Ten Fascinating Locations in Old New York, Part Four.

In this series of posts, I have been presenting the real life locations where I set my novel, A Predator's Game. The action took place in 1896. My characters, Nikola Tesla and Arthur Conan Doyle, battle with the multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes.

Part One. The American Tract Society Building, The Suicide Curves of the Ninth Avenue El, and The American Museum of Natural History.
Part Two. Bellevue Morgue, Hart Island, and The Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane.
Part Three. Tesla's Laboratory on East Houston, and the Eden Musée.

This post: Niagara Falls. The Adams Powerhouse. Goat Island and Terrapin Point.

The novel ends at Niagara Falls. This was inevitable. The conceit of my novel is that Nikola Tesla, tall, cerebral, other-worldly, acts in the role of Sherlock Holmes. The visiting author, Arthur Conan Doyle serves in the role of Dr. Watson. The multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes (the evil Holmes) functions as Moriarty.

In late 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls. During his real-life tour of America in the 1890s, he visited Niagara Falls and declared it should have been where Sherlock Holmes had died.

At the same time, in the mid-1890s, Niagara Falls was the site of Nikola Tesla's supreme triumph. The massive hydroelectric plant assembled there foretold the future. Electricity would define the progress of the coming century.

Two anecdotes.

In his youth, Nikola Tesla constructed paddle-wheels out of twigs and leaves and sent them spinning in a local creek. When he saw a postcard of Niagara Falls, he wondered how large a paddle-wheel would be necessary to harness its power.

A second relevant story is about Tesla and his cat, Macak, goes back to when the inventor was three.

". . .as I stroked Macak's back, I saw a miracle that made me speechless with amazement. Macak's back was a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks loud enough to be heard all over the house.

My father was a very learned man; he had an answer for every question. But this phenomenon was new even to him. "Well," he finally remarked, "this is nothing but electricity, the same thing you see through the trees in a storm."

Is nature a gigantic cat? If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God, I concluded." From: A Story of Youth Told by Age, Nikola Tesla.

 And so it was foreordained that Tesla would go on to discover the method of generating large amounts of electricity and would achieve this feat at Niagara Falls. In 1896, the electricity generated by the Niagara Falls complex doubled the electrical output for the entire United States. Some were skeptical that so much electricity would be used. They were wrong. Having electricity available created new industries. As an example, before having the electricity necessary for its refinement, aluminum was a precious and rarely used metal; an aluminum cap was placed atop the Washington Monument as a crown. The generators at Niagara helped create Alcoa as a major business and aluminum as a commonplace material.

The Adams Powerhouse at Niagara Falls (right)

The Adams Powerhouse was designed with cathedral-like grandeur by Tesla's friend, Stanford White and funded in part by Jacob Astor. In one of the tragedies that followed Tesla at the margins of his life, White would be murdered in one of the most spectacular and sordid crimes of the early 20th century (deemed "The Crime of the Century" by the press). Jacob Astor would die aboard the Titanic.
 

Armature being prepared for the Adams Powerhouse

Adams Powerhouse, 1902 (extended to add more generators)

Goat Island and Terrapin Point.

Niagara Falls is not the most ostentatious waterfall in the world, but among great waterfalls, it is the most accessible. At the time of the 1890s, the Victoria Falls and Iguazu Falls were known to the world at large, but few could venture to see them.

Goat Island divides Niagara Falls into two, into what are commonly called the American Falls and the Canadian Falls (also called the Horseshoe Falls). Goat Island is a primary tourist location with excellent views of both falls. In the 1890s, the more daring tourists had further options.

The Biddle Staircase and later the Biddle Elevator descended from the cliffside of Goat Island and allowed tourists to see the falls from below. That area below was a hostile landscape of boulders and scrub trees, but the views were spectacular.

The Biddle Stairs, in operation from 1829 to 1927. (minus the spectacular view)

The rickety bridge to Terrapin Rock at the time of the tower.

Just off of Goat Island, on the Canadian side and at the brink of the falls, was Terrapin Point. A dodgy bridge brought the braver tourists here, essentially just a rock at the brink of the cliff. From the 1820s until 1889, a tower was set at this site. It was blown up, with the promise of a new one soon being built to replace it. This new tower was never built.

Another view.

The bridge and Terrapin Point after the tower was blown up.

-----

Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------

Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, features Nikola Tesla as detective.

Continue reading →

Ten Fascinating Locations in Old New York, Part Three.

Tesla in his East Houston Laboratory

In this series of posts, I have been presenting the real life locations where I set my novel, A Predator's Game. The action took place in 1896. My characters, Nikola Tesla and Arthur Conan Doyle, battle with the multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes.

In my first post, I presented The American Tract Society Building, The Suicide Curves of the Ninth Avenue El, and The American Museum of Natural History. In the second post, I looked at how old New York handled its dead and undesirables, looking at the Bellevue Morgue, Hart Island, and The Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane. In this post I will look at Tesla's laboratory on the north side of Houston and at the king of the dime store museums, The Eden Musée.

Location #4. Tesla's Laboratory on East Houston.
Location #3. The Eden Musée.



To be continued with:
Location #2. The Adams Power Station.
Location #1. Goat Island and Terrapin Point, Niagara Falls.

Tesla's Laboratory on East Houston.

I've undertaken some novel research regarding Tesla's laboratories, including uncovering photographs of the building on East Houston. Although Tesla created some of his most seminal inventions at previous laboratories, the East Houston address housed his work for the longest period.

Tesla situated his laboratory on the fifth and sixth floors of 46 to 48 East Houston in Manhattan. The building was torn down in 1929. In a 1901 article, the first floor entrance was described as "barn-like" and a freight elevator took the visitors to the upper floors. (Tesla--the original hipster?)

From my novel:

  Long, sturdy tables ran aside the walls of the laboratory, topped by a variety of instruments: turbines and rotors, along with the tools to make machines, to score, slice, and twist metal. A forest of devices crowded the center of the floor: squat spools, towering columns and a six-foot disk inlaid with a hypnotic spiral of copper.
  Holmes imagined some as giant chess pieces. A Tesla coil rising from the floor had elegant, sensuous lines and was topped with a sphere. It was the bishop. Another, taller coil wore a jagged copper crown: the queen. The waist-high spools of wire were the rooks.

From The Omaha Illustrated Bee, December 18, 1904, p. 5

As I point out at length in a previous post, the photo presented below was mislabeled and this was Tesla's laboratory at 46 to 48 East Houston shortly before it was torn down to make room for the expansion of East Houston.

Tesla's E. Houston laboratory (correctly 46 to 48 E. Houston), shortly before demolition.

The Eden Musée.

Dime museums sprung up in the late 1800s, as a quieter and more permanent alternative for audiences to view the curiosities one might otherwise find at freak shows or circuses. They often mixed morals and the morbid. A waxwork display might depict the perils of alcohol alongside the murders of Jack the Ripper. They might include jars with medical specimens or special musical events.

The Eden Musée which opened on 23rd Street near 6th Avenue in 1884, was the high-brow establishment among these museums. It included such features as the Leaders of the World in wax, where curious visitors could walk up to figurines of royalties. It included the amazing automaton, Ajeeb, an expert at chess (inside the robot was an actual chess champion). And it included a Chamber of Horrors with wax figurines of murderers and victims as entertainment.

From my book:

  Built with continental pretensions, the three-story dime museum presented a French Gothic façade with statues of plump ladies serving as columns. A decorative arch displayed a carving of sea nymphs. Its steep roof sloped over its third floor, plunging down to meet an ornamental railing. Garish streamers were slung from window to window. A banner screamed in three-foot-tall letters: Open To All! Come Visit Our Chamber of Horrors!

Eden Musee, 1899. Not as decorated as on other occasions.

Roman Diorama with Wax Figures for highbrow edification.

An Invitation to Come See the Famous Chess-Playing Automaton and Seances

Closed in 1915, the museum has had an enduring legacy. An exhibit in Coney Island purchased some of the material at a bankruptcy sale to outfit a new Eden Musée dedicated to the waxworks. This was destroyed by fire in 1928 only to be rebuilt with new figurines. The name was franchised to Boston for a short-lived museum whose waxworks were then sent to Cedar Point, Ohio where it operated until 1966. More recently, the name has been revived at Cedar Point for a haunted house exhibit. In 2010, a television series titled Musée Eden was set in Montreal. It was a thriller/period piece centering around a wax museum.

Continued in Part Four.

-----

Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------

Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, features Nikola Tesla as detective.

Continue reading →

Ten Fascinating Locations in Old New York, Part Two

In my novel, A Predator's Game, set in 1896, my characters, Nikola Tesla and Arthur Conan Doyle, visit several noteworthy sites in New York and the surrounding areas. These locations range from the exotic to the macabre. In my previous post, I presented The American Tract Society Building, The Suicide Curves of the Ninth Avenue El, and The American Museum of Natural History. Today, I will deal with the fringes of Old New York and how the city handled its dead and mentally ill.


The Locations.

In today's post.
Location #7. The Bellevue Morgue.
Location #6. Hart Island.
Location #5. The Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane.


In a future post:
Location #4. Tesla's Laboratory on East Houston.
Location #3. The Eden Musée.
Location #2. The Adams Power Station.
Location #1. Goat Island and Terrapin Point, Niagara Falls.

7. The Bellevue Morgue.

The Bellevue Hospital complex resided along the border of the East River. This included the hospital and psychiatric institution to the north and the city morgue on the southern end. Here is its description from the book:

The Bellevue morgue served the entire city of Manhattan, handling eight thousand corpses a year. Situated by the East River, it lay south of its namesake hospital and mental ward, and was housed in an imposing building. Long, broad, and a single story, it stood as a virtual bunker.

Here are the totals of the traffic of bodies as detailed in the 1896 Annual Report.

From the State Charities Aid Association's Report on the Department of Public Charities of New York City, 1896

For the bodies that landed in the morgue, 48 hours were given for relatives to claim them or else they were shipped out to be buried in mass graves on Hart Island. With no system for notification, less than half of the bodies were claimed. Conveniently, the ferry to Hart Island docked just outside the back door.

Selling the dead to medical schools was a profitable venture and the high demand ensured that most corpses were obtained illegally. From time to time, the morgue had scandals regarding trafficking cadavers and skeletons. In 1896, scandals at Bellevue Hospital and the morgue came to a head, resulting in the dismissal of the long time keeper of the morgue, Captain Albert N. White.

Identifying bodies in the Bellevue Morgue

6. Hart Island

Hart Island is one of the most fascinating and troubling pieces of New York history. It is a small, flat island set at the northeastern extreme of what, in 1898, became the city. It became the repository for every aspect for which the city wanted to turn a blind eye. Over the years portions have been used as an internment camp for war prisoners, a boy's reformatory, a woman's workhouse, a sanatorium, a penitentiary, and a silo for nuclear missiles.

In its ongoing function from the 1860s through today, it has served as New York City's pauper's graveyard. Over one million individuals have been buried on its land, their coffins deposited like refuse in long ditches. For one hundred fifty years, prisoners have been used as the burial detail. I suppose I have strong feelings about this as voiced in my novel by Captain McEvoy of the Fidelity.

We launch out on two trips a day. In the afternoon we gather up the bodies from all the islands and their institutions, everyone who was terminally reformed. We haul 'em off to the Bellevue morgue. Those corpses stay two days to fester them up a bit and in hopes someone will claim them. Only as part of a sick joke, no one gets told they are there. So each morning we cart away the ripened from a previous harvest. Packed in the cheapest of coffins, we haul them off to the cemetery at Hart's Island. Only it's not a cemetery, it's a wasteyard, where the coffins get piled one on top of the other in vast pits. Not even St. Peter with his Book of Life could sort out their bones.

