Category Archives: Garretdom

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

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

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.

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.

Today’s Hot Potting Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Two of Yellowstone’s nineteen hot-spring deaths happened because young adults were attempting to “hot-pot” (swim) in hot springs. Both were park employees. The vast majority of the park’s hot springs are 50-100 degrees too hot for swimming.

On the evening of July 12, 1967, Brian Parsons, 20, of Nenuet, New York, an employee of the Yellowstone Park Company at Lake Lodge, decided to go on a late-night excursion with friends. They drove some 48 miles to the Nez Perce Creek area north of Old Faithful, and hiked up the creek in near darkness. The imprudent group did not secure a fire permit, nor did they even have a flashlight. Parsons and his friend, Ronald May, 18, of Cheyenne, Wyoming, wandered away from the main group to go swimming illegally in one of the hot springs. In the dark of around midnight, Parsons somehow fell or dove into a hot spring of around 180°F. May attempted to rescue him and sustained second degree burns to both of his legs. Parsons was covered with second and third degree burns over ninety percent of his body. He lived for days afterward in a Salt Lake City hospital, but finally died.

The same hot spring that killed Parsons also killed Donald Watt Cressey on the night of June 30-July 1, 1975. This pool on Nez Perce Creek was given the name Dead Savage Spring by the U.S. Geological Survey shortly after Cressey’s death. A “savage” in Yellowstone parlance is a park employee.

Cressey, 24, was an Old Faithful Lodge employee from Bellevue, Washington. On the evening of Sunday, June 30, 1975, Cressey and 10-20 other employees attended a large, late-night “hot potting” party on Nez Perce Creek. Cressey somehow got into the wrong pool, the one later measured at 179°F. When the party broke up, apparently no one missed Cressey, for the rest of the group drove home without him. This was suspicious to investigating park rangers, and the FBI was called in to investigate. Cressey, the senior cook at Old Faithful Lodge, had not been popular with everyone, and that fact, plus the group’s returning home without him, made the rangers look at foul play as a possibility.

Cressey’s body remained in the pool all day Monday and when he failed to show up for work on Tuesday, a search began. On Wednesday, his body was found by a young child who was fishing with his father. Not all of it could be recovered because it had been cooking in the spring for more than two days. His death was ruled accidental.

Exactly how Cressey fell into the pool is a mystery, but possibly it was a simple misstep in the dark. Ann Trocolli was one of the members of the swimming party. She stated that Cressey led the way to the pool and that

… once (we were) there, someone, I think Don, dove in. Jeanne (Le Ber) was shocked that someone would dive into the pool, but Don had been there before and must have known what to expect. We all got undressed(.) There were other people, seven or so, already swimming when we got in. (After that) I never saw Don in the pool … There was no one left in the water when we got dressed

On reading this, I assumed Cressey simply dove into the wrong spring in the darkness. But another party member, Miriam Frey, stated that Cressey undressed and was completely naked when she saw him dive into the pool. His body was found fully clothed. Therefore, Donald Cressey must have spent the evening swimming with other party members, gotten out of the 110° pool, put his clothes on, and then must have fallen into the other., much hotter spring. All assuming he rode home with someone else, no one missed him.

Dead Savage Spring, Yellowstone

Culled from: Death In Yellowstone

Mütter Museum Online!

Well, my evening entertainment is sorted with the news that the Mütter Museum has put a number of their collections online!  Won’t you join me in perusing?   Unfortunately, photos are missing from a number of the items, but it’s still worth a browse.

