Chicago: the White City

Beneath the Murder House, by Morgan Hirsch

Prince Farragut, the previous and only Prince of the City of Chicago, and H.H. Holmes, renowned as the first modern serial killer; they’re connected through time as certainly as though there were a rope tied between ‘em.

I won’t drag you through Holmes’s whole story, but just to be sure Holmes built a house down in Englewood that had a special basement where he’d cut up and dispose of the people he’d murder. He had his dissection table, a giant kiln with a steel door that was actually a crematorium, and then there were four odd-purposed vats. I’d known that Holmes had a secret basement before the murders came out; see, Holmes short-changed all the workers who built the place, and a lot of them had come to me because we were all Irish and we’d done work together and I knew a lawyer. So in 1890 these folks were coming to me. I heard from maybe forty people, most of it was common carpentry stuff, but I heard about a safe needing to be lifted to the third floor and then needing to have a room built around it, the huge basement kiln that didn’t look like any bread oven, and a five-foot deep, ten foot diameter iron vat dug into the basement floor that needed a special floor built over it lined with solid oak beams. There wasn’t much the workers could do to get their payment, though, even if the place was crazy of aspect.

I more or less forgot about it until 1895 when they started to find that Holmes had killed a whole lot of people. That’s when the Chicago Police started searching Holmes’s hotel and finding all sorts of gory effluvium. At the time I was doing some advisory work for the city building commission, and in July I was called in to help assess the structure of the basement after the first examinations. Slowly I recalled what I’d heard about the place five years prior. The safe was up on the third floor, the bread oven was the crematorium. But the vats-that was the mystery. I’d heard that Holmes had a five foot deep iron tub built into his basement floor, and it was there-but it had a couple of newer, bigger brothers as well. A few feet off from the five-by-ten tub of quick-lime, there was a six feet deep by twelve feet wide iron vat, also full of quicklime, slightly newer than the first. Then, there was a deeper pit, this one made out of blocks of granite, eight and a half feet deep by twelve feet wide, which contained acid.

I suppose I can see the demented logic of constructing such a hole if one needs to dispose of bodies in a repository of quicklime, but why then build two more-and then, a third? It couldn’t have been for quantity-to need two pits of quick-lime of those proportions at the same time, he could’ve eliminated two dozen people at once-ghastly math it is to figure out those numbers. And why were there two iron pits, followed by the larger stone pit? It’s a sick, maudlin thing to think that the acid pit was needed to be more economical than the lime pits; picture that, HH Holmes the efficiency expert. When the three vats were emptied, I received a pitiful few answers in comparison with the new questions. For you see when I was able to get inside the three emptied pits with a lantern, I found—Lord have mercy—scratches.

Cuts which were both consistent and deep lined the interior of each of the pits. In the deeper iron pit the abrasions were so thick they’d had pierced the iron lining of the tank at several points. The gashes had even marked the solid granite pit; conceive the strength required for that, if you will. I saw then that Holmes had not needed the three consecutively larger vats for different problems, but for the same problem, because whatever Holmes’s problem had been, it had been steadily growing-do you see? The first pit was roughly three-hundred-ninety cubic feet; the second was six-hundred-eighty, while the third was nine-hundred-sixty cubic feet. The last-the very last pit was almost six times that size. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

While I was down in these gruesome dark tanks, a section of wall in that horrid cellar was found to be newer than the rest. The next day a crew of men armed with picks and shovels—myself among them—tore that wall down and found the earth had been disturbed in the form of a tunnel. I’ve done my share of ditch digging and tunneling, and though I’m no expert, I can surmise that whoever Holmes had excavating this tunnel, there were a good number of them. Eight men at least, probably more considering what was at the end. The burrow went perhaps twenty-five feet below 63rd street, to a sealed wood and metal chamber. Whatever it was, it was elaborate; a gigantic underground cask of sheet iron, hardwood, more iron, more hardwood, and then yet more sheet iron.

When we breached the container, the entire tunnel was flooded with the most noxious, malevolent stench. The smell was worse than death: Holmes’s entire basement had been saturated with that odor, but this was worse in every way. I was later told that policemen all the way back on the first floor of the house had to cover their faces for the fumes. Then someone had the famous idea to light a match, and the stench proved explosive. A gout of flame shuddered the whole tunnel and I suppose we were lucky that warren didn’t collapse completely on us. The acrid stink of burnt hair was a positive relief when work continued. We got into the buried compartment; it too had its share of deep gouges, like the previous tanks. The whole thing was about fourteen feet long by eleven feet around, roughly fifty-three hundred cubic feet. I’ve been to the Field Museum, so I tell you without a doubt that an elephant could’ve fit down there. I’d be relieved if I could be sure that had been the case, that Holmes operated a secret black-market elephant exchange.

