From "Illustrated Police News", Vol. 51 No. 1322, February 20, 1892
Somewhere along the line, something snapped. Father Edward Dooley, scion of Glendale society and pillar of the church, stumbled onto the road to perdition, flaming out in a notorious fall from grace.
Edward’s father, an Irish immigrant, was the town marshal of Glendale, Ohio, and a significant landowner. Edward was the youngest of five brothers and, in an Irish tradition of long standing, was nominated as the family’s candidate for the priesthood.
As Edward neared ordination in 1885, his father died suddenly, leaving a prosperous widow. Edward was ordained in Kansas 1886 and returned to Glendale to say his first Mass in his mother’s parlor. He returned to Kansas and, although fresh from the seminary, was named pastor of a small congregation in Manhattan, population 3,000. This was in the days when Kansas was still very much the Wild West. (Wyatt Earp and his brothers had moved from Kansas to Arizona only a few years previously.)
The Dooley family suffered another blow in 1888 when Edward’s brother Thomas killed himself. A successful merchant specializing in lumber and building supplies, Thomas served as secretary of the Glendale village council. Delirious from typhoid fever, Thomas staggered from his sickbed, located a pistol and shot himself in the head. He was 28 years old. Edward, just one year younger, was named executor and spent most of the next year in Glendale settling his brother’s substantial estate, valued at the time around $20,000.
After months of handling such riches, the young priest couldn’t resist the allure of filthy lucre. Edward withdrew $2,000, hopped a train to Cincinnati, and had himself what they called back then a “spree.” When his family heard nothing from Edward for almost a week, they contacted Cincinnati Police. The Enquirer [March 27, 1889] had the details:
“Detectives Burnet and Wappenstein were detailed on the case and at an early hour yesterday morning located Dooley at Belle Curry’s house of ill-fame on Broadway. He had been out during the night with a few companions ‘blowing’ his wealth. For the past four days, however, he had been a regular boarder at Curry’s house.”
Edward, who was never identified as a priest in any of the newspaper reports about this misadventure, returned to Kansas and resumed his duties in the church. The only hint that his superiors might have known anything about his week of immorality was Edward’s new assignment, to a very tiny parish way out in the rural suburbs of Topeka.
Digitized by Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County
The death of Edward’s mother, on December 16, 1891, seems to have tipped the wayward priest into a sort of mania. The circumstances surrounding Mary Dooley’s death were quite suspicious. Suffering from indigestion, she called for Glendale doctor Alfred Shepherd, who prescribed some medicine and checked in on her later to see she appeared well on the way to recovery. Two days later, Reading undertaker Henry Ihlendorf asked Dr. Shepherd to sign Mary Dooley’s death certificate. The doctor refused, suspecting foul play. Dr. Shepherd notified Hamilton County Coroner Theodore Bange, who took the train to Glendale to investigate. Bange discovered that Undertaker Ihlendorf had already embalmed the corpse, employing a solution containing arsenic and thereby destroying any evidence. The coroner threw up his hands. Mrs. Dooley was buried and the neighbors whispered intently. Word of the rumors reached the ears of Fr. Edward Dooley and he was not amused. According to the Commercial Gazette [January 22, 1892]:
“It is alleged that Rev. Dooley, son of the deceased, who has been identified with high old times about the vicinity, came into a bar room not long since and electrified the crowd by laying a revolver on the counter, saying, ‘I’ll kill any – – – who says I poisoned my mother.’”
Edward became a regular at the local watering holes, displaying a prodigious thirst. It was not uncommon for him to drain ten or twelve pint bottles of beer an hour and there were reports he had consumed as many as thirty quarts of beer in a day. Rumor had it that Edward’s drinking got him booted from parish to parish in Kansas and eventually banished from that diocese altogether.
Within weeks after his bar-room threat, Dooley gained national infamy beginning with a confrontation at Havlin’s Theater on Central Avenue, right outside Cincinnati’s red-light district. Accompanied by one of the “frail sisterhood,” he purchased two box seat tickets. The proprietor, however, recognizing the occupation of Dooley’s companion, refused admittance. Fisticuffs ensued and Dooley, though a formidable fighter when sober, was bum-rushed into the street. Not long after, Dooley created quite the scene at one of the city’s most notorious brothels. As reported in the nationally distributed Illustrated Police News [February 20, 1892]:
“Detective Jim Jackson, who ejected him from the theatre, found Dooley in clerical garb raising high carnival in Belle Curry’s house of ill-fame. He took him out of the house, and after he had become sober released him again. Two days afterward, the detective found him buying wine in Daisy Lawrence’s house. He took him out and turned him over to the regular police, who sent him into the police court for drunkenness.”
It might seem difficult to top getting your picture on the front page of America’s sleaziest scandal sheet, but “Father” Dooley wasn’t done yet. His clerical title appears here in quotes because Dooley’s status within the Catholic Church was very unclear during his Cincinnati escapades. The Illustrated Police News said he was excommunicated, which is patently false. Other sources claimed he was never actually ordained; also untrue. Cincinnati newspapers describe him as defrocked or unfrocked, which seems to be inaccurate. It is possible that the diocesan authorities in Kansas temporarily released him from his vows.
On the evening of June 30, 1892, a loud explosion rocked Ike Hoffman’s saloon on Fountain Square. A large crowd of curious bystanders assembled as Ike locked his doors and pulled the shades. Eventually, a man and woman hurried out to a waiting cab and drove off. It was Edward Dooley and yet another “soiled dove.” The Cincinnati Commercial Gazette [July 1, 1892] had the details:
“Dooley said he had been drinking with the woman in Hoffman’s saloon, and, intending to frighten the proprietor, he had thrown a dynamite cartridge beneath the latter’s chair, not anticipating any serious results. Unfortunately, however for himself the cartridge exploded under his own chair, with disastrous result to the amusement-seeker. His companion was thrown violently off of her chair, and Hoffman was deafened by the shock of the concussion.”
After his wounds were dressed at a nearby drug store, Dooley and his date retreated to her room in Kate Riley’s Longworth Street bordello.
Within a month, Dooley was dead. He was just over 30 years of age, but months of constant inebriation and debauchery had drained all the vitality from his system. A bout of summertime pneumonia dealt the final blow. His casket was placed on a train to Glendale, where he was hurriedly buried after a very abbreviated ceremony. The Cincinnati Post [July 29, 1892] reported:
“After a few hastily spoken words, clay was consigned to clay, and the relatives returned. The erring young man rests near the remains of his parents.”
Records at the St. Gabriel Cemetery, also known as the Holy Rood Cemetery, indicate that Edward was buried as Rev. Edward Dooley, still a priest, however gone astray.
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