Monday, April 30, 2012

Coincidental murder story?

This isn't going to be a deep reflection on Libra  because I've spent quite a bit of today thinking about a different story, my story.

I'm writing about Josephine Cochrane. If you don't know who she is, you should look her up. She invented the dishwasher. And she happened to do so in Shelbyville, Illinois which is about an hour and a half from here (I used to live there).

My story borrows from Libra and Mumbo Jumbo in that there is a conspiracy theory behind everything. There is a secret society of men who are working together to prevent the spread of this invention in anyway they can. They don't want women and servants liberated from the kitchen sink and able to challenge them in other areas.

Of course, this in itself would make a good story. But in a stack of books about Illinois in the 1880s and women inventors, I also brought home a book called Weird Illinois: Your Travel Guide to Illinois' Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. I got it on a whim, thinking something in it might help me out.

It did.

I found a story about H.H.Holmes, who was apparently a "diabolical druggist" and operated a "murder castle" at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 (the same fair at which Cochrane displayed her dishwasher). Apparently he is America's first known serial killer.

I won't recount the gruesome details of the gas chambers and direction tables in his "castle" or the stories of some of the more than 50 murders that appear to have occurred there. If you want some ugly Illinois history, check out the book when I return it or read this wikipedia page.

For Mr. Mitchell's sake, I won't tell you how I plan to use this information in my story (I want it to be surprising) but it probably isn't hard to guess.

Lesson learned: Looking for an interesting coinciding story to mesh with yours? Find a "weird" history book!

1 comment:

Mitchell said...

The plot thickens . . . (and gets ickier!).