Charles Chapin’s Complicated Life, Part 2

Published Sep 28, 2022, 1:06 PM

Chapin's successful journalism career crumbled as stress chipped away at his mental health, and he committed a terrible crime. But there were still surprises left to his story. 

Research: 

  • “Of the Dynamite Explosion in Russell Sage’s Office.” The Leaf-Chronicle (Clarkeville, Tennessee). Dec. 7, 1891. https://www.newspapers.com/image/legacy/353237459/?terms=%22russel%20sage%22&match=1
  • “A Dynamite Bomb.” The Alliance Herald. Dec. 11, 1891. https://www.newspapers.com/image/legacy/423611027/?terms=%22russel%20sage%22&match=1
  • “City Slave Girls.” Saturday Evening Kansas Commoner. Aug. 24, 1888. https://www.newspapers.com/image/legacy/382892220/?clipping_id=30641784&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjM4Mjg5MjIyMCwiaWF0IjoxNjYyNDY2MjA3LCJleHAiOjE2NjI1NTI2MDd9.eLdfDQGTjlV-7dafIRsWSWJokfMsSrhH2IM2_6e5T7M
  • “New York World Editor Kills Wife.” Intelligencer Journal. Sept. 17, 1918. https://www.newspapers.com/image/legacy/557223275/?terms=%22Charles%20E.%20Chapin%22&match=1
  • Morris, James McGrath. “The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism.” Fordham University Press. 2003.
  • Chapin, Charles. “Winnetka’s Horror.” Chicago Tribune. Feb. 14, 1884. https://www.newspapers.com/image/legacy/349741239/?terms=Winnetka%27s%20Horror&match=1
  • “Editor Chapin Sane.” Enid Daily Eagle. Dec. 17, 1918. https://www.newspapers.com/image/legacy/608553349/?terms=%22Charles%20E.%20Chapin%22&match=1
  • “Mrs. Macaulley’s Crime.” Chicago Tribune. Dec. 25, 1887. https://www.newspapers.com/image/legacy/349513839/?terms=%22william%20macaulley%22&match=1
  • Chapin, Charles E. “Charles Chapin's Story Written in Sing Sing Prison.” G.P. Putnam. 1920. Read online: https://books.google.com/books?id=UmZMAAAAMAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s
  • “Russell Sage’s Will.” The Ordway New Era. August 3, 1906. https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=ONE19060803-01.2.45&e=-------en-20--1--img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA--------0------
  • Snow, Richard, “Charles Chapin.” American Heritage. December 1979. https://www.americanheritage.com/charles-chapin
  • “Prisoner McKeague.” Chicago Tribune. February 26, 1884. https://www.newspapers.com/image/legacy/349741560/?terms=neal%20mckeague&match=1
  • Roberts, Sam. “Archives From Prisons in New York Are Digitized.” New York Times. July 6, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/07/nyregion/new-york-prison-archives-are-digitized-by-ancestry-com.html
  • Wingfield, Valerie. “The General Slocum Disaster of June 15, 1904.” New York Public Library. June 13, 2011. https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/06/13/great-slocum-disaster-june-15-1904

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Uh. Today we are picking up our coverage of Charles Chapin and heads Up in case you don't recall from the first one, this two part episode involves not only murder, but also discussion of suicide and a lot of mental instability. So uh know that going in, we are, as I said, picking up with the life of Charles Chapin, and we're jumping right back into chapin story. So if you missed part one, we highly suggest you go back and start there, or this will have no context whatsoever. You will just spontaneously be working with Joseph Bullitzer out of nowhere, uh where we left off. Chapin, after making a name for himself in the St. Louis news business, had been summoned soon Do York by Joseph Pulitzer in a telegram that conveyed a sense of urgency to the whole situation. This was March of Pulleitzer had asked Charles Chapin to get on a train that very night, if at all possible. What Chapin would learn when he got there was that the managing editor of The New York World, Ernest Chamberlain, had prematurely run a special edition of the paper, reporting in bold headlines that war had been declared. This is in the wake of the sinking of the USS Main and Havannah Harbor, and most journalists saw the Spanish American War as inevitable, but it had not actually begun yet. The sinking of the Main and the impending conflict had been big news all over the US. Chapin had been working on his papers coverage of it when Pulitzer telegrammed, but Chamberlain had really jumped the gun here. He had been working round the clock and had run himself into the ground. He was really not well at this point. He died of pneumonia soon after this errant special edition had gone to press. But Pulitzer had another problem. In addition to that empty editor's chair, he was also in the midst of his rivalry with William Randolph Hurst, who had moved into the New York journalism scene with a lot of money and a desire to dominate park Row, and Pulitzer felt like the only person who could keep Hurst's papers in check was Charles Chapin. To make this daunting task worthwhile. Chapin was offered a salary of one hundred dollars a week. Foster Coates was hired as managing editor, and Chapin was the city editor in charge of the evening editions. As the rivalry between Hurst and Pulitzer ramped up, the news business became a frantic, constant stream of extra additions, round the clock, staff stealing stories from each other and running so many papers that readers just could not keep up. Sometimes a new edition was hitting the street almost hourly if there was a big story developing. Pulitzer developed an elaborate code for his employees, giving different editions code names and the editors being nicknamed as well, so that any eavesdroppers wouldn't be able to understand what they were hearing. No telegraph operators could blab any secrets they heard either. Yeah, Pulitzer's code name was Andy's in all of this, and Chapin was Pinch. Chapin, though, made the exact same mistake that Ernest Chamberlain had. He was working from four am until well into the night as the Spanish American war finally did begin and play out, and when that conflict ended, Chapin was a wreck. He had pneumonia and he was put on bed rest. But Chapin did recover, and he returned to work as an editor at New York World. Chapin became a legend of journalism. By all accounts, he was powerful, terrifying, and really good at his job. Irvin S. Cobb, one of the writers who worked for Chapin, once wrote of him, quote, Chapin walked alone, a tremendously competent, sometimes an almost inspired tyrant, and then even more descriptive. Quote in him was combined something of Caligula, something of Don Juan, a touch of the Barnum, a dash of Narcissus, a spicing of Machiavelli. Similarly, Stanley Walker, who was city editor of the Harold Tribune, wrote quote, even his laugh, usually directed as something sacred, is part sneer. His terrible curses caused flowers to wither, as grass died under the hoofbeats of the horse of Attila. The hun A chilly, monstrous figure, sleepless, nerveless, and facing with ribald mockery, the certain hell which awaits him but there were journalists who knew this reputation and still desperately wanted to work with him. Despite his brash manner, Chapin was so well respected that he was able to lure some of the best journalists away from HER's papers. To be clear, the people who worked for Chapin did not like him, but they got a certain degree of clout from working for him. Despite the stress of the world's culture and Chapin's unrelenting expectations, he was known to fire people with no warning, sometimes for reasons that would be an HR fiasco today. On occasion, these were firings he had been ordered to make due to budget cuts. Although Joseph Pulitzer later told him he could push back when he got those kinds of directives, he often did. Chapin's approach to running a newsroom was different than other papers. He is sometimes credited for being the first editor to assign reporters to specific beats covering a regular territory or subject matter, and he initially did this by just drawing a grid on a map of the city and giving each block of the grid to a reporter, and then those reporters were held responsible for making sure anything that happened in their section of grid that was newsworthy got covered. But here's what was really unusual. Those reporters didn't usually write the stories. They would call into the newsroom with details they had gathered, and then an assigned writer would assemble that information into a story. Those positions came to be called rewriters. Chapenhead embraced the telephone. He had telephones installed in the newsroom to speed up the delivery of information to the news desks. Reporters were to call in regularly with information as part of their daily routine, and because of his telephone relay system, the Evening Paper became more and more profitable as it outpaced competitors on scoops. People also started calling in with tips, which further expanded Shapen's lead over other papers when it came to getting stories out first. In nineteen two, Junior, as the Evening Paper was called, was making a two hundred thousand dollar profit. Yeah. He the news room always had a writer just hanging and ready in case anything came in at any hour of the day or night. Charles Chapin, though, was not only a boss who barked orders. He was perfectly happy to take interviews or reports and write up those stories himself quickly and with a style that consistently engaged readers. He was so good in his role as city editor that Pulitzer had been reluctant to promote him and lose out on that hands on approach, and this led to some friction at times because Chapin got passed over for promotions that went to lesser qualified candidates. There was even an internal memo that was prepped for Pulitzer that outlined the ways in which Chapin got more perks and money and took more time off than any other employee. These were sort of talking points he could point out to Chapin if he made a lot of fuss about it, but that memo also acknowledged that Chapin was easily the most valuable asset that they had in the newsroom. Chapin continued to make his case, but eventually he kind of dropped it when he felt like he was just getting nowhere, and he also worried he might be risking Pulitzer getting annoyed by him. During the nineteen o four General Slocum disaster, in which a pleasure cruise charted by St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran church went up in flames on the East River, killing almost fourteen hundred people. Chapin was there, taking the relay and writing up the grizzly details. The report was so bad that even the person who called in the tip became overwhelmed by the horrors he was seeing and hung up. The Evening World was the first paper to go to print with the story thanks to the telephone account. While there had been mixed feelings about Chapin's telephone system within the organization, the achievement of being first on such a big news story justified its use. Chapin's contract was renewed with a clause that he wouldn't go to work for any other paper for several years. Joseph Pulitzer's son, Joseph Jr. Became a new project for Chapin at this point, and that was a project that did not go particularly well. The younger Pulitzer had been enrolled at Harvard, but he had not been bothering to go to class, so his father sent him to work in Chapin's newsroom, thinking that might be a valuable education, and he instructed Chapin to show no partiality to his son. He may or may not have regretted that. Later Joe Jr. Was sometimes late, something Chapin hated, and then on occasion he failed to show up at all. And for Chapin, these were fire able offenses normally, but because of who this employee was, he tried to talk sense into him. And the thing was, the younger Pulitzer was apparently a pretty naturally talented reporter, so Chapin also kind of wanted to encourage him because he did do that with young reporters. He would find them and kind of teach them the business. After many infractions though of the editor's rules, it was finally a week of unexplained absence that got Pulitzer's son fired. Pulitzer Senior backed up Chapin on this decision. In a moment, we'll discuss Chapin's relationship with as great uncle after his return to New York, but first we will pause for a sponsor break. Shapen had, in his time back in New York reconnected with his great uncle Russell Sage. We talked about him in Part one. That reconnection had been a little bit tenuous because in the wake of the attack on Sage's office that we mentioned in Part one. One of Sage's employees who had been seriously injured by that blast, had received no financial assistance from his employer, and he sued Sage over it. The article that Chapin had written after interviewing his great uncle had described him as quote vigorous. This article was used against Sage in court because he had attempted to deflect the accusations against him by saying that he was in his own state of difficulty after the incident and that he was not aware of his employee struggles. So Charles had avoided any discussion and of the entire situation, and that had really deeply damaged Sage's reputation. He focused instead on just spending time with them whenever possible and endearing himself to the old man. Chapin recounted in his memoir that he took Russell for his first ride in an automobile. For example, Chapin believed that Sage was going to leave him a fortune when he died, yeah, and allegedly Sage had hinted that at as much Russell. Sage died on July twenty sCOD nineteen o six. He was ninety all of New York wondered what was contained in his will, which was rumored to have been rewritten just a few years before his death. But no one was more expectant about its contents than Charlie Chapin, and rumors started to circulate that the wealthy finance here had actually left all of his fortune to charity. Chapin was tense, and he actually had the death announcement of his great uncle rewritten twice by one of his writers, first casting stage as astute and completely in command of his faculties to his last breath, then as having been senile and of questionable mental acuity, before then going back to the more flattering version, which apparently had to be pulled out of a trash can. After several days of waiting, the contents of the will were revealed, and it was not what Shapin had hoped. Russell Sage had left almost everything to his wife. The exception was a few small bequeathments. His sister, who had died before him, was left ten thousand dollars. His nieces and nephews each got twenty five thousand dollars. That point was particularly painful for Tapin because his father, who had abandoned, the family was still alive, and he got his inheritance. Nothing was left to charity, although Mrs Sage used her inheritance largely in service of others. When Tapin ran the story, he included that the relatives had been left out and that some were preparing to contest the will. According to the storage shape and ran, each relative had expected a million dollars. Of course, this is incredibly inappropriate by today's journalistic standards. Chapin was reporting his own desires essentially as though they were fact. Also, just in general, this was a story that he had a vested interest in himself that he doesn't seem to have disclosed. This was a just a widely read and influential paper For this to be playing out in Earl arranged for his inheritance to be dispersed to Chapin's mother and siblings, but nothing to Charles. The logic was that he had a fancy, high paying job and the rest of them needed money, and Chapin had money. He had been putting it away over the years, according to his account, although others thought he may have been paid off for various stories rather than accumulating his wealth slowly over time, but in the decade following his father's death, which happened very shortly after Russell's stage, Chapin started using that money to make investments in the hopes of growing his fortunes so he could live the lavish life that he always dreamed of. In seven the Champains had moved into the Plaza hotel they actually got to move in before it was even open, and Charles had acquired numerous high price luxuries like a yacht and horses. He traveled in elite circles of wealth, and he wore custom tailored clothes as he did then. In nineteen o nine, during a turbulent time for The New York World in which Pulitzer was in hot water with Theodore Roosevelt, the staff was reorganized. Chapin was put in charge of the morning paper, with authority over all the other editions as needed. Chapin eliminated the day and night city editor positions and filled those spots with assistants who reported to him. He also shifted his favorite writers to salaried positions from freelance, and he hired a lot of new people. He had hired established writers that what were considered very high rate of seventy dollars to eighty dollars a week. He also hired writers fresh out of school at very low rates to learn the trade and to be trained at the World. Chapin status is temporary or permanent in the job was definitely something that seemed to be up in the air and discussions between him and Pulitzer, and there was definitely friction and resistance within the staff of the Morning Edition who were just not as eager to bend to Chapin's will as the Evening Edition staff had been. Nine months into the job, Chapin moved back to the Evening World In Chapin once again seemed to be standing where lightning metaphorically struck, at least in terms of news scoops. Mayor William J. Gaynor had recently been elected with the backing of Tammany Hall, and as part of coverage of the new mayor, Chapin had a reporter interview him just before he left on a European trip, and he sent a photographer named William Warnicky to photograph the mayor at the Hoboken Pier where he was to depart. Because of that random assignment, more nicky in the Evening World got exclusive photos of Mayor Gainer as he was shot by an angry city employee. Chapin is famously quoted as saying when he saw the photos, quote look blood all over him and exclusive too. Had Gainer not survived that shooting, that would have been even more callous and grim than it was. Pulitzer died the following year, in nineteen eleven, on his yacht as it was anchored off the South Carolina coast. During the funeral, the World Offices shut off all the presses and phones and observed a five minutes silence in the dark. Chapin later wrote that he felt that his spirit had been buried with Pulitzer. Even so, he continued in his role with the paper. When the Titanic sank, Chapin had, by random happenstance, known a reporter who was on board the Carpathia, which took on survivors of the Titanic tragedy. Carlos F. Heard and his wife Kathleen spoke with the survivors, and they were able to assemble the first detailed account of what had happened on board the doomed ship. But the captain of the Carpathia forbid any telegraph communication from going out, and he also didn't want their rescued passengers to be bothered, so he issued an order that the herds were not to be given any papers, so they couldn't write anything down. Still, they worked to document everything that unfolded on whatever scraps they could find New York newsrooms. At this point, we're running kind of on pure speculation because information had been limited to one Associated Press bulletin that was very thin on details. It mentioned that it had struck an iceberg, but basically nothing else. It had nothing about the face of anyone on board. And as the Carpathia returned to New York, papers actually sent out boats to meet them in the water to try to get this story. No wires were leaving the Carpathia, but a wire did go out to Carlos Herd to tell him Chapin was coming to meet a boat. Heard never actually got that wire, but he knew Chapin's reputation and correctly assumed that he was coming to meet him. To be safe, he bundled his five thousand words story into waterproof canvas and attached champagne corks to it. So that if he had to throw it to Chapin and it hit the water, it wouldn't sink. Chapin's tug was racing a similar boat that was carrying reporters from Hurst's papers. Although there were a lot of close misses, Chapin did take possession of the story when it was flung overboard, marked it up for the type setters while the tug made its way to the docks, so the World's extra edition covering the tragedy was being handed out to readers before the Carpathia even docked. No other reporters even had a chance to get a quote. At that point. Heard was able to purchase a copy of his own story as he left the ship and headed into the city. Yeah, this is that story of all of the newspapers trying to get out to the Carpathia is bananas. There are literally ships ramming each other as they try to get out there. Even when Heard had thrown his bundle overboard, it got caught on a wire and one of the sailors went out to get it, and the Carpathias captain is yelling at him to bring it back, and the passengers are yelling no, throw it down, and he the sailor, threw it down to Chapin, and like the ink was not even dry on the additions they were handing out there at the dock. It was like one of those like watershed moments in journalism for a lot of people, because it uh it was astonishing that it happened. So while Chapin's life was seemingly one success after another, he was spending the fruits of his labor far faster than they were coming in. His debt was mounting, Several of his investments had sunk, and he was losing money in the stock market, but he continued to live the life of a millionaire. And one of the things that he had done in all of this was take assets from the trust that was intended for the estate of his youngest sister, Edna. That was a daughter that his father had after he had started his second family. But at this point Edna was almost twenty one. That was the age when her trust and its investments would be assessed and accounted for and handed over to her, and Chapin had no way to replace what he had taken. Additionally, creditors were coming after him. He had such good instincts for news, but none of that transferred over to finances. He had no instincts in that space. Chapin resolved to end his life. He put in a call to the police station where he had friends, and said that he needed a revolver. He had no permit for one, but he was told to come down to the nearby police office where he would be set up with one. He and Nellie went to Washington via train. Charles came down with the flu on the way and was confined to bed. Once they arrived, he started to think about Nellie. What would happen to her if he was dead. She had no real support system and she wasn't in good health, and he believed he would have to end both of their lives to spare her the misery of destitution without him to support her. She had no idea what their financial situation was. The night Shapin intended to do this, He had the revolver under his pillow as Nellie slept beside him. When he put his hand on the gun, though, he had a vision of his mother, young and beautiful, shaking her head at him, so he abandoned the plan, at least for a moment. As the following days played out, Chapin became increasingly paranoid. He believed he was being followed, and he finally, in a park, told Nellie all of their problems and about his intention to end his own life. He did not share with her that he had also planned to kill her. Nellie was surely shocked by this information, but she seems to have really kept quite a level head. She told her husband that he had probably doably magnified his troubles by keeping them to himself and letting them stew, and that they just needed to return to New York and meet with a lawyer friend and talk this whole thing through, and Chapin did just that. He also reached out to a friend in the tobacco industry for help, who told him instantly he would do anything to get Chapin out of trouble. And the lawyer had advised him like, just come clean, say you used money from that estate and that you were going to pay it back. And so this tobacco friend basically enabled Charlie to replace the missing trust funds with a financial gift, and then he was able to wrap up his sibling and his trust and be free of it, which was a huge burden off his back, and life for a time went back to normal. But several years later, and as the summer of nineteen eighteen came to an end, Chapin was once again in hot water. Financially. He had sold off a lot of his luxury items to try to stay afloat. He was still deeply in debt and creditors were threatening to garnish his wages. He knew he would be fired once this story he went public, and so once again he decided that he needed to end his life and Nellie's. In the early morning hours of September six, nine eighteen, Charles shot Nellie as she slept. In addition to the note that he wrote Carlos Sites, which we read at the beginning of the first part of this he wrote another to a friend, Harry Stimpson, confessing what he had done, writing quote, for a long time, I have been unable to sleep. My nerves are unstrung. I am tortured with pain. My wife died this morning in a few minutes, I also shall be dead. After writing these letters, Tapin got dressed and put a do not disturb sign on the hotel door and left with his revolver in his pocket. He posted his letter to Sites and headed to Central Park when that's where he intended to take his own life, but he started having hallucinations. He saw hands reaching out to grab him and thought they were reaching into his pocket to take the gun. He kept wandering, eventually making his way to Brooklyn, although he wasn't totally aware of where he was. He had the gun pointed at himself when a policeman walked by him, and he panicked and put the weapon back in his pocket. Then he headed for the subway. At one point, as he rode the train, he described coming to the belief that he was already dead, and in the meantime, as he was having this walk about around New York, his letter to Sites had been delivered. As a consequence, Nellie's body had been found, and alert was put out that Chapin was either dead or he was wandering the city armed and dangerous. When Chapin got off the train near his office in the morning, he bought a copy of the New York Times, and he saw in its pages the headline wife of editor shot dead in bed. He read in that paper the very note that he had sent to Sites, and then after vacillating over whether to turn himself in or kill himself, Chapin went to the West sixty eight police station and demanded to see the captain. When it seemed that he was not going to be taken to the captain, he told the lieutenant at the desk quote, I am Mr Chapin of the New York Evening World, and I have just killed my wife. We'll get to the aftermath of this entire upsetting event after we take a break to hear from the sponsors that keep stuffy missed in history class going. When Chapin turned himself in, it was unsurprisingly very big news, but in the case of a man who had been the scourge of so many of New York City's journalists, it was kind of a heyday hearst. Papers were eager to run the story as fast as they could, and in the case of the New York Evening Journal, they ran the story of Chapin's confession right next to the story that police were still looking for Chapin because they didn't take the time to remove the first one. In his statements to police, Chapin continue need to insist that he had killed Nellie because he wanted to save her from a pauper's life, insisting quote, I idolized my wife. She was the only thing I lived for. She was my life, my religion, and the only thing I lived for. Chapin confessed everything, all the money he had borrowed, his overdrawn accounts, his attempts to hide his financial ruin, and his decision to end everything. The paper sent their lawyer to represent him. Chapin asked the district attorney if he could attend Nelly's funeral and offered to waive his right to a trial and to go directly to the execution. That offer was not accepted. He would make that request repeatedly in the days before Nellie was buried, but he was denied every time. In his cell, Chapin asked to see the papers, and he read all of the coverage of his crime and declined all interview requests. Meanwhile, reporters were trying to piece together Chapin's last days and figure out just how bad is financial situation was. There were even requests posted in the papers that his creditors should contact reporters because Chapin had destroyed most of his personal papers, so they had nothing to go on. Interestingly enough, no creditors ever came forward to reporters. Chapin's legal team insisted that their client was not in his right mind and was in no state to stand trial. This claim was supported by the fact that Chapin continually said he wanted to go to the electric chair. He insisted that he was perfectly sane and that he didn't want a sanity commission. One was assigned, though, in mid October, papers around the country ran the findings of the commission. On December seventeen, quote Charles E. Chapin, former city editor of the New York Evening World, who confessed to having shot and killed his wife at the Hotel Cumberland September six, has been found legally sane, according to the report of a Lunacy commission filed today. As trial was set to begin on January twenty, nineteen nineteen, Chapin, however, consented to a plea deal, which was submitted on January fourteenth. He confessed to the murder and was sentenced to prison and hard labor for a minimum of twenty years and a maximum of his natural life. The press had been anticipating a trial, and all of the stories that it would generate, but Chapin had cut them off one last time. When Chapin was recorded as an incoming inmate at Austining Correctional Facility known even then as Sing Sing which is its name today, he was listed as a widower. His prison term started two days after he had received his sentence, and he was sixty years old. Chapin's prison time was vastly different from other Sing Sing inmates. He and the warden Lewis Laws had become fast friends when Chapin began his incarceration, and as a consequence, over time, Charles was allowed to kind of do more or less as he pleased within the walls of the prison. He had been assigned of the prison library as his job rather than actual hard labor, and he was given a pension from the paper which enabled him to purchase things in the prison store. On the suggestion of a friend, he started writing his autobiography. That book, Charles Chapin Story Written in Sing Sing Prison, was published in He also became the editor of the prison newspaper, and for that job he got in office. A colleague who once visited him noted that that was a nicer office than the one he had had at The New York World. The move into the paper's office reinvigorated Chapin from the years before he murdered Nelly. Up through his arrest and sentencing, he'd been in sort of a torpor, but being back in the business of editing a paper, even just the Sing Sing Bulletin brought out some of Chapin's former energy. That meant he also wrote most of it, because he found the writing of his fellow inmates was not up to his standards. The paper lasted less than a year and a half before it was shut down by the state superintendent, but Chapin was allowed to keep the office. Chapin found penpal romance in prison twice. The first of his prison romances was with a woman named Viola Irene Cooper. She had written him first, wanting to learn more about him, and he had responded with a startling level of vulnerability, writing quote, I am more lonely than any person you may know, so lonely that I am even now reaching out my arm to clasp your hand, hoping you will let me hold it in mind for just a little while. Chapin sent Cooper, who was twenty four, his book. Although he feared that once she read it, she would lose interest in him, but she did not. She saw him in her own word, as an olympian of writing, which was her chosen profession as well. The two traded letters, and they built dreams of living together in a cabin in the woods. Viola came to visit him numerous times, but it didn't last. Their relationship ended when Viola, still young and still very much seeking adventure, set sail for Fiji aboard the wind jammer bouguin Villa. The second woman Chapin had a penpal romance with was Constance are Nelson, who worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. She had reached out to him after reading his autobiography. She asked him to help with editing stories about banking. As with Cooper, Chapin quickly took a familiar and romantic tone with Constance, and before long the two of them were trading their favorite novels. He was putting her photo across from him at dinner and writing her passionate love letters. Nelson first visited him in June of n and this was the first of many visits. Constance was greeted by the warden for lunch, almost as if she was visiting family, and she and Chapin had time together in the morning. In the afternoon, Constance also made a point to reach out to Charles's family and even to visit Nellie's grave and put flowers there. Yeah, she really seemed fairly committed to this whole idea that she wanted to be in his life. But perhaps the most surprising thing that Chapin did at Sing Sing was gardening. The prison yard at Sing Sing was large. It's been described as about the same area of two football fields, and for a long time it was very empty. There was a small garden at one point near one of the buildings, but that was it. And when Chapin had seemed extremely sullen one day, the prison chaplain who he had become friends with, had suggested he tried digging a little garden to get some fresh air and possibly feel a little better. Chapin told him he wasn't interested, but Father Cashion brought him gardening tools anyway, and Chapin grudgingly used them, only to discover he really enjoyed gardening and found it therapeutic. Soon he asked the warden if he could be assigned to care for the prisons lawns, and before long Chapin was drawing up designs to fill the empty barren space of the prison yard. When a local nursery discovered that he was trying to expand the prisons green space, they sent a truckload of plants. Soon, Chapin was reaching out to other people who might be able to donate bulbs, seedlings, and supplies. Horticulturalists shared Chapin's needs and wish lists among their various groups and friend circles, and they eventually created a network of donators. Chapin's designed for the prison yard to be transformed into a rose garden was published by the American Rose Society, and their annual there was a call with that for plant donations. Chapin's efforts had so successfully transformed the prison that the warden arranged for a greenhouse to be built. As winter approach that year, Chapin called it the Rosary and started taking his meals there. One of the really interesting details of Chapin's makeover the prison grounds was the thoughtful way that the landscaping had been planned, as it led to what was called the death house. That was the area of the facility where executions were carried out, and Chapin had designed this space so that year round, a condemned man's last view of the rolled outside that building would be filled with beautiful flowers. In the gardens were coming together so nicely that they were photographed by House and Garden. Japan was in the papers again, but this time only for his flowers. They had frequent visitors in the form of horticulture enthusiasts and reporters for gardening magazines. Chapin started to hope that all the positive publicity might help him gain a pardon so that he, in Constance could start a life together, and they had a lot of supporters who lobbied for this on his behalf. Chapin wrote during this time about how very much he had changed and pondered how gardening had been the key to that change quote, roses respond to me when all else fails. Park Row would never recognize me. I don't even know myself. And to think I have changed in so short a time, do you think that growing flowers did it. As his gardens had grown, people had started bringing him birds as well, which he kept in the greenhouse, and he started showing the birds to visitors with the same delight that he shared his gardens. By the time Chapin had been incarcerated for several years, he seemed to have gained a perspective on his persona within the New York news scene. When Irvin Cobb asked for a visit, the former editor initially refused, but then he acquiesced, and he wrote a letter to a friend about having done so. He wondered if Cobb was looking for a way to quote get even for the hard knocks he had when I was his boss. Yeah, he realized he was a jerk um, whether or not he regretted any of that. As another matter, Chapin's relationship with Constance Nelson went through some strain. Chapin's assistant in prison had been paroled, and that man turned to Constance for help figuring out kind of how to fit into the world outside, and she helped him out with money and with clothing. But when Charles heard about this, he assumed that there was something romantic between the two, and he became very angry and jealous. He later told Constance the jealousy was just part of passion. But they struggled to find their former closeness again, and Chapin replied less and less frequently to Constance's letters. In July of nine six, Chapin became very ill and was diagnosed with acute guest stritis. His health declined rapidly. At the same time, the prison had become far too attractive to visitors who wanted to see the gardens, and the warden had to end the flower tours because there simply wasn't enough staff to watch the tourists and the residents, although occasionally journalists are still allowed to visit for stories. As Chapin approached his seventieth birthday in late nine he seemed to have abandoned the idea of a partner parole. When a reporter asked him if he had thought about what would happen to his birds and flowers if he were to be released, Chapin told him quote, I do not believe I would care to leave here if I could. He occasionally wrote letters to Constance, but they seemed more critical and chastising than conciliatory in nature. Yeah, he basically blamed her for their strains. When an unknowing contractor drove a steam shovel through Chapin's Rose Garden as part of a new drainage project for the prison in late nineteen thirty. It destroyed some of his work, and it really devastated Shapin. He had been in poor health already with a stomach ailment, but this moment where he saw his garden destroyed, seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back when it came to his spirit. His health degraded rapidly, although he refused to go to the prison hospital, and after several months of being confined to bed visibly weakening, Chapin died on December nine, thirty of bronchial pneumonia. His last words, which he spoke to the warden, were quote, I want to die. I want to get it over with. Chapin had laid out his desire as at a letter to the warden to be opened after his death. He didn't want a funeral service. He wanted the least expensive coffin possible, and most importantly, he wanted to be buried next to Nellie in Glenwood Cemetery. His body was shipped to Washington, d c. In accordance with that wish, and that was accompanied by a wreath of roses that had come from his garden. He's a wild ride. I have so many thoughts. I do too, and most of them are not No, I'm not flattering in any way. No, I will talk about all this and behind the scenes as show um I as a little bit of a bomb for this strange story. I have a delightful listener mail which is from our listener Gina. He says, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I just listened to your episode on the invention of the dishwasher, and I was tickled to hear the mention of Josephine cochrd's grandfather, John Fitch. As you mentioned, he was instrumental in the invention of the steam locomotive. Perhaps he deserves his own episode. I live in the town where he was born, and I also happened to live in the house where he was born, or sort of, as the original house was torn down. My house was built in the nineteen fifties. I have attached a photo of his memorial that lives in my front yard. It looks a lot like a tombstone, and we get plenty of double takes as people walk or drive by. My husband's spruced it up a bit with some flowers and molts. But I told him not to make it look too nice because by all accounts, John Fitch was a deadbeat dad and not a very nice man. Thank you for all of your hard work on the show. I was able to attend a live show pre pandemic, and I feel so lucky to have been able to meet you too. Thank you so much for this note and this photo. Uh, it looks sprucy to me, so um. Hopefully we will get to do live events again and see many more listeners. But we'll just see what the future holds. Uh. In the meantime, if you would like to write to us, you can do so at History Podcast at ihart radio dot com. You can also find us on social media as Missed in History, and if you haven't subscribed, can do that on the I heart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Missed in History Class

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