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Percival Lowell, Viewing Venusians (1914)

September 15, 2013 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Photography, Science/Tech | Permalink

Astronomer Percival Lowell did some brilliant work in analyzing our solar system, but he took a wrong turn at Mars. In this classic 1914 photo, Lowell is examining Venus, but it was the Red Planet that burned him. At his Flagstaff Observatory, he “discovered” canals in Mars’ surface, which he felt must have been man-made–or at least Martian-made. These beliefs did not raise his stock in the scientific community. The opening of “Martians Build Two Canals in Two Years,” an article by Mary Proctor, daughter of early Mars mapper Richard A. Proctor, in the August 27, 1911 New York Times:

“According to a telegram dated Aug. 17, from Flagstaff Observatory, Arizona, Dr. Percival Lowell announces the rediscovery of two new canals of Mars, which were seen for the first time at the last opposition in 1909. The canals are now very conspicuous, and attracting world-wide attention because of their startling significance. 

Measurement of their dimensions shows each of them to be a thousand miles long and some twenty miles wide. In comparison, the canon of the Colorado River would be a secondary affair. What has been the cause of these vast chasms which have suddenly opened on Mars, where the internal forces are far less than could be possibly be the case with our planet? Nothing like it has ever been seen or heard of before. To witness the coming into existence on another world of a surface feature in what we know to be no airy cloud-built fabric, but the solidest of ground, is in its character an event so far of unique occurrence.

That these vast chasms have been caused by some internal disturbance is out of the question, for shattering of the sort would certainly have left its mark in yawning, cavernous abysses–such as are on our own planet in regions where volcanic disturbances have taken place. In the case of the new canals recently observed on Mars, such widespread, shattering effects are altogether absent, and as Dr. Lowell expresses it: ‘The outcome is purely local, and of most orderly self-restraint at that. An enormous change in the planet’s features has taken place, with no concomitant disruption beyond the bounds it set. The whole thing is wonderfully clear-cut.’

That the new canals were not a mere illusion or vagary of the imagination is proven by the fact that they are again visible, but they are as great a problem now as they were when first seen in 1909. Canals a thousand miles long and twenty miles wide are simply beyond our comprehension. Even though we are aware of the fact that, owing to the mass of the planet being a little less than one-ninth of the earth’s mass, a rock which here weighs one hundred pounds would there only weigh thirty-eight pounds, engineering operations being in consequence less arduous than here, yet we can scarcely imagine the inhabitants of Mars capable of accomplishing this Herculean task within the short interval of two years.”

Lowell’s sketches of the so-called Martian canals.

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Captain Henry Wirz, Erstwhile Warden (1865)

September 1, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

As far as domestic atrocities in America can be measured, I would think that the conduct at Fort Sumter, the Civil War military prison in Georgia, ranks with anything after slavery and the treatment of Native Americans. The open-air stockade prison (nicknamed Andersonville by inmates) held 45,000 prisoners during its 14-month existence, with nearly a third succumbing to starvation, lack of drinking water and disease. Swiss-born Confederate officer Henry Wirz commanded the camp and was known for his brutality and severity. Even though the lack of supplies and pen-type jail weren’t his fault alone, Wirz was the one executed for the crimes against humanity. The classic photograph above shows him as he’s about to have his sentence carried out. From the story of his hanging in the November 10, 1865 New York Times:

“WIRZ was executed this morning at 10:30 o’clock. Nobody who saw him die to-day will think any the less of him. He disappointed all those who expected to see him quiver at the brink of death. He met his fate, not with bravado, or defiance, but with a quiet, cheerful indifference. Smiles even played upon his countenance until the black coat shut out from his eyes the sunlight and the world forever. His physical misery, whatever it may have been, was completely hidden in his last and successful effort to die bravely and without any exhibition of trepidation or fear, so his step was steady, his demeanor calm, his tongue silent, except as he offered up his last prayer, and all his bearing evinced more of the man than at any time since his first incarceration. The crowd said he was a braver man than PAYNE, or HERROLD, or ATZEROTH. Perhaps it was the bravery of a desperate man, who knows mercy is beyond his hope. Nevertheless, he met his fate with unblanched eye, unmoving feature, and a calm, deliberate prayer for all those whom he has deemed his persecutors. He seemed to have convinced himself of his own innocence, and his last principal conversation was full of protestations that he died unjustly, and that others were just as guilty as he.

Yesterday afternoon, LOUIS SCHADE, WIRZ junior counsel, communicated to him the result of his last appeal to the President. WIRZ said he had no hope. He was ready to die. He had sought and received religious consolation, and it mattered little whether he died now or was spared to die a natural death, for die soon he must. An attache of the Swiss Consulate also called to ascertain the residence of his relatives, that they might be officially apprised of his death. WIRZ said he had been greatly wronged by the refusal of the Swiss Consul to receive money to enable him to conduct his defence.

WIRZ ate his supper as usual, and retiring, slept soundly the best part of the night. This morning he arose early and partook of a moderate breakfast. Soon after, R.B. WINDER, who was associated with WIRZ in the command at Andersonville, was allowed to visit him, and the two had a long conversation, devoted to a review of their career at the stockade, a review of the evidence, and mutual assertions that they were equally guilty, or rather, equally innocent, and that if WIRZ deserved hanging, so did WINDER. WINDER then bade WIRZ an emotional farewell at half-past eight o’clock. Mr. SCHADE was admitted for a farewell interview, during which the prisoner reiterated his thanks for his counsel’s efforts, and expressed himself as to his innocence, much as he had done before. It is due to Mr. SCHADE to say that he has been indefatigable in seeking to prolong the life of his client. He left the prison at the close of the interview, and went to the President’s, where at ten thirty-five he made his last appeal. WIRZ was hung at ten thirty-two.

After Mr. SCHADE left WIRZ, his spiritual advisers, Fathers BOYLE and WIGET entered and remained with him until he was led forth to the scaffold.

…

At thirty minutes past ten, his hands and legs having been pinioned by straps, the noose was adjusted by L.J. RICHARDSON, Military Detective, and the doomed man shook hands with the priests and officers. At exactly thirty-two minutes past ten, SYLVESTER BALLOU, another detective, at the signal of the Provost-Marshal, put his foot upon the fatal spring, the trap fell with a heavy noise, and the Andersonville jailor was dangling in the air. There were a few spasmodic convulsions of the chest, a slight movement of the extremities, and all was over. When it was known in the street that WIRZ was hung, the soldiers sent up a loud ringing cheer, just such as I have heard scores of times on the battle-field after a successful charge. The sufferings at Andersonville were too great to cause the soldiers to do otherwise than rejoice at such a death of such a man.

After hanging fourteen minutes the body was examined by Post-Surgeon FORD, and life pronounced to be extinct. It was then taken down, placed upon a stretcher, and carried to the hospital, where the surgeons took charge of it.

No sooner had the scaffold and the rope done its work, and become historically famous, than relic seekers began their work. Splinters from the scaffold were cut off like kindling wood, and a dozen feet of rope disappeared almost instantly. The interposition of the guard only saved the whole thing from being carried off in this manner.

The surgeons held a post-mortem, and an examination of the neck showed the vertebrae to be dislocated. His right arm, which has been the chief cause of his physical misery, was in a very bad condition, in consequence of an old wound having broken out afresh. His body also showed severe scrofulitic cruptions.

Agreeably to a request from WIRZ, Father BOYLE received the body to-day, and delivered it to an undertaker, who will inter it, to await the arrival of Mrs. WIRZ, who is expected soon. WIRZ left few or no earthly effects. The only things in his room after the execution were a few articles of clothing, some tobacco, a little whisky, a Testament, a copy of Cummings on the Apocalypse, and a cat, which was WIRZ’s pet companion. This is all there is left of him.”

Andersonville survivor, May 1965.

Andersonville survivor, May 1865.

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Bat Masterson, An Ink-Stained Wretch

August 8, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

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No one has ever come up with a bigger lie than F. Scott’s Fitzgerald with this whopper: “There are no second acts in American lives.” There have always been second acts and many more after that. I mean, not if you drink yourself to death, but for anyone who waits out the bad times with good humor. 

Bat Masterson was many things in his sixty-seven years–buffalo hunter, Army scout, sheriff, gambler and boxing manager, etc.–until he was one final thing: a New York City newspaper sportswriter. He died as an ink-stained wretch at an editor’s desk, not a gunslinger in a saloon. Masterson is in his journalistic dotage in the above undated classic photo. The report of his death from the October 26, 1921 New York Times:

“William Barclay Masterson, better known as Bat Masterson, sporting writer, friend of Theodore Roosevelt and former sheriff of Dodge City, Kan., died suddenly yesterday while writing an article at his desk in the office of the The Morning Telegraph. He had been connected with the paper for more than ten years, and for the last few years had been one of its editors.

At one time Masterson was said to have been the best known man between the Mississippi and the Pacific Coast, and his exploits and his ability as a gun fighter have become part of the tradition of the Middle West of many years ago. He was the last of the old time gun fighters.

He was born in Iriquios County, Ill., in 1854, the son of a farmer who came originally from St. Lawrence County, N.Y. Little more than a boy, Bat, his rifle across his knees, left the farm and rode into the then Fort Dodge and joined a party of buffalo hunters. Then his actual career began, and probably more weird and bloodthirsty tales have been written about him than of nearly any other man. His fights, however, were in the cause of justice, and he was one of a group of gunfighters who made that part of the country unhealthy for the bad men of the period.

While in the frontier town Bat heard one day that his brother had been killed across the street. Bat headed over. What happened he thus told later on the witness stand:

‘The cowboys had been on the range for some time and were drinking. My brother was the Town Marshall. They were carrying six-shooters and he attempted to disarm one of them who was particularly mean. They shot and killed him and they attempted to kill me. I shot and killed them–one at any rate–and shot the other one.’

His second killing was a cowboy named Jim Kennedy, who had come to town seeking the life of the Mayor. Kennedy shot several times through the door of a Mayor’s house and killed a woman. Then Masterson started out to get him. And he did.

One of Masterson’s most famous exploits was the battle of Dobe Walls, when with nine companions he stood off 200 Indians in a siege of 29 days. The attacking force was composed of Arapahoes and Cheyennes. A fortunate accident–the fall of part of the dirt roof of a saloon in which the buffalo hunters were sleeping–prevented the party from being surprised by the Indians and murdered in their sleep, for the attack was not anticipated. In the gray light of a June morning, when the hunters were engaged in restoring the roof, the Indians descended upon them. The hunters abandoned the roof and took to their guns. Time after time the Indian attack was stopped and the enemy driven back to the shelter of a fringe of cottonwoods along the Canadian River.

Masterson was only 18 years old when he joined Lieutenant Baldwin’s civilian scouts under Colonel Nelson A. Miles. He participated in the battle of Red River, where the Indians were commanded by Geronimo, and in other Indian engagements. Masterson lived fifteen years in Denver. There he became interested in pugilism. He went broke backing Charlie Mitchell in his fight with James J. Corbett. He was an official in the fight between Fitzsimmons and Corbett.”

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Masterson officiating Fitzsimmons-Corbett in 1897:

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Samuel Reshevsky, Outwitting His Elders (1920)

July 14, 2013 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Photography, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

“His face is intelligent and his head well shaped, but not abnormal.”

In the classic photograph above, the eventual chess grandmaster (and accountant) Samuel Reshevsky shows his prodigious skills for the game by squaring off simultaneously against 20 excellent adult players in France. The following article from the May 18, 1920 New York Times records the day’s events:

“Paris–Twenty graybeards sitting in a square played chess yesterday in Paris against a very small boy 8 years old, and he beat them all. Among the graybeards were some of the best  players in France, and one at least, whose boast is that he drew with Capablanca, the Pan-American chess champion, but all their reputation availed them nothing against a frail child with a pale, thoughtful face, who moved quietly from one board to another, reducing their most skillful plans and wiles to nothingness and mating them when they least expected it. 

Samuel Rzeschewski is the name of the prodigy. He was born near Lodz, in his father, himself a well known player, showed him the moves. For the paternal dignity the lesson was unfortunate. Within a fortnight Samuel was giving his father such beatings that to equalize things he had to give him a rook and another piece.

Yesterday at the Pavillon de la Rotonde, against twenty of the best players of the Palais Royal Society, his victory was complete. Wearing a blue sailor suit, he stood alone in the square of tables and faced unperturbed his graybeard and bald antagonists. His face is intelligent and his head well shaped, but not abnormal. Only the gravity of his face showed that he was not any ordinary 8-year-old going to play ‘hunt the thimble’ with an assembly of grandfathers.

Stepping quickly from one board to another, he spent little time on his moves. He seemed to see at once the weakness of his opponents’ play. Once or twice, when one of them had moved foolishly, his brows contracted in a disapproving frown. For half a minute at most he stood in front of each board, whistling through his teeth, then moved decisively and left his opponent puzzling uselessly how to counter the attack. In the end every one of the men was soundly trounced.

From here Samuel is going to London to complete his conquest of Europe, and then his father says he must retire from public life and begin his education, which has been sadly neglected during the war.”

Samuel Reshevsky, in 1968.

Reshevsky, in 1968.

