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In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Chicago witnessed the rise of Al Capone, a notorious mob boss who, despite running a vast and fearsome criminal enterprise for many years, evaded conviction until 1931 when he was finally indicted and convicted for tax evasion. Released from prison on 16th November 1939 due to his deteriorating health, Capone’s final years were overshadowed by syphilis, a disease for which he was treated by Dr. Joseph E. Moore, a renowned specialist from Johns Hopkins who was a good friend of journalist and critic H.L. Mencken. It was thanks to this connection that Mencken was privy to the intimate details of Capone’s condition, as detailed in this diary entry of his, written two weeks after Capone’s release.
The Diary Entry
November 29, 1939
Al Capone, the eminent Chicago racketeer, is a patient at the moment at the Union Memorial Hospital. He is suffering from paresis, the end result of a syphilitic infection. He is being looked after by Dr. Joseph E. Moore, head of the syphilis clinic at the Johns Hopkins. Capone says that he was infected very early in life, and assumed for years that he had been cured. He was married at 16, and is the father of a perfectly healthy son. His wife has apparently escaped infection.
The symptoms of paresis began to show themselves in Capone during the early part of his imprisonment. He was then locked up at Atlanta. The medical officers there wanted to make a lumbar puncture to ascertain his condition accurately, but Capone refused. In 1937, after he had been transferred to Alcatraz, he suddenly developed convulsions. They are often the first sign of paresis. He was then put on the malaria treatment, but after nine chills the convulsions returned and became so alarming that the treatment was abandoned. By that time Capone, who is not unintelligent, had been convinced that his condition was serious, and so he made arrangements for intensive treatment after his release. Dr. Moore was recommended, and hence Capone came to Baltimore. Dr. Moore planned to enter him at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Winford Smith, the superintendent, consented, but the lay board of trustees interposed objections, and so Capone was sent to the Union Memorial Hospital instead. Almost the same thing happened there. The medical board was in favor of receiving him, if only on the ground that a first class hospital should take in every sick man and waste no time upon inquiring into his morals. This was the position of Dr. John M. T. Finney, head of the medical board. After Capone got to the hospital the women of the lay board began setting up a row, led by Mrs. William A. Cochran, whose husband is a famous prohibitionist and wowser. As I write this row is still going on, but Capone remains at the hospital. The lady objectors argue that his presence is keeping other patients out of the place. The medical board answers that that is unfortunate but unavoidable. It argues that a hospital, as a matter of ethics, cannot refuse any sick man who applies for treatment.
Moore has put Capone on the malaria cure, and at the moment it seems to be working very well. Capone has already developed a temperature as high as 106 degrees. I am told that he bears the accompanying discomforts very philosophically and is, in fact, an extraordinarily docile patient. His mental disturbance takes the form of delusions of grandeur. He believes that he is the owner of a factory somewhere in Florida employing 25,000 men, and he predicts freely that he’ll soon be employing 75,000. This factory is, of course, purely imaginary. Otherwise, Capone’s aberrations are not serious. He is able to talk rationally about his own condition and about events of the day.
He is occupying two rooms and a bath at a cost of $30 a day. He sleeps in one room himself, and the other is a sort of meeting place for his old mother, his three brothers, and his wife. The brothers spend all day playing checkers, with occasional visits to the patient. They made an effort lately to rent a house in Guilford, but were refused when their identity became known. The mother is an ancient Italian woman of the peasant type, and can barely speak English. The brothers, all of them born in this country, are relatively intelligent fellows. The wife, who is ignorant but apparently not unintelligent, moves a cot into Capone’s room every night and sleeps there. He has two night nurses and one day nurse. He is naturally very popular with the hospital staff, and especially with the orderlies, for he is not only a good patient, he is also likely to leave large tips. His chills come on every second day, and Moore plans to keep him in bed here until he has had fifteen of them. He will then be transferred to Miami. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has notified Moore that so far as it knows there is no project on foot to kill Capone. Thus no guard upon him is maintained, and any visitor to the hospital is free to barge into his room.
Further Reading
Having remained sealed until twenty five years after his death, The Diary of H.L. Mencken was first published in 1989 by Alfred A. Knopf, edited by Charles A. Fecher. You should know that, although the diary contains many fascinating entries like the one above, it is peppered with racist and anti-semitic comments.
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