H. H. Holmes

• Born: May 16, 1861
• Birthplace: Gilmanton, New Hampshire
• Died: May 7, 1896
• Place of death: Moyamensing Prison, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

American serial killer

Major offenses: Fraud, bigamy, and murder

Active: c. 1890-1895

Locale: Chicago, Illinois; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Toronto, Canada; and Irvington, Indiana

Sentence: Jailed for stock fraud; death by hanging for murder

Early Life

Herman Webster Mudgett, later known as H. H. Holmes (hohmz), was born to a religious mother who could not protect him from his strict, harsh father. A bright child, he was harassed by bullies; once they chased him into a doctor’s office, terrifying him with a skeleton. He also performed experimental operations on neighborhood pets before he was eleven years old.

In 1878, Holmes married Clara Lovering. After working as a schoolmaster, he attended the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor; then he ensconced his wife and son with her parents in New Hampshire. He practiced medicine briefly in Mooers Falls, New York, then moved to Chicago, using the name Henry Howard Holmes. Holmes became partner in a pharmacy in Englewood, then a suburb and later incorporated into the city. In 1887, he bigamously married Myrta Belknap.

Criminal Career

How many people Holmes murdered remains a mystery. His multiple and unreliable confessions vary widely in their facts. Contemporary newspapers speculated that he had murdered as many as two hundred; modern historians estimate the number to be between nine and about fifty.

Holmes’s first murder victim was probably Mrs. E. S. Holton, Holmes’s partner in the Englewood pharmacy. Her disappearance in 1890 left him the business’s sole owner. Ned Conner managed a jewelry counter in Holmes’s store; in late 1891, his wife Julia disappeared with their daughter, Pearl. Other likely victims were his fourth simultaneous wife, Minnie Williams; her sister Nannie; and Holmes’s mistress, Emeline Cigrand. He may have sold some of his victims’ remains to medical schools.

When the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition opened in 1893, Holmes rented out rooms in a huge building he had erected on Sixty-Third Street. The building, called The Castle, had three stories with hidden passageways, an insulated, room-sized vault, gas jets in some rooms, and peepholes in all. In 1895, police discovered that the basement held a dissection and a torture table, mysterious wooden tanks, and an iron stove—eight feet tall by three feet wide—containing remains such as jewelry, clothing, and bones. Holmes may have murdered many visitors; he imprisoned guests and spied on them, gaining a sense of power and sexual thrills. He may have used the gas to incapacitate women and molest them.

Holmes clearly also murdered for financial reasons. Under many names, he committed various swindles, from defaulting on credit to selling faked inventions. His motive in the 1894 murder of longtime assistant Benjamin Pitezel seemed to be insurance fraud; he received ten thousand dollars in Pietzel’s benefits. Holmes murdered three of Pitezel’s children, perhaps to prevent discovery of their father’s death.

Legal Action and Outcome

In 1894, Holmes was jailed for stock fraud. In 1895, Pinkerton detectives arrested Holmes for insurance fraud. Tireless and clever work by Detective Frank Geyer proved Holmes’s culpability for the Pitezel deaths. In an internationally publicized trial, Holmes—primarily serving as his own lawyer—presented his defense but was convicted on four counts of murder; he was hanged.

Impact

Arguably America’s first well-documented serial killer, H. H. Holmes represents the dark side of the Gilded Age, when commerce and invention boomed and Americans admired the self-made tycoon. Chicago, especially, was growing from the ashes of its great fire and offered local opportunity and the glamour of the World’s Fair. Moreover, Holmes’s crimes eerily mirror the burgeoning technological sophistication of the United States as it prepared to enter a new century, both in his killing “factory” and in the “mass production” of his crimes. His exploits scandalized post-Victorian America, receiving far more publicity than his English contemporary, Jack the Ripper. He also inspired a reporter to coin the term “multimurderer,” a forerunner of the current concept of the serial killer. Many books on the Holmes case were published, including Holmes’s own self-serving autobiography. For a time, Holmes was largely forgotten, but attention to his story was revived during the 1970’s and 1980’s with a concomitant rise in interest concerning serial killers.

Bibliography

Franke, David. The Torture Doctor. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1975. Well-researched and detailed discussion about Holmes.

Geary, Rick. The Beast of Chicago: The Murderous Career of H. H. Holmes. New York: NBM Comics, 2003. A graphic novel, impeccably researched both factually and visually.

Holmes, H. H. Holmes’ Own Story. Philadephia: Burk & McFetridge, 1895. Holmes’s autobiography.

Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. New York: Vintage, 2004. Well-researched and well-written analysis, with a useful index, that places Holmes within the context of the Chicago World’s Columbia Exposition and turn-of-the-century Chicago.

Schechter, Harold. Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America’s First Serial Killer. New York: Pocket, 1994. Another accessible, detailed account of Holmes’s criminal career.

Wilson, Colin. “H. H. Holmes: The Torture Doctor.” In The Mammoth Book of Murder, edited by Richard Glyn Jones. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989. Brief but useful, with minor errors.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The History of Murder. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000. Contains a slightly revised version of the essay in the book edited by Jones.