Depraved

The Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-Century Chicago

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  • 3.0 (1 rating) ·
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Last edited by ImportBot
March 17, 2024 | History

Depraved

The Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-Century Chicago

  • 3.0 (1 rating) ·
  • 20 Want to read
  • 1 Currently reading
  • 2 Have read

Even as a child in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, Herman Mudgett was considered a lad with a future, a boy who professed filial devotion while secretly fantasizing his parents' deaths. By age eleven he was conducting secret experiments on small animals and strays, becoming skilled at disabling his subjects without killing them. In 1886 he appeared in the Chicago suburb of Englewood, Illinois, and introduced himself as Dr. H. H. Holmes to the wife of the ailing owner of Holton's drugstore. He was hired on the spot, and under his management the store prospered. But when Holmes's attempt to purchase the drugstore from Mrs. Holton went sour, and she sued him, she inexplicably disappeared - never to be seen or heard from again.
As Jack the Ripper was terrorizing London, Holmes was building his infamous "Castle," a grandiose residence and veritable fortress bristling with battlements and turrets. He hired and fired a succession of workmen to build the castle, thus eliminating witnesses to its secrets: a labyrinth of trapdoors, winding passageways, dark dead-end halls, stairways to nowhere, bedchambers fitted with peepholes and asphyxiating gas pipes, soundproof vaults and torture chambers, greased chutes large enough to send human bodies from the living quarters to a cellar equipped with acid vats, a crematorium, a dissecting table, and cases full of gleaming surgical tools.
Alternately donning the mantles of doctor, druggist and inventor, Holmes was also a get-rich-quick schemer and bigamist, with three wives and innumerable lovers - at least one of whom ended up a prize skeletal specimen, sold to a medical college for nearly two hundred dollars. But his increasing audacity and carelessness during his reign of terror led to his discovery and to "The Trial of the Century," in which Holmes finally confessed to twenty-seven murders. While he later recanted - maintaining his innocence until his final breath - he had already achieved immortality as the most monstrous criminal of his day.

Publish Date
Publisher
Pocket Star
Language
English
Pages
418

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Depraved
Cover of: Depraved
Depraved: The Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-Century Chicago
January 27, 2004, Pocket Star
Mass Market Paperback in English
Cover of: Depraved
Depraved: the shocking true story of America's first serial killer
1998, Pocket
in English
Cover of: Depraved
Depraved
October 1, 1998, Pocket
Paperback in English
Cover of: Depraved
Depraved
June 1, 1996, Pocket
Paperback in English
Cover of: Depraved
Depraved: the shocking true story of America's first serial killer
1996, Pocket Star Books
in English
Cover of: Depraved
Depraved: the shocking true story of America's first serial killer
1994, Pocket Books
in English
Cover of: Depraved
Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America's First Serial Killer
September 1994, Pocket Books
Hardcover in English

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Book Details


First Sentence

"Legend lays the blame for the disaster on Mrs. Patrick O'Leary's cow, though the likelier suspects were a crew of young hooligans-neighborhood boys sneaking a smoke in the hayloft of the O'Leary's ramshackle barn at 137 De Koven Street on Chicago's West Side."

Classifications

Library of Congress
HV6248

The Physical Object

Format
Mass Market Paperback
Number of pages
418
Dimensions
6.5 x 4.2 x 1.4 inches
Weight
7.8 ounces

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL7951460M
ISBN 10
0743490355
ISBN 13
9780743490351
Library Thing
129372
Goodreads
558695

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
March 17, 2024 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
December 7, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
April 5, 2014 Edited by ImportBot Added IA ID.
August 6, 2010 Edited by IdentifierBot added LibraryThing ID
April 29, 2008 Created by an anonymous user Imported from amazon.com record