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Chris Scott
Sergeant
Username: Chris
Post Number: 33
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 14, 2003 - 2:23 pm: |       |
I found this extraordinary account of the Whitechapel club set up in Chicago in 1890. I'm including two of the illustrations fom the article.
CS
Fort Wayne Sentinel (Indiana) 12 April 1890
WHITECHAPEL CLUB
A CURIOUS AND UNIQUE CHICAGO INSTITUTION
The Police of Different Cities Combining in Supplying Mural Decorations of a Queer Sort - A President Who Is Much Respected but Always Absent - Some of the Treasures.
The Whitechapel Club, of Chicago, was organized by certain young newspaper men whose sense of humor, sense of the horrible, of good fellowship, of the grotesque and the arabesque, and of a variety of other things chanced to be well developed, and who had a good deal of enterprise. They rented the rooms, held a meeting, and organized a club. In honor of the individual who has made Whitechapel famous, Jack the Ripper was elected President of the organization, but, as he has been, so far, absent from all meetings and the club has not his definite address, the Vice President performs the active functions of management. Under the constitution two members of any profession may belong to the club - two bank presidents, two burglars, two preachers, two actors etc. And the ranks have been much increased by additions to membership under this rule.
It is in interior decoration, as already said, that the club comes out strong, and by this allusion is not made to convivial habits exclusively. There are several well-knowm artists among the members, and they have contributed sketches which are, to use the verbacular, simply paralyzers. There are one or two portraits, drawn carefully from imagination, of the absent but honored President, and there are other sketches as striking. The police force of this and other cities have been called upon and have contributed to the mural adornments. Even the fire department has become interested, and as for the members themselves, they have become collectors with a mission.
The banquet-room of the club is L shaped and the long table round which the members sit in lively session corresponds in shape. Above the table dangling from a pulley is a trombone which is performed upon when a pampered menial is required to bring in some more of something. Skeletons, mostly of women, dangle here and there, and ther are skulls each with its ghastly history, among them that of the only colored man who ever committed suicide in Chicago. Nailed on the wall half full of clotted blood is a slipper of the Chinese merchant lately killed by highbinders in San Francisco, a donation from the San Francisco police force, and there are the shackles worn by Martin Burke from Winnipeg and a lot of anarchist relics from the police force of Chicago. There are knives and pistols with which crimes were committed. There are hideous Chinese masks and slung shots, and sand-bags, and any amount of such paraphenalia of red murder. The visitor is told the story of each, and the very marrow in his bones changes its composition.
There is some debate among outsiders as to what the ceremony of initiation into the Whitechapel Club consists of. The obligation is said to be something extremely sulphurous, yet the actual execises are said to be anything but tedious or complicated. One of the initaited was discovered to have the imprint of a bloody hand upon his shirt front, but there is current a theory that the ritual is flexible, and that in many cases all ceremonies, save those of a purely convivial nature, are dispensed with. Saturday night receptions of the club have become social events of note, and in no instance, it is asserted, has any one present at these reunions failed to return eventually to family and friends. The record of the club in this respect is as pure as filtered water. No bones are bleaching in the alley.
The Whitechapel Club, it need hardly be explained, is not an organization for gain, though formally incorporated under the State law. It has a seal and its blood-red letterheads are curiosities. It is a great institution.
(From Chicago Times)
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David O'Flaherty
Sergeant
Username: Oberlin
Post Number: 42
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 14, 2003 - 2:38 pm: | |
Hi, Chris
Thanks for that--I wonder where in Chicago they met. A Google search turned up this drinking song:
"Then stand to your glasses steady
And drink to your comrade's eyes
Here's a toast to the dead already
And hurrah for the next who dies."
Drinking song popularized by Chicago reporters at the Whitechapel Club, Chicago's informal version of Washington's Gridiron Club (www.chicagohistory.info/quotes)
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Chris Scott
Sergeant
Username: Chris
Post Number: 35
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 14, 2003 - 3:32 pm: | |
Hi david
There is a long article about the club and its history at
http://www.bolivianstudies.org/~lorenz/Whitechapel.html |
David O'Flaherty
Sergeant
Username: Oberlin
Post Number: 43
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 14, 2003 - 3:48 pm: | |
Thank you, Chris
I wish I had visited the Newberry Library more often when I lived in Chicago, all sorts of treasures there I missed.
Cheers,
#13  |
Stephen P. Ryder
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 2704
Registered: 10-1997
| | Posted on Monday, April 14, 2003 - 4:33 pm: | |
Well, I never thought there'd be any interest in this, but I did some time ago secure copies of the "Whitechapel Club" material held at the Newberry Library. Since its now been brought up I've made it available on the Casebook at:
http://casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.wc.html
Enjoy!
Stephen P. Ryder, Editor
Casebook: Jack the Ripper |
Jack Traisson
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Monday, April 14, 2003 - 3:24 pm: | |
Hi David,
The Whitechapel Club began in the back room of Kosters', a saloon at the corner of LaSalle Street and Calhoun Place in 1889. Later they moved to larger quarters at 173 Calhoun Place. Due to financial problems, the Whitechapel Club was forced to disband in 1895.
The Chicago Press Club, at the same time, had offices at 133 N. Clark up until 1907.
If anyone would like photographs of the interior of the Whitechapel Club just email me.
Another nice find, Chris.
Cheers, |
David O'Flaherty
Sergeant
Username: Oberlin
Post Number: 44
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 14, 2003 - 5:37 pm: | |
Well, there you go--I guess I didn't miss out after all (laugh).
La Salle and Calhoun Place--Calhoun Place must be no more, or at least I never heard of it. From the account of the members making a parade, it sounds like the Club was located kind of mid- Loop, northwest of where the Art Institute is today.
Now the major papers (there are only two) have shifted north and east a few blocks nearer the lake and for many years the hangout for the press was the Billy Goat Tavern made famous by John Belushi in those Saturday Night Live cheeseburger sketches (no fries, cheeps).
Thanks, guys
Dave |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Sergeant
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 15
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2003 - 10:05 am: | |
hi,
iwonder if it is possible to find out the names of those who belonged to the club?
can anyone help
jennifer |
Chris Scott
Sergeant
Username: Chris
Post Number: 36
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2003 - 12:25 pm: | |
Hi Jennifer
If you look at the url in my second post on this thread it gives names of quite a few of the members
Chris |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Sergeant
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 18
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2003 - 2:36 pm: | |
hi chris thanks will do
jennifer
hi i wondered who might have written the chicago article |
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