People ask me if ferrying bodies don’t give me the chills. The rot of dead flesh don’t do nothing to affright me. It's better than the rot of the living—the cheap bastards who tally up the cost of every grain of rice and strip the names from the dead to save a squeezed penny. I fear those dead souls in Tammany who’s got the power to transform humans into rubbish.

Prisoners on the grave detail, Hart Island. April 1, 1900, New York Tribune.

The coffins placed in ditches. April 1, 1900, New York Tribune

Captain McEvoy aboard the good ship Fidelity docked at Hart Island. April 1, 1900, New York Tribune.

The Hart Island Project is dedicated to making the public aware of the ongoing burials on Hart Island and to provide a memorial for the more recently buried.

Location #5. The Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane.

To investigate the conditions at the Blackwell Island Insane Asylum, the intrepid reporter Nellie Bly had herself locked up as a patient. The scandalous conditions and the resulting sensational stories prompted the shutting down of the facility and in early 1896 the State Lunacy Commission opened the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane on Wards Island. With 4,400 patients it became the most-populated psychiatric hospital in the world. Among its famous occupants, Scott Joplin would die there in 1917.

Ward's Island. The Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane is on the right.

1897 Photo of the East Building

Continued in Part Three.

-----

Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------

Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, features Nikola Tesla as detective.

Continue reading →

Ten Fascinating Locations in Old New York, Part One.

One of the joys of writing my novel, A Predator's Game, involved immersing myself in the Manhattan of 1896. With so many exotic locations, I was able to pick the best to set the scenes of my story.

Background.

In 1896, Manhattan and New York City were one and the same. The consolidation that would include the five boroughs took place in 1898. This was also several years before construction of the subway system had begun. Although no underground trains existed, there was an extensive system of overhead trains. Most trolleys were pulled by horses, with a single cable car traveling up and down Broadway and one on the Brooklyn Bridge. The latter converted to electric-power that year.

With the invention of the elevator and improvements in construction techniques, a new sort of building, the skyscraper, started going up all over the place and the tallest building one month would soon be overtaken the next.

The Ten Locations.

Location #10: The American Tract Society Building.
Location #9:  The Suicide Curves of the Ninth Avenue El.
Location #8: The American Museum of Natural History.
(to be continued with:)
Location #7. The Bellevue Morgue.
Location #6. Hart Island.
Location #5. The Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane.
Location #4. Tesla's Laboratory on East Houston.
Location #3. The Eden Musée.
Location #2. The Adams Power Station.
Location #1. Goat Island and Terrapin Point, Niagara Falls.

Location #10. The American Tract Society Building.

A background theme of my story is the perils of technology. The appearance of tall buildings were a source of wonderment in the 1890s: evidence of unrelenting progress while at the same time changing the public's concept of the city, suddenly there was such a thing as a vertical landscape. I searched for a building that would describe both the awe and the shock of the new, firmly planted in the 19th century but calling out to the future.

From the book:

  As inventors of the religious pamphlet, the American Tract Society delivered the Good News to the masses. . . . The Society decided to construct their own Tower of Babel nearby City Hall and Newspaper Row and not far from the launching point of the Brooklyn Bridge, perfectly positioned as a prestigious address and guaranteeing them a regular income as landlords. ...

  When completed in August of 1895, the American Tract Society building stood twenty-three floors, its roof higher than any building in the city save those with steeples. Its elevators gave a jolt when they shot the passengers up to the heavens at an alarming speed and made a terrifying drop when they returned them to earth. Or else they simply crashed.

Deaths in elevators and deaths in falling from man-made heights were new and exotic fears and the Tract Society received bad publicity from both with articles published in the local papers, The Engineering News and The Scientific American. The builders had installed the wrong type of elevator hydraulics for so tall a building. Thus the owners had trouble renting the upper floors and eventually had to sell the building at foreclosure. It still stands today, albeit with better elevator brakes.

The American Tract Building (in back), 1890s.

Location #9. Suicide Curve.

Nothing better defined the progress of the 1890s with its wonder, its convenience, and its hell, than the elevated trains. Not needing to stop for pedestrian nor horse, these trains invented commuting and expanded  the city, so that houses and buildings crowded out the cornfields and open lands of northern Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. They also blotted out the sky for those who worked and lived below. Their coal engines belched sulfurous clouds as they passed.

One of the Spidery Monsters that Made Up the Elevated Train System.

Along the Ninth Avenue El, at 110th Street, the train tracks rose to perilous heights and took a pair of sharp turns. These were called the Suicide Curves. In my novel, a runaway train approaches the turn.

  Tesla stared up the line. “Changing direction while maintaining velocity is a form of acceleration with the additional force directed outwards from the curve.”

  “What does the hell does that mean?” Conan Doyle asked.

  “When we hit the curve that velocity will be directed toward tossing the train from its tracks and over the edge of the railway. To execute the turn with a margin of safety, we need to cut our speed in half.”

  The track sloped upward atop spindly metal legs, ascending to over one hundred feet above the streets below, seemingly suspended in midair, higher than the roofs of the nearby tenements.

Suicide Curve on the 9th Avenue El at 110th

A Satirical View of the Oppressive, Belching Elevated Trains

#8. The American Museum of Natural History.

Having opened in 1877, the American Museum of Natural History underwent a period of rapid expansion in the mid-1890s. From the novel:

  The American Museum of Natural History filled the five floors of a long main building and an eastern wing. Scaffolding surrounded the stub of a west wing. A pair of rounded towers bracketed the main entrance, where a stairhead platform spread out in front of a series of six tall arches. From here, a cement staircase divided in two and toppled down to the street level.

American Museum of Natural History, an 1898 drawing showing its West Wing complete.

  Immediately upon entering the museum, they were greeted by a monstrous elephant, its head bowed for the charge, its glass eyes gleaming. Its tusks twisted inwards and nearly touched, like a pair of filaments with a narrow spark gap.

Tip, the Killer Elephant at the Public Entrance to the Museum. After having gored and killed seven people at the zoo, Tip was given a trial and then executed and stuffed.

Continued.

-----

Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------

Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, features Nikola Tesla as detective.

