{"id":7903,"date":"2022-10-19T19:34:23","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T00:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=7903"},"modified":"2023-03-22T22:03:52","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T03:03:52","slug":"mfdj-10-19-2022-a-hasty-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=7903","title":{"rendered":"MFDJ 10\/19\/2022: A Hasty Suicide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Fickle Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s another excerpt from\u00a0Minnesota 1918:When Flu, Fire, and War Ravaged the State<\/a>, about the Cloquet fire that devastated much of Northern Minnesota.<\/p>\n

The fire could be fickle, sparing explosives but destroying\u00a0homes. Perhaps the cruelest twist-of-fate tale to emerge from the ashes of October 12, 1918, involved the postmaster in Automba, John Arvid Kerttu.<\/p>\n

Passport records show he was born March 13, 1876, in Haaparanta, Sweden, and sailed from Goteborg for America in the summer of 1901. Five years later, he became an American citizen in Duluth. He was described as five foot three, stout with brown hair and eyes, a roundish face, and a reddish complexion. Kerttu worked as a taxidermist and artist in Duluth before becoming postmaster in Automba in the fall of 1915. He also had a store in town with a lunchroom, where he became a broker of timber deals for pulpwood and other business matters – a lucrative position for a successful immigrant in his forties.<\/p>\n

When the fires began to grow on October 12, 1918, Kerttu loaded up his wife, Elisabeth, and kids Theodore (ten), Lilly (eight), and Raganor (one) into Alex Mattson’s car, which was ferrying people out of Automba. Kerttu opted to stay to collect important business papers and the cashbox from his store. He stayed too long. The road to Kalevala that provided an escape route for his family was now blocked with flames. So Kerttu started across the clearing southeast of town. At the east end of the rail yard, surrounded by fire, he lay down against a huge sawdust pile.<\/p>\n

Refusing to submit to the agonizing fate of burning to death, he pulled out his pistol and shot himself in the head.\u00a0 When his body was found, the revolver was in his hand. His cashbox and papers were next to him. He was untouched by fire: the flames had somehow never ignited the mountain of sawdust that became his premature deathbed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nAftermath of the Fire\u00a0of 1918.<\/em><\/p>\n

Incidentally, I realized while doing some genealogy research recently that the Cloquet fire came within a mile of my great-grandparents’ house in Duluth.\u00a0 Ironic that 100 years later we should lose a house to the Camp Fire in Paradise, California.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Post-Mortem Photo Du Jour!<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nFATHER WITH DAUGHTER ON CHAIR COVERED WITH CROCHETED LACE
\nDaguerreotype, 1\/6 plate, circa 1847<\/p>\n

The manner in which this parent presents his daughter’s body to the camera connotes their separation.\u00a0 This child’s dehydrated state makes her appear more like a shrunken doll than a dead little girl.\u00a0 Perhaps the alien appearance resulting from her decay forced her father to acknowledge the need to let go, though it is notable that, despite these circumstances, he did not choose to have her photographed by herself.\u00a0 Her face and hair growth indicates that she is at least a year-and-a-half old.\u00a0 In that era, common summer diarrheas and other intestinal diseases such as typhoid, cholera and dysentery, rapidly dehydrated and killed children.\u00a0 It is no wonder the child mortality rate reached 50 percent considering that bloodletting and other drastic therapies were common treatments.\u00a0 The importance of fluid replacement was not recognized until the twentieth century.\u00a0 Interestingly, because diseased persons usually died quickly prior to the advent of modern therapies, they often looked amazingly healthy.\u00a0 Collectively, the images attest to the fact that in post-mortem photographs, for the most part, only the elderly and dehydrated showed overt signs of death.<\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0Sleeping Beauty II<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Fickle Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Here\u2019s another excerpt from\u00a0Minnesota 1918:When Flu, Fire, and War Ravaged the State, about the Cloquet fire that devastated much of Northern Minnesota. The fire could be fickle, sparing explosives but destroying\u00a0homes. Perhaps the cruelest twist-of-fate tale to emerge from the ashes of October 12, 1918, involved the postmaster in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts","category-ghastly"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7903"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8356,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7903\/revisions\/8356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}