SOMEBODY SHOOT THAT SON-OF-A-BITCH

I find it meaningful that Huey Pierce Long was murdered on the ground level 2^nd floor of the building he inspired. At 34 stories, the $5 million ($81 million today) limestone clad skyscraper remains, 80 years after its Depression Era construction, the tallest state capital building (above) in the nation.  Along with this singular monument, “The King Fish” built highways, bridges, charity hospitals, schools, sewers, electrical power grids and housing for the poor. He provided free text books for every child in the state, and dragged Louisiana into the twentieth century -  all in the face of fierce corporate opposition and propaganda.  And if the state's metamorphoses was ruthless and ugly, then Huey's critics must bare part of the blame, because their crimes fueled his. One critic publicly complained, “Good God, I wish somebody would shoot that son-of-a-bitch.”

Standard Oil funded the impeachment of Governor Long back in 1929, after he slapped a five cent a barrel tax on oil profits in Louisiana. The assault failed, but Huey vowed to make his attackers pay, saying, “Now,...I dynamite 'em out of my path.” Even after he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1933, he imposed himself on state politics with an unrelenting vindictiveness. Typical was his assault on the Pavy family.  Patriarch Benjamin Pavy (above)“a large jovial man with a gray mustache and a full main of silver hair”, had been a district judge in St. Landry Parish for 25 years, and had threatened to arrest Long's poll workers in the election that saw his brother, Dr. Felix Pavy, win the district's seat in the the Louisiana House.

In retaliation the Kingfish (above) had Pavy's youngest brother, Paul, fired from his job as the principle of Opelousas High School, and then had Pavy's eldest daughter, Marie, removed from her job as a third grade teacher in Eunice. And when even that failed to convince Benjamin Pavy to fall into line, the first bill Huey shepherded through the special session of House that September, “House Bill Number One”, was to redistrict Judge Pavy out of his seat. And to make his defeat certain, Huey even threatened to resurrect an old smear.

Back in 1910, the first time Benjamin Pavy had run for judge, his infamous opponent, Sheriff Marion Swords,  had reminded voters that Pavy's father-in-law, Edward Veazie, had produced several children with a black mistress. Now, according the Huey's close aide Joe Fisher, “Huey had warned Pavy...for six months to lay off or he would say Pavy had “coffee blood”. Huey (above, right)  was like a rattlesnake" said Joe, "He always warned first.”

Such “black familes”, like Veazie's, were far more common in the hypocritical “Jim Crow” south than anyone on either side of the divide would publicly admit. Pavy had lived half  his life under the threat of being made a social pariah. But just three months earlier his youngest daughter, Yvonne, had given birth to a son. And Pavy's son-in-law, 29 year old Dr. Carl Weiss (above) -  “unassuming, successful...apolitical” -  was unprepared when this insidious racial smear threatened his innocent son.

Just after nine that Sunday evening of 8 September, 1935, Huey Long left the House chamber, trailing a small retinue of supporters, reporters and his six state trooper bodyguards.

Huey had been receiving death threats since the impeachment trial, but lately the volume and tenor of the threats had ramped up. In January some 200 armed “Square Dealers”, an anti-Long militia, had occupied the East Baton Rouge Courthouse. The Louisiana Nation Guard had been called out. There was an exchange of gunfire and tear gas at the airport. No one had been killed, but clearly tempers were rising.

Halfway down the ornate, ten foot wide hallway (above), Huey stepped into the reception area of Governor Alvin Olin "OK" King's office, (nicknamed “O.K.” because that was invariably his response to instructions from Huey). In twelve hours the Senator wanted a meeting of “the boys” in O.K.'s office, and the governor's secretary assured him “Yes, they were all informed, and they’ll meet you at 9 o’clock.” Observed another of Huey's aides, the Governor “was in a very good humor that night.” Senator Long then resumed his lopping walk toward the Senate Chamber further down the hall, where the King Fish intended on pushing his agenda, first thing in the morning. It was just 9:20 pm.

Abruptly, a small bespectacled man stepped out from behind a decorative pillar. Dr. Weiss held a Belgian automatic .32 caliber pistol in his hand, with six rounds in the magazine and one the chamber. At four feet from Senator Long, Weiss fired his first round. It struck Huey in the right side of his abdomen, just below his rib cage, ripping through his intestines, and exited through his back. Huey yelled, and jumped away from the gun. Weiss tried to shoot again, but the empty cartridge from his first shot had jammed in the ejector. A terrified Huey escaped down the hall, past the entrance to the Senate chamber, and down the stairs.

Behind him, Officer Murphy Roden grabbed at the smoking pistol, and began to wrestle with Weiss. Both men fell, but Roden was up first, stepping back, drawing his own .38 caliber pistol, and firing ten shots into the crouching doctor. At the same time three other officers emptied their .45 guns into the assassin.

 Less than ten seconds after firing his only shot at Huey Long, Dr. Carl Weiss was dead, his corpse perforated with some 62 bullets, including a single shot through the forehead and one through the right eye. Weiss probably felt only the first of them, and not even that one for very long.

Surprised at seeing Senator Huey Long, alone, staggering off the stairs onto the first floor, Public Service Commissioner James O'Connor rushed to his side. Huey blurted out, "Hell, man, take me to the hospital.” O'Connor led Long out to the rear of the building, where they flagged down a private car.  It sped them north, to “Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium” (above), just a mile away. The hospital checked him in at 9:30 pm

 

Two of the best surgeons in the state were sent for. Speeding to Baton Rouge, they were forced to detour around work on one of Huey's new highways, and had an accident. They never made it to Baton Rouge.

About eleven that night, the still conscious King Fish agreed to undergo the surgery, preformed by Dr. Edgar Hull, a faculty member of the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans. The operation successfully repaired most of the damage to Huey's intestine. 

But in this per-antibiotic age, bacteria from his gut had already infected his other organs. Huey never regained conciseness. He spent the last 29 hours of his life “practically moribund:”, feverish, choking and coughing, until he died at 4:10 am., on Tuesday, 10 September, 1935. He was all of 42 years old. 

The day before Huey died, Dr. Carl Wiess had been buried in Baton Rouge's Roselawn Cemetery. Hundreds attended his funeral, including members and leaders of the “Square Dealers” Their numbers made his funeral “the largest ever held for an accused political assassin in the United States”.  Carl's wife and son, his father and mother, also attended. When two press photographers tried to take pictures of the family, they were assaulted, and their cameras were smashed. Carl's father-in-law, Judge Benjamin Pavy was “too sick” to attend.

They buried Huey Long in his tuxedo. As he lay in the rotunda of “his” building, 200,000 people filed past his coffin. Another 100,000 attended his funeral, on 12 September, 1935. 

He was buried in the gardens in front of his statehouse

Initially his grave was marked by a simple stone, but in 1940 the state erected a 35 foot tall memorial to Huey. 

Atop the stone stands an 8 foot bronze version of the King Fish, gazing upon his building. 

On the back is the inscription, “Here Lies Louisiana's Great Son Huey Pierce Long, An Unconquered Friend of the Poor Who Dreamed Of, The Day When the Wealth of the Land, Would Be Spread Among All the People.”

 

Huey Long was far from perfect. But then, so were his enemies. And in that regard, it was at least a fair fight.

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POLITICAL PHOBIA

I think of this guy as just another one of those self-made right-wing technocrats, who used his fortune to finance an ultra-conservative agenda - a 19th century Ross Perot.  In his case the technology was the telegraph, and the agenda was the 19^th century version of Islamaphobia. Samuel Finley Breese Morse (above) invented the telegraph. But before he learned about electricity he learned to fear the 'Bavarian Illuminati' from his father's Sunday sermons. As an adult Samuel proselytized that the Roman Catholic Church was flooding America with Irish and German Catholic immigrants intent on establishing a new Vatican City in the Mississippi valley. Wrote Morse, “Surely American Protestants...(will) discover...the cloven foot of this subtle foreign heresy. They will see that Popery is...a political as well as a religious system; that...differs totally...from all other forms of religion in the country.”  And like his 21st century prodgeny, the poison he was peddling (and funding) feed on fear and ignorance, and grow strong.

It sprouted into full flower in the congressional elections of 1854, catching on “like measles”, according to one Democrat. The organization was officially known as “The American Party”, but commonly refereed to as the Know Nothings, because its members were coached to respond to all questions by admitting only, “I don't know”, and because, frankly, in the eyes of their critics, the majority just seemed to be not very bright.  Membership was limited to white males of proven English heritage, and usually self described evangelical Protestants.  And although most of the new candidates had never been active in politics or held public office before,  they won 61 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives that year. They elected a governor and all the other posts open that year in Massachusetts and Maine. They controlled the state legislatures in Pennsylvania and most of New England. They gained advantage in Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Tennessee by taking no position on slavery. This hurt them in the south, as did being linked to violence and even murders in Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Boston, New York, Columbus, Cincinnati and New Orleans. Still, the Know Nothings looked certain to capture the White House in 1856. And then came Bloody Monday in Louisville, Kentucky.

They held three elections in Louisville in 1855. On 7 April voters threw out the incumbent mayor, who had converted to Catholicism when he married, and elected a Know Nothing replacement and a Know Nothing majority on the city council. They followed this a month later by electing a Know Nothing majority of county court judges. Then the school board fired every Catholic teacher, save one. The Know Nothings were feeling both confident and paranoid - it was the nature of the party and the movement. Now another Know Nothing, Charles Morehead, was favored to win the governorship of Kentucky on yet another election, Monday 6 May .  On the night before, 1,500 Know Nothings staged a torch light march through Catholic neighborhoods, warning them “to keep their elbows in” come election morning.

Maybe no one other than Reuben Thomas Durrett (above) could have made the nation face the truth about the Know Nothings. Others wrote about it, but they lacked his resume. R.T., as he preferred to be known, was a defense attorney, and familiar with arguing unpopular causes. He was “intellectually and physically...a magnificent man.” More than that he was a poet, and a lover of truth and history. He had a 50,000 volume personal library. And 300 years earlier, his French Protestant ancestors had barely escaped the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in France when Catholic bigots had cleaned house. So when the political spin machine smothered every other honest voice in Louisville, it was R.T. who validated the reality. “To my mind,” he wrote, “the whole secret of the success of this disgraceful affair was...that the Know Nothing sympathizers were prepared and armed for the conflict...”

According to R.T., the thugs, hired as “special police”, formed a gauntlet in front of the polls. If a would-be voter were an immigrant from Germany or Ireland he was presumed to be Catholic, and was “... ordered by one of the bullies to leave...” And if he refused, “...he was attacked by the whole mob, severely beaten and driven away. If the man showed fight, his life was in great danger." Recently ousted Mayor James Speed watched the beatings on the courthouse front lawn from eight in the morning until six. “It was not fighting man to man," he recorded,  "but as many as could fall upon a single Irishman or German and beat him with sticks or short clubs...”  The clubs had been specially made with lead weights in their tips, and mass produced.  In the afternoon Speed was told 200 shotgun wielding “Germans” had captured a polling place. Speed knew this to be a fantasy and said so. But his informant, a judge, “replied with warmth showing that he believed it to be true.” About four in the afternoon, things went from bad to worse.

Two Louisville (above) Catholic activists, Theodore Rhodes and David Doughtery were warning everyone in their east side neighborhood to stay off Main street. They stopped at Micheal O'Connor's grocery store, at the corner of 10^th street and Main and warned him to close. As they came out a Know Nothing ran up to them. Basil Rhodes, Theodore's father, standing in front of his home a block away, watched the man shoot his son dead. The gun shot drew Know Nothings from all directions, and it quickly became accepted that a Catholic had killed a Know Nothing.  The exact opposite of what had really happened. What followed was mass murder.

The worst of it was Quinn's Row, a block of 12 three story row houses along Main between 11^th and 12^th streets. Around eight that evening a Know Nothing mob set fire to a ground floor corner grocery run by a family named Long. Recorded a Catholic newspaper, “Seeking to escape...the wretched inhabitants reached the street only to meet death in another form. As soon as one appeared at a door he was fired at...” Mr. Long and two of his sons died that night, as did several of the residents of the upper floor apartments. “A number were taken off badly wounded, and others...returned to the burning houses, preferring rather to be burned than to meet the infuriated mob. One man escaped in woman’s clothes, was detected and shot. Another, who came out covered with a blanket, and, leaning on the arm of his wife, was torn away, and deliberately shot.”

While the first building was still raging, the feed store next door and its apartments went up, followed by a vacant house, then a tobacconist. Noted the newspaper, “How many of these miserable people thus caged in their own houses were burned alive there can be no computation.... Two men were hanged from their banisters of their own homes and also consumed in the flames.” In the last structure on the street, a rooming house, Patrick Quinn, who owned the entire block, was driven outside like the others. Recognized because of his investments around the city (and his brother, who was a priest) , he was singled out, beaten to death, and his corpse was thrown back into the fire.

The official version said that 22 people had been killed in the entire city on Bloody Monday. It is much more likely that the number was at least 100. The death toll would have been higher but in the German district one of the first buildings looted was Armbruster's brewery. The rioters got so drunk they could only satisfy themselves with torching that building before passing out. The new Know Nothing Mayor, John Barbee, managed to save two Catholic Churches from the arsonists, but no one was ever prosecuted for the murders, the beatings or the arson. In response the despised immigrants voted with their feet. Ten thousand left Louisville over the next few months, almost 25% of the cities' population. In the city left behind businesses failed, unemployment soared and city coffers dried up. Charles Morehead was easily elected governor in 1855, but it was the classic tale of “be careful what you wish for”.  And the bloodbath destroyed sympathy for the Know Nothings.  There would never be an American President from Morse's American Party.

Most of the Irish moved to Chicago. Typical was ex-Mayor Speed, who became active in Republican Party politics and served in the Lincoln administration. The Germans mostly moved to St. Louis and Milwaukee, and some to Kansas City, Kansas – ensuring those states would remain in the Union come the Civil War. It was that war which put the entire Know Nothing movement into perspective.

The Civil War made the Know Nothing agenda obsolete. Immigration was the great enemy in the eyes of Samuel Morse. But the actual enemy was the industrial revolution. The mathematician Alfred Whitehead observed, “The major advances in civilization....all but wreck the societies in which they occur.” And in his book “War and Peace in the Global Village” Canadian thinker Marshall McLuhan explains why that is so. “When one has been hurt by a new technology, when the private person or corporate body finds its entire identity endangered...it lashes back in a fury of self-defense...But... the symptom against which we lash out may be caused by something about which we know nothing.” McLuhan calls that symptom “Phantom Pain”, and compares it to the agony amputees report they feel in missing limbs.

Although America has institutionalized such economic  revolutions, and has won economic advantage from them - such as the current electronic revolution -  that does not make the cultural revolutions that  accompany them any easier to live with. Politics are never the solution. Politics are only another symptom. The solutions are always within ourselves, trusting ourselves to deal with whatever threats we perceive in our future  And the longer we blame others, Catholics or Muslims, Jews or Blacks, liberals or conservatives the longer and the more our nation suffers. The solution is never who to blame, but how together we can meet the challenges.

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BLOODY JACK Chapter Twenty-Six

I suppose the greatest problem with the real Jack the Ripper story is that the ending is so unsatisfying.

A poet of the age predicted, "They've captured Leather Apron now, if guilty you'll agree; he'll have to meet a murderer's doom, and hang upon a tree" But the murderer was never identified, never tried, never publicly punished, never danced at the end of a rope. But then, that is the horror of real murder. The victim cannot be recovered, nor can the victim's loved-ones be made whole. The horror of a real murder usually dies only when the killer, and those who loved the victim, die.

