Decidedly Grim

I’ve added another old newspaper clipping to the Garretdom archive. This one is about the whaling vessel Atlantic which broke apart and washed ashore on Ocean Beach in San Francisco in 1886. Read the article here.

Garretdom

I just added an 1886 railroad tragedy to Garretdom (the Olde Newspaper Article Archive) entitled “A Brave Old Man’s Death”. Enjoy.

A Brave Old Man’s Death

Garretdom

Some of you long-term readers may remember a little feature I used to do regularly entitled “Garretdom”: Old newspaper articles with a distinctly morbid bent. My previous entries are anthologized at the Garretdom page of The Asylum Eclectica, and I have decided to try to add to them regularly once again. There’s just something fascinating about reading 19th century newspapers. The language of the times seemed so poetic compared to the dull, colorless, duty-bound words which fill modern papers. The tragedies seem more profound, the pain more intense, the outbursts more extreme. Life just seems more interesting in these brittle yellowed pages than it does today. Perhaps you’ll agree?

Here’s the first new entry: an 1876 article from the New York Times submitted by Carrie about a man of a “morbidly sensitive organization” who was determined to end his life with whatever means necessary.

Breaking His Own Skull

Garretdom