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Zaren Burnette. Elizabeth, it's Mearen Burnette.
Hey, it's me Elizabeth Dutton.
I got a question. May know something ridiculous?
Yes?
No, not Helen Thomas. Me.
Okay, Zaron Burnett from the Associated Foreign Press. Uh, did you see this story recently reported about the hikers who lost their buddy in New York?
They're all worried. Oh yeah, so these these two guys they were hiking in the Adirondacks in New York, right, and they got really worried because the third guy who was with him died. Oh no, I know, right.
So they they then see that they call them stewarts, like the park Rangers to see the steward, like on the mountain. They go, hey, we're lost and our buddy died, and so like in the park Rangers, Stuart, it's like, Okay, you guys are messed up. And I just looks at him and knows they're messed up. Mean, while these guys are like, okay, he's not helping. They like leave, I guess, and they like call nine one one and they report
that their buddy's dead. They're lost or on this mountain Meanwhile, after they called nine one one, uh, this Stewart was able to determine that they were incorrect. The friend uh then called and said that they were not dead. I'm totally fine, guys. You guys went left, I went right. It was like so basically they were that high on shrooms. But they allot these two guys convinced themselves the third guy was dead and went through a whole thing. I
had like this, the forest rangers looking for him. They had nine one one looking for him. And then the buddy called like, hey, I'm lost. They're like, are you with two hikers? You want a mountain because I need to connect you guys, And so they connected him and camp goes.
Off on a different path. I guess they turned around.
He's not there, Like he's dead.
We thought you was Exactly.
Craig died. They meet up at the campsite. That must have been like one probably second coming of like, since Jesus you're.
Dad man, have you come back now?
They belong to the Church of Greg Exactly. It's ridiculous, very ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
I love ridiculous.
Stealing land, but not in the name of colonialism. Oh oh, this is ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. Heis and cons it's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
I know you don't.
I know, I done heard that. This one comes to us courtesy of Hailey Huntley.
Thank you, Hailey Huntley.
Haley wanted to show some criminal Chicago pride.
Hell yeah, right.
You and I both love Chicago.
Shout out Chicago.
It's a great city.
I love the whole place, south side, north side, all of it.
Everything. It's fantastic. It's one of my favorite places. You know what's really cool about it. My cousin lives there. Oh, I mean, so that's God's super cool. That makes it for him. But Chicago, right, it always brings the realness, yes, And it brings the crime.
Yes, which is it's America's best kept.
Secret, it really is. It brings crime in so many ways.
Oh my goodness. Yes, also many of.
Them outside of what we would talk about here.
This is true, very true, has a reputation.
But I've got a ninety nine percent verder free one for you.
Do you take a lot of research?
Yeah, it really did I want to tell you about George Wellington's streeter?
Okay, George Wellington Street.
Yeah, so this is Haley tipped us off. This is a good one.
Good look.
He was a native son of Flint, Michigan.
Born in Cargo Transplant.
Eighteen thirty seven. Whoa so okay at that time Flint was a frontier summing.
Yeah, he was there when they found He's like, yeah, he's like, we should call this place Flint.
He's there. He was born into this huge family, thirteen kids.
Oh wow.
The family was total.
Had nothing to do back then, just a lot to.
Create a lot of just what you got to churn out workers for the farm.
Yeah, a lot of bed tests and a lot of spares. Disease taken a couple of them. Let's be real, say of getting kids.
Through exactly, and you know, you got a lot of duds. Such a high standard, it's like poor poor health and hygiene, you're eating lead.
You know, it's just it's not a good time.
The family though, salt of the earth. Yes, good working class folks, hard working, upright, very patriotic military family. His great grandpa fought in the American Revolution.
Oh wow.
His grandfather served in the War of eighteen twelve. Oh, like this family didn't play deep American roots right serious, as was common for the freedom its freedom's.
Never freez established it and kept it.
You pay a hefty hefty feet.
Yes, generation to generation.
It's so it's common at that time among working class families for the kids to not really have a formal education beyond elementary school.
Yeah, you know, that's just what happened.
You know, my grandpa only made it to sixth grade.
There you go, there you go.
I only made it to fourth grade.
There's backwards.
Yeah, we're going backwards in my family.
I don't know anything past third grade.
I never went to kindergarten.
I still can't spell fourth grade?
Where am I? Where?
Pants?
Are these? My pants? So he didn't go past elementary school. Yes, but he had something better street smarts.
Ah, streeter smart.
Oh there it is, good job you're learning. Yeah, as these street smarts, I feel like flint. Street smarts just hit different, maybe even back in frontier times. So Streeter he also had another quality. He loved spectacle, the able, razzle, dazzle, the carnival.
Ah, who doesn't you know?
I don't know? No, actually I do well not really.
It depends not a huge.
On the situation. So his early career Streeter's early cruise basically like a nineteenth century picuresque novel. Seriously, he worked as a logger and a trapper. Oh wow, he was an ice cutter on Saginaw Bay. Yes, he got a gig as a deckhand on vessels that navigated Canada's Georgian Bay. He did a little mining in the iron and copper regions of Upper Peninsula. He was a sideshow barker at a carnival.
Dude, are you kidding.
I'm not kidding you. It was around this time that a war broke out, the American Civil War.
Oh.
As friend of the show Axel Rose once wondered, what's so civil about war anyway? Cue the whistling, It's Chinese because christ Civil War, the War of Southern Aggression. Uh. A Streeter enlisted in the Union Army, and he set off to fight for him. Yeah, he set off. I'm going to fight the traders.
It's a family tradition at this point, a family tradition.
And he did a good job of it. He was really good at it. He earned the rank of captain.
Damn.
It was a title that he No, I'm never sarcast you. No. He used that title for the rest of his life. Captain post bellum everyone called everyone called him cap.
You very rarely hear that post post.
Let's talk about that cap.
Everyone called him cap, not captain.
No Cap. He said that he fought in all these major battles, Missionary Ridge, who knows. Here's the thing, there's no reliable military record that shows that he served as a Union officer or even as an enlisted man. So there are all these historians and biograpy.
Make cap records. Not that hard.
We make records for that. So people have cast out on that the National Archives and Civil War pension records don't have any evidence of his service under the name George Wellington Streeter.
They were the best of the record keepers.
Yeah, so, I mean, he's born in eighteen thirty seven, right, so he was eligible. But we don't really know what he was doing. Tho.
I'm guessing he was running the rivers.
He was a cap in spirit. He already and like at this point he already had a reputation for exaggerating and like fabricating his.
Backstorylab I'm telling you he was the model for Captain Crunch. He had a river boat, he had hat going around.
His persona was like carefully constructed, not doing Captain Crunch. He posed as this war hero and that would get him sympathy from veterans, populous, working class bogs. He would portray himself as this like self made American fought for freedom, and this would become central to his myth making later on.
I always tell people that I was an active soldier in the in the in the Cold War. I tell people I thought for the Soviets, and I give them the look and they're like, you aren't even old enough. I'm like, yeah, you believe me. I like that make people's day weirder, like.
The front lines of the Cold That's pretty.
Good right there in the front lines.
Well, like Streeter right, his myth making was essential to his next gig. He bought a traveling circus.
Oh my god, this.
Thing had all sorts of exotic animals, right, I'm talking porcupines, deer, otters, donkeys. He had a white he had a white Normandy hog. What is a white Normandy hog? And all that came up were like recipes for some dish. But it's like Normandy pig I saw some photos.
You know, is it like a big is it attractive?
It's got long flutter? He didn't say like, hey, come look at that. How he said, look everyone, it's a white elephant. Like he told people, is a weight over it's an easy mistake to make their.
Does it have like a trunk? No?
In all fairness, though, the thing was ten feet long and weighed over fifteen hundred pounds. Whatt I paid a nickel to go see this?
I would do that. Ain't a hog now?
Once you paid your nickel and you're in there and they're like, that's not an elephant, and then you're just like, I'm dizzy. The fumes in.
The crowd whatever, that's like the grandfather of hog Zilla.
That's not a big old pig. A big.
So a lot of plays to drive Arkansas crazy.
Along the way, he picked up.
A wife money Impressed by the hog, he railed.
The circus with him. They were our couple.
Community.
Yeah. When the circus folded, so did their marriage. See many signed on to be with a circus baron like a big dog. She didn't sign on to be with a failed circus owner. So she bounced out. She took all the money he had left with her. There are some who say that she went off to become a vaudeville star. Oh I I could find no evidence of that, but like, what do I know. I'm just a simple country lark. I just work here, lady. Yeah, yeah, so Streeter,
he worked best with a partner. Sounds like in business, in romance, in life in hogs. So it wasn't long before he met and married Maria Mulholland. Oh yeah, no he I think the many took the hog wrote. But so Maria, right, she's this spitfire, she's feisty, feisty. Gasp. She became his lifelong partner in both legitimate and illegitimate endeavors. Oh yeah, so.
Good for him.
Hey he bumped her?
Oh he did?
Right, or die Little Bonnie and Clydes. He bums around as like a ship's navigator on Lake Michigan for a.
While, bumps around, or bums around.
He bumps around. Oops, right, he bummed around, bummed around? Right? Then maybe headed for dry lands land ho settled in Chicago in the eighteen seventies. Something happened in Chicago in eighteen seventy one. That's right, Elizabeth. It was the Great Chicago.
Fire, right, Yeah, so it was reportedly it.
Was ignited late one night when we were all in bed. Old Lady O'Leary kept a lantern in the shed when the cow kicked it over. That's what we all said to be a hot time in the old town. Tonight got fire, fire, fire, fire, hot town. Someone was a camp counselor around here.
I'll give you two guests.
The fire was so brutal it burned more than three square miles of the sat.
The London fire and Chicago fire like the Great Fire.
Yeah, it killed more than three hundred people. It left more than one hundred thousand people homeless.
Huge.
One of the structures that was lost was Colonel Woods Museum.
Not Colonel Woods, it was Popcorn Currentel.
It was right right on the corner of Clark and Randolph. I don't know where that is nothing sure. It was an amazing monstie of oddities and antiquities, birds, bugs, snakes, paintings, no hogs, paintings, model ships, but also a panorama of the city of London.
Just a little boys room that they turned into a museum.
A rifle owned by Daniel Boobe.
I'm telling you this is a scale model.
Of the Parthenon, a dinosaur skeleton, mummies, and papyrus sheets that were once the property of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons.
Maybe a twelve year old boy historical interest.
Yeah, it's a twelve year old boy with maybe one friend two if they're feeling.
So.
Everything was lost in the Chicago fire, but Colonel Wood didn't let that stop him. He picked up a business partner, a co owner, George Streeter, and together they reopened the museum.
Just a block away.
They found a theater that was like one block over, just outside of.
The burn zone I told you about.
And he's like, I know, I'm a hogman, Like I just.
Wanted to one thing. I can partnership a hog man.
But I think I can get into the museum gig. They started collecting stuff. Yeah, it took a few years, but they eventually reopened, this time with even more stuff crammed in there. And it was a big hit really, But for whatever reason, Streeter cashed.
Out of the venture, out of the curiosity.
Yeah, he's like, I'm no longer curious, which is good because the place burned down again less than a decade later. I mean, you imagine the dust and the must oh.
Yeah, and when you're building everything out of wood, everything.
Wood and oily rags. That's how they built everything in the insolated with oily rags. By that time, though, like Streeter had moved on. He became a salesman at county fairs.
He moved up in the perfect him.
When he got tired of that, like he was doing like the slap chop stuff and like, yeah, exactly. Uh. When he got tired of that, he went back to Chicago and he did a short stint as the owner of the Apollo Theater there. It's no relation to the New York City. Yeah, So he pops up here and there in the papers like sometimes were good, like when he was helping shore up a house that had collapsed. Uh, Like he and some other dudes were like, let's let's help this guy.
Let's play this.
And then once he was he and his family were the victim of a crime because they were living on this boat and got burgled when they went to the park that made the paper. He acquired a steamship called the Rutan. Let's get back on the r e U T A n routin there you go. It was Maria who named it. So don't blame me. I don't why she chose the name. Who knows, who knows, and honestly, who cares it is. So here's the thing about Maria.
She was a complete alcoholic, like a raging drunk. I'm talking like week long benders where no one knows where.
She is, face the bottle and whack out.
Streeter was cool with this. This is quote quote. It don't matter where she is. She's having a good time and I'll come home when she's ready.
Like she's his dog, a really old cats.
He respects the spirit. I So she had a lot of adventures piloted from the inside of a bottle. And on one of those benders she made a pal, a guy named Captain Bowen. So he told her all about a revolution going down in Honduras and he's like, you know, there's this business opportunity for us up here. Anyone with maritime skills in a boat and it tastes for danger and adventure. You gotta get into gun running.
Gun running.
Yeah, So he's like, you know what, you take a load of weapons down there.
The CIA doesn't exist yet, because it's going to be, So.
You're going to pilot your craft up and down the Honduran rivers, selling the wares to the revolutionaries, just just you know, put a sign on.
There, trustworthy by gun. Yeah, guns, like.
A lemonade stand sign. There's some debate about whether or not a Streeter actually did this. He told everyone that he wanted to charm, that he had transported weapons by boat to like a bunch of different Central American uprisings. Not just he told tales of his daring do outwitting foreign governments, like narrowly escaping capture. Because you know, he's a military man from a long line of military men, sure for this, And it was on those runs where
he honed his nautical skills. It made him a true salt, and it made him more hard boiled than he was before. So that's what he said. Anyway. The claims have never been substantiated so far, have no shipping records, no contemporary newspaper accounts, no government documents like verifying this gun running actorpts.
He was just like sitting at the beach just staring at boats, going I'm running guns on that one thing.
Though, Just because there's no paperwork doesn't mean it didn't happen. Like paperwork. To run guns to a foreign.
Government a successful crime.
Yeah, it's not something you want.
The paper you definitely want, I'll give it to them. Check. Maybe he did it.
But I must say that historians generally view his alleged gun running the same way they viewed his supposed Civil War service, like part of the larger than life persona created. Yeah, gun running was a genuine occupation for some people, like adventurers in the eighteen seventies eighteen eighties ADOR's Panama. So Streeter could have borrowed elements from like those real stories to fabricate his you know, was his myth.
Making at the right bar in the right marina or merchant.
Yeah, there's a great website, American Hauntings from Troy Taylor has an interesting section on Streeter really tracks all these tales. So historians they say that he Streeter invented these myths and legends in order to look patriotic, rebellious. It gave him an air of global experience, and it backed up that he was capable of commanding ships and like handling weaponry.
Worked brilliantly for Teddy Rosel, and he did that right all the way to the President.
But see that's the thing he did to the presidency. Why was it important for George Street?
Why was it important for George Streeter.
When we returned from this commercial break, we'll look into Yes, welcome back.
Gun running.
I know, right, be fun.
I was just sitting on the beach dreaming about it.
Seventies gun running, Yeah.
On a boat that's a steamship, would be some cool stuff.
And then you're all like, heloha, who I have the gun?
Did you want to keep Hawaii?
That was a lot of ad time, by the way, at least I'm assuming it is. We have no idea how many ads?
What ads? I don't listen to ads.
Don't blame it.
I never listened to.
Don't blame us.
I only I don't watch ads. I don't keep I love them. You know what, The ads are the best part. That's what I listened to shows for.
Just for the ads.
The show.
I skipped the show part.
Just get back to the ads exactly. They're fast and quick about things I'm interested in.
You know what, zaren close. Yes, I want you to picture it. It's July eighteen eighty six. You are a Chicago cop walking the beat along the waterfront on the north shore of Lake Michigan. As you come to the foot of Superior Street, you notice something. A steamship has run aground on the sandbar just off the shore. It's a muggy summer day. Carriages roll down the road behind you as you stare out at the boat. The rain from a common summer afternoon storm has just passed. The
air is thick and oppressive. You reach behind you and peel your uniform shirt and coat away from your sweaty back, flapping him a little just to get some air in there. You walk down Michigan Avenue a bit to take note of the name of the ship routon. You'll send word to get a tug to get this thing out of here, but first you need to make contact with those on the vessel. You blow your whistle call out towards the
deck of the steamship. A man appears. A slight man with a big sam Elliot mustache, pops up, adjusting the pork pie hat on his head. You ask him what happened. He tells you that he got straight at it on the sandbar in the storm. This just can't be true. That was not much of a storm. You ask the man his name, Cap Streeter. He yells back, the thick ropeline slapped lazily against the hull of the ship as it gently rocks with the waves that lap at the sandbar.
Just then you hear footsteps. The local alderman approaches you. He's heard about the stranded boat and came down to see what was what. It comes from a long line of sailors on this massive lake, steady talented mariners. What I'm trying to say, is Aaron, is that this man knows boats and piloting the very same. He shouts over to the man on the boat that it looks to him like he ran the vessel into the shallows on purpose,
came into it head on. Still, we'll get someone out here right away to get you loose and on your way, tells the man. Streeter stares you both down, and then clears his throat. He tells you that the area is unclaimed territory, and not the alderman or anyone else can tell him to move. He's outside the jurisdiction of the city. In fact, he continues, he hereby declares this little spit of land the district of Lake Michigan. He announces that it is a sovereign entity under his control. Now you
and the Aldermen look at each other in disbelief. A crowd has started to form, gathering to watch the spectacle of a large ship run aground, but now captivated by this blossoming standoff. You command Streeter to disembark. He laughs and goes below deck. You grab a paper boy who stopped with the crowd to take in the show. You send him to the precinct building to get back up for you. You tell him to convey the urgency of this situation. The Alderman tells you he's head in the city,
hauling at the mayor. You've got a situation on your hands, erin, and it's about to get way bigger than you or the Alderman could ever imagine. So at the time that Streeter ran the routine into the sandbarsh Cocko was really rapidly expanding. So the rebuild from the fire was like chug along, almost mostly completed. People were investing in Chicago, and developers wanted more land. They so they did like they'd done here in San Francisco. They used landfill to
extend the shoreline. So in San Francisco, and I think I mentioned this in the Shanghai Kelly episode. So many ships came pouring in during the gold Rush, depositing hopefuls at the foot of Market Street, and passengers and crew alike disembarked. They abandoned the ships on this marshy shore. So developers just started establishing businesses, hotels, saloons, what have you in the empty ships. And then they began to dismantle them and leave them lay where Jesus flag them,
filling in that muddy marshy area making more land. So blocks and blocks of downtown San Francisco are built on that rough landfill, compacted over time, but still not super stables, especially in a quake.
Tunnel that you go through a ship.
Yeah, Monk Army station goes right through a ship well. And then there's the Millennium Tower is leaning. There are great stories. I feel like, I can't remember what book it was that I read it, where in those marshes they would drive these pilots and they would just keep going, never to be seen again. But so the same thing
was going on in Chicago, right. There were ships, but most of the landfill that was created was when they contractors would just dump debris on the shore, and Streeter was all about this, so he he refuses to remove his boat. Instead, he's like inviting the contractors to come and dump junk and brick and wood, garbage whatever all around the ship, just to add real estate to his sovereign territory. Basically, with every load brought in to expand
his empire, he claimed ownership of that area. So you know, if you own something, you can also sell it. At least that's the idea I've heard this. So Streeter starts selling bogus deeds to these unsuspecting buyers, and he would exploit like poor folks. He would like kind of get a lot of black families who climate thing. But he would bray about how I'm the champion of the underdog.
So like, pretty soon though, he had one hundred and eighty six acres of what is now Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood. Are you familiar with the district?
Yeah, it lasted, it did.
You're probably familiar with Streeterville and you don't know it. It's the neighborhood north of the Chicago River, bounded by the river on the south Magnificent mile portion of Michigan Avenue on the west Lake, Michigan on the north and east. So basically it's the Magnificent Mile plus everything east of it. What and you know what's in that area like Navy Pier. Yes, that's Streeterville.
Are you kidding me?
And that's all Phil from him?
Wow, yeah he made.
I mean, the sand Bar was already sort of expansive. There were already squatters on it. They had set up all sorts of like dens of sin on there, like gambling shacks and shift bordella's.
I mean, most of the Chicago is basically built on a swamp. Locals called it and think.
Like yeah, and so the mayor would like evict all these little squatters off the sandbar, but people would like sneak back out there. And then Streeter comes along and it's like, no, this whole thing's mine now, let's just keep expanding it. And so others though, had already laid legal claim to the land. So the claimed land on their included plots already purchased by the Chicago Title and Trust Company Potter Palmer, who was like a huge landowner,
Nathaniel Fairbank, Marshall Field, Philip Arbor. So basically the fat cats of Chicago and these fat cats. They teamed up together to get Streeter removed from their land.
That's yeah.
They wanted this drunken squatter gone, I mean like, and Streeter was partying it up. He threw these huge parties. He sold booze even on Sundays, which he wasn't supposed to do, And so the elites they were sending the cops out on the regular. But like Streeter resisted, he said, they had no jurisdiction off my property. He armed himself and his supporters with guns.
Oh he meant it.
He and Maria went medieval and poured boiling water and oil on trespassers.
Are you for real?
I'm definitely for They built these makeshift forts along the one and eighty six acres, and they used scrap metal for defense. The place became known as Fort Streeter. Yeah, and he always called it the District of Michigan, but he pronounced it.
The District district.
Yeah, so everyone started calling it the district and it was like this, like mad Max style slum. Everyone who lived there was part of Streeter's army, and their battles went on for years, bad years. So if the cops couldn't get the squashed right. Palmer and Fairbank. They thought maybe the courts could, so they sued Streeters six ways to send, but Streeter always appealed and weaseled his way out. A reporter for the Chicago Tribune went to interview Streeter
in his house on the land in eighteen ninety. It is the greatest article. Streeter's a great interview. So the reporter was there because Fairbank had just won his suit of forcible detainer against Streeter just the day before, and Streeter was still in the shanty on the land, though, so he told the reporter that he intended to stay put until the Supreme Court of State of Illinois tried to kick him out, and then he promised to fight them too, and with what, according to the reporter, quote
with a shotgun, with a white bulldog and a stout heart.
Oh bulldogs.
Spot was like a fixture at the shant.
Dog name was Spot.
Spot. The dog was like snoozing under the table while missus Streeter cooked sausages and like Streeter sat around with some friends smoking corn cob pipes.
Are you kidding me?
I simply must read you a chunk of this article because there's no way for me to summurai into it justice. The reporter transcribes it in their vernacular and pronunciations, by the way. Quote, I've been a sailorman twenty five years, said the captain, jamming his tobacco into his pipe with his thumb, which is a trick all seamen know. And my name is G. W. Streeter, George W. Streeter, George Wellington Streeter, said Missus Streeter. But I'm no englisher day
she ain't. Are you never married me? Says missus Streeter. Vast said the captain. I allus lived board a boat. I ain't used to live in nowhere else. About two years ago there was another blow and another night. In comes here this old tub and stuck around about one hundred and fifty feet from the shore. She is bigger than the rootin and I'm moved into her more commodious, said Missus Streeter. Vast said the captain. I put on a roof and target, and me and the girl lived
here since then. The dudes said, I had their rob Perrian writes. They ordered me off.
I wouldn't go.
They asked the health department to fire me, and I fired the health department. They sent the harbor master to put me off, and that didn't work. Mister Fairbank, he said he'd burn me down, and I said, I'd shoot mister Fairbaks whiskers off if he tried it, I would do. Then mister Fairbak came in his carriage one day and he was howling mad, I says, says, I'm mister Fairbank. You look here, I am an American citizen and you can't come no British lord business over me, I says.
And moreover, mister Fairbank, you can't work no Johnny bull on me, says I. Because I was born in Michigan, I says. And you're riparian rights. It's nothing to me, mister Fairbank, I says. Our rights is more riper than his, more by token that we was here first, said Missus Streeter Vast, said the captain. And I'm gonna defend my rights. I'm gonna claim all this made land as a squatter. I'm gonna carry it up to the Circuit court and
to the Pellet Court and to the Supreme Court. And if the Supreme Court tries to hiss me, there's my government papers to run a boat. And if Uncle Sam don't fight them off, this ain't no land of freedom. It's unconstitutional, said a man with earrings, rising to spit in the cookstove. It ain't right, said missus Streeter. Vast, said the captain, And he rose and took down from the wall a long barreled shotgun, unpleasantly loaded with tenpenny nails, and arouse the dawn.
Oh damn loaded.
Nails and shot like this nails. I mean this interview fast.
Oh, I gotta start saying, I says.
And so the article made note of the fact that Streeter was holed up in a really nice neighborhood. So quote. From his front window, he can hear the boom of the lake and see the breakers piling in ashore. From his back stoop, he can watch the carriages of the haughty in the distance. He has only to turn over in bed to hear the chimes of Saint James's. The Newberry Library will stand withinhaling distance of his cookstove. Moreover, the made land which he lays claim to, is worth
many hundreds of thousands. No wonder he doesn't want to move.
Yeah, I mean, come on, nailed it right? It's something.
So after this, But our rights are riper, so after the interview, the Tribune like they popped in regularly to get choice quotes. Street quote.
Fact, he's incredible.
There's an article from juneo of eighteen ninety one where he laments that the Irish in the neighborhood are worse than the fat cat Swells said. He had this, he has this whole conspiracy theory that fair Bank had hired gangs of Irish to harass him. And like Streeter and his wife, they like they breathlessly tell of beating the buttons off these gang members, like blood flying everywhere, and they're all excited about it.
It's in the air well.
They're like the reporters like, well, what are you going to do about this? Ironically, he's going to take him to court. Quote. I've swore out warrants for Jack Dugan, Bob Dugan, McNally and Sullivan. A gang Irish should come around here trying to tear down my fence. And they tried to kill you too, Parr put in, missus Streeter, can't you be still? Shouted the Mariner And let me tell it.
Oh my god, I think if Popeye's grandfather was a young man, or his father was a young.
Man, yes, and so on that note, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll continue to follow the escapades of old Cap Streeter, Zarin Elizabeth George Streeter.
Now, before we get into back into this, I said before the break that it reminded me I picked the wrong person, you know, it reminds me of a young Abraham Simpson Homer's dad.
Yes, yes, and that as was the custom of the day. It was perfect, exactly, that is exactly it. Well, you know, if you just let me tell it, as George says, I just like, can you be still and let me tell it? Yeah, the fighting in front of the reports, so you.
Can still picture them, they.
Totally can totally can par You come on now? Par So George, known to his friends and supporters' Cap, known to his enemies as a pain in the rear, known to me as g W g W Streets wowing to gg Streets. Over two hundred court cases were filed involving him between eighteen eighty six and eighteen twenty two hundred, two hundred. So he had all these eviction orders, but he kept delaying enforcement through legal trickery. He'd appeal, appeal, appeal,
and then he had this like populist rhetoric. People loved him.
I would say, how's he affording all these lawyers pro bono stuff?
You know, he had a lot of shady business on the side. In eighteen ninety three, police successfully removed him Streeterville towed the routine away. Streeter was finally convicted of assault and sentenced to a year in jail, and that like temporarily removed to Yeah, but while he was in prison, developers moved in. But like his legend grew and he began positioning himself as this populist underdog, a man of
the people. I'm fighting these corrupt elites. So he gets out of jail, goes right back to the land, this time living in tents and cabins. So the boat's gone. But like you can't get rid of him. That's his land. So he claimed squatters. He made it. George Streeter, he was like doubling down at this point. He's issuing these phony legal decrees.
He legrees emperor.
He says he represents the District of Lake Michigan government. He issued stamps, seals, he wrote a fake constitution. He sold these like worthless land titles. And then he would like appeal to the press with bold speeches, and then his crazy behavior. He went all in and started holding mock elections for offices for his invented government. The other candidates and the guy with the earrings. So he like parade around town in military garb, like demanding recognition. He's
like dark Emperor, more serious, evil Emperor. I need to do an emperor I do anyway, Streeter. So he issued quote official licenses for street vendors and peddlers to operate in Chicago streater vendors, not just in his little Yeah, I'll give you that diplomatic community.
You got hot dogs.
None of this is valid, of course. At one point his shanty was set upon by a couple dozen cops and they weren't there on official duty. They'd been paid by Potter Palmer to strong arms Streeter and his wife out of this makeshift.
For George Streeter.
Yeah, Streeter open fire on them. Oh snatch, and then Maria like whips out a knife and she's just like slashing out.
She's close with a knife.
She did night close up work.
Yea.
They were arrested, but then they got released because they said it was self defense. They're like these guys weren't working as cops. Oh, they were just hired goons. And who do we We don't know that.
Yeah, sure.
Eighteen ninety nine cops descend again, this time because Streeter had taken potshots at a police carriage. The military there was this military governor William Niles had been called in. He surrounded the property with arm troops and a cannon.
Oh wait, do you said, what year is this?
Eighteen ninety nine?
Okay, so we have the anarchist issue in Chicago. So they're dealing, ok.
And that's why there's the Chicago Police are now working with the military and military governor that it was the time, so we could just use that as a.
Sweep up measure, right, And they're like, but like, where do you get a cannon? They took it from a park down the road.
Well that's what I'm saying, the anarchists. Everybody was grabbing.
Oh no, but no, not Streeter. The military cannon from the park and this will work. Well. The cops they posted up in tugboats that had like gatling guns on them.
Oh geez.
And so like everyone means business and they all move in. But there's like some back and forth change. Finally, Streeter and his guys get captured, but then they got released because the cops weren't authorized to be there. Also, there wasn't yet a law against like shooting at a carriage and missing.
Are you kidding me, discharger, He.
Wasn't like I was.
It's legal.
Yeah, So the rich folks person with a bullet like, he's like violently rich. They got more hired goons kept at it, so when a bunch of cops broke into his house while he and the missus were out, they confiscated his guns, his AMMO took it back to the station. Streeter gets home, sees this, immediately goes to the police station and walks in and takes everyone in the building hostage. I don't know.
Your hostage.
He wants his guns back. He had more guns he probably they're not there, called ear ring Joe. It was like, what guns do you have? He's like, I've got some. Let me talk to peg Leg Pete Stump down there with you and so yeah, so he takes everyone hostage, says, I just want my guns back. Legally, the cops didn't have a right to just go and take them, so they gave him back all his weapons and they let
him just walk home. Yeah, and then like eventually, yeah, charges were filed for the incident, but like he charmed the judge and got acquitted. Anyway, in nineteen hundred, some guys showed up at Streeters saying that they were land buyers, and like, we just want to talk to George. We're just here to buy some land. And you know, Streeter's not home, like he had he had an office in town where he would it was like his real estate office where he would sell the fake land from the office.
So they're like, you know, he's not home, sorry, and they're like, okay, great, and then they just burned down his house. He's not here. So Streeter was not having this. This meant war, so he rallied his misfit troops and they went to reclaim the territory. Good for the police. They show up in those strapped tugboats again as well as like all manner wagons and like literally hundreds of.
Officers, like a black Mariah with a cannon on it.
It was an extended standoff and so finally Streeter is convinced to surrender and once again he gets acquitted of all charges. Yeah. So nineteen oh two. That's when things went one percent for us. So one of Fairbanks guards gets shot and killed in the shantytown. A bunch of residents get implicated, but it was Streeter who gets charged with manslaughter. No one would testify, So the whole thing
was built on circumstantial evidence. And it was really cloudy as to like how it happened, where the guy was found, Like, there are a lot of conflicting reports.
It took to Chicago.
Yeah, it did matter. Streeter gets convicted and sentenced to life in prison for real. Yeah, so while he's in jail, he's in jail awaiting transfer to prison. Maria passed away. The paper said that she quote died in a barn from injuries received in a trolley car accident. Oh yeah, so I guess it was like.
From wound's received from a kick from a ghast.
I dug around some more, and I guess she got hit by a trolley car like and suffered for like a couple months.
There's a reason her life. The dodgers are called the trolley dodgers. It was an issue you had dodged that.
He didn't want to go to the hospital. Yeah, and she probably thought she'd get arrested they anyway, so she just hauled up in a barn. December of nineteen oh three, Streeter made an appeal to the Grand Jury to get him out of county. He wrote, quote, I have been in jail for more than a year without a sentilla of evidence against me. My health is bad. There's been one hundred and twenty five citizens signed for my release,
and I asked the Grand Jury to recommend it. I've been juggled all through the courts, and I've been kept here because there has been money on both sides of the case. It is a disgrace to civilize people the treatment I've received. So to many it looked like Streeter had been set up, like completely really with the man. Yeah, and what do you know, people look into it. He's
granted a full and unconditional pardon and released from Joliet prison. Yeah, so you know that erases that one percent rip to the guard.
So Joliet Jake out of prison.
Yes, exactly. He gets out and there are just huge parties, celebrations to mark his release, dances, feasts, you name it. He's a hero in a lot of people's eyes. This amazing character nineteen oh six, he hooked up with a pretty young thing named Alma Lockwood. She's thirty three years
younger than he. They shacked up back in Streeterville, lived there as the territory, he claim, grew smaller and smaller, and pretty soon what was once one hundred and eighty six acres was now just his house with a fence around it. Yeah, so he's still a fun character. He still had people over. He ran an underground saloon out of his house, and he broke the blue laws and sold booze on Sunday. And so they told him, you know, if you've got to get a liquor license, and even
then you can't sell on Sundays. But like, he refused, So there was this court order for him to stop doing business. When the deputy showed up to issue the paperwork, Streeter stabbed him in the bum bum with a bayonet.
Wow, with a bayonet?
Uh huh. So Streeter gets arrested but then released. Yeah, glads, repete. But the cops wanted blood, so they showed up and they tried to re arrest him. Alma comes out with an axe.
Where did he get these women?
Phenomenal women? The cops were able to get it away from her, but not before she relieved. Six of them are their weapons?
Of their weapons?
Yeah, and Reader starts unloading bird shot at him.
Wow, I love these two.
So Alma gets arrested for assault with intent to kill. But here's the thing. The cops that showed up for that raid never identified themselves as police. They just showed up wreck shop. And you know what that means. Acquittal. Yes, Alma gets acquitted. December eleventh, nineteen eighteen, the absolutely amazing Streeter legal run came to an end. A judge found that he had no legal claim to the land all that time, and they gave him seven days to clear out.
His response was, quote, no matter where I live, the district is mine. Just wait until my boys get back from France. Well apparently, yeah, his sons were if he had sons fighting World War One, plus like you know, some of the residents exactly to be they were legit. Though he's forcibly removed from his house. All the belongings put into a wagon and then they burned the house down. He and his wife lived in the wagon for a little while. They became like a local attraction. People would
come and hang out with him. Yes, so he stuck around the neighborhood local associations. They threw balls with him as the main attraction. Oh no, they like they come out and like, yeah he would. They'd have a big dinner and a dance and fancy dress or what you know, costumes but like people, and it would just raise funds for him and whomever. Else. He would file new lawsuits against the city and like various wealthy landowners every now and then, and then they all get struck down. Yeah.
He bought a houseboat called the Vamoose and he lived on that and he got a job selling hot dogs at Navy Peer.
Wow, I knew it come into dogs. He cannot have a Chicago story without dogs being sold.
Chicago story to me, and he was just like this character about town.
This is great.
One day, while he was chopping wood, a big artawood flew up and hit him in the eye. It got infected and then he got pneumonia. And on January twenty second, nineteen twenty one, at the age of eighty four years old, he went to the Great Beyond.
He got felled by a tree he was chopping there. Yes, yes, it seems about right.
His funeral was huge, hundreds of people, including the Mayor's.
Show say, and the Bishop of Chicago, the archbishop.
Archbishop, so the mayor shows up. This is from the Chicago Tribunes reporting on it.
Quote.
Curious citizens gathered about the open grave yesterday afternoon to witness the ancient mariner's burial. Lured were they by an adventurous iliad, which, for more than a generation has made the district a place of buccaneeric notoriety. An iliad in which the cap'n was hector defending his holdings from the depredations of Gold Coast agamemnons. He'd rather fight than eat, affirmed one citizen, spitting emphatically upon the fresh turned gravel.
Dirty shame he couldn't be buried in Streeterville, commented another. I'll bet a small boy speaking there's lots of money hidden away in the sands down there. I'll bet Up the driveway came a grayhearse, followed by numerous machines. The grays mechanics alighted, moss reader, veiled but tearless, peered curiously into the rectangular hole. The handsome coffin was placed upon its braces. The prayer began with l trains grumbling and
ray clouds hovering overhead. We used to be a proper country, with proper journalists and readers who wanted more than like just a personal reader. This is just a stringer's piece too. There's no byline.
Because someone just commenting on the deck.
It's just the beautiful stuff.
And the thing is society.
We were a literate society because we were producing this. Journalists were able to produce this, and there was an audience for it.
Unfortunately changed.
Yeah, so Streeter, Yeah, I mean it was a lot of life says, Yeah, he's gone, but the ven moose remains gone. He's gone, leg It was a legit funeral. He claimed the land in which he was buried. But there's the vamoose right. Alma lived there, at one point, suing the city for damages, asking them to repair it after another boat moored next to it and banged it up. She took over his hot dog business and his fake land claimed business too. At one point she incorporated the
Streeterville Guarantee Company in Arizona with a one billion dollar valuation. Yeah, and then she was going to use that to sue She got busted for moonshining on the vamoose during Prohibition, like they confiscated a still, but then she was like selling bootleg liquor. The Vamoose continued to fall into disrepair, mos Streeter would get arrested every now and then for defying orders to repair it. Streeter's kids would every now and then contest the property ownership in the district, filing
suit to get claim to the land, always dismissed. Sometimes the kids were legitimate, other times it'd be folks claiming to be the love child of like Streeter and some shanty boiller. Oh wow, yeah.
And do you think that they were like legitimately, No, I don't.
Think they were fair. Year by year through the Chicago papers, and it was like so thick with these claims and these articles.
There's just so many of us, another Chicago tradition.
Yeah.
In nineteen twenty eight, the city finally condemned the vemous twenty eight gave it a Viking funeral, although they actually hoisted it out of the water, let it dry, and then set on fire, pour concrete on top, tired it into the sun. Alma moved into a room on Howe Avenue and sold aprons to make ends meat, and she passed away in nineteen thirty six at the age of sixty six. The last of the air lawsuits was finally dismissed in nineteen forty. Nineteen forty, he run, yeah, and
so here we are today. The land was you know that, he claimed to Streeterville is one of Chicago's wealthiest and most developed neighborhoods, home to Navy peer like I said, also John Hancock Center, Northwestern University's medical campus. There's a true Chicago folk hero for you, Saren. What's your ridiculous takeaway?
That was a really fun like rebuilding of Chicago's story And I hadn't even heard that one, you know, So it was a really fun talking about Chicago in a way I had never heard about before. So thank you, Elizabeth. What was your.
Take away?
Elizabeth?
I went so deep into the Chicago papers at the time, and it's like there were so many other little side details, some too hideous to talk about.
Were you surprised how often they used to term jag Off in the.
Newspaper after post post George in like almost later years, things got crazy really that I can't I don't want to talk about it. Yeah, I'm sure, but the details were just fascinating and you could go down so many side rabbit holes. But honestly, what really struck me was the level of journalism.
Yes, it was beautiful letting him just.
Kind of run for it in the and the interviews and getting choice quotes, but it was it was, It was a pleasure going through all the newspapers on that what I do need.
I miss being illiterate society.
Oh my god, seriously, you know.
I mean like I know that it's it's wild and whatever things changes, it's going to happen. But like for all the writers who are like.
People are going to be reading my books for Milan, I'm like, not even one hundred years.
No, no, no, because it's all headlines and people don't even read a whole headline and then they comment on things without having read it, just to whatever. Yeah, it's a.
Shame that because also thinking, clear thinking comes along with that kind of good.
Right, completely completely. But in the art of the language, yeah, the poetry of it, play around with it. I need to talk back, David.
I went.
Hello to all the fine folks at Ridiculous Crime. I was just listening to your mascot episode, and I had to laugh to myself because my partner is and was a mascot from Anything, and they tell me all the time about all the like super mean and irritating and just violent kids they deal with. So it was kind of funny and a little bit cathartic to hear about Gritty kind of like smacking them back a little bit. That's so funny. Keep it up, y'all.
Yes, that's the thing. I've seen kids like go nuts in there. They're horrible rible.
I with Gritty Man, Yeah, check a kid.
That's right. That's all for today. You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime dot com.
Do you know what?
That's just one the Beauty of Dance Award, Yes, from Walmart dot com.
We were so excited when we got nominated. I didn't think it was a chance.
The Walmart dot Com Awards are really prestigious, very much.
So it was us in Conan O'Brien out there, and I was like, really excited to be in such a illustrious company.
That's gonna be really good ceremony.
Who knew he couldog dance like that?
Who tears it up? Pizza Lionza. We're also on Blue Sky and Instagram. You can find us on YouTube, Ridiculous Crime, Poda, Fabulous Animation, Yeah Love. Email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com and leave us a talk back on the iHeart app. Please reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by the Right Honorable Duke of the District of Lake Michigan Dave Cousten, starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research is by The Unthinkable Marissa Brown.
The theme song is by Shantytown Roustabouts Thomas Lee and Travis. The host wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are Houseboat Repairman Ben Bollen and Navy Peer Hot Dog Empresario Noel. We're All Redous Crime, Say it one More Timequeous Crime.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Four More Podcasts. My Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.