The Gravesend Poisoning Case Part 2: A Fatal Bottle of Beer

It was late afternoon on a hot day in June 1878, in the little village of Gravesend, near Brooklyn. In the two story Hubbard cottage, the lady of the house was wanting her bottle of ale.

Maria L. Hubbard was a sturdy-looking Englishwoman in her early 50s. She had been married for about 3 years to Samuel Hubbard, a wealthy farmer a decade her senior. Samuel was either her third or fourth husband. Maria Louisa Allen had emigrated to the US in the late 1840s with her brother Joseph. She had $40,000 of her own from running a restaurant in Fulton Market (in Manhattan) for many years. Maria had invested wisely in real estate and had an income of $1200 a year. She first married John B. Powell in the early 1860s, then Horace B. Hinman and possibly also a man named Crawford.

In the early 1870s, as Mrs. Hinman, she had followed her niece Mary Attlesey* to Gravesend village, where Mary was housekeeper to James A. Williamson (another wealthy, elderly farmer). Maria became Samuel Hubbard's housekeeper. With an income of $1200 a year, it is unclear why Maria took what might be seen as a rather unrewarding job. But she did.

Both Mary and Maria ended up marrying their respective elderly farmers. The gossips said that Maria had been a bit more than a housekeeper for some time, though. Samuel had been married before, too, to Jane Ann Brower, a widow who had apparently left him 6 months after their marriage. He was finally granted a divorce from Jane Ann in 1871 [see note in Sources].

Maria's in-laws had "bitterly opposed" the marriage and two in particular seemed to hate her: Samuel's nephew Cabe Stryker, and his sister Elizabeth (Hubbard) Johnson, who found Maria "repugnant." Samuel was close to both Cabe and Elizabeth, but they wouldn't go near Maria's house. He went to them. And when he came home, he was very hostile to her, she had told friends.But most other people liked Maria: she was kindly, and fond of a good time at Coney Island or at the local beach.

She was also fond of her daily bottle of beer. On Tuesday, June 18, 1878, at about 5 pm, Maria sent her companion Lizzie Lusk to the cellar to get her a drink. Lizzie, age 19, was called Maria's "niece" or "companion" but does not appear to have been related to her by blood. Lusk had recently joined the Hubbard household early in 1878, but it is not clear why. She was in the cellar alone with the bottle of beer and had the opportunity to put something in it. Lusk was never seriously considered as a suspect even though "no one handled the beer except her." Samuel had also just been down in the cellar before Lizzie went to get the beer.

Maria took a sip and immediately complained of a strange taste, saying that she was poisoned. She asked Lizzie to test it but she said no, she'd never drunk beer before and didn't wish to start (and presumably did not wish to be poisoned, as well).

Maria was ill in minutes, and within an hour she was dying. As it turned out, there was strychnine in the beer. Strychnine poisoning is quick and agonizing, affecting the victim within 20 minutes and killing them within a couple of hours. Some people thought it odd that Maria noticed the poison so soon, and thought perhaps it was a case of suicide (i.e. that she had known in advance, or slipped it into the bottle herself, which seems unlikely).

Dr. Van Cleek was called, and Maria asked for her closest friend, Mrs. Hicks.** Just before dying she shouted that Cabe Stryker had done this to her.

Samuel, Cabe and Elizabeth Lusk were arrested, then released because no one knew if anything was in the beer or not. Lusk said she was never going back to that house, not even "if the house were built with gold."

Finally, a Professor Eaton tested the remaining beer from the bottle on six unlucky frogs. He also examined the contents of Maria's stomach found both it and the beer contained strychnine. Samuel was rearrested, and removed to jail in Brooklyn. But a Grand Jury failed to find enough evidence to proceed with a trial, and he was released once again, to resume a quiet life in the village, where he died in 1893.

The Hubbard case was never solved.

Starred Notes

*Mary Attlesey was Maria's English-born niece, who was a relative of the Robert H. Attlesey (b ca 1845) of Brooklyn who witnessed Joseph Allen's Naturalization petition in 1863 (Joseph was Maria's brother). She and Maria had had a falling-out after Maria married Samuel. Mary was the chief benefactor of Maria's earlier, lost will, as was Mary's natural son, whom Maria had adopted for some unknown reason. Maria adopted Mary Attlesey's son John Henry Attlesey, renaming him John Henry Powell (she was Maria Powell at the time).

