Bermuda Bottled

This Cod Liver Oil - though Norwegian - is equivalent to the entire island of Bermuda, according to Scott and Bowne of Belleville, Ontario. How'd they get it all into those little bottles, anyway? Soothingly full of Hypophosphites*, this Emulsion will cure anything from consumption to a run-of-the-mill Canadian cold. And you'll feel like you just had a tropical vacation, too - possibly. Advertisement from Ladies' Monthly, about 1884.

* This would be phosphorous acid minus one hydrogen atom, see here and here. And for more on the efficacy of phosphates in Victorian medicine, you can look at this post about Horsford's Acid Phosphate.

*****
Thank you to Elizabeth Kerri Mahon at Scandalous Women for the Butterfly award! And thank you also to Hoydens and Firebrands for the Premio Dardas award (both are shown at the bottom of this page in the awards section).

And last but not least by any means, thank you so much to my top Entrecard droppers for January:

Thinking Out Loud
A Simple Life
Mommy's Little Corner
The Work From Home Mother
Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice
Computer Aid
The Ad Master
EzGreatLife
Cheapest Airfare
Holy Cuteness

Madam C.J. Walker

[This post is for the Black History Month Carnival.]

"I am not ashamed of my past. I am not ashamed of my humble beginning. Don't think because you have to go down in the wash-tub that you are any less a lady!...I have built my own factory on my own ground, 38 by 208 feet...I own my own automobile and run-about...Now my object in life is not simply to make money for myself...But I love to use a part of what I make in trying to help others." ---Sarah Breedlove Walker, entrepreneur and philanthropist

Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919) was the first self-made female millionaire in the United States. She developed and marketed a line of hair care and beauty products for African-American women that were well-known and highly regarded across the United States. She was also an important philanthropist who helped thousands of African-American women earn money as Walker agents. She was an important supporter of the NAACP and of their anti-lynching campaign (she donated the largest contribution to that fund in 1916). And she did it all with enormous intelligence, courage and hard work.

She was born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana, the daughter of Owen and Minerva Breedlove. She was the first member of her family to be born free. She married Moses McWilliams when she was 14 years old, and her only daughter Lelia McWilliams (afterward Walker) was born in 1885. By age 20, Sarah McWilliams was a widow. She and her daughter moved north to St. Louis, Missouri, where she took in washing in the 1890s. She remarried there in 1894, to John Davis, whom she divorced in 1903.

It was during this time, in St. Louis, that Walker's hair began thinning and falling out. She began to consider what she could do to remedy this and, as she later said, promoted herself from the wash-tub. Walker said later that the idea for her Wonderful Hair Grower had come to her in a dream. After moving to Denver about 1905, Walker found a pharmacist who assisted her in developing the products that she had envisioned.

In Denver, Walker began to work for a woman named Annie Pope-Turnbo (later Malone) who had developed her own line of hair care products. In 1906 she married journalist Charles Joseph Walker and adopted the name Madam* C.J. Walker for her business. Walker then developed her own products and services. These included her Wonderful Hair Grower, Glossine and Vegetable Shampoo. The line was primarily designed to promote hair growth, and Walker used her own before and after pictures on early ads to show how efficacious it was.

In 1910 she divorced Walker and established an industrial complex at Indianapolis, where she settled for several years. By 1917 the Walker Company was the largest African-American owned business in the United States. There were more than 25,000 Walker agents all over the US, many of whom were trained at Lelia College in Pittsburgh, named for Walker's daughter. These agents were able to make better lives for themselves, making far more money than they would have been able to do otherwise.

When she died in 1919, Walker had amassed an estate worth over a million dollars. She left large endowments to the Tuskegee Institute and the NAACP. She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Her Irvington-on-Hudson estate, Villa Lewaro (named in honor of her daughter Lelia Walker Robinson**) was designed by Vertner Tandy, the first registered African-American architect in the US. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1976.

Walker was honored with a United States postage stamp in 1998 and there are many books about her life, the definitive biography being On Her Own Ground, written by her great great granddaughter, A'Lelia Bundles. I recommend it highly - there is much more to Walker's story than this post can encompass. I am grateful to have had the chance to learn about this amazing woman.

*Madam Walker's name is usually spelled without the 'e', though in some sources it is rendered as 'Madame.' I am using the spelling used by her biographer A'Lelia Bundles.

**Afterwards known as A'Lelia Walker Robinson, she hosted a literary salon in Harlem in the 1920s known as the Dark Tower, in part of the Walker townhouses at 108-110 West 136th Street. She was called "the joy goddess of Harlem's 1920s" by her friend, poet Langston Hughes.

IMAGE SOURCES

The Walker ad is from Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis, and I hope that it was all right for me to use it (a lot of the IU Walker ads are under copyright so I have linked to them instead, see below). I am also grateful to this Google Answers answer for the link.

MORE ON MADAM WALKER:

Bundles, A'Lelia. On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker. (New York: Scribner, 2001).

Madam C.J. Walker Website [Walker history]

Madam C.J. Walker at Wikipedia

Madam C.J. Walker bio at The Black Inventor Museum Online

The Madame C.J. Walker Official Website [modern company run by the Randolph family]

Madam C.J. Walker's papers are at Indiana University

Walker ads at Indiana University Digital Collection: for Glossine, for Walker Agents and an image of one of the beautiful badges worn by Walker agents at their conventions. There are lots of other amazing images here too, including views of the Walker colleges and facsimiles of Walker's letters: there are 87 images in the Indiana collection, starting here.

"New Stamp Honors Madam C.J. Walker," New York Times, Jun. 14, 1998 [link here]

"Streetscapes: The Walker Townhouse," New York Times, Apr. 24, 1994 [link here]

If you have $4500 to spare you can buy a copy of Madam C.J. Walker's Beauty Manual, see here.

Madam C.J. Walker honored as an inventor in CNN's coverage of Black History Month.

The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove - a play written and directed by Regina Taylor. Thanks to Thomas MacEntee at Destination: Austin Family for the link.

The Actual Dime Museum

This is a broad outline of what the Dime Museum was in Victorian America - there are many more interesting stories about this pop culture phenomenon, which will be told in future posts (for example, the story of my third-great Aunt Kate's family's dime museum in Brooklyn).

The dime museum was a entertainment complex that was part exhibition hall, part theater, and part circus. It was popular in the mid to late Victorian period, and flourished between the Civil War and the First World War. Often the museum was in its own building, but sometimes in smaller towns they might be set up in a storefront. Dime museums were found mostly in the Northeast and Midwest, with large numbers in cities such as Boston, Philadelphia and New York. They were named for their street address, their city or the founder of the museum.

The first true dime museum was P.T. Barnum's American Museum, which opened in New York City in 1841 and was destroyed by fire in July 1865. It was located at Ann and Broadway in a five story building, and up to 15,000 visitors per day came to see the sights. Chang and Eng, the famous Siamese twins, and General Tom Thumb were featured there, as well as waxworks, live performances, and such bogus oddities as the Feejee Mermaid (a monkey's head attached to the body of a fish, which he had procured from the Boston Museum). There were also living exhibits such as Living Skeletons and Tattooed Ladies.*

The dime museum was a cheap entertainment - admission charges ranged from the titular dime up to fifty cents - safe for women and children, and open from morning to night. The exhibits changed rapidly, so that customers were return again and again (the museums often swapped exhibits).

The theatrical part of the museum was an auditorium area. There people could see vaudeville performances by magicians, sword-swallowers, singers, dancers and comedians. Sometimes plays were performed too, and sometimes they were of quite a high quality. There were often theatrical companies attached to specific dime museums. As Andrea Stulman Dennett points out in her wonderful study of the dime museum, some of them - such as the Boston Museum and Wood's Museum in New York - became legitimate theaters after the dime museum craze had passed.

When I was thinking about a name for this blog, I knew that I wanted to write about a large variety of historical topics - a little family history, ephemera, and all sorts of mostly-Victorian popular history and culture. I wanted a name that evoked the idea of a popular history grab-bag or encyclopedia. And arrived, at last, at the Dime Museum. But whatever might be on exhibit here, there will never be an admission charge - not even a dime!

There will be more on specific Dime Museums to come. And plenty of other things, too.

*As in Groucho Marx's immortal song Lydia the Tattooed Lady - which is one of the inspirations of my nom de blog. Lydia's tattoos, by the way, are mostly historical in nature - which makes her a living dime museum of sorts (which is where she and I part company!).

Images:

Barnum's American Museum ads from New York Public Library Digital Gallery, as is the ad for Humbug's American Museum, here.

Austin and Stone ad from New York Clipper, 1884 (scanned by me) - You may recognize part of the text in this ad, since I use it in my header.


MORE ABOUT DIME MUSEUMS

Dennett, Andrea Stulman. Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America (New York: NYU Press, 1997).

The Closing of the American Museum in Baltimore

Barnum's American Museum

The Lost Museum (CUNY site about Barnum's American Museum)

The Bowery Boys' podcast about Barnum's Museum

Photo of 1920s itinerant (shopfront) dime museum from ShowHistory.com

Wanted For Tenting Season

This is a little interlude while I am working on a couple of longer posts. One is about actual Dime Museums (and why this is called a virtual one) - and one is the story of a most remarkable woman, the first self-made female millionaire in America (that's coming up at the end of the week).

So here is one of the many interesting little want ads from my old favorite, the New York Clipper, from April 1884.

The Circassian Lady would be someone who looks vaguely exotic and has long gorgeous hair - here is a post from last year about Circassian hair preparations and the ladies who used them. As for the Electric Lady, perhaps she was wearing one of these corsets.

According to The Circus In America, the Washburn and Hunting Circus was only in existence in the year 1884, so perhaps they had trouble filling jobs such as these. Leon Washburn did go on to put together other short-lived circuses, though (Washburn and Arlington 1891-2, and Washburn and D'Alma, 1905-6).

The Grand Union Hotel

The Grand Union Hotel at Park Avenue and 42nd Street was hard to miss. Built in 1874, it was an enormous building directly across the street from the Grand Central Depot (later called Grand Central Station). It catered mainly to travelers who were not staying long in the city, and did not want to pay to transport their bags back and forth from a greater distance. There were 600 rooms, costing a dollar a day "and upwards" in the 1880s and guests could have their bags transported to and from the Depot for free.

King's Handbook of New York (1892) calls the Grand Union "a large, plain five-story structure" that appealed to business men wishing to stay a night or two in New York. The restaurant was "excellent" (as per the ad above right) and "its managers [were] thoroughly practical hotel men."

It was torn down in 1914 in advance of the construction of the subway. There is, however, a new Grand Union Hotel at 32nd St. between Madison and Park Avenues, where you can stay now. You'll probably have to pay to get your bags over to Grand Central, though.

Picture of Grand Union Hotel from NYPL Digital Gallery.

SOURCES

Hirsch, Jeff. Manhattan Hotels, 1880-1920 (New York: Arcadia, 1997), p. 26.

King, Moses. King's Handbook of New York (Boston: Moses King, 1892; facsimile edition pub. Barnes and Noble, n.d.) p. 211.

Advertisement from the Yale Banner (1887), p. 64, Google Books link here.

For Heaven's Sake Read This!

That's a catchy title for an ad, wouldn't you say? And what a lot is on offer here. Just think of what this FREE Book from the Devere Company in Toronto could help you achieve in 1884:

- Secrets Worth Millions!

-Dazzling Eyes and Complexions in 4 hours!

-Luxuriant Moustache, etc., in 21 days!

-Glorious Health! Boundless Wealth! Resistless Love!

It might be difficult timing the eyes, complexion and facial hair though.

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I am putting more links in the sidebar, so that it is easier to access some of the series I've written (and will continue to write) on true crime, scandals and ghost stories pertaining to Victorian New York City and Brooklyn. I'll probably add links for the posts on vaudeville/cinema, and on Victorian women.

Victorian Wanderers

This ad is from 1881 in the New York Clipper. Since the firm was in Chicago, the street salesmen could order things from their catalogue. Most of the items mentioned do not seem like the pots-and-pans sort of goods that a travelling pedlar might sell in the country. These items are flashy: jewelry, pocket-knives, canes, tricks "and everything you desire" (a tall order, that). There are also notions (for sewing, which are practical) and some lovely brocade handkerchiefs (which are not so practical).

I always wonder about the people in the pages of old newspapers - what they were like and what happened to them afterwards.

Louis Zitterbart was born in Bohemia in 1838, according to the 1880 census. This ad appeared in the New York Clipper in May 1864. Louis had been gone from home since about 1858, when he would have been 20 years old.

He was probably the son of Fidelis Zitterbart, a musician living at 258 Pennsylvania Avenue, Pittsburgh at least from the early 1860s to the mid-1880s. The elder Zitterbart was a composer and either he or his son Fidelis was the conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphonic Society in the late 19th century.

George Blumenschein - the agent mentioned in the ad - was a tavern keeper in Pittsburgh, who may have been a relative or friend of the Zitterbarts. It is not clear why an intermediary was needed, but since Louis had not been in touch with his family (suggesting a possible falling-out), there may have been some need for a mediator.

By 1880 Louis Zitterbart - the itinerant son - had settled down in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the leader of the Cleveland Grays Band, was married and had several children.

SOURCES

Allgeheny County: A Sesqui-Centennial Review (Pittsburgh, 1938), p. 55.

The Cleveland Directory for the Year Ending June 1880 (Cleveland, 1879) p. 552.

Directory of Pittsburg and Allegheny Cities (George H. Thurston, 1860), p. 348, Google Books link here .

The Musical Year-book of the United States (G.H. Wilson, 1884), p. 26. Google Books link here

Fidella [sic] Zitterbart household, 1860 US Census, PittsburghTwp,, Allgeheny, PA; p. 898, #713/714, Series M653, Roll 1066.

George Blumenschein household, 1860 US Census, Pittsburgh Ward 3, Allegheny, PA; p. 287, #562/687, Series M653, Roll 1058.

Louis Zitterbart household, 1880 US Census, Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio; p. 263B, FHL Film #1255005, NA Film #T9-1005.
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Thank you to RE Ausetmkt of Bad Gals Radio for the triple award(s), I really appreciate them!

The First Cat In the Movies

Here is one of my favorite Victorian cinema clips - it is only about 40 seconds long (an eternity for a movie, when it was shot in 1899-1900) with a little girl feeding a cat. I am pretty sure that this is the first cat ever in the movies - she or he looks a bit like a Norwegian Forest Cat to me, and is very beautiful.

The film quality is extraordinarily clear. It was made by the Lumière brothers, cinema pioneers who had the most serendipitous name in the movies: it is French for "light."

Auguste and Louis Lumière, sons of a photographer in Lyon, France, began working with film in the early 1890s. They developed several refinements to the motion picture camera, most notably perforation of the edge of the film so that it could travel through the camera and projector more easily. They began making films in 1895.



I wonder what she is feeding that cat? And she seems a little bit old for the high chair, don't you think?

A Remarkable Divorce Suit: Part 2

The divorce case of Trust v. Trust gripped New York City in the spring of 1865. Joseph W. Trust, a perfumer who also used the name Dr. Trust Felix Gouraud, was famous for his beauty products, such as Gouraud's Oriental Cream. His second wife, Mary, had been separated from him for several years, and was suing for divorce on the only grounds allowable at this time: adultery. You can read Part One over here. We pick up the story after the mother of Joseph Trust's mistress, Miss Martha Tompkins, testified about his visits and Martha's children, of whom Joseph almost certainly was the father:

The testimony continued. Undertaker Thomas O'Gora and some neighbors told what they knew about the death and burial of Martha Tompkins' first baby. Several neighbors said that "the doctor" (Trust) was a frequent visitor to the Tompkins.

Then Andreas Trust told the court about following his father to the Tompkins' house and listening in the hall. He said that his father asked the child (Manfred) to call him papa. Andreas' diary was read in court, but when cross-examined, Andreas said that his father had written the diary entry - not him. The diary, "written at my father's dictation," was all about Mary leaving for California with a Dr. Lyons (it is not clear if any of it was true).

Mary Trust's lawyer rested his case. Then Joseph's lawyer called upon his first witness. Imagine the surprise and shock that ran through the room when she cried out, "And I am the real lawful wife of Mr. Trust, so help me, by the Eternal God!"

This was Eliza Southwell Trust, the woman that Joseph had married in 1827 in Piccadilly, London. He had already told the court that she had left him for a "play-actor" some years before. But somehow he or his lawyer had contrived to find her and bring he to America to testify that they were lawfully married, which would nullify his marriage to Mary. Then he would not, of course, require a divorce from her.

Eliza showed the court the certificate of her marriage to Trust, from St. James Westminster, dated March 19, 1827. Mary's lawyer objected to this; he said that New York law did not "allow a woman to go upon the stand and testify that she is a man's wife." Both sides decided to exclude the testimony.

Joseph was called to the stand and immediately began arguing about the matter of false swearing since he was an atheist. The court decided that he therefore could not testify, since he "had no restraints upon him" and therefore "was of the most uncertain nature." This decision "caused quite a sensation" in court - and did nothing to help Joseph Trust's case, either.

A few more witnesses followed. One said that Mary used the name Dampier when she was running a boarding-house on Fourteenth Street, and that she said it was her maiden name, taken upon the death of her husband. Someone said that she also called herself Mrs. Rose.

The courtroom was full of absorbed spectators and, the Times noted, all the other city papers were full of stories about the Trust case. The Court said that there were two questions: (1) were Joseph and Mary legally married in New York in 1839, or at any other time and (2) had Joseph committed adultery with Martha Tompkins. If the answer to (1) was no, then the second question could, of course, be dismissed.

It took the jury all of ten minutes to return the answer yes to both questions, deciding entirely in favor of Mary Trust, who received a decree of absolute divorce from Joseph shortly thereafter. Joseph - or rather, Dr. Trust Felix Gouraud - married Martha Tompkins in Jersey City, New Jersey on September 27, 1867. What happened to Eliza Southwell Trust, who still considered herself Joseph's wife, is not recorded.

SOURCES

"The Trust Divorce Suit," New York Times, May 25, 1867, p. 2.

Trust Gourad [sic] household, 1870 US Census (2nd enum), New York City Ward 15 District 2, New York, NY; p. 323, #48/50, Roll M593-1033.

Andrew H. Trust household, 1870 US Census, New York City Ward 22 Dis. 5, New York, NY; p. 86, h/h #156.

Mary Trust household, 1880 US Census, New York City, New York, NY; FHL #1254880, NA Film # T9-0880, p. 48D. Andreas is in this household as Andrew Gorrance [Gouraud], age 37, Merchant.

Ferdinand Hopkins household, 1880 US Census, New York City, New York, NY; FHL # 1254892, NA Film # T9-0892, p. 507D. After Joseph's death in 1878, Martha married Ferdinand Hopkins. Her two surviving children with Joseph are listed in this household under the name Hopkins: Manfred T [Trust?] age 17 and Claud G [Gouraud?] age 12. Martha and Ferdinand Hopkins took over the Gouraud business and continued it for several years, see here and here for more information.

IGI marriage transcription record [Batch # M509052] of marriage of Joseph W. Trust to Martha B. Tompkins, Sept. 22, 1867, Jersey City, New Jersey. Joseph was age 60, Martha was age 28.

Advertisement image (1879) from Google Books, here. Joseph Trust died in 1878, and there was legal trouble concerning his will and the right to the Gouraud surname, between Andreas Trust and Martha Trust/Gouraud. Note that the proprietor of the company in the ad is "Mme. M.B.T. Gouraud." Also note the admonition not to buy other creams marketed under the name Gouraud. Andreas was using the Gouraud name to sell his own beauty products.

Annie Lewis Rebels (Also Writes Plays)

Annie Lewis was a playwright and actress of the late 19th century. She seems to have specialized in Western dramas.

In the New York Clipper ad at left, from 1884, she is trying to sell her newest opus, entitled "Pereta"- the sequel to another of her plays, called "Plasar, Queen of the Miners" - which debuted at Tony Pastor's Theater in New York in 1888, starring Sarah McVicker in the title role. It was, said the New York Mirror, "a sensational drama with prologue and five acts."

In November 1887, Lewis' play "On the Frontier," based on the Custer massacre, opened at the National Theater in Philadelphia. She was credited as Annie Lewis or Annie Lewis Johnston(e), and the play was also performed in New York in 1888 and London in 1891.

In 1893, when she was starring in "A Nutmeg Match" at the Fourteenth Street theater in New York, she threatened to quit the play if a comedian in it was given "specialties" (presumably, extra gags or routines) to do.

Photograph of Annie Lewis (in what is possibly an attempt at Dutch or Swiss costume) from Picture History.

SOURCES

"Annie Lewis Rebels," New York Times, Mar. 2, 1893, p. 8.

Fisk, Harrison Grey. The New York Mirror Annual and Directory of the Theatrical Profession for 1888 (New York Mirror, 1888), p. 51, 90.

Hall, Roger A. Performing the American Frontier, 1870-1906. (Cambridge UP, 2001), pp 154-5.

TOMORROW: The Gouraud Divorce Case, Part 2.

Victorian Gym Equipment

I found this advertisement in an 1883 British almanac on Google Books. This gymnasium equipment looks very similar to things we see today. The swing at the right looks like it belongs in a playground, as does the "Giant Stride" at middle left.

Clara's Perfect Mystery

There's no better way to get a read on what concerned people in the past than to look at the classified ads in old newspapers - they can tell you about what kinds of jobs and houses people wanted, things they had lost, what was for sale, and all sorts of other things.

Sometimes you can even get a glimpse of someone's life - a little mystery in a few sentences, that can only be solved in the medium of fiction. Here's one from the New York Times on 1855 that struck me. I'm planning to use it in my NaNoWriMo Victorian mystery, and I thought I'd share it:

CLARA'S NOTE IS RECEIVED, and is a perfect mystery, taken in connection with what I have heard. Will not CLARA grant a short interview some time convenient to herself? It is important for several reasons. Write again, and remember that all letters must now be prepaid to reach their destination.

--New York Times, April 19, 1855, p. 5.

Image from NYPL Digital Gallery.

The Remarkable Gouraud Divorce Suit , Part One

Dr. T. Felix Gouraud (also known as Joseph W. Trust, his birth name) was an English-born New Yorker known since the 1840s for his beauty preparations such as Gouraud's Oriental Cream and Italian Medicated Soap. In A Lack of Trust, we looked at his life up until the 1860s. Here is an account of the sensational divorce of Dr. Gouraud and his second wife Mary. In fact, it is so sensational that it will require two posts.

In May 1865 Gouraud's wife, Mary F. Trust, sued for divorce, on grounds of adultery. Mary said that she and Joseph were married "about the 9th day of October, 1839" in New York City. They had had 6 children, 4 of whom were now alive. They had cohabited until about 1856, when they separated due to his "brutal and inhuman" treatment of her. Since then she and the children had lived apart from him, and she supported them all. The adultery, she said, took place partly at his shop (at 67 Walker Street, just off Broadway) - and partly at "the corner of 29th st. and 9th Avenue" and "also at No. 483 Broadway." The latter were addresses at which Martha Tompkins, an assistant in Gouraud's shop, had lived in the early 1860s.

Joseph submitted an affidavit stating that he had married Eliza Southwell in England in 1827, and that Eliza was still alive. Therefore, he wasn't actually married to Mary at all. He did live with Mary between 1839 and 1856, though. Various witnesses followed, some saying that Trust had called Mary his wife, others saying that he had not. One of their boarders stated that Joseph called Mary "mother" and that she sat at the head of the table, which proved that they were married.

Constance Trust said that she was Joseph and Mary's daughter (she was about 25 years old at this time). The couple had had an earlier separation but had reconciled. Constance also told the court that her mother took the name Dampier only after she was released from the Tombs (a prison in lower Manhattan). She was there because Joseph had made a complaint about Mary in 1858 for "breach of the peace."

Andreas Trust, Constance's 23 year old brother, added to the picture of misery and violence that his sister had painted. He said that he had not struck his father the day before. But his father was very cruel to them and had "forfeited all claim to be respected as a father by his children."

Then Martha Tompkins took the stand. Martha had known Joseph Trust for about 5 years (i.e. since 1860). She worked in his shop at 67 Walker Street. She refused to say whether she had ever used any other names, which rather implies that she had. Her mother, "Madame" Tompkins, said that Joseph visited them. She said that Martha had a child called Manfred Garibaldi. There had been another child, who had died. Martha was unmarried, she added.

But mostly, Mme Tompkins said she just didn't know. Didn't know why Joseph came calling. Didn't know if Joseph and Martha were ever in a room alone together. Didn't know "in what capacity he visited at the house." Did Joseph ever say to her and Martha that Manfred and the deceased child were his? "No; not particularly." She also did not know the name of the deceased child or who had given Manfred his striking name. Had Martha ever been married? "I was not present." Mrs. Tompkins was called "an unwilling witness," which is a bit of an understatement.

There were witnesses to come who were more than willing to speak, however. And I think that one of them will surprise you as much as they surprised me.

In Part 2, we'll pick up the story on the second day of the Gouraud divorce trial.

Image of the corner of Walker and Broadway (in 1939, but looking much as it must have done in 1865), from NYPL Digital Gallery.

SOURCES

"A Remarkable Divorce Suit," New York Times, May 24, 1865, p. 2.

Martha Tompkins household, 1860 US Census, New York City Ward 9, New York, NY; p. 45, #176/341, Series M653, Roll 796. [I am still searching for the Trust/Gouraud family in the 1860 census, so will edit this if and when I find them.]

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Today in honor of Martin Luther King's birthday, please go and check out the MLK Remember the Dream Blog Carnival at Bad Gals Radio.

Annie Oakley On Film, 1894

This amazing little film clip was shot by Thomas Edison in 1894, showing famous shooter Annie Oakley hitting both still and moving targets.

Annie Oakley (born Phoebe Ann Mosey, 1860-1926) was a sharpshooter who had starred since 1885 in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. She was born in rural Ohio and was supporting her widowed mother and siblings by hunting, when she was only nine years old. When she was 21, she met her future husband, sharpshooter Frank E. Butler, when she defeated him in a shooting contest. She was one of the first female celebrities in America. The poster image is from Wikipedia.



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Thank you to Bearded Lady (Carlyn), who writes at The Raucous Royals and The Ballyhoo (both well worth a visit), for the Great Buddy Award!

May Dew

"She is just what you are, I fancy, and what I shall never be - a perfect lady. I may cold-cream my hands and May-Dew my nose, and mend my dresses, it will deceive nobody - not even Lord Dandy."
-- Sara M. Hardwich, Plutus Adonis: A Mythical Hero (London, 1884), p. 159.

Will it help your skin? It may do.

May Dew was made of "a vegetable liquid" and was good for all sorts of skin ailments: Greasy Skin, Freckles, Wrinkles, Pimples, Blackheads, Crow's Feet, Blotches, Face Grubs [oh dear], Sun Burn, Tan, Ringworm, Chapped Hands, Sore or Chapped Lips, Barber's Itch and something called Tetters (meaning skin diseases such as eczema, see definition here).

In the The Canadian Practitioner (Bryant Press, 1888), the recipe for "May Dew lotion for pimples" is given; it consists mainly of glycerin and rose essence.

British perfumer Eugene Rimmel also made a May Dew lotion in the 1880s.

There is more May Dew, here, but it is not a "great French lotion" at all. It is literally dew that was gathered on May Day or Beltane, and is supposed to have healing qualities. It is supposed to be particularly good for the complexion - hence the May Dew Agency in 1880s Toronto naming itself this. There is also a line of modern organic cosmetics in Britain called May Dew.

Advertisement from the Canadian publication Ladies' Journal, 1884.

Edited to add: Bill of Life On Planet Bill reminded me that I had not chased down what "Face Grubs" actually were...When you Google the term this very post is the first thing you see at the top of the page - which is a bit horrifying! Anyway - I just looked at a couple of 19th century medical guides and I think that they are referring to blackheads, which they also called "fleshworms." Because when they are squeezed out, etc etc. Lovely, huh?

Dr Gouraud Part 1: A Lack of Trust

This is the story of a French physician who was neither French nor a physician. He was a man with a complicated love life, at least three wives, who left a fortune and tangle of legal issues behind when he died in 1878. And his real surname was one of the great ironies of his life: it was Trust.

Joseph William Trust was born in England about 1806. In 1827 he married Eliza Southwell at St. James, Westminster. He told people in New York, decades later, that Eliza "had ran away from him with a play-actor" and that she was "a dancer in one of the theaters." Sometimes he denied having been married in England at all.

Sometime before 1839, Trust moved to New York City and began marketing beauty products under the name Dr. T[rust] Felix Gouraud. As Dr. Gouraud he sold exotically-named items such as Italian Medicated Soap, Liquid Hair Dye, Poudres Subtiles, and of course Gouraud's Oriental Cream.

Trust and his second wife Mary were married in New York in 1839 and had six children. He was enumerated in 1850 under his real name, as an English-born physician living with his wife Mary F. and their surviving children Constance, Andreas, Percy and [Alexander] Volney in the 5th Ward of Manhattan. His shop was located at 67 Walker Street.

Sometime in the late 1850s Gouraud hired a young woman named Martha Hopkins to work in his store. By 1865, Gouraud, Martha and Mary would be in a New York court room, along with a large cast of witnesses, to work out the details of a most scandalous divorce.

Later this week - Dr. Gouraud Part 2: "A Remarkable Divorce Suit"


SOURCES

T.Felix Gouraud information at Hair Raising Stories

Joseph W. Trust household, 1850 US Census, New York City Ward 5, New York, NY; #870/1681, Film # 17113, Image #00235, Ref. #15.

IGI extraction of marriage record: Joseph William Trust marriage to Eliza Southwell, 27 Mar 1827, St. James Westminster, London; link here.

Advertisement from the 1851 Boston Directory, courtesy of Google Books, link here.

An Illustrated Museum Newsletter

I thought that on weekends sometimes I would write you a little newsletter, possibly with links to interesting things I've come across. This one is to update you on how the museum will be running for now.

Once or twice a week I'll be posting longer stories - the Only the Dead Know Brooklyn ghost stories, more Victorian true crime, and stories about New York City things and people that are too interesting and involved for a quick drive-by. I will probably split the long stories into two or more posts but they will still, of course, exist as one story.

The other days I'll do shorter posts. Some days that might be very short indeed - an old advertisement, or a video clip. But I promise they will be things that I found fun, striking, weird or fascinating (ideally all of these!). I like posting something every day. I guess the main thing I wanted to say was that if some days there are tiny posts, that will be balanced by other days.

Which isn't to say that on the longer days I'll hit you over the head with William Faulkneresque walls of words or anything...I'll also keep you apprised of other projects as they develop - a possible third blog (for odd news of the past and present). I might share a little bit of relevant creative writing, and talk about my NaNoWriMo Victorian mystery - especially the bits of fun research I've been doing for it, about everyday life in Brooklyn in the 1890s. And about the true crime case it's based on, from 1873 - which features a female detective, several oddball suspects, and a clairvoyant.

I'm planning some longer posts on old Hollywood gossip and old movies, too. And the odd family history moment too - I haven't told you all of those by any means.

This week's longer posts: certainly Dr. Gouraud, the mysterious medical man. And after we dissect Gouraud: the amazing world of Dime Museums (the real kind!).

The advertisement that illustrates this post is from Duke University's Emergence of Advertising in America.

De Graves' Medico-Pencils

This advertisement from the late 1870s advises the customer that there were cheap imitations around and not to simply ask for a "Corn Pencil" - ask for the "Original Medico-Pencil," which was an "elegant addition to the toilet."

Mary Schaeffer Conroy, in her book In Health and In Sickness (1994) writes that De Graves' Medico-Pencils were essentially "little tubes of chloric acid" [p. 531]. The Wikipedia article on chloric acid is here, and it is not clear to me what this would do for warts and corn - eradicate them, supposedly.

******
Tomorrow I'll be writing about some changes coming to the Virtual Dime Museum. Stay tuned!

The Sweeper-Vac

The carpet sweeper that leads to inner satisfaction and great happiness is here, on the right. It may look like an ordinary carpet sweeper, hard to push and not tremendously efficient. But it is not!

It uses a "refreshing air-process" which sweeps up every particle of dust. And dust, as we all know, is very dangerous. Please read this post over at my other blog if you are not convinced!

This carpet sweeper was invented by Harold Sturgeon of Erie, Pennsylvania and patented in 1911, link here. It seems to be the ancestor of the modern vacuum cleaner, using suction - the refreshing air-process - to get up the dirt. It was powered by the motion of the wheels, rather than by electricity.

And if you wrote in using the magic words "I wish to see the Sweeper-Vac" - or "Please send further information" - the company would "do the rest." Ideally this would have meant that someone from the Pneuvac Company would turn up at your house and clean all the carpets.

Advertisement from the Ladies' Home Journal, 1913.

But Your Nose?

Here's a morale-booster with staying power. What a thing to say to your potential customers: "You Have A Beautiful Face. But Your Nose?"

Yes, what about it? That nose looks all right to me. Not perfect, but all right. Not worth putting it into that contraption, anyway. And remolding the cartilege sounds very dubious.

Trilety plays on the timeless worry about beauty leading to success in life - and the lack thereof leading to failure. Since success is "your ultimate destiny" (naturally) you need to purchase one of these nose-shapers. That will lead to Mr. Trilety's financial success in life, in any case.

The ad on the left is from 1916, and the ad below at right is from 1932. So Mr. Trilety of Binghamton, New York, "Pioneer Nose Shaping Specialist," was onto something. Play on people's vanity and vulnerability, and you will sell all sorts of strange things (that's still true today, as we all know).

Were you supposed to wear these at night? Surely Mr. Trilety did not mean for people to go outside in the little nose-holders, did he?

This Nose-Shaper was patented in 1907 by Ignatius Nathaniel Soares of Framingham, Massachusetts, and you can see the patent here. Anna D. Rostow of Summit, New Jersey "improved" it in 1921, but it looks more like something out of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch, really.

Thanks to jbcurio at Flickr for the advertisement with the man and woman; the man on his own is from Popular Mechanics, March 1932, over at Google Books.

Elizabeth Haiken writes about the Trilety Nose Shaper with reference to Michael Jackson's facial evolution, here, in an excerpt from Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery (Johns Hopkins, 1999).

The story of the mysterious Dr. Gouraud - he of Oriental Cream fame - is coming soon, I am just sorting out some of his legal issues as reported in the New York Times. And he was rather hard to hunt down in the census, since - and I'm giving away secret #1 here - that wasn't even his real name.

Gyer's Prismatic Fountains

For Wordless Wednesday, a little Victorian oddity to leave you (perhaps) speechless.

Professor and Madam Gyer offer, in 1884, an act which combines tableaux vivants - people frozen into dramatic poses, often in various stages of undress - with fountains upon which colored lights were shone. You can see the models standing under the fountains in this peculiar picture from an 1884 New York Clipper.

The tableau vivant - literally "living picture" - was a popular form of what we would call performance art now. Think of it as recreating two-dimensional pictures on stage - i.e., an artistic game of "Statues." By mid-century it had filtered down to the music halls an excuse for showing women in various stages of undress.

This is why, in this ad, the Gyers insist that their entertainment is both "chaste and elegant" - in other words, that the luckless models were wearing clothing, albeit wet and cold.

It was surprisingly difficult to track down the Gyers in public records. Perhaps it is not so surprising - itinerant theater people (who often did not use their real names) prove very hard to find on the US census, for example.

However, I did find a poster of Madam Gyer posing in 1900, as Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty: a chaste and elegant tableau vivant, sans prismatic fountain.

The Instant Ancestor

The theme for this month's Smile For The Camera carnival is the mystery photograph - a family photo or one you found in a secondhand store, with no clues about his/her/its identity - "instant ancestors," if you like. This charming woman is one of my instant ancestors - and I have no idea who she might be.

Her dress suggests a rough date of 1875-85. In the late 1870s and 1880s, skirts became tighter and corsets longer. In the first half of the 1870s, the closer-fitting skirt still echoed of the previous decade's wide crinoline. By the mid-1880s the bustle was more pronounced at the back and more squared-off in shape. The 1876 fashion illustration at the right shows dresses similar to the one this lady is wearing.

Barnes and Glenney, the photographers, worked in New Haven, Connecticut.

I was not able to find out much about Barnes and Glenney. Stephen Wheeler Glenney was born about 1838-40 in Connecticut, and was not listed as a photographer in the 1860 census [Stephen Wheeler household, 1860 US Census, New Haven Ward 5, New Haven, CT; p. 743, #1162/993, Series M653, Roll 87].

Women's fashion illustration from an 1876 Godey's Lady's Book from the NYPL Digital Gallery.

The Fearless Frogman

Paul Boyton (1848-1924) was an Irish-born adventurer and athlete, whose nickname was "the Fearless Frogman." He was not only fearless, but incredibly inventive and energetic.

Boyton was born in 1848 in County Kildare, Ireland, but was in the US by 1863 at which time he joined the Union Army (at the age of fifteen). He also served in the Mexican Navy and in the French forces during the Franco-Prussian War.

Boyton popularized open-water swimming and an early form of rubber wetsuit. The wetsuit, invented by Iowan Clark S. Merriman in 1872, consisted of a rubber shirt and rubber pants, belted and used in conjunction with a paddle as one floated on one's back (one source likened it to a wearable kayak). Boyton actually crossed the English Channel in this fashion. He often demonstrated his kayaking prowess on US rivers, while lugging a boat full of supplies behind him - in the advertisement and picture above, you can see how this worked. He also founded the US Life-Saving Service, which was the ancestor of the present-day Coast Guard. And when he wasn't busy with that, he toured with a small aquatic circus.

In 1895, he was ready to settle down a little. In that year Boyton bought 16 acres of swampy land at Neptune Avenue and West Twelfth Street in Coney Island. This was right behind the Elephant Hotel, which we visited previously. There Boyton opened Sea Lion Park, the first permanent amusement park in America.

Sea Lion Park featured a manmade lagoon with 40 sea lions, the Shoot-the-Chutes ride (rather like a modern flume ride), and the Flip-Flap roller coaster. This last ride had to be closed as it was so dangerous, first dropping the riders 20 meters and then inverting them in a loop. There was also a ballroom and a small circus there. Boyton's Sea Lion Park was featured in an early silent film not surprisingly called "Feeding Sea Lions"; there is also silent film footage of the Shoot-the-Chutes ride.

By 1903 Sea Lion Park was less popular than newer Coney Island amusements such as Steeplechase Park. So Boyton leased the land to Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy, who transformed it into the better-known, though also short-lived, Luna Park (which we'll look at in a future post).

The images of Boyton are from NYPL Digital Gallery. The 1884 advertisement is from the New York Clipper.

SOURCES

Denison, Charles. Coney Island (Ten Speed Press, 2002), p. 26. Johnson's New Universal Cyclopedia (A.J. Johnson & Son, 1877), p. 11.

Paul Boyton at Wikipedia
Boyton's autobiography at Google Books
Boyton's 1900 patent for a water canal ride with panoramas
Boyton's 1895 Shoot-the-Chutes patent
Boyton's 1907 "Amusement Device" patent (looks similar to the Shoot-the-Chutes)

Clark S. Merriman's 1869 Improvement In Submarine Clothing
Merriman's 1872 Improvement in the same

Jeffrey Stanton's article on Boyton and Sea Lion Park at westland.net, link here [with wonderful photographs of Boyton and of the Flip-Flap roller coaster]

Mrs. Thompson's Medicated Gloves

Mary E. Thompson was an inventor who patented her special false hair, among other items (see below). These Medicated Gloves were not patented but she was obviously quite proud of them. This 1887 advertisement is aimed at middle and upper class New York ladies. Mrs. Thompson didn't think that working class women minded rough hands, or perhaps it was more an issue of their not being able to afford $2.50 for the amazing gloves:

Thrice wearing will convince the most skeptical that they are the one thing needful. To be without them is almost a sin. Ladies who do housework need them to keep their hands free from coarseness and grimy stains and that vulgar redress so unpleasant. Ladies who wear diamonds and rubies should have their hands white and lovely, as a fit setting to the beautiful gems.

Whatever the "vulgar redress" was, you didn't want it evincing itself on your hands. And you certainly did not want to be coarse and grimy! And while you were at Mrs. Thompson's shop, you might want to pick up some nice false bangs and waves for your hair, too. Those were patented, in 1885 - you can see the original patent by clicking the link below (the 1885 patent).

Mary Thompson's husband, Charles D. Thompson, also patented a device for ladies' hair - the Crimping Pin, link below. The Thompsons were originally from Chicago; Mary won an award at the Indiana State Fair in 1881 for her "display of hair goods and work," and was listed as coming from Chicago [Annual Report of the Indiana State Board of Agriculture, 1881, p. 157]. They were in New York by the time of the 1887 ad, and were doing business at 240 Fifth Avenue.

Advertisement from Good Housekeeping, 1887.

Mary E. Thompson's Patents

Hair Head-Dress or Wave (1883)
Hair Crimper (1898)
Portable Dust Hood or Blower (1885) (for fireplaces - this seems to be the same Mary E. Thompson, since the witness for this and the Head-Dress patent is Charles D. Thompson, probably her husband).

Charles D. Thompson of Chicago patented a Crimping Pin for ladies' hair in 1880.

The 1916 Paris Candy Hat

Here is the hat that begs the question: Why? Why make a hat out of candy? Answer: Because you can!

This and two other candy hats were displayed at the Martha Washington Hotel (according to a note at the bottom of the magazine page) in New York in the spring of 1916. The Martha Washington was the first hotel for women only. It opened in 1903 and is still in business today, though of course men can stay there too. It was renamed the Hotel Thirty Thirty, after its address at 30 East 30th Street.

The article is from the April 1916 issue of Popular Mechanics, believe it or not (Google Books link here). And the postcard image of the Martha Washington is from NYPL Digital Gallery. The postcard gives the address as 29 East 29th Street - there were two entrances, one at 30 East 30th and one at 29 East 29th. There is also an interesting photograph of the Martha Washington at the website 14 to 42.

Dobbins' Electrifying Soap

Here is another item in the Strange Victorian Electrically-Named Product series, that has to be seen to be believed (and even then it is hard to) - presenting Dobbins' Electric Soap!

This advertisement appeared in an 1878 book called The Shaker Manifesto, and includes many endorsements from Shaker and other ladies. The soap had also won prizes at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia (where it was made) in 1876.

An Ohio matron wrote (and the italics are hers) that "this soap not only purifies clothes as none other will, but robs washing-day of all unpleasant features and electrifies the whole household!" Now that's a ringing endorsement!

Another lady, Mrs. E. Morely of Buffalo, New York, was moved to write a little poem:

Riches why does God confer?
'Tis that they may minister
To the poor in their distress -
By sending DOBBINS' ELECTRIC SOAP.

Whatever was in this white laundry soap that electrified households and thrilled tranquil Shaker ladies?

Advertisement (1878) from The Shaker Manifesto, link here at Google Books.

This picture of a Dobbins' Electric Soap Wrapper thanks to GoAntiques.com; it is for sale, too, and the link is here.

New Year's Day 1857 In Brooklyn

How did people celebrate New Year's Day in Victorian Brooklyn? Public "watch meetings" were held in the churches on the night of the 31st to see in the new year, and they were held at home, too. The old Dutch custom of paying calls on New Year's Day was observed in Brooklyn until at least the end of the 19th century, by which time the Eagle was printing lists of ladies and their addresses, who were holding open houses in the city that day. Coffee, lemonade, cakes and other treats were served.

The 17th century Dutch settlers liked to serve "New Year's dram"(whiskey, in other words) and "sugar and honey cookies" to callers. In the first year of his presidency, George Washington lived on Cherry Street in Manhattan, and at New Year's the president and his wife served tea, coffee, plain cake and plum cake. All was convivial until about 9 pm, at which time Martha had had enough. She stood up abruptly and announced that "the General always retired at nine, and I usually precede him." Everyone got up and left in a hurry after that!

My third great aunt Susannah Barnett was always one of the ladies who had an open house in Brooklyn on New Year's Day. She was the wife of a wealthy lawyer and lived in the exclusive neighborhood of Clinton Hill. In contrast, my great great grandmother Mary Ann, Susannah's sister-in-law, was not listed. She was too busy running her Eastern District shoe store, or later her boarding house, to do such things.

In 1857 the Eagle reported that the weather on January 1st was clear and sunny, and that calls were paid into the evening hours. They also were pleased to note that "no excess or impropriety occurred in any part of the city." And they noted that even the mayor and the mayor elect "received their friends at the City Hall."

Sources:

"New Year's Day," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan. 2, 1857, p. 2
"New Year's Day in the Olden Time," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 31, 1858, p. 2.

Image of Dutch settlers having fun on New Year's Day (an 1868 rendition) from NYPL Digital Gallery. I see pipes and drink, but where are those cookies?