On the evening of 28 October1893 Carter Harrison was takinga well-earned nap. As mayor of Chicago, he had just given the closing address at the World's Fair, the city's triumphant exhibition that had unveiled all sorts of splendid innovations, from the Ferris wheel to Dvorak's symphony From the New World. Harrison was known for his "open door" to the people of Chicago: too open, it seems. Eugene Prendergast, a crankthe police chief deemed "as crazy as a bedbug", burst into the mayor's mansion and began to fire a revolver. Staff rushed in to find their mayor sprawled on the floor, mortally wounded. As local clergy tried to make sense of the tragedy to their grief-stricken parishioners, one man of the cloth - a young Polish priest of the city's Congregation of the Resurrection - was inspired to consider a more earthly question. What if clothing could stop those bullets?
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