Hammett's Baltimore: Harlem Park

“I dreamed I was sitting on a bench, in Baltimore, facing the tumbling fountain in Harlem Park, beside a woman who wore a veil. I had come there with her. She was somebody I knew well. But I had suddenly forgotten who she was. I couldn’t see her face because of the long black veil. 
I thought that if I said something to her I would recognize her voice when she answered. But I was very embarrassed and was a long time finding anything to say. Finally I asked her if she knew a man named Carroll T. Harris. 
She answered me, but the roar and swish of the tumbling fountain smothered her voice, and I could hear nothing. 
Fire engines went out Edmondson Avenue. She left me to run after them. As she cried, “Fire! Fire!” I recognized her voice then and knew who she was, and knew she was someone important to me. I ran after her, but it was too late. She and the fire engines were gone." 

- Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest

Image from the archives of the Maryland Historical Society

The Harlem Park fountain is no longer there, the half of the park where it stood was redeveloped in 1963 as part of a revitalization project. According to the Sun archives, it was built in the late 1890s, paid for by the people whose house were on the square. When Hammett describes it as "tumbling," he is likely referring to an unintended property of the fountain. When it was turned on, rather than the  steady waterspout in the center of the pool the park creators intended, it spurted water at regular intervals, shooting up 30 or 40 feet, then falling back to the pool. Apparently it was fairly noisy, but they liked the effect, so it stayed. A Sun staffer in 1908 put it this way: "Instead of behaving like an orderly Baltimorean, the new offspring of the Park Commissioners was cutting up the capers of a French ballet girl. It was horribly incorrect, but it was pretty."

An Adam Horn Snow

Adam Horn, from the Sun, 1843

Once upon a time, a heavy, late March snowstorm in Baltimore was known as Horn's snow, because it was during such a storm that the murderer Adam Horn made his escape from Fowlesburg, Maryland. His crime, his capture, and his execution, would dominate newspaper headlines in 1843, and become one of the most infamous murders, locally anyway, of the 19th century.

Baltimore poet Lizette Woodworth Reese included the incident in her book, "The York Road," but the actual scene of the crime was the Hanover-Reisterstown Road, today's Hanover Pike, at the border between Carroll and Baltimore counties. There, in 1842, Adam Horn, a 50-year-old German tailor, opened a small shop in Fowlesburg, and shortly thereafter married 17-year-old Malinda Finckle, who lived nearby.

The Horns' marriage turned sour quickly. Horn was jealous of his young wife, and kicked her out of the house several times. On March 23, 1843, during a heavy snowstorm, he struck her with a piece of firewood and killed her.

Horn spread a story around that Malinda had left him, but two weeks later her torso was discovered, buried in a burlap sack, in an orchard near his house. She was four or five months pregnant when she was killed. A subsequent search of his house revealed her limbs, and her head was found partially burned in the stove. By this time, Horn himself was nowhere to be found.

In September, he was caught by a private detective in Philadelphia and returned to Baltimore for trial. The Sun covered it extensively, in full, front page stories almost daily, even printing a 32-page supplement for that  Horn's confessions. And the case just kept getting worse.

John Storech was a neighbor of Horn's -- a fellow German and a shoemaker -- who had been witness to some of the evidence against Horn. While in Philadelphia, the murderer has signed a deed, giving Storech his Baltimore County property. Under questioning in jail by the acting mayor, Storech revealed that Horn had confided in him after the murder, or at least confided a version of it -- that Horn had caught Malinda with a young man and beaten her to death with a shovel. Storech told the the mayor that Horn had sworn him to secrecy and said he'd taken care of the body. Storech left with a promise to return to Baltimore a few days later. Instead, he went home, walked out into his yard, and slit his own throat with a table knife. His body was found later, partially eaten by hogs.

The biggest revelation in the Horn case, though, was that he wasn't actually Adam Horn.

After arriving in Baltimore from Germany in 1817, Andrew Hellman moved to Virginia, where he married Mary Abel, the daughter of a respected Loudon County farmer in 1821. Despite what seems to have been an unhappy marriage, they had three children, a girl and two boys. In 1831, the Hellmans moved to Finksburg, where they lived for five years, then again to Ohio, where Mary's brothers lived. Mary survived an apparent poisoning attempt when she noticed a white powder lining a bowl of milk, and in April, 1839, the three children took suddenly ill. The middle child, Henry Hellman, recovered, but the other two died. It was never proven, but strongly suspected, that they had been poisoned as well.

In September, 1839, Henry was sent away to help a sick uncle, leaving his parents alone in the house together. When Mary's sister-in-law stopped by the Hellman house, she found Andrew in bed, unable to move and covered in blood that he said was the result of an attack by robbers. Mary's corpse lay in the other room, her blood spattering the walls and furniture. The house looked like it had been ransacked, and Hellman stuck to his robbery story, but when his neighbors assembled at the house, Mary's brother accused him of killing her and demanded that his wounds be examined by a doctor. There wasn't a scratch on him. A bloody ax, a knife, and Hellman's bloody clothes cemented the case against him, and the evidence pointed to him attacking Mary with the ax in her sleep.

Due to a delay, Hellman was still in jail awaiting trial in November 1840, when he was left alone in an unlocked room, and made his escape. He headed to Baltimore, where he might have run a shop yet another name, on Pennsylvania Avenue near Hamburg.Two years later, he turned up in Fowlesburg using the name Adam Horn.

After Horn's capture in Philadelphia, he was charged by a grand jury once for each of the nine methods he had employed in Malinda's murder. The Sun listed them: "1st, with a hatchet; 2d with a knife; 3d, with a wooden club; 4th, with a stone; 5th, with his fist; 6th, by dashing her against the ground; 7th, by strangling with a cord around the neck; 8th, by strangling or choaking with the hands; 9th, by pistol shot, through the head."

The trial drew enormous attention, running from November 21 to 27 as a parade of witnesses took the stand, and Horn (or Hellman) was sentenced to death. A special scaffold was built, higher than the walls of the Baltimore jail, and a record-breaking crowd of 30,000 people turned out to see him hanged, covering both side of the Falls River. 500 tickets were issued for entry into the jail yard, some of which were sold for a profit. Horn's head was examined by a prominent Philadelphia phrenologist, he said goodbye to his remaining son, and spoke to a priest, then ascended the scaffold. The Sun reported that a hush fell over the crowd, broken by the shrieks of women as Adam Horn dropped. He "struggled for about four minutes," then died. The reporter remarked that "I would venture to say that there was never an execution that took place in the United States, if in the world, marked with such dignity and propriety as this."

It wasn't the last of Adam Horn, though. Because a priest forgave his sins while he was in jail, his life was used as an example of the corruption of the Catholic Church (to which he belonged, though his wives did not) by anti-Catholics at home and abroad. And for a long time after his execution, his tale was told as a ghost story, every March, when it snowed in Baltimore. Looks like we got off easy, though. In Logan County Ohio, Hellman (a.k.a. Hatchet man) haunts the grave site of his first wife. Or, more likely, he doesn't.

No one seems to know where Horn is buried. It's tough to believe that his son Henry, who was disowned by his father, would cart the body back to Ohio for burial in the family plot. After his execution, the Sun speculated that his body would be taken to Virginia, but for now his final resting place is a mystery.

Note: I hope to return to the subject of Adam Horn soon, when I have time, to return to the scene of the crime and see what's there.

What's in a name?

From the Baltimore Sun, June 11, 1939:

Just back of the triangular block at Gay and Ensor Streets, on which stands Engine House number 6, is located, on the corner of Ensor and East Streets, an old two-story house with a hip roof. Embedded half-way up in its brick front is a small stone tablet which reads:
"Good-For-Nothing-Club. What's in a name, 1854."
Few, even of the neighborhood, have ever noticed this stone overhead between two of the second-story windows, and of those who do spy it, fewer still know anything at all of its significance.
It is probably the last remaining vestige in Baltimore of the once powerful "Know-Nothing Party."

I went to Ensor street this morning to see what was left. The Engine House is still there, at the point of the triangular block. It's to the left as you cross the bridge from Mulberry Street into East Baltimore. Ensor Street stretches back to the left of the point, and to the right are the shops (all shuttered) of the Old Town pedestrian mall.
At the back of the block, there is still an old, two-story house with a hip roof...

... and that's pretty much where it ends, for now. There's no evidence of the stone tablet in the walls, unless it's under the plywood (which would put it halfway up the building, but not between two windows). I tend to think this is the place, but the real estate records are a bit hard to track. Looks like they combined a bunch of lots for the Old Town Mall at some point, obscuring the trail a bit. Anyway, I suspect this was once the site of one of the Know Nothing political clubs.

The Know-Nothing Party, formally the American Party, was a powerful force in Baltimore long after it died out in the rest of the country. For a while, they ran Baltimore politics, mostly through their street gangs, with names like the Plug-Uglies, the Blood Tubs, and (for any Gangs of New York fans) the Dead Rabbits.

One of the ways the gangs influenced elections was through cooping-- abducting voters from taverns, and keeping them cooped up, forcing them to vote multiple times in multiple elections. There is some speculation that Edgar Allan Poe was cooped before his death in 1849. According to the Sun article, the basement of the Good For Nothing Club was used at least once for that purpose.

I have a couple of ideas where to find out more, but that's it for now.

On "Mobtown," War of 1812 origins of...

Baltimore is a city of nicknames--Charm City, The Monumental City, The City of Firsts, The City That Reads, The Greatest City in America -- and whatever is currently written on the bus benches across the city. One that has stuck over the years is "Mob Town," and it turns out we're coming up on the 200th anniversary of earning the name.

I've often seen "Mobtown" traced to the Pratt Street riots in 1861 (see the picture above), or the Know-Nothing rowdies in the 1840s and 50s, but it seems to date back further than that. The earliest reference I found in the Sun archives, which go back to 1837, is an 1838 letter to the editor:

In an 1838 "History of Pennsylvania Hall, Which Was Destroyed By A Mob" (and which is in Philadelphia), I found this line: "... the outrages committed by mobs in Baltimore, which have gained for that city the unenviable appellation of 'Mobtown'...." and in the records of an 1838 Commonwealth Convention in Philadelphia, to amend the state constitution, a Mr. Heister, of Lancaster, makes reference to a civil disorder law in Maryland: "We have recently seen the good effects of this law in Baltimore, not inaptly termed mob town—since the legislature of Maryland passed an act providing that the city should compensate the losers of property, by mobs."

In the 1830s, "Mobtown" didn't entirely belong to Baltimore, though, and the Sun seems to have been eager to discard it, or at least pawn it off on someone else, specifically Philadelphia.

But this wasn't the first time Baltimore had been called Mobtown. In The Western Messenger in 1835 or 36, the author of a "Letter on Mobs" rails against city violence in general, and Baltimore violence specifically. "You have without doubt, heard of the recent proceedings in Baltimore. That city is now re-baptised with its old name of "Mob-town,'' the letter says, "and well does it deserve the name, though, unfortunately, it has ceased to be very designative." The specific incident seems to have been a bank riot:

... in Baltimore the guilt is aggravated. It is true, that a body of men, the directors, etc. of the American Bank, which failed two years ago, are charged by the creditors of that bank, with gross fraud, but this is not proved, and is at the present time under trial, before the proper tribunal....One week would probably have put all at rest, in an equable manner. But this is not what the mob wished for. They saw the men, whom they charge with fraud, living in riches, and they thirsted for vengeance. They have taken it, with the utmost deliberation. They have destroyed their property, and sought to take the lives of the most obnoxious, and it was not until their main object was accomplished, that they could be quelled.

So Baltimore was already called Mobtown before the American Bank incident, but why?

The Niles Weekly Register, from April 29, 1815 (which was published in Baltimore on Calvert Street) contains this:

Further, we learn that from five to ten commercial houses are about to be established in Baltimore, by persons from Boston and its neighborhood. We greet them with a hearty welcome, and hope they may prosper amongst us. Many of our best and most patriotic citizens are emigrants from New England; and even a very "blue light" loses that factious, grumbling and suspicious spirit that distinguished him at home.f afier residing here a little while; for he finds this "Sodom," this "mob town" this "den of devils" as pious people in charity called Us, to have much less bickerings and quarrels than Boston, with a great deal mire harmony among neighbors, sind a general disposi'ion to ohligi; and he discovers what not a little surprises him, that our bank directors never enquire, whether he is a, "republican" or a "federalist!"

And in 1814, the Register (which seems to have had a bit of a beef with Boston), used the nickname similarly in another article -- always with quotes, to take issue with the idea that Baltimore was somehow inferior to Boston and other New England centers of commerce: "During these years the simple city of Baltimore (to be sure the only exporting place in Maryland) exported the value of 60,321,000 dollars, leaving a balance of about one million in favor of ell the "great commercial states'" against the city of Baltimore—the 'mob-town' and 'hater of commerce.'"


In 1835, a letter on the subject of general disrespect for the law refers to the American Bank riots again, but might give a clue about what happened in Baltimore to brand it for all time.

More recently, since the scenes of murder, outrage, and destruction which have been exhibited through the United States, both in the slave-holding States, and in those in which slavery does not exist, in the country as well as in the towns, at Boston, the republican city par excellence, as as well as at Baltimore, for which the bloody excesses of which it was the theatre in 1812, have gained the title of the Mob Town, good citizens have repeated with grief; "We are in the midst of a revolution."

So what happened in 1812?


Scharf's History of Baltimore has the answers, so I'll summarize.


When congress declared war on Britain (the War of 1812), a lot of people were upset about it. The Federal Republican and Commercial Gazette, published in Baltimore, had been strongly against the war, an opinion that ran contrary to the feelings of most of the German, French and Irish immigrants in the city. On June 22, 1812, some 35 men and boys attached the newspaper's headquarters, dismantling it brick by brick. No one was injured, but it kicked off a week of attacks by anti-war Baltimoreans against anyone who might be in favor of the war-- Protestant Irish, Portuguese, Spanish, and (for some reason) free blacks. The mob also destroyed ships in the harbor believed to be associated with the British.
Alexander Contee Hanson, the newspaper publisher, decamped to Washington, DC for a few days, then returned to Baltimore, to a house on Charles Street, with a band of armed supporters. On June 26, a mob attacked the Charles Street house, and one member of the mob was killed. Hanson and his men surrendered three days later, and the mob tore down the house. That evening, they attacked the jail. Some of the prisoners escaped, but others, including Hanson and James McCubbin Lingan, a hero of the Revolutionary War, were captured, stripped and beaten for hours. Lingan was beaten to death, and expired with the last words "Farewell, I am a dying man; Make your escape!" Another man, who did escape the jail, was captured, dragged to Old Town, and tarred and feathered.
Federalist newspapers around the country ran editorials decrying the violence in Baltimore, and Federalist candidates swept Maryland in subsequent elections, including Hanson, the newspaper publisher, who became a U.S. Senator in 1816.
Scharf ends his summary of the 1812 riot with these words: "Baltimore for many a year felt the consequences of the shameful deed, which fixed upon her an enduring reproach, and the opprobrious name of 'Mobtown.'"


So there it is. Scharf details earlier riots, but it was this one, 200 years ago next month, that put us on the national map as a place to be feared. The Battle of Fort McHenry happened in 1814, so if you really want to celebrate the anniversary of Baltimore's contribution to the War of 1812, tear down a building this June.

A note regarding the widow Meagher

The widow Meagher makes several appearances in biographies of Edgar Allan Poe, and they all seem to have come from the account of an anonymous San Franciscan, first printed in Francis Lemoine Didier's No Name Magazine in 1890 and reproduced here from Dider's The Poe Cult (1909):

A former Baltimorean, now living in San Francisco, gives what he claims to be a true account of the poet's last days and death. This is his story: "I was an intimate associate of Edgar Allan Poe for years. Much that has been said and written regarding his death is false. His habitual resort in Baltimore was the Widow Meagher's place. This was an oyster-stand and liquor-bar on the city front, corresponding in some respects with the coffee houses of San Francisco. It was frequented much by printers, and ranked as a respectable place, where parties could enjoy a game of cards, or engage in social conversation. Poe was a great favorite with the old woman. His favorite seat was just behind the stand, and about as quiet and sociable as an oyster himself. He went by the name of 'Bard,' and when parties came into the shop, it was 'Bard, come up and take a nip;' or, 'Bard, come and take a hand in this game.'
"Whenever the Widow Meagher met with any incident or idea that tickled her fancy, she would ask the 'Bard' to versify it. Poe always complied, writing many a witty couplet, and at times poems of some length. These verses, quite as meritorious as some by which his name was immortalized, were thus frittered into obscurity. It was in this little shop that Poe's attention was called to an advertisement in a Philadelphia paper of a prize for the best story; and it was there that he wrote his famous 'Gold Bug,' which carried off the hundred dollar prize."

Under the name "Meagle," she shows up with Poe in The Amiable Baltimoreans, written in 1951 by Francis Beirne, who includes a bit of a location. Beirne writes that Poe "haunted E.J. Coale's Bookstore on Calvert street and also became a familiar figure at the Widow Meagle's Oyster Parlor down by the harbor on Pratt Street."

A 1909 article in Cosmopolitan magazine is the possible source for the Pratt Street location. Written by Elisabeth Ellicott Poe, some sort of relative of Edgar Allan, who places the "Oyster shop of 'Mother' Meagher on Pratt Street near Hollingsford, where the prize story 'The Gold Bug' was written on top of an oyster barrel, with the noise of the shop about him."

There's no Hollingsford Street, but at least as of 1890 there was an intersection of Pratt and Hollingsworth...

... and it burned in the Great Baltimore Fire of 1905.

Burnt district near Pratt and Hollingsworth Streets from across Baltimore Basin (Harbor) 

The picture at the top of this post, purporting to be the Widow Meagher's place, is from the Cosmopolitan article. The tracks in front of it suggest it could be Pratt Street -- they are shown in maps from the same time. Another view of the city comes from Edward Sachse's 1869 bird's eye view map. It's probably unrealistic to expect Sachse to get all the details right, but from an imagined vantage point somewhere over Brooklyn, he captures the waterfront along Pratt Street, including the intersection at Hollingsworth. In the center of this detail picture, there's a building at the right spot that matches the style of the Cosmopolitan picture.

So there's the evidence for the Oyster Parlor, as well as I've been able to find it. On the other hand, there are no records, either in the census or city directories from the time, that anyone named Meagher ever owned a restaurant or tavern, or that one existed at this location. The Poe connection is tenuous at best. Didier's anonymous San Franciscan seems to have given his interview around 1890, 40 years after Poe's death, and his account has been dismissed by most scholars, along with the so-called "verses to the widow Meagher," which are believed to be inauthentic (I don't have a copy of them, but it's on my list of things to do).

One non-Poe detail that came up during my search for the widow, and I'm not sure what to make of it, is this passage from the book Sarah M. Peale: America's First Woman Artist by Joan King, published in 1987:

The study occupied [Peale] as well as anything could, but there were times when she simply walked through the streets of Baltimore, stopping at the bookstore on Calvert Street, or the Widow Meagle's Oyster Parlor on Pratt Street near Hollysworth, or the Baltimore Library near Holliday.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that there probably was no Widow Meagher's Oyster Parlor. But there should have been.

For completeness' sake, here is a copy of the article based on Didier's interview that made the rounds in 1890, which also deals with cooping, and Poe's death, reproduced from the Grey River Argus in New Zealand (right click to open it full size):