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Harriett Chalmers Adams, Dodging Vampires

June 30, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

There’s no doubt that Harriett Chalmers Adams, pictured in the Gobi Desert above and in a portrait below, was a woman ahead of her time, a bold explorer who risked life and limb in search of knowledge. But I wouldn’t say all her reconnaissance was trustworthy. During a 1918 trip through South America, she believed she encountered actual vampires, which may have been really large bats or Peruvian guys wearing capes. From the August 12, 1918 edition of the New York Times:

“Mrs. Harriett Chalmers Adams, woman explorer of South America, and the wife of Franklin Adams of the Pan-American Union, has returned to Washington from another trip to hitherto unknown parts of South America. She has now traveled more than 40,000 miles on that continent. Speaking of her experiences, she says:

‘I have gone through experiences such as, I am convinced, no white woman has had. I have circumnavigated the South American continent, covering more than 40,000 miles, and have penetrated savage wildernesses where no white woman had ever been. I have climbed mountains, walked in the extinct crater of Mount Misti, wandered in regions of mountain cold where my eyelids froze, and, descending into Amazonian wilderness, stayed in a region infested with vampires–creatures which until then I imagined to be pure myths. I have stood in the site of what is possibly the world’s oldest civilization, and have studied ruins built before the time of Babylon.’

Mrs. Adams has spent about eight years in exploration. In this work and pleasure she discovered, high in the Andes, an unknown river of peat–an important geographical discovery which sheds new light on the geologic formation of the continent. She was the first white woman to invade the interior wilderness of Peru, where she wandered about the sources of the Amazon, in company with jaguars, monstrous snakes, and other wild animals, none of which ever harmed or even attacked her, which led Mrs. Adams to the conclusion that no wild beasts are dangerous unless first attacked themselves by men. On this trip Mrs. Adams came to a region infested by vampires, which previously she had believed to be mythical, and spent a night–the most horrible, she says, of her life–among them. On this occasion her husband and Indian guides were attacked and a number of their mules killed by the blood-sucking creatures which measure three to four feet from tip to tip of their wings.”

 

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Edward Payson Weston, Ready For A Stroll (1909)

May 21, 2013 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Photography, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Though his child has long vanished from the sporting scene, Edward Payson Weston was known during his lifetime as the “Father of Modern Pedestrianism,” a pastime that rewarded those who could hoof great distances with surprising speed. I’ve blogged about the world-class walker before, when Brian Phillips of Grantland wrote a sparkling piece about the recent Weston biography, A Man in a Hurry. In this classic photograph, the legendary athlete, profiled at 70 years old, was far removed from his glory days of the 1860s-70s, but perhaps because of good health brought about from his peripatetic exploits, he was still twenty years from his death. Of course, it must be noted that his demise may have been hastened by an accident in 1927 in which he was struck by a NYC taxi, as the roads, which had become the domain of cars, had little room for a remnant of the 1800s who was so accursed by their encroachment. Weston could see the future and didn’t like it, though he was helpless, as we all are, to stop it.

In the same year that this image was taken, the native Rhode Islander wrote an article about one of his cross-country walks, a planned 100-day excursion from New York to San Francisco, for the July 16, 1909 New York Times. The article:

“San Francisco, Cal.–Having completed my walk from New York City to San Francisco last night, and enjoyed a restful sleep. I walked to the Post Office Building here this morning and delivered to Postmaster Fiske of San Francisco a letter which I carried in my walk from Postmaster Morgan of New York City. I received a cordial greeting from Postmaster Fisk and his subordinates. 

A pleasant incident of my arrival at Oakland last night was the hearty welcome and congratulations extended to me by officials and employees of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. This company did so much for me that I fail to find words to express my appreciation. 

Regarding my feelings and condition, I would say that I feel like uttering bitter words, but do not feel inclined to make excuses.

I have received hundreds of letters and telegrams congratulating me on my wonderful achievement, and each one makes me wish I deserved it. Full of vigor and strength, I am disappointed that the elements were against me, and I frankly acknowledge that had it not been for the unbounded kindness of the officers and employees of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, I should not have dared to come further than Ogden, Utah. I practically had the right of way on the railroad, and every engineer tooted the whistle on his engine as it passed me.

I contend I walked a distance of upward of 4,000 miles in 104 days and 5 hours, and while it exceeds the distance between New York and San Francisco nearly 700 miles, and far excels any previous record, yet technically it is a failure, and I do not feel inclined to close my public career with a failure.

The expenses of this walk were upwards of $2,500. Some dozen prominent cities in the East have made offers to arrange for testimonial lectures on my return, not only to help liquidate my financial loss, but to show that my object lesson in the journey, in striving to elevate in popular esteem the exercise of walking, is appreciated. 

If in the next two weeks I shall receive assurances from a sufficient number of cities and towns between Omaha and New York that they will arrange for lectures and send such word to me in care of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, San Francisco, then I will try to prove myself worthy of their confidence and esteem by showing how easy it is for any one to walk from San Francisco to New York by direct route within 100 secular days.

There are three very dear friends who oppose this extra walk, but when I convince them that it is my only salvation, and that it would still keep me young and healthy, I know they will fall in with my plans.

Meanwhile the only trouble I have is an awful appetite.”

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Mary Baker Eddy, Nearing Mission’s End

May 14, 2013 in Excerpts, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

This classic photograph profiles late-life Mary Baker Eddy, who was the founder of the hokum known as Christian Science, a scripture-based faith healing that believed medicine and hygiene were unnecessary. She was born in 1812 in New Hampshire, began “hearing voices” in her girlhood, and was soon known for her ability to “cure” animals and people alike. Her talent and charisma and persistence allowed her to remarkably create an international cult in an age long before mass media. Even her detractors were awed by her unlikely empire. In an otherwise lacerating 1903 critique of Mrs. Eddy, Mark Twain wrote: “She is interesting enough without an amicable agreement. In several ways she is the most interesting woman that ever lived, and the most extraordinary. The same may be said of her career, and the same may be said of its chief result. She started from nothing. Her enemies charge that she surreptitiously took from Quimby a peculiar system of healing which was mind-cure with a Biblical basis. She and her friends deny that she took anything from him. This is a matter which we can discuss by-and-by. Whether she took it or invented it, it was—materially—a sawdust mine when she got it, and she has turned it into a Klondike.”

Eddy became a shadowy figure in her later years–was she a morphine addict as rumors suggested? was she mentally unfit to care for herself?–though it didn’t diminish her hold on the public’s attention. She died on December 3, 1910. A passage about the origins of her calling from an article about her two days later in the New York Times:

“Some of her friendly biographers quote Mrs. Eddy as having said in describing the discovery of her so-called psychological sense:

When I was very little I used to hear voices. They called me. They spoke my name. ‘Mary! Mary!’ I used to go to my mother and say, ‘Mother did you call me? What do you want?’ and she would say ‘No, my child, I didn’t call you.’ Then I would go away and play but the voices would call me again distinctly.

There was a day when my cousin, whom I dearly loved. was playing with me, and she too heard the voices. She said: ‘You’re mother’s calling you, Mary,’ and when I didn’t go I could hear them again. But I knew that it wasn’t mother. My cousin didn’t know what to make of my behavior, because I was always an obedient child. ‘Why, Mary,’ she repeated, ‘what do you mean by not going?’

When she heard the voices again she went to my mother, and my cousin said:

‘Didn’t you call Mary?’ My mother asked if I heard voices and I said I did. Then she asked my cousin if she heard them, and when she said ‘Yes,’ my mother cried.

She talked with me that night and told me, when I heard them again–no matter where I was-to say: ‘What wouldst Thou, Lord? Here I am.’ That is what Samuel said, you know, when the Lord called him. She told me not to be afraid, but to surely answer.

The next day I heard voices again, but was too frightened to speak. I felt badly. Mother noticed it and asked me if I had heard the call again. When I said that I was too frightened to say what she had told me she talked with me and told me that the next time I must surely answer and not fear.

When the voice came again I was in bed. I answered as quickly as I could, as she had told me to do, and when I had spoken a curious lightness came over me. I remember it so well! It seemed to me I was being lifted off my little bed, and I put out my hands and caught the sides. From that time I never heard the voices. They ceased.”

 

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Gen. Cassius Marcellus Clay, Liberator And Captor

April 25, 2013 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Photography, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

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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Roald Amundsen, Before Tasting Dog (1909)

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

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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The Dead And The Dying, In Russia (1921)

April 15, 2013 in Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

mmm

The Russian famine which began in 1921 claimed six million people and placed many more at the brink of starvation, willing to do anything–anything–to avoid succumbing to the privations. This classic 1921 photograph shows the starving who had turned to cannibalism to survive. From the June 9, 1922 New York Times:

“London–A shocking story of despair, death and cannibalism in Russia was narrated to The Associated Press today by William Shafroth, son of former Governor Shafroth of Colorado, who arrived in London after a year’s work with the American Relief Administration in the Russian famine regions.

The desperate people, he said, are eating human beings, diseased horses, dogs, and cats. Cemeteries are being dug up and long-buried bodies snatched as food. In their hunger-madness the people are stealing bodies from morgues and hospitals to eat. Mr. Shafroth, who had charge of 20,000 Russians working for the American Relief Administration in the Samara district, is emaciated after his arduous work among the starving, dying and shelterless. But he gave ample proof that the famine sufferers did not try to seize him for cannibalistic purposes, as had been reported while he was in Russia. He said, however, that a Russian member of the A.R.A., who died of typhus, was disinterred at night and eaten by crazed inhabitants. This gave rise to the report that Mr. Shafroth had been devoured.

In some respects the young American’s narrative is unequaled even by the tragic pictures in Daniel Defoe’s journal of the plague year.

‘I know one instance,’ said Mr. Shafroth, ‘where a distracted mother of five children killed the youngest in order to appease the pangs of the rest of the flock; but the oldest boy cried bitterly when he saw his mother sever his little brother’s head and place the body into a pot. He refused to eat the flesh.”

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Margaret And Kate Fox, The Original Rappers

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

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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Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, A Handsome Woman

March 18, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

mmmm

Along with temperance, abolition and suffrage, dress reform was a major movement spearheaded by women in the 1800s. Females at the time were encumbered by garb that was cumbersome–and occasionally even dangerous–and wanted the right to wear more “rational clothing” without fear of reprisal, even arrest. One of the most outspoken of dress reformers was Dr. Mary Walker, a brilliant surgeon who wore a military uniform while providing medical attention to soldiers during the Civil War. After the war, Walker was so vehement and forceful in her insistence on women wearing men’s clothes that she was shunned, for the most part, by men and women alike.

This undated classic photograph shows Walker late in life, adorned in formal men’s wear. From an article about her in the March 12, 1886 New York Times:

“Newport, R.I.–This evening Dr. Mary Walker was for a brief period detained at the police station, where she expressed her surprise and disgust at the officials of a city who did not know the law, and who had laid itself liable by obliging her to accompany Officer Scott from Commercial Wharf to the office of the Chief of Police. The doctor arrived here by boat from Providence at 6 o’clock, and desired to be shown the residence of Miss Sarah Briggs, an old friend whom she had not seen since the Union soldiers were taken to Portsmouth Grove, near this place, for treatment during the civil war. She had been pleading in Providence with the members of the Legislature in behalf of woman’s suffrage, and for the payment of a Revolutionary claim which she claimed the State owed her friend Miss Briggs. She had no sooner reached the plank walk when, at the instance of several females who had seen her on the boat, the officer told her that she must accompany him tot he police station. She told the officer her name and said that he was violating the Constitution by interfering with her freedom. The officer, strange as it may seem, had never heard of Dr. Mary Walker and he insisted upon taking her to the station.

The doctor reluctantly accompanied the officer, and was followed by a crowd of men and boys, who, it would appear, had never seen a woman dressed in men’s clothing before, and it was a sight which they will never forget. The Chief of Police, being a man of intelligence and conversant with the laws, expressed his regret at her arrest, and apologized for his officer, who, he said, had acted in good faith. This would not satisfy the doctor, who was naturally very angry, and she insisted upon learning the officer’s name, and demanded that he be discharged from the police force. She was forced to admit, however, that she had been arrested in other cities by mistake. She remained at the station for some time, and repeated the law for the benefit of the officer who had arrested her. She also delivered quite a lecture upon sundry subjects, for which she is noted, and then walked out of the office with her hat on one side and with her cane in a very dudish position. The incident created a decided sensation. She will leave town to-morrow. It is rumored that she does not intend to let the matter drop, and a few wiseacres predict that she will try and make trouble for the city.”

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“In 1907, The German Apothecary Invented Pigeon Photography”

February 28, 2013 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Long before commercial planes, helicopters and certainly drones, Julius Neubronner invented pigeon photography, attaching a small camera to carrier pigeons, capturing great aerial photography for postcards and such. From Alyssa Coppelman at Slate: “In 1907, the German apothecary (who ran his family’s business) invented pigeon photography as a means of tracking his carrier pigeons. One of his pigeons used for getting medicinal supplies more quickly (a sort of FedEx pigeon) had stayed away a month before returning to him. Looking to track the pigeon’s journeys, Neubronner did what any curious owner would do: He strapped a small, timed camera to the pigeon to track its future travels.”

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Old Print Article: Edgar Allan Poe’s Mysterious Death Reexamined (1907)

February 13, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Photography | Permalink

Fittingly, Edgar Allan Poe’s death was a mysterious one. The haunting author, the first American to try to make his living solely as a writer, was found disoriented, ranting and ragged on the streets of Baltimore on an autumn day in 1849. Nobody could tell what had put him in such a state at age 40, and he was taken to a hospital where he died a few days later. Was his puzzling death the result of drunkenness or rabies or murder? No one still knows for sure. Muddling matters even further was that Poe’s enemy, the editor Rufus Wilmot Griswold, somehow became the executor of his estate and did his best to sully the writer’s reputation, suggesting his end resulted from a dissolute lifestyle.

A January 20, 1907 New York Times article promised to make sense of the puzzle nearly six decades after the Poe’s tragic demise, asserting that scientific breakthroughs had made it possible to understand what killed the poet and short-story writer. The paper called on one of the finest alienists of the era to undertake the mission, though great clarity didn’t exactly result from the enterprise. The opening of “Edgar Allan Poe’s Tragic Death Explained“:

Edgar Allan Poe, the author of “The Raven,” “The Gold Bug,” and “The Murders of the Rue Morgue”–to name merely the most popular of his works–the writer whose power startled Dickens and excited the admiration of Irving, Lowell, and Browning, and whom Tennyson called “the most original genius that America has produced,” was found in the streets of Baltimore on Oct. 3, 1847 [sic], dazed, in rags, a physical and mental wreck. He lay for days unconscious or raving like a madman, then sank to death. His condition was ascribed to a debauch or drugs, or both, his pitiful end to mania-a-potu.

In his lifetime and since his death, Poe’s personal habits and the circumstance of his end have been the topics of endless discussion, in which vituperation has been mingled with vehement defense. He has been pictured as a transcendent genius and a drunkard, a polished gentleman and a surly misanthrope. 

Within the last few weeks, the whole topic has been reopened by the approaching dedication of a monument to Poe in Richmond, Va. To the existing mass of contradictory testimony and discussion has been added much new material on the subject. Some of this, including letters, accounts of personal experiences, and the first article dealing with Poe’s case purely from the medical standpoint, has been published very recently. Taken as a whole, however, the evidence leaves the layman as much puzzled as ever regarding Poe’s complex personality and the circumstances of his death.

To arrive at the truth of the matter and to clear Poe’s name of injustice, if such existed, the New York Times has gathered all the evidence relating to the subject, particularly the letters and accounts recently printed, and submitted them to an alienist who ranks high as an authority on such matters in this city, and a physician whose practice particularly fits him to deal with the subject. This specialist undertook to review all of this evidence and to draw therefrom his conclusions regarding Poe as a man and his fatal malady.

The expert offered a surprising opinion. It contradicts the contention that Poe died of mania-a-potu. His death is traced to cerebral oedema, or “water on the brain” or “wet brain,” a disease unknown in the author’s day, but now well recognized with the advance of medical science. The more recent theories that Poe suffered from psychic epilepsy or paresis are discounted. Moreover the physician’s study of the case has resulted in the belief that the psychopathic phases of Poe’s case were so unusual that his mental responsibility is to be seriously questioned. His opinion follows:

“In reviewing the case of a man of undoubted genius, like Edgar Allan Poe, we must remember that Nature, while developing certain brain centres to an unusual degree, has neglected other mental attributes, so that they are far below those found in the average man. Thus Poe’s powers of imagination were abnormal at the expense of his will power, his ability to resist temptation, and his recuperation in case of misfortune. Such facts do not apply to men of exceptional abilities like Washington–abilities often confounded with genius–but to men of very exceptional gifts in only one direction. Lord Byron furnished an example of this condition. Its presence marked Poe as a weak man. His inherited characteristics were bad. His nervous system was constitutionally deranged; he was abnormal to a degree that leads one to seriously doubt his mental or moral responsibility. Add to these elements his reckless youth, the ease with which he was surrounded early in his life, and the years of poverty and misfortune which followed, and his tragic end is already foreshadowed.”•

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Babe Ruth, Upon Becoming A Yankee (1920)

February 8, 2013 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Photography, Sports | Permalink

The above classic photograph depicts Babe Ruth in the year he became a New York Yankee and tried on the pinstripes for the first time. The sale of his contract from the Boston Red Sox (for $125,000) stunned observers of the game. Truth be told, there weren’t a lot of great players in organized baseball’s early decades (because of the color line, among other reasons), so someone truly gifted like Ruth could have a massive impact on an organization. Fans in both Boston and New York were wise to that fact (for the most part), and this trade set off what would become a nearly hundred-year war between the clubs. From a January 7, 1920 New York Times article in the immediate aftermath of the deal:

“Babe Ruth, the Colossus of Swat, has signed his name to a document promising to play with the Yankees next season. Manager Miller Huggins, who went to Los Angeles to sign the player, wired President Jacob Ruppert yesterday that the home run slugger had signed an agreement to play here. Manager Huggins’s message also said that Ruth was very much pleased with the transfer that brought him to New York and would be delighted to play here next Summer. Huggins left California last night for New York.

Just what agreement Ruth has signed is not known by the officials of the New York club. That he has not yet signed a contract is certain from Huggins’s telegram. It is believed to be a tentative agreement that he will sign a contract at a certain time. Ruth expects to leave for the East next Monday. and his new contract will probably be signed in New York. He demanded a contract calling for $20,000 a year from Boston and this figure will undoubtedly be the basis of the new contract which the Yankees will give him. According to Huggins’s message, however, there is no question that Ruth is pleased with the change and glad to join the New York club. 

The purchase of Ruth for the record price of $125,000 was the topic of the conversation along Broadway yesterday and baseball fans of all ages and sizes already see a chance for the Yankees to land the 1920 pennant. Manhattan’s fondest dream of having a world series at the Polo Grounds between the Giants and Yankees now becomes a tangible thing and that is the big event which New York fans will be rooting for all Summer.

The two Colonels–Ruppert and Huston–were praised on all sides for their aggressiveness and liberality in landing baseball’s greatest attraction. If the club, strengthened by Ruth and by other players the owners have in mind, does not carry off the flag, it will not be the fault of the owners.

Boston is duly shocked at the sale of Ruth and there is a wide difference of opinion about its effect on the game in the Hub. The newspapers yesterday had cartoons showing a ‘For Sale’ sign on the Boston Public Library and on the Boston Common. They also picture Fenway Park, the home of the Red Sox, in darkness, with a sign ‘Building Lots for Sale.’

Two Bostonians prominent in Hub baseball in the past, Fred Tenney and Hugh Duffy, are quoted as saying that the sale of Ruth is a good thing for the Red Sox and that it will be a better club without him.”

Babe Ruth, 1918.

Babe Ruth, 1918.

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Upton Sinclair, Pumping Oil! (1927)

January 31, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Just read Chip Brown’s New York Times Magazine piece about the boomtown that North Dakota has become thanks to its massive oil reserves in this post-peak age, which reminded of this classic photograph of Upton Sinclair selling bowdlerized copies (the so-called fig-leaf edition) of his novel Oil! on a street in Boston, where the book was banned. (This novel is the basis for Paul Thomas Anderson’s great film There Will Be Blood.) The Beantown controversy helped boost Oil! to bestseller status. Sinclair, a radical firebrand, was no stranger to such public contretemps, whether running for the office of governor or hatching plans for a commune near the Palisades in New Jersey. On the latter topic, here’s a passage from a 1906 New York Times article about the formation that year of Sinclair’s techno-Socialist collective, Helicon Home Colony, which burned to the ground the year after its establishment:

“Not less than 300 persons answered Upton Sinclair’s call for a preliminary meeting at the Berkeley Lyceum last night of all those who are interested in a home colony to be organized for the purpose of applying machinery to domestic processes, and incidentally to solve the servant problem. The idea of the proposed colony is to syndicate the management of children and other home worries, such as laundering, gardening, and milking cows.

The response to Mr. Sinclair’s call gratified him immensely. When he went on the stage he was smiling almost ecstatically. The audience applauded him and then began to mop their faces, for the little Lyceum was almost filled, and some one had to shut the front doors.

The audience was made up almost equally of men and women. A large proportion seemed to be of foreign birth. Many of them were Socialists, judging from their manifestations of sympathy for Socialistic doctrines. The mentioning of two newspapers which disapprove of Socialism on their editorial pages was hissed. Mr. Sinclair himself said that he had thought of asking a Socialist to act as temporary Chairman, but that his man had thought that two Socialists on the stage at the same time would frighten the more conservative members.

The meeting lasted about two hours. Mr. Sinclair, at various times, had the floor about an hour and a half. Now and then the arguments caused a high pitch for excitement, and more than once four people were trying to talk at the same time. In the end always, however, what Mr. Sinclair suggested was accepted, including the appointment of committees and other preliminaries of organization.

For Mr. Sinclair is certain that his home colony is to come about. He said in his introductions that he had about a dozen people who had agreed to go in with him, whether anybody else did or not. But last night’s meeting indicated, in Mr. Sinclair’s opinion, that a home colony of at least 100 families could easily be organized.”

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Hi Jolly, Sans Camel, With Bride (App. 1880)

December 13, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Jordanian camel driver Hadji Ali was, in 1856, one of the few in his profession hired by the U.S. Army to create a caravan of humped beasts in the Southwest, delivering much-needed supplies. His name was bastardized by accident, and he was rechristened “Hi Jolly.” The camels, quite literally, delivered, but the War Between the States ended the program’s funding. Hi Jolly tried to make a go of it on his own, starting a camel-centric freight-delivery business, but it didn’t last long. He subsequently released his few remaining charges into the Arizona desert, where one is alleged to have frightened a young Douglas MacArthur. In the above classic photograph, the pack leader poses with bride Gertrudis Serna. By this point he had chosen the name “Philip Tedro” for himself, seemingly unaware that “Hi Jolly” was the greatest name ever. From Examiner.com:

“The story begins in 1855 when the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, started tossing ideas around as to how to establish and supply a route from Camp Verde, Texas, to Fort Defiance (a.k.a. Roop’s Fort), California. After exploring his options, the future Confederate President ultimately opted for camels. Once Congress had appropriated $30,000 for the effort, the USS Supply promptly shipped 33 animals from the Middle East to Texas.

By doubling the load managed by traditional beasts of burden, eating off the land and demanding minimal water, the camels were a hit. Yes, the new kids on the block made quite a splash and their ungainly appearance put the existing pack animals on edge. In fact, due to the general avoidance shown by raider’s horses, caravans were consequently safer than wagon trails.

However, the introduction of a foreign and little-known species was not all fun and games. The craggy southwestern terrain was a far cry from the camel’s native, comparatively silken sands and they were perpetually plagued by rocks painfully wedging themselves between their toes. Moreover, the ability to deal with a biting, spitting creature characterized by its cantankerous disposition was not to be found among local talent. Experienced handlers were deemed essential and the federal government thus employed a handful of camel professionals.

The leader of the pack, so to speak, was a Mr. Hadji Ali whose name was quickly transformed to ‘Hi Jolly” by heavy-tongued residents. Mr. Jolly, therefore, led a wildly successful operation for the next several years. The venture was so successful that some 40 more camels were added to the lineup.

When the project lost funding in favor of the Civil War and the ensuing Reconstruction, it ceased to be a reality.”

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Tad Lincoln, The Decade Before His Death (1860s)

December 7, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Mary Todd Lincoln suffered many losses in her life, and one of the bitterest was the 1871 death of her youngest child, Thomas,  nicknamed “Tad,” when he was just 18. The cause of death was reported to be “dropsy of the heart,” but it could have been TB or some other cardiac illness. To put it mildly, Tad was a free spirit, and he is responsible for the origin of a White House tradition. Long before President Obama was pardoning turkeys at Thanksgiving, the Lincoln child saved a similar bird. From Gilbert King at the Smithsonian history blog:

“However, the earliest known sparing of a holiday bird can be traced to 1863, when Abraham Lincoln was presented with a Christmas turkey destined for the dinner table and his young, precocious son Tad intervened.

Thomas ‘Tad’ Lincoln was just 8 years old when he arrived in Washington, D.C., to live at the White House after his father was sworn into office in March 1861. The youngest of four sons born to Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Tad was born after Edward ‘Eddie’ Lincoln died in the winter of 1850 at the age of 11, most likely of tuberculosis. Both Tad and his brother William ‘Willie’ Lincoln were believed to have contracted typhoid fever in Washington, and while Tad recovered, Willie succumbed in February of 1862. He was 11.

With the eldest Lincoln son, Robert, away at Harvard College, young Tad became the only child living at in the White House, and by all accounts, the boy was indomitable—charismatic and full of life at a time when his family, and the nation, were experiencing tremendous grief. Born with a cleft palate that gave him a lisp and dental impairments that made it almost impossible for him to eat solid food, Tad was easily distracted, full of energy, highly emotional and, unlike his father and brother, none too focused on academics.

‘He had a very bad opinion of books and no opinion of discipline,’ wrote John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary. Both Lincoln parents, Hay observed, seemed to be content to let Tad ‘have a good time.’ Devastated by the loss of Willie, and both proud and relieved by Robert’s fastidious efforts at Harvard, the first couple gave their rambunctious young son free rein at the executive mansion. The boy was known to have sprayed dignitaries with fire hoses, burst into cabinet meetings, tried to sell some of the first couple’s clothing at a ‘yard sale’ on the White House lawn, and marched White House servants around the grounds like infantry.”

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Aimee Semple McPherson, Spreading Cheer (1935)

November 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

A lot of twentieth-century America was written into the life of Aimee Semple McPherson, the evangelist who went from backwater tent revivals to Los Angeles megachurch media maven in short shrift. She was a feminine icon, progressive on matters of race before her country was, deeply charitable and in possession of a genius for broadcasting. She also had the type of sizable public missteps you would expect from a larger-than-life figure.

In the above classic photograph from the Los Angeles Daily News, the evangelist, left, prepares holiday baskets in a pantry. From H.L. Mencken’s 1930 writing about her in the American Mercury:

“For years she toured the Bible Belt in a Ford, haranguing the morons nightly, under canvas. It was a depressing life, and its usufructs were scarcely more than three meals a day. Often, indeed, there was too little money to buy them, and she had to depend upon the charity of the pious. She was attracted to Los Angeles, it appears, by the climate. The Bible Belt was sending a steady stream of its rheumatic mortgage sharks in that direction, and she simply followed. The result, as everyone knows, was a swift and roaring success. The town has more morons in it than the whole State of Mississippi, and thousands of them had nothing to do save gape at the movie dignitaries and go to revivals.

Aimée piped a tune that struck their fancy and in a short while she was as massive a local figure as Sid Grauman or the Rev. Bob Shuler. In five years she had a plant almost as big as that of Henry Ford, with an auditorium seating 5300 customers, a huge Bible School, a radio broadcasting station, a flourishing publishing house, three brass bands, three choirs, two orchestras and six quartettes. She is today the most prosperous ecclesiastic in America and her annual net takings exceed those of Bishop Manning.

But, as I have said, I doubt that she is happy in the homely secular sense, though the grace of God is undoubtedly in her. I detect a far-away look in her eye, an I detect a heavy heart in her book, despite its smooth, glad air of a Y. M. C. A. secretary. Certainly the attempt to jail her on perjury, a year ago, left some scars on her.

Connoisseurs will recall the outlines of the case: she alleged that she had been kidnapped, and the Los Angeles police alleged that she had been on a protracted week-end party with one of her male employees. She won in the end, but only after a long and nerve-wracking trial, in the course of which she had plenty of chance to observe that Moronia could punish as well as applaud. The trial, indeed, was an orgy typical of the half-fabulous California courts. The very officers of justice denounced her riotously in the Hearst papers while it was in progress, and she says herself that she was almost asphyxiated by the smoke of photographers’ flash-lights in the courtroom.”

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“All Had Been Mutilated In That Nameless Manner”

November 25, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

This gruesome 1890 image of Robert McGee has a suitably wild backstory. An explanation of how he came to be scalped in 1864 when just a lad, from The Old Santa Fe Trail: The Story of a Great Highway by Colonel Henry Inman:

One of the most horrible massacres in the history of the Trail occurred at Little Cow Creek in the summer of 1864. In July of that year a government caravan, loaded with military stores for Fort Union in New Mexico, left Fort Leavenworth for the long and dangerous journey of more than seven hundred miles over the great plains, which that season were infested by Indians to a degree almost without precedent in the annals of freight traffic.

The train was owned by a Mr. H. C. Barret, a contractor with the quartermaster’s department; but he declined to take the chances of the trip unless the government would lease the outfit in its entirety, or give him an indemnifying bond as assurance against any loss. The chief quartermaster executed the bond as demanded, and Barret hired his teamsters for the hazardous journey; but he found it a difficult matter to induce men to go out that season.

Among those whom he persuaded to enter his employ was a mere boy, named McGee, who came wandering into Leavenworth a few weeks before the train was ready to leave, seeking work of any description. His parents had died on their way to Kansas, and on his arrival at Westport Landing, the emigrant outfit that had extended to him shelter and protection in his utter loneliness was disbanded; so the youthful orphan was thrown on his own resources. At that time the Indians of the great plains, especially along the line of the Santa Fe Trail, were very hostile, and continually harassing the freight caravans and stage-coaches of the overland route. Companies of men were enlisting and being mustered into the United States service to go out after the savages, and young Robert McGee volunteered with hundreds of others for the dangerous duty. The government needed men badly, but McGee’s youth militated against him, and he was below the required stature; so he was rejected by the mustering officer.

Mr. Barret, in hunting for teamsters to drive his caravan, came across McGee, who, supposing that he was hiring as a government employee, accepted Mr. Barret’s offer.

By the last day of June the caravan was all ready, and on the morning of the next day, July 1, the wagons rolled out of the fort, escorted by a company of United States troops, from the volunteers referred to.

The caravan wound its weary way over the lonesome Trail with nothing to relieve the monotony save a few skirmishes with the Indians; but no casualties occurred in these insignificant battles, the savages being afraid to venture too near on account of the presence of the military escort.

On the 18th of July, the caravan arrived in the vicinity of Fort Larned. There it was supposed that the proximity of that military post would be a sufficient guarantee from any attack of the savages; so the men of the train became careless, and as the day was excessively hot, they went into camp early in the afternoon, the escort remaining in bivouac about a mile in the rear of the train.

About five o’clock, a hundred and fifty painted savages, under the command of Little Turtle of the Brule Sioux, swooped down on the unsuspecting caravan while the men were enjoying their evening meal. Not a moment was given them to rally to the defence of their lives, and of all belonging to the outfit, with the exception of one boy, not a soul came out alive.

The teamsters were every one of them shot dead and their bodies horribly mutilated. After their successful raid, the savages destroyed everything they found in the wagons, tearing the covers into shreds, throwing the flour on the trail, and winding up by burning everything that was combustible.

On the same day the commanding officer of Fort Larned had learned from some of his scouts that the Brule Sioux were on the war-path, and the chief of the scouts with a handful of soldiers was sent out to reconnoitre. They soon struck the trail of Little Turtle and followed it to the scene of the massacre on Cow Creek, arriving there only two hours after the savages had finished their devilish work. Dead men were lying about in the short buffalo-grass which had been stained and matted by their flowing blood, and the agonized posture of their bodies told far more forcibly than any language the tortures which had come before a welcome death. All had been scalped; all had been mutilated in that nameless manner which seems to delight the brutal instincts of the North American savage.

Moving slowly from one to the other of the lifeless forms which still showed the agony of their death-throes, the chief of the scouts came across the bodies of two boys, both of whom had been scalped and shockingly wounded, besides being mutilated, yet, strange to say, both of them were alive. As tenderly as the men could lift them, they were conveyed at once back to Fort Larned and given in charge of the post surgeon. One of the boys died in a few hours after his arrival in the hospital, but the other, Robert McGee, slowly regained his strength, and came out of the ordeal in fairly good health.

The story of the massacre was related by young McGee, after he was able to talk, while in the hospital at the fort; for he had not lost consciousness during the suffering to which he was subjected by the savages.

He was compelled to witness the tortures inflicted on his wounded and captive companions, after which he was dragged into the presence of the chief, Little Turtle, who determined that he would kill the boy with his own hands. He shot him in the back with his own revolver, having first knocked him down with a lance handle. He then drove two arrows through the unfortunate boy’s body, fastening him to the ground, and stooping over his prostrate form ran his knife around his head, lifting sixty-four square inches of his scalp, trimming it off just behind his ears.

Believing him dead by that time, Little Turtle abandoned his victim; but the other savages, as they went by his supposed corpse, could not resist their infernal delight in blood, so they thrust their knives into him, and bored great holes in his body with their lances.

After the savages had done all that their devilish ingenuity could contrive, they exultingly rode away, yelling as they bore off the reeking scalps of their victims, and drove away the hundreds of mules they had captured.

When the tragedy was ended, the soldiers, who had from their vantage-ground witnessed the whole diabolical transaction, came up to the bloody camp by order of their commander, to learn whether the teamsters had driven away their assailants, and saw too late what their cowardice had allowed to take place. The officer in command of the escort was dismissed the service, as he could not give any satisfactory reason for not going to the rescue of the caravan he had been ordered to guard.

The story of the massacre was related by young McGee, after he was able to talk, while in the hospital at the fort; for he had not lost consciousness during the suffering to which he was subjected by the savages.

He was compelled to witness the tortures inflicted on his wounded and captive companions, after which he was dragged into the presence of the chief, Little Turtle, who determined that he would kill the boy with his own hands. He shot him in the back with his own revolver, having first knocked him down with a lance handle. He then drove two arrows through the unfortunate boy’s body fastening him to the ground, and stooping over his prostrate form ran his knife around his head, lifting sixty-four square inches of his scalp, trimming it off just behind his ears.

Believing him dead by that time, Little Turtle abandoned his victim; but the other savages, as they went by his supposed corpse, could not resist their infernal delight in blood, so they thrust their knives into him, and bored great holes in his body with their lances.

After the savages had done all that their devilish ingenuity could contrive, they exultingly rode away, yelling as they bore off the reeking scalps of their victims, and drove away the hundred of mules they had captured.•

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Sculptor Auguste Rodin, Mid-Career (1893)

November 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography | Permalink

Auguste Rodin, 1893, the year his art caused controversy and failed to sell at Chicago’s World Fair.

On Auguste Rodin’s 172nd birthday, I present to you this classic photograph of the sculptor, which was taken in 1893 by Felix Nadar. By this point, The Thinker was complete and the artist’s reputation secure. Rodin died 24 years after this picture was taken at age 77. In 1923, Rodin’s secretary published a book alleging that the great artist died from a lack of heat in his home, his friends and nation having turned their backs on him. In its first month of existence in March of 1923, Time magazine ran an article (subscription only) about the controversy. An excerpt:

“Paris has been deeply shocked by a report of the circumstances of the death of the great Impressionist sculptor, Auguste Rodin.

A book by Mile. Tirel, Rodin’s secretary, states definitely that Rodin died of cold, neglected by friends and officials of the state, while his sculptures, which he had given to the nation, were kept warmly housed in a centrally heated museum at public expense. His case was so desperate that he asked to be permitted to have a room in the museum—the Hotel Biron, formerly his own studio. The official in charge of the museum refused. Other officials and friends promised coal but never sent it, though his situation at Meudon, ill, and freezing to death, was apparently well known to all of them.

No one in a position to know the facts has denied Mile. Tirel’s charges. The book has the sanction of Rodin’s son.”

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Rodin, through Sacha’s Guitry’s eyes:

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Carrie Nation, Hatchet At The Ready (1901)

October 26, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Carrie Amelia Moore didn’t care for alcohol and she didn’t mince words about it. But it was her axe-wielding that got most of the attention. One of the earliest and most ardent prohibitionists, Carrie Nation, as she came to be known, was infamous for entering bars and taking her axe to the inventory. No law could stop her and eventually she and her kind got the law changed, and for a while America was a dry country–well, apart from speakeasys and bathtubs and flasks. (For a good book about the period, read Daniel Okrent’s Last Call.)

On one visit to Atlantic City in 1901, Nation behaved unusually soberly, didn’t go crazy with an axe, and sort of disappointed everyone. From the August 19 New York Times of the year:

“Atlantic City, N.J.–Mrs. Carrie Nation has come and gone, and there was not a smashing nor anything else sensational. The hopes of the crowds that she would use a hatchet upon some saloonkeeper’s outfit were accordingly dashed.

Mrs. Nation sold 2,500 of her souvenir hatchets at 25 cents each, so that her day’s work was highly profitable. She took a bath in the ocean this morning, and later spoke to an audience of 5,000 persons. Her talk was on morals.

Her visit was a great disappointment for it was hoped that to liven things she would proceed to some of her characteristic acts. Perhaps that she did not do so was partly due to the weather, which was not conducive to enjoyment.”

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“Drops From Second Story Of Brick Building”

October 8, 2012 in Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

If the apartment house I grew up in had a fire escape like the tube model displayed in this 1924 image taken by the Cheyenne River Agency, I may have become an arsonist just for the excuse to go for a spin. The record connected to it at the National Archives and Records Administration has only a simple description:

“Drops from second story of brick building; small child is sitting in the end of the tube.”

Old Peinr Article: “Luther Burbank–The Man And His Mind,” New York Times (1906)

September 27, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

By any standards, Luther Burbank was a virtuoso botanist and horticulturist, mixing, matching and creating. Among the hundreds of exotic varieties that were hatched from his experimental Santa Rosa farm, greenhouse and nursery–which included plants, potatoes, fruits and flowers–was the spineless cactus featured in the above classic photograph. The opening of an admiring 1906 New York Times profile of Burbank:

Every summer our transatlantic steamers are burdened with great throngs of travelers beginning their pilgrimages to the shrines of departed genius. In America, too, we may visit places made illustrious by the former presence of Washington, Jefferson, Lee, Lincoln, Emerson, Poe, and other native men of genius. But, disguise it as we will, the visits are at last to cemeteries, where everything is described in the past tense.

But there is in America at this moment a man of the very greatest genius, just in the flower of his fame, a visit to whom not only emphasizes his genius and his leadership in thought and living things, but also enables one to see far into the future. There is a searchlight of truth in constant operation at Santa Rosa, Cal., and the mind and heart of Luther Burbank are the lenses through which the light is focused. Long ago I resolved to beg the privilege of standing near the searchlight and making a few observations as it illumined some of the peaks of knowledge I could never hope to scale.

Our so-called “Captains of Industry” are busy men, but many of their duties and responsibilities they may delegate to others. Luther Burbank is the busiest man in the world. I make that statement without fear of successful contradiction. His ship is alone on a vast sea of nature’s secrets. With him on the voyage of discovery are a few near relations to encourage him, a dear friend or two for protection and companionship, and several humble helpers to feed the boilers and oil the engines. But he is more alone than was Columbus, because he has no first officer, no second officer, no mate. Like Columbus, upon him alone falls the responsibility for the expedition; he alone knows why the vessel’s prow is kept always in one direction; he alone has faith that it must ultimately touch the shores of truth and reality.•

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The Master And His Pupils In Los Angeles (1950)

September 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

These three classic 1950 photos of pensive, unsmiling people were taken at a Dianetics seminar in Los Angeles, with the shadowy L. Ron Hubbard himself leading the meeting. Hubbard and his $4 self-empowerment book were largely ignored by the mainstream press until the title became a mammoth bestseller. From a 1950 Look magazine article about the rise of a new belief system, which initially took root most strongly in Los Angeles:

“Of all the dianetic centers, Los Angeles is the most exuberantly expansive and enthusiastic. There the Hubbard Foundation moved into a suite of modest offices last July. In August, it took over a two-story building housing a lecture theater and 20 ‘processing’ rooms. A few weeks later, it had to expand again – this time into a 110-room building where swarms of student auditors raptly attend Hubbard’s lectures and practice processing one another.

Still more recently, there have been instituted a series of weekend sessions at the swank Country Club Hotel in Hollywood. Here, taking over 20 or 30 rooms, a band of student auditors and pre-clears meet under the guidance of professional auditors for ‘intensive auditing with chemical assist.’

Hubbard and his associates insist that this use of drugs has nothing to do with narcosynthesis. They claim that ‘chemical assistants,’ purchasable in California at any drugstore, aid in helping resistant pre-clears to achieve dianetic reverie and to dredge up their basic-basic engrams.”

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