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Articles

Not Quite Professional

Bohemian and Elitist Newspaper Clubs in Nineteenth-Century Chicago

NOTES

  • Stephen A. Banning, “The Professionalization of Journalism: A Nineteenth-Century Beginning,” Journalism History 24, no. 4 (Winter 1998–1999): 157–60; Stephen A. Banning, “Unearthing the Origin of Journalistic Professionalization in the Mid-nineteenth Century” (master's thesis, University of Missouri, 1993); Stephen A. Banning, “Promoting Journalism Standards in an Age before Journalism Codes of Ethics: The Nineteenth Century Medical Press” (presented at the 2012 Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War and Free Expression. Chattanooga, Tennessee, November 2012); Stephen A. Banning, “Professional Meetings or Myopic Drinking Clubs: A Reexamination of Press Associations in the Nineteenth Century” (presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Midwest History Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, April 1995); Stephen A. Banning, “Uncovering a Mid-nineteenth Century Press Association Code of Ethics” (presented at the American Journalism Historians Association Conference, Roanoke, Virginia, April 1994); Stephen A. Banning, “Discovering a Mid-Nineteenth Century Drive for Journalistic Professionalization” (presented at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, Atlanta, Georgia, April 1994); Stephen A. Banning, “Unearthing the Origin of Journalistic Education” (presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications Midwest History Conference, Columbia, Missouri, April 1994); Stephen A. Banning, “The Missouri Press Association: A Study of the Beginning Motivations, 1867–1876” (presented at the annual conference of the American Journalism Historians Association, Lawrence, Kansas, October 1992); Stephen A. Banning, “Press Clubs Champion Journalism Education,” in Betty Winfield, ed., Journalism 1908: Birth of a Profession (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008); Stephen A. Banning, “Political or Professional?: The Nineteenth Century National Editorial Association” (paper presented at the 2013 Association for Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference, Washington, D.C., August 2013); Stephen A. Banning, “Professional Identity: Wisconsin Editorial Association Records Show Members Self-identified as Professionals Before the Civil War” (paper presented at the 2013 Association for Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference, Washington, D.C., August 2013); Frank E. Fee Jr., “‘To Exalt a Profession’: Association, Ethics and Editors in the Early Republic” (presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication annual conference, Washington, D.C., August 2013); and Frank E. Fee Jr., “Breaking Bread, Not Bones: Printers’ Festivals and Professionalism in Antebellum America,” American Journalism 30, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 308–35.
  • Stephen A. Banning, “Truth is Our Ultimate Goal,” American Journalism 16, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 17–39.
  • One study explored the professionalization theory in regard to Montana journalists. See John T. McNay, “Breaking the Copper Collar: Press Freedom, Professionalization and the History of Montana Journalism,” American Journalism 25, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 99–123.
  • Norma Green, Stephen Lacy and Jean Folkerts, ‘Chicago Journalists at the Turn of the Century: Bohemians All?” Journalism Quarterly 66 (Winter 1989): 813, 821; and Larry Lorenz, “The Whitechapel Club: Defining Chicago's Newspapermen in the 1890s,” American Journalism 15 (Winter 1998): 83–102.
  • A.M. Carr-Saunders and PA. Wilson, The Professions (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 2nd ed., 1964), 2; Howard M. Vollmer and Donald L. Mills, Professionalization (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1966) 3; Daniel H. Calhoun, Professional Lives in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 15–19; Philip Elliott, The Sociology of the Professions (New York: Herder and Herder, 1973), 40–41; and W.J. Reader, Professional Men (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1966), 161–66.
  • Bohemian Club, Certificate of Incorporation, Constitution, By-laws and Rules, Officers (San Francisco: “The Club, 1904); Porter Garnett, The Bohemian Jinks: A Treatise (San Francisco, Bohemian Club, 1908), 23; The Bohemian Club, The Grove Plays of the Bohemian Club, vol. 1 (H. S. Crocker Company, San Francisco, 1918); “The Bohemian Club of San Francisco: Midsummer High Jinks,” Harper's Weekly, Sept. 22, 1894, 895; and Louis Morris Starr, Reporting the Civil War: The Bohemian Brigade in Action 1861–65 (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 48.
  • The author extends a special thanks to the curators at the Chicago Newberry Library Special Collections archives, the Chicago History Museum Research Center and the Chicago Public Library Harold Washington Special Collection archives.
  • Charles Kendall Adams, “Clubs,” Johnsons Universal Cyclopaedie (New York: A.J. Johnson Co., 1894), 348–49.
  • E. Payson Mitchell, “The Evolution of the Club,” Godey's Magazine, November 1896, 524–27.
  • Frederick Converse Beach and George Edwin Rines, eds., The Americana: A Universal Reference Library, vol. 4 (New York: Scientific American Compiling Dept., 1907), [no pagination].
  • Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States, from 1690 to 1872 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 665.
  • Hudson, Journalism in the United States, 665.
  • John Weeks Moore, Moore's Historical, Biographical, and Miscellaneous Gatherings (Concord: N.H.: Republican Press Association, 1886), 255.
  • Herbert Tuttle, “Club Life in Berlin,” Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Review (London: Bradbury, Evans, 1875), 238: 48.
  • This was also known as the Concordia Press Club founded in 1859. Edmund Dodgson Yates, Fifty Years of London Life: Memoirs of a Man of the World (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1885), 408; “Notes,” Literature 1, no. 8 (Dec. 18, 1897), 284; and Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Speeches (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1910), 43.
  • Michael Palmer, “Parisian Newsrooms in the Late Nineteenth Century: How to Enter from the Agency Back Office, or Inventing News Journalism in France,” Journalism Studies 4, no. 4 (2003): 487. For more on early French press associations see Michael Palmer, “Les Journalistes en Republique: Syndicats, Associations et esquisse d une identite professionnelle,” in Roger Bautier, Elisabeth Casenav. and Michael Palmer, La Presse Selon le XIXe Siecle, (Paris: Univerite Paris 111, 1997), 72–85; and Leon Daudet, Salons et Journaux (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1917).
  • Ulf Jonas Bjork, ‘“Scrupulous Integrity and Moderation’: The First International Organization for Journalists and the Promotion of Professional Behavior, 1894–1914,” American Journalism, 22, no. 1 (2005): 95–112.
  • Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1945), 138; Richard Taub, American Society in Toqueville's Time and Today (Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing Co., 1974), 90.
  • “Evolution of the Club,” New York Times, May 30, 1886; “Ins and Outs of Club Life,” New York Times, Jan. 23, 1887; E.L. Vadakin, “Clubbing with Other Newspapers—Who Reaps the Benefit, the Clubber or the Clubbed?” Proceedings of the Twenty-first Annual Session of the Arkansas Press Association 12 (Morrilton, Ark.: Pilot Printing Co., 1893), 51; “Press Associations: Their Proceedings and Other Doings,” Newspaperdom 8, no. 1, Aug. 17, 1899,6; John Moses and Joseph Kirkland, eds., History of Chicago, Illinois 2 (Chicago: Munsell & Co., 1895), 583.
  • Charles Theodore Greve, “Clubs and Club Life,” New England Magazine 5, no. 35, September, 1888, 481.
  • Ibid., 479.
  • “Brief Comment—Doings of the Literary World,” Current Literature 2, no. 5, May 1889, 449.
  • John Thomas Scharf, History of Saint Louis City and County: From the Earliest Periods to the Present Day (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts, 1883), 958; and Hudson, Journalism in the United States, 665.
  • It should be noted that immigrants of Czechoslovaks descent were also commonly called Bohemians at this time, in reference to the geographical region known as Bohemia. It is not known if there were any clubs comprised of Czechoslovakian descedents in Chicago, but clubs referenced in this article do not appear to refer to any particular ethnic group. Richard Digby-Junger, “The Chicago Press Club: The Scoop behind The Front Page” Chicago History (Winter 1998–1999): 44.
  • Meeting announcements can be found in the following articles: “Bohemian Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 1, 1866; “Bohemian Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 17, 1866; “Bohemian Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Dec. 6, 1866; “Bohemian Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 6, 1867; and “Bohemian Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug. 28, 1867.
  • Official Reference Book of the Press Club of Chicago Oldest Press Club in the World (Chicago: Press Club of Chicago, 1922), 1.
  • James Hubert McVicker, owner of McVicker's theater, was a constant press club promoter, allowing clubs to meet in his theater. This may seem contrived as it would have been in his best interest as the owner of Chicago's premier theater to curry the press's favor to obtain positive reviews. However, he was also a former newspaper man himself, starting out as a printer in New York before working for the St. Louis Republican, and he may have enjoyed the company of reporters. Lois Mildred Bergstrom, History of McVicker's Theater from 1857, (master's thesis, University of Chicago, 1930), 14; “Chicago Clubs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 11, 1874; and “Bohemian Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Dec. 6, 1866.
  • “Bohemian Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Dec. 6, 1866.
  • “Bohemian Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 26, 1866.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • “Closed Up,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Dec. 7, 1866.
  • Ibid.
  • The president during the first three semi-annual meetings was Elias Colman. Colman was a writer for the Chicago Daily Tribune who went on to make discoveries in astronomy. “Bohemian Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 29, 1867; and Official Reference Book of the Press Club of Chicago Oldest Press Club in the World (Chicago: Press Club of Chicago, 1922), 1.
  • “Bohemian Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 29, 1867.
  • “Chicago Clubs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 11, 1874.
  • The new slate of elected officers after Coleman consisted of Charles H. Wright for president; Samuel J. Medill for vice president; H. Binmore for secretary; A.L. Smith for treasurer; James Chisholm, George Pratt, and O.H. Perry for executive committee; and Franc Wilkie, James W. Sheshan and J.C.W. Bailey for the library committee. Wilkie left his New York home at the age of thirteen and survived by selling newspapers. Later he became an editor and during the Civil War his newspaper reports in Missouri secured him a position as war correspondent for the New York Times. He moved to the Chicago Times during the war, and eventually figured prominently in another Chicago Press Club. “Bohemian Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 29, 1867; “Franc Wilkie Dead,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 13, 1892; and Official Reference Book of the Press Club of Chicago, 1.
  • “Chicago Clubs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 11, 1874.
  • When the Sherman House hotel was built in 1861 it “for ten years stood in the very foremost of American hotels.” The Sherman House's competition was Chicago's Grand Pacific Hotel, which opened ten years later and drew away some patrons. See Alfred Theodore Andreas, “History of Chicago,” vol. 3 (Chicago: The A.T. Andreas Company, Publishers, 1886), 355.
  • “Chicago Clubs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 11, 1874.
  • Ibid.
  • Andreas, History of Chicago, 705. The club met at the Briggs House.
  • “Bohemian Clubs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 10, 1871.
  • Ibid.
  • “Chicago Clubs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 11, 1874.
  • Philip Kinsley, The Chicago Tribune: The First One Hundred Years (Chicago: Chicago Tribune, 1945), 103, 104.
  • “Chicago Clubs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 11, 1874.
  • Ibid.
  • Percival Pollard, Their Day in Court (New York: The Neale Publishing Company, 1909), 274.
  • Ibid.
  • This was not the same Metropolitan Club of the early years of Chicago's existence. That Metropolitan Club was primarily known for its boat racing prowess against rivals such as the Pioneer Club of Chicago and the Shakspeare [sic] Rowing Club of Toronto. Chicago Daily Tribune, April 3, 1857; Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 17, 1857; Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 19, 1857; and Chicago Daily Tribune, May 25, 1858.
  • “Chicago Clubs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 11, 1874.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.; this press club was possibly mentioned by Kinsley's history, although the start date was given as 1872. See Kinsley, The Chicago Tribune, 104.
  • “Laudable Action of the Clubs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 15, 1873.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • Press Club of Chicago, Official Reference Book of the Press Club of Chicago, 2.
  • Will Eaton, known to his friends as “Handsome Will Eaton,” became an early member of the Press Club of Chicago and later a member of the London gentleman's club called The Savage Club. He also founded the Chicago Herald. See Morgan, My Chicago, 95.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid. Note that this explanation of the motivation for the Press Club of Chicago's beginning differs from other accounts that prominently feature novelist Mark Twain as progenitor.
  • Ibid.
  • 1876–1883 visitor roster, OWL Club, Chicago, bound volumes, MSS lot O, Chicago History Museum Research Center, Chicago, Illinois.
  • F.O. Bennett, History of the Press Club of Chicago (Chicago: H.O. Shepard & Co., Printers, 1888), 3; and John J. McPhaul, Deadlines and Monkeyshines: The Fabled World of Chicago Journalists (Engiewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962), 150.
  • There is a claim that the person who first suggested a new Chicago Press Club was Chicago Times reporter Sam Steele. In this version Steele discussed the idea first and Twain merely encouraged it. Mark Twain was familiar with clubs and press clubs in particular. For instance, Twain had previously loaned a piece of writing called “Encounter with an Interviewer” to the New York Lotus Club for a book designed to raise funds for the club, and Twain later gave a well-received performance of the piece at a fundraiser for the New York Press Club. Louis J. Budd, “Mark Twain's ‘An Encounter with an Interviewer’: The Height (or Depth) of Nonsense,” Nineteenth Century Literature. 55, no. 2 (September 2000): 230; “The Press Club Entertainment,” New York Times, Feb. 7, 1877; and Press Club of Chicago, Official Reference Book of the Press Club of Chicago, 2.
  • Bennett, History of the Press Club of Chicago, 9.
  • “The City,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 12, 1880; and Chicago Daily Tribune, April 3, 1857.
  • It was Wilkie and Stone who had originally been urged by Twain to start a press club. Franc Wilkie's interest in newspaper clubs may have come from his early connections with New York. His first job at a national newspaper was with New York editor Henry J. Raymond who was an influential force behind the New York Press Club. Raymond had helped introduce Charles Dickens to the New York Press Club when Dickens visited New York in 1868. During the Civil War Raymond suggested Wilkie act as a correspondent for the New York Times. Wilkie at first didn't believe Raymond was serious. However, after Wilkie wrote a story for another newspaper about the battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri that gained national recognition, Raymond convinced Wilkie he was serious about his offer. Wilkie would grow to greatly admire Raymond. More of Wilkie can be found in Franc Bangs Wilkie, Personal Reminiscences of Thirty-Five Years of Journalism (Chicago: F. J. Schulte & Company, Publishers, 1891); Frank Bangs Wilkie, Pen and Powder (Boston: Ticknor & Company, 1888); and Franc Bangs Wilkie, The Iowa First: Letters of the War (Dubuque, Iowa: Herald Book and Job Establishment, 1861). See also Appletons’ Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events, vol. 17 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1893), 582; Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 19, 1857; “Chicago in 1856,” The Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review, May 1, 1857, 565 Augustus Maverick, Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press for Thirty Years: Progress of American Journalism from 1840 to 1870 (Hartford, Conn.: A.S. Hale, 1870), 200–1; Louis Morris Starr, Reporting the Civil War: The Bohemian Brigade in Action 1861–65 (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 48; Wilkie, Personal Reminiscences, 90; and Francis Brown, Raymond of the Times (New York: Norton, 1951), 216.
  • Bennett, History of the Press Club of Chicago, 7.
  • Ibid., 8.
  • “The Bookery—Opie Read's Southrons,” Godey's Magazine, October 1897, 443.
  • Federal Writers’ Project, Kentucky: A Guide to the Bluegrass State (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939), 296.
  • Frederick William Allsopp, Twenty Years in a Newspaper Office (Little Rock, Ark.: Central Printing Company, 1907), 176.
  • Zella Hargrove Gaither, Some Living Arkansas Writers, vol. 1, ed. John Hugh Reynold, (Fayetteville, Ark.: Arkansas Historical Association, 1906), 325.
  • “The Arkansas Traveler,” Rowell's American Newspaper Directory (New York: Geo. P. Rowell & Company, 1887), 922.
  • “A Glimpse of Opie Read's Home Life,” The Lyceum Magazine, vol. 32, September 1922, 43.
  • William Lightfoot Visscher, “Opie Read—An Appreciation,” National Magazine, vol. 41, March 24, 1915, 958; and Gaither, Some Living Arkansas Writers, 325.
  • “Gleanings in Local Fields,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 5, 1890. For interesting but undocumented accounts of the Whitechapel Club, see Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (New York: Random House, Inc., 2003), 32–33; and June Skinner Sawyers, Chicago Sketches: Urban Tales, Stories, and Legends from Chicago History (Loyola University Press, 1995), 63–64.
  • “White Chapels and Turnovers,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug. 8, 1890.
  • “Two More Victims,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 6, 1890.
  • “Press Club Extends Its Sympathy,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 2, 1894.
  • “Regrets at the Death of N.D. Hutton,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 5, 1895.
  • “Press Club Benefit,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 18, 1894.
  • “Entertainment by the Press Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 21, 1894.
  • “Notes from the Metropolis,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 9, 1893.
  • “Dramatic Notes,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 25, 1894.
  • Benjamin Franklin King, Nixon Waterman and Opie Percival Read, Ben King's Verse (Chicago: Press Club of Chicago, 1894), 9.
  • Ibid.
  • Bennett, History of the Press Club of Chicago, 7; and “Chicago Clubs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 11, 1874.
  • Bennett, History of the Press Club of Chicago, 8; and William H. Freeman, The Press Club of Chicago: A History with Sketches of Other Prominent Press Clubs of the United States (Chicago: Press Club of Chicago, 1894), 17. Freeman was a member of the Press Club of Chicago in 1890. See The Elite Directory and Club List of Chicago (Chicago: The Elite Directory Co., 1890), 305–6.
  • “Chicago Clubs,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 11, 1874.
  • Bennett, History of the Press Club of Chicago, 8.
  • “Literary Notes,” Christian Union, March 31, 1880, 303.
  • Freeman, The Press Club of Chicago, 17.
  • Ibid.
  • Press Club of Chicago, Official Reference Book of the Press Club of Chicago, 2.
  • Bennett, History of the Press Club of Chicago, 13.
  • Richard Digby-Junger, “The Main Rendezvous for Men of the Press: The Life and Death of the Chicago Press Club, 1880–1987,” Journal of Illinois History 1, no. 2 (1998): 77; and “Chicago Press Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Dec. 9, 1880.
  • Freeman, The Press Club of Chicago, 55.
  • “The Chicago Press Club: The Men Who Made It a Success,” The Fourth Estate, March 8, 1894.
  • Andreas, History of Chicago, vol. 3, 705.
  • Wilkie, Personal Reminiscences, 307.
  • Lester Ketchum, “An Hour with the Press Club of Chicago,” Belford's Monthly, May 1893, 837.
  • Chicago & Alton R.R. Train Lunch, The Continent: An Illustrated Weekly Magazine, May 28, 1884, 703.
  • Trygve Thoreson, “Mark Twain's Chicago,” Journal of Illinois History 73, no. 4 (1980): 283.
  • Albert Shaw, ed., The American Monthly Review of Reviews, vol. 30 (Review of Reviews, 1899), 242.
  • Freeman, The Press Club of Chicago, 58.
  • Ibid.
  • Lewis O. Saum, Eugene Field and His Age (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 43.
  • Ibid., 44; This was done despite his humor not being universally appreciated by the members. William Switzler, editor of the Columbia Missouri Statesman and president of the Missouri Press Association during the year Field was a member, took a dim view of Field's efforts. Likewise, Lexington Caucasian editor Peter Donan was less than impressed with Field and more than ready to write about it. See Columbia Missouri Statesman, Sept. 1, 1871; and Lexington Caucasian, June 14, 1873.
  • Saum, Eugene Field and His Age, 180.
  • Slason Thompson, Eugene Field: A Study in Heredity and Contradictions (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901), 183.
  • Ibid., 185
  • Ibid., 201; The lack of appreciation from Switzler may have been political. Switzler had always been a passionate supporter of slavery and an avowed Democrat. On the other hand, Field was a lifelong Republican whose father, Roswell Field, had been a prominent St. Louis attorney known for defending former slave Dred Scott in a case that became known as the Dred Scott Decision. In 1874, Eugene Field delivered a poem before the Missouri Press Association called “Solomon Burch's Fighting Editor.” It was accepted as merely an odd poem by an odd poet. Closer scrutiny has led some to believe that the poem was a spoof of a Jefferson City, Mo., editor. Later in the meeting, amid toasts on a series of serious subjects, Field attempted to break the monotony with a toast that declared, “Women—unhappy is he who has not such a form to press.” See “Free Negroism, of the Failure of Emancipation - Effects of the Country's Economy,” Columbia Missouri Statesman, July 4, 1862; Slason Thompson, The Life of Eugene Field: The Poet of Childhood (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1927), 13; Criterian, June 15, 1870; Lexington Caucasian, May 23, 1874; Boonville Eagle, May 29, 1874; Saum, Eugene Field and His Age, 264; and Barrett, History and Transactions, 93.
  • Ketchum, “An Hour with the Press Club of Chicago,” 837.
  • “Wattersonianisms,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 20, 1881.
  • “The Press Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 16, 1881.
  • “Chicago's Press Club Dinner,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 16, 1881.
  • “The Press Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 16, 1881.
  • Morgan, My Chicago, 94.
  • “Wattersonianisms.”
  • “The Press Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 16, 1881.
  • “The Law of Libel,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 17, 1881.
  • Ibid. Stone apparently took Storrs’ comments on libel to heart, and began reviewing columns to such a degree that it was said to have significantly changed the character of the writing. The reason for the sudden concern regarding libel suits is unclear. Perhaps it resulted from the decline in the practice of dueling, a remedy for personal insult that had been previously heavily practiced by those angry with editors. Several years later, the Chicago Sunset Club, a non-partisan club where new ideas were discussed, also tackled the concept of freedom of the press in great detail, parsing the First Amendment along with recent court cases. See Slason Thompson, Eugene Field: A Study in Heredity and Contradictions (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901), 215; and Sunset Club, Echoes of the Sunset Club: Comprising a Number of the Papers Read at the Sunset Club of Chicago, During the Past Two Years (Chicago: Howard Barrels & Co., 1891), 16, 17.
  • “The Chicago Press Club's Dinner,” New York Times, Jan. 15, 1882.
  • “The Press Club Banquet,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 10, 1882.
  • “A Journalist's Joint,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 15, 1882.
  • Ibid.
  • Information about the reincarnated Press Club can be found in the following archives: Chicago Press Club Collection, box 3, folders 4, 8, 9, Harold Washington Library Special Collections, Chicago Public Library, Chicago, Illinois; Guest Book, May 22, 1950 - Sept. 22, 1961, Chicago Press Club Collection, Harold Washington Library Special Collections, Chicago Public Library, Chicago, Illinois; and Guest Book, Book. May 16,hicago Press Club Collection, Harold Washington Library Special Collections, Chicago Public Library, Chicago, Illinois; and Guest Book, Book. May 16, 16, 1962 – Dec. 28, 1969, Chicago Press Club Collection, Harold Washington Library Special Collections, Chicago Public Library, Chicago, Illinois.
  • “Expunged History of the Chicago Revolt: Being a True Account of the Rise and Fall of the Old Newspaper Club,” Victor Eubank, The Port of Humor, Deadline Chicago, September 1917, vol. 1, no. 1: 1–14; and “Newspaper Club of Chicago,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 6, 1893.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • “Items,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 6, 1894.
  • “Chicago Notes,” Inland Printer, November 1894, 168.
  • Ibid.
  • “Newspaper Clubs Reunite,” The Fourth Estate, Oct. 11, 1894.
  • Brand Whitlock, Forty Years of It (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1918), 42.
  • Some sources claim it started in 1888, others in 1889 and still others in 1890. For an example of a source stating the date as 1890, see George Ade, “George Ade Is Reminiscent about Celebrities,” New York Times, Jan. 2, 1916. For an example of a source stating the date as 1889, see “Whitechapel Club: A Curious and Unique Chicago Institution,” Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel, April 12, 1890. For a source stating the starting year was 1888, see Morgan, My Chicago, 90. The Whitechapel Club did not keep minutes and left no extant records, which, along with its secrecy, probably contributed to the lack of triangulation regarding start and stop dates. See “The Whitechapel Club,” Munsey's Magazine 26 (New York: Frank A. Munsey, 1902), 705.
  • Lorenz, “The Whitechapel Club: Defining Chicago's Newspapermen in the 1890s,” 83-102; Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 69; and “Chicago Whitechapel Club,” The Quincy Whig, Jan. 17, 1901.
  • “Whitechapel Club: A Curious and Unique Chicago Institution,”; “A Secret Society Item,” Quincy Daily Herald, Feb. 16, 1890; “The Whitechapel Club—Chicago Has a Grewsome [sic] Organization,” The Daily Argus News, July 25, 1891; “Whitechapel Club to Revive Weird Ceremony,” New York Morning Telegraph, July 22, 1917; H.A. Hallett, “Writer of Famous Scoop, Recalls It,” New York Morning Telegraph, July 22, 1917; Wallace Rice, “City's Funeral Pyre's 25th Anniversary Near,” Chicago Sunday Examiner, July 22, 1917; “At the Funeral Pyre,” The World, July 18, 1892; “Gone into Thin Air,” The Sunday Herald, July 17, 1892; “Whitlock Writes about Herald and Eastman,” Chicago Daily Journal, April 22, 1924; Charles H. Dennis, “Whitechapel Nights,” Chicago Daily News, July 27, 1936; William Hay Williamson, “They Laughed at Life; They Laughed at Death,” The Chronicle of Chicago, October 1929; Wallace Rice, “Old Whitechapel Club Was Notable Contributor to Gaity of Nations,” Chicago Daily Journal, April 22, 1924; Wallace Rice, “Whitechapel Club—That Cheerful Body Dedicates its New House,” Chicago Inter Ocean, March 6, 1892; John J. McPhail, Deadlines and Monkeyshines, (Englewood Cliffs: New Jersey, 1962), 152; “Whitechapel Club Honors Morris Collins,” Chicago Examiner, July 16, 1917; “Whitechapel Club Reenacts Rites at Funeral Pyre: Members and Friends Commemorate Cremation 25 Years Ago of Morris Collins,” Chicago Examiner, July 23, 1917; “A Coffin Dance,” The Morning Call, June 10, 1893; “By the Sad Waves,” The Quincy Daily Journal, July 19, 1892; “Cremated on the Lake Shore: A Strange and Dramatic Midnight Scene Near Chicago,” New York Times, July 18, 1892; “Two More Victims,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 6, 1890; “A Live Bear for the Whitechapel Club,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 29, 1890; “Man in the Street,” New York Times, Feb. 23, 1902; “Today's Chicago Elections,” New York Times, April 7, 1891; “Writers of Chicago Keep a Grewsome [sic] Day,” The Fort Wayne Sentinel, July 23, 1917; “The Whitechapel's Acquisitions,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug. 