Mutter Museum Collections Portal

Today’s Unheated Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Thousands of impoverished Northern European immigrants were promised that the prairie offered “land, freedom, and hope,” so they left everything they knew behind to take a chance in America.   The following is an account of the ill-fated emigration of the Norwegian Tisland family:

Of the nine children born to Ole and Karen Tisland, five had died of diphtheria and were buried in Norway. Though their son Andreas survived the disease, he was left deaf and weakened. Andreas was six and a half when Ole and Karen emigrated to America with their three other children. Their crossing was rough. In the course of the voyage, twenty-two children and one adult died. Ole and Karen watched helplessly as Andreas shivered with fever in the unheated steerage quarters. When he died his body was sewn into a canvas shroud with weights attached to either end. The ship’s captain read the last rites, and then the bundle was tipped off the side of the ship and into the sea. Some mothers on board immigrant ships kept the deaths of their children secret so they could bury them properly on land. Even burying a child in the strange land of a country they had never seen was better than losing a child’s body to the ocean. About one in ten steerage passengers died on board immigrant ships.

Miserable Steerage Conditions

Culled from: The Children’s Blizzard

Garretdom: Scheming Wife Edition

HAD HER HUSBAND KILLED.

The Crimes a Southern Woman Is Charged with by a Negro Murderer.

RALEIGH, N.C., Sept. 29—Last Thursday night the store of A.D. Owens, at Creswall, Martin county, was entered by burglars. Owens’ dwelling adjoined the store. He heard a noise and stepped to the door. As he did so he saw two burglars, one of whom raised a gun and fired. Forty buckshot entered the stomach of Owens, who in a few minutes was  corpse.  Since that time the authorities have been on the track of the burglars and murderers. Monday night Sheriff Sprewill arrived at Plymouth with the wife of the murdered man and two negroes. Another negro, James Davenport, alias James Ambrose, was shot and killed.

One of the negroes confessed some days ago that Mrs. Owens had hired them to kill her husband. She wished them to drown him, and prepared water in a barrel for that purpose. She gave him medicine to put him in a sound sleep, and the three negroes actually stood by his bedside ready to commit the crime. Their courage failed them. Finally Ambrose some nights afterward entered the store, and when Owens appeared shot him. Ambrose was pursued, and on making a desperate attempt to kill the members of the Sheriff’s posse was shot through the heart. Miss Owens and the other two negroes are now in jail at Plymouth to await trial.

Culled from the Thursday, September 30, 1886 issue of the Carlisle Weekly Herald (PA).

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And I’m sure you want to know what happened to dear Mrs. Owens?   Here’s a follow-up from the January 31, 1887 issue of The Times Herald:

TERRIBLE STORY OF CRIME.

CLOSE OF THE OWENS MURDER TRIAL AT WASHINGTON, N.C.

The Death Sentence Passed Upon One of the Culprits and the Other Two Sentenced for Life—How Owens Was Murdered—A Depraved Woman’s Murderous Design.

WASHINGTON, N.C., Jan. 31—The Owens murder trial, which abounded in startling revelations, has resulted in the sending of Mrs. Owens and Rev. Isaac Jones to the penitentiary for life and a death sentence against Stark Simpson. Simpson has taken an appeal to the supreme court.

The history of the terrible affair is as follows: A.D. Owens, a white man, was a merchant at Cresswell, Washington county. His wife was a woman with whom in early life he had contracted a liaison, and whom he married later, in defiance of the ridicule of friends and the entreaties of his relatives. He was, therefore, cast off, and though a man of respectable family was cut off from all social intercourse. Mrs. Owens had several children born before wedlock, and one of them, a daughter 20 years of age, was suspected of intimacy with a negro named James Ambrose. The latter was a desperado and outlaw, and was the man who some time since set fire to the jail at Harrell, while a prisoner therein, and so made his escape. Owens, angry at the girl’s love for Ambrose, locked her up. Her mother took her part, not objecting to her intimacy with Ambrose. This led to a quarrel, and finally to Owens’ death. The quarrel occurred last September, and Mrs. Owens, her daughter and Ambrose at once began to plan to kill Owens.