Continue reading →

Tesla Versus The Nobel Prize

The article as it ran in the November 6, 1915 Boston Journal.

On November 5th, 1915, the London Daily Telegraph made the announcement:

  The Swedish government has decided to distribute the Nobel prizes next week as follows:

  "Physics, Thomas A. Edison and Nikola Tesla; literature, Romain Rolland (French), Hendrik Pontoppidan (Swede); chemistry, Prof. Theodor Sveberg."
 
With Tesla and Edison being U.S. citizens, this announcement was picked up by newspapers all over America.

The story proved to be false. The British father and son team of William and William Lawrence Bragg won the prize for their work on X-ray crystallography. Tesla had not been nominated that year and would never win a Nobel Prize.

Although I had heard of this historical error, I did not realize how extensive and persistent it was. Even after the correct winners were announced, even after the Nobel Prize ceremony, Tesla continued to be named as the winner and named with a greater frequency than the Braggs.

Using an aggregator of American newspaper stories, over the months beginning with November 1915, 94 articles appeared in various newspapers  regarding Tesla and the Nobel Prize. (An additional 7 mentioned Edison as a winner without Tesla being named.)

Of these articles.

• 51 came with the initial announcement. Clustering around November 5th/6th some of these articles presented Edison and Tesla as "possible" winners, while others were certain.
• 10 belonged to a set beginning within a week. These were composed as a follow-up, talking with Tesla about his plans for and his visions of the future which included wireless telephone, lighting at sea, and wars without bombs.
• A mere 7 articles mentioned Tesla did not win the prize. These began on November 13th and in each case mentioned the correct winners.
• 19 cited Tesla as the winner of the Nobel prize while describing his patents for an electrical device to destroy bombs at a distance. These began December 8th, two days before the Nobel Prize ceremonies.Typical of these was a Boston Herald article dated, December 8th which began, "Nikola Tesla, the inventor, winner of the 1915 Nobel physics prize, has filed patent applications on the essential parts of a machine, the possibilities of which test a layman's imagination and promise a parallel of Thor's shooting. thunderbolts from the sky to punish those who angered the gods."
• 3 cited Tesla as the winner of the Nobel prize while discussing Tesla's views on the elimination of war. These began January 30th, 1916.
• 4 were miscellaneous, e.g., Nobel Prize given out tomorrow: Edison and Tesla are winners.

In contrast, the actual winners, William Bragg and his son, merited 22 articles.


Another way to look at this is:

• 56 articles reported Tesla as receiving the Nobel Prize from the time of the announcement until the correction.
• 7 articles correcting the error. (Additional articles reported the Braggs winning without correcting the previous error).
• 13 articles reported Tesla as receiving the Nobel Prize from the time of correction up through the day of the ceremony.
• 18 articles reported Tesla as receiving the Nobel Prize after the ceremony had taken place.

In contrast:

• 14 articles reported the Braggs as receiving the Nobel Prize up to the time of the ceremony.
• 8 articles reported the Braggs receiving the Nobel Prize after the ceremony. 

Thomas Edison was no rookie when it came to reports that he had won the Nobel Prize. On October 19, 1911, the Boston Herald ran a report with the headline: Edison Wins Nobel Prize for Physics. Similar articles ran in newspapers across the country. After the correction was made, Edison stated he would decline the award, anyhow: it was best given to an inventor early in his career who needed the money.

Some have suggested that Tesla and Edison were the original winners of the prize but that the recipients were changed due to Edison and Tesla's rivalry (or for other reasons). This did not happen. The nominations for the prize from 1915 have become available and Tesla's name was not among them. Furthermore, the initial report included several other recipients, all of whom failed to receive the award that year.

From an article in the Olympia Daily Recorder published 3 weeks after the Nobel Prize ceremony.

-----

Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook through Amazon and other online retailers

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------

Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, features Nikola Tesla as detective.

Continue reading →

Tesla Versus the Martians

In January, 1901, Nikola Tesla announced that he had received radio signals which he believed came from Mars. A brief message, the numbers 1,2,3, came to him during his 1899 experiments in Colorado Springs at the foot of Pike's Peak. "I share the belief of other scientific men that the planet Mars is inhabited; that the inhabitants are intelligent and they are trying to communicate with the inhabitants of other planets including our earth.  . . . While investigating, the instrument I was using recorded certain feeble movements that could be barely noted at times. Their character showed unmistakably that they were not of solar origin. Neither were they produced by any causes known to me on the globe. After months of deep thought on this subject I have arrived at the conviction, amounting to almost knowledge, that these movements must be of planetary origin. . . . Inhabitants of Mars, I believe, are trying to signal the Earth." [Tesla And Mars. January 4, 1901  Daily People, New York, p. 2]

This announcement was copied in newspapers throughout America, provoking wonderment by those who believed it dawned a new age -- and ridicule from skeptics. Over time, the announcement was used to denigrate Tesla, to show that he was delusional enough to believe in little green men. But, as for believing in communication with Mars, he was hardly alone in his notions.

Some Context.

In 1894, Percival Lowell, one of the foremost astronomers of the day, directed the high-powered refractory telescope he had set-up at an observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona toward Mars and announced that he detected canals, ergo, evidence of life. He published these findings in 1895 in a book called Mars.

Even more important in solidifying the public's impression of Martians was H.G. Wells' sensational, The War of the Worlds, serialized in 1897 and published in book form in 1898, in which malevolent Martians invade the earth.

Martian mania was fully underway. In the fanciful serial, Edison's Conquest of Mars, also 1898, the inventor collaborated with the greatest minds of the day to save Earth.

The salvation of Earth ". . .was due to a few dauntless men of science, conspicuous among whom were Lord Kelvin, the great English savant; Herr Roentgen, the discoverer of the famous X ray, and especially Thomas A. Edison, the American genius of science." Edison's Conquest of Mars, Garrett Putman Serviss.

Notably, Tesla was absent from the list.

