Category Archives: Facts

MFDJ 03/20/25: The First Bison Fatality

Today’s Ripped Open Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Marvin Lesley Schrader, 30, of Spokane, Washington, became Yellowstone’s first bison fatality on July 12, 1971, at Fountain Flats north of Old Faithful. Schrader, his wife, and three children spotted a solitary bull buffalo lying down in a meadow just east of Rush Lake that day. Schrader walked to within twenty feet of it to take its picture. The one-ton bison stood up, charged Schrader, and tossed him more than twelve feet. The animals’ horns ripped open the man’s upper right abdomen, and pierced his liver. With a large hole in his side, Schrader attempted unsuccessfully to rise onto one elbow, then lay on the ground groaning for a few minutes while his wife and children watched him die. Mrs. Bonnie Schrader admitted later that they had been too close to the bison. In the family’s possession was the park’s read “Danger” pamphlet that warned of wild animals.

Culled from: Death in Yellowstone

Civil War Injury Du Jour!

G. Porubsky, Co. B. 46th NY volunteer displaying excision of humerus. This photograph from Bontecou’s teaching album shows the drawn-in suspected path of the bullet. Bontecou’s operation of bone removal in the upper arm left the patient with a useless limb. Many were amputated in the antiseptic surgical era of the 1880s.

Culled from: Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography by R.B. Bontecou

Garretdom!

COULD NOT LEAVE ETHEL.

A Mother Drowns Her Little Daughter and Then Hangs Herself.

The Shocking Tragedy that Broke Up a Happy Home in Brooklyn and Drove a Fond Husband and Father Almost to the Verge of Insanity.

NEW YORK, Sept. 19.—A shocking domestic tragedy occurred yesterday at 438 Monroe street, Brooklyn, the residence of Wm. H. Hubbell, the Adjutant of the Forty-seventh Regiment, and for nearly twenty years an employee in the dry goods commission-house of Van Valkenburg & Co. in Worth street, near Church, in this city. Mr Hubbell, his wife Annie, aged thirty-six years, his seventeen-year-old crippled son George, and his seven-year-old daughter Ethel composed the little household. Mrs. Hubbell, although for some time in rather delicate health, attended to her own house-hold duties, and no servant was employed. According to the stories of relatives and neighbors Mr. Hubbell was a kind husband, and the relations between him and his wife had always been harmonious. Last night he was suffering from a shock which almost deprived him of his reason.

During his absence at business yesterday his wife sent her crippled son to his grandmother’s house in Greenpoint, summoned her daughter Ethel from play with some other children in front of the house, stripped her naked and drowned her in the bath tub, and then hanged herself from the bath room door.

Mr. Hubbell made the shocking discovery when he returned home about five o’clock. He was surprised on reaching the house to find all the windows closed and the blinds drawn down. This was unusual, as his wife and blue-eyed little daughter generally sat at the basement window every evening awaiting his return from business and greeted him with kisses. On ascending the stoop and opening the front door he found a note in the vestibule. The envelope bore his name and this significant warning: “Do not come in alone.”

The writing was in pencil, and he recognized it as his wife’s. He was much alarmed especially when he tried to open the inside door with his latch key and found it bolted. Tearing open the envelope and throwing it aside he read the contents of the note. It informed him that his wife had determined to end her life, and that she could not find it in her heart to leave Ethel behind her. She bade her husband a sad farewell and begged him to forgive her of the act, and to remember her kindly. With terrible apprehensions of what had taken place Mr. Hubbell burst open the door and after searching in vain for his wife and the children, rushed upstairs. In the little bath-room, between the front and back rooms, on the second floor he found his wife dead suspended by the neck from a hook on the back of the door, and with her face pressed against the door, and her feet almost touching the ground. Little Ethel had drowned face upward, in the bath-tub which was almost filled with water.

The spectacle appalled him, and he rushed from the house to the residence of his brother-in-law on Quincy street, a few blocks distant. He sent a messenger for Mr. George C. Jaffreys, the family physician….

Everything indicated that both the murder and the suicide were deliberate. About noon Mrs. Hubbell kissed her son and told him to go to his grandmother’s house in Greenpoint and remain there until his father went for him. About one o’clock she called to Ethel, who was playing with some children on the opposite side of the street.

“Come in, Ethel, I want to give you a bath before you go to your grandmother’s.”

Ethel hurried across and entered the house with her mother, who was noticed a few minutes later by one of the neighbors closing the windows and pulling down the blinds in the front of the house. The children’s clothes and hoses were carefully laid at the foot of the bath tub, and the little one was evidently conscious until the last moment of her mother’s intention. Marks on her neck indicated that she had been forcibly held under the water until the mother was satisfied that she was dead. A flatiron was found in the bath-room, and it is supposed to have been used by the mother in keeping the body under the water. In taking her own life Mrs. Hubbell had tied one end of a piece of clothes line around the top binge of the door and fastened the other around her neck, adjusting a large knot under the left ear. She then twisted the slack of the rope around an iron hook several times until her feet were raised from the ground and thus strangled herself to death. Her face was much contorted. She wore a calico wrapper and slippers. She was a small woman of delicate appearances, and she could not have weighed more than ninety or ninety-five pounds. She had been in poor health for some time and frequently she suffered from fits of despondency, caused as it is supposed, through sympathy for her crippled son. She has never, however, threatened suicide, and the tragedy was a startling surprise to all her relatives and friends. She was married when she was eighteen years old, and until a few years ago was of a cheerful disposition. Dr. Jaffreys said last night:

“I have been Mr. Hubbell’s family physician for some time, and have known that Mrs. Hubbell’s health has been a cause of great anxiety to him. She suffered mentally as well as physically for several months, but there was nothing in her condition in either respect to excite any special claim. I have no doubt that she committed this act while she was suffering from emotional insanity. Her husband, I know, was kind an affectionate, and this morning while leaving the house his wife, he tells me, kissed him, and told him to come home as early as possible. Little Ethel was a bright, blue-eyed, brown-haired girl and was a great favorite with the children in the neighborhood.”

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

MFDJ 02/15/25: Witch Hunts in Germany

Today’s Horrifying Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The most horrifying attacks against “witches” in the 16th century German lands were made in the Catholic territories. Though the new Protestant magistrates also prosecuted for witchcraft, they did not keep up with the prince-bishops and archbishop-electors of the Catholic ecclesiastical lands, executing one witch to the Catholics’ three. At Trier between 1587 and 1593, for example, under the direction of the Jesuit demonologist Peter Binsfeld, 368 witches were burned from twenty-two villages, a hunt so devastating that two villages were left with only one woman apiece. The abbot of Fulda was responsible for the deaths of over 700 witches at the beginning of the seventeenth century. A particularly vicious outbreak occurred at Ellwangen, where 390 person were burned between 1611 and 1618. The Teutonic Knights ordered the deaths of 124 in just two years, 1628 to 1630. In the conventual land of Quedlinburg, 133 witches were executed on one day in 1589. At Eichstätt, 274 person were burned at the stake apparently in one year, 1629.

Peter Binsfeld, what a dick!

The first wave of German trials victimized mainly women of the poor or middling sort, midwives like Walpurga Hausmänin, but as the supply of poor women ran low, accusers turned to women and men of the establishment. The nine hundred person put to death by the prince-bishop of Würzburg, for example, included nineteen of his priests and his own nephew. The archbishop-elector of Cologne ordered the deaths of the wives of his chancellor and his secretary. And at Bamberg the bishop executed six hundred witches, including his own chancellor and the burgermeister. Most grotesque was the execution of forty-one young children at Würzburg, a custom that grew in Germany until most major trials included children as both victims and accusers. These later witch hunters turned to younger victims, to men, and to persons of their own class. This last apparently led to a slackening of the craze (as in Offenburg), as the elite, fearful for their own lives, used their clout to stop the madness.

Poor Walpurga’s execution

Culled from: Witchcraze

Post-Mortem Portrait Du Jour!

Boy Rests With Eyes Half Open
Daguerreotype 1/6 Plate, Circa 1848

Culled from: Sleeping Beauty III

Garretdom: Race Riot Edition!

FOUR-MILE-RUN’S TRAGEDY

An Irishman Killed in a Fight, and an Italian Fatally Wounded.

PITTSBURG, Pa., Sept. 19.—Four-Mile-Run, in the Fourteenth ward, was the scene of a bloody race riot at noon to-day, in which two of the participants received fatal injuries. The fight was the result of bad feeling existing among the Irish and Italian laborers who have their abode in that neighborhood. On Saturday night, while Joseph Vernard, an Italian, was on his way home, he was attacked by a gang of Irishmen. There were six in the assailing party, and it is said they were under the leadership of two brothers named Daly. Vernard was terribly beaten, but managed to escape to his home. No more trouble occurred until noon to-day, when a gang of twenty Irishmen called at Vernard’s house and demanded admittance. A number of Italian boarders were in the house at the time, and the doors were quickly barred. The assailants, however, battered the doors down and rushed into the house.

A free fight followed, in the progress of which “Paddy” Rocco, an Italian, had his skull crushed with a chair, and Patrick Constantine, an Irishman, was shot in the abdomen. The sight of the prostrate men seemed to frighten the others, and a general stampede took place, so that by the time the police arrived all had escaped. The wounded men were removed to a hospital, where Constantine died a few hours later. Rocco is still living , but his recovery is considered doubtful. Five of the Italians were arrested this afternoon, but the Irishmen are still at liberty. It is believed that the latter intended to drive the Italians from the neighborhood.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

MFDJ 02/09/25: Disgusting Mouths

Today’s Agonizing Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The Middle Ages, while not known for many breakthroughs, did succeed in producing some of the most disgusting mouths in the history of the human race. Teeth were at an all-time low: rotting, blackened, cracked, painful.

Sometimes, itinerant teeth pullers in Europe wandered from town to town with a little medicine show, climaxed by the locals watching their brethren writhe in agony while teeth were yanked by long metal pliers. Barbers—along with surgery and hair cutting—did tooth pulling. Remember, there was no local anesthetic.

It’s no wonder the Church did a thriving business in devotional offerings to Saint Apollonia, the patron saint of tooth pain.

According to legend, Apollonia—the daughter of a pagan magistrate in Alexandria, Egypt—decided to convert to Christianity. The young woman was tortured to renounce Christ and return to the Roman gods, but she refused. The authorities started pulling her teeth out one by one. Still, she refused. She died a martyr’s death at the stake. In 300 A.D., she was canonized.

Culled by: An Underground Education

Sexual Deviant Du Jour!

The Sexual Criminal is a 1949 criminology textbook written by infamous Los Angeles County criminal psychiatrist J. Paul De River that is jam-packed with all the sexism and homophobia common to its era. I thought I’d share some of the case studies with you.

Case Study 110 B.H., age twenty-one, white male; his education consists of two years of high school. He was discharged from the military service for being A.W.O.L., and given a bad conduct discharge. Present occupation: hospital attendant.

Family History: His mother is living and in good health. His father is alive; he thinks he is well, but he hasn’t seen him for about fourteen years. His parents are divorced, mother remarried. There is a negative family history of insanity, epilepsy, and all constitutional diseases.

Past History: He states his health has always been excellent. He has a past criminal record. At the age of sixteen he was arrested for stealing an automobile and was sent to a juvenile boys’ camp for five months. He was arrested at the age of nineteen for grand theft auto, and again at the age of eighteen when he was given forty days in jail and three years suspended sentence. He was then arrested two years ago, and given eighteen months. He was paroled in fifty-two days but violated his parole and served a year in the penitentiary. He drinks, sometimes to excess, uses tobacco, denies the use of narcotics.

His sexual history began at the age of seven with acts of masturbation which occurred intermittently. Shortly after this he permitted an older boy to commit an act of oral copulation on his person. These acts occurred over a period of months at frequent intervals. He indulged also in acts of fellatio. About the age of nine, he was seduced into heterosexual practices by a girl eighteen. These acts were repeated perhaps two or three times. He has had numerous women in his lifetime for sexual intercourse. He has permitted homosexual acts to be practiced on him at various times, mostly for money. While he was in the penitentiary he indulged in homosexual acts. He denies unnatural practices with females. He states that there is no love affair during his homosexual association with men. He claims he indulged in these practices only to get sexual relief, or to receive money.

Somatic Examination: He is well-developed and well-nourished, athletic schizothymic physique, blond hair, gray eyes with heavy bushy brows. His face is egg-shaped with a squared-off chin and dimple. He has an aquiline nose, long neck, and prominent thyroid cartilage. The heart and lungs are negative. There is a good distribution of hair over the body and extremities. The glandular, bony, vascular, and muscular systems are negative. There is a superficial laceration, one inch, base of left scapula, approximately thirty-six hours old. Laceration of right thumb and right index finger, scar inner side of right wrist, one-fourth inch in length. Right anterior surface of right wrist, one-fourth inch scar, dorsal surface of hand at base of thumb. This scar resembles a pin scratch or a fingernail mark. There is a recent scar, posterior surface of penis just behind corona of glans-penis. This also resembles a scratch mark. There is an old healed scar, right upper hip. The genitalia are well-developed. There is a scar on the left upper thigh which was bandaged at the emergency hospital. His pupils are equal and react to light and accommodation. The superficial and deep reflexes are present.

Psychic Examination: He is well orientated as to time, places, dates, and persons. He states that he sleeps well, is not worried, and gets along well with people. He considers himself agreeable and states, “I am the happy type.” He doesn’t think he has any enemies. His wealth of knowledge is good. He performs the test for the opposites correctly and the backward and forward test correctly. He has no delusions, illusions, or hallucinations. His reaction time is prompt. He is not disassociated. He is high-tempered and explosive.

Statements Relative to His Present Offense: The following questions were asked of the subject and the following answers received:

Q: How do you feel about killing Mr. S.?

A: I feel awfully worried, and I didn’t know I was going so far, but I seemed to lose control of myself, and I didn’t know what I was doing until it happened. I just seemed to get excited and did this thing, and I didn’t know that I was killing.

Q: Do you think you are insane?

A: I couldn’t say whether I was nor not.

Q: How do you feel now? Do you think you are sane?

A: I don’t know but I feel I must have been upset. I thought I’d just put him out. I thought he could untie himself. You see, in the hospital where I work, when the patient is a neurotic we take a towel and put it around his neck, and sometimes if he is excited we twist it until he quiets down. I was taught this when I went to hospital school where I was being trained as a hospital attendant, and also in the penitentiary, as I was in the psychiatric ward.

Q: How long had you known the victim?

A: I met him in November. He picked me up. That first night he asked me if I was a movie star, when I told him no, he says well why don’t you go in pictures. I said I had no desire to go in pictures. Well, we drove out and ended up in his home. He asked me in for a drink, but I had another date and didn’t join him, and he let me out at a club house, an actor’s school home. I saw him in December, he phoned and invited me to dinner, and I told him I’d be there about eight-thirty. I had a date that night with a friend, a young lady. I like to dance and she asked me to go to the Palladium with her. This was about seven o’clock. However, I called Mr. S. and told him I’d be by later. Well, I did drop by his place to see him and he was waiting for me. He was alone. He seemed to be disappointed that I didn’t come earlier. After we’d had a few drinks he suggested that I spend the night there, and he’d drive me to work in the morning. We lay there talking and he snuggled up to me and said he couldn’t get warm. Finally he started getting friendly with me and we indulged in mutual masturbation, and he asked me to perform an act of sodomy with him, which I did. After the act was completed I was tired and wanted to go to sleep. In fact I was about asleep when he started all over again and used his mouth on me. Then we went to sleep. Later on in the night he did the same thing. Sometime in the early morning — it was just after I had him make coffee, I started to get up but felt sleepy. Suddenly I woke up and found that the was doing the same thing with his mouth. I got excited and began to scuffle with him, and he fell on the floor and got back up. I reached over and grabbed his privates and he grabbed me, and he hurt me. We began to fight. There was an ash tray on the side of the bed, and I grabbed it and hit him on the side of the head. He fell over the bed, but we continued to scuffle as he got up and I hit him, with my hand, in the face. Finally I hit him on the side of the head, and he fell down on the floor. I picked up a necktie and tied it around his neck. Then I tied his feet. He was still trying to get up, and then I saw my undershirt and I put it around his neck. He just lay there breathing deeply and making a funny gurgling sound. Then I put on my clothes, but I discovered there was blood all over me, and I didn’t continue to dress but took a shower.

Q: Did you know whether you had killed him or not?

A: I don’t know. I didn’t notice. The last I saw him he was breathing and making a sound.

The victim in the case of B.H.

Q: Then what did you do?

A: Well, I finished dressing and I went down to his car. I then took his keys. then I got out of the car, and went back to the apartment. I picked out some of his clothes and took them with me.

Q: Where did you find his car keys?

A: On top of the dresser.

Q: What else did you find?

A: I took a wallet off the dresser.

Q: Did you take any money?

A: I took what was in the wallet — five or six dollars.

Q: Then what did you do?

A: I got in the car, drove to the hospital and talked to some fellows. And it was about time I started to eat lunch, but my hand was cut and bleeding. So I went and got some clothes and told the fellow in charge of the hospital attendants that I was going to San Francisco. Well, I got about as far as Sacramento, and I stayed there for a time, and then I headed back and I was arrested for speeding. When they found out the car didn’t belong to me, anyway, I told them I had been in a fight with a fellow, but that I was taking his car and clothes back to him. They didn’t believe me and that’s why I was arrested.

Q: You do remember tying the necktie about Mr. S.’s neck, don’t you?

A: Yes.

Q: Why did you do that?

A: I tried to get even with him and make him quit.

Q: Did you choke him with your hands?

A: Yes.

Q: Where was he when you put the necktie about his neck?

A: He was lying on the floor.

Q: Did you intend to kill him?

A: Well, I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I just go excited and thought I’d teach him a lesson.

Q: Did you know he was dead when you left?

A: I don’t know. I really found out when I was arrested.

Q: You realize that you have done wrong, don’t you?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you realize that what you were doing was wrong at the time you killed him?

A: Yes, but I was so mad, I didn’t stop to think.

Q: When you got out of the car and went back to the apartment to get your clothes, did you look to see how Mr. S. was?

A: I didn’t notice.

Scene of the crime. Note the condition of room and condition of victim’s body Death resulted from strangulation.

Analysis and Conclusion: B.H. is medically and legally sane. Early environment undoubtedly played a great part in this subject becoming a criminal. We learn that he is from a broken home; his mother, after divorcing his father, remarried. There was undoubtedly no great family tie to either of his parents. He admits that he has not seen his father for fourteen years. At the tender age of seven he began to indulge in acts of masturbation and shortly thereafter he was seduced into perverted homosexual practices by an older boy. This was followed by his introduction into heterosexual relationships at the age of nine years, when he was seduced by a girl of eighteen years. From his sexual history we also note that he indulged in sexual acts of both hetero and homosexual nature. From this we must conclude that he is of bisexual nature. He also indulged in homosexual practices on most occasions for money, which puts him in the category of a male prostitute.

He deliberately and brutally murdered his victim, a man some thirty years his senior, after spending a night of homosexual debauchery. During the interrogation and examination, he displayed little remorse (affectively cold) for the commission of his sadistic homosexual murder. He freely admitted he had stolen the contents of his victim’s purse, his clothes and automobile, demonstrating a common practice found among homosexual murderers.

(This subject was tried, found guilty of first degree murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment.)

MFDJ 01/18/25: The Commisar Order

Today’s Eliminationist Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The Nazi war against the Soviet Union was waged from the beginning as a war of extermination. The “Commissar Order” authorized, in contravention of international law, the murder of the Red Army’s “political officers.” Of 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war, approximately 3.3 million died in German custody because the Wehrmacht intentionally let them perish of hunger, cold, and illness.

With the Nazi invasion of the USSR, National Socialist “Jewish policy“ assumed a clearly eliminationist character. The systematic mass murder of the Jews in the occupied territories took place as part of the Nazis’ war of extermination under gruesome circumstances, primarily in the form of mass shootings. By March 1942, SS and police killing squads had murdered over 600,000 Jews in the occupied Soviet territories.

During the Second World War, more than 18 million Germans served in the army. In 1943 alone, over 13 million people served in the German armed forces. Most of them served for at least some time in the Polish and Soviet territories where by far the greatest number of Holocaust victims were murdered. Not just the police and the SS, but frequently also members of the Wehrmacht, participated in mass shootings of Jews and “Gypsies,” including women and children. The extent of the Wehrmacht personnel’s involvement in crimes against the civilian population and the murder of Jews depended on several factors: the unit to which they belonged, where they were at what time, what their official rank and title was, as well as their personal behavior.

Liepaja, Latvia, December 1941 – Women before they were executed

More than a few of the soldiers who served “in the East” participated directly in genocidal acts. The majority of soldiers did not assist physically in the mass shootings of Jewish men, women and children, but they often witnessed the scenes of cruelty and murder that accompanied the clearing of ghettos and Jewish residential districts as well as mass shootings. Even those soldiers that became involuntary witnesses to such acts, or were accidental witnesses, learned sooner or later of the murders. As perpetrators and eyewitnesses sat together in full train cars for days on their way home for a furlough or convalescent leave, they told frequently boastful stories and passed around photographs that made the systematic character and extent of the shootings of Jews increasingly obvious. Little by little, most of the Wehrmacht learned one way or another about the murder of the Jews, and this information about the genocide was transmitted through them to the “home front“.

Culled from: Topography of Terror

Prisoner Du Jour!

Prisoners: Murder, Mayhem, and Petit Larceny is a collection of seventy portraits of turn-of-the-century prisoners in the town of Marysville, California and the fascinating contemporary newspaper and prison accounts describing the crimes of which they were accused. The photos themselves are more fascinating than most of the crimes. There’s something magical about glass plate negatives that you just can’t reproduce with modern photography. And I think people just had more character back in the day – or at least it seems that way.

EUGENE ROBAGE

NEWS EPITOMIZED

Deputy Sheriff Anderson arrived from Wheatland last evening and returned this morning with Eugene Robage, where he will answer in Justice Manwell’s court to a charge of petit larceny. He has admitted the theft of some tools from a Horstville barber. [September 2, 1902]

NEWS EPITOMIZED

Eugene Robage, sentenced to 30 days for petty larceny, was delivered at the county jail by Deputy Sheriff Anderson last evening. [September 3, 1902]

Garretdom!

There’s no racism in this article at all. None whatsoever.

HOW HE WAS CUT.

Frederick Steward Tells the Story of a Fight on a Street Corner.

Frederick Steward, a colored man twenty-six years old, whose home is at 1209 Kater street, was admitted to the Pennsylvania Hospital last evening suffering from a wound in the abdomen, received during a quarrel at Eleventh and Locust streets, in which several men were interested.

“‘Twas Abe Scott cut me,” said Steward after his wound was dressed. “Me and Bill Auter had some talk, but it all blowed over, an’ then Abe Scott cum ovah to whar I was an’ he wanted to fight. I told him to ‘way, fur I didn’t want anything to do with him, an’ then Charlie Polk he cum up an’ mashed me in de jaw. While I was attendin’ to him Abe he cums up behind me an’ throwed his arms around me jist so so an’ cut me. Then him and Charlie both run away.”

Auter was arrested and held as a witness but neither Scott nor Polk had been secured up to a late hour last night. The wound is a severe one, but is not considered of a dangerous character by the surgeons, although they were unwilling last night to give an opinion as to the probable result further than that the chances were favorable for his recovery.

Steward is said to be a quiet, peaceable fellow, while neither of his assailants bears a good reputation.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

Here’s another article (from the September 20, 1886 issue of the Philadelphia Times) that presents the story in a less sympathetic light to Mr. Steward:

STABBED ON LOCUST STREET.

One of a Gang of Colored Roughs Receives a Knife-Thrust in the Abdomen.

A gang of colored roughs were standing on the corner of Eleventh and Locust streets last night. One of the number, Abe Scott, who lives in Brier place, offered to fight Frederick Steward, of 1209 Kater street. The latter told his belligerent companion that he didn’t want to fight. Scott, however, became so anxious to show the crowd how Sullivan knocked out Hearld that Steward attempted to walk away. Charles Polk, another one of the loungers, stopped him and called him a coward, and he and Steward clinched. Scott watched the altercation until he saw that Polk was being worsted, and then he sailed in to his assistance. Steward’s back was turned and Scott pulled out a formidable jack-knife and opened the blade. Steward heard the warning cries of his friends, but before he could turn around he received a knife-thrust in the abdomen, which sent him to the ground. A Fifth district officer was seen approaching and the entire gang took to their heels, except William Anter, who lives in Poplar court, and he was arrested on suspicion of having been implicated in the stabbing. Scott and Polk escaped, though the police are looking for them. The injured man was conveyed to the Pennsylvania Hospital. The wound is serious.

I could find no confirmation of whether Steward lived.

MFDJ 12/31/24: An Explosive Ending

Today’s Explosive Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Mine Inspector’s Report for HOUGHTON COUNTY, MICHIGAN FOR THE YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30, 1903.

ACCIDENT No. 4—November 10. Henry Ninnes lost his life by a premature explosion at the 4th level south of No. 3. Shaft at the Trimountain Mine. The deceased and his partner, James Ingman, drilled three holes in the cutting out stope and prepared them for blasting. Henry Ninnes lit the fuse of two holes on the foot side of the stope and crossed over to the hanging side and fired the third fuse, when the explosion occurred, killing Ninnes and badly injuring Ingman. No inquest was held.

Trimountain Mine

Culled from: Some Fatal Accidents in the Atlantic, Baltic, Champion, Trimountain and Winona Copper Mines

Vintage Crime Photo Du Jour!

MURDERED A GOOD SAMARITAN
FEBRUARY 21, 1940
Daily News Photo

Annie Beatrice Henry held for press photographers by Sheriff Henry W. Reid of Calcasieu parish.

Joseph Calloway paid for his life for playing the good Samaritan. Spotting a dreary woman and a male companion trudging wearily along the roadside outside Lake Charles, Louisiana, on Valentine’s Day 1940, he stopped to offer a ride. The Houston salesman was led into a field, stripped of his clothes, and killed as he knelt begging for his life. Although her companion, Horace Finon Burks, was also indicted, Mrs. Annie Beatrice (Toni Jo) Henry confessed that she fired the shot that killed Calloway. She robbed him, she said, in an effort to get money to finance her murderer-husband’s appeal. Instead, she landed herself on death row. After being found guilty twice in verdicts that were overturned, she was convicted a third time and became the second white woman to be executed in Louisiana, on November 28, 1942.

Culled from: New York Noir

Garretdom!

How a Farmer Met His Death.

READING, Pa., Sept. 22.—Joseph G. Miller, a farmer aged twenty-nine years, of Lazarette, Chester county, was awakened during the night, got up, and in searching for a match knocked a revolver off the mantelpiece, discharging it and sending the ball into his abdomen. He exclaimed: “I’m shot!” and died.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

MFDJ 12/28/24: Decorated Skulls

Today’s Decorated Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

More often than not, when trophy skulls from the Pacific War and Vietnam are found in America today, they are decorated with writing, pictures and paint, often courtesy of the soldiers who took them in the first place, but sometimes thanks to a subsequent owner. One skull, brought home from the Second World War by a Navy medic, was found later by his grandson, who spray-painted it gold, tied a bandana around it and put it in his bedroom, until he became frightened of it and threw it in a lake. [Some people should not be allowed to have nice things! – DeSpair] Another, brought back from Okinawa and painted entirely in red and silver, was handed over to a forensic team in the United States in the early 1980s. One skull taken from the skeletonized pilot of a crashed plane and brought back to Morgan County, Tennessee, had been enlarged to hold a light bulb at Halloween. Others have been found covered in graffiti and pictures, coloured with crayon, felt pen or paint, and stained with soot and wax from the candles they have held. These processes of domesticating the dead, and turning them from a person into a prop, began on the battlefield.

While on duty, decorating bones was, at one level, simply something to do, in a world where bones were everywhere. The time invested in this kind of artistry may tell of tedious days spent at base camp, but it also suggests a sense of pride and the desire to layer personal identity onto enemy bones. Perhaps these artefacts were an attempt to take control, to make death more familiar and manageable: to convert the confusing and violent death of another into the reassurance of caring for oneself. There was a catharsis to the craft. Decorated skulls and bones were simultaneously attractive playthings, memento mori and an assertion of power over the enemy. The act of appropriation could even be an expression both of supremacy and, perhaps, of solidarity or even affection.

Marine Recruiting Sergeant John Shough of Springfield holds the skull of a Japanese sniper who was killed on Guadalcanal 20 years ago during World War II. Before the Japanese sniper was spotted tied high in a tree, he killed a young Marine who had gained quite a name for himself during the fighting. To avenge his death, other Marines in his group beheaded the sniper and upon his skull painted the emblem of the First Marine Division and the American Flag.

Culled from: Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found

Ghastly!

Yosuke Yamahata photographed the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 10, 1945. Here’s one of his haunting images from the book Nagasaki Journey: The Photographs of Yosuke Yamahata, August 10, 1945.

Garretdom!

MURDERED AT HIS MEAL.

James Keevan’s Wife Breaks His Head With a Sugar Bowl at the Tea-table.

PRINCETON, N. J., Sept. 23.—News was received here yesterday that a terrible murder was committed Tuesday evening at Kingston, between here and New Brunswick. The victim was James Keevan, who lived alone with his wife on the north side of the village. Both were over sixty-five years of age. It is supposed that Keevan was murdered by his wife after he had sat down to supper, the crime being the result of a quarrel. His dead body was found in a chair at the table on which he was leaning. A knife and fork were still in his hands. There was a frightful gash in his head and the fragments of a heavy sugar-bowl were scattered over the floor near the chair in which the murdered man sat. Keevan was a laborer and had had two or three wives. The murder caused the greatest excitement at Kingston and the surrounding country. The authorities at Somerville have been notified and they will take charge of the body, and probably arrest the woman.

Culled from the Friday, September 24, 1886 issue of the Louisville Courier-Journal

Follow-Up Article from the Evening Gazette (Pittston, PA), Thursday, December 30, 1886.

A Woman Guilty of Murder.

SOMERVILLE, N. J., Dec. 30.—Seldom has this community been in such a state of excitement as it has been since Monday, when the trial of the old woman Catharine Keevan for the murder of her husband, James Keevan, at Kingston, Sept. 21, begun before Judge Magie in the Somerset county court. The strange features of the horrible crime made it one of the most noteworthy in the criminal annals of the county. She killed her husband by smashing his head with a sugar bowl. She was found guilty of murder in the second degree and thus saved from the gallows.

MFDJ 12/26/24: Smallpox Blankets

Today’s Contrived Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Although variolation could protect against infection, it could also be misused to trigger deliberate outbreaks of smallpox. The fact that isolated populations, such as American Indians, were highly susceptible to the disease made it a potential weapon in the hands of less susceptible groups, such as Europeans. Indeed, in a dark chapter of military history, the British employed smallpox as an instrument of warfare on several occasions during the eighteenth century.

The best-documented incident occurred in the aftermath of the French and Indian War of 1754-63, when Great Britain defeated France and its allied Indian tribes and seized control of Canada. After the war ended, Pontiac, an Ottawa chief who had sided with the French, was angered by the British confiscation of Indian land. Seeking to drive the British out of Canada and the Mississippi watershed and return the territory to French control, Pontiac united six tribes along the western frontier into a military alliance.

Because most of the British army had returned home, the remaining units were badly overextended. As a result, the rebellious Indians, led by Pontiac, overran eight British forts in eastern Pennsylvania, killing or capturing the defending soldiers and settlers. On May 29, 1763, the Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo tribes began a siege of the major outpost of Fort Pitt (site of present-day Pittsburgh), which soon was seriously threatened. Indian scalping parties attacked British settlements around the fort, destroying harvests, butchering men, women, and children, and forcing the survivors to flee in terror.

Colonel Henry Bouquet, the ranking officer for the Pennsylvania eastern frontier, headquartered in Philadelphia, wrote a letter on June 23, 1763, describing the increasingly dire military situation at Fort Pitt. The letter was addressed to Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the British commander-in-chief in North America, based in New York. In addition to describing the Indian attacks, Bouquet reported that smallpox had broken out in the defending garrison.

On July 7, 1763, Amherst responded, adding a postscript to his letter in which he suggested that the defenders of Fort Pitt should use smallpox as a weapon against the tribes involved in Pontiac’s Rebellion. “Could it not be Contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians?” he wrote, “We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to Reduce them.” In response to Amherst’s recommendation, Bouquet replied elliptically on July 13, “I will try to inoculate _____ by means of Some Blankets that may fall in their Hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself.” Amherst responded approvingly on July 16, noting, “You will Do well to try to Inoculate the Indians by means of Blankets, as well as to try Every other Method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race.”

Although the available documents do not reveal whether Bouquet carried out Amherst’s suggestion, officers at Fort Pitt had already taken the initiative and executed a similar plan a few months earlier. William Trent, the commander of the local militia, wrote in his journal on May 24, 1763, that when a small delegation of Delaware Indians had visited the fort to advise the British to surrender, he had given them “two Blankets and a Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.” Captain Simeon Ecuyer, the commanding officer at Fort Pitt, was aware of this operation, since he subsequently approved Trent’s invoice to replace the blankets and the handkerchief. A severe epidemic of smallpox subsequently broke out among the Indians besieging Fort Pitt in the summer of 1763, but whether it resulted from Trent’s operation or from natural causes remains unknown.

Culled from: Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox

Morbid Art Du Jour!

“And Forgive Us Our Sins” by Emil Holarek, 1900

Garretdom!

Killed by the Falling Walls.

QUINCY, Ills., Sept. 22.—The walls of the Centre Mills, which was burned some time ago, fell to-day, killing Rodney Lambert and a colored man named Douglas. Ono Bassett, also colored, was fatally injured and two others badly bruised.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

MFDJ 12/24/24: Doomed Polish Clergy

Today’s Deported Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

After their invasion of Poland in 1939, the Germans began a reign of terror there. Tens of thousands of people, mainly from the educated classes, were murdered or deported to various camps, thousands to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1940, Poles made up the largest single prisoner group in the camp. Some 600 members of the Polish clergy, including high-ranking dignitaries, were isolated in the “small camp” for many months. Over eighty of the clergymen did not survive. On November 9, 1940, the SS executed 33 Polish prisoners by firing squad. All of them had been brought from the infamous Gestapo prison in Warsaw, “Pawiak”, to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. This was one of the first organized mass murders there.

Public execution of Polish priests and civilians in Bydgoszcz’s Old Market Square on September 9, 1939.

Culled from: Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp 1936-1945

Sideshow “Freak” Du Jour!

IDA WILLIAMS

A fat lady from Columbus, Ohio, Ida Williams weighed 500 pounds when she began touring while still in her late teens. She had gained another 66 pounds by the time she was well established on the circuit at age twenty-two. Sells Brothers Circus booked her in 1884, Ringling Brothers in 1892 and 1893 and the Great Wallace Circus in 1895. At the turn of the century she returned to the Ringling show.

When Ida was in her middle twenties she sat through a protracted session with Chas. Eisenmann. He photographed her looking left and then looking right. He tried several poses face-on. Ida changed her earrings and her dress. She wound pearls in her hair, put on a barrette, wore a cap and then covered it all with a shawl. She couldn’t place her hands so Eisenmann gave her an ostrich plume to hold and then tried a nosegay. Close-up portraits of this kind were not his forte.

Culled from: Monsters: Human Freaks in America’s Gilded Age

Garretdom

BLOWN INTO THE RIVER.

Two Men Killed by an Explosion in a Powder Mill Near Scranton.

SCRANTON, Sept. 22.—An explosion occurred in the press mill of the Rushdale works of the Moosic Powder Company this morning, which resulted in the death of Bailey Wage and William Miller, two men who have been employed by the company for a long time. Wage’s body was blown into the river. Grappling irons were procured and the river was dragged. After a couple hours’ work the body was recovered. Miller’s body was found on the railroad track about a hundred feet from the mill. When the explosion occurred, Michael Breen, the pumpman, was at work in the pump-room beneath the mill, but as the whole force of the explosion was upward and outward, the pump-room was not damaged and Breen escaped uninjured.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

MFDJ 12/15/24: A Debauched Frenchman

Today’s Filthy Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Louis XIV’s nephew, Philip, Duke d’Orléans, was Regent to the boy-king Louis XV for nine years and ruled the country in all but name. The myopic little Regent was generally considered to be the most debauched man in French history. Although he had demonstrated himself to be an intelligent and very gifted politician, his chief interests were women and wine. At the age of fourteen he became the father of a baby girl when he raped the head porter’s daughter at the Palais Royal. He made an actress and his wife pregnant at about the same time, mistress and wife simultaneously giving birth to an illegitimate son and a legitimate daughter.

Debauched? Moi???

His mistresses were legion; it was reckoned that he kept over a hundred at a time. His choice of women drew comment too, as all of them were very plain. When he was chided by his mother for his lack of taste, he famously replied, “Bah, Mother, all cats are gray in the dark!” His personal harem and his “daily filthiness” were the talk of France, but he was similarly famous for his drinking binges. The Regent was a desperate alcoholic, particularly partial to the new fizzy champagne recently invented by Dom Pérignon. To the very end he continued to consume seven bottles of champagne almost every evening.

The Regent’s regular orgies in the Palais Royal scandalized Paris. Every evening he would shut himself away with a few male and female companions, then get himself wildly drunk and sleep with whoever took his fancy, while naked prostitutes were served upon silver dishes for his guests. Even more controversially, he was an atheist and proud of it: the held orgies on Good Friday and it was alleged that he dabbled in the occult. The single most shocking allegation against the filthy old Regent, however, concerned his incestuous relationship with his eldest daughter, the Duchess de Berri. The abominable Elizabeth, short, obese, and badly marked from smallpox, was almost as debauched as her father. Married at the age of fourteen to her cousin the Due de Berri, the youngest grandson of Louis XIV, within four years she became wealthy teenage widow interested only in drinking herself senseless and running up huge gambling debts. Daily she drank herself into a stupor and could often be found rolling in her own vomit on the carpet. Eventually she became so fat that she found it impossible to mount a horse.

It was widely rumored that she was sleeping with her father, gossip which the Regent encouraged by inviting her to his all-night orgies and painting her in the nude. She died aged twenty-four, most probably from cirrhosis of the liver and weakened by a difficult and illegitimate childbirth, although her death certificate stated that she ate herself to death. It was commented at the funeral that the Regent’s unusually intense display of emotion at his daughter’s early demise was motivated by something other than parental grief.

In his forties, the Regent took on the appearance of a senile and purple-faced old man. When he first showed himself in England, London’s bookmakers offered odds that he would be dead within three months. In 1723, against the advice of his physicians, he took a new mistress thirty years his junior. The effect on his heart was predictably disastrous. They were sitting by the fireplace of his drawing room at Versailles one December evening when he had a massive stroke and slumped unconscious. When a doctor tried to bleed him, a lady courtier warned, “No! You’ll kill him… he has just lain with a whore.” Two hours later he was dead, aged forty-nine. Most people thought it was a miracle that he had lived that long. Although it was quite obvious to everyone what had killed him, court etiquette demanded that there should be an official postmortem. Unfortunately, while the physicians were carving him up, the Regent’s favorite dog snatched his master’s heart and ate it.

Culled from: Royal Babylon

Vintage Asylum Inmate Du Jour!

In The Library Eclectica, I have a book entitled The Faces of Madness: Hugh W. Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatric Photography (edited by Sander L. Gilman), 1977. It contains a wonderful collection of photographs of asylum inmates taken in the 1850’s by pioneering medical photographer and psychiatrist Dr. Hugh W. Diamond, along with engravings that were made of them and used in teaching. There are also several case studies by Dr. John Conolly (the leading British psychiatrist of the mid-nineteenth century) for some of the patients. The portraits are beautiful and sad and the text reveals the psychiatric thought processes of the mid-19th century.

Here’s today’s lovely soul.

Garretdom

A FIENDISH WOMAN.

The Horrible Manner in Which She Treated a Little Foundling.

CHICAGO, Sept. 22.—A case of terrible cruelty to a child is now on hearing before Judge Garnett. Mary Gray, a resident of Englewood, about a year ago took from the Foundlings’ Home a boy about four years old to rear. She is said to be a woman of ungovernable temper, and she first administered correction to the child with a severity that was cruel. Shortly the neighbors began to observe the little one’s distress, and sundry acts of Mrs. Gray’s brutality were witnessed by residents in the vicinity.

The Humane Society was informed, and an examination of the boy revealed that his entire body was covered with cuts, scars of cuts, sores, welts and bruises. Mrs. Gray was promptly committed to the Criminal Court. Witnesses for the State assert that the woman has been seen cuffing and kicking the child over the floor, striking him upon the face and scalp with a knife, and what is incredibly fiendish, with drawing the boy’s finger-nails by force. A large number of the reputable citizens of Englewood are present in the court, an deeply desirous of securing for the woman the severest penalty of the law.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

Incidentally, the jury returned a verdict of Not Guilty. Here’s the follow-up article from the September 25, 1886 issue of the Chicago Tribune:

ABUSING A CHILD

The Evidence Shows Mrs. Gray of Englewood Was Not Guilty.

It seems that injustice was done Mrs. Mary Gray, the Englewood lady who has been on trial this week in the Criminal Court on the charge of cruelty to a child, by the report of the trial published in THE TRIBUNE of Thursday. There was no evidence whatever that his toe-nails dropped off or were not in a perfectly healthy condition; nor was the word hatchet used in any manner during the trial of the case. There were no scars upon the child, except the cut on the lip, which had been produced by any external violence, and it was amply explained that the cut on the lip was occasioned by a fall of the child down a flight of eight or ten steps while playing with his dog. The child was covered with scars, but it was the testimony of Dr. Henrotin that these scars were the result of sores from skin or blood disease in the child. The child was stripped at the trial and shown to the jury, and several running sores of like character were found upon his person. Another serious one was found on his head. The only witness who testified to any act of cruelty beyond moderate chastisement was impeached by the defense, and acts sworn to by this witness were denied by Mrs. Gray almost in toto. A dozen or more of Mrs. Gray’s nearest and most intimate neighbors of the most respectable character testified to her uniform kind treatment of the child: that she had dressed it well, fed it well, kept it cleanly, supplied it abundantly with toys, and was very particular in regard to its manner and habits. The child at the trial showed this by its frequent replies of “no, ma’am,” and “yes, ma’am,” and “thank you,” and the like. Her neighbors also testified as to her quiet, well-disposed, and even-tempered character. The jury which tried her case was more than an ordinary one for intelligence and standing in the community, and on the evidence promptly acquitted her. Her attorney, while making some technical points in her defense, argued the case mainly on its merits, and there is no doubt that the verdict was a just one. Witnesses who testified against her were shown to have been actuated by motives of spite and enmity, and at least some principal ones bore a very unsavory character.

MFDJ 12/06/24: Ill-Advised Adventure on Longs Peak

Today’s Ice-Coated Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Taking a break from studies at the end of April, four students from the University of Colorado at Boulder set off into the Rocky Mountain National Park wilderness on Monday, April 18, 1960, with the goal of reaching the summit of Longs Peak.

Prince Willmon, 23, of Fort Smith, Arkansas, was the oldest of the group. James A. Greig, 21, came from Glenview, Illinois, and David Jones, 19, had come from Webster Groves, Missouri. They were joined by their friend Jane Bendixen, 19, of Davenport, Iowa. By Tuesday morning, however, Greig felt he was coming down with something and he turned back. Willmon, Jones, and Bendixen continued down the Longs Peak trail and began their trek up the mountain.

Somehow, all four students had missed seeing the signs at the trailhead and elsewhere along the trail to the mountain, telling them that these trails were closed to all but technical climbers at this time of year. Late April is still snow season on mountains in the Front Range, so the hiking party could expect to find ice and snow at higher elevations that would make climbing without equipment and proper footwear a hazardous endeavor.

The three climbers, all of whom had substantial experience on mountain trails, made their way up Longs Peak without incident until they had nearly reached the summit. Then, in what seemed like minutes, the weather changed from a generally overcast but comfortable day into a raging blizzard. Ice coated the rocky trails, and snow gathered in deep drifts. None of the climbers were dressed for this kind of weather, so they soon began to feel the effects of exposure. Bendixen and Willmon knew that their hands, feet, and faces were starting to freeze.

By Wednesday morning, as they fought their way through the endless blizzard, Willmon felt he could not continue. Jones and Bendixen found an ice cave and left Willmon there, telling him that they would head down the mountain and go for help. Soon Bendixen found herself out in front of Jones, moving quickly in her descent. Suddenly her feet went out from under her. She fell down a rocky cliff, hit her head, and lost consciousness.

When she came to sometime later, she began calling for Jones, but she received no response. She wondered if he had fallen as well, but she didn’t see him close by, so she determined that despite her injuries and the sense that frostbite had enveloped her hands and feet, she had better move or forfeit her own life where she lay. She began walking, continuing her descent until she reached the base of the mountain and could see lights far in the distance. She walked toward the lights, finally finding herself at a mountain home in Allenspark.

When the family answered the door, they saw immediately that she was in terrible trouble. Soon Bendixen was in an ambulance on the way to a hospital, while rangers began the search for her friends.

Willmon and Jones were not so lucky. Rangers found Willmon frozen to death in the ice cave, and Jones at the base of a cliff, where he had fallen as much as one thousand feet. He did not survive the fall.

Culled from: Death in Rocky Mountain National Park

Vintage Crime Scene Du Jour!

No caption. Another tenement hallway victim, who has been shot or stabbed at a point probably between the collarbone and the heart. He is a strong man, a laborer, probably Jewish or Italian. The building is dingy, with cracks, hasty plastering, some kind of sub-graffiti chalk mark on the wall, and a common hallway sink.

Culled from: Evidence

Garretdom

SHOT BY MISTAKE.

A Husband Takes His Wife for a Burglar and Fatally Wounds Her.

DENVER, Col., Sept. 22.—A shocking affair occurred on the Whittemore rancho, near Golden, at an early hour yesterday morning. H. B. Whittemore, while in bed, shot his wife twice, thinking she was a burglar. One ball entered the left side of her neck, and the other the right shoulder, coming out below the right shoulder-blade. The story of the shooting as told by Whittemore is as follows: “When we retired I had $400, with which I had intended to pay a debt. I remember my wife said she could not bear the new flannels she had on and would change them. About one o’clock in the morning I was suddenly awakened y a noise in the room, and saw a dark form between me and the window. I immediately thought of my money, and certain that burglars were in the house, I raised myself in bed and fired. The figure came straight towards me and I fired again. We then clinched, and I discovered that it was my wife, who had got up to change her flannels, and who I had mistaken for a thief.

Mrs. Whittemore, in whose presence the story was told, was asked if it was correct. She nodded assent and tried to speak, but could not, although she made the most piteous attempts to do so. The husband is almost crazed with grief over the unfortunate affair. No arrests will be made, as everybody is convinced that the shooting was entirely accidental. The physicians say it is impossible for the woman to recover.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook