H. H. Holmes

H. H. Holmes was an American confidence trickster and murderer whose crimes became associated with Chicago and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. He operated businesses and lodging premises designed to support fraud, theft and concealment.

Later journalism greatly exaggerated the number and theatrical nature of his killings, creating the legend of a purpose-built ‘murder castle’. Holmes was convicted of one murder and executed in 1896, while the full extent of his crimes remains uncertain.

In Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.’s enormous observation wheel becomes one of the fair’s defining attractions. Nearby, physician and confidence trickster H. H. Holmes operates a building later associated with fraud, disappearance and murder, exploiting the anonymity and movement created by the expanding city and the fair.