further investigation, Parr reportedly learned that Helen purchased the necklace from Tiffany's in Paris, but it was paid for by Nathan in New York and that Nathan then carried it back to Paris on his October 1909 trip with his family and returned it to Tiffanys because Nathan's wife refused to wear it. Go, Ellen! Instead, a $70,000 necklace was purchased — and claimed at customs upon their return to the U.S.

Unknowing, Charles's detectives were delighted to finally be able to report that Helen had a new beau, just what was needed to bolster Nathan's lingering doubts about his lady love as a con artist. The detectives were shocked to learn that her new love was instead a government agent and that Nathan had a customs target on his back. It is not known what conversations then took place between Charles's detectives and Parr, but they came away from the discussion with wildly different interpretations. The conclusion drawn by the Allens was that Parr and Helen were trying to blackmail Nathan for $1.5 million. The conclusion drawn by Parr was that Bache and the Allens were trying to bribe him with $300k to drop the smuggling case. Later Parr and the detectives would makeup, Parr denying that anyone offered him $300k and the detectives saying it was all a misunderstanding.

Charles is gone

No longer able to help his brother

By October 1911, Nathan had resigned from the tannery and his bank director position. He'd been indicted, and for months newspapers were awhirl with stories about the upcoming trial. The arrest of Charles's wife for smuggling in 1910 had, of course, been brought to the attention of the newspapers. Into it all fell Charles, literally and figuratively.
He plunged through a dining room roof at the Palmer House hotel in Chicago after falling, jumping, or being pushed through a window in his hotel room #497 on the fourth floor fifty feet above, breaking his neck and other bones, dying instantly. The window, eighteen inches off the floor, was still open when it was over. Some reports said he landed in a courtyard, others that it was in a dining room, and one said it was in an air shaft.
He had met with his friend Dewitt Creiger near the noon hour, then headed back to his hotel room with a headache, deciding not to go back to Kenosha on the 1:00 pm train as planned. He fell out the window soon after taking receipt of a pitcher of ice water from a bell boy who later testified that Charles was last seen sitting in a chair tilted against the wall by the open window. The open window and ice water might be signs that it was a hot autumn day. Perhaps he intended to pour water on his head, stuck his head out the window, became dizzy, and fell.

Suicide was discussed because Charles had lost $500,000 in the stock market a few days before his death. Given his wealth, that doesn't seem a large enough loss to have made him suicidal.†††

Murder was considered because there was some confusion in Chicago as to whether it was Charles or Nathan's body. If Nathan, things became more complicated because of the pending jewelry smuggling trial and its suggestion of blackmail.

Murder was mostly dismissed as a possibility when it was verified the corpse was Charles rather than Nathan. Had Chicago police known all there was to know about Nathan's troubles, they might have looked long and hard at Charles's enemies. The body was shipped to Kenosha, where the coroner's jury ruled it an accidental death.
The staff physician at the Palmer House remained adamant that it was suicide, but the reasons for his opinion were not reported. Hotel staff disagreed about whether a chair found on the floor beneath the body was the chair from Charles's room or a chair that had been sitting in that same location for weeks. To the best of anyone's recollection, there had been only one chair in Charles's room, and it was still there, but that didn't end the dispute at the hotel. No one said where the water pitcher got to.
Charles left behind an estate valued at $5 million ($133 million today). His obituary reported he was one of the first American golfers and played daily. I didn't find corroboration of either claim, but he was one of the founders of the Kenosha Golf Club, picking up whatever budgetary overages the club incurred at year-end and did win some golf trophies. He also owned a trotting racehorse named Brash and played whist. I came to like Charles while working on this story.

Nathan's trial and aftermath

Mom died wondering why her boys hadn't come to see her in a while

Ten days after Charles's death, Nathan pled guilty to smuggling and was fined $12,000 ($320,000 today). Collins was fined $4,000. The government then sued him for restitution, and he paid another $100,000, Collins another $1,000. At trial, Helen made a point of mentioning several times that Nathan had purchased many gifts for his wife and children that were also smuggled. She found several opportunities to mention those gifts Nathan took to his family, even in the initial information she supplied to Parr. Nothing was reported to suggest that authorities went to Kenosha to collect the goods, but it appears that is what Helen hoped for. In September 1912, Helen took a more direct whack at Nathan and his detectives and failed. Her suit for a claimed loss of $218,000 in stolen jewels and gifts she'd received from Nathan that Charles had removed from their joint bank box was dismissed. In pretrial publicity, her attorneys claimed that her suit would prove that Nathan's detectives sent a female detective into Helen's apartment at the Lorraine to steal her jewelry, then later pretended to recover it, while Charles stripped the bank box of everything, the whole effort being a conspiracy to ruin her financially.

Parr and some of his pals who had hoped to cash in when Helen won her big lawsuit against Nathan were left having to sell off what remained of her belongings.

Parr boasted to the press about having made Nathan pay $116,000 to the government in fines and fees, but nothing was reported about his receiving a bounty for his role. Early on, he had stated that if received, he saw no reason to share it with Helen. Not surprising. After his receipt of $100k for discovering a spring in the scale on the sugar weighing docks, a worker complained to newspapers that he was the one who discovered the spring while Parr collected the reward.

In November 1911, the Allen family sailed to Europe, reportedly to never return. Shortly before sailing, they buried Mary Hale Allen, aged mother of Allen and Nathan, who was never informed of Charles's death or Nathan's legal problems. The Allens did return to the United States, some to Kenosha and others to Connecticut. In September 1914, a Wisconsin tax commission ruled that Kenosha County could not collect income tax from Ella and her son because they were no longer residents of the county. The ruling reduced the county's income tax revenue by one quarter.

On January 17, 1913, John Collins paid his share of the restitution to U.S. Customs, the last $875 due insofar as the government was concerned, and the smuggling case that had dominated months of news coverage was officially closed. Later that year, he married chorus girl Elsa Fleischhauer and set up housekeeping with her at 5055 Sheridan Rd, not far from where he and Helen had once pretended to be brother and sister.

According to Helen, John Collins and his family washed their hands of Helen when she implicated him in smuggling. Ya think? In 1918 John's purchase of a home on Sheridan Rd. in Chicago for $80,000 elicited a brief mention of Helen's home on the same road. In the 1918 story, it gave Helen's name as Helen Orvelle Jenkins. The reporter had obviously not done his homework or would have known the name Jenkins was fictitious. When tracked down and asked if he was the John Collins who had been associated with Helen Jenkins, Collins first denied that he was the same man, then let his spokesman — detective William Sutherland – issue a retraction admitting it was him. At that time, it was reported that Collins owned half interest in the Dugan Lumber Company in Memphis, in addition to Southern Coal.

In September 1913, Helen's former possessions were sold at public auction by Darling & Co at 6 E. 33rd St. in New York. The auction was promoted as offering $500,000 worth of jewelry, furs, and household effects. Purportedly Helen was there for the first day, darkly veiled and unrecognized. The items had been placed with various creditors, including Richard Parr, and were sold to collect loans and storage fees. Noteworthy items in the sale were ivory carvings, fine rugs, and bric-a-brac. The auctioneer, Louis Van Brink, predicted great bargains for attendees, with Helen receiving $75,000 or $100,000, all of it expected to go to pay Helen's $100,000 in debt judgments to milliners, corsetieres and others such as Richard Parr. The first day sales were $5,700. Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, the originator of the red velvet swing, was said to be one of the largest bidders, purchasing portieres, paintings, and curios, paying $250 for a dining room suite. Other theater people who turned out to bid were Rose Coghlan, Virginia Norden, and Sam Harris.

The last newspaper story about Helen came when her aunt Carrie McBride sued her for $6,296. Carrie said Helen promised in 1909 that she would have become wealthy enough to support Carrie for the rest of her life, at $8 per week, to perform housekeeping, maid, secretarial, and chaperone services. Carrie said Helen stopped sending money after an initial $300. Helen wept, maybe with the first real tears in this story, and said her aunt was unfit at housekeeping, so Helen sent her to live with relatives in New Orleans. When Carrie and the relatives did not get along, Carrie returned to New York, but by then, Helen had no money with which to hire her. Carrie admitted that secretarial services provided were limited to brushing Helen's hair.

