Category Archives: Ghastly!

Today’s Ripped Open Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

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

Culled from: Death in Yellowstone

Civil War Injury Du Jour!

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

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

Garretdom!

COULD NOT LEAVE ETHEL.

A Mother Drowns Her Little Daughter and Then Hangs Herself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

Today’s Horrifying Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

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

Peter Binsfeld, what a dick!

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

Poor Walpurga’s execution

Culled from: Witchcraze

Post-Mortem Portrait Du Jour!

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

Culled from: Sleeping Beauty III

Garretdom: Race Riot Edition!

FOUR-MILE-RUN’S TRAGEDY

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

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

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

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

Today’s Decorated Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

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

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

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

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

Ghastly!

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

Garretdom!

MURDERED AT HIS MEAL.

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

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

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

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

A Woman Guilty of Murder.

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

Today’s Ice-Coated Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Culled from: Death in Rocky Mountain National Park

Vintage Crime Scene Du Jour!

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

Culled from: Evidence

Garretdom

SHOT BY MISTAKE.

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

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

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

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

Today’s Blood-Covered Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clandestine snapshot of a Nazi death march

Culled from: The Road To Hell

Malady Du Jour!

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

Looks like tertiary syphilis to me…  

Garretdom: Sausage Poison Edition

A FAMILY POISONED.

Seven Persons Made Seriously Ill By Eating Impure Sausage.

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

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

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

Today’s Blazing Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

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

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

Chinese man burned to death by the Japanese

Culled from: The Rape of Nanking

Suicide Du Jour!

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

Garretdom: Olde News!

Killed in an Elevator.

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

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

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

That Elevator Accident.

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

Today’s Immoveable Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

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

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

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

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

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

The Boot

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

Culled from: Rack, Rope and Red-hot Pincers

Dissection Photo Du Jour!

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

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

Garretdom: Olde News

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

STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.

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

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

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

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

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

Today’s Open and Shut Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

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

Kid Dropper

Little Augie

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

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

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

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

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

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

Louis Cohen

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

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

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

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

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

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

Culled from: Undisclosed Files of the Police

Crime Scene Du Jour!

Suicide, May 26, Hollywood Hills

Culled from: LAPD ’53

Garretdom

A Locomotive’s Boiler Bursts.

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

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

Today’s Completely Bedridden Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

At exactly 8:15:17 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the ‘Little Boy’ atomic bomb was released from the bomb bay of the Enola Gay as it passed over Hiroshima. Here’s an excerpt detailing the literal fall-out of the bombing.

The U.S Strategic Bombing Survey reported that:

All or nearly all pregnant women in various stages of pregnancy who survived and who had been within 3,000 feet of the center of the explosion have had miscarriages or premature infants who died shortly after birth.

And that:

Sperm counts done in Hiroshima by the Joint Commission have revealed low sperm counts or complete aspermia for as long as 3 months afterwards in males who were within 3,000 feet of the center of the explosion.

But those who had to experience it were less matter-of-fact:

We were being killed against our will by something completely unknown to us… It is the misery  of being thrown into a world of new terror and fear, a world more unknown than that of people sick with cancer.

Mother was completely bedridden. The hair of her head had almost all fallen out, her chest was festering, and from the two-inch hole in her back a lot of maggots were crawling in and out. The place was full of flies and mosquitoes and fleas, and an awfully bad smell hung over everything. Everywhere I looked there were many people like this who couldn’t move. From the evening when we arrived Mother’s condition got worse and we seemed to see her weakening before our eyes. Because all night long she was having trouble breathing, we did everything we could to relieve her. The next morning Grandmother and I fixed some gruel. As we took it to Mother, she breathed her last breath. When we thought she had stopped breathing altogether, she took one last deep breath and did not breathe any more after that. This was nine o’clock in the morning of the 19th of August. At the site of the Japan Red Cross Hospital, the smell of the bodies being cremated is overpowering. Too much sorrow makes me like a stranger to myself, and yet despite my grief I cannot cry.

At least the flies weren’t bothered by the radiation

Culled from: Eye-Witness Hiroshima

Post-Mortem Portrait Du Jour!

ESCINO JR TEN TE GENERAL DON MANUEL DE ENA
HABANA, SEPTEMBER 20, 1851
S F BEULING
DAGUERREOTYPE 1/2 PLATE, SIGNED & ETCHED

This memorial image melds the photographic history of three countries: Cuba, Spain and Sweden. Taken in Havana it is a part of Cuban history. This picture of a dead general, a Spanish colonial, documents the occupation of Central and South America by Spain. Taken by S. F. Beurling, a Swedish daguerreotypist who traveled the Americas, it is also an important piece of Swedish visual history, as it helps document the establishment of photography in Scandinavia. Beurling was one of the few photographers who routinely designed and etched their daguerieian plates. The subject’s name, date, and location were engraved on the plate, which was signed by the photographer. This postmortem photograph also represents the European practice of photographing dead notables.

Culled from: Sleeping Beauty II

Garretdom!

Many years ago, a fascinating collection of scrapbooks containing newspaper articles from the 1880’s/90’s appeared on eBay. The scrapbooks were obviously compiled by a kindred soul, as all of the articles were Grim, and were meticulously pasted into old textbooks.  I tried to purchase the collection from the lucky soul who found them at an auction, but he quickly realized what he had and started selling them on eBay where they went for astronomical amounts.  I was able to talk him into making copies of the books for me before he sold them off, and I’ve been slowly using them for my vintage newspaper Garretdom collection over the years.  Here’s one of the entries:

His Third Attempt at Suicide.

ITHACA, N. Y., Sept. 27.—Peter Sausman, formerly a wealthy man and the owner of one of the best farms in this country, cut his throat in a bath-room here yesterday. He is still alive, but cannot recover. This was the third attempt at suicide he had made within a week. His action was caused by melancholia, resulting from losses and poverty.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook