Category Archives: Garretdom

MFDJ 02/09/24: Racist Laws, 18th Century Style

Today’s Race-Dependent Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

England’s “bloody code” (as it was widely called by its detractors) had its eighteenth-century American counterpart in the swelling number of capital statutes applicable only to blacks. The first of these appears to have been enacted in New York, which in 1712, alarmed by a slave revolt, capitalized attempted murder and attempted rape committed by slaves. Most of these race-dependent capital crimes, unsurprisingly, were created in the southern colonies. Slaves made up more than half the population of South Carolina by 1720 and nearly half that of Virginia by 1750. To manage these captive workforces the southern colonies resorted to ever-increasing lists of capital statutes. In 1740 South Carolina imposed the death penalty on slaves  and free blacks for burning or destroying any grain, commodities, or manufactured goods; on slaves for enticing other slaves to run away; and on slaves maiming or bruising whites. Virginia, fearing attempts at poisoning, made it a capital offense for slaves to prepare or administer medicine. The Georgia legislature determined that crimes committed by slaves posed dangers “peculiar to the condition and circumstances of this province,” dangers which meant that such crimes “could not fall under the provision of the laws of England.” Georgia accordingly made it a capital offense for slaves or free blacks to strike whites twice, or once if a bruise resulted. “The Laws in Force, for the Punishment of Slaves” in Maryland, its legislature found, were “insufficient, to prevent their committing, very great Crimes and Disorders.” Slaves were accordingly subjected to the death penalty for conspiring to rebel, rape a white woman, or burn a house.


Slave sale advertisement from the July 30, 1737 issue of the South Carolina Gazette: “TO BE SOLD on Wednesday the 3d of August a choice Cargo of healthy Slaves, imported in the Ship Pearl Galley…”  Oh, America – so much to answer for!

Colonies with large numbers of slaves expedited the procedures for trying them. As early as 1692 Virginia began using local justices of the peace rather than juries and legally trained judges to try slaves for capital crimes. South Carolina adopted a similarly streamlined procedure in 1740. These systems remained intact as long as slavery existed. Execution rates for slaves far exceeded those for southern whites. In North Carolina, for instance, at least one hundred slaves were executed in the quarter-century between 1748 and 1772, well more than the number of whites executed during the colony’s entire history, a period spanning over a century.


Article from the April 12, 1739 issue of the South Carolina Gazette:

“On Thursday last two Negro-Men named Caesar and Allohoy belonging to Mr. Wm. Romsey and Company, were tried by Thomas Dale and Robert Austin Esq.; two of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace and Mr. John Fraser, Capt. Isaac Holmes and Mr. Henry Perroneau jun. being three Freeholders associated with the said Magistrates persuant to an Act of Assembly, entitled an Act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes and other Slaves. They were charged by Mr. Attorney General with deserting from their Master’s Service, and attempting, with several other Slaves, to run-away off this Province either to Augustine or some other Place, which Charge being fully proved, the former was condemned to die, and the latter to be whipt. Accordingly on Saturday last the said Caesar was executed at the usual Place, and afterwards hung in Chains at Hang-man’s Point opposite to this Town, in sight of all Negroes passing and repassing by Water: Before he was turned off [Turned off? That’s kind of hi-tech!- DeSpair] he made a very sensible Speech to those of his own Colour, exhorting them to be just, honest and virtuous, and to take warning by his unhappy Example; after which he begged the Prayers of all Christian People, himself repeating the Lord’s Prayer and several others in a fervent and devout Manner.”

Culled from: The Death Penalty: An American History

Garretdom: Well-Dressed Targets Edition!

This town is infested by a considerable number of little boys who appear to have nothing else to do except to waylay in pairs any decently dressed, well-behaved boy. The better dressed the boy the more sure he is of being beaten and bruised by these good for nothing little ruffians. Yesterday afternoon a little boy was going up Wabasha street in a quiet manner, and was suddenly, and unexpectedly assaulted by three rough boys. He received two or three blows in the face, and considerable blood flowed from his nose in consequence thereof. As soon as the boys struck their victim all fled as fast as their legs could carry them around the corner into Third street. The attack was a piece of pure wantonness. It is a great pity that some of these little bruisers cannot be arrested and punished.

Culled from the January 11, 1874 issue of St. Paul Pioneer as quoted in Coffee Made Her Insane

 

Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!

This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).

Here’s today’s entry:

October 29th. Very cold, and heavy frost last night. Toothache very severe. Fixed up our tent so that it is weather-proof. Six prisoners came in.

Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost

MFDJ 02/03/24: Distressful Wailing and Maggoty Bones

Today’s Distressful Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Here’s the interesting story of a Nebraska settler who served in the American Civil War as recounted in The Children’s Blizzard:

Born in the rich rolling farmland of eastern Ohio in 1835, Ben Shattuck was twenty-six years old and single when he enlisted in the seventy-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry on November 16, 1861, seven months after the war began. He was assigned to Company B under the command of Second Lieutenant Thomas W. Higgins, and he drilled through the cold, wet winter months along with hundreds of other raw recruits at Camp Logan near Chillicothe. By the end of January 1862, the Seventy-third Ohio was considered battle ready and the men boarded trains bound for West Virginia. Their first taste of action was a forced march of eighty miles over mountain roads in a winter storm. Near Moorfield, on the South Branch of the Potomac, they were ambushed at night by Confederate snipers as they stood warming themselves at roadside campfires. The next day, the Seventy-third came under Rebel fire again while trying to ford the storm-swollen Potomac and take Moorfield. Eventually the Union soldiers prevailed and briefly held the town before retreating back up the river.

Disease ravaged the green regiment in the aftermath of this first battle. Many died in the mud and snow. Whether Ben Shattuck was among those who fell ill during those first bitter weeks of campaigning, we do not know. But he did survive. On March 20, 1862, he was promoted to the rank of corporal. It was sometime during this first year of his service in the Union Army that Ben “converted” to Christianity, as an awakening of religious fervor was termed, and joined the Methodist church—the Methodist Episcopal Church, as it was known then.

Ben served with the Seventy-third Ohio in some of the bloodiest battles of the war, including the disastrous Second Battle of Bull Run at the end of August 1862, in which 147 of the regiment’s 310 men were killed or wounded and 20 taken prisoner, and the humiliating Union defeat at Chancellorsville the following spring. Though Chancellorsville ended in confusion and retreat for the massive Union contingent under General Joseph Hooker, the Confederate Army paid dearly for its victory. Robert E. Lee sustained some thirteen thousand casualties during the campaign (about 22 percent of his army) and lost the charismatic General Stonewall Jackson, mortally wounded by accident by his own men while returning to the Confederate lines at night. By chance, the Seventy-third Ohio was positioned away from the worst of the fighting and they emerged from the engagement relatively unscathed. In all, Union casualties came to more than seventeen thousand men during these few days in April 1863.

At noon on July 1, 1863, the Ohio Seventy-third arrived at Cemetery Hill overlooking Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and for the next three days they endured the almost ceaseless fire of Lee’s army. During the few hours at night that the guns and cannons were silent, the Ohio men lay shivering on the ground, listening to the cries of the wounded and dying on the field. “It was the most distressful wail we ever listened to,” wrote Samuel H. Hurst, the regiment’s commander.

The climax of the battle came on July 3. Early that day the Ohio men were driven back at the Emmetsburg Road, but eventually they advanced as the Union forces succeeded in breaching Lee’s line.