Not so with Jack the Ripper. His horror has so far survived 130 years after his last victim bled out in a dark and dirty corner of the dark and dirty Whitechapel.  Part of the reason for the longevity of his horror is the photo (above) taken in the tiny sad room at 13 Miller's Court, Dorset Street. 

Part of the reason is that the newspapers sold 1 million additional papers a day during the “Autumn of Terror”: - August, September, October and November of 1888. 

And part of the reason is that the historical-fictional Jack the Ripper has proved too profitable to let him die. But the police in 1888 were dealing with a real killer.

Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (above, front center), one the smartest officers in Whitechapel,  reminded readers of his memoir what the police knew by middle of September. “The perpetrator,” he wrote, “...was in the habit of using a certain public-house, and of remaining there until closing time...all of the victims were all of the same class... and living within a quarter of a mile of each other; all were murdered within half a mile area; all were killed in the same manner...he (the killer) lived in the district.” So the police - well at least those below the management level - were not fools. They knew who they were looking for. But finding him was not their top priority.

After the Hanbury Street murder of Annie Chapman on 8 September, Whitechapel and Spitafield were flooded with uniformed Constables and plain clothes Detectives, even employing the Whitechapel Vigilantes. As Commissioner Sir Charles Warren had said in his petulant self defense written in September and published in the November Murray’s Magazine, “...the primary object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime...” And that was what the police concentrated on – preventing the killer from killing again. And they did.

For 14 days – Friday, 15 September, to Friday, 28 September – Kosminski found the police foiling his searches for another victim, until he was forced outside his hunting grounds to Aldegate, where the public/police net was thinner. 

There, in the early hours of Sunday, 30 September,  he murdered Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square. But even then Warren's plan worked. 

The police were able to focus on Aaron Kosminski, living with his brother just down the block on Goulston Street (above) from where the Eddowes bloody apron was found.  Then, during all of October, the “tails” which Chief Inspector Donald Swanson pinned on Kosminski kept him from claiming another victim - 

...at least until 8 November when Kosminski was able to isolate Mary Kelly in her room – earlier in the evening, before the pubs had closed. And even then he did not kill until closer to dawn, when Kelly's singing, as reported by a neighbor, finally stopped.

The police never had solid evidence to arrest Aaron Kosminski. But Aaron Kosminski was still alive and no longer killing. Why? First there was Abraham, Aaron's older brother. Living with the first paternal role model Aaron had known since his father's death in 1874 would have been a stabilizing influence. 

And second, whoever the Ripper was, he was insane but he wasn't nuts. He did not want to get caught. He had always retained enough control to avoid witnesses and the police, to delay his gratification until the he was certain of his own safety. And by January or February of 1889, with no further killings, the police tails of Aaron Kosminski must have been superseded by more pressing matters.

 

And third, accepting Special Agent Douglas' profile, the Ripper was extremely passive until the assault. He needed the prostitute to initiate contact. He needed alcohol to lower his own inhibitions. And he needed the victim to be unconscious or dead before he could show the knife and penetrate her with it. This speaks of a man so repressed he might stand in the rain rather than asking to come inside. He was a paranoid schizophrenic but a high functioning one, as was proven by his arrest on a Saturday in December of 1889 for walking an unmuzzled dog in Cheapside.

Charles Dickens called Cheapside (above)  “...the busiest thoroughfare in the world...Here the two great arteries of Oxford Street...the Strand and Fleet Street from the west...Bishopsgate and Leadenhall from the east....Moorgate on the north and King William Street on the south, are all united...” The Cheapside Street market had been in existence for hundreds of years, but during Victorian times, says Dickens, it was “...almost monopolized by men's shops: hosiers and shirt makers, tailors and tobacconists, and above all by jewelers.” 

In fact, says Dickens, “The stranger will be particularly struck with the absence of women...in Cheapside (above)...there is scarcely a woman to be seen to every hundred men.” It would appear an odd place for a homicidal maniac with a particular hatred for women to be walking his dog, muzzled or unmuzzled.

Having been arrested, the 23 year old Aaron Kosminski made a competent presentation in court. He argued that since he did not own the dog he was not responsible for muzzling it. Like arguing a parking ticket in court, logic was of course no help  But when the magistrate found him guilty and assessed a 10 shilling fine, Aaron was quick enough to argue that it was the Jewish sabbath, and his faith forbid him from handling money. He presented a normal enough image that he was allowed to go free, returning on Monday to pay the fine. As Scientific American pointed out in September 2014, “...very few serial killers suffer from any mental illness to such a debilitating extent that they are considered to be insane by the criminal justice system.”

So this was the man who convinced Mary Jane Kelly to open her door to him, convinced Annie Chapman to go to the back yard with him, and convinced Martha Tabram to lead him off the already dark George Yard, through the narrow passage to the courtyard behind the buildings, and then up the unlighted stairs. Her trip to her own death may have been the longest of all the victims, requiring the greatest confidence that the man who was about to murder her, posed no threat whatsoever.

Seven months later, on Saturday, 12 July, 1890, this same man was meekly led by his brother-in-law to the Mile End Workhouse (above), where he was described as having been “insane for the last two years.”  It must have been hard for a Jew to turn their own blood relative over to the charity of Christians, but Arron was hearing voices, had stopped washing and refused food from any person's hand because he feared being poisoned, preferring to eat discards from the gutter. Aaron was granted admission. However 3 days later, either because the doctors suspected he was malingering, or because he fooled them, his brother Abraham took him home again.

It was not to last. On 4 February of 1891 the police brought him back to the Workhouse. The same issues were mentioned – not working, not washing and eating from the gutter – but this time the police said he had threatened his sister Martha with a knife. His family did not challenge his admission, and 3 days later, on 7 February, 1891 he was transferred to the Jewish wing of the infamous long corridors of the Colony Hatch Asylum for the “pauper insane” in Barnet, North London (above). The paperwork justification for transfer has not survived the century, but we do know Aaron Kosminski arrived with both hands tied behind his back.

Colony Hatch adhered to the Victorian belief that all problems are better with organization – from morning calisthenics to regimented meals. The 2,000 patients were also expected to work, in the tailor shop, the garden or just washing floors. Since most of the patients came from the East End the asylum had a kosher kitchen and a Yiddish interpreter. The records at Coolny Hatch have survived and they detail Aaron's 3 year transgression from “apathetic” to "Incoherent, at times excited and violent." The staff noted, “He declares that he is guided and...controlled by an instinct that informs his mind, he says that he knows the movements of all mankind, he refuses food from others because he is told to do so, and he eats out of the gutter for the same reason”

Eventually the violence became predominant, and Aaron's last stop was the complex of buildings at the Levesden Asylum For Imbeciles in Abbots Langley, 20 miles northwest of London (above). 

Aaron survived here for a quarter of a century, having spent most of his life institutionalized. The staff noted, "Patient does not know his age or how long he has been here." 

Aaron Kosminski died of a gangrene infection at the age of 54 years, on Monday, 24 March, 1919. At the time of his death he weighed just 96 pounds. But he lived longer than any of  his victims.

Kosminski even out-lived his would-be nemesis, Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (above). After retiring from the Metropolitan Police in 1896, with over 50 awards and commendations, including being named a Druid of Distinction, Reid moved to Hampton-on-Sea, atop the chalk cliffs of England's east coast. Here he became an English eccentric.

He renamed his home “Reid's Ranch”, and painted the outside walls with castle battlements and cannon aimed at the ocean. He opened a stand in his garden shed (above), from which he sold postcards – mostly featuring himself - and lemon-aide and wrote crank letters to the local newspaper. He died at the age of 61, on 5 December, 1917, the same year he finally married.

Thus I end my version of the story of Jack the Ripper – just another human being,  more unhappy and violent than most, but just another human being.

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