Not a fan of Chicago

 If you've ever been a "downstater," you will perhaps understand why someone who pens a blog titled "Sherlock Peoria" is not a fan of the city of Chicago.  And in that, I think I might have found a sympathetic ear in a certain author we know. Yes, he did travel there, and, yes, he probably paid the city a few compliments during glad-handing spiritualism tours, but what we see reflected in his writings?

A telegram with simply the words, "The most dangerous crook in Chicago."

The place criminals, or people who want to be seen as criminals, come from.

"Why, I seem to have read of the Scowrers in Chicago. A gang of murderers are they not?"

Chicago, in its very history, has such ties to crime that modern politics, both at state and national levels, love to emphasize its crime to steer voters to given ends. 

The tale of the dancing men cipher, which resulted in that telegram above, takes place in the late 1890s. After five decades of a criminal reputation so bad that a city-destroying fire in 1871 was seen as a new Sodom-and-Gomorrah-style divine cleansing, Chicago still found a way to re-establish its lawless ways to the point where an 1893 World's Fair in the city is now perhaps best known for its serial killer.

Since he was executed in 1896, Herman Webster Mudgett had left the title of "most dangerous crook in Chicago" open, but at the same time, was he even that at his peak? The killer, also known as "Dr. Henry Howard Holmes" (hopefully no relation) confessed to more murders than he actually did, and was not the sort of gangster Chicago was known for. A kingpin named Vincenzo Colosimo, who came over from Italy in 1895, was a more likely candidate, but even "Diamond Jim" as he was also known, was still on the rise in the end of that decade, not forming "the Chicago Outfit," the gang Capone would eventually run, until 1902. Neither of those men, Mudgett or Colosimo, seemed the sort to chase a woman all the way to England when they had other things to do.

The Canon's most notorious Chicago criminal, Abe Slaney, must have really found a sweet spot to be the city's "most dangerous" at the time of Sherlock Holmes's telegram, but then, Holmes telegraphed a New York City detective about Slaney and not an actual Chicago cop. Could Holmes have gotten a reliable answer from a Chicago cop of that era? Perhaps not.

America's former "second city" has its fans, and even has been considered by some as a second home for Sherlockiana's biggest annual event due to its rich ties to the hobby. But as a Peoria resident, I am probably not going to be dropping in for a visit if they ever do. (Sorry, upstaters!)