Also, beginning in the mid-1890s for the first time in human history, mankind could communicate beyond visible and shouting distances without the use of wires. Tesla undertook experiments transmitting and detecting radio signals from site to site in Manhattan. In 1896, Marconi showed that radio could communicate across the Bristol Channel, approximately 14 kilometers, and in 1899, across the English Channel. These transmissions were in Morse code. Voice transmission would not take place until 1900.

The possibility of communicating with another planet seemed possible as Tesla noted in an 1896 interview. "I have had this scheme under consideration for five or six years . . . [noting that we have electrical disturbances from the sun shows that electrical waves are propagated through space.] It is wholly through the electricity waves, which are propagated through the atmosphere and the ether beyond that we may hope to obtain any results." [May Signal to Mars. March 25, 1896. New Haven Register, p. 7]

A later article suggests that it was terminology that prevented Tesla from equating "electric waves" with electromagnetic or radio waves. In referring to using electric waves to communicate with Mars, Tesla said: "The oscillator instantly transform this electric current, by a series of coils, into an electro-motive force, vibrating at the rate of 2,000,000 to 4,000,000 times a second. This starts electric waves through the air and earth, which vibrate almost as fast as the waves that produce light, and travel with the same speed. These waves, like X-rays, pass through any dense substance . . ." [May 21, 1899  Seattle Daily Times Page: 4]

Other stories combined Tesla's ideas with the recent advances in astronomical photography—and foreshadowed those who would suggest Tesla was crazy. "In reflecting on recent photographs of Mars taken from a telescope, the photographer Dr. Elmerdorf declared he would soon be able to pinpoint the cities on Mars." In defending this statement the newspaper went on to say, ". . . one can pardon the enthusiasm of an extremist by recalling that all great inventors were at one time "extremists," Edison was a "crazy man" for years; and Nicola Tesla, who spends a fraction of his time signalling to Mars is called "peculiar" by nine scientists out of ten." [Mars Looks Pleasant Caught by Camera, Springfield Sunday Journal, October 30, 1898]

Together, these set the scene for Tesla's announcement that he had received a communication with Mars.

After Tesla's 1901 Announcement.

Some, including the radio expert Guglielmo Marconi dismissed the idea. "In earlier experiments before my apparatus was perfected I often received signals apparently from nowhere. . . . I should attribute the alleged signals from Mars to local disturbances in the atmosphere. . ." [Possible Signals from Mars. Signor Marconi is Not Inclined to Believe in Them. January 5, 1901, Baltimore Sun p. 9]

Other skeptics weighed in, some with derision. A San Francisco Chronicle opinion piece accused Tesla of swindling. "Faker Tesla has evidently found a "good thing" in some one who is furnishing him with coin to carry on his alleged experiments to communicate with the planet Mars . . . Tesla seems to be as much of an adept in working the "graft" on the credulous with money as was the author of the Keeley motor." [January 22, 1901, San Francisco Chronicle, p. 6] (The Keeley motor was the standard for a con job for many years.)

Others took the announcement with bemusement:

And he [Tesla] promises the men (but this, of course, is just between us)
He will have a private line for them to whisper up to Venus.
Also one "For Women Only" he will put in very soon,
So the girls can all be talking to the man in the moon.
[June 11, 1901, Boston Herald, p. 11]

The Colorado Springs Gazette commented: "If there are people in Mars, they certainly showed most excellent taste in choosing Colorado Springs as the particular point on the earth's surface with which to open communications." [March 9, 1901, Colorado Springs Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colorado) p. 4]

Tesla assured the skeptics that he would soon be able to send messages to Mars and open up a dialogue. The world waited. As a January 12th, 1901 headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer read: All of Europe Talking of Signalling to Mars.

Tesla received his own treatment as a hero in a fictional adventure. The New Golden Hours magazine, March 30, 1901.

Alas, Tesla failed to open up a line of communication with Mars. In contrast, on December 12, 1901, Marconi sent the first wireless transmission across the Atlantic.

A month later, Tesla did not attend a dinner honoring Marconi held at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. As one editorial suggested, "Possibly he may have had engagements with the people of the planet Mars that forbade his going." [January 15, 1902, Worcester Daily Spy, p. 6]

Tesla did have his supporters. "Now comes Professor Hough, the venerable astronomer of the Northwestern University with the announcement that in his opinion Mars is inhabited by a race much superior to the race which now inhabits the earth. As the Martians had a long start of us--Professor Hough believes that under the law of evolution they should be much more advanced intellectually and morally than we are." [September 19, 1902, San Jose Evening News, p. 4]

In 1903, Lowell reignited the argument that Mars was inhabited by claiming he saw bright flashes emanating from the planet.

Marconi Versus the Martians.

Beginning in 1919, Marconi went through several rounds of reporting that he had observed signals that may well have come from another planet. Some of his pronouncements were appended with uncertainty as to whether Mars was inhabited, others declared more certainty. This could well have been the phrasing of the reporting, a phenomenon which could equally have affected Tesla.

"Marconi, inventor of practical wireless, announces that he has received strange signals that did not originate on the earth. Nikola Tesla believes they may be messages from Mars. . . . Are the stars inhabited? The soundest affirmative argument is that nature is always efficient and that stars without folks would be extremely, inefficient, useless." [January 30, 1919, Wilkes-Barre Times, p. 12]

Marconi suggested that a mathematical language could be formed for the primary communication. He recommended the first message be: 2 + 2 = 4, and wait for a confirmation.

In a 1920 article, the inventor suggested these signals could be from the sun -- or a planet. ""We occasionally get very queer sounds and indications, which come from somewhere outside the earth," said Signor Marconi. "We have had them both in England and America. The Morse signal letters occur with much greater frequency than others, but we have never yet picked up anything could be translated into a definite message."

In 1922, when a particularly close alignment of Mars and Earth could allow for signaling, it was reported that Marconi was at sea, arranging just such an experiment. He denied that this was the purpose for his voyage.