Sometime in the course of that day Ben Shattuck, now a sergeant, sustained a bullet wound in his right leg and was taken prisoner by the Confederate forces. For the next eighty-three days he was held at the Confederate prison camp on Belle Isle, a low-lying island surrounded by rapids of the James River near Richmond, Virginia. There were no permanent barracks for the prisoners, only tents, and food was so scarce that prisoners were reduced to gnawing on maggoty bones and stealing the boots of dying fellow soldiers and selling them for food. “All other thoughts and feelings had become concentrated in that of hunger,” wrote a Union prisoner. “Men became, under such surroundings, indifferent to almost everything, except their own miseries, and found an excuse in their sufferings for any violations of ordinary usages of humanity.” Every day, fifteen to twenty-five prisoners died. Their corpses were wrapped in canvas and tossed into holes in the ground just outside the prison. Many on Belle Isle were forced to sleep on the ground without shelter and died of exposure; many froze to death in the tents.


Belle Isle Prison Camp

“Can those be men?” the poet Walt Whitman wondered when he saw a group of Union soldiers returning from Belle Isle. “Those little livid brown ash streaked, monkey-looking dwarves? — are they not really mummified, dwindled corpses?”

After nearly three months, Ben was released from Belle Isle, possibly in an exchange for Confederate prisoners. The wound in his leg would bother him for the rest of his life. During his final fifteen months of military service, Ben fought with General Sherman’s forces in the siege of Atlanta. He watched the city burn in November of 1864 and he marched with Sherman to the sea. On New Year’s Eve of 1864, Sergeant Shattuck’s term of service expired and he was mustered out of his regiment.

Culled from: The Children’s Blizzard

 

Garretdom! – Empty Morphine Bottle Edition

An Empty Morphine Bottle Was Near.

CHICAGO, Sept. 27.—Attorney Lawrence J. J. Nissen was found lying dead in his office at 170 East Madison street yesterday morning. Upon a table near by stood an empty morphine bottle. At his late home, 107 Schiller street, whither the body was at once conveyed, the theory of suicide is discredited, and the confidence expressed that he died of paralysis. The deceased was for forty years a resident of Chicago, and was formerly a partner of Judge Barnum in the law business. He was fifty-nine years of age and leaves a wife and several grown children.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

So I was going to put this in the “Suicide” category, but then I did additional research and found this article that made me change it to the “Accidental Death” category:

They Sought Relief from Insomnia.

An inquest was held yesterday at No. 432 West Twelfth street on the body of the lawyer, Lawrence J. J. Nissen, who was found dead in his office, No. 170 East Madison street, Sunday morning. A partly emptied bottle labeled morphine was found on a table by the side of the dead man. From the testimony of the daughter, Miss Emma Nissen, a teacher of elocution, it was learned that the lawyer had for years past suffered from insomnia, and that he was always in the habit of taking the drug to induce sleep. Some five years ago he had a narrow escape from death by taking an overdose. Judge Barnum, a former law partner of deceased, also stated that Mr. Nissen was long a sufferer from sleeplessness. The verdict was in accordance with the facts.

Culled from the September 28, 1886 issue of the Chicago Tribune.

Enjoy more morbid olde news at Garretdom!

 

Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!

This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).

Here’s today’s entry:

October 23rd. Very cold and heavy frost last night, for which could not sleep much. Went out again for wood.

Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost

MFDJ 01/13/23: Resisting Variolation

Today’s Undeniably Risky Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Variolation (immunization) against Smallpox in the 18th century was often conducted in special “pox houses” or “inoculation hospitals” that opened in a number of countries. Most variolators required the recipient to undergo a lengthy preparation period of fasting, bleeding, and purging, which, it was believed, would ensure a milder case of the disease. Only the relatively affluent could afford the time and medical fees required for the procedures. In the 1760s, Daniel Sutton and Thomas Dimsdale developed a simplified form of variolation that required little or not preparation of the patient and reduced the size of the incision and the amount of inoculum to diminish the risk of complications. This modified technique usually produced an illness that was considerably milder than natural smallpox, resulting in only a few pustules at the inoculation site and a much lower risk of death.


Physician performing variolation

Despite such improvements, however, variolation was widely opposed by the medical establishment as unsafe and by the church as an interference with God’s will. It did seem illogical to attempt to preserve people’s health by making them sick, and the procedure was undeniably risky: King George III’s son Octavius died as a result of variolation in 1783. On other occasions, recipients became infected with other fatal diseases, such as tuberculosis or syphilis, carried by the pus of the donor. Moreover, although people who had been variolated often acquired an extremely mild case of smallpox and felt well enough to resume their normal activities, they could still transmit the disease through the air to infect others. Thus, in the absence of strict quarantine, variolation often spawned additional epidemics. These hazards led many communities to ban the procedure outright.

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

Garretdom: A Gross Calumny Avenged!

The trial of Madame Clovis Hugues for the murder of a man named Morin, took place yesterday, and resulted in a verdict of “Not guilty.” The case from beginning to end displayed all the elements of a sensational romance. Morin was what, in England, would be termed a “private enquiry officer,” and it was not disputed that he manufactured evidence that mounted to a gross calumny upon the honour of Madame Hugues. This lady appears to have been a somewhat distinguished personage, for her husband had already fought with and killed a man who had previously aspersed her character. Upon this occasion Madame Hugues determined to avenge her own honour. She awaited a favourable opportunity and then shot Morin “like a dog.”  He lingered for some weeks in fearful agony and then died. Madame Hugues admitted, candidly, that the deed was premeditated, and when under examination she did not hesitate to justify her crime as a well-deserved punishment. The trial of such a woman was naturally a scene of considerable excitement. The circumstances of the crime were recounted by eye witnesses, and there was abundant testimony of the abominable persecution to which Madame Hugues had been subjected, and of the purity of her maiden life. M. Gatineau, her counsel, very skillfully availed himself of the favourable points of his client’s case. With consummate art he described her uneventful life as an unmarried girl, her marriage, essentially one of inclination, and then the blight caused by an unworthy imputation of pre-nuptial unchastity. The jury, after a very short deliberation, acquitted Madame Hugues on both charges of murder and premeditation, but they condemned her to pay two thousand francs by way of indemnity to the father of the victim. It is impossible to conceive that such a result could have been brought about in England. Although we hold equally high notions of honour, an English Jury could scarcely be induced to justify a premeditated murder simply upon the grounds of such provocation. The contrast between the offence for which the Captain and mate of the Mignonette are now serving six months’ imprisonment, and that for which Madame Hugues has to pay the nominal penalty of two thousand francs, is by no means in favour of the latter.

Culled from the January 9, 1885 issue of the Gloucester Echo.

Peruse more dreadful olde news at Garretdom.

 

Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!

This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).

Here’s today’s entry:

October 2d. Four months a prisoner, and oh, how long ones! A few Sherman prisoners, captured near Atlanta, came in. Drew a splendid ration of beans. We find it difficult to remember the Sabbath as it comes around, but conclude that this is one up in God’s country, if we haven’t lost our reckoning.

Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost

(10/2/64 was actually a Friday.  Sorry, fellas!)

MFDJ 12/26/23: The Pressing of Matthew Ryan

Today’s Willfully Mute Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In Ireland, Matthew Ryan appeared at the Kilkenny Assizes in 1740, accused of highway robbery. In prison he feigned madness, refused to put any clothes on, and in court affected to be dumb. The jury duly studied his actions and when asked by the judge to decide whether Ryan was mute and mad by the hand of God, or willfully mute, the jury brought in a verdict that he was “wilful and affecting dumbness and lunacy.”

Having pointed out the terrible consequences of his continued refusal, the judge mercifully gave him some days to consider his plight. At the later hearing, however, the robber showed his determination by continuing the charade. Accordingly, the court had no option but to pass the dreaded sentence, and two days later Matthew Ryan was taken under strong escort to the market square in Kilkenny. At this late stage, realization of the horrors to come dawned on the doomed man and, finding his voice, he begged to be hanged instead. But no dispensation could be given and as the large crowd watched with horrid fascination, Ryan was spread-eagled and tied down. A square board was then laid on his chest, on top of which were placed weights, increasing in number until the felon died of his intolerable injuries.


Matthew Ryan, pressed.

Culled from: Rack, Rope and Red-Hot Pincers

 

Garretdom: Accidental Death!

Fatal Explosion of an Oil Lamp.

PITTSBURG, Pa., Sept. 28.—A lamp exploded in the house of Mrs. Mary Flanagan, on Penn avenue last night, badly burning four persons, one of them fatally. Mrs. Flanagan had unscrewed the burner from the lamp without extinguishing the light and was filling it up with oil. The flame suddenly flashed up and the burning fluid was scattered over Mrs. Flanagan, her daughter Sadie, aged eight years, and an infant aged eighteen months. Hugh McGuire, a boarder in the house, succeeded in putting out the flames, his hands being terribly burned. The injuries by Mrs. Flanagan and the daughter are not serious. The babe will die.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

More grim olde news can be perused at Garretdom.

 

Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!

This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).

Here’s today’s entry:

September 14th.  Very hot. The train which left last night collided with a freight train six miles away, by which eight of the cars were smashed, killing and wounding about sixty “Northern Mudsills.” All of the uninjured on that train were sent back into camp, and none left to-day.

Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost

MFDJ 12/21/23: First Police Martyr

Today’s Martyred Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Sir Robert Peel’s new police force had its first martyr in 1830.  PC John Long saw three men apparently estimating their chances of breaking into houses in the Gray’s Inn Road, London. He followed them into Theobald’s Road, Lamb’s Conduit Street and Guildford Street, finally approaching them in Mecklenburgh Square. On being challenged, two of the men ran away. The third stabbed PC Long, who subsequently died.

A Group of Peelers, circa 1870.

The murderer was arrested and convicted under the name of John Smith, but he was actually a burglar called William Sapwell.

Culled from: The Chronicle of Crime

Here’s an account from the OLD BAILEY as published in the September 21, 1830 issue of the Essex, Herts, and Kent Mercury:

MURDER OF JOHN LONG, THE POLICEMAN.

FRIDAY.—John Smith, alias Wm. Sapwell, was capitally indicted for having, on the 16th of August last, committed a murder on John Long, one of the New Police, in Gray’s Inn-lane. On the usual question, “Are you guilty or not guilty of the offence with which you are charged?” being put to the prisoner by the Clerk of the Arraigns, he replied in a firm and audible voice, “Not Guilty.”—Mr. Clarkson and Mr. Bodkin conducted the case for the prosecution, and Mr. Adolphus appeared for the defence.

P. Milligan, examined by Mr. Bodkin—I reside in a court in Gray’s Inn-lane. The 16th of August was on a Monday, and on that day I was returning home from Cromer-street, a little before 12 o’clock. I observed three men coming up Wells-street. They turned into Gray’s Inn-lane-road, and proceeded in the direction of Battlebridge. Immediately afterwards I perceived a policeman coming up Wells-street, out of breath. The policeman inquired of me which direction they had gone, and I told him they had just turned the corner. He came up to them, upon which he said, “What have you been after?” The men made no reply, but instantly surrounded him, and began hustling him. Two of them were on one side and one on the other. One of the men who was on the right struck the policeman a left-handed blow to the side. The policeman instantly fell, and exclaimed very distinctly, “Oh God! I am a dead man!” [Why don’t people ever die like this anymore?- DeSpair]  The two men who were on the right immediately ran down Gray’s Inn-lane, and the other man turned short and set off down Wells-street. I followed the two men, and never lost sight of the prisoner until he was stopped by Mr. Cubitt’s private watchman, at a distance of about 100 yards from the place where the blow was given to the policeman. Whilst I was pursuing the prisoner I saw him throw something from him, both to the right and left, and subsequently pointed out the spot to Joseph Clements.—By Mr. Justice Bayley: The prisoner was nearest the policeman’s left side; but I cannot say whether it was he or the other who struck the blow, though I saw the arm move very distinctly.

Mary Ann Griffiths was examined by Mr. Bodkin, and gave an account similar in every respect to what she has more than once stated at the police-office. She swore positively that the blow was struck by the prisoner.

Amos Dennis, the son of a milkman residing in James-street, Wellington-square, swore that the prisoner was one of the men who surrounded the policeman, and that he was nearer the policeman than the other, who stood on the same side with him. The prisoner struck the policeman a backhanded blow. The blow was given rather sharply and the policeman immediately fell on his right knee. I pursued the prisoner until I saw him in the hands of Mr. Cubitt’s watchman. I am certain the prisoner is the man who struck the deceased policeman.—Mr. Adolphus: I ask you, young man—and I beg you would recollect that perhaps the prisoner’s life depends upon your evidence—can you undertake to swear that the prisoner was the man who struck the blow?—Witness, Yes, Sir, I can. When I was pursuing him there was no one between us, and I had a better opportunity than any one else of observing his person.

Thomas Prenderville, the private watchman, deposed, that he stopped the prisoner as he was running away from the place where the murder was committed.

Other witnesses were called, and on the prisoner being called on for his defence, he said that he was a baker by trade, and never had a shoemaker’s knife in his possession. His disposition was of a nature that never would lead him to strike any one. He was innocent of the crime with which he was charged—So help him God!

Several witnesses were called to character, but none of them appearing, Mr. Justice Bayley summed up the case at great length.—The Jury returned a verdict of Guilty, and he was ordered for execution on Monday next.

CONDUCT SINCE CONDEMNATION.

Immediately after quitting the dock he was conducted to one of the cells allotted to the reception of criminals ordered for speedy execution. Having complained of exhaustion, some slight refreshment was supplied him, and he was visited soon afterwards by the Rev. Mr. Cotton, who remained with him on that occasion for more than an hour engaged in religious conversation, to which the unhappy man is said to have given little attention, his mind being wholly engrossed in contemplation of the scene he had just quitted.

He attached no blame to the jury, nor did he seem to feel that the learned judge who presided had overcharged the case in his summing up; but he strenuously insisted that the witnesses who deposed to the most material points had sworn falsely. He repeated frequently, and with great emphasis, “I am innocent of the charge.” The Rev. Ordinary having adverted to the position in which he was first seen, as described by the witnesses—the immediate fall of the murdered man, and other circumstances equally conclusive, as fixing him with the murder; the culprit replied, “I do not deny that appearances are against me, but I again solemnly declare it was not I that did it. That is all I have to say on the subject.” The Rev. Gentleman, finding him impenetrable on this point, conjured him to employ the whole interval of life allotted to him in preparation from the dread change, which would assuredly take place, and promised to be with him at an early hour on the following morning. Smith said he was thankful for the attention he had received, and would endeavour to profit by the advice.

After the Ordinary had retired, he inquired if any of his friends had called at the prison subsequent to the trial; and being answered in the negative, he peevishly remarked—”I thought so, but no matter. I have nothing to do with the world now. However, it is likely they will come to see me when I go out.” And he then sank into a sullen and almost torpid state of indifference, until he retired to rest. His sleep, the turnkey in attendance describes as broken and restless, but he was yesterday morning in good spirits, and was tolerably composed during the day. He however persisted that he was wholly unconnected with the murder. He stated in a conversation he had with Dr. Cotton, that his real name was Wm. Sapwell, but he assumed that of John Smith when taken to the station-house, presuming that he would be set at liberty by the magistrates on the following morning. He says that he is a native of Wolverhampton, and that his family are in respectable circumstances. He has been residing for several years in London, and at one time carried on a good business as a baker. He has a wife, who is far advanced in pregnancy, and seven children, the oldest being in his fifteenth year. The account he gave Dr. Cotton was, that he had been spending the evening with some friends at the “Bedford” tea-gardens, where he played a match at skittles; that he was returning home through Gray’s inn-lane-road, when hearing a cry of “stop him,” he ran along with the pursuers, merely from curiosity, and was fixed upon as the murderer before he was aware that a murder had been committed.

Yesterday afternoon he was visited by his brother and wife; the latter was deeply affected, but the culprit chid her, as he said, for giving way to “unavailing regret.” His expression was—”You must try and keep up your spirits. What is done cannot be undone now. I must have died sometime, you know.” To which the afflicted wife sobbingly replied—”That’s true, William; but to die such a shameful death will break my heart, and bring disgrace on our poor children.”

At this instant he was agitated, and said “I hope I’ll be allowed to see them once more, and I shall be satisfied.” The wish was communicated to Mr. Wontner, and it was readily conceded. The children are to be admitted to a last interview of their wretched father this day (Sunday) after chapel hour.

We have one more fact to mention in connection with this dreadful affair, and that is most important. From private information, received since the conviction of Sapwell, it appears that another individual has been implicated, who was reported to be in custody at a late hour last night. The information was given at Gatton garden police-office, but the name of the party was not suffered to transpire.

EXECUTION—Yesterday (Monday.)

An immense concourse of spectators assembled to witness the last awful ceremony. A few minutes before the unhappy culprit, who seemed very dejected, but perfectly calm, was brought into the press-room. He advanced to the officer who was to pinion him, and while his hands were being secured, in answer to some questions from the Sheriffs, he asserted his innocence, “When he entered into the presence of his Maker, and he should demand why he came there, he asked, what ought he to answer?” One of the Sheriffs replied, “That he should say he was convicted of an enormous crime by an upright judge and a patient jury, and that he had suffered the penalty of his offence.” Sapwell rejoined, “That he anticipated that the Almighty would then say, “You were unjustly accused, you have no business here, but walk in.”

His neck-cloth was removed and placed in his bosom, and mournful procession slowly proceeded towards the scaffold. The moment before it left the room, he said to one of the officers, “Tell the man to have every thing ready, that I may not be kept waiting outside, if you please, Sir.” Sapwell preserved to the last great firmness, and ascended the platform with a steady step, and in about two minutes afterwards, the being, who had just been seen in the full vigour of health, was a corpse. For a few seconds after the drop fell the hands were raised upwards, but the struggle was brief.

Garretdom!

This sad tale is culled from the February 8, 1878 issue of the Rochester (MN) Post as transcribed in Coffee Made Her Insane:

A Desolate Household.

We have before spoken several times of the terrible ravages of diphtheria in the family of Mr. Wm. Holden, in the town of Haverhill [in Olmsted County]. Below we give the melancholy death list, embracing names, ages and dates of death:

Clara A., died January 3d, aged 18 years; Emily, died January 8th, aged 10 years; Eveline May, died January 9th, aged 7 years; Lonnie Mabel, died January 10th, aged 4 years; Scynthia [What a very Edward Gorey kind of name! – DeSpair], died January 18th, aged 8 years; Henry, died January 31st, aged 13 years.

There are four children left out of a circle of ten, all of whom, we are glad to learn, and the more especially for the sake of the stricken parents, are well and bid fair to be spared to them in their declining years.

The following lines, feelingly appropriate to the sad experience of Mr. and Mrs. Holden, are published by request:

“Six times since the New Year’s dawning,
Six time o’er one saddened home
Has the dark winged angel brooded
Six times has its summon come.

Yes, six times in quick succession
Have the shadows dark been cast,
Six times has the slow procession
From one darkened dwelling passed.

Desolate is now the dwelling,
Oh, how changed since New Year’s day!
Who can speak these parents’ anguish,
O, what words their grief portray!

Sorrowing ones, in this dark hour
Of your deep, unuttered grief,
Gladly would I proffer solace,
Gladly bring your hearts relief.

But the hand that has afflicted
Can alone assuage your woe,
He hath torn and He can heal you;
Yes, in love He dealt the blow.

‘Tis but little time at longest,
That death’s waters can divide:
Soon a glad reunion waits you
With your loved ones o’er the tide.”

Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!

This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).

Here’s today’s entry:

September 9th.  All the sick have been moved into the sheds at the west end. Prisoners from Sherman came in, and many went away at night. Rations of bread and meal, but no salt.

Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost

MFDJ 11/03/23: Filthy Chicago Heat Wave

Today’s Filthy Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

During the suffocating heat wave of August, 1896, most of the residents of Chicago seemed preoccupied by the simple ordeal of surviving the torrid day and suffocating night. If New York’s yellow press indulged its taste for the macabre during the heat wave, the Chicago Daily Tribune matched them for every rotting horse and dead dog. In particular the paper reported the situation among the city’s poor, with one descriptive headline declaring, “WRITHE IN THE GUTTERS — Residents in Tenement Districts suffer from the Heat–Thousands are Driven from Their Homes and Pass the Night in the Streets, Sleeping in Filth — Cobblestones Converted into Pillows — Babies Are Apparently Abandoned by Their Parents and Left to Shift for Themselves.”  Chicago was mirroring New York’s misery. “All the horrors of Hades were made real yesterday in the tenement house districts of Chicago,” reported the newspaper.

In Chicago, heat had reduced people to animals, as the Daily Tribune reported people crawling on all fours through the streets. Hundreds slept in the gutters and in alleyways. At the heart of Chicago’s tenement district, the streets “were literally packed with half-dead human beings.” Moaning people covered the sidewalks, “their faces in the dirt and filth,” grateful for the occasional drop of rain that drenched them and eased the stench of the streets. The most pathetic sight, though, was that of a baby, “who could not have been more than a year old [lying] all alone in the gutter among the filth that had been dumped from a nearby fruit wagon.” The baby’s head rested on the curbstone where it slept soundly, oblivious to the misery around it.

By Sunday, after five days of blistering heat, Chicago’s streets had become festering rivers of filth. With no rain to wash away the horse manure and urine, nor the organic refuse of the businesses and residences, the blistering heat made every street noxious and dangerous. Venturing out into the street at night to catch a breath of air meant making one’s way amid animal feces, rotting produce, and discarded meat trimmings from butchers.

Ironically, the large rectangular garbage containers found on every street became sought-after perches for individuals and families to rest safely above the muck. “The garbage boxes were a godsend to those who found the streets too wet and filthy to lie in,” a reporter from the Tribune observed. “Wherever one of the foul-smelling receptacles was, there was sure to be at least one person stretched upon it. Some of the boxes were covered with an old quilt, and babies, stark naked, lay stretched upon them without any one, apparently, having any fear of their falling off.”

Culled from: Hot Time in the Old Town

 

Garretdom! Annoying Swede Edition!

Nearly a Homicide.

On Sunday last Julius Lang aged 16 years and several other boys were playing ball at Green’s farm, when several Swede boys came along, and one of them said to the players: “You fellows don’t know how to play ball.” This with other remarks so exasperated the temper of Lang that he turned to one of the boys who was playing ball and asked him for his pistol, saying he would shoot some of the Swedes. The boy refused to let Lang have it, but he being much the stoutest, took the weapon by force, and then turning on the Swede boys shot Edward Hogan, lodging about a dozen small bird shot in his breast and stomach, one shot entering just above the abdomen was at first supposed to be dangerous, but nothing serious will occur from the wounds.

Lang was brought before Justice Fleischman on Tuesday, and after a hearing was committed to the County jail in default of $300 bail to appear at the next term of the District Court.

Duluth Minnesotian, September 12, 1874 as featured in Coffee Made Her Insane

More dreadful olde news can be perused at Garretdom!

 

Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!

This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).

Here’s today’s entry:

July 18th. A man was shot near the dead-line by the accidental discharge of a sentry’s musket, and killed. Prisoners who came in to-day report Montgomery, Ala., burnt by a Union raiding party.

Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost

MFDJ 11/1/23: Radioactive Sarah

Today’s Radioactive Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint. The incidents occurred at three factories in United States: one in Orange, New Jersey, beginning around 1917; one in Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s; and one in Waterbury, Connecticut, also in the 1920s.

After being told that the paint was harmless, the women in each facility ingested deadly amounts of radium after being instructed to “point” their brushes on their lips in order to give them a fine tip;  some also painted their fingernails, faces, and teeth with the glowing substance. The women were instructed to point their brushes in this way because using rags or a water rinse caused them to use more time and material, as the paint was made from powdered radium, zinc sulfide (a phosphor), gum arabic, and water.

Five of the women in New Jersey challenged their employer in a case over the right of individual workers who contract occupational diseases to sue their employers under New Jersey’s occupational injuries law, which at the time had a two-year statute of limitations, but settled out of court in 1928. Five women in Illinois who were employees of the Radium Dial Company (which was unaffiliated with the United States Radium Corporation) sued their employer under Illinois law, winning damages in 1938.

Here is the sad story of one of the Radium Girls.

Dr. Harrison Martland, medical examiner of Essex County, New York,  decided to meet a brave young woman called Marguerite Carlough who lay weakly in her hospital bed, her shockingly pale face surrounded by limp dark hair. At this time, “her palate had so eroded that it opened into her nasal passages.” Also visiting Marguerite was her sister Sarah Maillefer.


Dr. Harrison Martland

Sarah was no longer quite as matronly in figure as she had once been; she’d been losing weight for the past year or so. It was the worry, she thought. Worry for Marguerite, who was so badly ill; worry for her daughter, who was now fourteen years old. Like most mothers, she rarely worried about herself.

A week ago, she’d noticed that she’d started to bruise easily. And it was more than that, if she was honest with herself; large black-and-blue spots had broken out all over her body. She’d come to see Marguerite anyway, not wanting to miss the visit, limping up the stairs with her walking cane, even though she felt very weak. Her teeth were aching, too, but you had to put things into perspective; look at her sister: she was far worse off. Even when her gums started to bleed, Sarah thought only of her sister, who was so close to death.

As Martland met the Carlough girls, he observed that although Marguerite was more ill than Sarah, Sarah was also not well. When he asked her, she confessed that the black-and-blue spots were causing her intense pain.

Martland ran tests and found Sarah to be very anemic. He told her the results, spoke with her about her jaw trouble. And then Sarah, perhaps finally worried over what it might mean, “went bad quite rapidly” and had to be admitted to the hospital. But at least she wasn’t alone. She and Marguerite shared a hospital room: two sisters together, facing whatever might lie ahead.

The hospital doctors examined Sarah closely, concerned at her decline. Her face was swollen on the left side, her glands hot and tender. She was running a temperature of 102.2 degrees—increasing up to 105.8 degrees in the evenings—and by now had marked lesions in her mouth. She was, it appeared, “profoundly toxic.”

Martland brought in new equipment to test the radium in her breath; the normal result he was looking for was 5 subdivisions in 30 minutes. This test wasn’t as easy as simply holding the measuring device over Sarah’s prone body, though. This test, she had to help with.

It was very hard for her to do, because she was so unwell. “The patient was in a dying;, almost moribund condition,” remembered Martland. Sarah found it difficult to breathe properly. “She couldn’t for five minutes’ time.”

Sarah was a fighter. It’s not clear if she knew what the tests were for; whether she had the capacity at that stage even to know what was going on around her. But when Martland asked her to breathe into the machine, she tried so very, very hard for him. In… out…In…out. She kept it going, even as her pulse raced and her gums bled and her gammy leg ached and ached. In…out…In…out. Sarah Maillefer breathed. She lay back on the pillows, exhausted, spent, and the doctors checked the results.

The subdivisions were 15.4. With every breath she gave, the radium was there, carried on the very air, slipping out through her painful mouth, passing by her aching teeth, moving like a whisper across her tongue. Radium.

Sarah Maillefer was a fighter. But there are some fights that you cannot win. The doctors left her in the hospital that day, on June 16, 1925. They didn’t see as her septic condition increased; as new bruises bloomed on her body, blood vessels bursting under her skin. Her mouth would not stop bleeding; pus oozed from her gums. Her bad leg was a constant source of pain. Everything was a constant source of pain. She couldn’t take it anymore; she became “deliroious” and lost her mind.

But it didn’t take too long, not after that. In the early hours of June 18, only a week after she’d been admitted to hospital, Sarah Maillefer died.


Sarah Carlough Marguerite

Dr. Martland performed an autopsy on Sarah’s remains and he discovered something that no one had ever appreciated before. For he didn’t just test Sarah’s affected jaw and teeth for radioactivity—the site of all the dial-painters’ necroses—he tested her organs, he tested her bones.

They were all radioactive.

Her spleen was radioactive; her liver; her gammy left leg. He found it all over her, but chiefly in her bones, with her legs and jaw having “considerable radioactivity”—they were the parts most affected, just as her symptoms had shown.

It was an extremely important discovery. Dr. Humphries in Orange had never connected the cases he had seen because the women presented different complaints—why would he have thought that Grace Fryer’s aching back might be connected to Jennie Stocker’s peculiar knee or Quinta McDonald’s arthritic hip? But it was the same thing affecting all the girls. It was radium, heading straight for their bones —yet, on its way, seeming to decide, almost on a whim, where to settle in the greatest degree. And so some women felt the pain first in their feet; in others, it was in their jaw; in others still their spine. It had totally foxed their doctors. But it was the same cause in all of them. In all of them, it was the radium.

There was one final test that Martland now conducted. “I then took from Mrs. Maillefer,” he remembered,” portions of the femur and other bones and placed dental films over them. [I] strapped [the films] all over [her bones] at various places and left them in a dark room in a box.” When he’d tried this experiment on normal bones, leaving the films in place for three or four months, he had not got the slightest photographic impression.

Within sixty hours, Sarah’s bones caused exposure on the film: white fog-like patches against the ebony black. Just as the girls’ glow had one done, as they walked home through the streets of Orange after work, her bones had made a picture: an eerie, shining light against the dark.

And from that strange white fog Martland now understood another critical concept. Sarah was dead—but her bones seemed very much alive: making impressions on photographic plates; carelessly emitting measurable radioactivity. It was all due, of course, to the radium. Sarah’s own life may have been cut short, but the radium inside her had a half-life of 1,600 years. It would be shooting out its rays from Sarah’s bones for centuries, long after she was gone. Even though it had killed her, it kept on bombarding her body “every day, every week, month after month, year after year.”

It is bombarding her body to this day.

Martland paused in his work, thinking hard. Thinking not just of Sarah, but of her sister Marguerite, and all of the other girls he had seen.  Thinking of the fact that, as he later said, “There is nothing known to science that will eliminate, change, or neutralize these [radium] deposits.”

For years the girls had been searching for a diagnosis, for someone to tell them what was wrong. Once they had that, they believed faithfully, then the doctors would be able to cure them.

But radium poisoning, Martland now knew, was utterly incurable.

Culled from: Radium Girls

Sarah’s sister Marguerite died on December 26, 1926. What a long time to suffer.  

 

Garretdom!

Children Bitten by a Rattlesnake.

CHICAGO, Sept.28.—Near Andalusia, Ala., the three children (ranging from two to six years old) of a family went out Sunday afternoon to play near the house. A large tree had been blown down and they were playing around in the hole made by the roots of the tree being torn up. The afternoon passed and at night the children were missed. The parents instituted search, and they soon found them laying near the roots of the fallen tree. The two younger ones were dead and the eldest was in a dying condition. Upon investigation it was found that the children had all been bitten by a rattlesnake which had made its den under the roots of the tree. The bodies were terribly swollen, and looked as if they had been bitten in several different places. The elder child died during the night and the three innocents were buried together.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair – 1886 Morbid Scrapbook
More Olde Bad News found at Garretdom.

 

Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!

This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).

Here’s today’s entry:

July 16th. Two tunnels have been discovered, one of them running fifty yards outside of the stockade, and would probably have been a great success, had the place not been betrayed by a fellow of the 7th Maine, who for the extra mess of pottage sold his brethren. Jim Miller has gone in with Osgood, so Shep. and I have the tent to ourselves.

Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost

MFDJ 10/14/23: The Christmas Tree Ship

Today’s Foundering Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Apart from the many abandoned copper mines and ghost towns dotting the region, Michigan’s densely forested Upper Peninsula yields a rich harvest of second-growth pine and balsam trees. Beginning in early November, the local woodcutters and lumbermen commenced shipment of Christmas trees to the inhabitants of Milwaukee, Chicago, and the lesser cities and towns dotting the shorelines of the lower Great Lakes.

In the early years the task of delivering the fragrant spruce trees via Lake Michigan was the province of Captain Herman Schuenemann and his brother August, who in 1887 conceived the idea of hauling the bundled cargo, each bundle measuring six to eight feet, by lake schooner.

With his load of pines secure in the hold, Schuenemann sold Christmas trees and hand-fashioned wreaths from his mooring at the Clark Street Bridge in Chicago. The tallest trees drawn from the lot were presented to the grateful proprietors of the downtown theaters. In return, the brothers received complimentary season passes.


A 1909 photo of Captain Herman Schuenemann, center, Mr. Colberg, right, and W. L. Vanaman, left.

Herman Schuenemann, master of the Rouse Simmons, his wife, and three young daughters lived in a tiny flat at 1638 North Clark Street, a little more than a mile north of the river. The eldest daughter, Elsi, was devoted to her father and had recently taken an active interest in his seasonal business.

By 1912, Chicagoans had become accustomed to buying the well-shaped trees from the jovial Schuenemann for prices ranging from seventy-five cents to a dollar. It was as much a cherished holiday tradition as the Fourth of July fireworks celebration and the Taste of Chicago would become to future generations of city dwellers.

Herman affixed a hand-painted sign to the wharf, reminding his customers that he had ventured deep into the snow-covered woods of Manistique and Thompson, Michigan, and had personally selected and chopped down only the finest trees for his friends and business associates back in Chicago.

The shipment of Christmas trees via the Great Lakes was not without risk. The month of November was particularly treacherous for the Lake Michigan merchantmen. High winds and gale-like conditions had sent many a good craft to the bottom. The maritime sailors bitterly recalled the disappearance of the passenger ship Chicora in the heavy seas of January 1895. The only traces of the vessel were two bottle notes that washed ashore four months later, purportedly written by the doomed sailors moments before sinking. In 1898, Captain Schuenemann’s brother August went down with all hands while manning the fifty-five-ton schooner S. Thal in the churning waters off the north suburban Glencoe shoreline.

The threat of dangerous weather conditions failed to deter Herman Schuenemann, who purchased an eighth interest in the Rouse Simmons in 1910 with fellow navigator and Chicagoan Charles Nelson. The Rouse Simmons was fitted for duty in 1868 by McLelland and Company of Milwaukee. Measuring 123.5 feet in length, the wooden schooner carried three masts and was intended primarily for the lumber trade.


The Rouse Simmons 

With a crew and passenger list of 16 and between 27,000 and 50,000 trees tied up and bundled below deck, Captain Schuenemann set sail from Manistique, Michigan, on November 22, 1912, bound for Chicago. Skies were overcast and high winds were predicted. The Rouse Simmons headed straight into the open waters of the lake, heedless of the ominous weather reports. When the storm broke, the ancient wooden craft found itself hopelessly trapped. The flag of distress was hoisted, but there was little the coastal rescue vessels at Sturgeon Bay and Kewaunee could do to assist the imperiled ship traveling in such bad weather. The ship foundered in the rough water before the ice-caked masts and the sails blew out. Shortly thereafter, the Rouse Simmons disappeared.

Eighteen days of anguish, fear, and worry passed. In a dingy little room at South Water and Clark Street overlooking the Chicago River, Elsie Schuenemann held out hope that her father’s schooner would eventually appear on the distant horizon. She was weaving Christmas garlands, said to have come from the splintered trees recovered by coastal residents of Wisconsin where the trees had washed ashore. Facing destitution, the daughter of Captain Schuenemann and her grief-stricken mother sold the garlands to the public. Every dollar the family possessed was tied up in the boat. The Chicago Inter-Ocean newspaper, with the cooperation of the Lake Seamans Union, organized an emergency relief fund for the family.

“I am going to make an attempt to carry on father’s Christmas tree business,” vowed the brave young woman. “I will get friends to help me and send my trees by rail to Chicago and sell them from the foot of Clark Street. Ever since I was a little girl Papa has sold them there, and lots and lots of people never think of going any other place for their trees.”

W.C. Holmes Shipping, for whom Schuenemann skippered a vessel in his younger days, placed the schooner Oneida at the family’s disposal. It was moored at the Clark Street Bridge where the Rouse Simmons had stood for years, and was laden with Christmas trees recovered from Sturgeon Bay and shipped to Chicago. A cherished Yuletide tradition would remain unbroken.


Mrs. Barbara Schuenemann, left, widow of Captain Herman Schuenemann, with her daughter Elsie, right. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department dispatched the revenue cutter Tuscarora to search the small islands in Lake Michigan for survivors and clues as to the precise location of the doomed Rouse Simmons. The hopes and prayers of sixteen bereft families went with them but quickly faded.

Back in Chicago, a seaman who had signed on with the Rouse Simmons related a strange story. Hogan Hoganson, a superstitious Swede who lived at 413 North Milwaukee Avenue, had relied on his instincts and lived another day. He said that he refused to make the homeward voyage to Chicago after he observed several rodents leave the ship and scurry for cover in the shelter of the docks. It is a tradition of the sea that when a rodent abandons ship, disaster is lurking.

“The boys laughed at me,” said Hoganson. “They laughed at me for they mostly were not old sailors. to them the rats leaving meant nothing—but to me, who have heard of this strange thing for years—well I’m glad I got the hunch and came back by rail.”

Two bottle messages were reportedly retrieved. The first one was pulled from the beach at Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on December 13, 1912. “Friday. Everybody goodbye. I guess we are all through. Sea washed over our deck load Tuesday. During the night, the small boat was washed over. Ingvald and Steve fell overboard on Thursday. God help us. Herman Schuenemann.”

Ingvald Newhouse was a deck hand taken on board just before the sailing. Stephen Nelson was the first mate and the son of Captain Charles Nelson, also lost.

A second bottle note from Captain Nelson was reportedly found in 1927. “These lines were written at 10:30 p.m. Schooner R.S. ready to go down about twenty miles southeast of Two Rivers Point, between fifteen to twenty miles off shore. All hands lashed to one line. Goodbye.”

From time to time other curious artifacts, including a human skull believed to have come from the lost Christmas tree ship, would be caught in fishermen’s nets. On April 23, 1924, Captain Schuenemann’s wallet containing business cards and newspaper clippings was recovered at Two Rivers Point. But the precise location of the Rouse Simmons remained a Great Lakes mystery until October 1971, when diver G. Kent Bellrichard of Milwaukee found the remarkably well-preserved wreck lying under 180 feet of water off the coast of Two Rivers. The anchor was raised and placed on display at the Milwaukee Yacht Club. A signboard and porthole are on public view at the Milwaukee Public Library marine room.


Wreckage of the Rouse Simmons with a Christmas Tree placed on the bow

As to the fate of the surviving Schuenemanns, Elsie and her mother made good on their promise to continue with Papa’s business. A Christmas tree ship was moored at the Clark Street Bridge every holiday season thereafter until 1933.

The tragedy of the Rouse Simmons was forever immortalized in verse by Chicago Daily News reporter and book author Vincent Starrett.

The Ballad of the Christmas Tree Ship

This is the tale of the Christmas ship
     that sailed o’er the sullen lake;
And of sixteen souls that made the trip,
And of death in the foaming wake.

Culled from: Return Again to the Scene of the Crime

Garretdom: Sparring Death Edition!

A SPARRING BOUT HOMICIDE.

How Young Charles Archibald Got Out of a Very Serious Affair.

Charles Archibald, a young weaver, yesterday pleaded guilty before Judge Peirce [sic] to manslaughter in causing the death of John Cameron on the 15th of May, and Robert Hamilton, indicted for complicity in the offence, was acquitted. It was in evidence that Archibald and Cameron, while in an intoxicated condition, engaged in a sparring bout for fun on a hill near Hartwell street and Indiana avenue, and that Hamilton, who had been drinking with them, was a witness to the encounter. The contestants, it was said, were so drunk “that they fell all over each other,” and in the last round Cameron received an injury in the head which caused death a few hours later. District Attorney Graham said that it was but fair to say that Archibald was a hard-working young man, who had borne a previous good character, and that in view of all the circumstances of the case he would recommend him to his Honor’s clemency.

“Sparring in fun in this case proved to death in earnest,” said Judge Peirce to the prisoner. “I am sure you regret it. The root of the whole matter lies in the drinking custom of this city [Philadelphia]. It is a pity that you and other hard-working young men like you should spend all your wages for that which is not bread or strength, but which leads to so much misery. I have taken into consideration your previous good character and the recommendation of the District Attorney, and the sentence of the Court is, that you undergo an imprisonment of four months and two weeks, from the 14th day of May last.” This had the effect of discharging the prisoner yesterday.

From the collection of The Comtesse Despair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

More grim olde news can be found at Garretdom!

 

 

Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!

This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).

Here’s today’s entry:

June 28th. Hot. Heavy shower in the evening. Six hundred prisoners from Grant’s army, taken near Petersburg, came in. Among them we found the familiar faces of [Thomas] Winn, [Thomas Stephens] Stevens, and [William H.] Tyler from the 21st. Thirty Indian sharp-shooters from Northern Michigan, also. I learn that my brother Henry is with the regiment, and is acting adjutant.

Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost

MFDJ 09/08/23: Prison Camps of Siberia

Today’s Unsanitary Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Not without reason is Novosibirsk called the “Capital of Siberia”. As of 1982, fifteen concentration camps and four prisons provided sufficient grounds for calling it a “capital”.  Here are a few “highlights” of the area.


Siberian prison camp, 2001.

In the city’s Dzerzhinskii District is a pre-trial detention prison in which 3000 inmates are waiting for their day in court and subsequent transferal to a camp. The prison is always full, though the actual number of inmates incarcerated here varies. Twenty prisoners are confined to a cell, thus allowing 1.5 square meters per person. The cells contain double-level plank-beds; mattresses and linen are not provided. The cells are dirty and infested with lice. The prison also accommodates four death cells. Executions are carried out by firing squads.

In Dzerzhinskii District in the northern part of the city, about 1000 prisoners from camp no. 98/8, a strict-regime facility, are assigned to work in two nuclear warhead plants, innocuously designated as “Chimkontsentrat” and “Chimapparat”. The high level of radioactivity emanating from the plants renders dangerous any visit to the immediate vicinity.

Camp no. 91/10 is a hospital where sick prisoners or prisoners completely exhausted from their backbreaking work are delivered. O.Z., an eyewitness, reports: “I arrived at the camp hospital on Gusinobrodskoe Highway without having had any camp experience before, and I thought the place was an inferno. The hospital wards—barracks, in effect—were packed with sick people. It was cold and damp everywhere. A stench emanated from the overfilled rooms. The thug-like hospital attendants lived off the rations of the patients, to whom the physicians in turn paid no attention. I was brought into the surgery ward, as I was suffering from acute appendicitis. Immediately following the operation, I was sent out with some other patients to work in the courtyard or in the kitchen. We were also made to tidy up the operating room and clean the surgical instruments. I was shocked by the sanitary conditions. Several of the forceps, for example, were rusted. In the evening, we were assigned to sharpen the hypodermic needles systematically with a hone. I witnessed dozens of cases in this ‘hospital’ of desperate prisoners driven to self-mutilation by the brutal working conditions in the logging camps. Instances of prisoners who had chopped off a finger, swallowed a nail, or stitched a dirty thread through the flesh of an arm or leg were common. These prisoners, however, were never treated. The doctors’ response was, ‘You messed yourself up, now you can go rot to death for it.’”

Culled from: The First Guidebook to Prisons and Concentration Camps of the Soviet Union

 

Garretdom: Scarce Locals Edition

Culled from the Prairie Schooner, Marshall, Minnesota, September 13, 1873:

Somebody’s child living out here on somebody’s farm had a finger cut off the other day, but we are unable to learn names and their particulars. Hope it is done aching by this time. If anybody else will cut off a finger we will lend them a good sharp knife, will pay for having it (the finger) sewed on, and will give a good square notice of the affair in the Schooner. Locals [local news items] are scarce and getting scarcer.

Culled from: Coffee Made Her Insane

More weird olde news can be found at Garretdom.

MFDJ 09/04/23: The Clifton Disappears

Today’s Ferocious Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The Clifton was a 308-foot (92m) steel whaleback bulk freighter, originally launched as the Samuel Mather at Superior, Wisconsin, in 1892. Whaleback freighters, sometimes called “pig” boats, were designed to sit low in the water and as such, they were not favorites of crewmembers who were confined below decks without portholes.


The Clifton during its days as the Samuel Mather

On Saturday, September 20, 1924, the captain of the Clifton, Emmet D. Gallagher, was trying to load 2200 tons of crushed stone at Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, but was short of crew. The freighter had recently been converted to a self-unloader that despite the name required more men, not fewer, to operate. Gallagher ordered the chief engineer to round up the necessary crew and so when the Clifton left Sturgeon Bay, there were 27 men aboard.

The Clifton passed the Old Point Mackinac light and turned to the southeast. The captain was hoping to reach the Birmingham Sand & Stone Company dock in Detroit by late Monday afternoon. Conditions were not unusual when they put out into Lake Huron despite a strong southwest wind and building seas, but by late Sunday afternoon, the storm had strengthened to a ferocious gale.

By noon on Wednesday, the Clifton had failed to arrive in Detroit. No distress calls had been received and the last sighting had been on Sunday morning off Forty Mile Point. Nor had the vessel taken shelter in any of the harbors along the eastern shore.  So what happened?

September 28, the steamer Glencairn came across a wreckage field and slowed to fish debris out of the lake. They found the broken remnants of the Clifton‘s pilothouse with the ship’s clock pointing to 4 o’clock. The hull, however, had never been positively identified and is likely located somewhere northeast of Oscoda, Michigan.

Culled from: Disaster Great Lakes

And you’ll be pleased to know that since this book was published, the Clifton has been located!  From the September 21, 2017 issue of the Detroit Free Press:

On Sept. 21, 1924, the steamship S.S. Clifton left Surgeon Bay, Wis., carrying a load of stone to Detroit. The freighter was seen passing through the Straits of Mackinac at 10:20 a.m., and was last seen by a tug boat on upper Lake Huron that evening,

A gale came up, sweeping across the lake. The storm was violent and unrelenting.

The S.S. Clifton would founder, taking with it the lives of all 28 sailors on board.

Three days later, when the S.S. Clifton didn’t arrive in Detroit as scheduled, a thorough search of the Lake Huron coast line – from Oscoda (near Alpena) to Port Huron – had failed to reveal any trace of the missing ship.

Eventually, wreckage from the S.S. Clifton, began drifting ashore on the Canadian side of Lake Huron, indicating that the whaleback freighter sank.

Also, the fact that no bodies floated ashore told investigators that the S.S. Clifton sank very quickly and that the sailors had no time to get off the ship, or launch lifeboats.

The exact cause of her sinking was never determined, and her final resting place at the bottom of Lake Huron has remained a mystery for nearly a century.

“The S.S. Clifton has been on many wreck hunter’s bucket lists ever since she vanished in 1924,” said David Trotter, renowned Great Lake’s shipwreck discoverer, deep diver, author and owner of Undersea Research Associates. “Of the remaining shipwrecks left to find in the Great Lakes, the Clifton would easily be number one.”

Trotter has spent the last 40 years searching for and discovering Great Lake’s shipwrecks. Many of his discoveries have been recognized worldwide as some of the most important historical and archeological findings in Great Lakes maritime history.

Some of Trotter’s discoveries include the sidewheel steamer Keystone State, which sank with all hands in 1861; the four-masted schooner, Minnedosa, which sank with all hands in 1905; and the 436-foot steamship Hydrus, which was lost on Laker Huron during the great storm of 1913.

But the S.S. Clifton had eluded him, just like it had eluded all the wreck hunters before him.

“I started searching for the Clifton in 1987,“ said Trotter. “We were searching mostly in the northern part of Lake Huron near her last reported sighting in 1924.”

While Trotter searched for the Clifton, he would find many other shipwrecks along the way, so his endless side-scanning of the lake bottom wasn’t futile.

“Lake Huron has 9,500 square miles on the U.S. side, and if you also add the Canadian side, that’s a grand total of 25,000 square miles,” said Trotter. “That means there’s an awful lot of water out there to go looking for a given ship that was barely over 300-feet long.

“The description of her loss was so oblique as to possibilities that you knew you had a tremendous area to cover.

“It’s just a matter of whether you start in the right area first or you end up in the right area last.”

Trotter ended up in the “right area” in the summer of 2016.

“Myself and my team of technical divers were working on another project in June of 2016,” said Trotter. “We discovered and identified two schooners – the Venus and the Minnedosa– which were lost in 1887 and 1905, respectably.

“On our last day of survey, we hooked another target. We logged the coordinates of that target, but decided at the time to put it aside because we wanted to focus exclusively on the two newly discovered schooners.”

On Sept. 24, 2016, Trotter and his dive team decided they wanted to make a quick dive on the target they discovered three months prior. When the divers surfaced, Trotter happened to be videotaping, and one of the divers said, “Dave, there’s a whaleback down there.”

Trotter responded by saying, “You have to be kidding me; that has to be the Clifton!”

Although the visibility wasn’t great, the divers managed to use GoPros and capture some footage of the shipwreck, which Trotter then scrutinized before he officially identified the shipwreck as the long-lost S.S. Clifton.

“The Clifton was the only whaleback ship left in Lake Huron that hadn’t already been found,” said Trotter. “There was no question we had found the Clifton.”

Trotter was stunned to learn that the Clifton had traveled 100 miles south of where many shipwreck hunters believed she had met her demise.

“Last sightings are not necessarily confirmation of where an event happened, and that couldn’t be more true than in this particular case,” added Trotter.

Trotter decided to stay quiet about his Clifton discovery because he wanted to get his dive team back out to the wreck site during the 2017 summer months to further investigate and document the Clifton.

“We made nine separate expeditions out to the Clifton wreck site, during July and August,” said Trotter. “The visibility is much better at that depth during the summer months, so we could capture far better footage, in addition to really exploring the vessel, both inside and out.

“Finding the Clifton is one part of solving the mystery. The other part is attempting to understand what happened to this ship in her final moments that caused her to sink.”

On a day in early July, when the surface of Lake Huron was calm, Trotter and his experienced team of divers made their way back out to the Clifton wreck site. Five divers, each using mixed-gas, descended below the surface and slowly made their way down to the wreck.

“The bow of the Clifton sustained heavy damage,” said Trotter, after having seen footage shot by the divers. “The first 40 feet of the bow section is completely destroyed, likely caused by the impact with the lake’s bottom when she sank.

“The Clifton lays over on her port side at about a 45-degree angle.

“The turrets are still well in tact at the stern.

“We found that the self-unloading mechanism was still in position, and that was an interesting discovery because we now realize that the unloading mechanism didn’t break free, causing the Clifton to have instability, resulting in her sinking.

“We explored the ship’s rudder, and it was interesting to us that it was continuing to be straight forward, causing us to conclude that the Clifton continued under power as she torpedoed to the bottom of Lake Huron.

“Our divers were able to enter the stern section of the Clifton, weaving their way with great skill through the engine room, where they documented tremendous amounts of debris.

“We looked for a reason that might have caused her sinking from a mechanical standpoint, but we didn’t see one.

“The divers were able to look at many of the original items inside the ship that were still intact, like the paneling and architecture.

“The cargo hatches were all open on the ship, which caused all the stone and aggregate that the Clifton was hauling, to spill all out onto the floor of Lake Huron.

“Divers also came across signage inside the ship, and also saw an unopened suitcase, but due to the large amount of debris, they couldn’t reach the suitcase.”

To this day, Trotter can’t believe that he found the S.S. Clifton by accident.

“The only whaleback steamer that was lost in Lake Huron was the Clifton, and her disappearance has been one of the Great Lakes’ greatest mysteries,” said Trotter. “Historical records will validate much of the information we have pulled up from the wreck, and will provide historians new primary source information about this shipwreck.”

Trotter plans to continue to venture out to the Clifton site and send his divers down to do more documentation.

“We want to continue exploring the engine room and the cabin structure at the stern,” added Trotter. “We also would like to retrieve the suitcase, if possible, bring it up and see what may be inside.”

Other than the mysterious loss of Le Griffon, Robert Cavelier de La Salle’s ship that was lost somewhere on the Great Lakes in 1679, Trotter strongly believes that the discovery of the S.S. Clifton is the next best thing, when you consider the few remaining legendary shipwrecks that are yet to be found in the Great Lakes.

“The Clifton is one of the last mysteries on the lakes,” said Trotter. “We’ve managed to solve it.”

Photos of the wreckage can be viewed here.

 

Garretdom: Farm House Horror

A GIRL’S FRIGHTFUL MURDER.

Tramps Enact a Farm House Horror on an Unprotected Woman.

FARMINGTON, Mo., Sept. 30.—[Special.]—A brutal and horrible murder of a  young woman named Annie Veath, daughter of a respectable old German named Peter Veath, was committed in St. Genevieve county, about sixteen miles from this place yesterday.  While the mother of the young woman was absent at a neighbor’s and the boys were at work in the fields, some villainous tramp went to the house, murdered her and threw her body into the well, where it was found by the family. Some of the furniture drawers were opened, as if robbery was the object of the murder, but whether the girl was abused before being killed is not known. Sheriff Jokerts of St. Genevieve county passed through here this morning on the hunt of the villain, having secured the measure of the man’s track at the house. He tracked the fellow some distance in this direction. A man with a dark moustache and dressed in dark clothes had been at the house during the day before the murder was committed. He wanted to know if he could get luncheon for himself and a partner, saying he would return in a short time. The young woman’s brother was at the house after this visit, and was told of the man being there, but paid no further attention to it and went to work again.

Great excitement prevails in the vicinity, and if the guilty party were caught there would likely be a neck-tie party. A reward of $200 has been offered for the apprehension of the murderer.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair – 1886 Morbid Scrapbook

I researched the newspapers but I couldn’t find any evidence that the tramp was ever abducted.  If indeed a tramp was the one responsible for the murder, and not the father or the brother or the respectable farmer next door.  One never knows, does one?

More horrible olde news can be perused at Garretdom.