Chicago had a very tall and ballzy mayor at one point named "Long" John Wentworth.
Wentworth also happened to own one of the Chicago newspapers, so he could say just about anything he wanted, and it was instantly front page news.
On the near north side of Chicago along the lake, in the wealthy area now known as "The Gold Coast", there once stood a large patch of sand dunes where the transients, junkies, and prostitutes would basically camp for weeks and months on end during the summer.
Wentworth didn't want them there any longer, so he hired a few thugs to spread rumors on the street that there were going to be some "dog fights" on the west side of town, with hookers, drugs and liquor..."it was going to be a party of debauchery that shouldnt be missed."
When the time of the fake party finally arrived, and all the hooligans were milling about on the west side of town, Wentworth quietly marched a gaggle of policemen with axes and torches out to the dunes and destroyed everything they could find.
Because thats the way Wentworth rolled......big and bad-ass.
The very first year that Wentworth was in office as Chicago mayor (in 1857) there previously had been an ongoing dispute between the city and the billiard hall owners, because of the stiff license fees to keep tables.
60$ per table per year in 1857 was a lot of money, but, at the same time, billiard tables were
still illegal at the state level.
Many hall owners even refused to pay the fees, and multiple petitions were submitted to the city to get the fees lowered, but with no results.
The issue became so serious that the new mayor Wentworth dropped the hammer on them all. He issued a stern public statement in his newspaper declaring that he was going to have every deliquent hall owner and every one of their patrons indicted by the state of Illinois !
Read his bold threat in this rare newspaper clipping from April 1857:
