Who was H.H. Holmes?
“Herman never did anything wrong; he never had to be scolded for not doing what he was told, nor for playing pranks — I never knew him to torment anyone, especially animals. Some boys, you know, like to torment kittens and sometimes they are very cruel to them, but Herman was too tender-hearted for that.” — Theodate Mudgett, Holme’s mother.
So what was the truth? I’m going to admit that I’m incredibly confused trying to find out how many people Mudgett exactly did kill, and what was legend, as well as what was fact.
Mudgett was raised in a transitional phase in history, as the generation that fought in the Civil War slowly faded out of public life as the Theodore Roosevelt generation that led the country into the 20th century.
Born in New Hampshire in a very religious Methodist family, H.H. Holme’s parents were Horton Mudgett and Theodate Mudgett, both descended from the first English immigrants in the area. His father was a farmer, trader, and house painter. He had two siblings, an older sister, and an older brother, and he would be born on May 16, 1861.
Holme graduated from high school at Phillips Exeter Academy and then took various teaching jobs. He married a woman named Clara Lovering, a beautiful woman from a prominent New Hampshire family in 1878. The two of them would have their first child two years later in 1880. He would attend the University of Vermont in 18, but later drop out, and then would enter the University of Michigan Department of Medicine and Surgery, and become a doctor in 1884 after passing his exams.
It was during this time that, according to Selzer, Mudgett would use cadavers to attempt to defraud insurance companies, mutilating them. He later moved to Mooers Forks, New York, where there was a rumor that Mudgett saw a little boy disappear. He soon left Mooers Forks and then moved to Philadelphia to work in Norristown State Hospital. He would own a drug store, and while he worked there, a boy died from medicine was purchased at the store. He denied it and left the city.
It was then that Herman Webster Mudgett would change his name to Henry Howard Holmes, which, according to John Borowski in the H.H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer documentary, was to avoid identification by previous victims of scams. Holmes eventually moved out to Englewood, Illinois in 1886, just outside Chicago.
In late 1886, however, while married to Clara, he also married Myrta Belknap, who he later had a daughter named Lucy Theodate Holmes. He would try to divorce Clara in Commonwealth v. Mudgett, alias Holmes, and have his lawsuit dismissed in June of 1891 because he was being prosecuted at the time for his crimes. While in Englewood, he lived with Myrta and Lucy while Clara lived at home in New Hampshire.
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