ILLINOIS: Museum Piece

Singly and in straggling little groups the faithful came to view the remains. Hinky Dink was dead, at 89. At Hursen’s funeral Home on Chicago s South Michigan Avenue, under the glass cover of a $5,000 bronze casket, the Honorable Michael Kenna, symbol of the gaudiest era of Chicago’s noisy and sinful past, was now a museum piece”.

Tiny (5 ft. 4 in.), gimlet-eyed Hinky Dink Kenna had run the roaring First Ward—the Loop and the near South Side—with grasping fingers and a cunning brain, for almost half a century. He had started his climb to power early; he was orphaned and a newsboy at twelve, two years before the Great Fire. When he was 24 he owned a saloon (with a dice game upstairs) and was edging into Democratic politics.

The First Ward was a politician’s paradise. Its bawdy districts, “Little Cheyenne” and “the Levee,” were solid with gambling joints, peep shows, flophouses and saloons, and harbored the riffraff of half a continent. The First Ward’s blocks of bordellos ran from haughty establishments like the Everleigh house (wine: $12 downstairs; $15 in a room), to a “Bedbug Row” of noisome prostitutes’ cribs. The jangle of its pianos never stopped.

Beer & Free Lunch. Hinky Dink and his lifelong partner, Bathhouse John Coughlin, had set out to rule these rich and raffish stews of the new metropolis. Bathhouse John, once a rubber in a Turkish oath, was the front man. He was a huge, bumbiing. handsome ruffian, full of pomp, speech and warm red blood. Tight-lipped Hinky Dink was the boss. They were elected aldermen; together they controlled the vote, became loved, feared, respected.

They were full of calculated benevolence. At Hinky Dink’s saloon, the Workingmen’s Exchange, beer was served in two-handled, 28-oz. mugs, and no hungry man was ever turned away from the lavish free lunch. The pair staged an annual First Ward ball which was attended by thousands of whores, pickpockets, hopheads, politicians and pimps. Their guests drank free champagne, brawled, engaged in orgiastic dancing, and cheered as Bathhouse John led the Grand March wearing a bright green cutaway, mauve vest, lavender pants and a high silk hat.

But Hinky Dink kept sober (his wife was a temperance worker), honored his word, and ruled with an iron hand. He made and unmade mayors and chiefs of police. Year after year he used his power brazenly, openly, ruthlessly to squeeze bribes from all who sought municipal favor.

The Payoff: Twelve Cigars. Times changed. Prohibition put Hinky Dink out of his saloon; Al Capone stole much of his power. Bathhouse John died in 1938, old and broke. But Hinky Dink stayed on at his old stand in the First Ward. Then, in 1943, diabetes and old age beat him down. He retired to a hotel room. His fortune (estimated at $2,000,000) afforded him but little comfort beyond the dozen $1 cigars he smoked every day. He died attended only by a male nurse.

Jack (“Greasy Thumb”) Guzik, one of the successors to Capone’s power, came to his wake. Hymie (“Loud Mouth”) Levin, another underworld kingpin, sent flowers. So did politicians from the First Ward. But the funeral at old St. Mary’s Catholic Church was a disappointment—half the seats were empty, and Hinky Dink got only three automobile loads of flowers, as compared to Bathhouse John’s seven.

An apologetic First Ward lobbygog (Chicagoese for ward heeler) explained: “He was retired too long. If you don’t go to other people’s funerals they won’t go to yours.”