SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE CASE OF PRENDERGAST, THE SLAYER OF CARTER H. HARRISON, MAYOR OF CHICAGO. BY RICHARD DEWEY, M. D., Patrick Eugene Joseph Prendergast was born in Ireland in 1868 and was 25 years old when he shot and killed Mayor Harrison. His parents came to America while he was an infant, leaving him behind, and when he was five years old brought him to the United States. Some evidence given by his mother at his trial, brought out by the prosecution, tended to show that he had an injury of the head when four years old by falling from a bench about four feet high, which rendered him unconscious and thereafter ill for some weeks with nausea and vomiting. It was alleged the effects of this injury lasted three months. The parents of Prendergast came to Chicago. His father died of consumption while Prendergast was still in school. A paternal uncle died insane in Ireland. His mother is living in fair health at the age of about 63. The boy attended school from 7 years of age till about 16. He was rather dull and backward in his studies. At the period of puberty he became peculiar and fond of solitude. It was doubtful whether he was given to onanism. During adolescence he appeared to be threatened with consumption and went to New Mexico for his health. He came home in a destitute condition, "looking like a tramp," but his bodily health appears always thereafter to have been good. He took an interest in study of law; read a book called "Easy Lessons in Law," and when the "single-tax" theories of Henry George began to be agitated he eagerly espoused them. He enjoyed argument on this subject and (his mother and many others testified) wearied all the people around him with discussion of this matter. His principal work from the time he left school seems to have been carrying and delivering newspapers, though he started a laundry at one time which was a failure. He was irregular in his hours and ways but his habits do not appear to have been vicious. He smoked a little, used alcoholics but little. He stated he had slightly practiced onanism and had been otherwise sexually abstinent. It was shown at his trial that he was quarrelsome and contentious, having frequent disputes and occasional physical conflicts with the boys he came in contact with. He had on one occasion disappeared for a time, and it was afterwards found he had been in a rural part of Wisconsin, and apparently thought he was engaged in a religious mission. He took up his abode in a vacant building and engaged in preaching or haranguing on the highways to children and others who were attracted by his peculiar appearance. He had frequently called at the Catholic school where he was educated and engaged in arguments with the religious brothers. He had, when about 20, written out a form of prayer which he claimed was miraculously given him and he sent it to a priest recommending its use as capable of producing miraculous results. Several Catholic priests and brothers who had known the prisoner well testified they had thought him insane for a number of years. He wrote letters and postal cards to the Pope, to Cardinal Gibbons and to the archbishop, offering advice and suggestions. He insisted that the "single-tax" doctrines should be taught in the school which he had attended and became so unreasonable that he was forbidden admission to the school. Among other things, he insisted that certain prayers should be used. He also wrote giving advice to Secretary of the Treasury Carlisle about the finances of the country and to various other Washington officials. Shortly after the election of Carter Harrison as Mayor of Chicago, in the spring of 1893, the prisoner told his mother that his influence had elected Harrison, and that he (Prendergast) was to be corporation counsel of Chicago. He was angry with his mother for not believing him, and said he knew as much law as the present officials. It seems probable that in a joking way Mayor Harrison may have encouraged Prendergast to expect some office and the city corporation counsel had had a call from Prendergast who informed him he was to have his place, and that official had in sport surrendered his office to Prendergast and introduced some of his subordinates to the "new boss." It appeared in his trial that one reason of the prisoner for desiring the position of corporation counsel was an opinion of his that he could accomplish the elevation of the railroad tracks. This was a subject which had been bitterly agitated in Chicago for many years, the city, the greatest centre of railroads, being gridironed with tracks in every direction. The 18 or 20 separate trunk lines have each their many times multiplied miles of tracks and switches all running to the heart of the city, intersecting its most thicklythronged and populous districts-all except one upon the same level as the city streets, and the result that might be expected occurs,― annually hundreds of human beings are slain at these grade-crossings. The agitation due to this monstrous abuse had no doubt affected powerfully the mind of Prendergast. The denunciations of the press, and the indignation meetings of the people on the one hand, and the indifference of the corporations and the venality and supineness of the city government, on the other, had aroused such a state of public feeling as to furnish a brain like that of Prendergast with a motive strong enough to engender fanaticism. He conceived of himself as one who could correct this abuse by being made corporation counsel. He built upon this foundation of vanity, imbecility and the political ambition to which his race is so prone, a