Investigative Classics is a weekly feature spotlighting past masters of the reporting craft.
This Week: Merchants of Misery Prey on the Sick in Chicago
- William Jones, Chicago Tribune, 1970
A middle-aged man gasps for air while suffering an apparent heart attack. The ambulance drivers demand $40 to take him to the hospital. They are told he has only $2. They take the $2 but leave the man.
An epileptic man with a fractured hip waits in a police car for two hours until the right private ambulance arrives – the one that has paid off the cop for just such tips.
An elderly man whose body is riddled with cancer tells the ambulance drivers that any movement causes severe pain. In response, they grab him under his arms, drag him across the floor and drop him onto the stretcher. “Next time the guy,” one man mutters to another, “will walk to the stretcher.”
These are just some of the scenes Chicago Tribune reporter William Jones witnessed during the two months he worked undercover as an ambulance attendant. His series of articles, which exposed police payoffs and sadistic treatment of patients by some private companies offering ambulance service in Chicago, led to several reforms and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1971.
Here’s how Jones opened the series:
They are the misery merchants and they prowl the streets of our city 24 hours a day as profiteers of human suffering.
Waiting in filthy garages scattered throughout the city, they prey on families faced with an urgent need for transportation and medical care for a loved one.
They are the hustlers among the city s private ambulance operators and they are waiting for your call for help.
Their business is big business in Chicago. The multimillion-dollar industry accounts for nearly 1 million dollars of Cook county’ s welfare fees each year. At the same time, the misery merchants are exacting a toll in needless suffering and sadistic treatment of the ill that may never be inventoried.
You may have to call the misery merchants this afternoon or tomorrow or next week. When you do, a member of your family may be gasping after a heart attack or screaming in agony after fracturing a hip or leg. As you frantically leaf thru the telephone directory to find an ambulance company, you unwittingly will be playing a game of Russian roulette with the person you are trying to help. The stakes are high. If you are poor or black or on welfare, they are even higher. I know because I worked as a misery merchant and this is how they operate.
