Mrs. Dubois' Excellent Adventure

NYPL

This is the story of an intrepid young lady, age eighteen, who went off in search of the North Pole in the year 1868. And yet the only place I have found this story is in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

The Eagle reporter heard this story from its heroine - a lady called Mrs. Dubois, who lived in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn -  in the year 1887. She was widowed by then and leading a quiet life. But what an adventure she'd had nineteen years before!

The year was 1868 and the future Mrs. Dubois was then Miss Worrell - a young Englishwoman whose uncle, John Harford, was the captain of the Greyfeather. Harford was taking the Greyfeather on a expedition to the North Pole. And his niece, Miss Worrell, was on board  - the only female member of the expedition.

Harford became ill ten weeks into the voyage and was unconscious in his berth for nine days. The first mate wanted to turn back south, because they had no maps and no charts - and, according to Mrs. Dubois, only two ships had ever gone so far north, and they were whaling ships. She did not want to turn around and go south  "to the captain, while in that condition, she knew it meant death." And so Miss Worrell took over:

She then took command herself and kept the ship on its courses. The second mate refused to obey her orders. Drawing a revolver from a belt around her waist she fired at a rope and shot it in two. She then told the mate that if he did not obey orders she would try her next experiment on him.

He changed his mind after that.

Arrow above points to Kodiak Island; 1911 map from MapsEtc (link below)

Miss Worrell took the ship up to "seventy-two degrees north latitude and in sixteen days reached "Codiac" (Kodiak) "by way of the Behring Straits and the Arctic ocean." Kodiak Island was part of Alaska as of 1867 (the Eagle got this wrong and said it was Russian in 1868). They got some "ice, pine [wood] and fish" and took it on board, paying the "Esquimaux" for it in whiskey.

Miss Worrell then took the ship to Australia - she does not say why - and it was at this point that the crew mutinied. The Eagle reporter noted that she had "large scars on both hands" from being attacked by a crew member with a "sailor's knife," during the mutiny. Her uncle recovered around this point (again, this is a little unclear) and they returned to England. She later visited the United States and met Mr. Dubois in New York, where she married him at the Sands Street Methodist Church in Brooklyn. She had been a widow for many years, the reporter added.

She was probably the Caroline Dubois (or Du Bois) living at Gravesend (Sheepshead Bay was very close to Gravesend and enumerated with it) from the 1880 census on, born in England in 1849 (April 1849 according to the 1900 census), and a widow since at least 1880. However, this Caroline DuBois had a daughter Frances, born in New York on August 31, 1866.*  Two thorough searches of the census records (and yes, perhaps I will do a third search!) failed to turn up any other Mrs. Dubois in the Sheepshead/Gravesend area in the 1880s, born in England about 1848-50. There were only a few other Mrs. Dubois' of  roughly the right age in all of New York State, never mind Brooklyn. So something does not add up...

As for Captain John Harford of the Greyfeather, he is proving to be elusive, too. There were many attempts to reach the North Pole in the mid nineteenth century. Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition is perhaps the most famous one of the mid Victorian period. Harford's voyage may not be known because it ended in failure, but it does seem strange not to have been able to find (so far) any corroborating evidence. After all, if this story is true, then Caroline Worrell would have been the earliest known woman to attempt to reach the North Pole. Josephine Peary, wife of Robert E. Peary, who claimed to be the first man to reach the North Pole (in 1909), has been assumed to be the first woman polar explorer. She went with Peary on several expeditions, the earliest being in 1891.

So many questions and contradictions - yet the Eagle story is subtitled "Her Famous Trip In Search of the North Pole." This implies that there are other news stories out there about it, that it was a known news item, being recalled 19 years later. I'm going to keep researching this story, but I wanted to post it now. One of the pleasures of history blogging is that one can come back and add to a post, or write a follow-up.  I have no doubt that there will be a follow-up post for this story, too.

Sources (for now):

"Career of Mrs. Du Bois," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 10, 1887, p. 1.
"Our Polar Expeditions," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sept. 25, 1897, p. 5. [re Mrs. Peary]

1880 US Census, New York, New York [Manhattan], FHL #1254887, T9-0887, p. 397A. [Caroline Dubois 38y Widow, Dressmaker, b England, dau Frankie 13y b New York]
1892 NY State Census, Gravesend, Kings Co., Film # 12930244, Digital Folder # 4370043, Image 330
1900 US Census, Brooklyn Ward 31, Kings, NY; ED 0566, Household #252, Ref #32, GSU #1241069, Image #0069.
*Ancestry.com, New York Passenger Lists 1820-1957, Frances K. Cunliffe passenger on the President McKinley dep. from LA, arr NYC 1 July 1933, states that she was born in Brooklyn, NY on 31 Aug 1866; she was definitely the daughter of Mrs. Dubois, who was living with or near the Cunliffes from 1892 on.

Arctic map (1911) from Maps Etc.

Excess Perfume and Citron Face

I am working on a story that is either an amazing true story - or an incredible, fantastical lie - starring a lady who lived at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn in the 1880s. It is so startling that I don't believe I've ever seen anything like it in the Eagle - and yet there it was, buried in the newspaper, with no follow up and a reporter who didn't ask a lot of questions that I wished he had.

So it is off to the library for me to hunt up a few things that I hope will be on microfilm. And I will tell you all about it sometime next week!

In the meantime, here are some useful tidbits from an 1859 etiquette book, published in New York, that this highly-respected Sheepshead Bay lady would not have needed on her very unusual adventure: 

Advice for ladies:

Do not wear a green bonnet!

Avoid uniting colors which will suggest an epigram - such as a straw-colored dress, with a green bonnet...otherwise your malicious rivals will assert that your face resembles a citron, surrounded by its foliage.

A lady will not:
...look back at anyone who has passed her [on the street];
...eye another lady's dress, as if studying its very texture;
...will not stop upon the walk to talk with a friend to the inconvenience of others.

A lady does not put her address on her visiting-card.

Excess in perfume should be avoided, lest the suspicion be excited that you deal in the odors that you inhale.

Advice for gentlemen:

Beware of asking the hour, or of taking out your watch during a visit; avoid spitting on the floor - your pocket-handkerchief will serve your purpose. To place your hat on any article of furniture when you enter a room is ungenteel; to lay it on a bed is unpardonable. You must hold it in your hand, or leave it with your coat in the anteroom.

Swinging on one's chair is extremely ill-bred.

Never look about you in a room, as if you were making an inventory.

An additional caution, as per the cartoon above: do not be one of "those offensive bipeds who always carry their sticks at an angle in crowded places," lest you force the people around you to wear fencing masks to protect themselves.

Source:  The Dime Book of Practical Etiquette for Ladies and Gentlemen (New York: Lewis P. Beadle & Co., 1859).

Image of 1889 cartoon from NYPL Digital Gallery. Citron image from Wikipedia.

The Belle of New York

NYPL Digital Gallery

The Belle of New York was an 1897 musical that failed to interest New Yorkers, and its run was very short (64 performances). But what a huge success the play had in London! In fact, it ran there for over a year, with over 600 performances.

The title character, a sweet Salvation Army girl named Violet, was played by Edna May, who is seen at left in one of her costumes (not the official Salvation Army getup, though). A rich, lazy young man named Harry falls in love with her and his father pushes them to marry. He makes Violet heir to his fortune (taking Harry out of the will at the same time, you see). And all would have been well ---

Except for the fact that Violet knows Harry is still in love with his former fiancee, Cora Angelique (is that not a great name?). And Violet really loves Harry and wants him to be back in the will. So she sings a naughty song to get Harry's dad to break things off (that is all it took to upset wealthy parents in 1897, it would seem). Cora and Harry get back together. Violet tiptoes offstage, presumably to change back into her Salvation Army outfit.

But wait! Harry finally realizes that - yes, you guessed it - that he really, truly loves dear, virtuous, selfless Violet, the Belle of New York. Back she comes, to pose on a swing, in a ruffled dress and a bonnet the size of a zeppelin. Cue tremendous (English) applause.

Edna May (1878-1948), the star of this confection, was made famous by the London success of the play. She married several times, finally to a wealthy Englishman, but had had a tragic love affair with an Indian prince. It ended badly because his family did not approve of her - the exact opposite of Violet's experience in The Belle of New York.

More here:
The Edna May Pages
John Culme's Footlight Notes: Edna May
...And  finally a bit about the 1952 Fred Astaire/Vera Ellen movie The Belle of New York, which also stars a rich hero and a Salvation Army heroine, with slightly different plot twists - minus both Cora Angelique and the skyscraper bonnets.

A Secret You Should Know

A while back I wrote a series about a man called Frederic(k) Bell - truly one of the most interesting Victorians I have come across. He was known as the "Singing Preacher" in New York in the 1870s. He was an English-born ex-pugilist turned Methodist minister, who had a tendency to get into trouble (with women, mostly) and then be ejected from various congregations on both sides of the Atlantic. In his last New York phase, in the 1890s, Bell worked as a fortune teller (having given up the ministry) in Brooklyn. He was arrested for some shenanigans in his fortune telling career and then went off to lecture elsewhere in the US and, a few years later on, in Australia. I'll tell you all about that in another post sometime.

But today, we're going to meet his "sister" - a fortune teller called Madame Pablo, who lived at the same address as Bell - 166 State Street in Brooklyn - for a time, in the spring and summer of 1897.

Fred Bell, speaking to the Eagle about his new career as an "Eastern Mystic," said that yes, she was his sister. And their ads appeared together in the Eagle on May 30th of that year (May 30, 1897, p. 24).  Both ads were very long - longer than the usual ads for Clairvoyants. Fred and Vanessa both liked capitals. A lot. Fred called himself:

THE EASTERN MYSTIC and famous OCCULT WONDER (who has returned to Brooklyn after an absence of twenty years); is an ELECTRO MENTAL HEALER of great power; consultation free;  AS A MENTAL SPIRIT MEDIUM the doctor has no peer; he does not descend to trickery, humbug or clownishness, and all LIFE READINGS are given to you in his own hand writing, so that you always have it to refer to.

Whatever her relationship to Bell, Madame Pablo certainly shared his gift for hyperbole. Her own ad, right after Fred's, begins in a similar manner. Both point out their foreign allure, their brilliant talents, and the fact that they are better than any other mediums in town:

MME VANESSA  PABLO, PALMIST, The rage of LONDON, PARIS and ST. PETERSBURG. Your life is in your hand, like an open book, and can be accurately read by Mme. Vanessa Pablo, the QUEEN OF PALMISTS or Chiromancy. Nature has bestowed on this bright young woman many advantages...She can place within your reach a REMEDY for every failure, every mistake, every trouble, every doubt. There is no home so dreary and sad, no life so wrecked or blotted, no heart so sorrowful and lonely, that cannot be benefited by a visit to this PHENOMENAL PALMIST. Full life readings, VERBAL or MANUSCRIPT. A SECRET YOU SHOULD KNOW - The wonderful power of human magnetism, or the strange secret of silently controlling the MIND and ACTIONS of others, scientifically explained to those who wish to use it for honorable purposes, given without extra charge for one week.

You could learn how to control others, just as long as you promised not to misuse your new found power. But you did have to act quickly: CUT THIS OUT. IT DOES NOT APPEAR EVERY DAY, Madame Pablo's ad concludes. This last statement was the truest in the ad, for Madame Pablo only seems to have advertised once more, in June 1897 (June 3, 1897, p 9).

Was Vanessa Pablo truly the sister of English pugilist-turned-minister-turned mystic Fred Bell? Bell did have two sisters, Emmeline (born 1855) and Betsey (born 1851), back in England. It's possible that she was one of them, but that does seem unlikely. She may have been a medium named Lottie Fowler who really did go to London and St. Petersburg (among other places), in the 1870s - the decade in which she was briefly famous. She ended up back in New York City and died tragically at Blackwell's Island in 1899. Lottie's story is quite fascinating - and long - so I'll be writing about her in a future post.

Selected Bell and Pablo sources, all from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

"Dr. Bell in a New Role," June 6, 1897, p. 30.
"Dr. Bell and Occultism," June 7, 1897, p. 3.
"Ex-Pastor Bell Arrested," June 15, 1897, p. 1.

BDE advertisements:

May 30, 1897, p. 24.
June 3, 1897, p. 9.
June 9, 1897, p. 8.
June 10, 1897, p. 8.
June 12, 1897, p. 11.
June 14, 1897, p. 9.

Image from NYPL Digital Gallery. Also see Fred Bell, Eastern Mystic from the Dime Museum back in 2009. I'll put links to the entire Fred Bell series - and what a story it is! - up on one of the Pages, pretty soon.

Dr. Talbot's Medicated Pineapple Cider

DISTURBED SLEEP. - Add one tablespoon of Dr. T.B. Talbot’s Medicated Pineapple Cider to a tumbler of cold water, and drink before you retire; when you rise in the morning repeat the above. If that does not make you sleep, take two tablespoonfuls of the Cider. For sale everywhere. B.T. Babbitt, Sole Agent, Nos. 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 72 and 74 Washington street, New York.
 
                 -- Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 16, 1864, p. 3.

Dr. Talbot had been working on his Medicated (or, as in the ad on the left, Medical) Pineapple Cider for 25 years, according to most of the advertisements I found, dating from the early 1860s: "It is not new to the doctor, but it is entirely new to the public." A three-dollar quart bottle would "last a well person a year" - Dr. Talbot did not say how many bottles a sick person would need, but you could get a whole gallon for ten dollars. Medicated Pineapple Cider was for all persons, sick or well, old or young, and cured - well, just about anything. In other words, it was pretty much like a thousand other Victorian remedies.

In an 1856 advertisement in the Almanac of the New York Tribune, the cider is said to prevent sickness of all kinds, and cites two "well known" New York gentlemen who had benefited from it. In the Tribune's 1863 Almanac and Political Register, one may read of a particularly startling way to take your medicine: 

...To cure [Catarrh], add to half a pint of water some ten drops of Dr. T.B. Talbot's Medicated Pineapple Cider; take some of the mixture in your hand and snuff it up your nose...

No, thank you. I would rather just drink it, please.

The pineapple had been known in Europe since Columbus brought it back from his travels. The term pineapple was already being used in English (first recorded use in 1398) for what we now call a pinecone. The Spanish introduced the pineapple to Hawaii and the Philippines in the early 19th century, but large-scale cultivation of the fruit would not occur until about a century later, in the early 1900s. It seems to have been grown in Florida and California to some extent (see here, for example, at NYPL Digital Gallery for a Florida pineapple picture dated 1870-1910). Pineapples were expensive, but increasingly available in the United States and England through the mid to late 19th century. It sold for 14-16 cents a pound in New York City in 1860, which was fairly expensive, but cheaper than celery at 50 cents for 12 stalks. Apples, in contrast, were a nickel a bag ["Wholesale Produce Markets," New York Times, June 14, 1860, n.p.].

 Pineapples are good sources of manganese and vitamin B1 (thiamine). Whereas too much manganese is said to be one of the causes of insomnia, thiamine is sometimes said to be helpful as a relaxing natural sleep aid (though it known whether this was common knowledge in the 1860s).

Is there a New York connection in all of this? Yes, of course! Dr. Talbot's Cider was sold by B.T. Babbitt at Washington Street, New York. Benjamin Talbot Babbitt (1809-89) - perhaps a relative of Dr. Talbot's? -  was best known for his Babbitt's Best Soap. He sold many other products too, such as baking powder, and invented more than 100 things including an artificial ice maker. A friend of P.T. Barnum's, Babbitt was known for his flamboyant advertising. Sinclair Lewis named his businessman anti-hero George Babbitt, in the 1922 novel Babbitt, after him.

There is a Brooklyn connection (of sorts), too - Pineapple Street in Brooklyn Heights. According to Brooklyn.com, a Miss Middagh living in the Heights, in the 1850s, disliked the way in which streets had been named for her neighbours, so she took down the signs and put up her own - including Pineapple Street (she also celebrated the Cranberry and the Orange). 

In addition to all this, the pineapple was a symbol of hospitality. It had been imported from the Caribbean to the US since the 18th century, but was a rare treat. Serving it to your guests was a sign of welcome and prosperity. Even Charles Dickens, in the 1860s, welcomed visitors to his home at Gad's Hill with "the 'cider-cup of Gad's Hill' - a drink composed of cider, limes, brandy, pineapple, toasted apples, lemon-peel and sugar [which] became famous as a specialty of the place." ["Dickens at Forty Years," Appletons' Journal Nov. 5, 1870, p 592]. Perhaps when the weather gets cooler, I will try and recreate this cider cup (there doesn't seem to be a recipe extant) and post it! But the final question must be: did Dickens' cider cup cure catarrh or insomnia? Dr. Talbot's answer would be a resounding No (provided, of course, that he was not snuffling up cider when he was asked).

Pineapple Cider ad from Harper's Weekly, May 20, 1865 (at Scribd). The lady in the pineapple costume dates from the last quarter of the 19th century, according to the NYPL Digital Gallery, as is the picture of Brooklyn's Pineapple Street. The Babbitt soap ad is from Wikipedia. More on the history of the hospitable pineapple here at the University of Florida.

And if you are interested in making a little non-medicated pineapple cider (although perhaps the rum might count as a sleep aid, come to think of it), you can click the Foodista widget below and go to a nice recipe over there.

Hot Spiced Pineapple Cider