Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/61

 Herald, and it somehow gathered to itself many of the clever men of Chicago who were writing for the press, and a few intimate spirits in other lines of work, but of sympathetic spirit. For a while the club was nameless, but one afternoon a group were sitting in one of the rooms when a newsboy passed through the alley and cried: "All about the latest Whitechapel murder!" Seymour paused with a stein of beer half lifted, and said: "We'll call the new club the 'Whitechapel Club.'"

I suppose the grewsome connotations of the name led to our practice of collecting relics of the tragedies we were constantly reporting. When he came back from the Dakotas, where he had been reporting the Sioux War, Seymour brought back from the battles a number of skulls of Indians, and blankets drenched in blood, which were hung on the walls of the club. From that time on it became the practice of sheriffs and newspaper men everywhere to send anything of that kind to the Whitechapel Club. The result was that within a few years it had a large collection of skulls of criminals, and some physicians discovered, or thought they discovered, differences between these skulls and the skulls of those who were not criminals, or, if they were, had not been caught at it.

These and the ropes of hangmen and the various mementos of crimes were the decorations of the club rooms, and on Saturday nights the hollow eyes of those skulls looked down on many a lively scene.

Admission to the club was obtained in a peculiar way. An applicant for membership had his name