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A Brief Note From 1909 About A Wealthy Feline

May 5, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the September 3, 1903 New York Times:

“London–A little pink Persian kitten sat for its photograph to-day in the studio of a well-known animal photographer wearing a gold crown on its head and a gold order around its neck. The pink Persian came from the Windsor Castle and now belongs to Mrs. Anita Comfort Brooks, President of the Gotham Club of New York, who is on a visit to London. This crowned kitten enjoys a perfumed bath every morning and one of its favorite pastimes is to paw the keys of a grand piano.

‘I was the first cat lover to think of giving a cat diamond earrings,’ said Mrs. Brooks to-day. ‘Bangles and necklaces had become so very hackneyed, and I wanted my cat to be unlike any one else’s, so I had the ears pierced and bought my cat a pair of fine diamond earrings.’

Mrs. Brooks always names her cat’s after celebrities. President Roosevelt was the one who rejoiced in jeweled ears. Governor Hughes, another pet, wears pink corsets, pink shoes, and pink stockings, and Admiral was a fine figure in a navy blue coat, striped trousers, and an Admiral’s hat.”

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A Brief Note From 1890 About Lactose Intolerance

May 2, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the August 1, 1890 New York Times:

“Plainfield, N.J.–Mary Goldsmith, who died near Plainfield a day or two ago in consequence, it is supposed, of a too free drinking of milk, was a cook employed on Gen, Schwenck’s large dairy farm, Holly Grove, on the Park Avenue Road. She was a middle-aged woman and had been in Gen. Schwenck’s service for some time.

She became very fond of the fresh milk, and drank it warm as it came from the cows morning and evening. The family cannot say how much she drank a day, but they think she must have consumed three or four gallons. She grew stout, but seemed to be in perfect health till within a day or two of her death. Then she complained of pains around her heart. She finally suffered so much that she was forced to her bed, and died a few hours later.”

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Old Print Article: “A Woman Returns To Life While On A Dissecting Table,” New York Times (1884)

May 1, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

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“While on the table the body showed signs of life.”

No one in a Massachusetts insane asylum was going to believe the story of Estelle Newman. They would just assume she was crazy. An article about her predicament from the December 11, 1884 New York Times:

“Springfield, Mass.–A strange story has come from Egremont, among the Berkshire hills, near the New-York line. The town and the surrounding villages are in great excitement. The story runs that Estelle Newman, about 30 years old, died in Egremont in 1878, and, after the funeral services in the little Methodist church was buried in the town cemetery and forgotten. The sensation comes from the dying testimony of H. Worth Wright, in Connecticut, who is said to have confessed to his brother that he, being a student in the Albany Medical College, was present at the funeral with other students, lay in wait near the cemetery till the burial was over and graveyard was deserted, and then helped disinter the body and carry it in a sack to the medical college. They at once went to work on it in a dissecting room. While on the table the body showed signs of life, and was resuscitated by the students. Finding the woman alive on their hands the authorities of the college had her taken to an insane asylum in Schoharie County, N.Y. This is the last that Wright is said to have known of her whereabouts. The Newman woman’s grave will probably be opened to see what the story amounts to.”

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A Note From 1912 About A Successful Plumber

April 30, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the April 4, 1912 New York Times:

“London–The story of how Adelaide Dallamore, a girl of 23 years, dressed as a man and living with another girl as her husband, while earning a living for both as a plumber, was related to-day in an action in the Police Court.

Miss Dallamore as arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct as a man, and the arrest led to the amazing discovery.

Miss Dallamore for some time has earned a good living working at plumbing. On promising to dress in woman’s clothes in the future the court bound the girl over.”

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Old Print Article: “One Of A Strange Family,” New York Times (1880)

April 29, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

“She was a withered old hag of singular presence, being nearly 6 feet 9 inches in height and exceedingly slim.”

This deeply insulting and jaw-dropping article about the disappearance and death of the matriarch of family named De Groat, which appeared in the November 29, 1880 edition of the New York Times, may be the single craziest thing to ever appear in the paper. The opening:

“Mongaup Valley; Sullivan County, N.Y.–Three hunters from the western part of Sullivan County were in town to-day, and reported the finding of the body of an old woman who had been missing from the neighborhood of Mongaup Valley since the first week in November. Her death was a tragic one, and was a fitting end to a strange life. Her name was Margaret Conkling, and she was known throughout the county as ‘Old Mag.’ She belonged to a large family of half-savage people known as the ‘De Groats,” the ‘Hinkses,’ the ‘Henions,’ and the ‘Conklings.’ This family numbers about 375 men, women, and children, and a more degraded set of persons it would be difficult to find in the United States. They dwell in small cabins and caves in the wooded hills of Orange and Sullivan Counties, and their living is made principally by stealing, hunting, and fishing. Some of them are expert basket-makers, and, with huge backloads of baskets, they often descend from the mountains to the villages of Sparrowbush, Port Jervis, Monticello, Huguenot, and Cudderbackville, where they dispose of their wares and invest the proceeds in whisky and tobacco. On these trips they plan robberies, and every basket-selling tour is sure to be followed by a raid. They can easily hide themselves in the mountains, and always manage to escape detection. They are of Indian descent, and bear all the facial marks of their ancestors, while their habits are even less decent than those of their savage progenitors. They intermarry exclusively, and no divorce is needed to separate man and wife when they wish to be separated. The result of this is evident in the faces and persons of their children. Many of them are idiotic, some of them are born without ears, some without hands, and there is one singular being, now living in a lonely hut near a pond on the western edge of Sullivan County, that would be an acquisition to Barnum’s show. This object–for it can scarcely be called a person–has neither nose, eyes, nor ears, and only two teeth can be found in its head. Its feet are clubbed, and its hands are more like the fins of a fish than human members. Yet this singular creature lives and seems to enjoy itself. Dave Boyle, a well-known hunter in that section, has seen it eat raw fish, raw potatoes, and raw skunk flesh with evident delight. The mother of this object is a woman 6 feet 7 inches in height, and her husband is her own uncle. The mother has a heavy beard, and the father is a hare-lipped, hunchback dwarf, not quite four feet in height.

Such is the family to which ‘Old Mag’ belonged, and among this savage tribe she was regarded as a sort of queen. She was said by them to be the ‘seventh daughter of a seventh daughter,’ and was therefore thought to be endowed with miraculous powers of curing and fortune-telling. She was a withered old hag of singular presence, being nearly 6 feet 9 inches in height and exceedingly slim. Her skin was yellow, her hair long, black, and coarse, and her chin was covered with a beard about three inches long. She dressed herself in Indian style, and lived alone in her cabin on the shore of Big Pond, just in the edge of a productive cranberry marsh. Here she was visited last Summer by large numbers of New York and Philadelphia people who were spending the Summer in Sullivan County. She told their fortunes and received presents of money from them. ‘Old Mag’ would never allow a human being to sleep in her cabin. not even one of her own tribe, and those of the tribe who visited her always went prepared to sleep out of doors. These family gatherings were the wildest orgies imaginable, and more than one member of the fraternity has been missing after a debauch in some little log cabin in a remote glen or on a bleak mountain. 

‘Old Mag’ was last seen alive in the latter part of October. At that time she visited Mongaup Valley and Forestburg, telling fortunes and laying in a stock of tobacco and whisky. She seemed to be as lively as ever. One week after she was seen at the Mongaup Valley Post Office a half-witted young man named Hinks, one of the tribe, appeared and said that ‘Old Mag ain’t no hum no more and mebbe she’s dead.’ A hunter who heard of her disappearance made a trip to her cabin and found it deserted.”

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Gen. Cassius Marcellus Clay, Liberator And Captor

April 25, 2013 in Excerpted, Old Print Articles, Photography, Politics, Urban Studies

General Cassius Marcellus Clay of Kentucky, profiled in these classic photographs, was a wonderful and terrible man, an abolitionist from a family of slave owners who went mental in his dotage, essentially imprisoning a very reluctant 15-year-old wife when he was in his eighties. He was also a politician, an expert duelist, a Yale graduate and so much more. From a report of the death of the nonagenarian in the July 23, 1903 New York Times:

“Gen. Cassius Marcellus was famous for such a multitude of daring deeds, political feats, and personal eccentricities that it is hard to choose any one act or characteristic more distinguished than the rest. As a duelist, always victorious, he was said to have been implicated in more encounters and to have killed more men than any fighter living. As a politician he was especially famous for his anti-slavery crusades in Kentucky, having become imbued with abolition principles while he was a student at Yale, despite the fact that his father was a wealthy slave owner. As a diplomat while Minister to Russia during and after the civil war, he took a prominent part in the negotiations that resulted in the annexation of Alaska.

The act of Gen. Clay’s life that has commanded most attention in recent years was his marriage to a fifteen-year-old peasant girl after he had reached his eighty-fourth birthday. In 1887, he had married his first wife, Miss Warfield, a member of an aristocratic family of slave holders, and years afterward when he had become an ardent disciple of Tolstoi, he came to the conclusion that he ought to wed a ‘daughter of the people.’ In November, 1894, he chose Dora Richardson, the daughter of a woman who had been a domestic for some time in his mansion at White Hall, near Lexington.