They admitted to their confidence Isaac Jones and Stark Simpson. All agreed that the wife should poison her husband. She gave him poison, but in too great quantities, and he was only made sick. The failure of the plan enraged Mrs. Owens. She conferred again with Jones, who was looked up to by all the conspirators. Jones advised her to give her husband an opiate, and said that when he was under its influence at night she should give him the signal. They would enter the house, take Owens from the bed, and drown him in a barrel of hot water. Mrs. Owens heated the water and administered the opiate. She gave the signal and her negro allies entered. Owens was partially stupefied, and all the party stood by his bedside. Jones declared that it was unsafe to make the attempt to end his life in that way. Mrs. Owens, furious at the repeated failures, urged them to shoot him. Jones concurred in her idea, and said that as enough were present to do the deed he would go to his church. It was agreed that the negroes should return later in the night and make a noise as if breaking into Owens’ store, which adjoined the house. The plan was carried out. Mrs. Owens roused her husband, telling him burglars were attempting to enter. Owens declined to go out. She urged him to do so. Finally he went into the yard, and clapped his hands together to frighten the burglars. In an instant the report of a gun was heard, and Owens fell, pierced by many buckshot. In half an hour he died. The community was soon in a state of the wildest excitement, and Ambrose was at once suspected. Two men, Bosnight and Spruill, volunteered to capture him. Entering his cabin, they found him. He cried out:

“If you want me for shooting at Owens, you are after the wrong man.”

With these words he sprang at Spruill, threw him to the floor, and, drawing a revolver, attempted to shoot him.

Bosnight seized his revolver, but Ambrose drawing another again attempted to shoot Spruill. Bosnight then fired at him, blowing off the top of his skull. Concealed in Ambrose’s house was Stark Simpson, who was arrested. He confessed the deed, and revealed the awful crime above stated. He said that Ambrose Shot Owens, and also that Mrs. Owens had promised each of them $20 and a pair of shoes for killing her husband.

To verify Simpsons’ statement they took him to Mrs. Owens’ door. She came out when Simpson called, and Bosnight and Spruill, who were concealed, heard her acknowledge her obligation for killing Owens. She told Simpson to call in the morning and get his money. The men entered and arrested her. The people were furious, and came near lynching her and her two accomplices, but they were safely jailed. Later they moved the case from Washington to Beaufort county. Upon the witness-stand Simpson testified in his own behalf, and retold all the horrible story, and his statement caused a profound sensation.

More Grim Olde News Can Be Perused at Garretdom!

Today’s Narrow Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The earliest victim of a vehicle plunge into the Grand Canyon was Waddy Thompson Ligon, age 73.  On October 29, 1925, Ligon drove his converted Ford Model A down the old, very narrow “Dugway” about 2 miles south of Lees Ferry. The wheels on the right side of the Model A slid off the narrow dugway as he backed up. The vehicle slide off the steep road and jammed into a crevasse, pinning and killing Ligon.

Truck at south end of “Dugway” south of Lees Ferry. Coconino County, Arizona. 1923.

Culled from: Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon

I uncovered a newspaper article that gives much more glorious detail on the incident:

Garretdom!  Killer Cop Edition.

CLUBBED TO DEATH.

The Brutality of a New York Policeman, Who Kills an Old Man.

NEW YORK, Oct. 8.—Max Aronson, fifty years old, a Hester-street grocer, was brutally clubbed by Policeman Wood, of this city, in his store on Wednesday last and died to-day. A Coroner was summoned to take his ante mortem statement, but found the old man unconscious and dying. According to the statement of a son and the physician, the clubbing was one of the worst cases of police brutality reported for years. They say that a boy tried to steal some fruit, but was ordered away by the old grocer. The boy’s mother interfered and created a row. Policeman Wood took the woman’s part, and accused Aronson of striking her, following his words by clubbing him. The skull was fractured. Two sons interfered, and driving the officer away, called a physician.

While the physician was caring for the old man, Policeman Woods returned with another officer, and brutally clubbed the old man again. The two were driven out, but returned and took the old man away from the physician, and locked him up with the whole family for forty-five hours. The old man was not allowed medical attendance. After their release on bail Max Aronson began to sink, and died to-day. The policeman is under arrest.

