Book Review: Alder, J. (2006). First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875-1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 367 pp

• Published date: 01 September 2009
• Date: 01 September 2009
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016808329516
• Subject Matter: Articles

452 Criminal Justice Review
Alder, J. (2006). First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875-1920.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 367 pp.
DOI: 10.1177/0734016808329516
Jeffrey S. Alder’s book First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875-
1920 is a book most historians might wish they wrote.
Taking a quote from muckraker journalist Lincoln Steffens as the title of his book, Alder
explores how the rate and nature of homicide changed in Chicago from 1875 to 1920.
Chicago is an interesting choice. On one level it might be a case in point for extrapolation
to other large cities undergoing rapid urban and demographic changes. On the other hand,
Chicago was a unique place. Reeling from the immediate shocks of a disastrous fire in 1871
to achieve a World’s Fair in 1893, its growth and ethnic shifts were a dramatic cacophony
of late 19th and early 20th century America.
In the first 20 years of his study (1875-1895), killings were mostly done in public places.
Often they started in a saloon and spilled out on to the streets. Victims were acquaintances
if not friends. Adler explores the rise and extent of drinking places, the growing bachelor
culture, and how male pride and bravado led the slightest insult–real or perceived–in the
booze blurred world of the tavern, to a brawl and death. From its peak in the 1880s, bar-
room fights declined to be replaced by those in the bedroom.
Though at low rates before the turn of the century, wife killing (uxoricide, he educates
us) increased 312% by 1920. These were less public and more private affairs. Two reasons
seem to be the cause of husbands killing wives. At first (in the 19th century) they were
matters of jealousy with rage resulting in overkill followed perhaps by a suicide. In the first
two decades of the 20th century it resulted when abused wives, exercising their own
autonomy and assertiveness, threatened to dissolve the marriage. Occupational and marital
instability...