Aside from the smell and some debris-perhaps dirt, perhaps excrement-there was a small box in the room. It was a Huntley and Palmer biscuit tin. Jim Kenyon the Fire Marshal had authority of the scene, and he took the duty to open it. Well, Jim discovered the source of that putrid, mortifying reek. It came on so strong that to a man everyone scurried for the tunnel to escape for fresh air, save Jim and I. I won’t say aloud what happened down there; what ungodly thing Jim found in that old biscuit tin. I will say that when he at last emerged from that warren he was chattering like lunatic and retired from his post a month later, due to an extreme case of “stress.”

Prince Farragut. Yes, I did say I would tell you about him, how he’s entwined in these anomalous events. I don’t suppose it’s of any risk for me to tell you that at the time I was—how to put it—beholden to the Prince? Ought I call him regnant? That’s the term, isn’t it? I knew some of his purposes then, and knew to hide that tin until I could bring it to his attention. I sought him out that night-the reek must still have been upon me-and divulged everything to him. I assured him that I would pursue the matter for him; would go to where Holmes was being held and demand answers, would consult every expert, or any expert that I could find. The Prince clapped me sternly-he wanted none of it. He was very clear: I was to tell no one of what had transpired. I was to provide him the names of every man who’d seen that foul lair, and where they could be found. I was to take that tin, and hide it where no living soul could find it. And lastly, I was to wait some time, and then see Holmes’s estate demolished, entirely. Of the burrow below 63rd street, Farragut muttered in uncertain terms about taking on that responsibility himself. How he accounted for a five-thousand cubic foot void below a paved street, I can only guess. For me, I followed every order. The next month the already infamous Murder House of Chicago collapsed after a quick series of explosions, and the remainder burned. The Fire Department did not respond for hours; perhaps their grief at the retirement of Marshal Kenyon caused the delay.

Now, do understand that I had completely forgotten the name Holmes in 1895 when I had been engaged in demanding payment from him only five years earlier. The years after H. H. Holmes’s execution were even busier for me than those preceding them: the Drainage Canal was being completed, ground was being broken on the freight tunnels, new sewers to direct rainwater to the pumping station, the Wilmette & Lawrence avenue channel and then the Cal-Sag Channel after that, and sewage treatment plants were just a few of the burgeoning city’s projects. With this profusion of work, even the most vivid memories can be smothered by time.

And truly, what does it signify if once or twice a year you should find a series of deep scrape marks in a relatively new concrete tunnel? Is it not merely a spot of misfortune if tunneling equipment left underground over a long weekend is found by a work crew several hundred feet away, clawed so badly as to be useless? Who can be blamed for paying no serious attention to a horrid, abominable stench that sometimes comes out old sewers which have fallen to disrepair? And haven’t subway cars been known to make beastly, faceless and ungodly screeching sounds, which reverberate throughout concrete tunnels? If the occasional single worker goes missing in a tunnel, ought not it to be treated only as an isolated tragedy with all possible sympathies extended to the grieving family?

Prince Farragut had always made his home at Goose Island, if you’ll recall. When the Freight Tunnels were being laid out-Chicago’s first subway, you know-the Prince impressed upon me to impress upon the City that a long, North-South line would be of inestimable value: namely, a tunnel that connected the near North side neighborhoods (including Goose Island) to the more Southerly areas, such as Englewood. If you’re unfamiliar with the old terminals, the Englewood stop was at none other than 63rd and Wallace Street. I wasn’t fool enough to ask the Prince’s reasons then, so don’t ask me his reasons now. Make your own guesses as to why the Prince wanted an open, underground line between his own domain and the former site of the Murder House.

The first sections of the Deep Tunnels were put into service in 1985. By then Prince Farragut had already been slowly removing himself from city politics, letting the regent’s council bear the burden of day to day affairs. I believe the Tunnel and Reservoir project—of which the Deep Tunnel is a major part—has been one of best concealed, most secretive public works projects of this city’s history, and I have followed every major project since reconstruction after the Great Fire. Freak incidents such as the destruction of equipment, reports of appalling smells, and the sudden expiration of a team of workers have been kept entirely out of the attention of the press. This “expiration,” though, deserves comment; it happened in 1991, within a fortnight of Prince Farragut’s last public appearance. It’s rumored that workers were issued hunting firearms in addition to safety equipment. Though by then my sources of information were becoming few; perhaps it was merely a rumor.

A quiet but general work stoppage occurred in April of 1995 throughout the Deep Tunnel. The cause was not even made known on the usual back channels. Work did not resume until August, a month after the last corroborated sighting of Prince Farragut, as he was leaving a Regent’s council meeting. Various kindred—myself included—have hinted in no uncertain terms that Farragut then traveled to the McCook Area Reservoir, where he entered the Deep Tunnel. For me and most others, the Prince has not been seen since. But it was not lost on me that it was almost one hundred years to the day since H.H. Holmes’s Murder Castle was discovered that the Prince disappeared into the tunnels which he at one point ordered adjacent to that very structure.

What does it mean? The point of this tale? It means: Stay out of the Deep Tunnel.