Clement Quirk Lane

Who is Clement Quirk Lane?

Clement Quirk Lane was the city editor for the Chicago Daily News from 1942 to 1958. Born in 1898, he joined the Chicago Daily News after high school, where during Prohibition he worked the crime beat. As described in Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone, legend has it that during "slow nights," Lane and counterpart James Doherty of the Chicago Tribune invented often-comical nicknames for many of Chicago's underworld figures, including "Greasy Thumb" Gusik, "Loudmouth" Levine, and "Violet" Fusco.

Later he became a columnist, where in 1938 he invented the characters "Oxie O'Rourke" and "Torchnose McGonigle." These were figures in the vein of predecessor Chicago newspaperman Finley Peter Dunne's "Mr. Dooley" and "Mr. Henessey," stand-ins for the "voice of the people." Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko would take up that tradition afterwards with his character "Slats Grobnik." According to a Time magazine article about his work in January 1944, Lane said, in reference to his creation, Oxie was "the perfect answer for a newspaperman; he can't be scooped because he knows everything. He is the voice of the people west of the tracks."