Category Archives: Garretdom

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

MFDJ 10/15/24: Boys Will Be Monsters

Today’s Exciting Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

This was written by John Marr in his wonderful 1990’s era zine “Murder Can Be Fun“. I’d like to shout out what a splendid bit of writing it is! – DeSpair

The classic recreational drowning occurred in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1925. A fine spring afternoon found 9-year-old Johnny Veres and his little pal Milt, who was only 6, goofing off on the bands of the Merrimac River. Undoubtedly, by the time they answered the summons of history, the two young scamps had already run through the complete retinue of childish riverside amusements. Bare toes had wiggled in mud, stones had skipped across the water, fish had evaded improvised hooks. The lads itched for something new, something different. As they later told police, they were ready “for excitement.”

They found it by adding a new, original twist to an ancient game. For thousands of years, small boys [and girls! – DeSpair] have whiled away many a seaside hour by constructing small crude crafts of flotsam and jetsam. After setting them adrift, the youthful rascals gleefully pelt the products of their labors with stones. The game ends when the target has been smashed to kindling, or, better yet, sunk to the accompaniment of children reveling in the joy of destruction.

Johnny and Milt’s innovation was simple: a living target. Aquatic birds were out; they have an unsporting habit of flying out of range after the first volley. Adult swimmers and mariners are prone to retaliation. This left them but one obvious option.

Somehow or other, they got their hands on an 18-month-old baby. After stripping the squirming infant of her clothes, they threw her into the river and jovially pelted her with rocks as the current bore her away. Unlike their previous floating targets, it wasn’t necessary for them to score too many direct hits to sink the screaming infant. As she went down, they probably thought exultantly, This is excitement! The quick response of the police, summoned by horrified onlookers, was just an added thrill. However, it was too late for the baby. By the time her body was recovered from the river, she was dead.

In custody, Johnny and Milt corroborated each other’s stories, save for one small detail. Each admitted to his part in the kidnapping, and they had no compunction about describing how they threw the stones. But when it came to throwing the baby in the river in the first place, it was a plain case of, “He started it first!”

Milt was eligible to get away with it by virtue of his age; Massachusetts law at the time presumed that a child under the age of seven was unable to understand the nature of their act. No charges were brought against him, although he was held as a material witness. The picture for little Johnny was far grimmer. He was indicated for manslaughter. At his hearing, he put on a show worthy of his spiritual ancestor, Hannah Ocuish. As the judge, visibly moved, read the indictment that threatened to incarcerate the little boy for the remainder of his childhood, Johnny, with all the carefree innocence of his years, amused himself by playing with a handful of pennies a kindly deputy sheriff had given him. As they led the little killer away from the courtroom, he playfully ran away from the sheriff, but was quickly caught. Security was poor as there wasn’t a set of handcuffs in town small enough for his tiny wrists. When confronted with a jail cell and asked what it was for, he announced, “That’s where they put the bad men.” Obviously, not the kind of place a small boy who was only playing expected to end up. At last word, the court shipped Johnny to a local psychiatric hospital for sanity observation.

Oddly, I couldn’t find a photo of the older boy, John Veres, but I did find this photo of little Milt.

And here are a few headlines related to the murder:

Culled from: Murder Can Be Fun #17 by John Marr

Post-Mortem Portrait Du Jour!

The Twins
circa 1852
sixth-plate daguerreotype
3.75″ x 3.25″

In this highly unusual scene, a woman holds two infants, one living and the other deceased and complete hidden from the viewer in a shroud-like wrapping. The most probably explanation is that this was done in order to conceal signs of advanced decomposition, injury, or illness.

Culled from: Beyond the Dark Veil: Post-Mortem and Mourning Photography

Garretdom!

The Scaffolding Gave Way.

LEWISTOWN, Pa., Sept. 26.—While James Banks and James Barr, two painters, were engaged in painting the cornice of the Presbyterian Church yesterday morning the scaffolding on which they were standing gave way and the men were precipitated to the ground below, a distance of fifty feet. Banks was instantly killed, his head striking on a large stone, crushing in the whole top portion of the skull. Barr’s back was hurt and his injuries are pronounced fatal. Banks was thirty-five years old and leaves a wife and three children.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

MFDJ 09/04/24: Doubling the Last Meal

Today’s Fulfilling Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

If the condemned wins a stay of execution after he has eaten his last meal, does he get to choose another meal when his next execution date rolls around?

Absolutely! This has happened many times. The trick is to make sure that you actually have the meal in front of you before the stay is issued. For example, Dobie Gillis Williams (Louisiana) received a stay while he was dining on his last meal. He just continued eating. However, Thomas Thompson (California) received his stay of execution after he had ordered his final meal, but before he had actually received it. The order was canceled.

I’m not sure if Dobie’s first meal was the same as his last meal, but this is an artistic depiction by Teresa Kelly of his last meal prior to his actual execution on January 8, 1999.

Culled from: Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals from Death Row

WEEGEE Du Jour!

Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig (June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968), a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography. Weegee worked in Manhattan, New York City’s Lower East Side as a press photographer during the 1930s and ’40s, and he developed his signature style by following the city’s emergency services and documenting their activity. Much of his work depicted unflinchingly realistic scenes of urban life, crime, injury and death.

Here’s a photo from the book Weegee’s New York: Photographs, 1935-1960:

Murder suspect Alan Downs is led to jail after confessing to killing his wife, circa 1940, in New York City.

(I couldn’t find any additional information about this guy – anyone want to see if you can track the story down?)

Garretdom: Olde News!

SHOT IN HIS TRACKS.

A German Burglar Fatally Wounded While Attempting to Run Away.

During the past ten days a number of small robberies were perpetrated in the Eighth district [Philadelphia]. It was evident from the fact that the houses were all opened from the rear by the same implement, that one man or a single gang was doing the work, and the police were instructed to keep a particularly careful lookout for suspicious characters. Early on Saturday morning Policeman Ritchie saw a man in the act of scaling a fence in rear of 444 north Eighth street. He placed him under arrest, when the prisoner knocked him down and ran. The officer recovered his feet and fired after the fugitive, brining him down at the second shot.

Assistance was secured and the wounded man was taken to the station-house, where he gave the name of Frederick Glass and his residence as 910 Spring Garden street. The wound was found to be a dangerous one and he was sent to the Pennsylvania Hospital, where he died a short time after his admission.

A large chisel found in the man’s pocket was found to fit the marks on the houses which had been robbed or where attempts to force doors and shutters had been made and articles found in his room were identified as having been stolen.

Glass came to this country from Germany a short time ago and took up his lodgings at 910 Sprint Garden street with Mr. Voss. The proprietor of the house says the man had no visible means of support, and frequently remained out all night and slept during the day. The Coroner will investigate the case today.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

MFDJ 08/20/24: Kid Dropper and Little Augie

Today’s Open and Shut Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In the spring of 1920 Police Commissioner Richard Enright called Captain Cornelius Willemse into his office and gave him strict orders to rid the Lower East Side of a pair of notorious Jewish gangsters with long rap sheets: Nathan Kaplan, called “Kid Dropper” for his ability to knock opponents out with one punch, and Jacob Orgen, a diminutive terror known as “Little Augie.” Although the two were in all the same rackets, they were bitter rivals.

Kid Dropper

Little Augie

Among their specialties was providing muscle during labor disputes. If management hired the Kid to get scabs through the picket lines, the strikers hired Little Augie to keep the scabs out. The gangsters extorted shopkeepers and forced them to pay protection money, often from each other. They robbed merchants of their inventory and told them to file for bankruptcy. Then they would sell the stolen swag and kick back a small portion of the illicit profits to the destitute storeowner to keep him in business just so they could rob him again.

With the onset of Prohibition, they expanded their businesses into rum running and dope dealing. Neither man cared how he got his money, so long as the other did not. In the process, many innocent people fell victim to their violent gun battles.

Captain Willemse quickly discovered that his usual tactic of dragging in their henchmen to beat useful information out of them did not work. Kid Dropper had advised his underlings to take their medicine. “There isn’t a chance of you being convicted,” he assured them. “because I can fix a juror or two, and witnesses are made to order.” He spoke from experience, having beaten the rap several times himself despite strong cases against him. The best Willemse could do for the next three years was keep tabs on the gangs through a network of informants that he developed with the help from the city’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles Norris. Willemse convinced him to treat the poor residents in the neighborhood for free. Naturally, the grateful patients wanted to return the favor. Before long Willemse’s telephone was ringing off the hook with anonymous tips about each gangster’s doings, but there was never enough evidence to convict them.