12, 1890; “Skulls vs. the Gridiron,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 20, 1981; “With Skulls for Bowls,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 28, 1890; “Chicago Whitechapel Club,” The Quincy Whig, Jan. 17, 1901; “Philadelphia's Clover Club,” New York Times, June 19, 1891; “A Whitechapel Club Joke,” New York Times, June 21, 1891; “Finley P. Dunne, Humorist, is Dead,” New York Times, April 25, 1936; “Chicago's Whitechapel Club,” Ogden Standard Examiner, March 25, 1890; Opie Percival Read, I Remember (New York: Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1930), 232; “Lucy Monroe, “Odd Clubs,” McBride's Magazine (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Company, 1901), 67: 110; “The Whitechapel Club. Its Members Remove to New Quarters and Sing a New Song,” Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, March 16, 1892; “The Great Whitechapel Club,” The Salt Lake Herald, April 5, 1891; and “Depew and the Skulls,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 5, 1891.
  • Whitlock, Forty Years of It, 47.
  • Monroe, Current Literature, 332.
  • “The Whitechapel Club—Chicago Has a Grewsome Organization.”
  • Members continued to interact well after the club closed. See for instance the following archival information: Findley Peter Dunne to John T. McCutcheon. Feb. 19, 1903, Special Collections, Midwest MS, McCutcheon, Incoming Correspondence, Dunne, Findley, E, box 60, folder 1621, Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois. The following lists all ninety Whitechapel Club members: From John J. Vilkas to Victor Oakley, Jan. 22, 1941, Miscellaneous, Whitechapel Club History, 1941, Newberry Library, Special Collections, Chicago, Illinois. For insight into the life of a Whitechapel Club member before, during, and after his tenure in the club, see the following diaries of John T. McCutcheon: 1889, The Vacation of ‘89 [Diary 5], Special Collections, Midwest MS, McCutcheon, box 33, folder 866, Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois; 1889, Jan. 1 to June 5, Senior Year, Class Day, Commencement [Diary 2], Special Collections, Midwest MS, McCutcheon, box 33, folder 866, Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois; [Diary 3], Special Collections, Midwest MS, McCutcheon, box 33, folder 866,an. 1 to June 5, Senior Year, Class Day, Commencement [Diary 2], Special Collections, Midwest MS, McCutcheon, box 33, folder 866, Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois; [Diary 3], Special Collections, Midwest MS, McCutcheon, box 33, folder 866, 866, Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois; 1895 [Diary 8], Special Collections, Midwest MS, McCutcheon, box 33, folder 867, Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois; and 1895 [Diary 8], Special Collections, Midwest MS, McCutcheon, box 33, folder 867, Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois.
  • Hallett, “Writer of Famous Scoop”; and “Story of Famous Whitechapel Club,” Frank Kelley, Scrapbook on the Activities of the Whitechapel Club, Chicago History Museum Research Center, Chicago, Illinois.
  • “Traditions of the Whitechapel Club—Adopted at the Regular Business Meeting, Held March 2d, 1893,” Chicago History Museum Research Center, Press Club of Chicago, Miscellaneous Pamphlets, qF38SP P8z. This was a personal copy of Richard J. Murphy, Whitechapel Club member and secretary of the department of publicity, World's Columbian Exposition, contributed by his son, J. Sherwin Murphy.
  • Green, Lacy, and Folkerts, ‘Chicago Journalists at the Turn of the Century: Bohemians All?” 813, 821; and Lorenz, “The Whitechapel Club,” 83–102.
  • Lorenz, “The Whitechapel Club,” 83–102.

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