The question continued to hound him. In 1934, three years before his death, he is quoted as saying, "I am frequently asked if it is within the range of probability that we may one day talk to Mars by radio. Why not? If there are beings on Mars at least as intelligent as we are, there is no reason why we should not one day communicate with them." [Marconi Thinks Mars Obtainable In Line Of Radio Communication. August 13, 1934, Springfield Republican, p. 5]

Edison (and others) Versus The Martians

It is unfortunate and unfair that Tesla alone was tarred by his statements amount communicating with Mars. Here is a sampling of others of the great scientist and inventors of the day.

Thomas Edison had his round of publicity regarding communication with Mars. From an interview on his 73rd birthday in 1920: "Asked what he was working on now, the inventor said he was not prepared to make any definite announcement, but his latest investigations had to do with ether. He said he believed radio communication with Mars to be possible. ... "Existing machinery is sufficiently strong to send a signal to Mars. The question is, have the beings there receiving apparatus delicate enough to get our signals?" [Thomas A. Edison Warmly Greeted On 73d Birthday. February 12, 1920, Harrisburg Patriot, p. 8.]

On the occasion of his 74th birthday Edison announced working on an immortality machine and continuing to work on a radio to talk to Mars. "'. . . the life units which form a man do not die. They pass out of one important mechanism to seek another habitat. I believe that one hundred trillion entities go to make up a single man; twenty billion cells each consisting of a commune of 5000 entities. . . . The device is of the nature of a valve, and the slightest conceivable amount of energy exerted on it is multiplied many times. . . .' Next to the immortality machine in importance comes a radio invention by which Edison hopes to make possible communication with Mars." [Edison at 74, Works on Machine to Prove That He'll Live Forever. February 11, 1921, Cincinnati Post, p. 6] The immortality machine also mirrors some of Tesla's wilder pursuits in his later life.


Years before, in praise of Edison, Lord Kelvin said, ". . . Edison brought out his lamp here in New York, and the whole world was lit. New York is the only spot on earth that Mars sees. Mars is signalling only to New York." [Mars Signals New York. June 1, 1902 Macon Telegraph p.14]

Charles Steinmetz declared that building a radio tower to signal Mars was feasible but would cost one billion dollars. [September 8, 1921 Muskegon Chronicle, p. 4]

-----

Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------

Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, features Nikola Tesla as detective.

Continue reading →

Dr. Henry H. Holmes in the Journal of the American Medical Association

Dr. Eugene S. Talbot wrote an article regarding the multi-murderer Henry H. Holmes which appeared in the August 1st, 1896 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Talbot had received a dentistry degree from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in 1872 and a medical degree from Rush Medical School in 1880. By 1896 he had written three books:

• Irregularities of the teeth and their treatment. (1888)
• A study of the degeneracy of the jaws of the human race. (1892)
• The etiology of osseus deformities of the head, face, jaws and teeth. (1894) 

Deformities and degeneracy, dental and otherwise, seemed to be of keen interest to him. He would soon branch out into being an expert in moral degeneracy and criminal behavior. In 1898 he authored, Degeneracy; its causes, signs and results, and, in 1905, Developmental pathology: a study in degenerative evolution. 

The article is presented below. I have lightly annotated it to clear up errors in Holmes biography. The work is mostly dry with occasional bizarre archaic references and some lack of clarity. He describes Holmes as having the most degenerate anatomy that Talbot had ever seen over twenty years but then goes on to say "Holmes was certainly a degenerate physically, as the numerous stigmata he bore proved, but he was not more of one than many moral men and good citizens."

I have highlighted the more remarkable findings.

H.H. Holmes.
 by Eugene S. Talbot, M.D., D.D.S.
Fellow of the Chicago Academy of Medicine
JAMA, August 1, 1896, Volume 25: pp. 253-7.

That Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as H.H. Holmes, was a criminal par excellence is beyond doubt, but how far and in what respects he was a degenerate, in the accepted sense of the term, is worthy of serious consideration.

Few criminals have received more public attention, but despite this, many essential details of his history are wanting. Very little has been stated as to his heredity. He claims to have come from respectable New England stock and to have been religiously and carefully brought up. As a boy he does not appear to have been a scapegrace, and no criminal charge is there on record against him. He married at 18 or 20 [Note: correctly at 17] and commenced the study of medicine at Burlington, Vt. From there he went to the University of Michigan, where he claims to have graduated in medicine in 1884.

According to his own account, after graduating he taught school and practiced medicine in New Jersey for about a year, but it would appear that before this he had already, with a confederate, conspired to defraud life insurance companies, an industry he never entirely abandoned and which finally brought him to the gallows. [Note: some newspaper accounts incorrectly place Holmes in Mooer's Fork, New Jersey shortly after graduation. Other accounts rightly point out that Mooer's Fork is located in northern New York.]

Just when he assumed the name of H.H. Holmes is not certain, but probably not long after this. He himself says it was done when he went before the Illinois Pharmacy Board in 1886. From that time he has been known by that name and under it started in business as a druggist in the outskirts of Chicago, where he went into rather extensive and complicated transaction, chiefly of a crooked character. He managed, however, to keep in fair standing with his neighbors, and at one time was actively interested in church and religious matters.

During this time he had abandoned his New Hampshire wife and child and without divorce, married in 1887 a Miss Belknap. Some years later in the same way he married a Miss Yoke in Denver under the name Henry Mansfield Howard. He is supposed also to have contracted another bigamous marriage with Minnie Williams (one of his supposed victims). Besides these he had irregular relations with other women. In 1894, shortly before his final arrest for the murder of Pitzel [Note: correctly, Pitezel], he revisited his old home and lived as husband for a few days with his first wife, to whom he told a romantic fiction anent his absence.

Between 1886 and 1894 there is no full account of his doings. They included an extensive series of swindles and forgeries. His transactions covered many parts of the country. He ranged from Canada to Texas and Colorado, often in trouble but generally managing in some way to escape the most serious consequences of his crimes. These were in their way often remarkable for their boldness and impudence. He negotiated for the sale to a gas company of a gas-making machine which was actually running on gas stolen from the company's own mains. He admits "deals of a somewhat similar nature."

While his confessions, generally, have been unreliable, it is probable that the above is safely inside the truth. He was emphatically a man of affairs, but his business transactions were so shady in their nature that the obscurity that enveloped them has been dispersed as yet only to give a glimpse such as the above.

It was during this period that he built his celebrated castle, with its secret chambers and passages, dark rooms, trapdoors, etc. Here he employed the female type-writers and other employees whose mysterious disappearance has done so much to make his popular reputation as a murderer. As far as this crime is concerned it must be admitted that the evidence against him is altogether circumstantial, his confessions and statements being notoriously and boastfully mendacious, in the main. Out of the twenty-seven murders he admitted in his latest confession shortly before his execution, the majority of the victims are still living. [Note: several, not the majority] Even his dying admission that he had been responsible for the sacrifice of two lives from criminal operations can not be accepted as perfectly reliable, considering his character for untruthfulness. He seems to have had little or no regard for human life, and as a dealer in "stiffs" and a defrauder of life insurance companies his operations were often enough suggestive of murders, even if these were not often committed.

The history of the Pitzel case, where it appears he made away with his confederate and then later three of his children, and seemed to be planning the deaths of the widow and remaining family, distributing the deaths about the country in such a way as to avoid suspicion, must be fresh in the mind of the reader.

Holmes in his personal appearance, like [English forger and swindler Thomas] Wainwright (whom he much resembled in his criminal career), presented nothing specially repulsive in his appearance. He was quiet, mild in manner and voice, fairly well educated, neat in dress and could pass anywhere for a respectable business or professional man. During his long criminal career he appears to have had no particular ambition, except to succeed in his crooked operations and to ingratiate himself with women for whom he seems to have had a more than normal inclination.

Mentally, there was no lack of acuteness. The fact that he managed to escape justice so long is an evidence of this. When he was finally arrested his behavior was peculiar and shifty. He told contradictory stories, and when his case came to trial he dismissed his lawyers and insisted on managing his own defense. Though he showed some aptness in examining witnesses, he was finally obliged to recall his counsel and give the case into his hands. The jury found him guilty almost without leaving the box. Perhaps the one witness whose testimony was the most convincing was his latest bigamous wife.

Holmes made numerous statements and confessions to detectives and others and published a book while awaiting trial which purports to give an account of his life.

The most remarkable of these confessions, however, was that published in the Philadelphia Inquirer of April 12, three or four weeks prior to his execution. In this he reports the details of twenty-seven murders and claims that he was a case of acquired moral idiocy; that he presented numerous facial stigmata of degeneracy that had grown upon him, during his criminal career. Eighteen of the twenty-seven victims in this confession are living. [Note: This tally of the living is incorrect. A better tally is difficult to undertake, several of the supposed victims had no names or else were not located.] Its author acknowledged its falsity within a day or two of its appearance.

It was not merely criminal vanity that prompted it, for he received for it a very substantial compensation of several thousand dollars. Throughout his imprisonment, his acquisitiveness was shown in this and other publications for which he received money, and in propositions of blackmail for persons he contemplated involving in these confessions.

While in Philadelphia, Jan. 30, 1896, I had the opportunity of making a careful physical examination of H.H. Holmes with the following results:

The subject was a 35 year old American, 5 feet 7 1/2 inches in height, weighing 150 pounds. The occiput was asymmetrical and prominent, the bregma sunken and the left side of the forehead was more prominent than the right which was sloping. The hair was brown, and on body and face excessive. The face was arrested in development. [?] The zygoma was arrested and hollowed on the right side.

The pictures of Holmes published in the daily papers and in his book, do not, to my mind, portray the features of the man as I saw him in his cell. Figure 1, comes the nearest as he appeared when I saw him. His face was cleanly shaven, except moustache, very thin and much emaciated, presenting the appearance of being in a decline, due perhaps to confinement and a tendency to consumption. He had a cough, and the chances are if he had been allowed to remain in confinement he would have succumbed to tuberculosis.

Figure 1

Figures 2 and 3 show the antero-posterior and lateral shape of head. The right ear was lower than the left. The nose was long and very thin; stenosis of nasal bone very marked. The septum deflected to left, nose to the right. The thyroid gland was arrested. Strabismus in the left eye, inherited. The left higher than the right. Slight protruding of the upper jaw; arrest of lower. The mouth on the left side drops lower than on the right. The width, outside of first molars was 2. Width outside first bicuspids 1.62. Height of vault, 63.

Figures 4 and 5 upper and lower jaw. The alveolar process was normal with the exception of the process about the second molar on the right side which was hypertrophied. The teeth were normal in size and shape, the third molar undeveloped. 

Figures 4 and 5

Marked pigeon breast, left side more prominent than right. Chest arrested with tendency to tuberculosis.

Arms: Right normal. Left one and one-half inches longer. He was right handed. His legs were long and thin. The tibia flattened. The feet medium in size but markedly deformed. Depression on left side of skull at bregma, said to be due fall of brick at age of 30. Sexual organs unusually small.

The jaws were unusually long as compared with the width, with a semi-saddle arch on the left side of the upper jaw. The molars of the lower jaw and left upper had been extracted in early life. The hypertrophy of the alveolar process, the want of development of the third molars and the general abnormal development certainly display a very unstable nervous system in his early life.

In twenty years' experience, I have never observed a more degenerate being from a physical standpoint. Holmes in his confession published [sic], stated that ten years ago he was examined by four men of marked ability and by them pronounced mentally and physically normal and healthy. "Today, I have every attribute of a degenerate, a moral idiot." Is it possible that the crimes, instead of being the result of these abnormal conditions are, in themselves, the occasion of degeneracy?  . . . within the past few months these defects have increased with startling rapidity; as is made known to me by each succeeding examination," etc.

Holmes was examined ten years ago, not to ascertain stigmata but for life insurance, and the Bertillon system was not used at all since only criminals are thus examined, for identification. When these examinations are made, only one arm, finger and part of the body are measured, and not both sides for comparison.

While I was making my examination, I called his attention to a number of deformities which he was not aware he possessed.

Being a medically educated man, he certainly should have been better acquainted with these malformations, but he had evidently given this subject little attention since he was ignorant of the cause of two most marked deformities: The too deep depression in the left front and occipital region of the head. These he claimed were due a brick falling upon him at the age of 30. The marked deformity of the chest walls he claimed to be due to pneumonia.

Both deformities were stigmata of degeneracy. Holmes, since his confinement, had no doubt lost flesh, which made these deformities appear more prominent. That they had developed as a result of his criminal tendencies is perfectly absurd. They must have developed with the osseous system, which would be complete by the 26th year; nor will acromegaly account for them.

Holmes had been called an extraordinary criminal, but he certainly was no more of a criminal than Wainwright, who was well known in his time as an essayist and better as a forger and murderer. From the standpoint of literary and artistic culture Wainwright stood higher than Holmes. Like Holmes, he attempted to defraud insurance companies and there is no doubt he poisoned a girl for this purpose. Holmes habitual criminality was modified by his education and antecedents. He had sufficient ability and self-control to successfully pass for a respectable citizen and to keep his criminal transactions so distributed as to territory and covered that only the self-interested perseverance of a life insurance company prompted by a hint from an ex-prison acquaintance could reveal them. His mental defects, so far as they existed, seem to have been confined to his moral sensibilities. He apparently had none of that sense of moral dictation which is a part of the constitution of every normal individual. He acted entirely as an egotist, perfectly capable of appreciating the possible immediate consequences of his acts and more than ordinarily expert in managing in one way or another in avoiding them, but utterly lacking in even the utilitarianism commonly expressed in the old adage that honesty is the best policy. While the murders have mainly created his popular reputation, they were but incidents in his consistent criminal career. He had no regard for others' rights or lives. Doing away with a mistress or a confederate when she or he became inconvenient was an easy matter to him. His education, his dissecting-room training and subsequent specialty helped to remove original superstitious fears that might restrain the average criminal. He seems to have been utterly lacking in any lasting or sincere affection or attachment. A man who could deliberately desert successively two wives with their children would be capable of abandoning others whose relations were less reliable.

[English criminologist] Havelock Ellis remarks that whatever refinement or tenderness of feeling criminals attain to reveals itself in what we should call sentiment or sentimentality. One of the characteristics of Wainwright's essay is their sentimentality. Himself, when in prison, he described as the possessor of "a soul whose nutriment is love, its offspring art; music, divine song and still holier philosophy." This sentimentality cropped up in Holmes in the letters to his first wife whose pathetic nature so impressed his counsel. It was also shown in his successes with women.

His crimes were apparently all deliberate and cold-blooded. In his arrangement of his building, "The Castle," he made provisions for various kinds of crooked work. Only in this way can be reasonably explained this seemingly crazy piece of architecture. There is no evidence in his record that Holmes was insane in any way except it be morally.

In his apparent disregard for human life he was less peculiar than would at first sight seem. When a man has an object in view, which to him is a supreme motive, nothing will stand in his way. Holmes had no regard for the law if he could avoid its punishments, no conscientious scruples to govern his conduct. The taking of life was no more to him than to the Sultan of Turkey, a hanging judge or a military commander, who will sacrifice forlorn hope to gain an advantage. It is not so improbable, therefore, that he may have been a more or less wholesale murderer if he found people in his way. He may have disposed of his victims and regarded it only as an inconvenient necessity. There is nothing in his character to make this intrinsically improbable.

Holmes was certainly a degenerate physically, as the numerous stigmata he bore proved, but he was not more of one than many moral men and good citizens. There was, with the defects, undoubtedly a certain defectiveness and want of balance of the nervous system, but it can not be said that this necessitated the career he chose. If he were a "born criminal" it was not evident till after he had passed his minority and his moral imbecility did not apparently reveal itself to any very striking extent during his boyhood. He followed the course of many young men, who, on leaving the associations and restraints of home fall into evil courses, only he went farther and under pressure, it may be of want and misfortune, adopted to the fullest extent the anti-social and aberrant career of a criminal. There was, possibly, always a certain defect in his moral constitution which was checked in its effects by the restraints and training of his earlier years and might have been overcome entirely had his will been directed into proper paths. His case seems to be largely if not altogether one of acquired moral obtuseness, not of complete congenital moral insanity. How far he was handicapped morally by his constitution, is a question that can not be decided absolutely, but probably not more than the average criminal, who is generally of a more or less degenerate type.

It has been assumed that his vanity and egotism were excessive and evidence of his abnormal mental constitution. First, however, it ought to be proven that these existed to any such extent as is inferred. This can not well be done from his history. He was not obtrusive in his manner and his very choice of life made it impolitic, to say the least, to such publicity, and in his way he was very politic. He had ample confidence in himself, as was shown by his attempting his own defense. This may be taken as evidence of egotism, but he can hardly be said to have been obtrusively egotistic. His numerous statements in regard to himself were apparently not so much prompted by vanity as by a desire to make a profit from them. This was especially true of his last noted confession, which was one of the best remunerated productions of fiction based on fact that has been brought out in the country.

There was certainly one striking psychologic peculiarity about the man; lying seemed to come naturally to him. He did it sometimes apparently without object. In this, however, he was not altogether unique, but there are marked examples, never in their acts passing over the line of legality.

Summing up the character of Holmes, we would say that he was, first of all, a swindler, a chevalier d'industrie and a roue. Money and women seemed to be his objects in life, especially the former, and he was perfectly unscrupulous in his methods of gratifying his ruling passions. His professional and general education, which he seems never after the first failure to have attempted to utilize properly, only served to make him the more dangerous and probably aided to make him the murderer as well as a seducer, bigamist, forger and thief. He may have had some congenital deficiency in his moral make-up, but the absolute lack of moral dictation of his later life, was due to or greatly aggravated by his self-chosen environments.


Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------

Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, features Nikola Tesla as detective.
 

Continue reading →