Murder and Mayhem in Chicago's Vice Districts

By Troy Taylor

From the very beginning, Chicago thrived on its reputation as a wide-open town. After the Great Fire, no part of the city was rebuilt more quickly than the vice districts, where bribed cops and brutal force emboldened professional wickedness to celebrate itself with gala events like the First Ward Ball, begun in honor of a madam's pianist and often so crowded that passed-out drunks couldn't even fall to the floor. Randolph Street was nicknamed Gambler's Row because men gambled with their lives by visiting it. In Little Hell, guns and knives could be rented by the hour. In these seedy areas only put to sleep by Mickey Finn's knockout drinks or Gentle Annie's knockout punches, it is no wonder that Detective Woolridge kept seventy-five disguises, made twenty thousand arrests and was shot at forty-four times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Feb 11, 2009
• ISBN: 9781625841117

Troy Taylor

Troy Taylor is an occultist, supernatural historian and the author of seventy-five books on ghosts, hauntings, history, crime and the unexplained in America. He is also the founder of the American Ghost Society and the owner of the Illinois and American Hauntings Tour companies. Taylor shares a birthday with one of his favorite authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald, but instead of living in New York and Paris like Fitzgerald, Taylor grew up in Illinois. Raised on the prairies of the state, he developed an interest in "things that go bump in the night"? at an early age. As a young man, he channeled that interest into developing ghost tours and writing about haunts in Chicago and Central Illinois. Troy and his wife, Haven, currently reside in Chicago's West Loop neighborhood.