Presently Lane and Reed appeared and went south on State street.
Wooldridge followed, and at an opportune moment seized them both from
behind. The fight that followed is historic. Only sheer luck and the
threat to kill both antagonists on the spot if they did not cease
resistance saved the detective's life. After knocking both men down
with his billy he succeeded in holding them until a fellow officer
came to his rescue. They were arrested and convicted June 25, 1905,
and sent to the penitentiary for three years.
May 19, 1906, Detective Wooldridge raided the following places: H. C.
Evins, 125 S. Clark street; George Deshone, 64 N. Clark street; E.
Manning Stockton, Bar & Co., 56 Fifth avenue, seizing some $30,000
worth of gambling paraphernalia.
Disclosures of conditions which so seriously threatened the discipline
of the United States army and navy that the secretaries of the two
departments and even President Roosevelt himself were called upon to
aid in their suppression.
It was charged that a coterie of Chicago men engaged in making and
selling these devices had formed a "trust" and had for years robbed,
swindled and corrupted the enlisted men of the army and navy through
loaded dice, "hold-outs," magnetized roulette wheels and other crooked
gambling apparatus.