Essay

Chapter 18 of the history textbook states, “The American murder rate rose rapidly in the late 19th century, from 25 murders for every million people in 1880 to over 100 by the end of the century.” Serial killing began with H.H. Holmes at a time of urbanization, where the increased population of the city made anonymity easy for serial killers because it was easy to blend into the metropolitan area.

Marginal Revolution

H.H. Holmes was the first well-known serial killer in America. The Crime Museum says that, “Holmes would take out insurance policies on these people before planting the bodies and would collect the money once the bodies were discovered.” Holmes was killing people for money. He killed people with no families, friends, and without anyone who would care that they were gone. He got away with this until he killed Benjamin Pitezel, his partner in crime. From loc.gov, “Carrie Pitezel, confesses to attempting to defraud Fidelity Mutual Insurance by faking her husband’s death with the help of H.H. Holmes. She fears that Holmes has killed her husband.” Holmes did kill her husband, along with a few of her children. From The Chicago Eagle Newspaper, “H.H. Holmes has virtually confessed to the murder of the two children whose bodies were found in the cellar of a Toronto house.” Harper’s Magazine says that “Holmes was a ‘magnificent swindler, petty cheat, mass murderer, he was a man of nimble, tortuous mind.’”

Biography

The Crime Museum says that, “Holmes built a hotel called the castle… during construction he hired and fired workers so that no one knew that he was building a ‘murder castle.’” Holmes could just hire and fire workers because there were so many people living in this area. The hotel Holmes was building was not just any hotel, it was a death trap. The Rock Island Angus Newspaper explains what exactly this hotel was for, “One room at the top of the house has twelve exits by which a person can escape, from which an enclosed chute runs down to the basement of the building, in which a body could be transferred without anyone being the wiser. In this basement a larger archway had been built over the sewer in such a way that he could easily put in a trap door opening into the sewer.”

History.com

How was Holmes able to do this? Holmes and many others like him were able to get away with murder, and this is because of the mass urbanization that occured. Crime and Justice says it best, “The rise of capitalism and related processes of mass migration to urban centres resulted in individuals being immersed in a sea of strangers. This development also proved to be a key precondition for the emergence of serial murder, given that a defining attribute of serial killers is that they prey on strangers. Thus dense modern urban environments represent ideal settings for the routinised impersonal encounters that operate as a hallmark of serial killing.” Cities were and still are a great place for serial killers to do their work. In big urban cities, a person will see new people everyday, and never see them again. Serial Killer Phenomenon says, “These kinds of cities really did change the game for this breed of killers to come about. The rise of big cities lead to an increased opportunity for anonymity… it was much easier for a killer to remain absolutely nameless and retreat into concealing shadows - that’s one of the characteristics of serial killers is that they are particularly talented at ‘cloaking’ themselves and going about a normal everyday life.” Holmes could murder people without anyone noticing.

City Talk

Crime rates rose quite a lot throughout the 19th century. Time.com says that “In cities, increasing urbanization rendered the night-watch system useless as communities got too big.” Now that there was more people and a bigger population, a small night-watch system with unqualified people was doing nothing to stop real crime. Chapter 18 of the history textbook says, “The rising crime rates encouraged many cities to develop larger and more professional police forces… by the end of the century, professionalized public police departments were a part of life in virtually every city.” Without the need for police forces back then, we wouldn’t have the protection we have today.

Dayton History

Serial killings began in a time where mass urbanization was happening because it was easy to blend in. H.H. Holmes seemed like a normal person, and he was able to kill so many people by pretending to be like everyone else. His “murder castle” looked just like any other hotel, but just like Holmes, it was different on the inside than it seemed on the outside.

Marron Institute

Annotations:

History textbook: I used this source to learn more about crime during the time of urbanization, and to learn about the increased killings.

The Crime Museum: I used this article to learn about H.H. Holmes, his background, and who he actually was. I also learned about his "murder castle."

loc.gov: I used this source to learn the timeline in which everything happened.

The Chicago Eagle Newspaper: I used this source to see what people knew about the murders in this time.

Harper’s Magazine: I used this source to learn about the "murder castle."

The Rock Island Angus Newspaper: I used this source to learn about what detectives had found out about the murder castle.

Crime and Justice: I used this article to learn about serial killings during the urbanization time.

Serial Killer Phenomenon: I used this article to learn about why people were able to kill and blend in.

Time.com: I used this this source to learn about how police officers and security improved.