Judgments Make the Monsters
Judgments Make the Monsters
The Gilded Age of America was a prideful place. People were judged mostly on their money and social circles. The fair had become an expression of pride. The American people were humiliated by the French when they reviled the Eiffel Tower and showed off France’s self-proclaimed superiority in art, manufacturing, science, and engineering. The competition was in every aspect of the American people. After the Chicago fire of 1871 the Chicago World’s Fair opened in 1893 and went on for six months with more than 26 million visitors. It was also the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ first voyage to the New World. There were many new things that debuted for the first time at the Chicago World’s Fair. There was Cream of Wheat and Juicy Fruit gum. The technological products were dishwashers and fluorescent light bulbs. The core of the fair quickly became known as White City for its white stucco siding and streets newly illuminated by electric lights. The first American serial killer emerged. For several years before and during the exposition, Dr. Henry Howard Holmes was eagerly luring victims into his three-story block-long building called the “Castle.” Where they were tortured, mutilated and killed. Dr. H. H. Holmes used people’s fears and insecurities against them.
Dr. H. H Holmes was born Herman Webster Mudgett in New Hampshire’s Lake Country. Holmes had a brother and sister. Holmes family was Methodists. His parents were very well known and liked amongst there church. They were very practical and plain. Holmes family lived a very simple and moderate lifestyle. He was small, odd, and exceptionally bright. At the age of sixteen he graduated high school and took a job as a teacher. When he was nineteen he left New Hampshire to attend medical school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. After graduating he used insurance fraud to fuel his plans for his murder castle. Mudgett changed his name to H. H. Holmes and quickly set out to buy a pharmacy and an empty lot across the street.
When he was young he started medical school. Holmes had to work hard at making friends. During his time he became influenced by the importance of fitting in. He started to obsess on the people who stood out. There was one person who would change his future forever. Holmes noticed a group of boys interested and talking with the new nurse. They were asking her questions on biology and anatomy. The nurse did not know a single thing. She didn’t even know how many bones were in the human body. Everyone knew that, Holmes thought. She just kept laughing and flipping her blond hair.
This secretly enraged Holmes because he believed in the educational conformity of the school. Holmes believed that only the most intelligent were allowed at University of Michigan. The nurse just didn’t measure up. Another problem Holmes had with the nurse was the fact she didn’t seem to know anything about the medical field. Being a nurse Holmes saw her as an alien intruder and this particular nurse didn’t belong there. Holmes was ready to teach the rest of the school that the nurse needed to go. He would make her life a living hell. Holmes started a plan that had been working on other people for years.
Holmes started talking to the group of boys she always talked to before class. He knew everyday that she did this right 7:45am before she left to go to her nursing station. Once the group of boys were used to him he began working out his plan.
As the nurse was walking up when Holmes said to the other guys, “What happened to her hair?”
The other boys were confused. One of them asked, “What do you mean?” The nurse quickly changed her path and walked straight to the nursing station.
Holmes answered the boys question, “It looked like she didn’t even go home last night.”
The one boy who liked her the most said, “Well, yeah, maybe.”
One week he made up a rumor that she didn’t pass the nursing exam to get her job. Holmes said that she slept her way to the top.
Holmes’s proof was, “Have you ever asked the nurse a medical question? She usually gets it wrong.”
“See, see, do you see what I’m talking about?” Holmes was very good at manipulation.
Weeks would go bye where he would make fun of everything about the nurse. Everyone who should have been annoyed with Holmes but they were more disgusted with the nurse.
Holmes questions went on like this,
“Did you notice the way the nurse talked, and it’s so uneducated?!”
“Did you notice she has a lazy eye, that’s