The Devil in the White City also, as a minor subplot, tells the story of Patrick Prendergast. According to his Wikipedia entry, "his grandfather
was reported to have died insane, while his mother had "repeated attacks of hysterics" and his father died of consumption. At the age of four,
Prendergast was reported to have suffered a severe head injury from a fall, 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. He left home at
sixteen because of imaginary persecution and by eighteen had developed grandiose ideas of his capabilities and became a fanatic for the single-tax
notion."
Patrick worked as a newspaper distributor in Chicago and constantly wrote to politicians and influential people, for two main reasons, (a) it gave him the illusion that he was familiar with, and an equal to, the powerful people he wrote to, and (b) he hoped that, being a man of political influence, he would eventually be appointed to a appropriate high-level position in the political administration. He was observed once in a park, walking in circles with his hat pulled down over his eyes, until he walked face-first into a tree.
In 1893, he ended up ringing the mayor's doorbell and shooting the mayor dead. Even though he was obviously mentally ill he hung for it, the mayor was a beloved populist politician and the people demanded blood.
Patrick worked as a newspaper distributor in Chicago and constantly wrote to politicians and influential people, for two main reasons, (a) it gave him the illusion that he was familiar with, and an equal to, the powerful people he wrote to, and (b) he hoped that, being a man of political influence, he would eventually be appointed to a appropriate high-level position in the political administration. He was observed once in a park, walking in circles with his hat pulled down over his eyes, until he walked face-first into a tree.
In 1893, he ended up ringing the mayor's doorbell and shooting the mayor dead. Even though he was obviously mentally ill he hung for it, the mayor was a beloved populist politician and the people demanded blood.