Robert H. Attlesey has been tentatively identified as the son of William and Alice (Martin) Attlesey of Soham, Cambridgeshire, England - and thus the nephew of my husband's third great grandmother, Sarah (Attlesey) Haylock of Soham (and first cousin of her daughter Sarah, his great great grandmother). I'm still not clear on the connection of the Attleseys to the Allens, though there were Allens in Soham. But they seem to have been fairly closely related.

**Maria's best friend in Gravesend was Cornelia Hicks, wife of Thomas Hicks, Jr (who served on the jury for this case). Thomas was a 5th cousin of my great great grandfather Daniel Losee Hicks.

SOURCES

From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

"The Gravesend Poisoning Case," Jun. 20, 1878, p. 2.
"Poisoned: A Startling Tragedy at Gravesend," Jun. 20, 1878, p. 4.
"Mysterious: The Suspicious Death of Mrs. Maria L. Hubbard," Jun. 21, 1878, p. 4.
"The Gravesend Case," Jun. 22, 1878, p. 2.
"Unsolved: The Supposed Mysterious Poisoning Case at Gravesend," Jun. 22, 1878, p. 4.
"Strychnine," Jun. 26, 1878, p. 4.
"Mrs. Hubbard: The Mysterious Gravesend Poisoning Case," Jun. 26, 1878, p. 2.
"Discharged: Hubbard: The Alleged Gravesend Poisoner," Jul. 27, 1878, p. 4.
"The Hubbard Poisoning Case," Jun. 27, 1878, p. 4.
"Mrs. Hubbard," Jun. 30, 1878, p. 4.
"Mrs. Hubbard," Jul. 1, 1878, p. 4.

From the New York Times:

"A Farmer's Wife Poisoned," Jun. 20, 1878, p. 5.
"The Gravesend Mystery," Jun. 21, 1878, p. 8.

Clues to Samuel Hubbard's ancestry - and the name of his first wife - are from this Pedigree Research File at Familysearch.

One mention of the Samuel Hubbard-Jane Ann Brower divorce is made in a notice in the Eagle on Aug. 18, 1871 which states that Samuel Hubbard of Gravesend was given an unconditional divorce from Jane Ann Hubbard. She was the widow of Charles B. Brower of Brooklyn, whose curious Mexican War adventures merit a separate post.

IMAGES

Image of bottle of strychnine from the Inventing Ourselves exhibition, Lemelson Center, Smithsonian Institution.

Image of beer bottle from Antique Beer Bottle Hall of Fame.

The Gravesend Poisoning Case Part 1: Maria's Ghost

In September 1878 the ghost of a murdered woman electrified the little village of Gravesend in south Brooklyn (which is the perfect name for the place a ghost might wish to appear).

Gravesend was just north of Coney Island, and though the railroad had reached it by then, it was still a quiet, rural place. The Gravesend Poisoning Case of June 1878 had given the town press coverage that it did not need or like, though.

Maria Hubbard, wife of a wealthy Gravesend farmer, had died quickly and horribly from drinking a bottle of beer laced with strychnine. Though her husband Samuel was arrested twice for the crime, he was released both times, as was his cousin Jacob "Cabe" Stryker and Maria's niece/companion Elizabeth Lusk. The case was never solved.

Gravesend was one of the six original towns of Brooklyn. Founded by Lady Deborah Moody and a group of Anabaptists in 1643, it encompassed the whole of Coney Island, directly to the south. Coney Island and Gravesend were independent of the City of Brooklyn until 1894 (which itself did not join New York City until four years after that).

Until the last third of the nineteenth century, Gravesend was a quiet farming community. By 1878, however, three racetracks, the railroad, and the developing resort of Coney Island were just starting to bring more people, and change, to the little village.

The center of Gravesend (pictured at left in the 1950s) was a little square with a building at each corner, as you can see in the map detail above. At the crossroads in the center of the square stood the Town Hall, the Dutch Reformed Church, Sim Hoagland's hotel/tavern, and Samuel Hubbard's house (directly in front of the Dutch Reformed cemetery). Samuel's ancestors had been in Gravesend since the days of Lady Deborah. He was one of the biggest land owners in the town, a weather-beaten, short man about 60 years of age.*

Bartlett McGetrick was an Irish-born railroad flagman with a ragged silver beard and grey eyes, who spoke in a "rich brogue," though he had been in Gravesend for so long he recalled when "corn grew all the way down to the water." He was 63 years old in 1878, married with three children still at home. The J. McGetrick at the top of the map was probably his son (John McGetrick was in his early 30s, born in Ireland). He had often chatted with Maria and considered her a friend. McGettrick told a reporter that she had been kindly, church-going and a meticulous housekeeper.

On the night of August 30, 1878, at about 10pm, McGetrick was crossing the Prospect Park and Coney Island RR tracks, at the center of the square, near the Town Hall. This line had opened in 1875 and ran from Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn down to Coney Island.

It was completely dark except for the starlight. He heard a woman calling to him from the direction of the Hubbard house. He went over to the two-story cottage, which had a big front porch, and was buried in trees, vines and creepers. There was a woman on the porch and she looked just like Maria Hubbard, said McGetrick. She was wearing the same sort of calico wrapper Maria wore. And she had left what looked like grave clothes on the porch.

McGetrick was terrified and immediately fell on his knees and started praying. Maria called to him again. So he got up and went over - quite reluctantly, as you can imagine. Her face was pale, a little yellow on one side, he said. And her eyes were bright with "supernatural light." In a "hollow but kindly voice" she asked after McGetrick's health and after his dog, who had died recently. And then she hinted that she thought the dog had been poisoned, in a meaningful way. She had already accused a specific person of poisoning her, on the day she died.

Two men passing by heard and saw the ghost too, an ex-Justice of the Peace, Andrew McKibben, and a barber named either Sauer or Rosenthal (the Eagle man wasn't sure which). Their approach made Maria's ghost nervous. McGetrick said she "resumed the grave clothes" and "vanished in a cloud of blue smoke." He added that he was worried that she was going to return and take him away with her.

But Maria's ghost never came back. Most of the residents of Gravesend were not convinced by McGettrick's story, though the barber (Sauer or Rosenthal) confirmed it. McKibben, however, said that it was his son who was there, not him, and didn't want to discuss the matter.

In the next installment, we'll meet Maria and look at her complicated connections, including various relatives, stepchildren, either three or four husbands, and some hostile in-laws. We'll also examine what happened on the day she drank the wrong bottle of beer - and see who might have put something in it - and why.

[to be continued...]

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*Samuel Hubbard and I share the following ancestors: Anthony Van Salee (ca 1609-1676) who was living at Gravesend by 1639; Jacob Suydam (ca 1666-1738) an early settler in Flatbush; and Rev. Johannes Theodorus Polhemus (ca 1598-1676). Van Salee, the son of a pirate, is one of the most interesting characters to settle in New Amsterdam, and very much worthy of a separate post.

IMAGE SOURCES

Picture of a shadowed Gravesend cottage by Daniel Berry Austin, courtesy of the Brooklyn Public Library. The 1950s Gravesend village square photo is also courtesy of the Brooklyn Public Library. Map of center of Gravesend village (1873) from the Brooklyn Genealogy Information Page. The link will take you to a big version of the map where you can see all the names fairly clearly.


SOURCES AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON GRAVESEND

"Ghostly: The Awful Apparition that Startled a Gravesender," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sept. 3, 1878, p. 4.

"Mrs. Hubbard's Ghost," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sept. 3, 1878, p. 2.

"That Spook: The Apparition that Agitates the Town of Gravesend," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sept. 4, 1878, p. 4. [The article, dated Tuesday Sept. 3rd, states that the ghost appeared on the previous Friday night, i.e. August 30th.]

Bartlett McGet[t]rick household, 1880 US Census, Gravesend, Kings, NY; #325/563, Series T9, Roll 857, p. 348.

Samuel Hubbard household, 1880 US Census, Gravesend, Kings, NY; #151/163, Series T9, Roll 857, p. 328.

Frank Jump's photos of the Lady Deborah Moody House in Gravesend.

Gravesend at Forgotten New York. If you scroll down a bit, you'll see a photo of an earlier Samuel Hubbard's house, circa 1750. This isn't the cottage where the 1878 murder took place, though.

Gravesend at the Bridge and Tunnel Club.

A Kitchen Hair-Dryer Nightmare

This beauty innovation from 1917 will make you appreciate the modern hand held hair dryer! It consists of a metal tube that you place over one of the burners on your stove. A lighted burner, of course. The model looks quite calm, all things considered.

The article states that a Chicago woman invented this. Her name was Albertina Keegan, and her 1916 patent is here at Google Patents.

Albertina (Johnson) Keegan was born about 1877 in Wisconsin, to Swedish immigrant parents. She was married to livery stable owner Thomas Keegan. In the 1920 census, her occupation is erroneously listed as "None."

Next time, we'll look at the town of Gravesend, in Brooklyn - to set the scene for the story of the Hubbard poisoning case of 1878, which took place there.

Advertisement from Popular Mechanics, April 1917, link here.

1920 US Census, Thomas Keegan household, Chicago Ward 2, Cook, IL; #54/196, Series T625, Roll 306, p. 164.

The Breakfast Rebels

A combination of apricots and dates is new for breakfast, and you will find brown sugar and butter delicious on cooked cereal.

Come on, kids, you can rebel a little bit better than that! Slouching in your chair looking grumpy is nothing. I can manage that every day, whether or not I am feeling rebellious.

But apricots and dates stuck together in a bowl will make all the difference to the rebels' parents. Look at them over on the right, they are so happy, pretending to be Scott and Zelda. Except that Scott and Zelda wouldn't be up at the crack of dawn eating cereal.

And there is brown sugar and butter on the hot cereal, too. If Scott really did wake up for breakfast, he'd have to rethink the whole last half of The Great Gatsby. Gatsby would decide he doesn't need to win Daisy back after all: what he really needs is some Cream of Wheat. The Cream of Wheat is better company, anyway.

This 1927 advertisement is from the digital collections of Duke University.

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Coming Attractions!

I am working on a story that I thought at first glance was going to be straightforward, but happily - it isn't. It's a ghost story AND a true crime case which gripped Brooklyn in the summer of 1878. And here is the strangest part (for me): I am distantly related to the accused, and my husband is related to the victim, who was, like him, an English immigrant. I am fairly sure that he is related to her, since her niece had the same unusual, regional surname as his great great grandmother.

I will be working on this one for a few days before I start posting, since there is plenty of genealogy work to do as well as writing up the crime case. The first installment should be appearing early next week.

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Thank you so much to Miss Margie and Miss Edna of the incomparable Margie and Edna's Basement for the Smart Blogger award.

And thank you very much Stephanie for the Premier Dardos award! Stephanie has two wonderful blogs, Rocket Scientist and Ask Me Anything, both of which I read every day.

Go now and visit them! You will be glad you did.

We Cure Eye Troubles

We Cure Eye Troubles

It doesn't matter what your eye trouble is, or how serious or chronic it may be, this great Eye-Book will show you how to treat your own eyes at home. No knife. No pain. No trouble. Not necessary to see a doctor.

Our book about eyes, sent free, tells all about it: things which you ought to know, but which your doctor has never told you, and contains letters from many that have been cured.

A postal card will get the book and we will give you our free advice if you will write us a short description of your case.

Write now while you think about it.

An easy-to-resist offer from 1909...What if, for example, your eyesight was such that you couldn't actually read the free book? And don't you need keen eyesight to perform medical treatments?

In addition, the lady in the picture appears to be self-administering something closer to a cosmetic eye-lift than, say, cataract surgery. It's a temporary eye-lift, though; as soon as she takes her hands away, she will be drooping again.

And if the book and the advice was really free, how did the North American Eye Specialists stay in business?

Advertisement from Popular Mechanics, March 1909, p. 155 - link here.

Gale's Arenaceous Concrete

When skin preparations come to mind, arenaceous (or sandy) concrete does not tend to be on the list. Unless, of course, your name is M.D. Gale.

This advertisement dates from about 1845-47. Instead of the usual porcelain-skinned Victorian lady, it shows Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) and his horse - neither of whom, one would have thought, would be known for their fine complexions, particularly since Taylor's nickname was "Old Rough and Ready."

Zachary Taylor was a renowned general, the hero of the Mexican-American War, specifically of the Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847. In 1849 he would become the 12th President of the United States, though his tenure was short-lived, as he died the following year.

The only M.D. Gale in New York in the 1850 census was a soap maker named Moses D. Gale; presumably he made cosmetics (of a sort) as well as soap. The concrete cosmetics must not have sold very well, for Gale turned to politics a few years after this advertisement (perhaps inspired by Zachary Taylor). Gale was a member of the New York State Assembly, 8th District, in 1852-53. By 1860, he was a Clerk at the Marine Court in New York.

Gale was not a feminist in any sense of the word. In 1853, he commented upon women working in the temperance movement. He noted that temperance petitions signed by women were worthless because "the constitution of the female mind was such as to render woman incapable of deciding correctly upon those questions."

Which proves that he was exactly the sort of person to suggest that women use powdered concrete as a beauty aid.

Advertisement from the Library of Congress.

SOURCES

McMillen, Sally Gregory. Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement (Oxford UP, 2008), pp 55-6.

Moses D. Gale household, 1850 US Census, New York City Ward 10, New York, NY; #36/133, Series M653, Roll 798, p. 817.

Moses D. Gale household, 1860 US Census, New York City Ward 10, New York, NY; #91/144, Film #444261, Image #00308, Ref. #14, link here.

Moses D. Gale at The Political Graveyard.

Walking On The Ceiling

Will any manager, who's not a ninny,
To walk the stage give Roscius one poor guinea,
When he can double his receipts by dealing
With a man-fly, who walks upon the ceiling?
---James Robinson Planché, 1852

Awhile back I wrote a post about a snake charmer, Nala Damajanta, who was having a bit of trouble with her ex-manager, John Palmer. An advertisement that Palmer ran in the New York Clipper in 1884 mentioned that he was the son of James Palmer, "the celebrated ceiling walker." I could only find one small mention of him, a one-line obituary in The Era Almanack, which simply read : "Palmer, James. Ceiling Walker, [died] age 52, Dec. 24, [1883]."

Ceiling walking was often attributed to the forces of magnetism or "atmospheric pressure," a writer noted in Chambers's Journal in 1883. But it had more to do with cleverly-designed planks and shoes. Planks with special "traps" were attached to the theater ceiling, and into these "traps" fit the hooks or springs on the bottom of the acrobat's specially-designed boots. John Ayton Paris wrote in 1836 that ceiling walking was accomplished by attaching chains to the soles of a man's boots, pulling them through the special planks on the ceiling. Two or more people would hold the chains from above while the man shuffled along.

A London "Strong Man" told writer Henry Mayhew in the 1840s that the first man to ceiling-walk was a "dodge" or "wizard" called Herman; but Herman, like the other ceiling or air walkers I came across, was extremely hard to trace beyond the mention of his name.

The most celebrated of the ceiling walkers was not John Palmer's father, but a man known as Professor Sands. He may or may not have been the Richard Sands who designed the first circus poster in 1856, and ran a circus with one J.J. Nathan at that time. The circus poster, engraved by Joseph Morse, is below.

Professor Sands was killed during a performance in America, probably in the early 1850s. He had walked on a "marble slab in the circus," said Mayhew's Strong Man; then someone challenged Sands to do it on an ordinary ceiling. Sands took up the bet and went to the town hall, where the ceiling, not surprisingly, gave way. He broke his neck. Sands' assistant then took on his name and his special boots, and continued to perform as Professor Sands.

As early as the late 1850s ceiling walking was being mocked in the popular press, as being both sensational and laughable. One writer of the time described a street show put on by a ne'er-do-well named Bill:

When the white mouse, walking on the tight-rope, and carrying in its mouth a miniature balancing-pole, is caught by the wind, and blown over into an antipodal position, Bill announces that the little beast is imitating Signor Druirilani, the renowned ceiling-walker.

The author is making fun of the false-Italian stage names many acrobats adopted, such as Signor Antonio who ceiling-walked at the Queen's Theatre in London in December 1853. Drurilani refers to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, a famous London theater. Mr. Sands, "the American Air Walker" (probably Professor Sands' assistant) performed there in March 1853.*

Alfred M. Gillette, a performer with the Ringling Brothers' Circus, "was credited with originating the upside-down or 'ceiling-walking' act...50 years ago," according to his 1947 obituary in Billboard. But he was merely following a tradition nearly a century old.

The wonderful Barnum poster is from the Ringling Museum of Art. The lithograph of the ceiling walker is from Sports and Amusements For the Young Philosopher (1836), link at Google Books, here. Joseph Morse's 1856 woodcut poster of the Sands and Nathan circus is from the Library of Congress.

* The Drury Lane, as it is commonly known, is said to be haunted by no less than seven ghosts, including those of two famous Victorian clowns, Dan Leno and Joe Grimaldi (which suggests some future posts to me - Only the Dead Know London?).

SOURCES

"Athletes - Part II," Chambers's Journal (Vol. 60, W. and R. Chambers, 1883), p. 158.

Dramatic Register for 1853 (T. Hailes Lacy, 1854), p. 45 ["Ceiling Walking Wonders" advertisement] and p. 91.

Ledger, Edward. The Era Almanack, dramatic and musical 1883 (Era Almanack, 1883), p. 69.

Lewis, Robert M. From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: theatrical spectacle in America 1830-1910. (JHU Press, 2003), p. 120 [shows 1856 Sands-Nathan poster]

Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor (London: Griffin, Bohn and Co., 1861 ed., orig. pub. 1851), p. 103. Interview with the "Strong Man" pp 98-104. Mayhew did the research for this groundbreaking book in the 1840s.

Paris, John Ayton. Sports and Amusements For the Young Philosopher (E. Hunt, 1836), p. 24.

Planché, James Robinson, et al. The Extravagances of J. Robinson Planché, Esq., 1825-1871 (S.French, 1879), p. 279.

"The Final Curtain," Billboard (Jun. 28, 1947), p. 47 [Gillette obituary].

Turner, Godfrey. "Pictures on the Pavement," The Train: A First-Class Magazine (Groombridge and Sons, 1858), p. 212.

The First Automobile Parade

Here is Thomas Edison's film of the first automobile parade in New York City, in 1899 (the film was released in February 1900). Gasoline-powered cars had only been around for three years at the time, and not everyone was used to them - in particular, the horse at the midpoint of the film, who is most unimpressed by the procession of cars zipping past him. There are plenty of bicycles too - including a large tricycle that I liked very much.

And though I don't much like modern cars, I would love to have driven one of these!

Corsets For Dowagers

Just the thing to flatter and entice women into buying a corset: call them dowagers! There are four dowager sizes to choose from in this 1914 advertisement; short, medium, long and extra-long.

The word dowager literally means a widow who has inherited either a property or title from her late husband. It comes from the French "douer," meaning portion [The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, ed. C.T. Onions, Oxford 1966, p. 286]. The dower or "morning gift" was the term for money or property which was settled upon a bride by her husband on the morning after the wedding.

Illustrator Helen E. Hokinson (1893-1949) was famous for her cartoon drawings of pigeon-breasted, silly dowagers in the New Yorker in the 1920s. See here at their website for an example of one of them.

The term "dowager" was often used in conjunction with royal titles such as the Empress Dowager Cixi of China (1835-1908) - who definitely did not wear a Royal Worcester Dowager corset.

Advertisement from NYPL Digital Gallery.

The Auto-Masseur

No dieting, no drugs, no sweating in a vapor bath, and no "Aerobatics."* This 1917 advertisement from the Canadian magazine McClure's shows the projected results but remains vague on the machinery involved.

This device is likely to be the Abdominal Belt which was patented in 1904 by Sidney H. Burns of New York City. It looks pretty useless, as one might expect.

The Ceiling Walker post is coming along, but will be delayed somewhat due to the fact that my computer is acting up and needs some fixing-up over the weekend. I don't want to rush things as it is a bit complicated to write (and really quite fun, too).

* Aerobatics is the demonstration of flying maneuvers. I assume that Burns meant aerobics plus acrobatics in what Lewis Carroll called a portmanteau word.

Telephone Headache Tablets

It would be easy to blog about nothing but patent medicine history, a subject that has fascinated me for a long time. And in the Virtual Patent Medicine Museum, headache cures have an exhibit hall all to themselves - not surprisingly, there are many.

Here are Charles W. Horn's oddly named Telephone Headache Tablets, dating from about 1900-1910. The telephone is probably analogous to the quickness with which the tablets are supposed to deliver their therapeutic "message" to your headache.

You could order them quickly over the phone, too, as the lady with a symbolic headache rag tied around her head is doing: "Hallo! Send me none but the 'Telephone.' I know what they are and many of my friends have used them without a single failure."

They were not safe for children, says the ad - and as it turns out, you will not be surprised to learn that they weren't safe for adults either. They were found to contain acetanilid[e], which is made of analin (a by-product of coal tar) and acetic acid. Acetanilide (now spelled with the final 'e') is related to acetominophen, used in headache medications today - but it is incredibly toxic and used in the manufacturing of rubber and dyes. Taking these tablets would give you more than a headache, no doubt about it.

The advertisement was scanned from my copy of Nostrums and Quackery (Chicago: American Medical Assocation Press, 1912), p. 539.

Deene's Complexion Tea

Dorothy D. Deene was a commercial artist in Chicago in the 1910s, who also manufactured this mysterious Deene's Complexion Tea about the same time. The tea pamphlet is from the Duke University Emergence of Advertising in America collection, link here.

She was born about 1882 in Illinois and was listed as an Artist, working from her Chicago home, in the 1910 census. Her father was Scottish and her mother either from Virginia (1910 census) or new York (1920 census). In 1920 she gives her occupation, curiously, as "Manufacturer, Wind Mills."

Deene writes in the tea pamphlet that her mother concocted the Complexion Tea. Mrs. Deene, "a great beauty," felt strongly that "constipation was at the root of most disorders of the human body." Not surprisingly, the tea's first ingredient is senna, which is a laxative. It also contained:

-buckthorn (a purgative)
-buchu (South African shrub used for urinary tract and gastrointestinal ailments)
- juniper (for urinary tract complaints and diabetes)
-couch grass (for urinary tract problems)
-anise (possibly for digestive problems, and/or for flavoring)
-coriander seed (flavoring, and as diuretic and carminative, i.e. re production of intestinal gas)
-and licorice root (flavoring, and can be used as cough and catarrh medicine)

In other words, this was very powerful stuff, even though Deene said that it was approved by the FDA. Deene assured the public that not only would they be cleansed internally (and indeed, that seems to be inevitable) - but that both men and women would become more beautiful and energetic if they drank this tea every day. Oh, and your complexion would improve, too, as per the name.

Men would see an improvement in their careers too, as the tea enhanced "business ability." As for women, they would have to be content with the beautifying aspects of the tea. Although the tea does seem to have been a plus in terms of Dorothy Deene's business abilities.

Duke's Emergence of Advertising in America collection also has an art booklet published by Deene which contains examples of her artwork, and more sultry photographs of her, here.

Please Note: For a fascinating in-depth look at this amazing woman, please visit Sharon Williams' wonderful Chicago History blog and read the post she has written about Dorothy Deene. It is just terrific!

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Dorothy D. Deene household, 1910 US Census, Chicago Ward 6, Cook, IL; #17/56, Series T2624, Roll 245, p. 217.

Dorothy D. Deene household, 1920 US Census, Chicago Ward 3, Cook, IL; #1014/51, Series T625, Roll 32, p. 262.

I wasn't able to find Deene in the 1900 census, and haven't found out about her manufacturing windmills, unfortunately. If I do, I'll come back and edit this.

For now, I'm off to research the amazing phenomenon of Ceiling Walking, which will be the subject of a post later this week. Stay tuned!

The Lager Beer Bears

Of course, in order to get the lager beer, you have to get past those polar bears.

Advertisement from 1877, from Pop Art Machine.

The Tobacco Disinclinator

Way ahead of his time, W.S. Ballou advertises his anti-smoking medication in 1867, called the Tobacco Disinclinator:

That the use of Tobacco shortens human life from Five to Twenty years, decreases manly vigor in the same ratio, causes a majority of the sudden deaths usually attributed to heart disease, and renders the subject more acceptable and less able to withstand any disease, is the opinion of our most eminent physicians. How shall we rid ourselves of this accursed habit, and prevent the uninitiated from falling into it? We answer simply by using the DISINCLINATOR, according to the directions. Thirty years' experience qualifies me to judge something of its effects. And years of abstinence and FREEDOM FROM ALL DESIRE enables me to appreciate the difference between its use and disuse; being now perfectly healthy and vigorous, and weighing some Fifty Pounds more than when a Slave to Tobacco.

Send By Mail a Receipt of Five Dollars, Office 833 Clinton Place (8th Street), New-York.

Ballou may or may not have been a Universalist minister of the same name, although I have not found anything to link him explicitly with the Tobacco Disinclinator. There were very few Ballous in New York City at this time, and none with the correct initials who were old enough to have had thirty years' experience with the product.

I really like the name of this product, and wish I knew just what was in it - perhaps some extract of nicotine, which would have made this similar to the use of nicotine in patches and chewing gum today.

Image from the Library of Congress
[Digital ID: cph 3c02485; Source: b&w film copy neg.
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-102485 (b&w film copy neg.)]

A Greenwood Mystery Tomb

The Cairns monument at Brooklyn's historic Greenwood Cemetery is one of its more obscure mysteries. It is not clear how many people are buried there or who they were. And the tombstone itself, located on Locust Avenue, is oddly inscribed with disjointed Bible verses and references to "Eden's Oil" and "America's Star." There were also five lampposts in front of it, which at one time were kept burning night and day.

The Eagle mentions the tomb in 1882 and 1890, but like the other sources I found, does not hint at the origins of the information. Sarah W. Kairns and Elizabeth Cairns, respectively aged 117 and 100 years, were said to be buried in "a plain inclosure [sic]" called "The Ancient Sisters" or the "Old Maids' Rest." There were five sisters altogeter, but only Elizabeth and Sarah were listed on the stone. They all lived to be over the age of 100; the oldest (Sarah) was 117. The Eagle said that not much was known about them, except that they were well-to-do and had all lived together in New York:

[The Old Maids' Rest] is on an eminence near the Shelter House...One headstone of white marble serves for the whole family. At the top there is carved something which looks like a sunburst and under it the inscription, "America's Star," followed by [several Biblical quotations] A very singular series of inscriptions...totally devoid of connection...In front of the plot are five marble pillars about four feet in height, on top of which, until the death of the last of the Misses Cairns, were kept burning night and day five curiously fashioned lamps. The center post has on it this inscription, "Sisters anointed with Eden's oil."...The plot is well taken care of, but the lamps have vanished.

In the same year, 1890, a periodical called Current Opinion mentioned the tomb. The writer repeated the story of the five centenarian sisters, adding that "as long as one of 'em was alive she kept lamps burning on those five posts filled with Eden's oil; the posts are anointed with Eden's oil." No sources were given for this information. The sisters anointed with oil seems to be a reference to the Parable of the Ten Virgins, in which the five wise virgins, of the ten attending a wedding, have brought oil for their lamps.

In the book Permanent New Yorkers, Judi Culbertson and Tom Randall state that there are 17 old ladies from an old age home buried there. The oldest, Sarah Kairns, was the married mother of 22 children, who lived to be 117 years old. The authors add that people thought that the plot had been purchased "by a lunatic." Unfortunately, there are no footnotes given, so it is hard to say where they got this information.

The Greenwood interment records show a Sarah W. Kairns, buried in Lot 8698, section 50, on January 9, 1855. According to their on-line records, though, there are no other Cairns or Kairns (or other variant spellings) buried there.

There was a Cairns family in New York, at the right time, that was well-off - but of five sisters in the family, only two were living in New York, as was their brother William, a dry goods merchant. One New York sister, Jessie, was married to William's partner David Henderson. The other, Elizabeth, died unmarried in 1858, age 72 (born ca 1786); however, she is buried with other members of this family in another plot (Lot 1277, section 107). None of the Cairns men in the family had a wife or other relative named Sarah.

An Interesting, Yet Improbable Spiritualist Connection:

It was suggested to me in conversation that perhaps the old ladies were religious sisters. In researching this possibility, I came upon a book called Strange Visitors, by a man named Henry J. Horn. Henry J. Horn was a Brooklyn artist turned spiritualist (he later lived in Saratoga Springs). He published Strange Visitors in 1869. Each chapter is purported to have been written by a deceased author, dictated to a clairvoyant who then passed the transcriptions on to Horn (Horn may have been the clairvoyant, it is hard to tell from his introduction). In the chapter "written" by John Hughes, first Archbishop of New York, there is this curious passage:

The Sisterhood of the Five Wise Virgins, newly organized...escort from earth youthful souls who have been baptized in the Church, and who are friendless and vagrant, having inhabited while on earth such parts of new York City as the Five Points and Water Street [notorious slums of the time] and having neither kindred nor connection to claim them.

Unfortunately, this was not a real sisterhood, for it would have fit perfectly into the mystery of the tomb with the five lamps. And there does not seem to be any connection with the Horn family, as Henry was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx in 1900.

A conclusion that isn't really a conclusion: a Sarah Kairns does appear to be buried here, along with an undetermined number of other people (the on-line Greenwood burial records cannot be searched by lot/section number, unfortunately). There is definitely a spiritual/religious symbolism which is open to interpretation. And it will remain a mystery, until enough information can be found to enable us to interpret it correctly.

Since I was not able to locate a picture of the Cairns tomb, the image is a mysterious view of Greenwood, probably mis-19th century, courtesy of NYPL Digital Gallery.

SOURCES

"Died," New York Times, Aug. 17, 1858, p. 5. [obituary of Miss Eliza Cairns]

Horn, Henry J. Strange Visitors: A Series of Original Papers (Carleton, 1869), p. 60.

"A Day With the Dead," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan. 1, 1882, p. 2.

"Out of the Beaten Path," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb. 16, 1890, p. 13.

[Untitled], Current Opinion (v. 4, 1890; Current Literature Pub. Co., 1890), p. 84.

"Died," New York Times, Oct. 23, 1900, p. 7. [obituary of Henry J. Horn, who "enetered into spirit life" Oct. 22, 1900 at Saratoga Springs]

Culbertson, Judi and Tom Randall. Permanent New Yorkers (Chelsea Green Pub. Co., 1987), p. 121.