Discrepancies and addendum

* Other Iroquois Theater fire victims and survivors from Kenosha include: the Cooper brothers, the Van Ingen family, Edith Brown and Frank Slosson

† Hough earned a bigger place in history in 1909 when he quashed one of two criminal libel suits brought by the U.S. government on the part of President Teddy Roosevelt (who had appointed Hough to the U.S. District Court for NY's southern district in 1906) against two newspapers, the New York World and Indianapolis News. The other suit was quashed by Albert B. Anderson, another district court judge. The newspapers had reported there was corruption involved in the acquisition and building of the Panama Canal. In an anonymous verdict, the U.S. Supreme Court, headed by chief justice Edward Douglas White, upheld Hough's ruling in 1911. It appears that Hough's ruling was based on a jurisdictional technicality rather than because Roosevelt was attempting to punish the press for disagreeing with his political agenda. Anderson's commentary was snappier.

‡ Schreyer is recognized for his depictions of horses. Before heading to Chicago, Ellen Fuld Dwelle Jenkins was a horse enthusiast.

§ Widower Foultz had followed his father's footsteps into banking and had been an officer in the First National Bank in New Castle, PA, for thirty years.

** The Russell family had a summer home on Millsite Lake and wintered in Yonkers. William had patented several valves used in the plumbing industry and operated a company, Steam Specialties, selling supplies used by steamfitters. They had four children. Helen would tell newspapers that she'd tried to affect a reconciliation at a restaurant but failed because William was too angry and that he urged her to throw Mary out on the street. They were still together at William's death in 1930.

†† A bit about the detectives who worked Helen's robbery:

• James McCafferty (1859 – 1911) was chief of detectives in 1909. A big department hierarchy change in early 1910 resulted in McCafferty being demoted to an inspector of the Eleventh division. He died of leukemia less than a year later after 24 years on the force. He was married to a woman named Gertrude and had three children.
• Detective Hyams was probably Louis Hyams (1874 –)
• Inspector George W. McClusky (1860-) was reduced to captain in the 1910 NYPD cataclysm.
• Pinkerton man George Dougherty joined the department as head of detectives from 1910 to 1913. He described McClusky as the finest police officer he'd ever worked with.

‡‡ Founded in 1875, the Mooney & Boland detective agency was headed in 1910 by John Boland and William Sutherland. It boasted of having agents in all principal cities of America and Europe as well as a secret railway service. William Sutherland had purchased the interests of the firm's co-founder James Mooney at his death in 1891 and served as general manager of the western division, based in Chicago, located in the stock exchange building on LaSalle & Washington.

§§ At his death in 1927, Louis left an estate valued at over $2.5, with a substantial portion going to charity. He was a stockbroker known for his racehorses, including the legendary Hermis. Bell's large collection of art and furniture was sold at the Anderson Galleries in 1921for $50,000 ($710k today). Architect Duncan was also the designer of the Ulysses S. Grant's tomb and Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Arch in NYC.

*** Richard Parr was a long-ago classmate of William Loeb's, recommended by him to a specially created position as an investigator of fraud. The case with the spring and inaccurately weighed sugar was the high point of his career. Parr was married to Geneva Clement and had three children. One of his obituary notices said that he was a personal friend of Teddy Roosevelt.

††† Newspapers in 1911 did not pick up on a bit of info that would have added interest to conjectures about Charles's death (albeit to no gain insofar as shedding light on the cause). Fourteen years earlier, Charles Allen's brother-in-law, James Wallace Knox, who had earned a fortune in Pittsburgh's window glass industry as a co-founder of Knox, Kim & Co. (later named Abel, Smith & Co.), had committed suicide in a hotel room in Kenosha. Knox had been an important name in horse racing at one time, campaigning the famous chestnut stallion racing horse Nutwood from a yearling in 1871 until 1882, but had gambled everything away. He was married to one of Ella French Allen's sisters, probably Arrilla / Avilla. It is certain that Ella French Allen and her siblings were reminded of Knox's suicide when they learned of Charles's fatal accident.

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