The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003

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Part 1, Chapters 7-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Frozen Music”

Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “A Hotel for the Fair”

Holmes planned to construct a hotel for visitors to the fair. Holmes still managed to evade his creditors. Myrta’s great uncle, Jonathan Belknap, visited Holmes and Myrta’s Wilmette house. He did not like Holmes but still agreed to loan him $2,500 for the construction of a new house for the couple. Holmes forged Belknap’s signature and paid himself the same amount again. Holmes offered Belknap a tour of his properties, which Belknap wisely refused. Finally, Belknap gave in and agreed to stay the night at Holmes’ hotel. During the night, he heard someone try the lock: Patrick Quinlan, the caretaker, tried to insist on entering. Soon after this, the forgery was discovered. Holmes hired a specialist to install a bespoke kiln, similar to a crematory, in the building. Holmes grew distant from his wife again but sent her money. The young women that Holmes hired as clerks frequently disappeared. Soon afterward, he met a family who fitted the mold he had initially outlined in his insurance fraud scheme.

Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “The Landscape of Regret”

The Eastern band of architects arrived in Chicago on January 9th, 1891. After a discouraging visit to the desolate Jackson Park, Root attempted to reignite their morale, and the men discussed the fair over a lavish dinner.

Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary: “Vanishing Point”

In 1891, Icilius “Ned” Conner, a young jeweler, moved into Sixty-third and Wallace with his wife, Julia, and daughter, Pearl. Business prospects looked favorable in view of the proximity of the world fair and a new railway line near the park. Holmes offered Julia, and later her sister Gertrude, a job in the drugstore. Holmes had Ned test the soundproofing of his vault. The police were fully employed with the disappearances of the wealthy, and thus overlooked Holmes’ activities.

Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary: “Alone”

The Exposition’s newly formed Board of Architects met again on January 12th. Burnham attended Root, sick with pneumonia, at his bedside, breaking to visit Hunt, whose gout plagued him while the Board continued throughout the week. The original plans were approved. Root seemed to rally but subsequently died. The Monday after the Sunday funeral, Burnham returned to work. On Tuesday a bank failed in Kansas City, and the president of the fair quit. Workers unions pushed for higher wages and lower working hours.

Part 1, Chapters 7-10 Analysis

The construction of the “castle of death” to suit Holmes’ peculiar requirements was a terrible shadow of the construction of the White City just blocks away. Both gather pace in these chapters. Root and Burnham entertain the eastern architects, with transactional motivations that are in this sense not entirely dissimilar from Holmes’. Burnham was “hell-bent on winning them with flattery that verged on unction—a tactic that Louis Sullivan had known Burnham to deploy with great effect” (104). Though Burnham himself was “not especially susceptible to flattery except in a sentimental way, he soon learned its efficacy when plastered thick on big business men” (104). Holmes’ fine treatment of Belknap in these chapters is also transactional. Holmes can engineer the affections of other people. Though far less macabre, Root’s attempts to seduce the eastern architects parallels Holmes’ attempts to seduce Belknap and his success with women.

The display and exercise of power is another queasy commonality between the Exposition and Holmes’ morbid enterprise. Not only is the fair an expression of the new world-leading status of America, but its leaders fight for precedence between themselves: “Daniel Burnham was obsessed by the feudal idea of power” (104). The fluctuating fortunes of Mayor Harrison, a symbol of power, and the men made rich by the fair are further expressions of Larson’s central examination of power. Larson frames Holmes in a similar role, experimenting with the exertion of power as he dissects his victims and toys with their lives. It is Prendergast’s dream of attaining a position of influence that governs his madness, a strange reflection of the era’s obsession with power.

A new railway line is laid in these chapters, bringing new affluence to the district and new victims to Holmes in the form of the Conner family. Larson emphasizes the parallel between Holmes’ new social connections and the construction of this railroad. Mass migration to the city and the employment of women disrupted family and small-town community life as it had formerly been known in America. Holmes’ destruction of families is a dark perversion of that social shift toward urbanization. Likewise, Holmes’ nightmarish castle of death and destruction is a striking counterpoint to the White City, which would inform the nation’s favorite fairytale castle, Disneyland. It is another ironic coincidence that mass murderer Holmes used as his alias the surname of the era’s famous fictional detective, Sherlock.