Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the WorldWooldridge, Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman)
History
Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World
Wooldridge, Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman)
Crime -- Illinois -- Chicago; Police -- Illinois -- Chicago
NUMBERLESS HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPES.
August 20, 1891, he met with another narrow escape at Thirtieth and
Dearborn streets, while attempting to arrest Nathan Judd, a crazed and
desperate colored man. Judd threw a brick at him, striking him over
his left temple, and inflicting a wound two inches long.
Judd was shot through the thigh, and afterwards was sent to the house
of correction for one year.
Detective Wooldridge, alone in a drenching rainstorm at 4 o'clock on
the morning of June 23, 1892, at Michigan avenue and Madison street,
intercepted three horsethieves and hold-up men in a buggy trying to
make their escape.
At the point of a revolver he commanded them to halt. As they
approached him no attention was paid to him, or to what he was saying.
Seizing the bridle of the horse, he was dragged nearly a block before
the horse was checked. A twenty-pound horse weight was hurled at him
by one of the robbers, which just missed his head. Another one of the
robbers leaped upon the horse and rained blow after blow upon his head
with the buggy whip.
Detective Wooldridge shot this man in the leg; he jumped off the horse
and made good his escape while Wooldridge was engaged in a desperate
hand to hand encounter with the other two robbers. Wooldridge knocked
both senseless with the butt of his revolver. They were taken to the
police station and gave their names as John Crosby and John McGinis.
Both were found guilty a month later and sent to the penitentiary by
Judge Baker.
SAVES WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN FIRE.
March 4, 1892, Detective Wooldridge by his prompt and courageous
actions, and the immediate risk of his own life, succeeded in rescuing
from the Waverly Hotel (which was on fire), at 262 and 264 S. Clark
street, two ladies who were overcome by smoke on the second floor of
the burning building: also a lady and two children, aged two years and
five months, respectively, from the fourth floor.
This act was performed by tying a silk handkerchief around his mouth,
and on his hands and knees crawling up the winding stairs to the
fourth floor, where he found Mrs. E. C. Dwyer unconscious. Placing
the two children in a bed quilt, he threw it over his shoulder, and
seizing Mrs. E. C. Dwyer by the hand, dragged her down the stairs to a
place of safety, where medical assistance was called.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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