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Robbery at the Potter Household in Chicago—The Police Scoff at the Story of the Chicago Millionaire’s Wife and Leading Society Woman—Strange Happenings in the Family—A Daughter's Experience With a Newsboy is Recalled. Chicago, Nov. 15.—Neither the police nor the Potters are doing any real hard work on the trail of the burglar who woke up the Potter household between and 2 o’clock last Tuesday. Mrs. Potter’s wound is now very slight, in stead of very severe, and a look of disgust crosses Captain Colleran's face when the case is mentioned. This burglar, it is known, must have entered the house through Miss Margaret Potter’s chamber window, passed by her bed without disturbing her maiden slumbers, gone by five bed room doors and entered Mrs. Potter’s room, where, instead of taking the jewel case which lay in full view in the moonlight, he wasted his energies in trying to chloroform Mrs. Potter and struck her a blow when she ob jected to the drug. NOT THE WORK OF A ROBBER. Lieutenant Perry, who has handled criminals for thirty years, said yester day: _'*No robber, who has sense enough to get into a house like that, is foolish enough to try to use chloroform. Every burglar knows that it is im possible to chloroform a sleeping per son. The first breath of the drug will awaken the sleeper. No one can be chloroformed unconsciously. He or she must either consent to it or be forced. I do not believe that there was a robbery or attempt at robbery.’ The Potter family have queer things happen to them at frequent intervals. Miss Margaret Potter holds the lime light in recent years. When her novel, “A Social Lion,’”’ came out a few years since under the nom de plume of “Robert Dolly Williams,” Chicago swelldom had a duck fit. Seventeen-year-old girls are not ex pected to know one-tenth part the knowing things that got into that book, still less to hang them around the necks of their most intimate friends. Miss Margaret’s ‘‘coming out’’ was deferred, and Paps Potter wents to buying up the edition on a bull mar ket. The last twenty-six copies cost him $25 apiece. Mrs. Potter herself is a very beauti ful and fascinating woman and is an aunt of the very lvely Princess Chimay, who was, before her marriage to the prince, Clara Ward, of Detroit. COMIVANT INCIDENT RE CALLED, he police hint that it might be well to look up the whereabouts of Eugene Dunnivant in the present episode. Everyone will recall the story. “Eugene Dunnivant, as schoolboy, newsboy, convict, was a fair-haired Scotch boy, peddling papers about the North Side. He left the papers at the Potter mansion. Gertrude Potter, daughter of the rich rolling-mills man, learned to love the newsboy and he learned to love her. They were children, and the parents frowned on the attachment. One day Eugene went to the peni tentiary on a charge of burglary. The girl who lived in the big house appar ently forgot him. Then friends inter ceded for Donnivant and secured his release. He came out of Joliet and im mediately gave notice that he would start suit for $100,000 against Orry W. Potter. He asserted that he had been sent to the penitentiary in order to make it impossible for him to see little Ger trude. The suit was hushed up before it reached the courts, but it served to startle Chicago,and was the talk of the town for years. The latest information obtainable is that when young Dunnivant gave up his suit he went to California. It is hinted that since his departure a year ago he has returned to the city.
Newspaper Details
Quincy Journal
Quincy, Illinois, US
Thu, Nov 15, 1900
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
David P.
USA 29 May 2026
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