Category Archives: Garretdom

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

MFDJ 12/04/24: Last Days of the Death March

Today’s Blood-Covered Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

On March 16, 1945, the Nazis liquidated the death camp at Spaichingen, located in southwestern Germany, about twenty miles north of the Swiss border. Joseph Freeman and thousands of other inmates began a six-week death march ordeal that ended in the city of Füssen in southern Germany. Joseph’s story is documented in the book The Road To Hell: Recollections of the Nazi Death March. The following is a brief excerpt from the book, discussing more than one month into the march.

In the weeks and days before the “Thousand Year Reich” was collapsing, we prisoners continued to agonize and to perish. As spring approached, the days grew warmer. We were barely surviving on a diet of grass, leaves and melted snow. I was dying piece by piece. The suffering of my fellow inmates was my suffering. I was not myself any longer. I was a part of a body of a hundred men, a collective body that was slowly expiring. Part of me was still living, but as inmates were dying with every passing hour, a part of me was dying too. It was a slow death. In a moment one can see the Angel of Death. This is the end. Humans die only once. I’m not human. I died a thousand times and I came back to life. Death was not an end to my suffering. I was death alive. There was no end to my agony.

In the last week of the death march we met a group of SS men escorting other inmates. We had no idea of where they came from. The SS from our group were engaged in an animated conversation with the SS escorting the other group. Then, after a while, the new group joined our column. As the two groups merged, we saw three trucks on the side of the road loaded with sacks of food. This was the price they had to pay to join our group. The SS from our group had made a good deal. They received a lot of food in exchange for a handful of new inmates to oversee. These new prisoners would be dead in a few days anyway. It looked as though the new group had been on the road for a long time. The new SS wore heavy, warm clothes: boots, fur coats, and raincoats with head covers. But their charges were poorly dressed and had no covers on their heads. Their faces were yellow. True, we looked repulsive, but the newcomers did not look any better, and the only difference being they did not smell as bad as we did.

That night the same scene repeated itself. We rested on frozen ground in an open field, surrounded by the well-fed SS. The smoke from their cigarettes and the smell of the vodka and pieces of salami drove some of the starving inmates crazy. Some could not take it anymore. They started to run and the SS sent the dogs after them. In just a few minutes we could hear the cries of the runaway prisoners. The barking of the dogs and the shouting of the SS still ring in my ears. Shouts rang out and then the silence. The SS returned with the dogs, who were covered in blood. Some of us quietly said Kaddish for those who had been killed. We could not sleep. I did not know how much longer we could go on.

The end was approaching for the last surviving inmates from Spaichingen. People were dying every day and night. The new SS men behaved more brutally than the former ones. If an inmate could not walk or fell down, he was immediately pulled from the line and shot. I felt I had reached my end. The pain and the inhumane conditions were catching up with me. I had lost so much weight I was reduced to skin and bones. When I received my ration it was very hard for me to reach my hand to my mouth to eat the little piece of bread. My hands were shaking uncontrollably. Inmates were lying and rolling on the ground with blood oozing from their mouths. The SS shot those who were laying down. This living Hell was an eternity.

A day later the new group joined us, the Unterscharfuehrer changed the routine. We rested during the day and marched in the evening. It appeared to me that we were avoiding villages and cities. Only one hundred and fifty inmates from Spaichingen Death Camp remained alive. During the four weeks of our forced march the SS had killed more than one thousand three hundred people.


Clandestine snapshot of a Nazi death march

Culled from: The Road To Hell

 

Malady Du Jour!

The Dr. Ikkaku Ochi Collection is a fascinating cluster of medical photographs from the late 19th and early 20th century that had been collected by Dr. Ikkaku Ochi in Japan and were found in a box many years later.  There was no detailed information available for most of the photos, but the images are compelling because they show composed portraits of people suffering through intense pain caused by conditions that in most cases would be resolved through treatment today. There’s a sense of overwhelming sadness that comes through in these pictures, but also dignity and strength.


Looks like tertiary syphilis to me…  

 

Garretdom: Sausage Poison Edition

A FAMILY POISONED.

Seven Persons Made Seriously Ill By Eating Impure Sausage.

The selling of impure meats resulted in the family of Thomas Fahy, living in the rear of 804 north Front street [Philadelphia], being made seriously ill yesterday afternoon by partaking of Bologna sausage purchased at a neighboring store. The housewife had prepared the noonday meal, and to make it more complete went to Whartman’s store, at Beach and Poplar streets, and bought a couple of pounds of Bologna sausage. Thomas Fahy, the head of the family, which consisted of himself, wife and four little Fahys, besides Margaret Cohen, who is stopping at the house, returned to his work after eating a hearty dinner, but complained of feeling unwell and went home. He had arrived but a few minutes when he was attacked with a violent fit of vomiting and retching pains in the stomach. Mrs. Fahy was taken sick with symptoms similar to those of her husband and Margaret Cohen, aged eighteen years, began vomiting up the poisonous substance, her condition becoming serious and exciting alarm. Thomas, aged seven years; Mamie, aged eight; Michael, aged ten, and Winnie, the youngest of the children, were all attacked with nausea and violent pains, but their condition is not considered as serious as the elder members of the family, they partaking but lightly of the impure sausage. The condition of the entire seven began to assume such alarming proportions that a messenger was sent to the office of Dr. Emil H. Herwig, at Third and Brown streets, who at once administered an antidote which afforded some relief to the sufferers. An investigation revealed the fact that the sudden illness was caused by “sausage poison,” induced by eating liberally of the meat which had become almost putrid. The children are recovering as rapidly as could be expected, and Mr. and Mrs. Fahy’s illness, thought serious, is not likely to result fatally. Margaret Cohen, who partook more liberally of the poisonous sausage than the others, is lying in a critical condition, and considerable apprehensions is felt regarding her recovery.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

I tried to find out if the Fahys (and poor Margaret) all survived but struck out in my research.

MFDJ 11/29/24: Incineration in Nanking

Today’s Blazing Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The torture that the Japanese inflicted upon the native population at Nanking, China in December, 1937 almost surpasses the limits of human comprehension.  Here is one example:

The Japanese subjected large crowds of victims to mass incineration. In Hsiakan a Japanese soldier bound Chinese captives together, ten at a time, and pushed them into a pit, where they were sprayed with gasoline and ignited. On Taiping Road, the Japanese ordered a large number of shop clerks to extinguish a fire, then bound them together with rope and threw them into the blaze. Japanese soldiers even devised games with fire. One method of entertainment was to drive mobs of Chinese to the top stories or roofs of buildings, tear down the stairs, and set the bottom floors on fire. Many such victims committed suicide by jumping out windows or off rooftops. Another form of amusement involved dousing victims with fuel, shooting them, and watching them explode into flame. In one infamous incident, Japanese soldiers forced hundreds of men, women, and children into a square, soaked them with gasoline, and then fired on them with machine guns.


Chinese man burned to death by the Japanese

Culled from: The Rape of Nanking

 

Suicide Du Jour!

One of my favorite books is Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective’s Scrapbook.  It is exactly what it says it is: a bizarre and oft-disturbing scrapbook collected over the years by Los Angeles area police detective Jack Huddleston, whose career spanned from 1921 to the early 1950’s. Here’s an entry that may have inspired a Hüsker Dü song!

 

Garretdom: Olde News!

Killed in an Elevator.

CHICAGO, Sept. 23.—As the employees in Mayer, Engles & Co.’s wholesale clothing house were leaving the store last evening, the elevator, containing Samuel Mayer, Samuel Herman and Louis Nochman, fell from the fourth floor to the basement. The accident was caused by the breaking of the cable. Herman’s chest was crushed in, producing internal injuries from which he died. Mayer had his skull seriously fractured and will probably die. Nochman, who was taken to the Michael Reese hospital, had an arm broken and a shoulder dislocated.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

Here’s a follow-up from the Thursday, September 30, 1886 issue of the Chicago Tribune:

That Elevator Accident.

The inquest on Samuel Mayer and Samuel Harmon, the two men who lost their lives in the elevator accident at the corner of Fifth avenue and Adams street about ten days ago, was continued yesterday at the Michael Reese Hospital. Louis Nachman, the elevator-boy, who is suffering from a broken arm, testified that the two men, Mayer and Harmon, got on the elevator on the fifth floor, and that at noon as he closed the gate and started down Mayer and Harman began sparring. The elevator had only gone a few feet when he was struck and knocked down, the heel of his right shoe becoming wedged between the floor of the elevator and the wall of the elevator-chute. This brought the elevator to a stop, but for what length of time he could not say, as he lost consciousness at the moment his foot was caught and the elevator stopped, and did not regain it for over twenty-four hours. The verdict of the jury was that the heel of the shoe caught between the platform and the shaft, holding the elevator still although the throttle had been pulled for a down trip; that the cable unwound rapidly and that when the heel was torn from the shoe the elevator shot down to the basement, a distance of thirty feet.

MFDJ 11/27/24: The Dreadful Boot

Today’s Immoveable Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Persuasion by means of pressing usually ended in death — hardly desirable in court cases where confessions and names of accomplices were required. However, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly in Scotland and France, a device was used which, while not endangering life in any way, positively encouraged the unfortunate victim to reveal everything he knew, whether true or imagined. The instrument was known as the Boot.

There were several versions of this device, the variations probably owing to the fact that in those times descriptions were passed by word of mouth rather than by detailed drawings and blueprints. So torture-instrument manufacturers at one end of the country were given a different idea of how the machine functioned than was actually the case. But as long as all the machines caused excruciating agony, there was obviously no need for any standardization by the authorities.

As its name implies, the boot was designed to torture a prisoner’s legs and feet, and the device was so effective that even the early stages of its application caused injuries sufficient to induce a hasty confession.

The most common form of the boot required the victim to sit on a bench, to which he was securely tied. An upright board was then placed on either side of each leg, splinting them from knee to ankle; the boards were held together by ropes or iron rings within a frame.

With the legs now immoveable, the torture started with wooden wedges hammered between the two inner boards and then between the outer boards and their surrounding frame, compressing and crushing the trapped flesh.


The Boot

An alternative method dispensed with the frame. Instead the boards on each side of the legs were bound tightly together. For the ‘ordinary’ torture, four wedges were driven between the two inner boards. For the extra-ordinary torture, eight wedges were used, bursting flesh and bone, and permanently crippling the victim. It was described by a seventeenth-century visitor to Scotland as ‘four pieces of narrow board nailed together, of a competent length for the leg, not unlike the short cases we use to guard young trees from the rabbits, which they wedge so tightly on all sides that, not being ably to bear the pain, they promise confession to get rid of it.’

Culled from: Rack, Rope and Red-hot Pincers

 

Dissection Photo Du Jour!

School unknown, ca. 1900. Bucket for waste is visible in the foreground beneath table at left. Private collection.

Culled from: Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine: 1880-1930

 

Garretdom: Olde News

They had quite a thunderstorm in Lima, Ohio in 1886!  And who knew that they had an oil boom in Ohio?  

STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.

Oil Tanks in a Blaze, and a Woman Killed by a Stray Bolt.

LIMA, Ohio, Sept. 23.—This morning at seven o’clock this city was startled by a terrific clash of thunder. In a few moments, black clouds of smoke were seen rolling up from one of the oil wells on the Brotherton land. The fire at once communicated with the tank, and in a few minutes all was on fire. At the same time the gas in the tank three hundred yards west ignited. The wells, all machinery, tanks and about 2400 barrels of oil were consumed. At one o’clock the derrick at the gas works oil well was struck, consuming the entire structure, machinery and tanks and 1200 barrels of oil. This well is adjoining the gas-works, which at one time was in great danger; but the gas-works and all the machinery connected therewith are saved. The railroad bridge was on fire several times, caused by oil running down, but was saved without much damage. About that time high columns of black smoke were seen southeast from the city. Five wells are reported to have been struck by lightning and destroyed: The Hogle No. 2, Shockey, McLain, Holmes and Bowman. Rain ahs been falling in torrents. The thunder and lightning has exceeded anything of the kind known here.

Mrs. Henderson, standing in the doorway of her home near the first well struck, was struck by a stray bolt and killed.

Reports of damage by lightning at several places in this vicinity have been received. At Bluffton the Eastern and Western Narrow Gauge Railroad depot was struck by lightning and totally destroyed. At Beaver Dam the Lake Erie and Western Railroad depot was badly damaged. At Spicerville Charles Hoover’s barn was destroyed, and many barns and outhouses are reported to have been destroyed in the vicinity of Lima.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

MFDJ 10/21/24: Dangerous Photo Ops

Today’s Perfect Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Scrambling around the lip of a fall in Yosemite Park in search of a more “perfect” spot from which to see the water falling has been lethal at least six times. On July 27, 1970, 19-year-old Nicholas Michael Cordil from Los Angeles hiked with Donald Echenberg to the top of Upper Yosemite Fall. They arrived together but Cordil soon separated from his buddy to hoke toward the world-famous scene. Over his shoulder he told Echenberg he was “going to look at the fall.”

Cordil too never came back. Echenberg searched but could not find him. Three days later a hiker found parts of Cordil’s badly damaged body in the deep pools below the base of the waterfall.

How easily these fatal slips occur is often hard to believe. On August 13, 1989, 20-year-old John Eric Ofner from Santa Barbara, California hiked with Gretchen Rose and Celia Denig to the top of Upper Yosemite Fall. The weather was hot. All three hikers went swimming in Yosemite Creek. Now cooled off, Ofner walked to the edge of the waterfall for a better look. He tried to peer downward. He edged a little closer, looked again, and then realized that this was the best view he was going to get. He turned around to head back upstream to Rose and Denig.

Abruptly he lost his footing on the sloping rock and fell facedown into the creek. Even though the water was flowing fairly low, it instantly swept him over the brink. Ofner fell more than 1,400 feet onto granite and was decapitated upon impact.


“Maybe I can get just a little bit closer…”

Culled from: Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite

Sing Sing Death House Prisoner Du Jour!

NAME: Anthony Papa
NUMBER: 106-433
AGE: 27
OCCUPATION: Button Maker
MARITAL: Married, 1 child
PHYSICAL: 5’8″, 183 lbs.
CRIME: Saw 5-year-old girl at his wedding, was attracted to her, struck and killed her, night, premises, Mineola, 4-19-47
CLAIMS: Doesn’t remember doing it (if he did it)
JUDGE: Collins, Nassau County Court
SENTENCED: 10-22-47
RECEIVED: 10-22-47
EXECUTED: 7-1-48

Date May 29, 1945

I, ANTHONY R. PAPA, hereby request that, in the event that I am executed, my eyes be immediately removed and given to the New York Eye Bank, for whatever disposition and use they may wish.

Anthony R. Papa

I approve of the above gift.

Frances Papa
Wife

I think there’s a song by The Adverts about that…  – DeSpair

I found additional information on the crime in the newspaper archive:

Former Service Man Held In Girl’s Death

MINEOLA, N. Y., April 21—AP—Anthony Papa, 27, was held today on a first degree murder charge in the death of six-year-old Rosemary Fusco, who was found dead in her home Saturday night, her throat slashes from ear to ear.

District Attorney James N. Gehrig of Nassau county said that Papa, who had been dishonorably discharged by both the army and the navy, was arrested after police followed a trail of blood from the Fusco home to the Papa home.

Gehrig said that papa, while confessing the slaying yesterday afternoon, asserted that, “I loved her like she was my own child.”

The trail of blood leading to the Papa residence resulted from Papa’s cutting his hand on the window of the Fusco home, Gehrig said.

(Belleville Daily Advocate, Monday April 21, 1947)

Child Slayer Dies In Electric Chair

OSSINING, N.Y., July 2 (AP)—Anthony Papa, 28-year-old child slayer, died in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison last night.

Papa was silent at the end. Yesterday, he had complained about the heat, saying “It’s awful hot along with my other troubles.”

He was convicted of first degree murder on Oct. 12, 1947 for slashing to death six-year-old Rose Marie Fusco in her Mineaola, N. Y., home the preceding April.

(Bangor Commercial, Friday, July 2, 1948)

 

Garretdom: Olde News

Why a Saloon-Keeper Was Murdered.

CLEVELAND, Ohio, Sept. 23.—The Coroner’s inquest in the murder case at Melmore, Ohio, develops the fact that Lewis C. Leidy, a saloon-keeper, was murdered by Charles Gains and Nathaniel Echelberry. The men entered Leidy’s saloon Monday morning and asked for some whisky. Leidy refused to sell to them because their wives had requested him not to do so. The men left the saloon, returning in a few minutes armed with stones. The quarrel was renewed, and Echelberry struck Leidy on the head with one of the missiles, fracturing his skull. Both men then jumped upon their victim and beat and kicked him in a most brutal manner until life was entirely extinct.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook