I’ve been researching at breakneck speed for my second book, “Wicked in Columbus, Indiana.” The book, which will be published by The History Press, should be out sometime early 2017. It focuses on some of the crummy stuff the city has experienced (although nothing more recent than 1980). I also talk about how some of this crummy stuff has been cleaned up.

I’m about 90 percent done with the research for three of the chapters, which center on a public fight between the oldest editor and the youngest mayor in the state of Indiana in 1877, the Ku Klux Klan’s presence in Columbus and Bartholomew County over the years, and a look at two doctors who were poisoned and the investigation into who did it.

Many more chapter to work on, including two areas of the city that were considered the worst slums the city has ever seen, a bevy of brothels in the early 1900s, as well as a few murders and robberies and a few other topics.

Click on the photos below to see caption information.

Isaac M. Brown, editor of The Evening Republican when he got into a public fight with Mayor George W. Cooper in 1877.

Death Valley was a poor area of Columbus that featured substandard housing and seasonal flooding through the first half of the 20th century.

Geroge W. Cooper, who was 26 years old when he fought 56-year-old Isaac M. Brown in Columbus in 1877.

Dr. Griffth Marr’s lunch was poisoned at Bartholomew County Hospital in 1977. He survived.