Read Reclaiming History Online
Authors: Vincent Bugliosi
The discord within the Rubenstein household was, as one might expect, taking its toll on the children. Hyman, the oldest, remembered his father and mother arguing constantly, his father drinking to excess, and the arguments erupting into physical fights.
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Fannie and Joseph eventually separated in 1921.
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Jack, ten at the time, stayed with his mother.
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“Truancy and incorrigible at home” were the reasons the Social Services Bureau gave in its 1922 report for having eleven-year-old Jack examined by the Institute for Juvenile Research, which was under the Illinois State Department of Mental Health. Based on its psychiatric examination that year, the institute made the recommendation to the Social Services Bureau that he be placed in a new environment, primarily to provide supervision and recreation and thus end his interest in street gangs.
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The examination noted the following about his childhood demeanor: he was “quick tempered” and disobedient, he openly disagreed with his mother, he ran away from home, he felt his classmates were picking on him, he felt he could not get along with his friends, and he was destructive. Jack’s psychiatric examiner stated, “He [Jack] stated that he does not like to live at home because he does not like his mother. Stated his mother beats him and so he runs away. He could give no adequate reason for running away from school, but said that he went to amusement parks at this time…This patient is egocentric, states that he can lick everyone and is as good as anybody at anything he wants to do.”
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The Stanford-Binet intelligence test was administered to Ruby on July 6, 1922, and yielded an IQ of 94.
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Jack Ruby wasn’t quite a moron, but for the rest of his life no one would ever accuse him of being bright either.
Perhaps the best insight into eleven-year-old Jacob Rubenstein’s world can be had by reference to the words written about his mother in some of the documents from the Institute of Juvenile Research, which were later provided to the Warren Commission. In a questionnaire regarding young Jacob, a handwritten observation, presumably by a psychiatric examiner in response to the typewritten question “What do you consider the chief trouble in patient’s situation?” read, “An extremely excitable and un-understanding mother.”
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A summary sheet dated July 6, 1922, had this notation: “Mrs. Rubenstein has so little self control that during any conversation of the slightest importance, she becomes highly excited, talking most rapidly and often un-intelligently. She admits she loses her temper with the children and beats them, has a very disagreeable and sharp tongue and quarrels with her neighbors—often is ready to come to blows with them. In spite of her temper and severity with the children, she cannot control them and is always getting into quarrels because of their delinquencies, i.e., principally their destructive tendencies and disregard for other people’s property.”
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The institute also noted that “from a superficial examination of his mother who was here with him, it is apparent that she has no insight into [her son Jacob’s] problem and that she is thoroughly inadequate in the further training of this boy.” The report concluded it was “very advisable” to put young Jack “into a new environment.”
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No action was taken on the recommendation of a new environment, and in March of 1923, the institute elaborated on its earlier recommendation, stating, “Placement in a home, where intelligent supervision and discipline can be given him will in all probability improve his present behavior and his future conduct.”
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In a 1964 report to the Warren Commission pursuant to the Commission’s request for a summary of the clinical evaluation done at the Institute of Juvenile Research on Jack Ruby in 1922 and 1923, the Illinois State Department of Mental Health stated that Ruby’s family relationships were “characterized by a high degree of instability and disorganization…All the children apparently were involved in some, more or less minor, delinquent activity.”
Regarding Jack’s mother, the report said, “It is not possible to reconstruct from the accumulated data the nature of the mother’s disturbance. She might have been an emotionally and materially grossly deprived individual suffering from a severe character disorder, but by the same token she could have been of low intellectual endowment or grossly disturbed emotionally to the point of being psychotic.”
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In another section of its report concerning Ruby, the Department of Mental Health told the Warren Commission, “He was not fond of his parents but still preferred his father to his mother.”
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However, the department, in compiling its summary of records from 1922 and 1923, apparently overlooked a questionnaire in which Ruby, after saying he was not fond of his parents, was reported to have given a “no” reply to the question “Does he like his father better than his mother?” and a “yes” reply to the next question, “Does he like his mother better than his father?”