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

Incidentally, I tried to find out whether the killer cop was ever punished for his crime, but I could not.  I highly doubt it.

More dreadful olde news can be devoured at Garretdom.

So with the last fact I was originally planning on sharing an interview of a “juvenile female sadist” from J. Paul De River’s 1949 opus, The Sexual Criminal.  However, after reading through the interview, I realized I had more questions than answers about this case and decided to do some digging.  I stumbled across an article that unpacks part of the fascinating story on the blog Unknown Gender History.  I did some additional digging to fill in the gaps and now I present to you…

Today’s Curious Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Later, the police captain related, the girl said to her father: “Daddy. Hi. you mustn’t get excited; let’s so for a walk.”

[“Chloe Davis Tearfully Tells How Her Mother Ran Amok – Frightened, Shocked Girl Becomes Ward of Juvenile Court, But Is Released In Father’s Care by Judge’s Order,” syndicated (AP), Washington Post (D.C.), Apr. 25, 1940, p. 5]

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And here is an excellent video on the tragedy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6tPrLbj3C0

Culled from: Unknown Gender History

Personally, I think she killed them all.  What do you think?

Garretdom: Obstructed Edition

Today’s horrible olde news comes from the August 1, 1872 issue of the Mower County Transcript (Austin, Minnesota) as quoted in the excellent compilation book Coffee Made Her Insane.

A little boy named George Killian, aged six years, lost his life on Thursday last under most painful circumstances. In company with a younger brother he was playing upon a plank across the flume of Engle & Co.’s mill, from which it is supposed he fell into the water. The smaller boy missed him, and supposing he had stolen away, ran off in search of him. His inquiries excited alarm and Mr. Engle caused the gate to be closed, when it was found to be obstructed. The mill was stopped by choking the stones, and upon search, the body — except one leg, which had been severed and floated away — was found lying upon the top of the wheel, which is of the Turbine pattern, and has a lateral motion. It is supposed that the leg was forced into one of the buckets — they being too small to receive the whole body — and by contact with the case, in which the wheel revolved was crushed off. It was not found until after the body was interred. Coroner Barnes held an inquest which resulted in a verdict of “accidental death by drowning.”

More gruesome olde news can be perused at Garretdom.

Today’s Reeking Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The historian Joanna Bourke has written about the euphoria of killing in battle and the carnivalesque atmosphere that warfare can foster. The combat gear, the face paint and the “endless refrain that men had to turn into ‘animals'” all represent a kind of exhilarating inversion of the moral order. These rituals seem alien when taken out of context—they seemed alien to the new troops arriving to fight—but they provide a way to cope with the shocking realities of combat.  It is hard to comprehend conditions for combat troops on Guadalcanal in 1942. Even the service troops, behind the front line, had little idea what it was like to be plunged into the ‘meat grinder’, where time had no meaning and there was no hope of escape: if it did not kill you, it sent you insane.

Famously, the Japanese refused to surrender and the Americans refused to take prisoners, so it became a fight to the death. In Biak, New Guinea, Japanese soldiers occupying a system of limestone caves had reportedly tried to surrender, but the Americans told them to ‘get the hell back in and fight it out’. Meanwhile, the Japanese fired on stretcher-bearers, tortured Americans to death and mutilated their bodies. Some prisoners were beheaded, and there were reports of Japanese eating the flesh of their enemies, and of their own men. In these conditions, there was no hope of escape: you must either kill or be killed.

Soldiers who fought on the frontlines were easy to spot. They were filthy and covered in coral dust and rifle oil; their uniforms were in tatters and had been stiffened by weeks of rain, sweat and sun; they were thin and haggard, unshaven, with bloodshot eyes, and their hands were blackened and calloused; they were hungry, thirsty, exhausted, smelly, and, more often than not, they were suffering from ‘jungle rot’, fungal growths between the fingers and toes and in the ears; they had sores on their limbs from the filth, insect bites, and many of them were suffering from malaria or other tropical fevers.