vision of himself as a great reformer and deliverer of the people. He had visions of fame and power with himself as the central figure, all the more vivid and splendid because unlimited by any appreciation of their impracticable and impossible nature. While the world looked upon him as an insignificant, even pusillanimous creature, he regarded himself as a hero and a genius; even more than that; as a sacred messenger from God, soon to be applauded and hailed as a deliverer by the very newspapers he was now humbly carrying from door to door. Hence his demand upon the Mayor for office, and the bitter disappointment of continued failure. The hope-deferred which maketh the heart even of the common, everyday office seeker sick, was intensified in Prendergast by a growing feeling in his weak mind that a divinely-conferred mission was being prevented in its accomplishment and that the Mayor, by his indifference was not only breaking faith with an important political supporter, but was an obstacle to the execution of the divine will, and must therefore be removed out of the way. About 7.30 P. M. on October, 28, 1893, Prendergast called at the residence of Mayor Harrrison and asked to see him. The Mayor was resting, having been busy at the World's Fair all day, and Prendergast was told to return in half an hour, which he did. He was then admitted to the presence of the Mayor and left alone with him. He had been with the Mayor but a few moments when shots were heard and it was after wards shown that Prendergast had with him a six-chambered revolver loaded with five cartridges. He fired at and hit the Mayor three times. The family coachman, hearing the shots, entered the room and later testified that on seeing him enter, Prendergast leveled the revolver at him, (the coachman), and then, seeing the coachman retire, turned his aim again at Mayor Harrison and fired, and then stooping down and skulking, made his way to the door, and, going out, fired back as if to prevent pursuit. The prisoner when this testimony was given denied that he fired back or skulked, though freely admitting the shooting of the Mayor. From the Mayor's house Prendergast went to the police station and surrendered himself and announced that he had shot Carter Harrison. The next morning he asked for the newspapers, and being given the supplement of one, stated that was not what he wanted, but the front page with an account of the shooting of the Mayor. In my visits of examination to Prendergast at the request of the State's Attorney, I found a young man, shy in his demeanor, yet with an air of self-importance, lean and ill-favored, of stooping shoulders and shambling gait, with a sinister expression of face imparted by grimly set lips, the upper thin, the lower large and full. A "canine" expression was given to the mouth by a frequent lifting or curling of the upper lip, which showed the teeth and produced a decidedly vicious effect. There were numerous wrinkles of the face around the angles of the eyes and mouth, stiff hair of a decidedly red color, and certain malformations of the cranium and facial bones to be presently mentioned. Dr. E. S. Talbot, of Chicago, has kindly supplied the accompanying portrait of Prendergast taken from his photograph, and the following is his description of his physical condition and abnormalities taken from his recent work: * "Height, five feet, seven inches. Weight, 132 pounds; hair, red, coarse and stiff; very little upon face. Nose fairly normal, thin at bridge, broad at alae. Ears large and projecting; lobes short and broad; tragus both well developed; helix broad, with typical tubercles at the upper and outer border of the ear. [Morel: degenerate ear.] Lips, upper, small and thin; lower excessively developed, more prominent because of undeveloped upper jaw. Face;-arrest of development of the bones of the face, especially at the alae *The Aetiology of Osseous Deformities of Head, Face, Jaws and Teeth, by Eugene 8. Talbot, M. D., D. D. S., Professor of Dental Surgery, Woman's Medical College, Chicago, Ills. Third edition revised and enlarged. Chicago: The W. T. Keener Co., 1894. of the nose. Zygomatic arches normal, but appear prominent owing to the arrest of the bones of the face. Lower jaw normal. Forehead receding. Head sunken at the bregma; occipital portion excessively developed; circumference 22.2 inches (57 millimeters); antero-posterior, 7.75 inches (20 millimeters); lateral 6.36 inches (16 millimeters); lateral index, 82; therefore extreme brachycephalic. Feet large; hands normal; fingers long and skinny. Width outside first permanent molar 2.25 inches; width outside second bicuspid, 2 inches; width of vault, 1.25; height of vault, .75; antero-posterior, 2." I am aware that many attach no significance to cranial measurements and deformities of the osseous system-or rather, claim that we do not know what significance to attach to them, and indeed we must all admit that we are not in a position to say how much any one or more osseous deformities mean in any given case. It is true that some mentally and morally normal individuals present as great deformities as any member of the defective classes, and the deformities among the normal impress themselves more powerfully in proportion to their number; but the more powerful impression produced upon the mind by the exception leads perhaps to an exaggerated idea as to the prevalence of exceptions and to undue doubt as to whether any rule exists, since we have no full or reliable data as yet upon this subject. The outline of the circumference of Prendergast's head as shown by a conformateur" such as hatters use, gave a decidedly |