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JOHN J. COUGHLIN DIES 1 Nationally Known Alderman of Chicagos First Ward Passes On. Long Identified With Breeding and Racing Roguish Eye Best Horse He Ever Owned. Alderman John J. Coughlin, nationally known as "Bathhouse John," died today in Mercy Hospital. He was 76 years old and the dean of Chicago horse owners. For forty-six years he had been alderman of Chicagos famous First Ward and justly proud of his long and continuous service in the City Council. His doctors last-minute resort to an oxygen tent failed to save the aldermans life. Alderman Coughlin was probably the most ardent thoroughbred owner in the Windy City. His great fault and possibly the biggest barrier to much greater success on the turf than he enjoyed was his intense interest in his horses and interference with his trainers. The best horses he ever owned were Roguish Eye and Karl Eitel. He never forgave New York officials for awarding Marshall Fields High Strung the purse of 7,990 over Roguish Eye in the Belmont Futurity of 1928 after a sensational finish which saw the two colts nose to nose at the end. HIS VINDICATION? Many in the big crowd at Belmont Park that day agreed with Alderman Coughlin and for years afterward he displayed his feelings by naming his horses Who Win, Vindicated, Very Well, Donacare, etc., and a visit to his office was certain to result in his pointing to the enlarged photograph of the Futurity finish above his desk with a white line from finish post to finish post showing Roguish Eye the winner. Alderman Coughlin often claimed that he was the first man in America to make a chart of a race in the form now so familiar to the American public. He would display a loose leaf ledger, in which he said he used to insert the charts, abbreviated, as he would make them up at old Harlem, Washington Park, Garfield Park and Hawthorne, in the early days of those tracks. The alderman annually campaigned one of the largest strings of any Chicago owner, and its members all boasted of the best bloodlines in America, yet Coughlin never reached the high place in the owners list which should have been his lot. He owned horses back in the heyday of the sport in the Windy City when the original Washington Park and the American Derby were second to no track and no race in America. INTERFERED WITH TRAINERS. But for his continual interference with his trainers, the Coughlin stable might have been one of the most formidable in the country. He would order horses worked to specified times, seldom appearing at the track to clock them himself, but woe betide the trainer if the Alderman noted any difference between the time he ordered and the Continued on twenty-fifth page. JOHN J. COUGHLIN DIES Continued from first page. workout as it would appear in Daily Racing Form. His friends, his secretaries and even casual acquaintances, knowing his habit, often beseeched him to let the trainer have a free hand, but no arguments they could advance ever swayed the veteran from his course. He was the boss and he owned the stable, therefore his orders had to be obeyed. Roguish Eye was the best horse he ever owned, with Karl Eitel a close second. The Futurity was Roguish Eyes greatest race, and he came out of it with an injury from which he never fully recovered. Other well known horses of the recent era which Coughlin campaigned were Wacker Drive, Dolly Polly, Fannie May, Flood Control, Dan Burnham, Front Row, Winifred, Sheepshead Bay, La Dentelle, Sign Off, Free Miller, High Lark, Teernahila, Official, Naughty Polly, Camp Douglass, and Board Trade. Funeral services will be held Monday from Hursen mortuary, 1820 S. Michigan Avenue, to St. Johns Church, 18th and Clark Streets, thence to Calvary Cemetery, where the body will be placed in a mausoleum.
