grabbed the wrong bottle from a tabletop littered with medicines and downed a potentially fatal dose of Squib’s chloroform.[xvi] Initially, as Riddle sat chatting with Penn Bank director[xvii] and fellow Club member[xviii] Frank B. Laughlin, he seemed to improve. But he soon became “insensible from the effects of the drug,”[xix] and Laughlin was forced to send for Captain Fullwood and Riddle’s physician, Dr. Sutton. Laughlin and Fullwood watched with concern as Riddle “would draw up in his chair” in pain. When Dr. Sutton arrived with a prescription, Riddle refused it, saying it was useless for his particular suffering. Fullwood sent for a glass of port from the Club’s bar, but Riddle refused it.[xx] They were helping Riddle to bed when John Schlosser, the Duquesne Club’s well-meaning chef, knocked on the door to see about the fuss. Riddle greeted Schlosser with a hearty “Hello, old boy,” and white-knuckled his way through a short conversation before “his tongue seemed to get thick”[xxi] and his eyes “assumed a glassy look.”[xxii] Two more physicians were called to the Duquesne Club, Dr. Daily and Dr. Fleming. They found Riddle unconscious and vomiting, so they “speedily procured a stomach pump” with which to divest the bank president of his contents. When he still did not regain consciousness, they introduced a mixture of strong black coffee and brandy via the pump, and at around six in the evening, Riddle briefly awakened. “I am sorry,” he croaked, “I did not mean to do that.” The doctor asked Riddle “how things were at the bank[,]” and Riddle answered truthfully, “All right when I left there this morning,” before passing out again.[xxiii] Meanwhile, the news “that President Riddle had taken a narcotic” caused “great excitement”[xxiv] and “the Duquesne club building … was besieged by anxious inquiries after his condition.”[xxv] Was it an accident? Intentional?
No one knew. Riddle awoke the next day to mortifying newspaper reports of his prostration and headed to a friend’s house for the remainder of his recovery. Meanwhile, to the banking community’s horror, reports of the Penn’s second closure, coupled with an unrelated run on the Masonic Bank of Pittsburgh, two bank failures in New York, and one in Erie, Pa., caused public unease to mature swiftly into a proper panic. Small runs were suddenly drawn on institutions all over Pittsburgh, and particularly for those banks who had loaned money to the Penn, the ground beneath them became shaky. “Country banks began drawing their funds from city banks,”[xxvi] city banks stopped transferring funds to other banks, mercantile firms and other businesses stopped depositing and small depositors drained their accounts. City‑wide bank failures were only prevented by the clandestine injection of the personal funds of nervous bank directors.
Finally, on May 29, depositors’ worst fears were confirmed. President Riddle had been allowing massive overdrafts on sham accounts of fake companies created to enable Bank Penn to corner the market in crude oil.
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