When the little girl became his wife, the General proceeded to employ a governess for her. She rebelled. Then he sent her to the same district school she had attended previously. The fact that he supplied her with the most beautiful French gowns and lavished money upon her, she did not consider compensations for the teasing she got at the hands of her fellow-pupils. In two months he had to take her back home, still uneducated. 

The old warrior’s eccentricities increased during his declining years, and after his latest marriage he thought little of anything except his dream that some ancient enemy was trying to murder him and his ‘peasant wife,’ as he called her. She, in spite of his kindnesses, kept running away from White Hall, and finally he decided he must get a divorce. This he did, charging her with abandonment. She soon married a worthless young mountaineer named Brock, who was once arrested for counterfeiting. Then the General began to plot to get her back, having already given a farm and house to her and her new husband, only to hear that Brock sold the property. At last Brock died, and a few months ago dispatches from Kentucky stated that the General was trying in vain to prevail upon his ‘child wife’ to return to him. She refused persistently, never having outgrown the dislike for the luxurious life with which he surrounded her and still preferring the simple country existence to which she was born.”

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A Note From 1884 About An Old Sweetheart

April 24, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the January 9, 1884 New York Times:

“Chicago–The recent developments in the medical colleges in relation to grave robberies in the vicinity of Chicago have excited general attention which was not lessened to-day by the discovery of a new case which in one way is a strange commentary on the brutality of some of the students. The detectives to-day recovered from the Homeopathic Medical College the stolen corpse of Mrs. G.M. McConaughy, the young wife of a Nebraska attorney. She was the daughter of J.B. Craft, a merchant of Rochelle, and until her marriage a year ago, was the acknowledged belle of that town. She was 22 years old then, of very attractive personal appearance, and highly accomplished. She was a schoolmate of Newton J. Shinkle, one of the students now under arrest, and it is said he was at one time in love with her. Now he is in a cell charged with robbing the grave of his former sweetheart. A few weeks ago Mr. McConaughy and his wife left their home in Nebraska to visit the old folks in Rochelle. While there the young wife became a mother, but her life went out with the old year, and New Year’s Day she was buried in the cemetery in Rochelle.

The husband made daily visits to the grave, and on Monday discovered some evidences that it had been disturbed. Investigation showed that the coffin was there, but it was empty. It was learned that young Waterman, one of the students under arrest, visited Rochelle New Year’s morning, and returned that night with a Saratoga trunk. Shinkle came to Chicago the day following. The trunk was traced to the Homeopathic College, and the body was found in a perfect state of preservation and was promptly given up by the Faculty. The body was purchased for $35, Jan. 2. The remains were shipped back to Rochelle and buried. Shinkle rode to Chicago in the same car with the husband of the woman whose grave he had robbed.”

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Old Print Article: “Lombroso Tricked Again?” New York Times (1907)

April 23, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies

"Lambroso thinks that these indications...prove that the prisoner is a degenerate and only slightly responsible for the crime."

“Lambroso thinks that these indications prove that the prisoner is a degenerate and only slightly responsible for the crime.”

Cesare Lombroso was a pioneering criminologist in the 19th century who helped establish the field, but his methods and assumptions were often somewhere south of bizarre. An excerpt about some of his quackery from an article in the August 4, 1907 New York Times:

“Paris–Prof. Cesare Lombroso, the well-known Italian criminologist, has written to Le Temps on behalf of Soleilland, the man under sentence of death in Paris for assaulting and murdering a little girl, the daughter of a couple with whom he was on friendly terms.

Lombroso calls attention to the peculiar shape of Soleilland’s right hand, the outer edge of which, instead of being slightly convex, is quite straight and forms a continuation of the line of the forearm. There is a wide gap between the third and fourth fingers, and the second and third are the same length. Instead of two oblique lines on the palm, there is only one straight line. All these signs are peculiar to what is called in neuropathology the monkey hand, as usually found in the lower apes, epileptics, idiots, and born criminals.

Lambroso thinks that these indications, taken in conjunction with the peculiar shape of the iris of Soleilland’s eye, prove that the prisoner is a degenerate and only slightly responsible for the crime. The professor suggests that President Fallieres ought to weigh the matter very carefully before ordering his execution.

"All these signs are peculiar to what is called in neuropathology the monkey hand."

“All these signs are peculiar to what is called in neuropathology the monkey hand, as usually found in the lower apes, epileptics, idiots, and born criminals.”

Unfortunately the weak point in Prof. Lombroso’s argument is that Bertillon, the head of the Police Anthropometrical Department, says that he has never photographed Soleilland’s hands, and it is extremely probable that the distinguished Italian is the victim of a practical joker.

This is not the first time. He had a similar mishap years ago. Lombroso asked Prince Roland Bonaparte to obtain photographs of hands of female criminals. Through a misunderstanding the Prince in applying to the Anthropometrical Department asked for photographs of the hands of workwomen. The photographs appeared a year later in a work by Lombroso, who described the hands as showing all kinds of criminal tendencies, whereas they really belonged to respectable, hardworking women employed at the Central Markets.

Since the Chamber of Deputies has disallowed the executioner’s salary, thus indirectly stopping capital punishment, thirty-four criminals have been sentenced to death and none of them has been guillotined. A marked recrudescence of crime has since occurred in Paris, with quite an epidemic of offenses against women and children. The Soleilland case has brought public feeling to a head, and now there is a strong demand for the revival of the death penalty.

Meanwhile, Soleilland’s spirits are reviving and he is telling his warders that when his sentence is commuted and he is sent out to New Caledonia or Guiana he hopes to settle down, lead a new life, and own a donkey cart.”

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A Brief Note From 1867 About Flour Barrels

April 22, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the February 28, 1867 New York Times:

“Buffalo–Five dead bodies, two males, two females, and one newborn infant, were found by the Detective Police at the Grand Trunk Railroad depot this afternoon. They were shipped through the American Express Company for Ann Arbor, Mich. The bodies were packed  in flour barrels in a nude state, and had not been dead over a week. The bodies are now being cleansed of flour, and will be exposed for identification to-morrow morning. This city is wild with excitement to know whose relations have been thus desecrated by body snatchers.”

Old Print Article: “Photographs By Telegraph–Television Next?” New York Times (1907)

April 21, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Video

"We can now send a not too complicated photograph over very long distances in six to twelve minutes."

“We can now send a not too complicated photograph over very long distances.”

In the early years of the twentieth century, Professor Arthur Korn was conducting pioneering research into the development of the fax, which is still popular in certain places. A German of Jewish descent, the professor fled his home country in 1939 and emigrated to America, where he lived out his life. The opening of a November 24, 1907 New York Times article about Korn’s early telecommunications work, done in a time before world wars were even a thing, which seems to have resulted in the first facsimile ever sent:

“With the recent successful demonstration of Prof. Korn’s invention, by which photographs may be telegraphed from one part of the world to another, it seems not improbable that some day we may be able to see distant views through the aid of a telephone wire in the same way that we can now hear distant sounds.

That, at the first glance, may seem an impossibility; but no more impossible than the idea of telegraphing photographs would have appeared before its actual accomplishment.

The remarkable series of tests which demonstrated the practicability of the new invention took place in the office of The London Mirror on Nov. 7. The machine used in the test had been constructed for The Mirror by M. Carpenter of Paris. The receiving instrument was installed in the Paris office by L’Illustration, one of the leading pictorial journals of France.

Photographs–including one of the King–were both sent and received between London and Paris, a distance of 280 miles, and the eminently satisfactory results which were obtained came as a revelation to the distinguished company. Among the guests were several hundred who are prominent in science, art, politics, and journalism. This was the first time that photographs had been telegraphed from one capital to another, and Prof. Korn, the inventor, was the recipient of many congratulations, 

The first test was the sending of a photograph of King Edward to Paris, the whole operation taking only six minutes, at the end of which time the signal was given that the picture had been admirably reproduced in the Paris offices of L’Illustration.

Then a photograph was transmitted from Paris. A sensitive film was placed on a receiving cylinder, which is inclosed in a box, and as soon as the current was switched on the film began to slowly rotate and receive an exact copy of the film in Paris–an operation which again occupied six minutes.

The receiving film was then taken off the cylinder and an excellent photograph was printed from it amid the applause of the audience.

In a lecture given after the tests had been completed, Prof. Korn explained the working of his new system of photography. ‘We can now,’ he said, ‘send a not too complicated photograph over very long distances in six to twelve minutes. The problem of television, by which distant views are reproduced in a way similar to that by which we now hear distant sounds, has not yet been solved. Many bright minds are working upon it, but the great difficulty is the speed required. This must be a thousand times greater than the highest speed that has yet been obtained with telephotography.”

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“The picture you wish to have transmitted is taken to a sending station”:

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Roald Amundsen, Before Tasting Dog (1909)

April 19, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies

Capt. Roald Amundsen, the great Norwegian explore of polar regions, is profiled in this classic 1909 photograph. The arduous journeys that he and his rivals undertook to unravel Earth’s mysteries were large and heroic, but in a March 11, 1912 New York Times article, Amundsen discussed the smaller details of being an explorer that usually get lost in the history books. Excerpts about dog-eating and tooth-pulling:

“With regard to food, we had full rations all the way, but in that climate full rations are a very different thing to having as much as a man can eat. There seems little limit to one’s eating powers when doing a hard sledging journey. However, on the return journey we had not merely full rations, but as much as we could eat from the depots after passing 86 degrees.

‘The first dogs were eaten on the journey to the pole in 85 1/2 degrees, when twenty-four were killed. In spite of the fact that they had not always been able to obtain full meals, the dogs were fat and proved most delicious eating. It is anything but a real hardship to eat dog meat. …

‘Washing was a luxury never indulged in on the journey, nor was there any shaving, but as the beard has to be kept short to prevent ice accumulating from one’s breath, a beard-cutting machine which we had taken along proved invaluable.

‘Another article taken was a tooth extractor, and this also proved valuable, for one man had a tooth which became so bad that it was absolutely essential that it should be pulled out, and this could hardly have been done without a proper instrument.”"

 

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A Brief Note From 1873 About A Missing Knife

April 18, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the October 27, 1873 New York Times:

“A letter dated Oct. 1, from Dos Palmas Station, on the Desert, to the Yuma (Cal.) Sentinel, says:: ‘Four days ago the son of old Chino Theodore, from Yuma, came to this station about dark, on foot, and nearly dead for water. He said he had left his father and a boy, the brother of Mrs. Jeager, out forty miles on the desert, without water and nearly dead for the want of it, having been without it for three days when he left them twenty four hours before. Joe Dittier, the station-keeper, and Hank Brown started the next morning with a team and plenty of water to find them. After going twenty-five miles, they came upon the old man. He had found a cask of water that had been left by surveyors, and had drank himself nearly to death. One of the party stayed with him, and the other went to look for the boy. After going fifteen miles he was discovered stretched out under a bush, naked and almost dead–his tongue being swollen and black, and blood running out of his nose and ears. He was brought to after two hours’ hard work, having been without water for five days and nights. Their three horses died. The party are now stopping here and getting along all right. The old man says that if he had not lost his knife he would have cut his throat, and ended his misery. The station keeper and Brown deserve praise for the manner in which they acted, being without food three days on their return.”

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Old Print Article: “Revived By Jiu-Jitsu,” New York Times (1910)

April 16, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

“The patient immediately regained full consciousness.”

As far as I can tell, a Tokyo man fainted on a train platform in 1910 and got the crap beaten out of him. The New York Times had a different take in its September 4 issue of that year. The story:

“Tokyo–An extraordinary story of the resuscitation of a man apparently dead by means of jiu-jitsu is printed by the Japanese Advertiser, which paper declares that, though jiu-jitsu has attracted much attention throughout the world as a marvelous art of self-defense, it has not yet received the attention it deserves as a means of restoring to life persons who are victims of shock, concussion of the brain, apoplexy or drowning.

It has long been asserted that this curious science has what may be known as an esoteric side–that there are secrets connected with it that are imparted only to those who have attained a very high degree of proficiency, and that they are pledged not to divulge these secrets. It is even said–and believed–that certain jiu-jitsu experts know how to kill a human being by what is little more than a touch.

However this may be, the story now related appears well authenticated. A man named Tanenouchi Yasutara, 23 years old, a conductor in the service of the Tokio street railway, suddenly fell apparently lifeless on the platform of the train on which he was on duty. His collapse was due to apoplexy. The man’s body was lifted to the ground and every possible means of resuscitation known to the fellow conductors and motormen, as well as others suggested by onlookers, was tried without avail. The man remained livid, without any apparent respiration or pulsation, and was on the point of being given up for dead when one Iura Hidikichi, who is a jiu-jitsu expert, happened to pass by, and, lifting the lifeless body up, tried upon it the jiu-jitsu method of resuscitation. 

The effect was an instantaneous as it was marvelous. The patient immediately regained full consciousness, to the great amazement of the onlookers who had crowded around.

Broadly speaking the method employed is as follows: The operator kneels on one knee immediately behind the patient, whom he lifts to a semi-sitting posture, placing his (the operator’s) knee between and slightly below the patient’s shoulder blades in the cardiac region, then brings his hands forward over the patient’s chest, and then gives them a powerful jerk backward. If any life remains the effect is instantaneous, not only respiration and pulsation, but full consciousness, being restored. There are, however, details in regard to this treatment which cannot be learned.”

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A Brief Note From 1847 About A Silenced Man

April 15, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the July 15, 1847 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Philadelphia–On Tuesday evening last, in Decatur Street, William Rushworth and Patrick McGuire quarreled, a regular fight ensued, when the former got the latter down, throttled him until his tongue protruded from his mouth, and then bit it off. The physicians fear death will ensue from mortification or lock jaw, and in case of recovery he will be deprived of the power of articulation.”

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A Brief Note From 1911 About A Dish Served Cold

April 12, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the October 19, 1911 New York Times:

“Vancouver, B.C.–The Rev. J.G. Patton, who arrived to-day from Maleoules, New Hebrides, where he has been a missionary for nineteen years, said that shortly before he left a French trading vessel made a raid and a number of natives were kidnapped. 

The natives, in revenge, attacked the steamer and captured three of the crew, all natives. These were killed and eaten.”

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A Brief Note From 1894 About Fruitarians

April 10, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the June 11, 1894 New York Times:

“A new society of cranks has been started by a former Lieutenant in the German Army. His name is Wäthe. He is the leader of a new ‘ism,’ and as such has sailed from San Francisco to Honolulu. The ‘Fruitarians’ is the name of the new society he represents, and their belief–or rather notion–is, that modern civilization is full of vanities and strange motions, and greatly needs reforming. The members eat nothing but ripe fruit, eschew cooked food of any kind, and drink only water. They are to live in huts, bare of the comforts of civilization, and go naked. Ex-Lient. Wäthe intends to buy a large tract of land in the Sandwich Islands, or perhaps, a small island outright, for the purpose of founding a colony.”

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Old Print Article: “Walking on Water,” New York Times (1886)

April 9, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

While Charles Blondin gained fame by crossing over Niagara Falls on a tightrope, and Steve Brodie gained even greater notice by pretending to go over it in a barrel, only “Professor” Alphonse King tried to traverse its channel with tin shoes of his own invention. His results were mixed. From the December 12, 1886 New York Times:

“Buffalo–An attempt was made to-day to outrival the feats of Donovan, Graham, Hanslitt, Potts and Allen in braving the terrors of Niagara, which though a failure in one way, was a success in another. Mr. Alphonse King, who is the inventor of a water shoe, gave exhibitions some years ago in this country and Mexico and not long ago in Europe. He gave one in the Crystal Palace in London, and while there attracted the attention of Harry Webb, an old-time manager, who made him an offer of a year’s engagement to come to this country. While here some time ago Mr. King had looked over Niagara River below the Falls and believed that he could walk across the channel on the patent shoes. He came to this country four weeks ago and has since that time been in New-York City practicing for the trip. While there, Thomas Bowe, hearing of King’s determination to attempt the trip, made a wager of $1,500 with Webb that King could not walk 100 feet in the current. The money was deposited with a New-York newspaper, and on Friday afternoon Messrs. King and Webb, accompanied by A.C. Poole, of Poole’s Eighth Street Theatre, reached the Falls.

The trip to-day gave King two cold water baths, and demonstrated that while he could walk with or against the current all right it was impossible to walk across the river because of the eddies, which twice upset them. He retired confident that what he set out to do could not be done. King’s ‘shoes’ are of tin, 32 inches long, 8 inches wide, sloping at the top, and 9 inches deep. Each weighs 30 pounds. They are air-tight and have in the middle an opening large enough to admit the feet of the wearer. At the bottom are a series of paddles, which operate automatically as fins.”

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A Brief Note From 1884 About A Girl, Interrupted

April 8, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the February 15, 1884 New York Times: 

“Youngstown, Ohio–Kitty Gilmour, daughter of the late Dr. Gilmour, of New Lisbon, died on Monday after six hours’ illness. Physicians pronounced the disease hemorrhage of the bowels. The body was placed in a vault here. At 2 o’clock this afternoon the undertaker went to the vault to bury another body and discovered moisture on the glass of Miss Gilmour’s coffin and noticed that her face was flushed. He summoned Dr. Nelson, the girl’s uncle, who ordered the body to be taken to his house. It was quickly removed from the coffin and placed on a cot. The doctor found on placing his hand underneath the body that it was warm. Bottles filled with hot water were placed at the feet and along the sides, an electric battery was applied ineffectually, and every known restorative used, but at 8 o’clock to-night none had been very effective. The appearance of the corpse was very life-like, a natural color overspreading the entire face except the chin, on which is a purple spot. The neck and arms have not stiffened. The folded hands clutch a bouquet of white roses. At the throat is a bunch of tuberoses. The lady was 24 years old, and was to have been married in a few months. She was the only child of a widowed mother, who is almost crazed with grief and suspense. Much excitement exists. A council of physicians has been summoned who will experiment with the body during the night.”

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A Brief Note From 1908 About Monkey Arson

April 4, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the July 5, 1908 New York Times:

“‘Nimbo,’ a pet monkey belonging to Mrs. Mary Blackwell, a widow, who lives in a three-story frame house at 1,770 Bath Avenue, Bath Beach, sat in the parlor window yesterday afternoon watching the boys in the street set off firecrackers. Mrs. Blackwell was on the lawn in front of her house watching the youngsters also.

She happened to turn around, however, and saw Nimbo in the act of striking a match and setting fire to the lace curtains at the parlor windows in imitation of the boys in the street. Mrs. Blackwell gave the alarm, but before firemen reached the house it was in flames.

Mrs. Blackwell had to be restrained by the police to prevent her running into the house after Nimbo, and she begged the firemen to save him. They tried, but when they reached the monkey they found he was dead and his body burned almost to a crisp. Mrs. Blackwell was heartbroken over the monkey’s death.”

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Old Print Article: “The Tattooed Woman,” New York Times (1882)

April 3, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

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“She was the daughter of a sailor who began tattooing when she was but 6 years of age.”

A sailor’s daughter was covered in ink from a tender age, as seen in an article in the March 19, 1882 New York Times:

“Miss Irene Woodward is a brown-haired, brown-eyed maiden of about 19 years of age of medium-size, and of pleasing appearance. She claims to be tattooed on every part of her body from her neck to her heels. During a reception of three hours at the Sinclair House yesterday afternoon she was attired in a scant costume of black velvet and gold. A close-fitting bodice or jacket, trimmed with gold bullion and fringe stopped an inch or more above the knee. The bodice was cut low in the neck and edged across the bosom with lace ruching. The visitors were permitted to look upon the quaintly decorated skin of the upper portions of the chest and back, the arms, and the exposed surface of the lower limbs. Miss Woodward remarked that she felt a little bashful about being looked at the way, never having worn the costume in the presence of men before. The tattooing, which was done in Indian ink, appeared artistic, and the devices were varied and attractive. Around the neck was observed a floral necklace. Dependent from this was a bunch of roses in full bloom drooping until their graceful forms were lost beneath the lace edging of the bodice. The rising sun was illustrated on each shoulder and the arms were covered with stars, hearts, floating angels, wreaths, harps, crosses, a full-rigged ship, and various mottoes. The young woman’s back, it was said, was completely covered with a large cross, heart, and anchor. Upon the lower limbs were pictures very numerous and complicated. Miss Woodward states that she was the daughter of a sailor who began tattooing when she was but 6 years of age and finished it when she was 12. She was born near Dallas, Texas, and has spent the greater part of her life in the Western wilds. She conceived the idea of exhibiting herself after seeing the tattooed Greek in Denver. On and after to-morrow she will figure among the multitude of curiosities at Bunnell’s Museum, at Broadway and Ninth Street.”

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Margaret And Kate Fox, The Original Rappers

April 2, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies

We see ghosts sometimes because we’re afraid of death. If others haven’t completely died, maybe we can also somehow go on forever?

In 1848, the Fox sisters (Margaret, Kate and Leah) of New York told a lie about ghosts that people wanted to believe, and so they did. The two younger siblings (pictured in the above undated classic photograph) claimed that they could communicate with a murdered man who made “rappings” on the floor upon command, and with a little sleight of hand–foot, mostly–they caused a national sensation. The girls were soon “performing” in large halls and arenas around the world. The so-called intelligentsia was just as gullible as were the rubes; James Fenimore Cooper allegedly prepared for death by meeting with the girls. And Spiritualism, discrete from religion, had begun in earnest the United States

The Fox girls may have had an unusual beginning, but their ending was quite predictable: Interest in them faded, a lifetime of lying tied them in knots they could never extricate themselves from, and they died in poverty and obscurity, interred in pauper graves. From a November 21, 1909 New York Times article about spiritualist cranks in America:

“The Fox sisters were the founders of modern Spiritualism. It was in 1848 that spirit rappings were first heard in their home at Hydesville, N.Y. It created an unparalleled sensation, and from the pilgrimages to the Fox shrine grew the great religion–or industry–of Spiritualism. 

According to a confession subsequently made by Margaret Fox, she and her sister Kate, then children, found they could produce peculiar sounds by the manipulation of the toes and fingers. They greatly enjoyed the perturbation of their mother, who could not understand the mysterious sounds and began to think the house was haunted.

She finally told the neighbors and the resulting sensation naturally tickled the children more than ever. But their married sister Leah Fish, who lived in Rochester, learned the origin of the mysterious sounds and saw the commercial possibilities. She took them with her to Rochester, and in a short time the whole world was talking of them.

Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were among their visitors. Elisha Kent Kane, the great explorer, fell in love with Margaret and is said to have married her, though his family never acknowledged it. Kate, who was the first to discover the power the sisters possessed, kept up the seances until her marriage in 1873.

In 1888, Margaret Fox confessed that the whole thing had been a fraud, and Kate indorsed the confession. Leah Fox was then dead. Subsequently Margaret retracted the confession, and this retraction completely satisfied the Spiritualists, who at her funeral predicted that the year 1848 (the year of the first rappings) would loom higher in history than the year 1 of the Christian calendar.

But the Spiritualists were never able to explain how it was that Margaret and Kate Fox not only confessed the fraud, but gave public exhibitions of how it was committed. On October 21, 1888, Margaret Fox appeared before an audience of 2,000 persons in the Academy of Music, in this city, and gave a demonstration. Physicians went upon the stage and felt her foot as she made the motions by which she had produced the raps heard around the world. Then she stood in her stocking feet on a little pine platform six inches from the floor, and without the slightest perceptible movement made raps audible all over the theatre. She went down into the audience, and there, resting her foot on that of a spectator, showed how by the motion of her toe the sound was produced.

She gave other public exhibitions, and her subsequent retraction of her confession did not explain away the demonstrations. Kate Fox became a dipsomaniac, and her children were taken away from her because of that fact. She died in 1892, and Margaret a year later. Margaret’s last words were: ‘Give me one more drink.’ She, too, had become a dipsomaniac.”

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A Brief Note From 1908 About A Healthy Woman

March 29, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

“Chicago–As a result of overdevotion to health promotion, Mrs. Nancy Balleon of Oak Park is near death.

While taking a sun bath yesterday Mrs. Balleon fell from a scaffolding she had built outside her room on the third floor of her home.

Mrs. Balleon had been interested in a number of health systems. After taking a walk in the morning in her bare feet, exercising on the parallel bars, and taking a cold plunge, she has been in the habit of spending several hours in her improvised sun porch. It is supposed that while dozing she rolled from her cot off the scaffolding. She is suffering from three broken ribs and concussion of the brain.”

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Old Print Article: “Fanatic Kills Little Girl,” New York Times (1908)

March 28, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

“His wife told the Coroner that the child had been killed by God, and that her husband was God.”

From Robert Matthews to Mel Lyman to Krishna Venta, America has never known a shortage of messianic kooks. Once such self-styled Christ found his way into the pages of the April 29, 1908 New York Times. The story:

“Allentown, Penn.–A murder by a religious fanatic occurred last night in the Borough of Alliance, near here, Councilman Henry Smith’s little daughter was killed by his brother-in-law, Robert Bachman of Nazareth, Penn., while on a visit at the Bachman home. At the time of the killing Bachman was in a frenzy, during which he drove everybody except the little girl out of the house.

Bachman was at the head of a new praying band, and last week he got the Smiths interested. Thy went to Bachman’s house yesterday, prayed and held services, and then decided to remain until the spirit told them to leave. Late last night, under Bachman’s direction, Smith, in fighting the devil, broke three doors, kicked in the floorboard of a bed and jumped, smashing it. Meanwhile Bachman was in an adjoining room with the Smiths’ only child, May Irene, who would have been 5 years old today. 

When Mrs. Smith entered that room she found her daughter dead on the floor and Bachman on his knees alongside in a religious frenzy. The horrified mother snatched up the body of her child and ran shrieking from the house. Later the father and mother took the body to their home, eight miles distant. The forehead and upper portions of the child’s bosy were bruised and scratched. 

This afternoon Bachman was arrested. His wife told the Coroner that the child had been killed by God, and that her husband was God. The belief is that Bachman, in his frenzy, unwittingly killed the child.

Smith and Bachman are cement mill workmen.”

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A Brief Note From 1912 About Smart Parisians

March 26, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the October 1, 1912 New York Times:

Paris–Ultra-smart Parisians in search of a novel sensation have discovered a new use for scent. Instead of using morphia, cocaine or caffeine, they now employ as a stimulant hypodermic injections of otto of rose and violet and cherry blossom perfumes. 

An actress was the first to try the new practice. She declared that forty-eight hour after the injection of the perfume known as ‘new mown hay’ her skin was saturated with the aroma.”

A Brief Note From 1909 About Medicinal Cheese

March 24, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies

From the October 24, 1909 New York Times:

“Denver–Limburger cheese is the principal ingredient of a cancer cure which Philip Schuch Jr., a local chemist, says he has discovered.

Following the death of his mother 11 years ago from cancer, Schuch began an investigation of the cause and growth of cancers, during which, he asserts, he discovered that the basic germs of cancer are similar to those of leprosy and consumption. He spent several months in the leper colony in Venezuela studying the disease.

Schuch’s cure consists of a thorough cleansing of the affected parts with liquor of quicklime and sweet milk, in equal parts, and then the application of poultices of pulped fresh Swiss or Limburger cheese, moistened with glycerine. Although no test of this has been made, Schuch says that theoretically the formula should cure mild cases of leprosy.”

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