John Perry and the tragedy of La Bourgogne

By Diane Euston

  In the last issue of the Telegraph, we explored the incredible life of Annie Bird (1856-1937), once president of the Emery, Bird, Thayer & Company. She happily lived at her spacious mansion called “Elmhurst” at 36th and Broadway from 1904 until her death. 

  The 18-room Southern colonial mansion was built by coal magnate John Perry in 1898, and the reason it never became his permanent home is a tragedy one can hardly imagine. The story behind Elmhurst’s construction and the man who suffered tremendous loss in his life leads us to look into the life of John Perry, once the president of Kansas City’s largest coal company.

John Perry’s Early Life and Marriage

  John Perry was the oldest son born to parents Joseph and Mary Ann Perry in 1850 in the small town of Kingham, Oxfordshire, England. 

  After receiving a common education in England, John set his sights across the sea, first going at 18 years old to South America. One year later, he settled in Fort Scott, Kan. where he took up a career as a mine operator and coal dealer. In 1873, his younger brother, William Coulling Perry (b. 1854), moved to Fort Scott and began to prospect for coal in southeast Kansas.

  John Perry quickly became a well-known coal dealer well past the town of Fort Scott, and in December 1875, he married Mary Katherine “Kate” Massey in Cincinnati, Ohio. Kate, born in 1848, was the oldest of six children of Dr. Thomas E. Massey (1824-1888) and his wife, Sarah Medary (1826-1907). 

  In 1877, the couple welcomed their first child, John Perry, Jr. Twin girls Sadie and Florence followed in 1879.

A Growing Business Interest and Family

  John Perry’s success in the coal industry had him extensively traveling throughout Missouri, Kansas and Colorado looking after his interests. In 1882, John made a business decision that would prove to be quite profitable. He bought into a major coal company stationed in Kansas City, Mo.

  In 1871, Richard Keith (1842-1905), a man born in Lexington, Mo., moved to Kansas City with $40 in his pocket. He entered the coal business, operating a yard on Bluff Street. In 1874, Keith partnered with Joseph Henry to form Keith & Henry Coal Company.

  John Perry, familiar with Keith & Henry due to his own interests in mines in the same towns, opted to buy out Henry’s interest. The firm at 5th and Main then became known as Keith & Perry, with Keith serving as president.

  In short order, their business boomed. John Perry first remained in Fort Scott with his growing family while Richard Keith kept the main operation. Keith & Perry grew from 2,000 carloads of coal per year to 50,000 per year. They employed over 2,000 people.

  John Perry’s business interests grew in Fort Scott as well. He started Citizens National Bank in the town in 1885, serving as president.

  The growth of Keith & Perry had the business partners looking for more financial interests. In 1887, the partners erected a large office building on the southeast corner of 9th and Walnut. Known as the Keith & Perry building, the company’s offices were on the sixth floor while doctors, lawyers, coal and lumber dealers leased space inside. In fact, one tenant was none other than Dr. Bennett Clark Hyde, a suspect tried in the infamous Thomas Swope murder.

  By 1889, the Perry family – including children Albert, Sadie, Florence and baby Albert born in 1887 – moved from Fort Scott, Kan.  to a large mansion at 2627 Troost Ave. John took over as president of Keith & Perry.

    Tragedy hit the family in 1891 when their oldest child, John, Jr. passed away from pneumonia while attending school in St. Louis. The couple buried their son inside Mount St. Mary’s Cemetery. Always one to plan ahead, John opted to purchase several plots next to his young son.

  Little did he know that these plots would remain empty forever.

Building Elmhurst with an Eye Toward the Future

  In 1892, John and Kate Perry welcomed a baby girl named Katherine, completing their family of six and likely a source of healing after the death of 14-year-old John, Jr. 

  One year later, Richard Keith, son Charles Keith, John Perry, and John’s brother, William reorganized Keith & Perry to be the Central Coal and Coke Company. Business was fantastic and allowed for the best of everything for the Perry family.

  John purchased a five-acre section of land at 36th and Broadway from the McGee family in order to build a dream house for his wife and children. The 18-room stone Southern colonial mansion was coined “Elmhurst” by John; the land was covered in large trees perfect for a sprawling estate.

  Construction on Elmhurst began in June 1898, and the Kansas City Star reported, “The house is to be two stories high, built of native yellow rubble stone with white trimmings. . . The roof will be of red tiles and the inside furnishings partly hardwood and partly painted. The feature of the dwelling is to be a ballroom in the attic of elliptical shape.” 

  In addition, there was to be a dining room trimmed in oak, a billiard room in the basement built of red oak and a large stone barn. The cost was $40,000.

  One year later, Sadie and Florence graduated from Sacred Heart Convent in Manhattan, N.Y. The 20-year-old twin girls were set to celebrate with their mother, Kate, and younger siblings, 11-year-old Albert and four-year-old Katherine with a trip to France. Since Elmhurst wasn’t totally complete, John stayed behind to keep an eye on the home and his business interests. 

  John Perry watched as craftsmen carved the names of his children on each of their bedroom doors at Elmhurst, hopeful and excited for everyone’s return.

  The day would never come.

The Sinking of La Bourgogne

  On July 2, 1898, the French vessel La Bourgogne left New York bound for La Havre, France with 725 people on board. All of John Perry’s family, including his wife, Kate, and children Sadie, Florence, Albert and Katherine, settled into their first-class cabins aboard the ship.

  There were 83 passengers in first class, 123 in second class, 297 in steerage and 222 crew.

  On July 4, just two days into the journey, La Bourgogne was about 60 miles south of Sable Island near Nova Scotia when around 5am, dense fog, reducing visibility to about 20 yards, caused the ship to hit the British vessel Cromartyshire. The iron bow of Cromartyshire punctured directly into the starboard side of La Bourgogne. 

  The wife of the captain of Cromartyshire immediately woke up at the impact and dressed her two children on board. When she found her husband, he was lowering boats to assess the damage of their ship. It was found that the La Bourgogne had scraped the entire length of Cromartyshire’s port side and veered off. 

  The damage to Cromartyshire wasn’t catastrophic, so the captain immediately went to work with his crew to help survivors of La Bourgogne. They dropped 30 tons they were carrying on board to make room for survivors.

  The scene as described by survivors on board La Bourgogne was pure hell. 

  Captain of La Bourgogne, Louis Deloncle, 44, had been with the ship less than six months, and the action of his crew would become an intense debate for years to come. 

  In mere minutes, the passengers of La Bourgogne were in midst of a scene of chaos. Most passengers were asleep when the ship collided, and 40 minutes is all it took for La Bourgogne to disappear into the sea. Although it was customary in sea disasters to have women and children climb into lifeboats first, this did not occur with La Bourgogne.

  The scene later described how the crew worked to save themselves instead of the passengers. The San Francisco Call reported, “Passengers and crew were alike in the awful struggle for self that turned the deck of the liner into shambles and made the ocean the scene of deliberate murder of helpless women and men, and by the very ones whom they had entrusted their lives.” 

  One man described how a lifeboat full of 40 women was dragged down with the ship since “not one man would pause to cut the lines and give them life.”  

  Another man reported seeing an Irishman beat over the head multiple times when he tried to climb into a boat, the man beating him a member of the French crew.

  Patrick McKeown from Wilmington, Del. told newspapers, “I left the doomed steamer only two minutes before it went down and my last sight as I jumped from her deck was a Roman Catholic priest giving absolution to a praying group who with terror stricken and upturned faces gathered round the holy man.” 

  The priest was later identified as Father Anthony Kesseler of New York City.

  Adrien La Casse, a 30-year-old language professor from New Jersey, was traveling with his wife, Victorie on La Bourgogne. He awoke his wife when the collision occurred and watched in horror as men from the crew beat other people to boats and witnessed steerage passengers use knives to gain access to the remaining boats.

  Adrien told newspapers, “I saw a boat load of women go down. There were 40 women in the boat, and not one man in it, and strange to say the boat was launched without an oar. The women did not remain quiet on the boat.” As the frigid cold spray from the ocean waves hit their lifeboat, women frantically pushed to the other side. The boat capsized.

  “Every soul was lost,” Adrien said. “Three of the women remained afloat for a few seconds and then disappeared. I could not reach them from the raft.”

  Adrien La Casse was able to rescue his own wife, 28-year-old Victorie. From their lifeboat, the couple watched as men, women and children struggled to keep their heads above water. “At times I could see the heads of many people emerge on the crest of a wave, and later on they disappeared in the trough of the sea,” Adrien recalled.

  Adrien La Casse was later heralded a hero. He “was the only man in all that great company who showed his manhood in the face of that overwhelming disaster.”

  His wife, Victorie, was the only female survivor. 

  In the sinking of La Bourgogne, only 163 people survived of the 725 on board. Although 200 women were on board, Victorie was the sole survivor. Survivors included 104 of the 222 crew members – but only 61 of the 503 passengers lived.

   Lost at sea was the entire Perry family.  

  John Perry learned the news of the sinking of the ship while standing outside of the Kansas City Star offices. 

  He did all he could- throwing his money and his time into finding his perished family. John took a train to New York and a ship to Nova Scotia. He, along with Judge JF Dillon, hired the ship Hiawatha to retrieve the bodies of their lost families. 

  Although they found 30 bodies floating with life vests openly at sea, none of them were the Perrys. They removed the life vests, attached heavy weights to them, and sunk the bodies deep into the sea.

  The French crew, despite calls from around the world, were never prosecuted. The Compagnie Generale Transatiantique which owned the La Bourgogne vindicated the crew of any responsibility. In fact, it was reported that members of the crew were  “to be decorated. . . with life-saving medals for the alleged heroism which they are asserted to have shown at the time of the disaster.”

  It was said later in reports that the passengers “were so paralyzed with fear and so entirely helpless from consternation that they would not even accept the offers made to them by the French crew to embark in boats.”

  Despite hopes to recover monetary damages from the owners of La Bourgogne for the wrongful deaths of those on board, the highest court in France declared they were not at fault.

Moving on from Tragedy

  John’s wife, Kate, was extensively involved before her death in establishing an orphan’s home for boys in Kansas City. John’s business partner, Richard Keith, encouraged his wife, Mary in her leadership of this new organization. Known as Ladies of Charity and established in June 1896 by Mary Keith, the organization purchased the Rogers 4.5-acre farm at Westport Rd. and Southwest Trafficway. The mission was “to rear [orphans] under Christian influences and teach them how to earn an honest living.”

  The organization had a 12-room building and a “cozy chapel” that they turned over to the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. The home opened with three nuns and 25 boys. In 1899, the same group established a “new home for orphans and abandoned children” at 23rd and College known as St. Anthony’s Home for Infants.

  Because he couldn’t bear to live inside Elmhurst, John Perry wanted to donate the house to be used for the orphans, but neighbors were against the idea.

  He chose to honor his wife and children lost by donating to a charity close to his wife’s heart. John Perry donated the money to build a two-story structure of native stone for the Kansas City Orphan Boys’ Home. It included two parlors, a play room, kitchen and industry trade rooms. The second floor contained classrooms, a library and a community room for the Sisters. 

  Off the main hall was a parlor called “the Perry Room, “which was “a room sat apart for the donor of the home and [will] be always at his command.” It was decorated in oak with green accents.

  After a $40,000 investment from John Perry in honor of his lost wife and children, the Perry Memorial Orphan Boys’ Home opened May 3, 1900. After a formal visit to the home in September 1901, John Perry packed his bags and moved back to his native England. 

  Kansas City was too painful for him, and although he was still a large stockholder in the company he built, he built his new life at Potash Farm in Sandon, Essex, England. He remarried a woman named Eva and had one daughter named Lucille in 1904.

  His large estate known as Potash Farm is still standing and has been converted into apartments.

Revisiting the Reach of John Perry

  John Perry occasionally returned to Kansas City on visits. His brother, William, became president of Central Coal and Coke Company until his death from a heart attack in 1907. Then, John’s nephew took over the business.

  Elmhurst was too painful for John Perry to live in, but it became the treasured home of Joseph and Annie Bird of Emery, Bird, Thayer & Company. After her death, the home was torn to the ground; however, the impressive entrance to the home still stands just north of Valentine on Jefferson St. Those gates were to be the entrance to John Perry’s home for his wife and children.

Entrance to Elmhurst, Annie Bird’s home.

This wall and gate is on Jefferson St. just north of Valentine Rd. Photo by Diane Euston

  But fate left John without his family, and fate took him back to his native England where he built a new one. A final visit to old friends in Kansas City occurred in February 1923. He died in November 1923 in England.

  The disaster of the La Bourgogne was practically forgotten after the Titanic sunk in April 1912. But comparisons of the conduct of the crew of the Titanic was compared to the crew of La Bourgogne. The behavior of the French sailors was “more apprehensible in the light of comparison with the heroism and noble sacrifices of the male passengers and crew who went down with the Titanic.” 

  The Keith & Perry building at 9th and Walnut, once a showpiece of downtown, was razed in 1946 “to make room for a parking lot.”

  But the Kansas City Orphan Boys’ Home remained for a time, acting as an ongoing memorial to John Perry’s lost family. The facility ran out of room in 1913, and a big charity drive raised funds to finish the east wing of the home. 

  There, thousands of boys with no home found comfort inside the Kansas City Orphan Boys’ Home where they were given an education and experience in trades such as shoe repair, gardening, manual trades and basketry.

  In 1953, the Diocese marketed the old orphan’s home as a boarding school called Pius X after a $100,000 renovation. But, in 1960, the old building built with John Perry’s money shuttered for good. In 1961, the land was sold to be revamped into the Westport Shopping Center.

  Up on a hill at Mount St. Mary’s Cemetery in Kansas City, one grave appears in a plot meant for many others. John Perry’s oldest son sits alone in the grave, his mother and siblings buried deep at sea.

Diane writes a blog on the history of the area. To read more of the stories, go to http://www.newsantafetrailer.blogspot.com