Morbid Fact Du Jour!

Today’s Unclaimed Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Victoriano Corrales was a miserable excuse for a human being. For over a decade, he mistreated and abused his wife, Angelina, and their six children. In February 1946, he nearly choked Angelina to death in their home in Bryte, in what is now West Sacramento, California. Had it not been for his oldest daughter who stepped in to stop him, he would have murdered her. Shortly after that incident, a terrified Angelina took her children and left Victoriano without telling him where she was going.

Corrales moved to Brighton, which is now the area around the California State University, Sacramento. At the time, the area consisted of light industrial businesses and run down housing with some scattered vegetable gardens. The Southern Pacific Railroad crossed tracks nearby.  It was a busy place, with lots of soot from the constantly passing steam engines. Corrales lived in a shack, described in newspapers as a garage, a few blocks from the American River and a block from Folsom Blvd.

Corrales, who worked as a farm laborer, dishwasher, and a cement pipe worker, missed having a woman in his life to slap around, so he traveled to his hometown, Irapuato, Mexico where he sweet talked a local woman, 28-year-old Alberta Gomez into coming to Sacramento to live with him. In June 1948, he smuggled her over the border near Calexico CA. After living a few days with Corrales in his ramshackle garage, she realized she had made a terrible mistake. When she threatened to leave him on June 12, 1948, Corrales beat her brains out with a hammer. He chopped off her head, arms and legs, and then made two trips to the American River to dump her body parts. He wrapped the dead woman’s torso in an electric blanket, using the cord as a rope. The American and Sacramento Rivers were flowing high at the time and a week later, her torso washed up 25 miles downriver in Steamboat Slough. The other parts of her body were never found.

After a few month, Corrales grew tired of living alone and returned to Irapuato to find another female to smuggle back over the border. He met twenty-something Maria Pulldo and lied to her about being a successful man, and asked her to come with him to Sacramento. He again crossed the border near Calexico. When they first arrived in Sacramento the pair stayed a few days at a West End hotel where he pretended to be a man of means.

He hired a cab to drive them to his shack in Brighton. When Pulldo saw the neighborhood, she recoiled. According to the cab driver, she became very angry at being misled. When she saw the shack, she allegedly said, “This is as dirty and ugly and old as you are. I will not stay here. I am going to find another man.” The two fought in the driveway, with Corrales eventually dragging the terrified woman into the dank hovel. Once inside, Corrales used his hammer and hit Pulldo several times on the head. Grabbing his trusty double-edged axe he hacked off her head, arms, and legs. Like before, it took him two trips to carry what was left o Maria Pulldo, and after tossing her body parts into the American River, he went to sleep. The next day he cleaned the gore-soaked floor and burned all the bloody clothing. A few days later he burned the mattress.

Pulldo’s body was discovered a few days later on December 21, 1948, floating near the H Street Bridge. The autopsy revealed that Pulldo was alive when decapitated. Police speculated a connection or correlation between the Steamboat Slough torso and the H Street Bridge torso.

Mrs. Ira Anderson, a neighbor of Corrales, called police on January 17, 1949 after hearing about the body found in the nearby American River. On December 14, the Andersons and several local witnesses Saw Corrales arguing in the cab with a Hispanic woman and watched as Corrales dragged the struggling woman into his shack. Mrs. Anderson described seeing Corrales burning his mattress a few days later and even recalled Corrales saying to them back in December that his female friend would not be with him for long.

Mrs. Anderson told the police, “I told my friends how I never had seen those women come out of the cabin, but we did not think too seriously about it at first because he was always quiet.” Anderson also feared that if the police did not find evidence, it would be very uncomfortable living next door to Corrales.

Upon investigation, police did in fact find evidence, lots of bloody evidence. They discovered a double-blade axes leaning against the refrigerator, a six-inch knife on the table, a hammer, and blood residue on the floor of the shack. They took Corrales downtown for questioning.

This was during pre-Miranda Rights era and it was likely Corrales was slapped around until he confessed. He took the police to the American River and showed them where he had tossed Pulldo’s body parts.

Victoriano Corrales at the river.

Police dragged the river and found her head and right leg. A brown ribbon was still tied in her black hair and a silk stocking was on her leg. On March 20th, Pulldo’s other leg turned up floating underneath the bridge at Rio Vista.

Corrales pleaded not guilty and was assigned Public Defender Elvin Sheehy. Since Corrales had admitted his crimes, the best Sheehy could hope for this client was Second Degree Murder or an insanity plea. The District Attorney was John Quincy Brown and the Honorable Judge Coughlin presided. Examining psychiatrists deemed Corrales sane. Jury selection took longer than the actual trial.

Brown told the jury in his closing statement, “Corrales is a savage type of individual with stone age moral concepts. He has no conception of the enormity of his offense. He is a stolid kind of savage who killed these women and cut up their bodies with as little concern or less as you and I would have in killing a chicken and cutting its head off.” (Personally, I’d find killing a chicken harder than a person…  oh, did I say that out loud??? – DeSpair]

The jury agreed and on March 17, 1949, found Corrales guilty of the two murders and was sentenced to death on March 21, 1949. On February 24, 1950, Corrales calmly walked into San Quentin’s gas chamber. Nobody claimed his body.

Culled from: Forgotten Sacramento Murders: 1940-1976 by my friend, David Kulczyk

Civil War Injury Du Jour!

Charles Fox, Pvt. Co. 1 111 N.Y. Vols. “Aged 18, admitted April 5th, 1865 to Harewood Hospital, suffering from GSW right foot fracturing metatarsal bone of big toe and severely injuring  OS Calcis. Wounded March 31st, at the Battle of Petersburgh, VA. On admission, the condition of injured parts, however was tolerable good. Parts became subsequently gangrenous, with disorganization of the ankle joint, bones necrosed and sloughing of soft parts,. Sinuses had formed, extended upwards the leg. The limb was amputated at the lower third by circular method. Patient did well after the operation under simple dressing… Parts nearly healed when transferred to Lincoln USA Hospital, July 20th, 1865.”

Photograph from Bontecou’s 5 1/2 by 7 1/2 inch two volume set of body wounds.

Culled from: Shooting Soldiers

Today’s Brave Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Let’s have another jolly story of Christian Martyrdom from the classic of the genre, Fox’s Book of Martyrs (1848).  This incident allegedly occurred during the Eighth Persecution, under Valerian, A. D. 257.

At Utica, a most terrible tragedy was exhibited: 300 Christians were, by the orders of the proconsul, placed round a burning limekiln. A pan of coals and incense being prepared, they were commanded either to sacrifice to Jupiter, or to be thrown into the kiln. Unanimously refusing, they bravely jumped into the pit, and were immediately suffocated.

Culled from: Fox’s Book of Martyrs

Sexual Deviant Du Jour!

The Sexual Criminal is a 1949 criminology textbook written by infamous Los Angeles County criminal psychiatrist J. Paul De River that is jam-packed with all the sexism and homophobia common to its era.  I thought I’d share some of the case studies with you.

Case H. R.

The following case will illustrate a homosexual homicide. This subject brutally killed his victim at the culmination of wild sexual orgy. The victim had befriended the subject.

Case Study 109. H.R., age twenty, white male; he has completed the ninth grade of school; occupation: rancher and farm hand.

Family History: His mother died when he was two years old. Cause of death is unknown. His father was killed in an automobile accident ten years ago. He has one brother, twenty-seven years of age, whom he has not seen for some time. There is a negative history of insanity, epilepsy, and all constitutional diseases.

Past History: He has had the usual childhood diseases. He states his health has always been good. H. R. was raised by various relatives, and he left home at an early age and worked on farms. He states he started to masturbate about the age of nine. About this time, an older man committed the act of pederasty on him. Since that time he has had homosexual affairs, most of which were in the nature of passive pederasty. He also occasionally indulged in acts of fellatio. H.R. states he had his first act of sexual intercourse with a girl when he was sixteen. He has had four hetero love affairs.

At seventeen he had a serious love affair with a man forty, and when he was twenty, he had another love affair with a man about his own age. He states that he enjoys sexual acts with men more than he does with women, and that acts of sodomy give him the greatest pleasure. He still indulges in the act of masturbation. He states that he has noticed in the past few years that he has difficulty in reaching the acme of sexual satisfaction. Sometimes it takes him forty-five minutes to one hour. He states that he only likes girls now as friends. He prefers men as his sexual companions. He states, “I like muscular, virile type of men with well-developed sex organs.” During his life on the farm he indulged in acts with other men and boys and he admits acts of bestiality with horses and cows.

He denies ever having syphilis or gonorrhea. He uses tobacco and alcohol, but denies the use of narcotics.

Somatic Examination: He is a well-developed and well-nourished white male, athletic schizothymic physique, sandy brown hair, blue eyes, fair complexion. His face is of the steep egg-shaped variety, short chin; there is la lack of hair growth over the face. His skin is in good condition. He has a tattoo mark on his left forearm — heart and arrow. He had much dried blood coagulated over the right and left chest. His hands are large, long, and thick. There is a recent wound, about a quarter of an inch long — proximal joint of the right little finger. Heart and lungs are negative. The bony, muscular, and glandular systems are negative. There is a tendency towards a barrel chest. The right side of the chest is larger than his left. There is a lack of hair distributed over his body and under his arm pits. The genitalia are well-developed, the testicles are large. In the examination of the central nervous system, the pupils are equal and react to light and acommodation. The deep and superficial reflexes are present and within the norm. There are no disturbances of sensibility noted.

Psychic Examination: He is well orientated as to time, places, dates and person. His reaction time is prompt. His general knowledge is fair; his wealth of knowledge is good for one of his education. He performed the backward and forward test and the test for the opposites correctly. There is no disassociation noted. He states he gets along well with people. He knows the difference between right and wrong and is able to define such. He is affectively cold and lacks outward feeling. There are no delusions, illusions, or hallucinations.

Statements Relative to His Present Offense: The following questions were asked of the subject and the following answers received:

Q: Are you sorry for what you have done?

A: I am very worried over what happened and I feel very badly. I realize it wasn’t right to kill a man, but I was angry and I couldn’t control myself, once I started I just kept going.

Q: What did you do with the weapon you used?

A: I threw the knife over the bridge.

Q: Were you able to eat and sleep all right after the murder?

A: I slept very well, and there’s nothing wrong with my appetite.

Q: How long before you realized what you had done was wrong?

A: Right after I killed the fellow I realized what I had done was wrong.

Q: How did you come to kill this man — what caused you to get angry at him, as you put it?

A: I knew the fellow about two days. He gave me a lift in his automobile along the highway en route down here. We stopped and bought two quarts of wine. We then went to a hotel in a nearby town and arrived there about dusk. We got a room and got undressed and went to bed. We indulged in the act of mutual masturbation and an attempt of sodomy was made after fooling around for some time and drinking and quarreling. Then everything seemed to go blank on me. I can remember standing over him —he was bleeding. Somebody came to the door and got in, and said, “My God!” and they ran downstairs for help. I left for I thought I’d better get out. After I left the place I hitch-hiked. A fellow gave me a ride in his car, and I fell asleep in the car, and I guess he got suspicious of me and the way I looked, for while I was asleep he drove me to the jail. I guess it was about daylight.

Q: Can you tell me anything more about what happened?

A: We had been drinking about two quarts of wine, and the knife had been lying on the table. I do remember hitting him on the chest. Then I stabbed him and he hollered, “My God, you’ve stabbed me.” Then he began yelling for help, and I kept beating him. Then I realized that I’d better get going when someone came to the door. I went out the window by the fire escape.

Q: Did you intend to kill him?

A: Not in the beginning, but when I got started, I couldn’t stop.

Q: Do you feel sorry that you’ve killed him?

A: I feel sorry because I don’t know what’s going to happen, otherwise I don’t worry.

Analysis and Conclusion: This subject is medically and legally sane. This subject is the product of a poor home and early seduction is the cause of his homosexual practices. He is temperamentally cold, perverted, and hyper-sexual. He brutally murdered his victim during a homosexual sex orgy, by beating him on the head with a wine bottle, and stabbing him with a knife.

He showed little remorse during questioning for what he had done, which is characteristic of the sadist, who pumps up affectivity for the purpose of murdering his victim, as a means of satisfaction for his pent-up sexual impulse.

(This man was tried, found guilty, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.)

Today’s Hypocritical Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

When Western countries condemned the Japanese for their attack on Nanking, China, the Japanese couldn’t believe the hypocrisy.  Here’s one of many examples where they had a point. 

As vice president under William McKinley, then as president in his own right, Teddy Roosevelt had relished the chance to bring Christian civilization to America’s first major colonial possession in the Pacific, the Philippines. “Not one competent witness who has actually known the facts believes the Filipinos capable of self-government at the present,” Roosevelt said. He found it unthinkable to “abandon the Philippines to their own tribes.” To him, the Filipino freedom fighters were “a syndicate of Chinese half-breeds,” and to grant them self-government “would be like granting self-government to an Apache reservation under some local chief.”

Christian intellectuals saw nothing wrong with “helping” Filipinos by denying them freedom. The Literary Digest polled 192 editors of Christian publications and found only three who recommended independence for the Philippines. “Has it ever occurred to you that Jesus was the most imperial of the imperialists?” asked the Missionary Record.

Just three decades before the Japanese soldiers were taught that the Chinese were beasts, American veterans of the Indian wars sailed off to the Philippines. “We had been taught… that the Filipinos were savages no better than our Indians,” an American officer said. When Senator Joseph Burton of Kansas defended the slaughter of Filipinos on the Senate floor as “entirely within the regulations of civilized warfare” by citing earlier massacres of Indians as a precedent, “no one even bothered to respond.”

America would cause the deaths of more than 250,000 Filipinos—men, women and children—from the beginning of the hostilities on February 4, 1899, to July 4, 1902, when President Roosevelt declared the Philippines “pacified.” That is pretty serious killing. America fought WWII over a period of fifty-six months with approximately 400,000 casualties on all fronts. So Hitler and Tojo combined, with all their mechanized weaponry, killed about the same per month—7,000—as the American “civilizers” did in the Philippines.

The Filipino uprising against their former Spanish masters had been a guerrilla operation, a popular insurgency supported by the civilian population. The brutality of the Spanish response had been one of the American rationales for kicking Spain out in the first place. Now America replaced the oppressor and adopted the same methods—widespread torture, concentration camps, the killing of disarmed prisoners and helpless civilians—but with a ruthlessness that surpassed even that of the Spanish. The majority of Filipinos killed by the American soldiers were civilians. An army circular attempted to assuage any guilt by rationalizing that “it is an inevitable consequence of war that the innocent must generally suffer with the guilty’ and since all natives were treacherous, it was impossible to recognize “the actively bad from only the passively so.”

American soldiers firing on “insurgents,” 1899

One American army captain wrote of “one of the prettiest little towns we have passed through”—the people there “desire peace and are friendly to Los Americanos. When we came along this road, the natives that had remained stood along the side of the road, took off their hats, touched their foreheads with their hands. ‘Buenos Dias, Senors’.” The good American boys then proceeded to slaughter the residents and ransack the town.

Anthony Michea of the Third Artillery wrote, “We bombarded a place called Malabon, and then we went in and killed every native we met, men, women and children.” Another soldier described the fun of killing innocent civilians: “This shooting human beings is a ‘hot game,’ and beats rabbit hunting all to pieces. We charged them and such a slaughter you never saw. We killed them like rabbits; hundreds, yes thousand of them. Everyone was crazy.”

“I want no prisoner,” one American general ordered. “I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me.” An officer asked for clarification, “to know the limit of age to respect.” The general replied in writing to kill all those above “ten years of age.”

Corporal Richard O’Brien wrote home about “The Beast of La Nog,” a Captain Fred McDonald who ravished a village by that name. “O’Brien described how his company had gunned down civilians waving white flags because McDonald had ordered ‘take no prisoners.’ Only a beautiful mestizo mother was spared to be repeatedly raped by McDonald and several officers and then turned over to the men for their pleasure.”

Post-massacre, March 8, 1906, Bud Dajo

Culled from: Flyboys

Crime Scene Photo Du Jour!

Photographer: R.A. 10-30-58. Assault victim, Case information unavailable.

Culled from: Scene of the Crime

Today’s Dramatic Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In August 1854, cholera roared into London’s Soho district, killing ninety-three people. John Snow, a British doctor, who was London’s leading anesthetist, decided to investigate, conducting a famous experiment that finally broke the back of the disease. He graphed the deaths from cholera and noticed that they seemed to occur to people who drank from one of several public wells. The water in that well, he proposed, must be the culprit. To test his hypothesis, Snow removed the pump handle from the suspect well and the cholera epidemic came to an abrupt end. [This story is told in compelling fashion in the book The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. – DeSpair]

In 1883, Robert Koch, one of the founders of the germ theory of disease, went to Egypt to uncover the cause of a cholera epidemic that seemed to be moving toward Europe. He arrived just after a colleague of the great Louis Pasteur, Pierre Emil Roux, who was trying but failing to isolate the cholera-causing microorganism. He was trying to grow the bacteria the way the master had taught him—in broth, which tended to be contaminated with other microorganisms. Koch had a better laboratory method, growing the bacteria on the springy surface of agar, where he could see and discard contaminants. Not only did he find the microorganism, the comma-shaped Vibrio cholerae, in Egyptian patients, the next year he showed that the bacteria lived in human intestines and that they were transmitted in water. He repeated the work in Calcutta and reported his victory to the German government, which hailed him a hero.

Robert Koch

Not everyone was won over, however. One Munich hygienist, Max von Pettenkofer, insisted that the miasma (foul air) theory was correct and, to prove it, he asked Koch for a flask of broth brimming with cholera bacteria. He drank it down. He wrote back to Koch jubilantly: “Herr Doctor Pettenkofer has now drunk the entire contents and is happy to be able to inform Herr Doctor Professor Koch that he remains in his usual good health.” to which one modern commentator, Roy Porter, a historian of medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Science in London, wryly notes, “Pettenkofer must have been fortunate enough to possess the high stomach acidity which sometimes neutralizes the vibrios.” But while Pettenkofer is a curious footnote in history, Koch triumphed. Soon, Porter writes, Koch was “burdened with success.” As a consequence, “his research declined, and so to offset that he turned oracle.”

Cholera: another cutie!

The victory over cholera was only a beginning. With the growing and profound knowledge that many diseases are caused by microscopic organisms and that the spread of disease can be prevented, the Western world was transformed. It took years for the change to be complete, but the result was a vigorous public health movement that emphasized simple but powerful measures like cleaning up water supplies and teaching people what now seem to be basic lessons of health and hygiene—keep flies away from food, wash your hands before handling food, give your babies milk, not beer, quarantine the sick. The results were dramatic. In large areas of the world, many of the killer diseases seemed tamed, or even vanquished, and deadly epidemics seemed to be relics of the past.

Culled from: Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It

Prisoner Du Jour!

HECTOR BLACK
VICTIM OF CREEK’S ATTACK IS DEAD

After lying for 24 hours in an unconscious state at the county hospital, E.C. Robertson, who was assaulted by Andrew Malidone and Hector Black, two Greek waiters, died last evening at 10:15 o’clock.

The injured man had a severe concussion of the brain from the effects of the fall which he received and never recovered consciousness in order to give his version of the affair.

When brought to the city prison on Friday night, none of the officers recognized Robertson on account of the battered and bleeding condition of his face, but yesterday morning Officer Single succeeded in establishing the dead man’s identity and notified his daughter Lulu at Sutter City.

The girl came to this city and went immediately to the county hospital, where she remained with her father until his death.

It was an affecting scene that transpired at the hospital when the little girl was led into the room where her father lay with his battered and broken features. Although she was on the verge of breaking down, she bore up under the stain wonderfully and proceeded to write to her five brothers informing them of their father’s condition.

The dead man has been employed as a blacksmith at Hammonton and came to this city to make some purchases. There are several versions of the manner in which the deceased was hurt, but the police have two eye witnesses to the affair and both of them state that Robertson was struck from behind by one of the Greeks and fell on his face against the trolley track that is laid on the sidewalk into the car barn. There is a large blood stain on the sidewalk close to the track, and the police are of the opinion that the man struck the rail, causing the concussion. When found the deceased was lying on his face in the exact position in which he fell.

One of the witnesses of the affair stated that he thought the Greek who struck Robertson had something in his hand, and this blow may have caused the wound behind the dead man’s right eye, although the wound could have been received in falling.

Witnesses state that Robertson was arguing with Mrs. Gabriel in front of the restaurant when the two waiters attacked him and he ran. Both of the Greeks gave pursuit and when they reached the front of the car barn one of them struck him, causing him to fall.

Coroner Kelly will hold an autopsy this morning and District Attorney Greely will prepare charges against the prisoners.

The dead man was very quiet in his habits and his friends cannot imagine how he became involved in the brawl with the woman.

He has many friends in the vicinity of Sutter City who will be shocked to hear of his untimely end.

Mrs. Gabriel could not be found yesterday and the restaurant was closed up. Marshal Mahen would allow no one to talk with the prisoners yesterday and their version of the affair could not be obtained.

Robertson was a native of this State and aged 42 years. Undertaker Bevan has charge of the remains. [September 8, 1907]

CORONER’S JURY BRINGS IN VERDICT—HOLD GREEK WAITER RESPONSIBLE

The following verdict was rendered by the coroner’s jury last evening in the case of William C. Robertson, who died as a result of injuries sustained from a fall caused by being struck by Hector Black, a Greek waiter.

“Well, the jury, find that the deceased, William C. Robertson, a native of California, aged 48 years, 5 months and 21 days, came to his death on the 7th day of September, 1907, in the Yuba county hospital, from injuries received by the hand of one Hector Black. Signed, Joseph E. Coombs, foreman; Halsey C. Dunning, Floyd S. Seawell, C. R. Schinkel, John Gavin and H.P. Galligan.”

The district attorney will probably prefer a charge of manslaughter against the prisoner today. It is not known as to what action will be taken against Andrew Malidone, who was with Black at the time the crime is alleged to have been committed.

The autopsy performed Sunday morning revealed the fact that the skull of the deceased was severely cracked in addition to the concussion of the brain. [September 11, 1907]

BLACK MUST ANSWER IN SUPERIOR COURT

At the preliminary examination of Hector Black, charged with the murder of William C. Robertson, yesterday afternoon the murder charge was reduced to manslaughter and the prisoner held to answer before the Superior court with bail set at $3000 or $2000 cash.

Andrew Malidone, who was arrested with Black, was discharged as there was no testimony offered to which he could be connected with the case. [September 17, 1907]

HECTOR BLACK WILL KNOW HIS FATE TODAY

The case of the People vs. Hector Black, a Greek charged with the crime of manslaughter, commended in the Superior court in this city yesterday and arguments were completed. The jury will take the case this morning.

Attorney Greely represented the People and Attorneys W.H. Carline and Waldo S. Johnson the defendant.

The alleged crime was committed on September 6, 1907, on C street in this city, when Black is alleged to have pushed a man named Robertson to the sidewalk and he died from his injuries.

The following witnesses were examined on behalf of the prosecution: Dr. J. H. Barr, John Peffer, Clyde Kelly and Charles Stevenson.

They had seen the defendant push a man on C Street named Robertson which resulted in his skull being fractured, causing death.

After the prosecution had rested the defense took up the examination of witnesses and concluded at 4:30, when the case went over until today at 10 o’clock.

Black, the defendant, a good looking Greek, testified that he is but 18 years of age. He heard Robertson call Mrs. Gabriel, who conducts a restaurant on C. street, bad names, so he pushed him away and he fell down. [December 6, 1907]

HECTOR BLACK JURY DISAGREES

The trial of Hector Black, charged with manslaughter for the killing of W. C. Robertson, came to an end in the Superior court last night at 9 o’clock, when the jury was discharged after the foreman declaring that it would be impossible to arrive at a verdict.

The case was given to the jury at 11 o’clock yesterday morning and from the first ballot to the last the jurors stood eight for acquittal to four for conviction.

At 4:30 o’clock the jury was brought into court and Judge McDaniel asked if there was a possibility of arriving at a verdict. The foreman declared that he believed it impossible, but, after reading the instructions on excusable and justifiable homicide, Judge McDaniel sent the jury back for further deliberation. At 9 o’clock the jury reported that it stood the same and the jurors were discharged.

The trial proceeded without an objection from either side and was without an exception the most peaceable criminal trial every conducted in the Yuba County court.

In all probability the case will be dismissed and Black given his freedom. [December 7, 1907]

[Superior Court records show the case was dismissed December 11, 1907, at the request of the District Attorney.]

Culled from: Prisoners

Today’s Unbearable Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Here’s a description of a Soviet prison camp circa 1980 from the book The First Guidebook to Prisons and Concentration Camps of the Soviet Union:

The greater part of the Arkhangel’sk Region, a territory lying astride the Arctic Circle, is an icy, mountainous wasteland. In the south, however, there are large tracts of forest as well as significant deposits of metal ores, especially aluminum bauxite.

Life in these difficult climatic conditions is so hard that volunteers refuse to work here. For this reason, the Soviet state sends thousands of prisoners to the labor camps of Arkhangel’sk Region instead. As of 1980, there were no less than 100,000 prisoners in the three major forced-labor camp complexes, one of which was Oneglag.

Oneglag, whose administrative headquarters designed as no. 350 may be found in Plesetsk, included 50 strict-regime and seven special strict-regime camps and a total prisoner population of approximately 60,000. The camp complex services the Bauxite Construction Trust and the Onega Special Lumber Company which provided lumber for use in the Soviet Union or for export to the West.

The following is an eyewitness account from M.K., an electronics engineer released from Oneglag in 1976:

“I was in a privileged group of specialists assigned to build tracks for the bauxite dredges and to plan the relocation of the logging camps. This gave me the opportunity to observe the conditions under which the prisoners in several ‘Oneglag’ camps lived. To begin with, the prisoners were kept hungry and were denied fresh vegetables, which, under sub-polar conditions, can cause scurvy. The ‘struggle’ against scurvy was carried out at our camp with the use of local remedies. Barrels of spruce-needle extract, which the prisoners drank as a source of ‘vitamins’, were available in the living areas of the camps. This measure, however, did not prevent the prisoners from losing their teeth.

“At winter temperatures of -40º or -50º C., the work in the logging areas was unbearable, and the production quotas were high. Failure to fulfill these quotas was punishable by incarceration in the isolation cell on reduced rations. A prisoner so punished, however, was at least withdrawn from his work duties.

“In the camps, I often saw desperate prisoners who had resorted to self-mutilation in order to escape the work that was sending them to their graves. Some placed a leg under a falling log, others chopped off a finger. Some even deliberately allowed a hand to become frostbitten so that it would have to be amputated. An atmosphere of hopelessness and despair reigned in the camps. Only the religious prisoners were able to stand above the human degradation. They believed that they were being tested by God and that they had to endure their sufferings. The others, however, fought each other over food or reduced themselves to acts of homosexuality or even sodomy. There were no women at the camps. The barracks at the camps were built of damp wood, which the prisoners had to dry with their own bodies. Not even the heating ovens were of any help against the dank winter cold.

“Even though we lived in the forest, we did not always have firewood for the ovens. The supervisors were more interested in fulfilling their work plans than in sending the prisoners out to gather firewood for the camps. This was left to the disabled prisoners. The camp rations condemned us, moreover, to permanent hunger. Because of the impassability of the roads in the winter, it was not always possible for the authorities to deliver provisions to the camps, which made matters much worse. In such cases, helicopters sometimes dropped packages of zwiebach from the sky. In the summer, swarms of midges, tiny gnat-like insects, plagued and literally devoured the prisoners. Even the protective nets on our headgear were of no help. The netting was coarse enough for the insects to penetrate. Yet the quotas had to be met and the prisoners had to continue working —swollen from illness, bloodstained, and hungry.

“When I was released from this horror after three years (I was unexpectedly rehabilitated), I could not for a long time believe that I had come out alive. And now, I can hardly believe that this horror continues to exist today. But it does exist. I still correspond with friends I left behind in the camp.”

Prisoners working along the Gulag railroad

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

Civil War Portrait Du Jour!

By comparison with the ragtag forces of the South, the Union Army was magnificently equipped, as exemplified by the cornetist of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry pictured here. Yet Northerners were repeatedly chagrined by the frequency with which the ill-equipped Rebels bested them in battle. A Unionist lady wrote of Lee’s army marching through Frederick, Maryland:

I wish, my dearest Minnie, you could have witnessed the transit of the Rebel army through our streets… Their coming was unheralded by any pomp and pageant whatever… Instead came three long dirty columns that kept on in an unceasing flow. I could scarcely believe my eyes.

Was this body of men, moving… along with no order, their guns carried in every fashion, no two dressed alike, their officers hardly distinguishable from the privates—were these, I asked myself in amazement, were these dirty, lank, ugly specimens of humanity, with shocks of hair sticking through the holes in their hats, and the dust thick on their dirty faces, the men that had coped and encountered successfully and driven back again and again our splendid legions…?

I must confess, Minnie, that I felt humiliated at the thought that this horde of ragamuffins could set our grand army of the Union at defiance. Why, it seemed as if a single regiment of our gallant boys in blue could drive that dirty crew into the river without any trouble!

Culled from: Portraits of the Civil War

Today’s Ignited Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

On the afternoon of Saturday, December 11, 1971, an explosion ripped through a water intake tunnel under construction about 230 feet (69m) below the surface of Lake Huron near Port Huron, Michigan. The force of the blast was so immense that it ripped the 48-inch (120cm) corrugated metal air ducts to shreds, leaving a contorted mass of debris blocking the passageway and cutting off any escape for some of the workers further in the tunnel. Luckily, Eldon Bright was working near the elevator shaft and was one of the first to be lifted to safety. “You couldn’t see because all the lights were knocked out. I don’t know, maybe about 28 guys were trapped at the other end… Sure they will bring them up eventually, but a lot of them are going to be dead.”

It took rescue crews until 7 p.m. to reach the trapped men. Twice the rescuers had to be evacuated because of dangerous levels of methane gas. Ambulance worker Daniel Eastwood described the scene: “When we found men alive, we bandaged them, tied them to a stretcher and then moved on… They would cry for us not to leave…” Some 40 workers were in the tunnel at the time of the blast; 21 were killed and 9 injured.

Rescue workers bring a worker out on a stretcher

Investigations proved inconclusive but many believe that a crew working on the Lake Huron end of the tunnel five miles (8km) away set off the blast when they were drilling a ventilation shaft. Investigator Lindsay Hayes contended that a large drill bit broke loose, fell into the tunnel and set off sparks that ignited the methane gas.

The blast created a shock wave with a speed of 4,000 miles an hour and a force of 15,000 pounds per square inch.

The water tunnel, which was designed to carry fresh drinking water from Lake Huron to Detroit, was completed in 1974 and is capable of pumping 800 million gallons of water per day.

Culled from: Disaster Great Lakes

Civil War Injury Du Jour!

Surgeon General’s Office
Army Medical Museum

Photograph No. 196 and 197.  Case of successful primary amputation at the hip-joint.

Private James E. Kelley, B., 56th Pennsylvania, age twenty-eight, was wounded at about 9:00 in the morning of April 29, 1863, in a skirmish of the 1st Division, 1st Corps, on the Rappahannock, nearly opposite the “Pratte House” below Fredericksburg. A conoidal musket ball fired from a distance of about three hundred yards shattered his left femur. A consultation of the senior surgeons of the brigades decided that ex-articulation of the femur was expedient and the operation was performed at 4:00 in the afternoon at the “Fitzhugh House” by surgeon Edward Shippen, U.S. V., and the amputation was accomplished with slight loss of blood. The patient was, at first, placed in a hospital tent, was transferred May 22 to the Corps Hospital, progressing favorably. By May 28 all the ligatures had been removed. On June 15, 1863, the patient was captured by the enemy and removed to the Libby Prison in Richmond. Up to this date there had been no adverse symptoms. On July 14, Kelley was exchanged and sent to the Annapolis, U.S.A., General Hospital. On his admission he was much exhausted by profuse diarrhea. The internal portion of the wound had united but the external portion was gangrenous. Applications of bromine were made to the sloughing surface without amelioration. A chlorinated soda solution was substituted, and in the latter part  of July there was a healthy granulating surface. On December 23, 1863, the wound had entirely healed and Kelley visited Washington and obtained an honorable discharge from service and a pension. At this date, the picture from which the photograph was taken was drawn by Hospital Steward Stauch, U.S.A., one of the artists of the Army Medical Museum. Kelley then went to his home, near Black Lake P.O., Indiana County, Pennsylvania. A letter dated January 12, 1865, was received from him at this office and represented him as as in excellent health and spirits at the time. In the spring of 1868, Kelley went to New York and had an artificial limb adapted by Dr. E.D. Hudson. At that time the photograph was taken. He could walk quite well after the adaptation of the artificial limb. This specimen is preserved at the Army Medical Museum and is number 1148 of the surgical section. Kelley’s disability was rated March 4, 1874, as total, second grade. There was nothing additional recorded at the pension office at the above date.

Culled from: Orthopaedic Injuries of the Civil War 

Today’s Lasting Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In 1700 the governor and Council of Maryland considered the fate of two men sentenced to death for burglary. It was the first offense for both. “What they have Stollen is but a Trifle,” the governor noted, in suggesting that clemency might be appropriate. The Council disagreed. Members urged the governor to inquire whether the two were guilty of “any other evil Practices” that might allow him, in good conscience, to let the execution proceed. “So many Burglarys are Dayly comitted in this Province,” the Council concluded, “that it is absolutely necessary some publiq Example should be made to deterr others from the like Crimes for the future.”

Criminologists would likewise call it deterrence, but eighteenth-century Americans usually had blunter words for the primary purpose they ascribed to capital punishment. “There are but few who are made without fear,” explained James Dana a few hours before Joseph Mountain’s execution in Connecticut for rape. The punishment that awaited Mountain was “calculated and designed to put the lawless in fear.” The Virginia Gazette observed that capital punishment was a way of “counterbalancing Temptation by Terror, and alarming the Vicious by the Prospect of Misery.” An executed criminal was “an Example and Warning, to prevent others from those Courses that lead to so fatal and ignominious a Conclusion:—and thus those Men whose Lives are no longer of any Use in the World, are made of some Service to it by their Deaths.” Fear, terror, warning—whatever one called it, the main purpose of the death penalty was conceived to be its deterrent effect, its power to prevent prospective criminals from committing crimes. “Suppose our ministers of justice, in their superabounding mercy, should spare the vilest criminals,” the minister Aaron Hutchinson imagined. “Vice would be daring, and the wicked walk on all hands.”

To convey that message of terror to the greatest number required careful management of the process by which criminals were put to death. Most clearly, an execution had to be a public event, open to anyone wishing to attend. “A principal design of public executions is, that others may fear,” argued Noah Hobart before an audience gathered in Fairfield, Connecticut, to see Isaac Frasier hanged for burglary. “One end of the law,” the minister Nathanial Fisher proclaimed at a similar occasion, “in ordering him to suffer, in this public and ignominious manner, is to alarm and deter others.” By locating executions in open spaces affording views to large numbers of people, and by scheduling them in the daytime to maximize visibility and convenience for spectators, officials sought to broadcast terror as widely as possible. Death “should be publicly inflicted on the wicked,” Nathan Strong declared, so “that others may see and fear.”

The message was conveyed in several ways simultaneously. Americans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries knew in the abstract, even if they had not witnessed any actual executions, that death was the consequence of serious crime. Executions were reported in newspapers and discussed in sermons and were the talk of any county where one occurred, so the public would have been well informed about capital punishment even without the opportunity to see it put into practice. But there was something uniquely terrifying about seeing an execution. One could usefully meditate on the death of the burglar Philip Kennison, for instance, but it was only “the Sight of this unhappy Criminal” actually dying that could “give an Edge to these Meditations, and fix them with lasting Impressions on all our hearts.” Those who saw Samuel Smith, another burglar, dropped from the scaffold would never forget that the “connection between crime and gibbet, is much nearer and more natural, than many suppose.” Condemned criminals were well aware that their role at an execution was to be seen by as many as possible. Valentine Dukett was said to have pondered “the awful spectacle which this body of mine will in a short time exhibit.” The burglar Levi Ames is supposed to have rhymed on the morning of his execution:

Ah! what a Spectacle I soon shall be,
A Corps suspended from yon shameful Tree.

The death penalty was understood as something that had to be seen in order to have its maximum effect.

Culled from: The Death Penalty: An American History

 Vintage Prisoners Du Jour!

ABORTIONISTS
October 12, 1936
Photographer: Fred Morgan

Abortion Hospital, Newark, N.J. Nurse Anne Green and Dr. G. E. Harley. — photographer’s caption.

Dr. George E. Harley, 66, and his nurse Anna Green, 28, were arrested October 9, 1936, on charges of performing illegal operations. It was alleged that they ran Newark’s “Anti-Stork Club,” a sort of co-op for illegal abortions, and that as many as eight hundred young women had paid $1  to $2 a month for “membership.” Records seized at their offices indicated that the doctor might have performed as may as 5,800 abortions.

Culled from: New York Noir

I totally need an “Anti-Stork Club” t-shirt!

And also, here’s an article with additional details from the February 22, 1937 issue of Time magazine:

Just about a year ago, according to the testimony she last week swore to in a Newark court, a wayward New Jersey girl named Anna Bartholomeo found herself pregnant and speedily learned about “Dr. Harley’s place.” This was an eleven-room house in a respectable Newark neighborhood where one George E. Harley, a genteel little malpractitioner, conducted an anti-birth insurance business. For $2 a month, paid in advance, “Dr.” Harley guaranteed that no customer need have a baby. For contraceptive he dispensed a “Magic Oil.” In case of pregnancy he stood ready to perform an abortion.

More than 2,000 women in Newark, New York City and neighboring communities subscribed to the system of this abortionist whose name echoed London’s famed Harley Street where England’s most honorable doctors have their offices.

Newark’s “Dr.” Harley was called both an osteopath and a chiropractor last week. According to an imposing certificate on his office wall, issued by a diploma mill called the “American Academy of Medicine & Surgery,” he is a “Doctor of Medicine & Master Diagnostician.” Subscribers to his anti-birth plan submitted photographs of themselves in street clothes and in the nude, and received numbered identification cards.

“Dr.” Harley’s assistant, a strapping brunette of 33 named Anna Green, carefully filed the photographs, especially the nudes, which few women rebelled against posing for, in big leather-bound scrapbooks.

Police exulted over those tell-tale photographs when they raided this abortorium last autumn. But prosecutors did not need to subpoena any of the women as witnesses, for Anna Bartholomeo, 20, inmate of the North Jersey Training School for Girls, testified willingly. This young woman went to the Harley establishment last spring, when she was three months pregnant. Because she had neglected to take out a Harley anti-birth policy, “Dr.” Harley wanted to charge her $150 for the abortion. Her “friend,” who accompanied her, haggled the charge down to $125, whereupon Anna Bartholomeo was promptly delivered of her embryo.

Last week a Newark jury decided that “Dr.” Harley and Assistant Green were criminals. A judge prepared to sentence them to from seven to 15 years in a penitentiary. This jeopardized the prepayments made by women who expected to require abortions. As for their nude photographs, the county prosecutor guaranteed to protect their reputations by impounding the scrapbooks.