MFDJ 09/04/24: Doubling the Last Meal

Today’s Fulfilling Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

If the condemned wins a stay of execution after he has eaten his last meal, does he get to choose another meal when his next execution date rolls around?

Absolutely! This has happened many times. The trick is to make sure that you actually have the meal in front of you before the stay is issued. For example, Dobie Gillis Williams (Louisiana) received a stay while he was dining on his last meal. He just continued eating. However, Thomas Thompson (California) received his stay of execution after he had ordered his final meal, but before he had actually received it. The order was canceled.


I’m not sure if Dobie’s first meal was the same as his last meal, but this is an artistic depiction by Teresa Kelly of his last meal prior to his actual execution on January 8, 1999. 

Culled from: Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals from Death Row

 

WEEGEE Du Jour!

Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig (June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968), a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography. Weegee worked in Manhattan, New York City’s Lower East Side as a press photographer during the 1930s and ’40s, and he developed his signature style by following the city’s emergency services and documenting their activity. Much of his work depicted unflinchingly realistic scenes of urban life, crime, injury and death.

Here’s a photo from the book Weegee’s New York: Photographs, 1935-1960:


Murder suspect Alan Downs is led to jail after confessing to killing his wife, circa 1940, in New York City. 

(I couldn’t find any additional information about this guy – anyone want to see if you can track the story down?)

 

Garretdom: Olde News!

SHOT IN HIS TRACKS.

A German Burglar Fatally Wounded While Attempting to  Run Away.

During the past ten days a number of small robberies were perpetrated in the Eighth district [Philadelphia]. It was evident from the fact that the houses were all opened from the rear by the same implement, that one man or a single gang was doing the work, and the police were instructed to keep a particularly careful lookout for suspicious characters. Early on Saturday morning Policeman Ritchie saw a man in the act of scaling a fence in rear of 444 north Eighth street. He placed him under arrest, when the prisoner knocked him down and ran. The officer recovered his feet and fired after the fugitive, brining him down at the second shot.

Assistance was secured and the wounded man was taken to the station-house, where he gave the name of Frederick Glass and his residence as 910 Spring Garden street. The wound was found to be a dangerous one and he was sent to the Pennsylvania Hospital, where he died a short time after his admission.

A large chisel found in the man’s pocket was found to fit the marks on the houses which had been robbed or where attempts to force doors and shutters had been made and articles found in his room were identified as having been stolen.

Glass came to this country from Germany a short time ago and took up his lodgings at 910 Sprint Garden street with Mr. Voss. The proprietor of the house says the man had no visible means of support, and frequently remained out all night and slept during the day. The Coroner will investigate the case today.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

MFDJ 08/20/24: Kid Dropper and Little Augie

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

MFDJ 08/17/24: London’s Empty Tomblands

Today’s Honeycombed Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Grave diggers, church sextons, and night watchmen appointed to guard the graves in 18th century England were often in the pay of the body snatchers. Fearful of discovery, the crooks took meticulous care to disguise the violation they caused by carefully replacing soil, flowers, and mementos in their original positions. The crimes were often so stealthy that a gang would sometimes burrow into a suitable-looking new grave, only to find it empty, their rivals having gotten there before them. In such cases, when one team had “trespassed” on the burial ground considered the territory of another, revenge was swift; there was no honor among body thieves. The crooks gave one another up to the authorities, raise a mob against their rivals, or left a trail of guilt, propping up coffins in their graves and leaving shrouds strewn on the ground. Ultimately, the reckless men became so adept at their trade, and the demand from anatomists so intense, that London’s churchyards were honeycombed with empty tombs. On several occasions when thefts were suspected, horrified relatives would frantically dig up grave after grave, only to find every corpse was gone.

Culled from: The Knife Man

 

Torture Instrument Du Jour!

Stretching Ladder

This instrument required that the victim be spread on an inclined ladder where his/her body would be stretched.

From this position, the victims were also exposed to additional atrocious torture all over their body in the form of flogging, mutilation and so on.

Culled from: Torture – Inquisition – Death Penalty

 

Garretdom!

A SUNDAY SUICIDE.

The Result of Domestic Unhappiness—Letters Left by the Deceased—Evidence That the Suicide was Premeditated.

“Good-bye,” were the last words spoken by Frederick Fegley to his wife before killing himself in a tragic manner yesterday in the Heiner’s Springs woods about half-past eleven o’clock. The suicide was rendered unusually appalling and tragic by the fact that the man’s young wife, whom he married only a few months ago, and his own brother were compelled to witness the self-destructing deed, which is supposed to have been caused through domestic infelicity.

Fegley was married in June last to Miss Mary E. Reed, daughter of William Reed, Nineteenth and Cotton streets. The course of their courtship did not run smoothly, and after marriage domestic happiness did not fall to their lot. Miss Reed was only a little over 14 years old when they were married, and from the evidence given before the Coroner yesterday it would seem that she married unwillingly and possibly out of fear, because Fegley had threatened several times that unless she consented to be his wife he would end his life. After the marriage they lived at the home of the girl’s parents for some time, but this did not seem to be agreeable to Fegley, and he left their home and took boarding with his brother-in-law, Henry Zuber, 1824 Cotton street. Subsequently he rented two rooms in the lower section of the city, bought furniture and asked his wife to go to housekeeping with him. The mother objected to her daughter’s leaving, but told the husband that if Mr. Reed, who was in Philadelphia, would give his consent when he returned home she would yield.

Yesterday Fegley spent the morning hours in company with some friends, and about the time above mentioned went to the home of his wife for her final answer. She again told him to be patient until her father returned home. “If you don’t live with me I’ll do away with myself,” said the husband, and he walked toward the new road which leads up into Heiner’s woods.

HE SHOWS THE REVOLVER.

When about a hundred yards from the house he drew from his pocket the revolver with which he ended his life and held it up toward his wife, who was watching him from the yard where they had been talking. Believing that he intended to carry out his threat and hoping to prevent it his wife ran after him, but he started on a brisk run up the road. Henry, a brother of the suicide, who was near by and saw him run followed by his wife also feared that he had decided upon a rash act and ran after him, but neither of the two caught up to him before he reached a grassy plot under a large tree in the woods. Turning around he faced the terrified wife and brother, put the barrel of the weapon into his mouth, while the brother, who was then only a few feet away, in a frantic shout, begged him to stop. The words came too late to be heeded. As the last one fell from the lips of the excited man the shot resounded through the woods. The wound proved fatal almost instantly. The residents of that portion of the city were greatly excited, and the lead man’s mother and sister were terribly affected by the awful and unexpected news.

Coroner Denhard was sent for, and as soon as he had viewed the body it was removed to the residence of Mr. Zuber and an inquest held. Henry Zuber, Henry Fegley, brother, MRs. Fegley and Mrs. Reed were the witnesses heard, but nothing but the facts already stated were elicited, except that Mrs. Reed said she objected to her daughter going away because she was needed at home, and that both her and Fegley had promised before the marriage that she could remain with them.

Before Fegley left with his wife, after talking to her in the yard, he gave her a letter, which, as well as another found on his person and addressed to his mother, brothers, and sisters, was produced at the inquest. He charges his wife with having deceived him, but did not intend to harm her in any way and hopes to meet her in Heaven. On the back of the envelope were written the words: “To-morrow look on the porch and you will be sad forever.” After due deliberation the jury gave as the verdict, “That the deceased, Frederick Fegley, came to his death on Sunday, September 26th, from a pistol shot wound inflicted by his own hand with suicidal intent.”

That he had fully made up his mind to kill himself is certain, because in the letter to his mother he tells her not to grieve for him, that his body will be found in a few days and that he will be better off dead than living. Besides this evidence of the fact there is still a stronger one. William Y. Lyon had sent Fegley a tax notice a few days ago and on Saturday evening he came to Mr. Lyon’s house and paid it and in the conversation which followed he told Mr. Lyon that he had trouble on account of his wife and added, “Look out for some startling reports.”

The deceased was a son of the late Joseph Fegley, who was killed a few years ago in East Reading by a runaway sleighing team. He was 24 years old, a pipe cutter by occupation, and bore an excellent reputation for sobriefty and industry. Henry, George, Mrs. Henry Zuber and Mrs. Annie Gartner are the surviving brotehrs and sisters.

A watch and chain, a small sum of money and the other person effects which were taken from the pockets of the dead man were given to his wife.

Culled from the September 27, 1886 issue of the Reading Times.

MFDJ 08/11/24: The Death of Private Mills

Today’s Freely Given Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

An account of the death of Private Albion B. Mills, Company E, 16th Maine Infantry, 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, 1st Corps at Gettysburg during the American Civil War.

Anna Morris Holstein, a volunteer nurse at Gettysburg, remembered this particular young man for many weeks after the battle. She reported their meeting:

In the (Union tent), as it was called, standing alone in a rebel row, [of tents] I found a boy of seventeen, wounded and “sick unto death,” whose wan, emaciated face, and cheerful endurance of suffering, at once enlisted my sympathy. He was the son of a clergyman in Maine; and in answer to inquiries about his wound, told me, with a feeling of evident pride, that “early in the day his right leg was shattered and left upon Seminary Hill, and he was carried to the rear; that the stump was doing badly; he had enlisted simply because it was his duty to do so; now he had no regret or fear, let the result be as it might.” I wrote immediately to his home, to tell them he was sinking rapidly; my next [letter] briefly stated how very near his end was; there were but a few days more of gentle endurance, and the presentiment of the child we had so tenderly cared for proved true—when, with murmured words of “home and heaven,” his young life ebbed away—another added to the many thousand given for the life of the nation. One week after his burial his father came; with a heart saddened with his great loss, [he] said that his eldest had fallen at “Malvern Hill,” the second was with the army at Fernandina, and Albert [sic], his youngest born, slept with the heroes who had made a worldwide fame at Gettysburg. They were his treasures, but he gave them freely for his country.

Private Mills hailed from Vassalboro, Maine. He was reported to have been wounded in his right leg on July 1. The ball caused an agonizing fracture and the limb had to be amputated at the upper third. He was seventeen or eighteen years old when he died on October 7; the burial followed the next day in the hospital cemetery at Camp Letterman, in Section 9, Grave #3, but the body was shortly moved to the National Cemetery.


2nd Corps Hospital, Gettysburg

Culled from: Killed In Action

 

Vintage Crime Photo Du Jour!


November 14, 1946

The woman in black—there was always one lurking around and possibly up to no good in the noir era—is Dorothy Sweeny of Shell Lake, Wisconsin, and she’s a suspect in the murder of her husband. Ellis Sweeny was ambushed and shot dead on October 9, 1946, in “the back woods in Wisconsin,” according to the Dispatch. A man named Gilbert Dickerson, described as Mrs. Sweeny’s “paramour,” was charged with the murder, which in the news shorthand of the time was invariably described as “a triangle killing.” Dickerson soon went to trial where, to the surprise of the press and prosecutors, a jury found him not guilty.

Even so, authorities still suspected Mrs. Sweeny, who in this photograph appears to have her grief well in check, of complicity in the crime. After Dickerson’s acquittal in November, she was then brought to St. Paul for a polygraph exam. Among those gathered around the table to watch a criminologist administer the test are the sheriff and district attorney from Washburn County, Wisconsin, and, at right, St. Paul Police Chief Charles J. Tierney.

Mrs. Sweeny, a blood pressure cuff around one arm, looks perfectly collected in this photograph, telling a reporter, “I am not a bit worried.” As it turned out, she had no need to be. She passed the polygraph and was later freed from jail with credit for time served after agreeing to plead guilty to being an accessory to murder. Under Wisconsin law, she could be charged with that crime even though her supposed accomplice had been acquitted. “And so,” said the Pioneer Press in a story late that November, “the 29-year-old woods man’s widow walked out of court a free woman.”

Culled from: Strange Days, Dangerous Nights

 

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.  I decided to start sharing them on a daily basis. So without further adieu, here is one of the entries saved by our 19th century kindred soul:

A YACHT DISASTER.

Four Members of a Pleasure Party Go Down With the Wreck.

ST. JOHNS, N. F., Sept 24.—A disaster occurred in the Bay of St. Johns this morning, the British schooner Mary Ann, and cutting her in two. There were twenty-seven persons on board the ill-fated craft, four of whom were drowned. Their names were Charles Weeks, Nicholas Milley, Leander Milley and Sarah Ann Fahey. The others saved themselves by clinging to the main rail of the Summerset or were picked out of the water by her boats.

The Mary Ann sank within two minutes after the collision. Fahey had hold of his wife’s hand, and was drawing her out of the companionway of the sinking vessel, when the mainmast and mainsail fell, parting husband and wife forever. Gregory Leman, another passenger, was fatally injured.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

MFDJ 08/04/24: The Tragic Life of Bobby Driscoll

Today’s Belligerent Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The fates of former child stars always make good media copy when they are dreadful, far juicier than reports on the few who adjust reasonably well to adulthood, like Shirley Temple or Ron Howard. One of the most tragic victims of the Hollywood studio system was talented young Bobby Driscoll. As a  youngster, the industry could not get enough of him. But when he became a gawky young adult, the system cruelly shoved him aside. He was unable to cope with such bitter rejection and escaped into drug addiction, which eventually killed him.

Driscoll was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1937, and moved with his parents to California in 1943. A Los Angeles barber whose own boy was already in motion pictures urged Mrs. Driscoll to have little Bobby try his luck in the movies. She took him to MGM, where the pixie-faced Bobby was soon hired for a role in Margaret O’Brien’s Lost Angel (1943). By the time he was six, the cooperative Bobby was making $500 a week, remarkable money in those times—especially for a youngster. By 1946 he was being touted as “the greatest child find since Jackie Cooper played Skippy [in 1931].”


Young Bobby Driscoll

Driscoll was the first human actor Walt Disney put under contract. He and the equally young Luana Patten were paired in Song of the South (1946) and So Dear to My Heart (1948), billed as the “sweetheart team.” When asked what he intended to do with his weekly earnings, Bobby said, “I’m going to save my money and go to college, then become a G-man.” His biggest success was in the thriller The Window (1949); he was given a special Oscar as the year’s outstanding juvenile performer. Also for the Disney studio, he played Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island (1950) and provided the model and voice for the animated Peter Pan (1953).


The Sweetheart Team

By 1954, Bobby was in that awkward teenager stage, gangly and acne-faced. Finding screen jobs scarce, he performed a few TV guest appearances. Away from work, he did not fit in with his peers. “I really feared people,” he admitted later. “I tried desperately to be one of the gang. When they rejected me, I fought back, became belligerent and cocky and was afraid all the time.” He first tried marijuana when he was 16, then turned to harsher drugs, finally becoming a heroin addict. He was arrested in 1956 on a narcotics charge and on suspicion of being a drug pusher. Bobby then tried to straighten out his life, and even landed a new film role. The project, however, was a trashy study of juvenile delinquents called The Party Crashers (1958), featuring another Hollywood has-been, Frances Farmer, who was also failing to make a successful comeback.


Looks like a must-see to me!

Abandoning acting for the time being, Driscoll took odd jobs, but he either quit or got fired from every one. He married a woman named Marjorie, had a son, and was determined that his kid would never have to endure what he was undergoing. But when his wife divorced him, Bobby reverted to drugs. He was jailed as an addict in 1959, and in 1961 he was apprehended while robbing an animal clinic. He was incarcerated at Chino Penitentiary for drug addiction and remained there for more than a year. When he was paroled, he worked as a carpenter and then drifted to New York. His mother would remember, “None of the studios in New York would hire him because he had once been on drugs.”

Bobby’s last months must have been desperate ones indeed. He died penniless in an abandoned Greenwich Village tenement. His body was later discovered by two children playing there on March 30, 1968. Two empty beer bottles were found by the corpse and there were needle marks on his arms. Since no one knew who he was, he was buried in a pauper’s grave. The causes of death were listed as a heart attack and hardening of the arteries. Later that year, when Bobby’s father himself was dying, his mother tried again to find Bobby. She had no success, and she went to the FBI for assistance. Time passed, and finally, she heard from an L.A. County agency that her son was officially dead. He had been traced through his fingerprints to that unknown corpse who had been buried back in Manhattan.

Nobody could write a better epitaph to this wasted life than the victim himself. At one point in his tormented adult existence, he observed, “I was carried on a satin cushion and then dropped into the garbage can.”  [That should be on his gravestone! – DeSpair]


Driscoll near the end

Culled from: The Hollywood Book of Death

 

Vintage Photos Du Jour!


A Student’s Dream
Photographer: A. A. Robinson, 1906

Robinson made a series of 8″ x 10″ photographs depicting students on the dissecting table surrounded by cadavers and/or skeletons. The photographs were popular images of their time and were sold to students throughout the United States. The images graphically represent one of photography’s theoretical concepts—that of “magical substitution.” Magical substitution is the phenomenon when the viewers place themselves in the depicted scene. It is one source of empathy, as one contemplates even fleetingly what it would mean to be in that situation.

Culled from: Stiffs, Skulls & Skeletons

 

Garretdom: Parisian Edition

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.  I decided to start sharing them on a daily basis. So without further adieu, here is one of the entries saved by our 19th century kindred soul:

What a Wicked City Paris Is.

PARIS, Sept. 27.—The city continues to furnish a singularly large number of murders and suicides. At one of the hotels yesterday the cook shot and fatally wounded his mistress and then attempted suicide, because the woman had made him jealous. A hairdresser shot and mortally hurt his mistress, because she had tired of their relationship and resolved to reform. A workman having his week’s pay in his pocket, and feeling hilarious met a pretty female organ grinder, and asked her to play him a waltz so that he might dance for her amusement while she played for his. The woman’s male companion instantly became incensed at the request of the happy-minded workman, and shot him dead.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

MFDJ 07/29/24: The Chinese Rod of Split Bamboo

Today’s Terribly Mutilated Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Next to Russia, for sheer love of whipping as a corporal punishment, comes China, and little less formidable than the Russian knout is the Chinese rod of split bamboo. The sharp edges of the bamboo cut into the flesh, inflicting terrible lacerations. Little wonder that deaths, as a result of these floggings, have been frequent, and that those who escape this fate are often so terribly mutilated that they remain cripples for the rest of their lives.

The stick, too, was employed in other countries besides China; and was often used as an alternative form of punishment, or for certain specific offenses, in countries where the use of the whip was customary. In some cases, especially where a stick or bastinado formed the instrument of punishment, the buttocks were not the selected points for battery. Thus, in Turkey, the soles of the naked feet were beaten with a stick.

Culled from: The History of Corporal Punishment

 

Post-Mortem Portrait Du Jour!


CHILD HELD BY MOTHER WITH FINGERLESS GLOVES
Ambrotype 1/6 plate in wall frame, circa 1858

Culled from: Sleeping Beauty III

 

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.  I decided to start sharing them on a daily basis. So without further adieu, here is one of the entries saved by our 19th century kindred soul:

Violently Ill from Poisoned Victuals.

MEXICO, Mo., Sept. 26.—Mr. and Mrs. H. L. Miller and Mr. and Mrs. F. I. Gibbs, who live ten miles southwest of here on the Hilt farm, became violently ill yesterday morning from the effects of poisoned victuals eaten at breakfast. The two men when they became sick were at work on the highway and were both overcome at the same time with griping pains and violent vomiting. They were taken home by the men who were working with them. When they reached home they found their wives in the same condition, both of them being in bed and unable to move. A physician was sent for, and he pronounced the symptoms poisoning. An antidote was administered, and all are now out of danger. The general supposition is that an eleven-year-old colored girl, who is employed in the capacity of nurse to Mrs. Miller, administered the poison. She was punished a few days ago, and was in bad humor about it.

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

MFDJ 07/28/24: A Lingering Death at Hiroshima

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

MFDJ 07/25/24: Executioner Schmidt

Today’s Revolting Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

An excerpt from the introduction of A Hangman’s Diary: The Journal of Master Franz Schmidt, Public Executioner of Nuremberg, 1573-1617:

During the earliest recorded years of the city of Nuremberg, Germany’s history the death penalty seems, after conviction, to have been carried out by the accuser, who strung up the criminal on any suitable tree or post. Sometimes, with an eye to poetic justice, the wrong-doer was made to suffer on the very spot where he had committed the crime. Such a method, however, was soon considered to be incompatible with the dignity of the court that had pronounced judgment; it also brought undesirable odium on the accuser; so that gradually the task devolved on the Züchtiger, an official entrusted with the infliction of torture and of other forms of punishment. The prosecutor was, nevertheless, required to provide or pay for the rope, the fuel for the pyre, and similar necessary items; a regulation that soon became obsolete in practice, although it figures on the statutes as late as the sixteenth century.

The executioner, known as the ‘Mate of Death,’ the Hoher, the Haher, the Suspensor and, later, as the henker, Nachrichter, or, more commonly, the Scharfrichter, was a person of considerable importance as well as infamy. The City records show that it was difficult to find a skilled and, at the same time, reputable practitioner to fill the post. Many of those recruited were mere ruffians who themselves perished on the scaffold. Thus in 1386 Meister Friedrich was burnt alive at Windsheim as a coiner; in 1479 Meister Hans was beheaded for treason by his assistant; in 1503 an executioner killed his Lowe in the course of a quarrel over the rightful division of moneys received for dispatching five criminals. On the other hand, in 1497 Meister Jorg, after many years of office, was made a freeman of the City. Some hangmen seem to have shown comparative humanity, for in 1507 Hans Peck earned a sharp reproof on account of the leniency with which he had treated a poor fellow condemned to the pillory.

The office was not without its dangers. In 1544 hangman Kester was murdered in the presence of a number of peasants, who made no attempt to interfere with, still less to secure, the murderer. It is therefore not surprising to find that some artists, either on this account or from the more respectable motive of humanity, gave up their post.

From about 1350 we have a fairly complete list of the Nuremberg executioners, together with many details respecting their office and careers. Perhaps the most famous, as well as the most respectable of all the sinister list, was Meister Franz Schmidt, author of the diary from which are taken the entries translated in this book. After acting for five years as assistant to his father, who was executioner to the Bishop of Bamberg, Schmidt settled in Nuremberg, where he acted as chief Scharfrichter from 1578 to 1617. During this period, according to his journal, he executed 361 persons and otherwise punished 345 minor criminals; but the record is incomplete.


Executioner Franz Schmidt in action

Schmidt had some education, and also scientific tastes, which led him to dissect a number of his victims. He seems to have been superior to most who practised his revolting trade; a stern man, but not altogether inhuman, and inspired by a grim piety, as his diary shows. His disapproval of harsh punishment for those charged with witchcraft is to his credit, since every infliction of torture and each execution brought him heavy fees. Humane feelings also made him oppose the drowning of women, a practice that often entailed very protracted suffering. At his suggestion, this method was changed into hanging or beheading, a swifter if equally stern procedure.

In 1585 he had the unpleasant duty of executing his brother-in-law by breaking him on the wheel. On his way to the gallows the criminal was punished with the red hot tongs. Only two tweaks were inflicted, the rest being remitted by the Council as a special favor, possibly out of regard for the presumed feelings of Schmidt. The two held a long and apparently edifying discourse of which the condemned man was allowed to embrace his daughter. In the end the conscientious Franz dispatched his relative with no less than thirty-one strokes of the bar.

As a reward for his services, in 1584 Schmidt was granted full pay during life, and his lodgings were thoroughly renovated. He resigned in 1617, on which occasion he notes in his diary that he is once more a “respectable” person.

Culled from: A Hangman’s Diary

 

Arcane Excerpts: Uh-oh! Edition

Years ago when I was a data entry examiner for Medicare, I read a post-op report detailing a horrible accident that befell a man when he sat down on a chair naked after a shower and a screwdriver became unexpectedly lodged in his rectum!  This is the 1811 version of that story.

This article about a most unfortunate man was culled from the 1811 Eclectic Repertory and Analytical Review.

A gentleman of an inactive and sedentary disposition had for many years suffered from constipated bowels, which increased to that degree that the most active cathartics failed in producing the desired effect. By the advice of a practitioner, whom he consulted in Paris, he daily introduced into the rectum a piece of flexible cane (about a finger’s thickness), where it was allowed to remain until the desire for evacuating the faeces came on. This plan succeeded so well that for more than a twelve month he never had occasion to resort to any other means. One morning, being anxious to fulfil a particular engagement in good time, in his hurry he passed the stick farther up, and with less caution than usual, when it was suddenly sucked up into the body, beyond the reach of his fingers. This accident, however, did not interrupt the free discharge of the faeces, and the same evacuation regularly took place every day, whilst the stick remained in the gut. It was seven days afterwards when I first saw him; he was in a very distressed state, with every symptom of fever, tension of the abdomen, and a countenance expressive of the greatest anxiety. His relatives and friends were totally ignorant of the real nature of his case; and nothing less than the urgency of his sufferings, could ever have prevailed upon him to disclose it to me. Such were his feelings on the occasion, that a violent hysteric fit was brought on by the mere recital of what he termed his folly.

After repeated trials I was at length enabled, with a bougie to feel one extremity of the stick lodged high up in the rectum; but without being able to lay hold of it with the stone forceps. To allay the irritation for the present, an emollient clyster, with tinct. opii.3ij, was given, which passed without the lest impediment, and did not return. On the next examination, two hours after, I found the sphincter ani considerably dilated, and by a continued perseverance to increase it, the relaxation became so complete, that in about twenty minutes I was enabled to introduce one finger after the other, until the whole hand was engaged in the rectum.

I found the end of the stick jammed in the hollow of the sacrum, but by bending the body forward it was readily disengaged, and extracted. Its length was nine inches and a half, with one extremity very ragged and uneven.

For several days after, the situation of the patient was highly critical, the local injury, joined to the perturbation of his mind, brought on symptoms truly alarming. At length I had the satisfaction to witness his complete recovery; and he has ever since (more than two years ago) enjoyed good health, and the regular action of the bowels, without he assistance of medicines, or any other aid.

It’s a miracle cure!! – DeSpair

 

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.

I enjoyed the daily Andersonville prison entries that I did earlier this year and thought I’d start sharing daily news articles from these fascinating scrapbooks.  I’ll add them to the Garretdom archives, but in most cases I won’t search out vintage illustrations to couple them with, so that I can share them on a daily basis.  So without further delay, here’s today’s article, from 1886:

Incendiaries That Need Lynching.

READING, Sept. 27—The dwelling-house of Mrs. Hettie Schwenk, a widow, near Little Oley, this county, was visited early this morning by incendiaries, who for revenge set fire to the house, which was destroyed, with the contents, involving a loss of $5000. The inmates barely had time to escape. Nothing was saved. Mrs. Schwenk was carried out of the house, and John and Samuel Schwenk jumped from the second-story window. John was badly burned. Recently Mrs. Schwenk was robbed of $300 and is continually harassed by unknown parties.

From the collection of the Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook

Read more grim olde news at Garretdom!

By the way, there are some incendiaries that need lynching right now in California!  (See the Park Fire.)

MFDJ 07/14/24: Middle Age Pestilence

Today’s Appalling Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

European expansion produced the ‘Columbian exchange’, a highly unequal disease trade-off in which Columbus may have brought one killer disease back from the Americas: syphilis. This broke out in 1493-4 during a war between Spain and France being waged in Italy. When Naples fell to the French, the conquerors indulged in the usual orgy of rape and pillage, and the troops and their camp-followers then scattered throughout Europe. Soon, a terrible venereal epidemic was raging. It began with genital sores, progressing to a general rash, to ulceration, and to revolting abscesses eating into bones and destroying the nose, lips and genitals, and often proving fatal.


Man suffering from syphilis, 1868

Initially, it was called the ‘disease of Naples’, but rapidly became the ‘French Pox’ and other terms accusing this or that nation: the Spanish disease in Holland, the Polish disease in Russia, the Russian disease in Siberia, the Christian disease in Turkey and the Portuguese disease in India and Japan. For their part, the Portuguese called it the Castilian disease, and a couple of centuries later Captain Cook (1728-79), exploring the Pacific, rued that the Tahitians ‘call the venereal disease Apa no Britannia – the British disease’ (he thought they’d caught it from the French).

That some of the Spaniards at the siege of Naples had accompanied Columbus suggested an American origin for the pox (or ‘great pox’, to distinguish it from smallpox). It certainly behaved in Europe like a new disease, spreading like wildfire for a couple of decades. ‘In recent times’, reflected one sufferer, Joseph Gruenpeck (c. 1473-c.1532):

I have seen scourges, horrible sicknesses and many infirmities affect mankind from all corners of the earth. Amongst them has crept in, from the western shores of Gaul, a disease which is so cruel, so distressing, so appalling that until now nothing so horrifying, nothing more terrible or distgusting, has ever been known on this earth.

Syphilis, we now know, is one of several diseases caused by members of the Treponema group of spirochetes, a corkscrew-shaped bacterium. There are four clinically distinct human treponematoses (the others are pinta, yaws and bejel) and their causative organisms are virtually identical, suggesting all are descendants of an ancestral spirochete which adapted to different climates and human behaviors.

What caused this terrible outbreak? Many epidemiological possibilities have been mooted. It is feasible that some American treponemal infection merged with a similar European one to become syphilis, with both initial infections subsequently disappearing. Others maintain that venereal infections had long been present in Europe but never properly distinguished from leprosy; treponemal infections (pinta, yaws, endemic and venereal syphilis) had, it is suggested, initially presented as mild childhood illnesses, spread by casual contact and producing a measure of immunity. With improved European living standards, treponemes dependent on skin contact had become disadvantaged, being replaced by hardier, sexually transmitted strains. Thus an initially mild disorder grew more serious. A related theory holds that the spirochete had long been present in both the Old World and the New; what would explain the sixteenth-century explosion were the social disruptions of the time, especially warfare.

Like the pox itself, the debate raged — and remains unresolved to this day. But whatever the precise epidemiology, syphilis, like typhus, should be regarded as typical of the new plagues of an age of conquest and turbulence, one spread by international warfare, rising population density, changed lifestyles and sexual behavior, the migrations of soldiers and traders, and the ebb and flow of refugees and peasants. While Europeans were establishing their empires and exporting death to aboriginal peoples, they were caught in microbial civil wars at home. Bubonic plague bounced from the Balkans to Britain, malaria was on the increase, smallpox grew more virulent, while typhus and the ‘bloody flux’ (dysentery) became camp-followers of every army. Influenza epidemics raged, especially lethal being the ‘English sweat’ (sudor Anglicus) which struck in 1485 (delaying Henry VII’s coronation), 1507, 1528, 1551 and 1578, and was described by Polydore Vergil, an Italian diplomat in London, as ‘a pestilence horrible indeed, and before which no age could endure’. John Caius’s (1510-73) A Boke of Conseill against the Disease Commonly Called the Sweat or Sweating Sickness (1552) noted the copious sweating, shivering, fever, nausea, headache, cramps, back pain, delirium and stupor. It came to crisis within twenty-four hours, with very high mortality. It was thought even worse than the plague, for plague:

commonly giveth three or four, often seven, sometimes nine… sometimes eleven, and sometimes fourteen day’s respect to whom it vexeth. But that [the sweating sickness] immediately killed some in opening their windows, some in playing with children in their street doors, some in one hour, many in two it destroyed, and at the longest, so they that merrily dined, it gave a sorrowful supper.

The ‘English sweat’ remains a riddle. Such calamities form a doleful backdrop to the Renaissance.


The English Sweat – famous ska band!

Culled from: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind

 

Post-Mortem Portraits Du Jour!

Culled from: Sleeping Beauty I

MFDJ 07/13/24: Our Lady of the Angels Fire

Today’s Badly-Burned Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Fires are not supposed to happen, but when they do and people die, they can affect an entire community, especially if children are involved. Never was this more apparent than on December 1, 1958, when Chicago and the nation experienced one of the most heartbreaking tragedies in history. On that day a fire enveloped the half-century-old Our Lady of the Angels parochial school on Chicago’s west side, leaving 92 students and three nuns dead.


Avers Avenue in front of the north wing of Our Lady of the Angels school where 95 died on December 1, 1958.

To examine the school fire is to revisit a story filled with startling inconsistencies and shattering grief, a tale of ordinary people caught up in a mind-numbing disaster, the effects of which would still be felt decades later. Not only did this fire shock the world and tear apart a close-knit community, it left lingering questions that turned the event into a mystery that has deepened with each passing year.

What is known is that in the fall of 1958, classroom space at Our Lady of the Angels was strained to capacity, a dangerous situation present in hundreds of American elementary schools, public and private. Some 1,400 students, 20 nuns, and nine lay teachers occupied its 24 classrooms where, in some, up to 60 children were jammed together. The 2 1/2-story brick school building on the corner of Avers Avenue and Iowa Street was the hub of a thriving Roman Catholic parish in a well-kept, predominantly Italian neighborhood. The U-shaped school consisted of a north and south wing connected by an annex. The south wing was built in 1903, and the north wing, which had originally been designed as a combination church-school, was built in 1910. In 1939, after a new church was built next door, the school’s north wing was converted entirely into classrooms, and a chapel was built in its basement.

December 1, 1958, promised to be a cold but clear day in Chicago. For pupils at Our Lady of the Angels, it was the first day of class since school had let out the week before for Thanksgiving. The day passed without fanfare and everything seemed normal. At 2 P.M. the students settled down for their final hour of lessons, eagerly awaiting the three o’clock bell that would signal their dismissal. But lurking nearby was a hidden fire burning in the basement stairwell of the school’s north wing. Exactly when it started was never fixed to the precise minute, but the date of its occurrence will never be forgotten. Because the school lacked an adequate fire detection system, several minutes would pass before anyone discovered the blaze.

Two boys returning to their second-floor classroom after emptying wastebaskets thought they smelled something burning. When they reached their room in the building’s annex, they informed their teacher, who stepped into the hallway to find smoke gathering at ceiling level. After conferring with a neighboring teacher, she ran down to the principal’s office in the school’s south wing to seek direction. (A standing rule prohibited anyone from sounding the school’s fire alarm without first notifying the mother superior.) After learning the principal was substituting in another classroom downstairs, the teacher hastened back to her own classroom, where the smoke in the hallway had thickened. Rather than wait for an alarm, she and the neighboring teacher promptly evacuated their children down a stairway to a set of exit doors in the south wing. After marching their pupils into the church next door, the first teacher ran back to the school and pulled the fire alarm while the other teacher took off for the convent across the street to use the telephone. The fire alarm started ringing in the school at 2:42 P.M., the same time the first telephone call reporting the fire was received by the fire department. For the 329 students and teachers in the north wing’s second floor classrooms, the signal came too late. Flames and smoke had already traveled up the rear stairway and entered the long corridor, cutting off escape.


Firefighters bring victims down from blazing classrooms in the alley north of the school.

The unsuspecting occupants were first alerted to the fire not by the alarm but by a series of events that began with an ominous rising heat inside the building and the sound of doors rattling. In Room 208, next to the burning stairway, children giggled when someone suggested “it must be ghosts.” But the laughter stopped when a boy got up from his desk and opened the back door. “There’s smoke in the hallway!” he exclaimed. Waiting for the first alarm, Sister Mary St. Canice instructed her 46 seventh graders to stay seated and calm. “We mustn’t panic,” she told them. “Get down on your knees and pray. The firemen will come.” The nun meant well. But he instructions were quickly abandoned by the will to survive. When glass transoms over the doors shattered, smoke and fire spilled into the room across the combustible ceiling tile, plunging it into superheated darkness. Chased by flames, the children rushed to the windows and began screaming “the school’s on fire!” Seconds later the youngsters started jumping out the windows, bouncing off the pavement 25 feet below. Some broke bones and limped or crawled away. Others remained silent and still. Those unable to escape the room fell to the floor where they died. As the fire advanced further through the corridor, the same harrowing scene was repeated in each of the remaining five classrooms.


The body of a young girl is carried down a ladder from Room 212 when the fire is nearly extinguished.

As terror unfolded inside, those outside became aware of the fire. At around 2:30 P.M., janitor Jim Raymond had been walking between the narrow gangway separating the back of the school and parish rectory when he saw smoke and a red glow coming from one of the school’s frosted basement window panes. Raymond ran into the rectory to get help. “The school’s on fire!” he yelled to the housekeeper Nora Maloney. “Call the fire department, quick!” Raymond then disappeared back in the school, inside of which were four of his own children. Maloney’s actions at this point remain unclear because her call, the first report to the fire department, wasn’t received until 2:42 P.M. Meanwhile, after reentering the school basement, Raymond attempted to douse the flames himself. But the fire was too big for him to handle alone, so he ran up a set of stairs to the second floor where he was met by one of the parish priests. Together they helped evacuate a classroom next to the building’s only fire escape. In the next few minutes, the janitor made several more trips before passing out.


Another victim is removed down a ladder.

About the same time Raymond discovered the fire, traveling salesman Elmer Barkhaus was driving south of Avers Avenue when he too saw smoke coming from the school’s northeast doorway that led to the basement and faced the alley directly north of the school. Barkhaus pulled his car over and, after finding no fire alarm box on the corner, ran into a small candy store next door to telephone. The store’s owner, a Polish immigrant named Barbara Glowacki, was leery of strangers, so when the excited Barkhaus barged up to her front counter, she said she had “no public phone.”

“The school next door is on fire,” Barkhaus yelled before running out the door to ring doorbells on neighboring homes. Glowacki went into the alley to investigate the stranger’s report. She saw smoke and  a wisp of flame shooting from the transom above the school’s rear stairwell door. Fear shot through he body; her daughter Helena’s classroom was on the first floor. She hurried back to the store and called the fire department. After being told that “help is on the way,” Glowacki returned to the alley. This time she saw frantic students and nuns leaning out the upper windows. They were shrouded in black smoke that pushed from behind them. “Help us,” they screamed. “We’re trapped.” But before Glowacki could react, the first of dozens of students began jumping the 25 feet to the icy pavement.


Firemen carefully retrieve the body of a young girl from room 212 before the fire is completely extinguished.

Sirens began to fill the neighborhood and harried parents and neighbors ran into the alley carrying painting ladders that fell far short of the window ledges. When Engine 85 pulled up, its crew saw smoke and flames surging in from the school’s upper window ledges and children dropping from the sills, many with their clothing and hair aflame. The fire was soon elevated to five alarms, bringing 60 fire companies and ambulances to the scene. Desperate as the situation was, in the decisive early moments of their arrival, firefighters still managed to save 160 children by pulling them out windows, passing them down ladders, catching them in life nets, or otherwise breaking their falls before they hit the ground. One rescuer who climbed a ladder to Room 211 was Lieutenant Charles Kamin of Hook-and-Ladder 35. When he reached the window, scores of 8th graders were bunched together trying to squeeze out. The fireman reached in and began grabbing the children one at a time, swinging them around his back and dropping them to the ladder. He didn’t have time to worry if they missed. A broken bone from falling was better than dying. Kamin rescued about nine children, mostly boys because he could grab them by their belts. He was stopped when the room exploded in fire and the remaining pupils at the window fell back in the flames beyond his reach.


Joseph Maffiola was ostensibly the first victim removed from the school after the fire was out and it became clear that no more survivors would be found. The ten-year-old was found, along with 25 classmates, in room 212. He was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Cook County Hospital. His teacher, Sister Therese Champagne, was among the fatalities in his classroom.

It took fire crews a little more than an hour to put out the fire. But when they entered the second-story classrooms in the north wing, their discoveries were grim. Flames had consumed everything in their path. In Room 212, 27 5th graders and the nun were dead, most asphyxiated by smoke. Next door, in Room 210, the nun and 29 4th graders were burned to death. At the end of the corridor, amid the debris from the partially collapsed roof, the badly-burned bodies of nine 7th graders were discovered huddled next to their nun near the front of Room 208. Across the hallway, in Rooms 209 and 211, another 27 8th graders lay dead.


Firefighters carry a body to an awaiting police squadron for the trip to the county morgue.

For the hundreds of parents and relatives standing in stunned silence outside the school, the huge loss of life became apparent. As weary firefighters emerged from the ruined building carrying cloth-covered stretchers, a long line of ambulances and police squadrons crept slowly past to collect the bodies. For many parents the plight was made worse by not knowing if their child was dead or alive. Although many did locate their youngsters in the streets outside the school or in neighboring homes, others were left to search among the seven hospitals that had received the injured. For some parents, the search would not end until they reached the county morgue. By night’s end, 90 bodies had been counted, 87 students and 3 nuns.

Chicago, a city tempered by past tragedies, was stunned by the appalling loss. In addition to the dead, another 100 people were injured, including students, school staff, firefighters, and civilians. Two families had each lost two children. Among the injured, some had fractured skulls, broken bones, smoke-damaged lungs, and terrible burns. Five more children died in the coming months, bringing the final death toll to 55 girls, 37 boys and 3 nuns.


John Jajkowski, a ten-year-old in Sister Theresa Champagne’s fifth grade class in room 212, was found dead under a window near the back of room 212. Firefighter Richard Scheidt carried the boy’s smudged but unburned body from the school, along with 19 other children. As Scheidt stepped from the side door of the north wing on the alley side of the school with John in his arms, photographer Steve Lasker of the Chicago American newspaper snapped this heartbreaking photograph. It became the defining image of the tragedy and appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world. This photo, perhaps more than any other, conveys a sense of the unmeasurable sorrow caused by the OLA fire.

As the destroyed school still smoldered questions arose: How did the fire start? How was it able to spread so fast? Why did it go unnoticed for up to 20 minutes? And why did so many perish?

Accusing fingers pointed in all directions. The church’s pastor received death threats. Angry parents charged the fire department with slow response. Fire officials blamed school personnel for a delay in turning in an alarm. Candy store owner Barbara Glowacki was criticized for not letting Elmer Barkhaus use her telephone. The janitor was accused of poor housekeeping. The Archdiocese of Chicago was blamed for overcrowding. As newswires reported the disaster around the globe, the Pope sent personal condolences to the parish and its families, while the Soviet Union criticized the United States for spending too much money on weapons systems and less on safety devices for schools.


Faces of grief – Robert McNeilly (center) carries an unconscious girl from the school, with the assistance of Sister Adrienne Corolan and an unidentified man. Robert was among those who helped with rescue efforts before the fire department arrived. (Photo courtesy of Bob McNeilly and Robert Denstedt)

Investigators sifted the ruins to piece together the fire’s rapid progression: sometime after 2 p.m., the blaze broke out in a ringed, 30-gallon cardboard trash drum located at the bottom of the school’s northeast stairwell. After consuming refuse in the container, the fire at first simmered from a lack of oxygen and smoldered undetected, elevating temperatures in the confined stairwell space. When intense heat shattered a window at the bottom of the stairwell, a fresh supply of oxygen was sucked into the area, causing the fire in the waste drum to flash up. The flames quickly spread to the unprotected wooden and asphalt-tile staircase, feeding off varnished woodwork and walls coasted with 14 layers of paint, the top two layers composed of an extremely flammable rubberized-plastic paint that produced heavy black smoke.


Fire-charred main corridor on the school’s second floor. Note the collapsed roof.

Because the building had no sprinkler system, the stairwell quickly turned into a chimney as flames, smoke, and gases billowed up from the basement. A closed fire door on the first floor stopped the blaze from entering the first-floor corridor. But there was no door on the second floor, allowing the fire to continue up the stairway and sweep into the 85-foot-long corridor leading to the second-floor classrooms. Once inside the corridor the fire fed on combustible wooden flooring, walls, and trim, as well as the ceiling, which was also coated in the flammable rubberized-plastic paint, thus filling the corridor with deadly columns of penetrating black smoke. While the fire made its way up the stairwell, hot air and gases in the basement had entered a shaft in the basement wall and ascended two stories inside the wall. This hot air fanned out into the shallow cockloft above the second-floor ceiling, sparking serious secondary burning in the hidden area directly above the six north-wing classrooms packed with 323 students and 6 teachers. These flames also dropped into the second-floor corridor from two ventilator grilles in the ceiling.

Some survivors reported that after classroom doors had been opened and quickly closed, they heard a loud whoosh, thought to have come from an explosion that accompanied the ignition of volatile fire gases that had built up in the corridor. When intense heat from the fire began breaking large glass transoms over classroom doors, smoke and flames entered the rooms, spread across flammable ceiling tile, and forced the occupants to the windows. This was the situation in the school’s north wing when the first firefighters arrived at 2:44 p.m. As they concentrated fist on rescue, the fire on the upper story of the north wing grew steadily worse and eventually burned off one-third of the roof before being brought under control.


This is looking southeast across room 211, toward the windows overlooking the courtyard. While the roof did not collapse in this room, as it did in rooms 208 and 209, the death toll was nevertheless very high, largely due to the sheer number of students (nearly 60) jammed into the room. (Life Magazine Photo)

Though investigators were able to pinpoint the start of the fire, its cause eluded them. A check of the heating and electrical systems revealed no problems. And no evidence suggested the fire was fed by an accelerant. Several pupils were known to sneak cigarettes in the stairwell, but no solid evidence pointe to a discarded smoke as a possible cause. The only other possibility was arson.

The week after the fire, a blue-ribbon coroner’s jury heard testimony from firefighters, church officials, students, teachers, and parents. The inquest revealed some disturbing facts: Our Lady of the Angels School, like many other school buildings at that time, had no sprinkler system or smoke detectors, and its fire alarm rang only in the building, it did not transmit a signal to the fire department. The nearest street fire alarm box was two blocks away. All but one of the school’s staircases were open, without fire doors, and the building had just one fire escape. Window ledges were 37 inches from the floor—too high, it was learned, for some children to climb onto. Consequently, many of the dead had been found stacked beneath the windowsills. Finally, with an enrollment of approximately 1,400 students, the school was severely overcrowded.


Larry Walter, 13, peers from beneath bandages intended to protect massive open burn wounds and ward off infection. Hospitals that normally handled a few burn patients a week suddenly had dozens in one day. Nearly 100 children were hospitalized with injuries ranging from cuts and sprains to severe burns, broken bones and fractured skulls.

Nevertheless, the school had passed its most recent fire inspection the previous October. Chicago’s municipal code at the time did not apply to pre-ordinance buildings built before 1949. Instead, a 1905 law that lacked such modern safety requirements as sprinkler systems, automatic fire alarms, and enclosed stairways covered Our Lady of the Angels. It was later determined that a sprinkler system for the school would have cost about $8 per parent—the same price as one football helmet used by the school’s 8th grade football team.

Despite all its hoopla, the coroner’s jury failed to find the fire’s cause and did little more than issue 22 non-binding recommendations for providing schools in the city with more extensive fire protection. After fading from the public consciousness, in January 1962, the school fire once again became front-page news when police in suburban Cicero, Illinois, questioned a 13-year-old boy about a series of fires he had set in the western suburb. When the police learned that the boy had been a troubled 5th grader at Our Lady of the Angels at the time of the fire, they pressed him for more information. His mother and stepfather hired an attorney, who recommended that the boy submit to a lie detector test.

In his interview with the boy, Chicago polygraph expert John Reid learned that the youth’s firesetting tendencies stretched back to the age of five, when he first set fire to a garage. Reid learned the youth had set up to 11 fires in apartment buildings in Chicago and Cicero, mostly by tossing matches onto papers placed at the bottom of stairways. At first, the boy denied that he had set the Our Lady of the Angels fire, but the test results suggested he was lying. In a Family Court hearing in February 1962, Reid described how he leaned over to the boy and said to him, “There are 92 children and three nuns sitting in heaven who want the truth.”


Susan Smaldone, a 9-year-old from room 210, lies critically burned in the hospital the day after the fire. Her injuries were very severe and she died in the hospital on December 22, 1958 from kidney failure.

The boy, Reid testified, then “became evasive, turning his eyes from side to side, and then told me how he started the Our Lady of the Angels fire.” The boy admitted to Reid that he started the fire in the hopes that any damage would be just enough to allow for a couple of extra days off from school. The boy also told Reid he had set the fire because he hated his teachers and his principal, who, he said, “always wanted to expel me from school.” The boy’s attendance record at the school was poor, and his behavior was listed as “deplorable.” His teachers, a report shows, said he was a “troublemaker”.

In his eight-page confession, the boy described how he started the fire in the basement after going to the washroom. “I looked around and I didn’t see anybody. I threw three matches in the can and then I ran up the stairs to my room.” The boy also filled in a pencil sketch of the basement, pinpointing exactly where the fire was started. He said he waited at the trash barrel for “a few minutes” after setting the fire and watched the flames “get bigger and bigger.” He then returned to his room on the second floor and was evacuated with his class.

When Reid asked why he had never before told anyone about setting fire to the school, the boy replied, “I was afraid my dad was going to give me a beating and I’d get in trouble with the police and I’d get the electric chair or something.” Reid turned the confession over to authorities, and the boy was placed in the Audy Juvenile Home. Chicago police pursued a juvenile petition charging him in the school fire, but after  series of closed-door  Family Court hearings that ended in March 1962, Judge Alfred Cilella threw out the boy’s confession, ruling that Reid had obtained it improperly. Moreover, because the boy was under 13 at the time of the fire, the judge said he could not be tried for a felony in Illinois. Nevertheless, the judge found the youth delinquent for starting the Cicero fires, and he sent him away to a home for troubled boys in Michigan.

Despite the judge’s ruling, the boy’s description of how, where, and when the fire was started, details that only the fire setter would have known, corroborated much information compiled by investigators that, up to 1962, had been previously unreleased. Also telling are the similarities in the way the fires started in the apartment buildings and school, blazes that began in papers in a stairwell, further supporting the claims of Reid and other investigators who remained convinced that the boy was being truthful in his confession.


The day after: unbelieving crowds flock to view the school.

Culled from: Great Chicago Fires

More photos can be viewed at the wonderful OLAFire website.

The ruins of the school were demolished in 1959 and another school, built to modern safety standards, replaced it.  This is what the site looks like today.