Finally in August 1923, a call came in about a strike that Kid Dropper was contracted to break. The informant told Willemse where the gangsters were going to assemble. More than likely they would be carrying concealed firearms in violation of the Sullivan Law. Willemse and his man caught the entire Dropper gang off guard, except for the Kid. His .38 was on the floor. Willemse arrested him anyway. At a police lineup the next day, thirteen member of Dropper’s gang were identified as participants in violent crimes and remanded to the Tombs. The Kid, however, skirted the law again and was set free, but without his gang to protect him, he knew he would be killed the moment he stepped out of jail. He cut a deal with District Attorney Edward Swann and agreed to leave New York for good on a noon train out of Grand Central Terminal, as long as the police escorted him out of the city.

That night, Willemse received a disturbing phone call. Little Augie already knew about the Kid’s arrangement and was none too happy. The next morning, Willemse detailed eighty detectives to ensure that Dropper left New York alive. His men rounded up Little Augie and every one of his known associates and had them safely under lock and key. Willemse arranged to have the Essex Market Courthouse completely cordoned off as he personally ushered Dropper to a waiting taxicab. As Dropper got into the backseat, Willemse let him know what he thought of him. “If I had my way, I’d throw you out on the street and get you croaked… Don’t ever come back to New York—” Suddenly, a bullet smashed through the rear window of the taxicab and shattered Dropper’s skull. A second bullet ripped through Willemse’s straw hat. As Dropper collapsed, two more bullets pierced his backside. A final round caught the driver.

The killer was a young immigrant, Louis Cohen, recruited by Little Augie to make the hit. The police had frisked him for a weapon, but he concealed the pistol in a newspaper that he had raised over his head.

Louis Cohen

When Cohen appeared for arraignment the next day, his pockets were stuffed with newspaper accounts of his deed. Although he had no money and could not read, he was smart enough to ask the court to appoint State Senator Jimmy Walker of the Warren and Walker law firm as his attorney. Jimmy Walker would go on to become mayor, and his partner, Joseph Warren, would become his police commissioner.

To most everyone, it seemed like an open-and-shut case that would result in Cohen being sentenced to death, but Walker was a very clever lawyer. As part of Cohen’s defense, he convinced the jury that poor misguided youth had done the world a favor by killing the notorious Kid Dropper. The fact that he had nearly killed a police captain was barely mentioned. Cohen escaped the electric chair and was sentenced for murder in the second degree to twenty years in prison. After the verdict, Walker became inundated with gangsters seeking his counsel.

Little Augie also beat the charges against him. Willemse tried to convince him to go straight, but Little Augie would not hear of it. He told Willemse, “If it wasn’t for the likes of us, you wouldn’t have a job.”

For all his bravado, Little Augie met the same fate as Kid Dropper in October 1927. He and his lieutenant, Jack “Legs” Diamond, were ambushed. Little Augie took four bullets to the head. Diamond survived his wounds and went on to become a legend in his own right. Little Augie’s killers were never apprehended, but his death paved the way for Louis “Lepke” Buchalter and his notorious band of marauders, dubbed Murder Incorporated, to take over Orgen’s criminal enterprises.

Jack “Legs” Diamond survived an assassination attempt on August 15, 1927, but refused to cooperate with the police. His companion Little Augie was not as lucky.

Louis Cohen had been contracted by Little Augie to kill his rival Kid Dropper in 1923. After he got out of jail, Cohen found himself on the other end of a gun when he was rubbed out on January 8, 1939.

Culled from: Undisclosed Files of the Police

Crime Scene Du Jour!

Suicide, May 26, Hollywood Hills

Culled from: LAPD ’53

Garretdom

A Locomotive’s Boiler Bursts.

BALTIMORE, Md., Sept. 26.—The engine attached to the Baltimore and Ohio train from New York, due here at 8:30 to-night, burst her boiler about a mile outside the city limits. The engine was completely wrecked, and the baggage and smoking cars telescoped. Fireman Charles Lizer was scalded fatally, and Engineer Jeremiah Morningstar was badly injured. Two passengers were slightly hurt.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook