Milwaukee Mayhem
Murder and Mystery in the Cream City's First Century
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From murder and matchstick men to all-consuming fires, painted women, and Great Lakes disasters--and the wide-eyed public who could not help but gawk at it all--“Milwaukee Mayhem” uncovers the little-remembered and rarely told history of the underbelly of a Midwestern metropolis. “Milwaukee Mayhem” offers a new perspective on Milwaukee’s early years, forgoing the major historical signposts found in traditional histories and focusing instead on the strange and brutal tales of mystery, vice, murder, and disaster that were born of the city’s transformation from lakeside settlement to American metropolis. Author Matthew J. Prigge presents these stories as they were recounted to the public in the newspapers of the era, using the vivid and often grim language of the times to create an engaging and occasionally chilling narrative of a forgotten Milwaukee.
Through his thoughtful introduction, Prigge gives the work context, eschewing assumptions about “simpler times” and highlighting the mayhem that the growth and rise of a city can bring about. These stories are the orphans of Milwaukee’s history, too unusual to register in broad historic narratives, too strange to qualify as nostalgia, but nevertheless essential to our understanding of this American city.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Milwaukee historian Prigge delves into the dark side of the Wisconsin metropolis in the 19th century through this collection of sordid stories involving death, dismemberment, disappearances, and debauchery. There are murderers, a "stout and moonfaced" bigamist named Jiggs Perry, and a bingo-addicted tenant with a grudge who bludgeoned her landlady; and tragedies, like the 1883 fire at Newhall House, dubbed "Milwaukee's grandest hotel" by the author, where patrons leapt from top floors to their deaths on the street below. A chapter on vice explores the "underground economy of desire" featuring gambling, prostitution, pornography, and bootlegged liquor. This history is teeming with interesting characters like Rosina Georg, proprietor of a dance hall known for underage drinking and an interracial clientele, and Frank Blunt, a thieving womanizer who was raised as a girl but lived as a man. Other tales include a suicide by cannon, an antikissing crusade, roving bands of flirtatious fops, and the chilling account of a young woman picked up for a blind date and never seen alive again. Prigge plucks these stories from obscurity and vividly brings them to life. He also helpfully identifies the modern locations of settings should readers feel inclined to take a macabre Milwaukee tour.