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The report included a comment on a finding from the physical examination given Jack in 1922 that “the only medical finding of some interest is the undescended testicles. This may be of a certain physical as well as psychological importance.”
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A dependency hearing for Jack, his younger brothers, Sam and Earl, and his younger sister, Eileen, was finally held in Chicago’s juvenile court on July 10, 1923, where it was alleged the children were not receiving proper parental care.
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The judge made a finding of dependency, which meant that the Jewish Home Finding Society was appointed guardian of the children, and they were taken from Fannie and placed in foster homes, where they may have remained until November of 1924.
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The exact dates and length of time Jack and his younger siblings were away from home is not clear. Court records either are inexact or have been destroyed, and the testimony of the children themselves shows their own uncertainty. Earl testified that “on the farm I was with my brother Sam, and Jack was in another farm some distance away from us. In the foster home Sam and I were together again, I think, just Sam and I. Then in another foster home, I think, Jack was with us. The three of us were in one foster home together.”
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When Jack and his younger siblings returned to their mother’s home, family harmony did not.
Jack exhibited entrepreneurial instincts early on in life, scalping tickets at sporting events, selling peanuts and pennants at football and baseball games, tip sheets at racetracks, chocolates at burlesque shows, cheap costume jewelry, even carnations in dance halls.
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He was described as “always looking to make a buck,”
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and two of his sisters said that in his days in Chicago he could be classified as a “peddler or salesman” of novelty items.
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Many of Jack’s friends knew him by his nickname, “Sparky,” which he did not like. Eva said he acquired the nickname because from age five to eight, being short, fat, and stocky, he wobbled when he walked and thus was likened to a horse in the comics—“Sparky, the slowest darn horse you ever saw.” Eva recalled that hearing the name Sparky burned him up, and he would hit the children calling him that name.
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Hyman Rubenstein has a different recollection as to how his younger brother acquired the nickname. When questioned before the Warren Commission as to the origin, he said, “Fast, aggressive, quick thinker, always on the ball, you know.” Asked if he was sure, he admitted, “No, but how else would a fellow get a name ‘Sparky’?”
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But Hyman admitted that Eva “was at home most of the time and I think she could tell you more about the family than any of us…She has a very good memory too, by the way, which is important.”
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However, the consensus of nearly everyone was that Ruby was called Sparky because of the volatility of his personality.
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Jack was out on the streets a lot, where he was described as “quite good with his fists.”
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A childhood friend remembered Jack’s proclivity for engaging in arguments, usually about sporting events. If the argument did not go to his liking, he was liable to use his fists or pick up a stick or any other weapon that was readily available. Similar to what many of Jack’s other friends through the years would recall, this same friend observed that “when the altercation was over, he immediately returned to his usual likeable self.”
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The recollections of Jack’s friends from his Chicago days were that although he had a quick temper, he was not overly aggressive or apt to pick fights for no reason, but he sure as hell didn’t go out of his way to avoid them either.
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They do remember that he would initiate a fight with anyone showing a pro-Nazi or anti-Semitic attitude, and that whenever he would hear of a meeting of those sympathizers taking place, he would go there and try to break it up.
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Older brother Hyman said, “Jack went out to the northwest side many times and broke up Bund meetings. That is one thing he wouldn’t go for. Other people told me. They said, ‘Your brother is terrific. He just goes in there and breaks up the joint.’ He just couldn’t tolerate those guys. Nobody would dare mention the word ‘Jew’ in a derogatory form to him because he would be knocked flat in two minutes.”
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Although only five feet eight inches tall, he was solid and muscular. Ruby bragged that he could hit harder than heavyweight champ Joe Louis.
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Though volatile and scrappy, Jack was able to avoid any major trouble or legal problems. He hung around with hustlers who could help him make a fast buck
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and, as Hyman put it, “fellows who loved life and [to] go out and have a good time,” but “he never hung around with no hoodlums. We knew hoodlums, sure. If they came into a restaurant where you are, next to them you are sitting, ‘Hello, Hy’, ‘Hello, Joe.’ What do you do, ignore them? You have known them all your life, you don’t ignore them…[They’re] kids from the neighborhood.”
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Hyman did mention the only time he could remember Jack being in trouble: a fight with a policeman, he thought for scalping tickets, where he was clubbed on the back of the head, requiring hospitalization. Hyman didn’t recall what year this was, but said he went to court with his brother and the charges were dropped.
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The only other time Jack got into trouble was in his late teens when he served thirty days in 1930 for selling copyrighted sheet music, a fact that he admitted, years later, still embarrassed him.
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Jack appears to have been an average student, attending several different public schools in the Chicago area. Records from the Board of Education do not indicate he ever advanced past grade 8B or attended any Chicago high school. However, Jack himself said that he entered the second year of high school but did not complete it, and Eva seemed to remember her brother attending a year and a half of high school.
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There’s no record of Jack having had any schooling outside the public school system,
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but before his parents separated, when Jack was ten, he and his brothers did receive some Hebrew school training.
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At the time of Jack’s exam by the Department of Mental Health, he was in the fifth grade, and his best subject was arithmetic and his worst ones were spelling and history.
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During the two years, 7A and 8B, for which there exists a record of his grades, on the excellent/good/average/poor scale that was used then, Jack had one “excellent,” eight “good,” seven “average,” and three “poor” grades.
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There is some difference of opinion among the children as to how Orthodox a Jewish home Joseph and Fannie kept. Earl remembers it as a home where his mother made them all observe dietary rules and the practice of having separate dishes for dairy and meat.
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However, Hyman remembers the home as “not Orthodox, not strict, nothing strict except for the holidays.”
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And Eileen stated, “We weren’t too religious…We adhered to certain conservative Jewish principles.” Eileen doesn’t remember the family having separate dishes, but agreed with Earl and Hyman that their mother’s influence made the family abide by strict dietary rules.
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The seeming contradiction in the home of Joseph and Fannie Rubenstein in strictly observing the dietary laws of Judaism, but not necessarily the more formal aspects of the religion, was easily understandable to the eldest son, Hyman: “You try to bring up eight kids in Chicago and keep them in shoes and keep them in school, out of jail, out of trouble, that was enough…That is more important.”
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Things weren’t made any easier by the fact that Fanny Rubenstein was deficient in so many ways. Her daughter Marion later said that ever since she could remember, her mother was “difficult to get along with. She was selfish, jealous, disagreeable, and never cared to do anything in the house but lie around and sleep…[She] has never been any kind of a housekeeper, was careless with money, and never took much interest in the children’s welfare.” The children couldn’t invite friends to the house “for fear that she [would] embarrass” the family. Fannie had eventually taken to accusing her children of being “immoral,” and they were all “nervous wrecks” living with her under one roof, which they were finding increasingly impossible.
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Joseph was still separated from Fannie when Jack, around age twenty-two, left Chicago “sometime in 1933 or 1934.”
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According to Eva, there was no work in Chicago and Jack heard that a lot of jobs were available in San Francisco.
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First though, Los Angeles beckoned, and Jack and three friends arrived there and found work selling “Collier’s Tip Sheet” for handicappers at horse races.
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Eva recalls that her brother also worked as a singing waiter, but apparently he ruined a lot of good meals and, she says, “nearly starved to death.”
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Moving to San Francisco a few months later, Jack initially continued to sell tip sheets at the Bay Meadows racetrack. Later, he solicited newspaper subscriptions door-to-door. He worked for several of the newspapers that covered San Francisco and the nearby small towns—the
San Francisco Examiner
, the
Call-Bulletin
, the
News
, and the
Chronicle
.
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