On October 28, 1893, Patrick Eugene Prendergast fatally shot Carter Harrison III (the mayor of Chicago) inside Harrison's residence. Prendergast's assassination of Harrison was driven by a delusion Prendergast held that he was entitled to be appointed the city's corporation counsel (a role he held no qualification for), and that Harrison had wrongfully deprived him of this.
The assassination occurred two days prior to the closing day of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and led to the cancellation of the world's fair's closing ceremony. It quickly drew comparisons to the 1881 assassination of U.S. president James A. Garfield by Charles J. Guiteau. Like Prendergast, Guiteau had been a deranged office seeker whose actions were motivated by their having not been given a patronage appointment that he perceived he was entitled to. Harrison's death was met with large-scale public mourning in Chicago, with his funeral ranking as one of the most-attended in history. The national reaction was also immense, with the assassination becoming one of the most sensationalized events of its day. For a long time afterwards, Harrison's assassination was considered a well-remembered event in American history. However, it has since fallen into relative obscurity.
In the subsequent murder trial, Prendergast was found guilty of murder in the first-degree, and was sentenced to death. Legal efforts led by attorney Clarence Darrow to forestall his execution (including an attempt to have Prendergast legally found to be currently insane, a condition which under Illinois law would have rendered him ineligible for execution) were ultimately unsuccessful. Prendergast was executed by hanging.
Background Carter Harrison III (victim)
Carter Harrison III was an American politician who served two tenures as mayor of Chicago: the first between 1879 and 1887 and the second beginning in 1893. Harrison was a Democrat.
Harrison unsuccessfully ran in 1891 to become mayor again. Harrison was returned to office in early 1893, winning election to an unprecedented fifth term as mayor. His fifth term overlapped with the city's hosting of the World's Columbian Exposition, a significant world's fair that was scheduled to hold its closing ceremonies on October 31. Harrison was due soon after to marry his fiancé, Annie Howard, on November 12.
Harrison was a well-liked mayor. Dubbed "the common man's mayor". and "the people's mayor", he made himself accessible to citizens. He took great pleasure in riding around the city's neighborhoods on horseback, stopping to speak with residents. He also made it known that his door was "always open", allowing citizens to drop-in for audiences with him at his residence. He had ordered his staff never to turn away any visitor to his residence. His policy of giving drop-in audiences to residents would lead to him finding himself fatally at the receiving end of gunshots fired by the aggrieved Patrick Eugene Prendergast.
Patrick Eugene Prendergast (perpetrator)
The assassination was carried out by Patrick Eugene Prendergast, a newspaper distributor. Prendergast was reported to have suffered a severe head injury from a fall at the age of four, from which he was unconscious for a long period of time and suffered vomiting for four weeks after. He was described as a peculiar child, solitary, irritable and excitable, with a poor memory who did poorly in school. Prendergast left home at 16 because of imaginary persecution and by 18 had developed grandiose ideas of his capabilities and became a fanatic for the single-tax promoted by Henry George.
Prendergast became a newspaper distributor in Chicago, where he lobbied for improvements in Chicago's railroad grade crossings, which he saw as a danger to the public. He supported Carter Harrison's 1890s election campaigns under the delusion that if Harrison won the election, Prendergast himself would receive an appointment as the city's corporation counsel. Prendergast had a fixation with writing postcards. In order to support Carter Harrison's pursuit to regain the mayoralty, Prendergast sent rambling postcards to prominent Chicagoans urging them to vote for Harrison. Among those who received such a postcard was prominent lawyer A. S. Trude, who would later prosecute the case against Prendergast in the murder trial that followed the assassination. Prendergast sent these postcards in support of Harrison for more than two years before Harrison was successful in winning the 1893 Chicago mayoral election. Prendergast believed that his letters had been responsible for Harrison's success in the election.
Prendergast visited Chicago City Hall under the delusion that he had been appointed corporation counsel by Harrison. After Prendergast was insistent to a clerk that he held the position, he was brought to meet Adolph Kraus, the incumbent corporation counsel, who showed Prendergast his office and teased him by facetiously asking if he wanted the job. While Prendergast did not have the education or qualifications that required for the office, he was nevertheless angered that he had not been appointed by Harrison to it. After Harrison had spent six months in office without appointing him corporation council or granting him any recognition, Prendergast began to desire revenge against Harrison for the perceived slight.
Prendergast wrote threatening letters to both Harrison and Kraus, a fact which was quickly discovered by investigators following the assassination. One letter to Kraus read, "I want your job. Do not be a fool. Resign. Third and final notice."
Earlier activities of Prendergast on the day of the assassination
On October 28, 1893 (the day of the assassination), Prendergast purchased a six-chamber .38 revolver manufactured by Smith & Wesson. He would use this weapon to carry out the assassination. Because this model often misfired, he opted to keep the chamber under the hammer empty.
Per press reports, on the day of the assassination (prior to traveling to Harrison's residence and assassinating Harrison), Prendergast had visited Kraus at his office at City Hall and issued a threat if Kraus did not resign from his office. The news reports stated that Kraus tricked Prendergast into thinking he was about to resign, before escaping by ditching Prendergast in the building's crowded lobby.
Earlier activities of Harrison on the day of the assassination
On the day of the assassination, Harrison delivered a speech shortly before noon at the Music Hall on the grounds of the World's Columbian Exposition as part of its "American Cities Day" celebration. American Cities Day saw Harrison host 5,000 mayors and city councilmen of U.S. cities at the fairgrounds. It is believed to have been the largest-ever gathering of United States mayors.
In his remarks, Harrison remarked on Chicago's ascendence in the ranks of world cities, promising that by the end of the next half-century, "London will be trembling lest Chicago shall surpass her," and that predicting that Chicago would grow to become, "the biggest city in America and the third city on the face of the globe". He expressed his wish of living to see the day that Chicago might reach such heights.
Harrison delivered second, impromptu, remarks around noon. Aldermen Martin B. Madden and William R. Kerr (both member's of the convention's committee on arrangements) had originally been scheduled to ring the Columbian Liberty Bell at noon. When Alderman Madden failed to show at noon, Harrison suggested that he would join Alderman Kerr in ringing the bell. Harrison and a party which also featured Mayors Edwin Sydney Stuart (of Philadelphia), George Pickering Bemis (of Omaha), and John Fitzpatrick (of New Orleans) ventured over to the bell, where Harrison stood before the bell with his hands holding its cord and delivered brief unprepared remarks before proceeding to ring the bell. This was the final speech that Harrison would ever deliver.
Afterwards, Harrison toured exhibits at the exposition and mingled with the crowds. He first visited the Tiffany's exhibit, where he signed an autograph album for the exhibit's manager. He next toured the Britannia and Meriden exhibits, and was presented at each exhibit with gifts of souvenir spoons. He next had lunch, after which he visited the Italian exhibit. During the afternoon, he expressed hope that the U.S. Congress may perhaps authorize an extension of the fair for an additional year, remarking that he wished he would have more opportunities to visit the fair than the twenty times he already had over the course of its run. At 3:40 PM local time, Harrison remarked that he was feeling tired and departed the fairgrounds for his residence. He remarked that, having spent most of the day at the fair, he felt "dead tired".
Harrison retired to his residence for the evening, arriving at approximately 5pm local time. Soon afterwards his son William Preston Harrison returned to the house as well, and joined his father for dinner and in order to discuss a potential article to be published in the Chicago Times newspaper that the family operated. They were joined at dinner by Mayor Harrison's youngest daughter, Sophie. Towards the end of the dinner, the mayor fell asleep in his chair.Also available at:
Assassination Prendergast rang the doorbell of Harrison's home. Harrison's maid, Mary Hanson, answered the door, and requested that Prendergast return in a half-hour. When Prendergast returned, she asked him to wait in the hall. Hanson went to retrieve the mayor. Hanson had thought Prendergast looked familiar and mistook him for a city official. When Harrison asked who was here to see him, she told him it was a city official. Hanson then herself went to join other household staff for dinner in the kitchen, while Harrison went to greet his visitor. Harrison went through a doorway that connected the dining room directly to the front hall of the residence.
Soon after Harrison walked into the doorway, four gunshots were fired by Prendergast into him. The first gunshot entered Harrison's left hand, exiting through his palm. The next went through his abdomen roughly five inches above his navel, and stopped in his intestine. The third made a roughly three-inch wound under his right nipple. The final shot appears to have been fired while Harrison was on the ground suffering the pain from the first three shots. It traveled four inches below the skin below the rear of his right shoulder.
After shooting the mayor, Prendergast ran out of the residence through its front door. Harrison's coachman, Paul Elliason Risberg, having heard the gunshots from the level of the House below, had quickly run up the stairs to the entrance level with a handgun. Noticing Risberg emerging into the front hall, the fleeing Prendergast shot into the front hall. Risberg returned fire. Neither were wounded in this exchange.