Visit Our Companion Websites: Homicide in Chicago 1870 - 1930 Illinois Murder Indictments 2000-2010 2003 Chicago Murders Illinois Judges 2015 Leigh…
The Book: Florence Kelley, Factory Inspector in 1890s Chicago, and the Children
Anarchy and Anarchists by Michael J. Schaack. A history of the red terror and the social revolution in America and Europe. Linked here as the complete Project Gutenberg edition; the long-standing Anarchy Archives transcription is available only over unencrypted HTTP.
The Haymarket Affair, Chicago History Museum The violent confrontation between Chicago police and labor protesters in 1886 proved to be a pivotal setback in the struggle for American workers' rights. The Chicago History Museum presents the events, the trial, and the surviving evidence. The Library of Congress presentation formerly linked here, The Dramas of Haymarket and its more than 3,800 digitized manuscripts, broadsides, photographs, prints and artifacts, has been retired from the American Memory site.
The Haymarket Massacre Archive, Anarchy Archives An online research center on the history and theory of anarchism, hosted by Pitzer College. This link opens the archive's Haymarket history section directly.
The Labadie Collection, University of Michigan The Labadie Collection was established in 1911 when Joseph Labadie, a prominent Detroit anarchist, donated his library to the University of Michigan. Although the Collection was originally concerned mainly with anarchist materials (the field in which it remains strongest), its scope was later widened considerably to include a great variety of social protest literature together with political views from both the extreme left and the extreme right. Materials are now collected from all parts of the world. In addition to anarchism, the Collection's strengths include: civil liberties (with an emphases on racial minorities), socialism, communism, colonialism and imperialism, American labor history through the 1930s, the IWW, the Spanish Civil War, sexual freedom, women's liberation, gay liberation, the underground press, and student protest.
Alchemy of Bones: Chicago's Luetgert Murder Case of 1897, Robert Loerzel This web site is a companion to Alchemy of Bones, featuring a wealth of information about the people, places and subjects in the book — including many stories, facts and pictures beyond those in its pages. The author hopes that this Web site will aid people researching the history of Chicago in the 1890s, genealogy, and topics such as criminology and journalism. Legacy site: it is served over unencrypted HTTP and has no HTTPS version.
Chicago History and Collections, Chicago Public Library The Chicago Public Library's gateway to its Chicago history holdings: neighborhood and community histories, the Chicago Public Library Digital Collections, municipal reference material, and research guides for local, family, and building history.
Chicago History Museum The Chicago History Museum cares for, showcases, and interprets millions of authentic pieces of Chicago and U.S. history. Our ability to illuminate the past is a reminder of what really happened once upon a time, sheds light on the present, and compellingly informs the future.
Chicago Address Conversion Guides, Chicago History Museum The Chicago History Museum's research guide to Chicago street names and numbering. It explains the 1909 renumbering, lists street name changes, and points to the printed and digitized conversion tables needed to turn a pre-1909 address into a current one — the standard step when tracing a person or a building through nineteenth-century records.
The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago The Chicago Historical Society, the Newberry Library, and Northwestern University's reference work on Chicago history, with more than 1,400 entries, interpretive essays, maps, and historical sources.
Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court: Public Records Request The Clerk's office provides current instructions for requesting archive and court-file records. The former Famous On-Line Cases exhibit is no longer available.
Forgotten Chicago (site temporarily unavailable) A former website focused on discovering and documenting lesser-known elements of Chicago infrastructure, architecture, neighborhoods, and cityscape. The link is withheld pending a valid TLS certificate.
Hidden Truths: The Chicago City Cemetery & Lincoln Park Hidden Truths began when I discovered the recent Internet release of the historical Chicago Tribune. I wanted to know why there was a cemetery tomb in Lincoln Park. Contemporary references only implied the Couch family vault sat where there was once a cemetery. No one seemed to know why that last vestige of the graveyard remained.
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, University of Illinois Chicago The current museum site documents the history and legacy of Hull-House and offers exhibitions, programs, and collection resources. The former Urban Experience in Chicago project is no longer available.
Hull-House Yearbook (University of Illinois at Chicago) In the 1900s, the world-famous Hull-House settlement house, founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, began publishing yearbooks documenting their activities. The text was accompanied by photographs of programs, classes and events. This database contains digital images of the photographs in the Hull-House Yearbooks from the collection of the University of Illinois at Chicago's Special Collections Department. They span the years 1906-1941.
Pullman Strike Commission Report This detailed report of the Strike Commission appointed by President Grover Cleveland investigated the causes of the Pullman Strike in Chicago in 1894 and the resulting labor unrest. The commission was headed by Carroll D. Wright, the U.S. Commissioner of Labor Statistics and its report included testimony by George Pullman, Eugene Debs, Samuel Gompers and over a hundred witnesses.
The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot. Chicago Commission on Race Relations Published in 1922, this report gave the findings of a commission appointed by Governor Frank Lowden to investigate the social and economic causes of the Chicago race riot of July 1919. The report was one of the early attempts by a large U.S. city to not only study the riot but to also investigate industry, housing, racial contacts, public opinion, and crime in Chicago to determine the conditions in Chicago which led to the riot. The report was published by the University of Chicago Press.
Chicago HSI Chicago HSI is an application to research spatial relationships between homicide events in Chicago. This tool is comprised of multiple federal, state, and regional data resources organized into an intuitive visual display.
Illinois Murder Indictments 2000-2010 This Leigh Bienen website makes available more than 2200 murder indictments across the state of Illinois over the period 2000-2010. The set of indictments are a new data set on murder and the history of capital punishment in Illinois.
Mad in Pursuit of Family History: Moses "Maroney" Rafael Flanagan, Family Outlaw, Susan B. Price Bio of Moses Rafael Flanagan as researched and told by a relative. Moses Rafael Flanagan was murdered on the streets of Chicago in a Prohibition-related "hit," on 7 May 1919. He was 23. He was a hood, with a hood nickname -- Muhoney or Muroney.
National Archive of Criminal Justice Data The mission of the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) is to facilitate research in criminal justice and criminology, through the preservation, enhancement, and sharing of computerized data resources; through the production of original research based on archived data; and through specialized training workshops in quantitative analysis of crime and justice data. NACJD is home to web sites for two separately maintained programs: the Project for Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) and the Homicide Research Working Group (HRWG).
Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924), Famous Trials A detailed account of the Leopold and Loeb case, including the trial, contemporary material, and related resources.
An Inventory of the Florence Kelley Collection, University of Illinois Chicago The Florence Kelley Collection includes published reports and articles by Florence Kelley, a printed program for a memorial in her honor, and a few scholarly articles about her work. The link opens UIC Special Collections and University Archives' finding-aids index, from which the collection inventory can be located.
Florence Kelley Letters Project Kathryn Kish Sklar, co-director of the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender, and Beverly Wilson Palmer, research associate at Pomona College, edited a one-volume edition of the letters of Florence Kelley. The project began with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2003-2004 and was completed under an eighteen-month grant, 2004-2006, from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives and Records Administration. The Selected Letters of Florence Kelley, 1869-1931 was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2009.
Florence Kelley, Spartacus Educational, UK Brief bio of Florence Kelley and a list of some of her publications
Florence Kelley: A Commitment to Social Work A profile of Kelley's social-work career from The New Historia, which continues the Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society project.
William Darrah Kelley (1814-1890) Biography of Florence Kelley's father from the U.S. House of Representatives' History, Art & Archives, drawn from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
American Newspaper Repository (Duke University Library) The American Newspaper Repository Collection dates from 1852 through 2004 and consists of approximately six thousand bound newspaper volumes and more than 11,000 unbound newspaper items, most of which came, directly or indirectly, from the British Library. Notable long runs include the World, the New York Herald Tribune, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune. There are also runs of foreign language and immigrant papers, such as the Yiddish Forward, the Irish World, the Greek Atlantis, trade journals, Communist papers such as the Daily Worker, and other political papers. Many of these runs apparently exist nowhere else in the original format.
Charles Booth and the Survey into Life and Labour in London (1886-1903) The Charles Booth Online Archive is a searchable resource giving access to archive material from the Booth collections of the Archives Division of the Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE Archives) and the Senate House Library.
IPUMS NHGIS: National Historical Geographic Information System Historical census tables and GIS boundary files for the United States from 1790 to the present, free with registration. NHGIS is the modern successor to the University of Virginia Geospatial and Statistical Data Center's Historical Census Browser, which is no longer online.
Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 Statistical Abstract data present here ranges from our most recent edition to the historical abstracts compiled throughout the decades
Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Division of Historic Preservation The successor to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. The Division operates the state historic sites and memorials and administers the state historic preservation programs. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, formerly part of the same agency, is now a separate state agency.
Illinois State Archives The Illinois State Archives serves by law as the depository of public records of Illinois state and local governmental agencies which possess permanent administrative, legal, or historical research values. Its collections do not include manuscript, newspaper, or other nonofficial sources.
Kheel Center Archives - Cornell University The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives is the unit of Catherwood Library at Cornell University that collects, preserves, and makes accessible special collections pertaining to the history of the workplace and labor relations.
New York Public Library - Florence Kelley Papers Abstract: The Florence Kelley papers document the professional career and family life of the Progressive-era social reformer. The papers include correspondence with her grandparents Isaac and Elizabeth Pugh, her parents William Bartram Kelley and Caroline Bonsall and her children Nicholas, William Darrah, Jr., John Bartram and Margaret Kelley. Kelley's professional correspondence documents her commitment to social reform, from her time at Hull House in Chicago to her tenure as general secretary of the National Consumers' League. The collection also includes manuscripts and typescripts of Kelley's writings, address books, scrapbooks, photographs, and a few items of ephemera.
Criminal Trial Transcripts of New York County Collection (1883-1927), John Jay College A collection of 3,326 court cases from criminal trials held in New York County between 1883 and 1927. The collection was digitized in 2025, with part currently browsable online through John Jay College.
The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America (Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study) The library's principal holdings date from the founding of the United States to the present and are especially rich in the areas of women's rights movements, feminism, health, social reform, education, professional life, volunteer and civic efforts, family relationships, and travel.
The Pullman Strike of 1894 The National Park Service's account of the strike at Pullman National Historical Park. Northern Illinois University Libraries also holds a digitized collection of documents, images and video on the strike within its Gilded Age and Progressive Era project.
John Peter Altgeld: The Eagle Remembered, Jeffrey Chown Northern Illinois University's documentary film on the life of John Peter Altgeld, who joined the Union Army at age 16, rose to political power in the late 1800s and served a controversial term as Illinois governor from 1893 to 1897. Streaming from NIU's Huskie Commons repository.
Michael Magidson's Altgeld web site, Vassar Biography of John Peter Altgeld, written for Vassar College's 1896 project. Legacy student project, served over unencrypted HTTP.
Famous American Trials Details of the Leopold and Loeb trial (and other famous American trials) by Douglas O. Linder, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.
The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Yale University The Avalon Project mounts digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government.
People v. Nathan F. Leopold, Jr., and Richard Loeb: court records The Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County holds the case file. The former online listing of famous cases is no longer published, so this link opens the Clerk's current public records request process. For the trial narrative and documents, see Famous Trials: Leopold and Loeb.
National Women's History Museum Biographies, exhibits, and teaching resources on women in American history, free to the public. It replaces the former Encyclopaedia Britannica 300 Women Who Changed the World feature, which now sits behind an institutional subscription.
Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender (Binghamton University) The Center promotes research, teaching, and intellectual exchange on historical issues related to women and gender, and hosts the Florence Kelley Letters Project listed above.
Woman in Public Life, Bradley University Library Bradley University Library's republication of material on Illinois women in public life, including the First Ladies of Illinois, 1818-1918. The former Alliance Library System Illinois Women site is no longer in service.
Iowa Women's Archives: Louise Noun and Mary Louise Smith The Founders digital collection includes photographs and scrapbooks featuring news clippings, newsletters, and correspondence formerly owned by Iowa natives Louise Noun and Mary Louise Smith. Noun was a social activist, art collector, and author of several books on women's history. Smith was a political activist who fought for equal rights and became the first female chair of the Republican National Committee. Together, they founded the Louise Noun - Mary Louise Smith Iowa Women's Archives, which opened in 1992 at The University of Iowa Libraries. The digital collection platform currently challenges automated and some public browsers, so this entry links to the Archives' own history page.
A History of Women in Industry: Country to City, National Women's History Museum The Progressive Era: 1880-1930. The "violation of woman's sphere" that Sarah Bagley addresses had to do with the emerging 19th century idea that women's lives should be centered within the home as wives and mothers. Only men had a place in the public world of work, activism, and politics. By working in the Lowell mills, and by speaking out against the exploitation of female workers at Lowell, Bagley was challenging those views of womanhood.
Papers of M. Carey Thomas Brynmawr College Library/Guide to the Papers of M. Carey Thomas
Sophia Smith Collection — Women's History Archives at Smith College The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College is an internationally recognized repository of manuscripts, archives, photographs, periodicals and other primary sources in women's history.
The Gerritsen Collection (subscription or institutional access required) In the late 1800s, Dutch physician Aletta Jacobs and her husband C.V. Gerritsen began collecting books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights. The Gerritsen Collection has since become the greatest single source for the study of women's history in the world. It is now published by ProQuest; the link opens the public description page rather than a login screen.
The Lucy Parsons Project The Lucy Parsons Project is an online educational resource designed to publicize the life of Lucy Parsons and the struggles she championed. Many of the struggles in which she took part are responsible for the freedoms and privileges many Americans enjoy today.
UCLA Humanities Technology: World's Columbian Exposition (1893) A real-time visual simulation model that helps users explore the historic built environment of the 1893 World's Fair.
Women and Social Movements in the United States 1600-2000 This Worldwide Web site is intended to serve as a resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women's history. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, the website seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding at the same time that it makes the insights of women's history accessible to teachers and students at universities, colleges, and high schools.
Women Working, 1800-1930 Web site focusing on women's role in the United States economy and providing access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections. The collection features approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images.