All the troops serving in the Pacific faced hunger, illness and hard labor in heat and heavy rain. The humidity rotted everything, from guns and clothes to people’s bodies: the rain turned men’s skin white and puffy. Camps were often flooded or submerged in mud, and men had to cut their way through the thick vegetation with machetes, walking in a single line.  It was said that in some places, where the jungle was particularly dense, if a man didn’t keep his eyes on the feet of the soldier in front, he could be lost.

Caption from LIFE. “Through dense jungles near foot of grassy knoll, American soldiers make their careful way on patrol.”

There were mosquitoes and leeches, spiders, lizards, snakes and maggots. There was no running water or electricity, and despite the legion of hard-working service personnel, there were inevitable supply problems, which meant regular food and water shortages.  When water did arrive, it might be delivered in an old oil drum, foul-tasting, stomach churning, full of rust with a blue greasy film, but the soldiers drank it anyway because they were so desperate. It is hardly surprising that there were outbreaks of typhus and dysentery. The vast majority of those who died in the Pacific succumbed to disease, heat, accident, and famine; during some phases of the campaign these casualties out-stripped combat fatalities by as many as 100 to one.

Not published in LIFE. Exhausted U.S. Marines sprawl on the beach while waiting for landing craft to take them off Guadalcanal following four months of fighting the Japanese.

Then there was the ‘reek of mass death’, as Ladd remembered. ‘Never mind the heat, the smell alone was enough to drop a strong man in his tracks.’ The dead were all around, in every stage of decomposition. Mangled bodies hung from barbed-wire entanglements, floated in rivers, and lay by the thousand where they had fallen, ensnared by the forest, protruding from the muddy ground and shallow graves. Many had been mutilated by the explosions that killed them, blown into pieces, burned by napalm attacks, and blackened by exposure to the tropical elements. It was not unusual to see headless bodies and bodiless heads on the battlegrounds, and horrific accidents happened behind the frontlines too. A snapping cable on a ship could decapitate a man, as could the propeller blades of an idling aeroplane. One member of the US Army Transportation Corps, enduring months of backbreaking work on the supply vessels, fell into the lower hold of a ship during a blackout and hit a strong hook on the way down which severed his head. He was brought up again in a basket.

Eugene Sledge wrote that the ‘fierce struggle for survival… eroded the veneer or civilization and made savages of us all’. There was a feeling that the habitat had caused a kind of social degeneration. Human body parts were commonplace, and enemy bodies were there for the taking. In other words, the moral landscape was as surreal as the physical landscape, since soldiers lost all the normal social structures that framed their lives at home. They were surrounded by the dead, they were ordered to kill and they thought they were going to die: in these circumstances, men could, in the words of historian Jonathan Glover, ‘escape the restraints of moral identity’. They became numb to their surroundings.

Take the instance when Sledge and his unit, fighting their way towards enemy lines on Peleliu, came across a Japanese machine gunner who had been killed in position, so that he looked as though he was about to fire his weapon, still staring along the gun sights, even though the top of his head had been blown off. As Sledge talked to the American gunmen who had been in the fight, he noticed that one of them was lobbing coral pebbles into the dead soldier’s open skull. ‘Each time the pitch was true I heard a little splash of rainwater in the ghastly receptacle.’ But, as Sledge noted, the American might as well have been a little boy playing with stones in a puddle back home, because his movements were so casual, and ‘there was nothing malicious in his action.’

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

Garretdom: A Fool and His Cigar

A Fool and a Can of Powder.

LAFAYETTE, Ind. Oct. 3.—A horrible and fatal explosion occurred at Bringhurst, Carroll county, on Friday.  A man named Britton came to the store of Shanklin & Kearns for some powder.  Mr. Kearns, with a lighted cigar in his mouth, poured out the powder from a large can into the scales. In setting down the can the cigar was knocked from his mouth into the can of powder, which exploded with great violence, tearing out the front part of the building and scattering the goods into the street.  It was a fearful wreck.  Mr. Kearn’s arm was broken in two places, his shoulders were dislocated, and his head and face were burned in a frightful manner.  He died in a few hours after intense suffering.  Britton had both arms broken and was terribly burned.  His injuries are fatal.

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

More grim olde news can be read at Garretdom.

Today’s Suffocating Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Maggie Messenger, aged 13 had worked for a family in Carlisle, England for less than three weeks in 1881 when the couple’s 2-year-old son drowned in a shallow well.  A cursory investigation determined the death accidental.  Six days later, the parents left their surviving child, an infant of 6 months, in Maggie’s care. When they returned that afternoon, they found Maggie full of explanations, but no baby in sight. First, Maggie claimed a man had grabbed the child from her. Then she said the baby had run off while she dozed. Q quick search turned up the infant lying face down in a nearby bog, suffocated. Footprints matching Maggie’s were found on either side of the body, perfectly positioned for straddling the infant while shoving her face into the muck.

Maggie was convicted of the second killing. She is best remembered as the last person under 16 to be sentenced to death in the United Kingdom. Her sentence, however, was eventually commuted to life imprisonment.

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

Garretdom: Another Jealous Husband

Another Connecticut Tragedy.

HARTFORD, Conn., Oct. 4.—Henry Hotchkiss, a musician, aged thirty-five, has for some time been in trouble with his wife, from whom he is supposed to have separated. They had two children. Yesterday afternoon at two o’clock they met on Market street. He drew a revolver and fired two shots at her, one of which took effect in her head and the other in her back. She died in a few minutes. Hotchkiss then fired one shot into his own head, but the wound inflected is thought to be but slight. He was taken to the hospital. The tragedy has caused great excitement.

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

Follow-up: Mr. Hotchkiss did, indeed, survive (from the March 4, 1887 issue of The Meriden Journal):

STATE PRISON FOR LIFE.

The Sentence of Henry S. Hotchkiss for Murdering His Wife in Hartford.

At 4:30 yesterday afternoon Henry S. Hotchkiss was brought  before Judge Torrance in the Hartford Superior Court room.  S. F. Jones, counsel for Hotchkiss, repeated the story of the shooting of his wife Etta, by the prisoner, and made the plea that Hotchkiss was insane at the time of the shooting.  He claimed that insanity was caused by the unfaithfulness of the prisoner’s wife. He was ready to plead guilty of murder in the second degree. Judge Briscoe of counsel for the prisoner made a similar plea. State Attorney Hamersley said that it was questionable in his mind whether the jury would convict of murder in the first degree, but it would have no doubt of a verdict of murder in the second degree. As far as he was concerned he would accept the plea and leave it wholly with the court to decide as to the acceptance. The court agreed to accept the plea and Hotchkiss was put to the plea and pleaded guilty to murder in the second degree. Judge Torrance then pronounced sentence that he be confined to the Connecticut state prison during his natural life.

The crime for which Henry Hotchkiss is consigned to a living death was the murder of his wife, Etta Hotchkiss, on October 4, 1886.  On that day, while Mrs. Hotchkiss was walking on Market street in company with another woman, she was accosted by her husband, but refused to speak to him. Then the man pulled a small revolver from his pocket and fired two shots directly at the woman’s back. Both bullets struck her and she staggered into a store, fell to the floor and died instantly. As soon as Hotchkiss saw the result of his desperate work, he shot himself in the head, but only inflected a flesh wound. The cause of the murder was jealousy, aggravated by Mrs. Hotchkiss’ alleged improper behavior. Hotchkiss has two children, who at present are with friends at New Britain.

More grim olde news can be found at Garretdom.