Replevying a Corpse

As a hardened reader of sensationally horrible deaths in the Victorian press, you would think that very little would shock. Yet there is a category of mortuary stories that recently has given me pause. I refer, of course, to stories involving writs of replevin on corpses.

What?

Here is the basic legal definition.

Replevin is an action or a writ issued to recover an item of personal property wrongfully taken. Replevin, sometimes known as “claim and delivery”, is an antiquated legal remedy in which a court requires a defendant to return specific goods to the plaintiff at the beginning of the action. The advantage of a writ (order) of replevin is that it deprives the defendant of the use of the property while the case is awaiting trial, therefore increasing the likelihood of a quick settlement.

But what does this have to do with corpses?

REPLEVYING A CORPSE

A Dead Woman’s Body Held for a Board Bill.

Trouble Between Foster Geggs and Mrs. Frost, His Landlady.

A Difference of Fifty Dollars Provokes a Strange Suit.

Difficulties Experienced by a Constable in Serving a Writ.

‘Squire Sanderson issued a writ of replevin yesterday for the remains of the wife of Foster Geggs, a merchant of New Lexington, Ohio. They were detained by a Mrs. Frost, a keeper of a boarding-house at No. 322 Walnut street. Constable Frank Dossman served the papers, and, after a great deal of trouble, the body was secured.

Five weeks ago a gentleman and lady arrived in this city from New Lexington, Highland County, Ohio. They were Mr. and Mrs. Foster Geggs. They applied to Mrs. Frost for board and lodging, and were accommodated. The lady appeared to be in bad health, and

THEIR MISSION TO THIS CITY

was the search of medical aid for Mrs. Geggs, who was suffering from a complication of diseases. She appeared to regain her health for a time, but a week ago she had a relapse. Early yesterday morning her sufferings were released by death. When daylight had arrived Geggs sent for Estep & Meyer, the undertakers. They embalmed the body, and, incased in a handsome coffin, it was ready to be shipped to New Lexington for burial. Shortly after noon the undertakers’ wagon arrived to take the remains to the depot, but Mrs. Frost refused to allow them to be removed. She claimed that Geggs owed her $50 for board and lodging.

HE ACKNOWLEDGED THE INDEBTEDNESS,

but not to the amount she claimed. He offered to settle for $25. This offer the woman spurned. He pleaded with her to allow the undertakers to remove the body of his dead wife, but she shook her head and said no. She wanted her money, and was going to have it, if she had to hold the body for a week. Several of the boarders tried to persuade her to release the remains, but it was of no used. Finally, Geggs threatened to swear out a writ of replevin. Mrs. Frost laughed at the idea, and dared any Constable to enter her house. Seeing no other way to secure the body of his wife, he appeared before ‘Squire Sanderson and swore out

THE WRIT OF REPLEVIN.

The ‘Squire detailed Constable Dossman to serve the papers. When he arrived he found the door of the house locked and barred. He rang and knocked for admittance, but Mrs. Frost refused to admit him. He next tried the windows, but could not in any way gain an entrance. The alley way was the only resort, and on this side the Frost woman did not look for the Constable to enter. After scaling a high fence he found open the rear door. Having gained admittance, he found the corpse in the parlor. The writ was served on Mrs. Frost, and she reluctantly opened up the front door and

THE COFFIN WAS REMOVED

to the undertaker’s wagon, which was still in waiting. The remains were driven to the Grand Central Depot, from whence they were taken to New Lexington last night. The writ also called for several valise and trunks, which were also secured. The interesting and sensational suit will be heard Monday December 27, by “Squire Sanderson.

This is the second instance in this city where a corpse was secured only on a writ of replevin.

ANOTHER CASE

About two years ago the wife of Johnnie Ryan, the Fifth-street concert hall man, swore out a writ for the body of her baby that was buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery on the Warsaw pike. Mrs. Ryan wanted the remains removed to another cemetery, but the Superintendent refused to give up the body, claiming that she owned for the burial lot, and the digging of the grave. She appeared before “Squire Sanderson and swore out the writ. Constable Frank Johnson, with a squad of Special Constables, served the papers. A number of spades were secured and the body of the child was resurrected. The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 17 December 1886: p. 4

Popular thought held that a body was not property and could not be stolen.

The common law recognizes no property in anybody in the dead, though it does recognize the property in the shroud and other apparel of the dead as belonging to the person who was at the expense of the funeral. Cincinnati [OH] Daily Gazette 17 April 1880: p. 8

and

But whatever may have been the rule in England under the Ecclesiastical law, and while it may be true still that a dead body is not property in a commercial sense of that term, yet in this country it is, so far as we know, universally held that those who are entitled to the possession and custody of it for purposes of decent burial have certain legal rights to and in it which the law will protect. Indeed the mere fact that a person has exclusive rights over a body for the purposes of burial, necessarily leads to the conclusion that it is property in the broadest sense of the term, viz., something over which the law accords him exclusive control. (Larsen v. Chase, 50 N. W. 238, cited in “Property in Dead Bodies,” Walter F. Kuzenski, Marquette Law Review, Issue 1, Vol. 9, December 1924)

However, in real life, bodies were often held for ransom. The threat of either retaining a corpse, of publicly displaying it, or of burying it in a pauper’s grave was used in all kinds of circumstances to extort money, legally owed or not. A decent burial was a serious business; even the poorest would go to great lengths to have the trappings of a “proper” funeral, rather than a pauper’s rites, with burial in the Potter’s Field.

Some hospitals apparently had VIP undertakers on the early 20th-century equivalent of speed-dial. I assume the undertakers paid handsomely for their priority status.

ON REPLEVIN WRIT

John Lund Secures Possession of Wife’s Corpse.

Undertaker Holds Body of Woman Who Died at Hospital and Refuses Possession.

After he had been forced to take out a writ of replevin to secure the corpse of his wife, who died yesterday morning at U.B.A. hospital, John Lund, an Englishman, was permitted to proceed with the arrangements for the funeral. Mrs. Lund died yesterday morning and, in accordance with a custom common in the hospitals, a nurse immediately notified Edward J. Corkery, an undertaker at 524 South Division Street. Corkery called for the body.

Soon afterward Metcalf & Co., who had been notified by the husband, went for the body and were referred to Corkery, who refused to give it up unless paid for his trouble. Lund went to the prosecutor for a warrant for kidnaping, but the prosecutor advised him to take out the replevin papers, and made them out himself. The body was taken by a constable late last night on the writ and removed to Metcalf’s establishment.

The funeral will be held from the residence of Andrew Olesen, 264 Ann street, Saturday afternoon at 2:30. Grand Rapids [MI] Press 5 September 1907: p. 8

It is a nice point whether a dead person can be kidnapped, but the prosecutor obviously made the right call.

With this next case, we meet Mr. John B. Habig, a well-known Cincinnati character and keeper of the Cincinnati public morgue for 20 years, in a highly discreditable incident.

AN EXTRAORDINARY REPLEVIN

An Attempted Case of Extortion

The body of the aged gentleman who fell dead in front of No. 88 Twelfth street, on Thursday morning, as reported in the Gazette of yesterday, was identified yesterday by his son as that of William Hall, as was surmised. The young man, William C. Hall, an engineer on the I.C. & L Railroad, came to the city yesterday and after identifying the body at Mr. John B. Habig’s undertaking establishment, No. 183 West Sixth street, ordered it removed to Soards, a few doors east for shipment and interment, at the same time offering Habig $10, as payment for keeping the corpse. But Habig was not that kind of man; he wanted more than $10 for keeping the body a day and a half, and demanded $40. The young man refused, claiming that the demand was extortionate, and was told that he must pay it, or he could not have the corpse. This was late last night, but Mr. Hall posted off to ‘Squire True, who, fortunately, was in his office trying the case of the Hamiltonian horse-killers, and who at once gave Mr. Hall the requisite magisterial assistance. Constable Green was armed with a writ of replevin and at once started off after the body. Shortly before midnight the strong arm of the law grasped the corpse and transferred it to Soards’ establishment, from whence it will be shipped to Mt. Carmel to-morrow morning. If Mr. Habig wishes to rid himself of the richly deserved odium which much attach to the act, he must rise and give a satisfactory explanation of his exorbitant demand.

In years gone by the deceased kept a well-known livery stable on Sycamore street below Fourth. Cincinnati [OH] Daily Gazette 8 August 1874: p. 4

The Cincinnati Enquirer also reported on the case, adding the detail that “The daughter of the deceased remarked that she did not wish Habig to bury the body because he had sent a drunken attendant with her when she went to view it.” The newspaper added, “Mr. Habig has added to his reputation, but not to his stock of money, or we have been sadly misinformed.” Yet when he died, the Enquirer wrote favorably of him, stating in his obituary: “On down the pages of crime’s annals in this vicinity the name of Habig is so closely linked with these crimes and tragedies that it is a question if there lived in Cincinnati during that period a man whose name was more familiar to the public eye.” [Cincinnati (OH) Enquirer, 4 May 1898: p. 8] He was described as a big, fat, jolly man, always ready for fun. De mortuis, one assumes. Plus he left three sons to carry on the undertaking business, who would be more inclined to advertise if the Enquirer didn’t rake up the past.

Freight and railway companies often found shipping the dead a very profitable line.

Replevying a Corpse

A poor widow had the dead body of her husband brought by rail from Dover to Leamington, without first inquiring the cost. The railway company charged at the rate of 1s a mile, making £8, and as the widow could not pay this sum they detained the corpse for two days until the money was raised. Evening Post, 14 May 1892: p. 1

HOLDING CORPSE FOR THE EXPRESS

The agent of the Adams Express Co. at Shamokin held the corpse of Henry Fretz, awaiting the payment of charges amounting to over a hundred dollars. It was finally settled by the government.

Fretz was from Pitman, Northumberland county, and an apprentice in the United States Navy. February 14 he was drowned in the San Francisco Bay and government officials notified his parents that they would bury the body there or bear the expense of having it shipped home.

The parents requested the body to be shipped and it arrived in Shamokin Wednesday evening, accompanied by a bill for charges amounting to over a hundred dollars. Being unable to pay the claim, the agent refused to turn the corpse over to the grief-stricken parents and it was held in the Shamokin office, where it remained until the tangle was straightened out by the government assuming the charges. Wilkes-Barre [PA] Times 27 February 1909: p. 9

Sometimes the writ was for a partial corpse.

Recently a man had his leg amputated in a Washington hospital, and, upon visiting the capital some months afterwards, discovered the member preserved in alcohol. He was shocked, and demanded it, that he might bury it. The demand was refused, but, upon bringing suit in replevin, the case was decided in his favour, and he was given possession of his own leg. The Arizona Sentinel [Yuma, AZ] 28 February 1885: p. 2

Here we find dueling replevins: for corpse and for shroud.

POLICE WILL GUARD FUNERAL SERVICES

Undertaker Threatens to Take the Clothes Off of a Corpse During Row With a Rival, So Precaution Is Taken

Funeral services for Charles Klytta, 60 years old, will be held under police protection this afternoon from his late residence, 5438 South Laflin street, because B. Trundell, an undertaker at 1702 West Forty-Eight street, threatens to interrupt the ceremonies with a writ of replevin and remove from the body a suit of clothes which he says he paid for.

This threat grows out of a dispute between two undertakers soon after Klytta fell heir to $1,000 several weeks ago. Klytta was employed by Trundell, but he was a close friend of Joseph Patka, 1750 West Forty-Eighth street, a business rival of Trundell’s.

When Klytta received the $1,000 he left his wife and eight children and went to live with Nicholas Jasnoch, 4858 Winchester avenue. Then he began to spend his small fortune in having a good time. He became ill and was told he had not long to live.

Immediately both undertakers asked Klytta if he couldn’t throw the “business” their way. Klytta was in a dilemma. He liked Patka as a friend, but also thought he should respect the wishes of his former employer. Finally a Bohemian lodge of which he was a member was asked to settle the question. A committee waited on Klytta’s death bed and argued the matter, with the result that Patka was chosen.

Scarcely had Klytta breathed his last, however, when Trundell drove up and carried off the body. Mrs. Klytta pleaded in vain for the return of the body. Then she engaged Attorney D. Carmichael, and he tried to get the body. Yesterday the lawyer obtained a writ of replevin from the Municipal court and, accompanied by a bailiff and a policeman, went to Trundell’s establishment. The body was laid out in state in the parlor, clad in a new suit of clothes.

The writ did not provide for taking the clothing with the body and an argument ensued. Finally Patka took the body and new suit and carried them off to his undertaking shop. Therefore Trundell threatens to obtain a writ of replevin for the clothing and to get it today when the services are held at the Klytta residence. The Inter Ocean [Chicago, IL] 8 November 1912: p. 1

Undertakers more usually replevined their own property, such as coffins or candle-holders.

Bill Is Not Paid:

Takes Coffin Back

Detroit, Oct. 9 Because his bill for $300 had not been paid, Stanley Lappo, an undertaker, flanked by two constables, entered the home of Mrs. Vincent Dziegiuski. After retrieving the woman’s body from its casket, he loaded the latter, with candles, pedestals and display palms, into his wagon and drove off. The undertaker later explained the woman’s husband had agreed to pay the account before the funeral took place. When he failed to do so, Lappo obtained a writ of replevin and took possession of his property.

The husband later effected an arrangement with another undertaker, and the funeral was held a few hours later. Duluth [MN] News-Tribune 10 October 1921: p. 6

Sometimes the quarrels leading to a writ were not about money, but about something more visceral. This is an excerpt from the story of Mrs. Terrica Beck, an elderly Catholic woman badly treated by her daughter and son-in-law. I have not found a resolution to the case.

Throughout her last illness she desired to be buried in the Catholic cemetery. This was her last request. She died in her sister’s house. The expenses of her last sickness were borne by her sister. The coffin and shroud were purchased, and the last sad offices performed by her sister.

Scarcely had her last breath expired, when her son-in-law, before careless of her welfare, appeared and laid claim to her clothing and body. More desirous of the property, he departed expressing his willingness that Mrs. Beck’s dying wishes as to her interment should be complied with….In accordance with the wishes of the deceased, her body was placed in the vault of the Catholic cemetery, whence it was removed by a suit of replevin sued out by her son-in-law. He had obtained a coffin and shroud from the city, and had a grave dug at the expense of the city in the Potter’s Field. He was willing to pay the expense of a law suit, to defeat the dying wish of his wife’s mother, but not to pay for giving her more than a pauper’s funeral. Plain Dealer [Cleveland, OH] 28 April 1870: p. 3

One can only imagine the family dynamic that would lead to the following situation:

Refused to give up Body

Anderson, Ind., Jan. 4

Mrs. Joseph Speece was compelled to replevin the body of her husband so that it could be buried. He died Wednesday at the home of his wife’s father, John Nelson, and when she prepared for the funeral Nelson refused to give up the body until a large board bill had been paid. When a writ was served the body was delivered. The widow also sues Nelson for $100 for the detention of the body. Wilkes-Barre [PA] Times 4 January 1901: p. 1

One last oddity: Although judges in several jurisdictions ruled in the early 1900s that corpses had no commercial value (were not property) and thus could not be replevined, that judgement did not stand all over the country. In a 1906 case where there was a wrangle about the funeral expenses exceeding what the family wanted to pay, the family obtained a writ of replevin to get the body back from the overcharging undertaker. “As some value had to be given the writ it read ‘one corpse to the value of $50.’” The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 30 September 1906: p. 12

There are many dismal stories of first/second wives, mistresses, and hostile family members battling over loved one’s corpses, but they don’t always go as far as replevining. Other stories of legal proceedings over corpses? Swear out a writ to Chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

Thanks to Michael Robinson for the details of corpse property law.

Undine, of Strange Company, sent this great story of a legal fight over an embalmed body.

She also added a bonus tale of a dead-beat dad: A (somewhat) related story was about a man whose wife died, and he afterwards stiffed the undertaker on the bill. (“Stiffed,” get it? Oh, never mind) When, a while later, his daughter also passed away, this undertaker refused to take the job. In fact, he spread the word through the “Undertaker’s Association” that the man was a, well, deadbeat, so all his colleagues refused the man’s business as well. (As a side note, the bereaved man tried to get a free coffin from a local charity. When they realized he wasn’t indigent–just an incredible skinflint–they indignantly refused.) I don’t recall exactly how the story ended, except that he finally managed to get his daughter buried using a blanket instead of a coffin!

Thanks, Undine!

For more stories of Victorian death and mourning see my book, The Victorian Book of the Dead, also available for Kindle. Or ask your library/bookstore to order it. You’ll find more details about the book here and indexes here.

Chris Woodyard is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com.

Valentine’s Day: It’s Murder

Valentine’s Day, with its endless opportunities for romantic disappointments, amorous rivalries, and insulting comic valentines, was a source of many heat-of-passion homicides.

VALENTINE CAUSES MURDER

One Man Dead and Number Injured in St. Louis Fight.

St. Louis, Feb. 16. As the result of a quarrel which started over a valentine, John Carley, aged thirty, is dead from a bullet wound, Mrs. Minnie Howard, his step-sister, is under arrest charged with the shooting. William Ewing and Maud Goodwin received cuts and bruises and were locked up as witnesses. The trouble occurred in a boarding house conducted by Mrs. Howard. She asserts that she fired the shots which killed Carley, to prevent him from killing Ewing during the general scrimmage.

Lincoln [NE] Nebraska State Journal 17 February 1904: p. 2

Valentine Causes Murder.

Pickensville, Ala., March 22. Lee Doss shot and killed Luther Ball, who had sent an offensive valentine to a sister of Doss.

The Allen County Republican-Gazette [Lima OH] 23 March 1897: p. 1

It is curious that this story of Valentine patricide mentions the dead man’s insurance, practically inviting local vultures to swoop on those minor daughters.

THE DEADLY VALENTINE.

A Penny Caricature Results in the Murder of a Modern Woodman in West Virginia.

A comic valentine resulted in the violent death of Charles R. Stewart, a member of camp No. 5719, Charleston, W. Va., on the evening of February 13. “Neighbor” Stewart’s son, Louis, defending his mother, shot his father to death. The tragedy was the sequel to the receipt by Stewart of a comic valentine, which he thought had been sent him by his wife, with whom he had not been on the best of terms. Mrs. Stewart angrily denied sending the penny caricature. The son, Louis, interferred in the quarrel. The father turned to assail him with a chair, when the son drew a pistol and fatally wounded his father. The son is in jail. Stewart held a Woodman certificate for $2,000, payable to his three minor daughters, and full settlement will be made as soon as the complete proofs of death are filed.

Louisville [NE] Courier 24 March 1900: p. 1

C.R. STEWART, SHOT BY HIS SON, DIES FORGIVING.

Charleston, W. Va., Feb. 15. Charles R. Stewart, shot Tuesday night by his son, Lewis, died yesterday. Before his death he became reconciled with his wife, whom he accused of sending him a comic valentine, when his son interfered. Stewart said to Judge Hall: “Be as easy on my boy as you can, and may God forgive him.” The Coroner’s jury held young Stewart on a charge of homicide.

The Standard Union [Brooklyn, NY] 15 February 1900: p. 12

The law did go “easy” on the boy.

Merciful Sentence for Parricide.

Special to The Washington Post.

Charleston, W. Va., July 21. Lewis Stewart, who last February shot and killed his father, C.R. Stewart, was to-day found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to pay a fine of $10 and to spend one hour in jail.

The Washington [DC] Weekly Post 24 July 1900: p. 2

Attempted murder was also a recognized Valentine’s tradition, according to this frighteningly candid chemist.

Poisoned Valentines.

“Poisoners,” said a chemist, “make use of Valentine Day to send boxes of poisoned cake or candy to their foes. Therefore beware.

“This fact is a sad reflection upon human nature,” he resumed. “Yet here is a worse reflection. Once, in a poisoning case in St. Louis, I testified that there were several deadly poisons that left no trace of any sort behind in the body of the victim. Well, the lawyers asked me what these poisons were, and I refused to divulge their names. ‘Such knowledge is too dangerous for the public at large to possess,’ I said.

“The judge upheld me, and I didn’t give the names of the poisons. But do you know that within the next month I received eight hundred letters from all parts of the world asking me, on all sorts of plausible pretexts, the poisons’ names? And still, to this day, I occasionally receive such letters, especially in the valentine season. I’ve received over a thousand in all. That is to say, I have direct knowledge of a thousand persons who would, if they dared, commit murder.”

The Journal and Tribune [Knoxville TN] 13 February 1910: p. 29

A POISONED VALENTINE.

The Deadly Present Sent to a Jersey City Belle Last Monday.

From the New York Star.

Miss Nellie Willis is a well-known young lady, who moves in good society in Jersey City. She lives with her mother, who is a widow, at 167 1/2 Fourth street. For several weeks she has been annoyed by receiving anonymous letters, some of which were obscene, while others contained passionate words of love. No attention was paid to the letters, and most of them were destroyed soon after they were received. When at last the letters became abusive they were turned over to the post office authorities, who were asked to try and discover who the writer was, so that the annoyance could be stopped. Efforts were made to find the writer, but without success. Sometimes the missives would be mailed in Jersey City, and at other times in Brooklyn and again in New York and Garden City.

Neither Miss Willis nor any of the members of her family could imagine who these letters were coming from, or for what purpose they were written. Miss Nellie is about 19 years of age, has a very pretty figure and is quite handsome. She has two sisters, one of who is married to Mr. Alexander Connors, who is in the feed business at Thirty-fourth street and Tenth avenue, New York, and another one is married to Mr. P. Cox, a Wall street broker. Her brother is an engraver and does business on Maiden lane.

The letters suddenly stopped coming to the house, and for a week not a note of any kind was received, and Miss Willis began to think that the annoyance had stopped.

On Monday morning the postman delivered at the house a good-sized box addressed to Miss Willis. As it was St. Valentine’s day it was supposed by Mrs. Willis that the package contained a valentine from one of her daughter’s many admirers. As Miss Nellie was out when the package was received, it was left in the parlor until she returned. When Miss Willis opened the package that evening she found a pretty box made of lacquered wood, and on opening it saw that it was filled with delicious looking figs.

She took one of the figs from the box and was about to eat it, when her attention was called to a green spot on the side. Upon a closer examination she found that the fig had been slit with a knife, and on breaking it open, the inside was found to be sprinkled with a green powder. The rest of the figs were examined, and every one had been treated in the same way. The box was taken to a chemist, who told Miss Willis that she had had a narrow escape from being poisoned, as each fig contained a big dose of Paris green.

The discovery was so startling that the young lady was taken ill and has been suffering from nervous prostration. The box and figs were turned over to the police, who are making every effort to find the scoundrel who mailed the package. The postmark was that of one of the stations in New York. When Mrs. Willis was spoken to about the matter she said:

“I cannot imagine who sent Nellie the box or for what purpose it was sent. Someone must have a spite against her. She narrowly escaped being poisoned.”

Miss Willis met with a romantic adventure shortly before Christmas. At a party one night she met a young [man] named H. Cisco. He called on her several times, when he asked her to marry him. She refused his offer, and her mother forbade him to come to the house. When he found out that he could not call on her he would watch wherever she went and annoy her with his attentions on the street. He finally threatened to kill Miss Willis, and she had him arrested. When brought up before the police justice he said that be was a student at the Troy Institute, and that he did not intend to harm Miss Willis. He was discharged, and since that time nothing has been heard of him.

The Savannah [GA] Morning News 23 February 1887: p. 7

HER VALENTINE A STRANGE PARCEL

York Young Woman Receives a Package, Following Threatening Letters

Special to The Inquirer. York, Pa., Feb. 18. Miss Lulu M. Cole, an attractive and popular young woman of this city, received a deadly valentine last Saturday, the fact of the reception of which has just been made public.

On that day a box came to her by mail. It contained a small vial, the contents of which, when examined by a pharmacist, were said to be poison. It will be further analyzed. There was no note accompanying it, and there is scarcely any clew to the sender.

In a measure Miss Cole was prepared for the deadly messenger by a number of letters– eight or more–which she had been receiving during the preceding few days, all of which were threatening, and some of which expressed a burning desire to see Miss Cole dead. One of the writers is said to have made use of the expression that she or he would not be. satisfied until the girl was no more.

The whole matter has been placed in the hands of the postal authorities, and an effort will be made to discover the offenders. The authorities, as well as Miss Cole, are reticent about the matter and will give none of the letters for publication. Miss Cole denies a report that she suspects a woman who is jealous of her, claiming that there is no jealousy nor any cause for jealousy, so far as she knows, and that she has not the least idea as to whom the writer or writers may be.

The Philadelphia [PA] Inquirer 19 February 1903: p. 1

The mystery of the Valentine poison does not seemed at all clarified by this ‘explanation.’

WHO PUT IN THE POISON?

Miss Davis Says She Simply Sent a Bottle of Whiskey to Miss Cole.

York, Pa., Feb. 22. The mystery surrounding the sending of a bottle of poison through the mail to Miss Lulu Cole of this city has been cleared up by Detective White.

Miss Grace Davis, a young woman of the West End, made a statement to-day to the effect that she had mailed a small bottle of whiskey and a valentine to Miss Cole, explaining that it was all a joke.

“When Miss Cole accused me of sending threatening letters to her, of which I am absolutely innocent,” said Miss Davis, “I decided to have some fun. I filled a small bottle with whiskey in the presence of my mother and sister and others and, with a valentine inclosed it in a package and intrusted it to a friend, Percy Blossed, to mail. He tasted some of the whiskey before mailing the package. I marked the bottle ‘Nerve Tonic.’”

Miss Davis’s story has been corroborated and the detective is now working to discover how poison was introduced into the liquor after it left the hands of Blosser, who can prove by witnesses that he had not tampered with the package.

So far as known Miss Davis and Miss Cole have always been friendly.

The Sun [New York NY] 23 February 1903: p. 3

GIRL DRIVEN FROM HOME BY THREATS

Miss Lulu Cole Again Tormented by Anonymous Threatening Letters.

York, Pa., March 4. Another threatening letter has been received by Lulu Cole, who recently received by mail a bottle supposed to contain poison and numerous letters containing threats upon her life.

The writer of this later letter boldly defies the postal authorities, detectives, and constabulary, and tells Miss Cole that her life is in jeopardy even at the own fireside. Living in continual fear has become so great a strain upon Miss Cole that her health is being impaired and she will, on the advice of her physician, leave town for awhile.

The Washington [DC] Times 4 March 1903: p. 4

Let’s be careful out there this Valentine’s Day!

The Will and the Ghost: 1876

STORY OF A WILL.

I recently asked an old lawyer’s opinion of ghosts. The result was as follows:

“Do I believe in spirits? Well, yes, when they are contained in bottles and come from a well-known firm. But ghosts! Why! Do you think I am a Spiritualist? Nonsense!”

“So you don’t believe in ghosts and spooks? You have never had any remarkable experience?”
“Hold on there! Now that you seem determined that I shall commit myself, and probably having heard that I have a ghost story to tell, I will satisfy you; but let me remark before commencing that the story I am about to tell is God’s truth and as such must be received. Scoff at it but once, and I shall stop in the middle of my story.

“Yes, I do believe in ghosts, or, at least, in some strange natural phenomena that the world has called ghostly for the last eighteen hundred years or more. Now, listen:

“It was in the latter part of 1876 that I undertook a case for a young woman. It was for a divorce.

“She was the daughter of my aged client, Dr. Baxter, a man who could have raised $500,000 in hard cash inside of twenty-four hours.

“The case was somewhat remarkable. Annie Baxter had married a stockbroker, named Thomas Thorne, against her father’s wishes.

“Her husband, she soon discovered, had married her chiefly for what he could get out of her father, who, he hoped, would soon get over his displeasure and forgive his daughter’s disobedience; but the old doctor was stubborn and did not relent. He refused to see Annie and forbade the mention of her name by any of his household.

“Thorne, on finding that he could not get hold of any of the doctor’s money, soon tired of Annie; and Annie, who had been a spoiled and petted child, brought up in the lap of luxury, became miserable and in want. But she stood her sorrows with heroism, and not a complaint escaped her till Thorne began to drink and gamble, at times not returning for weeks to his home, and then under the influence of liquor.

“She was obliged to earn her own living, and when her child was born she had to go to one of our large free hospitals for care and attention. It is doubtful if her father would have let her go had he known her condition, for he still loved his daughter; but she did not let him know, and one day while making his rounds in the maternity ward of the B. Hospital, to which he was a physician, his attention was called to a woman who had fainted. He went to her bedside. It was Annie, his daughter, who, not expecting to see him, had been greatly shocked. She did not know of his connection with the hospital.

“The doctor’s kind heart was softened at once. He was greatly moved. He had her carried in an ambulance to her old home under his roof. He had forgiven her.

“Just about this time Thorne was arrested in a bad house, where he was raising a row, and sent to prison for six weeks. Annie then placed her petition for divorce in my hands, and my connection with the case commenced.

“The divorce was obtained with ease, as Thorne made no answer to the complaint and the case was perfectly clear in our favor.

“Now begins the ghostly part. Dr. Baxter owned a small yacht, in which he was accustomed to make short excursions about New York Bay and Long Island Sound. On the last excursion of any kind he ever made the yacht capsized in a squall, and the doctor was drowned, everyone else being rescued alive.

“After the funeral the doctor’s will was looked for. It was known that he had made a will at the time of Annie’s marriage, leaving all his property to his sister on the condition that Annie could have $600 a year from the estate during her life.

“After father and daughter became reconciled he told me he intended to make a new will and leave his property chiefly to her, but the only will that could be found after his death was the former, and his sister, Mrs. J., refused to waive her rights under the will in the least. By my advice, Annie asked her to make her a proper compromise, but she refused to do anything more than stand by the will.

“Almost a year passed away, when one day I received a note from Annie asking me to call on her at the Gilsey House, where she was staying a few days, on business of the utmost importance. On going there she told me a strange story, so strange that I feared she had lost her mental balance, but I saw she was perfectly earnest about it.

“’A few nights ago,’ said she, ‘while I was sitting with my little boy by the fire in my room, at about 10 o’clock in the evening, there being no other light than that of the fire in the room, I heard a strange noise. Then the door opened—and closed. I looked around, much surprised at receiving such a late visitor, especially as he came without knocking. But my first surprise was lost in the terror and dismay that came over me as I saw enter and approach my chair—who do you think? My father! Or his ghost!

“’As I knew he had been dead over a year, you may imagine my feelings. He came direct towards me, casting his ulster overcoat off on a chair, as he used to do when he came home late.

“ ‘”Annie,” said he, putting his hand on my head and stroking my hair, “I have come to see you righted. You are suffering from a most unnatural fraud and crime. Your aunt stole my last will. As I had promised you, I made you my heir—and my only heir—and the will was drawn by my own hand, and executed three months before I died.

“’”Your aunt, in whom I firmly believed, was one of the witnesses. Dr. R., who went to China before my death, and is there still, was another. I am determined to see you have your rights, though I am no longer in the flesh, and be assured that I can see you through.

“’”The lost will is in your aunt’s bureau drawer in her bedroom, on the second floor of our old house. The ebony bureau. You will find the will under the paper on the bottom of the drawer. And this is the way for you to obtain it.

“’”Go to your lawyer and tell him what I have told you. Ask him to go with you to call on your aunt. As usual she will receive you kindly. She will be in the library. Go at about dusk on Wednesday evening, the 10^th, and while she is talking to you I will appear and carry out the rest of the plan.”

“’Then the doctor put on his coat again and kissed my baby and myself in the most affectionate manner—quite as though he were alive—and started to go, but before he had reached the door his form melted into air and shadow. He had disappeared.’

“On hearing this strange ghost story I sat still for a few moments and reflected; then I resolved to see it through.

“Accordingly, on Wednesday, at the time indicated I found myself sitting with Annie Thorne in her aunt’s library. Her aunt was very kind and genial, but did not offer to have the gas lighted—perhaps she thought we would stay longer. We talked about having the $600 annuity cashed; such we pretended was the object of our visit. At last the old lady said:

“’We may as well have a light; don’t you think so?’

“’No, I don’t!’ said a solemn and familiar voice, and a dusky form crossed the room and stood before the grate fire; remarkable to say, the firelight shone sheer through his legs. I felt my hair raise. I was greatly frightened.

“As to the old lady, she gave a wild shriek and sank back in her chair. ‘Della,’ said the ghost, for such it surely was, ‘stop your nonsense! Are you not ashamed to treat my child as you have done? Here you have disturbed my rest in my grave by your dishonesty.’

“By this time the ghost had walked out into the middle of the room, where he could be seen pretty well by the firelight. The form and face were perfect. It was Dr. Baxter, beyond doubt.

“’Woman,’ said he, continuing his speech, and now, pointing his long, bony finger at the old lady, ‘had you not gold enough without taking Annie’s birthright? Get up and come with us!’

“So saying, he motioned me to open the door, which I did. Then leading, he made us all follow him upstairs; or, rather, he drew us along by some strange, magnetic force until we reached the door of the chamber occupied by the old lady.

“Here he stopped and, addressing her, said:

“’Della, open that door!’ She obeyed at once. We all entered.

“’Now, get that lost will of mine out of your drawer at once and give it to the lawyer, Mr. C.’

“Strange to say, she went at once to her bureau drawer, and, after raising things about a little, brought out the will and handed it to me.

“’Now, Mr. C.’ said the ghost, ‘make out an affidavit that this will, having been mislaid, has just by chance been found.’

“I did so as best I could in the semi-darkness.

“’Della, sign that paper,’ said the ghost, ‘and to-morrow you will swear before a notary that it is true, or I will go there with you and make you do so later on. That is all for the present,’ said the ghost, and we all returned to the library.

“When we reached there the ghost was gone, no one knew where. The old lady was so much horrified that she fainted, and we left her in the care of her servants. We had recovered the lost will.

“To establish the validity of the will was not difficult, and Mrs. Thorne was soon in possession of her rights.

“Such is my story and I again affirm that it is true. The names are changed to avoid offense to the persons who figured in the story, which is the only change made.

Evansville [IN] Courier and Press 25 December 1889: p. 3

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil does so enjoy a happy ending. Where there is a will, there is a way. And we are all grateful to the author for sharing this salutary example of the fundamental errors made by an amateur for whom the kindliest adjective would be “bungling.” The will should have been destroyed without delay; preferably burnt without a trace and the ashes beaten to pieces with the poker. If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well. One really cannot fathom what Mrs J. was thinking to leave the will at the bottom of the drawer—and just beneath the lining paper where a child could have discovered it. Most discreditable. Mrs J. should carefully reconsider her ambitions for a criminal career.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

A Few Uses for a Dead Tombstone

Recently there were two stories in the news about tombstones being reused in inappropriate ways: children’s grave markers used to “decorate” a country mansion and United States veterans’ headstones built into a patio. This is, of course, nothing new: the ruins of churches and monasteries, including tombs and headstones, have long been mined for useable stone to repair cottages or build walls. It was only in 2013 that a town in the Ukraine announced that it would stop using Jewish headstones as paving materials.

In most countries—the U.S. being a notable exception—the dead have only a short-term lease on their final resting places. After a certain length of time: perhaps 5 to 20 years—it varies depending on where you are—the presumably skeletal remains will be exhumed and either burned or placed in an ossuary, making room for the next generation of corpses. (The poor very often went directly to the ossuary stage, as in this previous post about composting the dead in Naples.) And when the bodies are removed, the tombstones are removed as well. What is done with this perfectly good material?

This squib gives an example of the practicalities of Italian law regarding graves:

[Milan] City law requires that a certain number of the oldest tomb markers be carted away each year to make room for new graves. The discarded markers were gathered for years by the Capuchin friars and saved to build the church. St Petersburg [FL] Times 24 September 1953: p. 2

Street repair and pavements were by far the most common uses for dead tombstones.

TOMBSTONES

Sold By an Undertaker and Used For Street Paving.

[Philadelphia, North American.]

John A. Fitzpatrick, undertaker, of 2570 Frankford avenue, secured permits for, and has just completed the removal of 706 bodies from the old burial ground behind the Third Baptist Church, in Second street, above Catharine, to Arlington Cemetery. Lewis Good, Chief of the Bureau of Public Health, is a large stockholder in Arlington Cemetery.

The Baptist Cemetery was opened in 1800 and burials have been made there as late as 1893. Many of the bodies are those of persons who died of contagious diseases. When they were dug up it was found that most of the boxes had rotted away, leaving the remains exposed to view. A factory, in which about 50 men and girls are employed, faces the church yard. One of the girls said that the scene was ghastly in the extreme, and that the odor was nauseating.

A remarkable feature of this churchyard “flitting” is that the tombstones and headstones were sold to the Alcatraz Paving Company, and by the firm used in paving League street, between Front and Second streets. Mr. Gibb admitted that the contracting undertaker had received permission to do what he pleased with the stones, but he was apparently somewhat abashed when he learned of the use they had been put to.

Whole headstones bearing the cross or “Sacred to the memory of __ ___,” or “In memory of my beloved wife, __,” or “In fond remembrance of __ __,” were dumped into the street and broken into the proper size by the ruthless laborers, while the neighbors looked on in horror. At night the children collected samples of the stone, and there is scarcely a house in League street which does not contain a piece of some lettered tombstone.

Even in the church itself the stones have been used to material advantage. In one place a footstone which originally belonged to “J.M.,” is now doing duty for a doorstep, and at another door a footstone marked “At rest” answers the same purpose.The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 13 August 1900: p. 4

This distasteful desecration, no matter how technically legal it was, could be spun into a heart-rending piece for the papers.

A TOMBSTONE FOR FLAGGING

A Curious Relic on Park Row and Its Effect on Passers-by.

[New York Evening Sun.]

A piece of the flagging in the sidewalk on Park row, near Broadway, is broken. Some stone to repair it was left at the curb yesterday. One piece, which looked older than the others, was covered with sand. A workman brushed away the sand, and was astonished to find graven deep in the surface of the stone these words:

SARAH,

Daughter of

William and Caroline Kirkland,

Died March 8, 1837

Aged 3 years 2 months.

CHARLES PINCKNEY

Son of W. and C.M. Kirkland

Died December 8, 1840,

Aged 8 months.

The piece of flagging had once been a tombstone. The workman turned its face toward the sidewalk, chiselled off its rough edges, and there is lies to-day, a reminder of the busy throng passing by of the mutability of human affairs. No one seemed to know from whence it came or where now are the graves of the two children that it marked.

It was curious to watch the effect of a view of the stone upon persons who stopped to read its inscription. A sad-faced woman, dressed in mourning, paused to look at it. Tears came into her eyes as she thought of the little, carefully attended grave of her children in Greenwood, and her face seemed to mirror the thought. “What if my baby’s grave should be desecrated like that, and is headstone carried away for a flagging?”

A young mother leading a golden-haired boy glanced at the inscription, shuddered and hurried away as if pursued by the phantom of fear. A boy smoking a cigarette and wearing the bravado air born of the fearlessness of youth spelled out the words of the epitaph and then turned to another boy and asked, “I wonder, Jim, where de kids was planted?” The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 20 August 1887: p. 14

I have threatened my family with a dreadful post-mortem vengeance if they bury me in one of those detestable fields of grave-markers flattened, not for aesthetic simplicity, but for convenience in mowing. Apparently this has long been a problem.

TOMBSTONES CARRIED AWAY

Cemetery at Toledo, O., Said to Have Been Desecrated by Trustees in Charge.

Charles Barash and Adam Geokle are terribly wrought up over the discovery that the old Fort Meigs cemetery at Toledo, O., has been desecrated and the tombstones of their dead friends have been spirited away. The men say the stones were removed by the trustees in charge of the ground because they interfered with the cropping of the grass with a lawn mower. It is understood about 200 stones have been disturbed from time to time, and the matter was passed unnoticed until a few days ago, when relatives of the dead were informed of the condition of affairs.

An investigation was instituted and many of the stones were found around at the neighboring farmhouses, where they were doing duty as paving blocks. In one instance the foundation of a corn crib was found to be built out of the purest marble bearing the date of the death of a sleeper in the old cemetery.

When the men who had removed the stones learned an investigation was about to be made they brought the slabs back and deposited them in a heap on the burial place. Many ex-soldiers repose in the beautiful ex-cemetery, and the desecration has reached the ears of the local Grand Army men, and they propose visiting the cemetery and making a thorough inquiry into the matter. Daily Herald [Biloxi MS] 27 July 1900: p. 3

The local Perrysburg newspaper went on the offensive with a lengthy article about the charms of graveyards and old epitaphs. Then they testily addressed the question of the tombstone removals.

As to the removal of head stones the explanation is that many friends of the dead have removed the stones themselves to replace them with more substantial monuments, and have left the stones in the cemetery or disposed of them to the parties furnishing monuments or have taken them to their own homes to use as they saw fit. It is claimed that no stones with anything more than initial letters of parties names have been removed by trustees, and not even then except when monuments giving the facts have bene standing over the graves.

Those implicated declare that no one has ever done anything with the intention of showing any want of proper respect for the dead or for the feelings of those who have friends buried here, and no purpose injuring in any way any person in his or her rights in the matter. It is not claimed that no mistakes have been made. There have been mistakes, but when known a fair and honourable correction has been made as far as possible and use of any stones belonging to patrons of the cemetery has never been tolerated or practiced. The people of Perrysburg cherish great pride in their beautiful cemetery and it is the one sacred spot in all the town for all the people, and they will not tolerate anything like desecration of its precincts. They wish their good name to be protected and will do all that is possible to keep it worthy of regard and respect by everybody, and desire that anyone having a grievance, to report the same to the proper authorities for settlement and not to rush into print for mere sensation to the hindrance of a just and equitable satisfaction of all concerned.

The present trustees are giving careful and prolonged attention to all matters pertaining to complaints that have been made and hope that all will soon be entirely satisfactory. The Perrysburg [OH] Journal 20 July 1900: p. 1

One of the more ingenious uses for tombstones was that of an “imposing stone,” used in print shops. This was a stone set in a wooden frame, aptly called a “coffin,” and used as a table to set up type for page forms. It needed to be perfectly hard and flat to keep the type level and even. This editor seemed to have no scruples about purloining a tombstone to keep the presses running. In an amusing reversal of the custom, I’ve seen references to editors who asked that the office imposing stone be reused as their grave marker.

He Stole a Tombstone.

Pocatello Tribune.

There is an editor in Idaho who bears the enviable reputation of being a graveyard nocturnal visitor and who sails under the euphonious title of “Tombstone Brown.”

He is the proprietor of the Moscow Democrat and following is the story they (those who know him best) tell on him: “It seems that Mr. Brown was running a small weekly paper in Missouri, or some other seaport town, and the plank he was using for the imposing stone, warped so badly one night as to “pie” a couple of forms. [“Pie” refers to jumbled or broken type. Presumably the plank warped the form out of place.] This temporarily stopped the wheels of progress and Brown’s paper; but, nothing daunted, he started out in search of another board. On his way to the lumber yard he passed the village church yard, where reposed the ashes of a number of his friends and many of his enemies; a happy thought struck him. History tells us that he never fully recovered the effects of the blow. That night accompanied by an express wagon and a blind boy he entered the silent city of the dead, and appropriated the most highly artistically finished tombstone, which he placed in his office, a substitute for the pine board. He then went to work resuscitating the remains of the forms, merrily whistling, “I’m going home to ‘pie’ no more.” [Parodies a line from “I’m Going Home (to die no more),” a popular sacred song.] In a short time the paper was ready for press and the world moved once again.

It is further alleged that the man whose grave is now unmarked and forgotten was, when living, a bitter enemy of the editor, and a veteran of the late war. We will not vouch for this tale; but, if true, it shows the relentless enterprise of a western editor, and we predict that he will “get there Eli,” though his path be strewn with libel suits and delinquent subscribers, galore. The Caldwell [ID] Tribune 23 January 1892: p. 5

One of the proprietors of the Petersburg, Va., Index, in going over the office recently, discovered that a slab used as an imposing stone was the tombstone of a near relation, who had died about forty years ago. The engraved side of the stone was downward, and how it came into use in the office is unexplained. That was rough, but not so bad as the baker who stole a tombstone for the bottom of his oven, and the next morning found that every loaf of bread had “Sacred to the Memory” on the bottom of it. The Emporia [KS] News 17 October 1873: p. 2

Larcenous bakers got slated in this next, widely circulated joke. Of course, marble has long been recommended as the best surface for working pastry.

A baker in New York stole a tombstone for the hearth of his oven. One of his customers, finding a death’s head on the bottom of his loaf of bread, ran in dismay to his deacon, fearing the end of the world was approaching. The latter was in equal trepidation, when, on examining his own loaf, he found the marrow-bones. In their alarm they had recourse to the parson, who could afford them no consolation, inasmuch as “Resurgam” was legibly set forth in bold relief upon his own loaf. Bruce Herald, 9 July 1875: p. 3

A festive use for second-hand tombstones is found in the following story. Curiously, in the view of those of us who enjoy horror novels and films, few of the desecrated stones wreaked psychic vengeance on their callous users. This is one of the rare cases where any connection is implied between reused tombstones and bad luck.

I’ve condensed the article, but it tells the story of a fellow named John Ryan who ran saloons and “variety halls” in 19^th-century Cincinnati, Ohio. When he went bankrupt, the brewery that had loaned him money confiscated his saloon fixtures.

GRAVESTONES

Made the Bar Counter

Over Which For Years Beer Was Served

For the Patrons of the “White House Varieties.”

Ill Luck Ever Followed Owner of This Grim Furniture

Strange Story Recalling the Checkered Old-Time Career and Tragic End of John Ryan

Among the effects taken by the Jackson Brewery some years ago were four marble grave stones each one six feet in length and three feet in width, the rounded ends sawed neatly off. The inscriptions were, by the time the brewery secured the stones, nearly illegible, and showed plainly that some effort had been made to erase them. There is an interesting and grewsome tale in connection with these headstones. Many residents of the city remember Johnny Ryan and the notorious White House Theater he operated for some years on the lower side of Fifth street, between John and Central avenue…

The bar counter at the White House Varieties was about 25 feet in length, of highly polished marble. Over this bar for some years hundreds of kegs of beer and barrels of the vilest liquor were sold to persons who undoubtedly, drunk as they were, would have hesitated before drinking had they known for what use the highly polished marble had originally been intended.

ON “NASTY” CORNER

In 1892 John Ryan blossomed out as a saloon keeper, on Vine street, just below Fifth, in one of the ramshackle frame shanties then occupying the present site of the Carew Building. A new order of things had come—the White House Varieties had been closed by the police. The new place was an attractive one for hoboes and others of like ilk, for an enormous schooner of beer was sold for five cents. John Ryan stood behind the bar as at the White House of yore, his hard face wreathed in smiles as he raked in the nickels. The counter was of marble, four slabs laid lengthwise, and so closely did these slabs fit to one another that a searching eye was required to discover the minute cracks at the points where they joined.

Ill-fortune, however, followed Ryan like a Nemesis. He was doing a good business at the Nasty Corner when he received orders to move. The unsightly buildings were to be torn down and a magnificent office building erected. He then removed to Pearl and Pike streets, opened a saloon on the northwest corner, and fell dead in the place early in the spring of 1893, three days after he had started his new venture. Mr. Ed Cogan was then employed by the Jackson Brewery as a collector. The brewery held a mortgage on the saloon fixtures in the place and Cogan and a bookkeeper named Adam Ritter were sent down to make an inventory of the effects. The only thing of any value Cogan was able to find was the polished marble counter top. Examining it, and finding that it was of sections, he exerted his strength and turned one of the slabs over. Gazing at it with staring eyes he ejaculated:

“My God! Adam, look at this!”

A STRANGE DISCOVERY

Mr. Ritter looked at the inverse side of the stone, and at the top saw a roughly carved weeping willow. Underneath were the words:

Sacred

To the

Memory of

JAMES ____

Died March 19, 18__

May He Rest in Peace.

The remaining head stones were hurriedly lifted from the bar top and placed in an upright position against the counter, and each one bore an inscription to the memory of some one, showing plainly that the bar top had been composed of marble headstones taken from some grave yard, but by whom and when and where the stones were obtained no one knew. For years these silent mementoes of the dead, rudely torn from the heads of graves, had graced the bar of the White House Varieties; ribald songs had floated through the air and drunken men had laid their aching heads upon the cool marble to ease the throbbing pain. The stones, Mr. Cogan stated yesterday, were sent up to the brewery with a wagon load of other fixtures, and are no doubt stored away and forgotten. The names on the tombstones were all of natives of Ireland or of Irish Americans. The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 25 March 1900: p. 12

Ryan changed his name and tried to open another saloon/variety hall to recoup his losses. In the course of this he sued another brewery for defrauding him of some money.

The case was continued until the next day, and Ryan went home to his saloon at the corner of Pearl and Pike streets. A short while after reaching home he gasped, clutched at his throat and fell dead in the barroom. The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 25 March 1900: p. 12

Scarcely satisfying. We’d like to have seen him crushed mysteriously under his own marble bar counter….

Oddly enough there are few stories about tombstones being reused to mark graves. Some thieves recut stolen grave markers, although it seems a hard way to make a living.

STOLE AND SOLD TOMBSTONES

A unique swindler is operating in Susquehanna and Wyoming Counties as the reputed agent of a large granite firm. He sold tombstones at Hallstead, Great Bend and Nicholson. Some days after several stones were missing from the cemeteries and it was found that the agent had taken the stones from graves, changed the lettering, polished the granite so that it looked like new and palmed the tombstones on inspecting victims. Warrants have been issued and officers are in pursuit of the swindler. The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 9 November 1901: p. 4

The majority of tomb robbers seemed to have a personal use in mind.

Stole Tombstone for Child’s Grave.

Macon, Ga., Feb. 2. A tombstone was stolen from a marble yard here last night.

The tombstone, an artistic production, surmounted by a lamb, was found to-day in a cemetery at the head of a grave where rests the body of Henry Sike’s only child, who died recently. So the police are looking for Sikes, a middle-aged white man. They have discovered that he hired a horse and wagon last night and the wagon wheel tracks are plainly traceable from the marble yard to the grave yard.

But the police have not found that Sikes had accomplices in the theft laid to him and they cannot understand how he accomplished it unless his parental grief and his yearning to mark his child’s grave lent him the strength of a dozen men. The Bamberg [SC] Herald 8 February 1912: p. 8

A Timaru man (says the Catholic Times) stole a tombstone, obliterated the inscription, and has erected it to himself in the local churchyard. As the man from whom he stole it has discovered the theft, it is probable that a corpse will soon be ready. Oamaru Mail 13 August 1889: p. 1

Boy Steals Stone For Mother’s Grave.

Jacksonville, Fla., Aug. 11 An 11-year-old orphan boy was lodged in the juvenile detention quarters Thursday because he stole a tombstone to mark the grave of his mother. “Mother didn’t have a tombstone over her grave,” the lad told officers, “and ever since she was buried I wanted to have one. I was trying to work and buy one.” Macon [GA] Telegraph 12 August 1932: p. 12

We have to admire this husband’s dedication to his late wife, but were there extradition treaties covering the transportation of stolen tombstones across state lines?

A Sorrowing Widower

A fellow living on the Indiana shore of the Ohio river, near Vevay, Indiana, having recently lost his wife, crossed in a boat to the Kentucky side, visited a grave yard there and stole a tombstone, which he placed over the remains of his lamented better half. Public Ledger [Philadelphia, PA] 19 June 1860: p. 1

The chaos of war lent itself to tombstone recycling. The Allied press framed this practical solution to a wartime engineering problem as a “Hun” desecration. One suspects the unsentimental allied troops would have used tombstones to shore up their trenches if they could get them.

tombstones used to make German trenches 1915

A GERMAN TRENCH

Tombstones Used by the Hun to Make His Trenches

Star 3 August 1915: p. 1

Finally, we find tombstones reused for the benefit of the young. From the cradle to the grave….

ROCKERY OF TOMBSTONES

Old English Churchyard Turned Into Playground

Monuments Made Use Of.

London. The cry of the Londoner is always for more open spaces, more parks, more playgrounds for the children of the great city’s poorer members. Recently, in order to create a playground for the neighboring juveniles, old St. Pancrass churchyard was converted into a species of recreation ground.

The place formerly tenanted with the remains of deceased citizens of St. Pancras now rings with the merry laughter of their descendants.

It was decided to form an ornamental rockery with the superannuated monuments. The work has been very tastefully carried out and the eye of the stranger and sojourner dwells approvingly on this little rockery, composed of tombstones, once the pride of the local monument mason. Washington [DC] Bee 26 May 1906: p. 6

Frankly, the illustration suggests neither “ornamental” nor “playground,” but rather “attractive nuisance lawsuit.”

This next stone at least had some educational merit as a kind of grave primer.

UTILISING TOMBSTONES

Not long ago a cottager in a village in Kyle applied to the landlord for a new hearthstone. The landlord declined to give him one, but told him there were a lot of old tombstones piled up in the churchyard, and that he ought to go and take one.

A few days later he called on the cottager, and found that he had taken the hint and also the tombstone, but that he had put it down with the lettering uppermost.

“Why did you put it down that way?” he asked rather angrily.

“Oh!” was the reply, “it does fine to teach the bairns the alphabet.” Waimate Daily Advertiser, 18 August 1900: p. 1

Other uses for a dead tombstone? Chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog, The Victorian Book of the Dead.

Touching the Corpse: Late Examples of Cruentation

Injun Joe helped to raise the body of the murdered man and put it in a wagon for removal; and it was whispered through the shuddering crowd that the wound bled a little! The boys thought that this happy circumstance would turn suspicion in the right direction; but they were disappointed, for more than one villager remarked: “It was within three feet of Muff Potter when it done it.”

-The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain, 1876-

The notion that a corpse would bleed in the presence of a murderer is known as cruentation. It has a long history—some say the practice is mentioned by Homer.

The blood especially was the very self. It is this belief that explains the idea that the corpse of a murdered man bleeds in the presence of, especially at the touch of the slayer. There are references throughout the literature of the Middle Ages to the bleeding-corpse or cruentatio. It occurs in the Nibelungenlied. And in the Ivain of Chretien de Troies, there occurs a scene where the corpse is brought into the hall where Ivain is, and then begins to bleed, whereupon the men feel confident that the murderer must be hidden there, and they renew their search. The soul is regarded as speaking through or by the blood. In the Highlands 1 I feel confident that there are remnants of such a belief, pointing back to a belief similar to the thought of the Hebrews when they held that “the blood is the life” (Deuteronomy xii. 23). To be remembered, too, are Homer’s expressions: “The blood ran down the wound” (Iliad, xvii. 86); “the life (ψυχή) ran down the wound” (Iliad, xiv. 518). A Greek, quoted by Aristotle (De Anima, i. 2, 19), declared that the soul was the blood. The Arabs say “the soul flows” (from the wound), i.e. he dies.

Survivals in Belief Among the Celts, by George Henderson, [1911], p. 38 at sacred-texts.com

See, also, this admirable article by the Chirugeon’s Apprentice for some early examples.

And here, at the always fascinating Executed Today blog, for links to more examples.

The curious practice continued well into the 19^th century. Here is one, vividly described, from 1818 Ohio.

One of the most thrilling circumstances of which I have recollection—and it was an occurrence that aroused the most profound and wide-spread interest among the pioneers of the Scioto Valley,” said Mr. Emmitt, “was a murder trial that occurred at Sharonville, in 1818. It was, I have no doubt, the most weird performance of the kind that has ever taken place in Ohio, and it made a life-long impression upon all those who were present at the arraignment of the man accused of the crime — an arraignment as horrible as the mind of man can conceive.

“One morning, in 1818, a man named Williams was coming through the woods, adjacent to his home. This man Williams had a brother, of whom he was intensely jealous, and they had quarreled a few days before. Williams was carrying his gun—a custom then universal among the backwoodsmen—and when about three miles from Waverly, he saw a man sitting on the ground, with his head resting against a tree. Williams took the man to be his cordially hated brother, and acting upon a murderous impulse, he raised his gun and discharged its contents into the head of the sleeper, killing him almost instantly. To Williams’ utter consternation, he discovered that the man he had murdered was not his brother, but an inoffensive neighbor named Louis Sartain. Williams left his poor victim in the woods and went on his way to transact the business he had started out to look after. Sartain was missed from home, a search was instituted for him, and after a few days, his ghastly remains were found lying in the woods, with a bullet in his head.

“Sartain was buried, and then a few pioneer detectives, spurred on by the united sentiment of the settlers, began a vigorous endeavor to discover his murderer. Williams was suspected of being the guilty man. He was rather a hard character, of vindictive disposition,-and quick to quarrel. Tracks were found about the spot where the murder occurred, which were similar in size to the shoes worn by Williams. The bullet recovered from Sartain’s head was found to be identical with those constantly used by Williams— made in the same mould, to all appearances.

“These were the strongest evidences of guilt that could be adduced against Williams, and there were many circumstances that tended to make the detectives doubt their trustworthiness. They knew that Williams had never had any trouble with Sartain, who was, in reality, a man with no known enemies. He was a good-natured, easy-going fellow, whom almost everybody liked. The detectives, who had watched Williams’ actions very closely, could discover in him nothing that would tend to confirm their suspicions. He went about in a quiet, unconcerned, every-day sort of way; discussed the murder with his neighbors; wondered with a decent show of interest who could have committed the crime, and expressed himself in easily understood terms regarding the character of the punishment that should be visited upon the assassin, when he should be discovered. All this time, Williams was fully aware that public suspicion accused him of the murder. No one sought his arrest, because the evidence was lacking to prove his guilt.

“A month passed, and the belief became more firmly fixed than ever, in the public mind, that Williams was the murderer of Louis Sartain. For centuries past, there has existed in Ireland, and in portions of England and Scotland, as well, the superstitious belief that if a murderer places his hands upon the body of his victim, the wounds of the person murdered will gape and bleed afresh. In the south of Ireland, the most implicit confidence is placed in this infallible murder test, as it pleases them to so believe it. This same belief found many adherents among the pioneers of the Scioto valley, who were quite liberally tinctured with Celtic blood. And after all other means of discovering the slayer of Louis Sartain had been exhausted, it was proposed, by some of the older people, to have Sartain’s body resurrected, in order that a final supreme test might be made— a test which, it was fully believed, would fasten the responsibility of the black crime upon Williams.

“A public meeting was called, the project discussed, and the determination reached to take Sartains body from the grave, place it in a public place, summon every man in this section to attend the “trial by blood,” and compel every person in attendance to place his hands upon the body.

“A committee was appointed to resurrect Sartain’s remains under legal authority and remove them to the old stone Baptist church, near Sharonville, where they were exposed to public view, on a certain day, when all the country round was summoned to be in attendance. Poor Sartain! His corpse presented a horrifying sight to the great concourse of people that gathered at the church, in response to the constable’s summons, or the promptings of curiosity, that was wrought to a wonderful pitch. The murdered man’s hair and beard had grown fully one-half an inch, and his body was fairly alive with slimy grave worms, that were feasting upon his flesh. The stench arising from the decaying body could not have been endured under less exciting circumstances. Every man, of course, felt it his duty to vindicate himself, inasmuch as all had been publicly and officially called upon to subject themselves to the test of touching the dead body; and all believed that they could do this safely, save Williams. They confidently expected to see the gangrenous wounds of Louis Sartain gush out a stream of accusing blood the moment Williams entered the room — or surely when he dared place his hands upon the foul-smelling body.

“John Shepherd, who was then constable, was Lord High Master of Ceremonies. He was a very officious fellow, with a smattering of education, and was known far and wide because of a wonderfully confusing infirmity of speech. He talked through his nose, and after the most outlandish manner possible. He stationed himself near the platform on which Sartain’s body lay, and called upon each man in turn, by name, to step forward and go through the fantastic programme arranged for the occasion. Samuel Corwine, against whom there was, of course, not the faintest breath of suspicion, was the first man called, and this is the way Shepherd officially notified him:

“Sabued Cudwide! Sabued Cudwide! Cobe upad touch de dead body ob Louis Sartain, subbosed to be shot or murdered!”

Mr. Corwine quietly walked up to the body, examined it, placed his hands upon it and retired. The body didn’t bleed.

“Uccle Tede Howa’d! Uccle Tede Howa’d!” shouted Constable Shepherd, who wanted Mr. Cornelins Howard to step forward.

“Cobe forrud, Uccle Tede, an’ touch yo’ han’s to de murdered man’s torps.”

“Uccle Tede” was not a second Moses. He, too, failed to draw blood from Sartain’s body.

“And one by one, in answer to their names, the men there gathered, filed in, touched the corpse and stepped aside—all but one man, Williams, who stood calmly just without the house and awaited his summons. His, by preconcertion, was the very last name called. Those who had successfully passed the dreadful ordeal crowded the room, reeking with the most frightful stench, waiting for the appearance of the one man, to entrap whom was the inspiring idea of that almost barbarous performance.

Williams walked into the room with a steady step. He was pale, but not nervous. He knew the prompting motive of that extraordinary trial. He knew that it was designed for his sole benefit. He knew that his neighbors believed him guilty of the murder. He knew that the majority of them firmly believed that the worm-eaten body of Louis Sartain would accuse him of the unwitnessed killing in the woods. He knew that the moment was one of supreme consequence to him. He knew that his every movement and expression were watched by three hundred pairs of eyes, and that he must exert fairly superhuman control over himself. He knew that he was guilty, as silently charged, and he probably had a sickening fear that tell-tale streams of blood would really issue from the bullet-hole in Sartain’s head. But in the face of it all, he walked up to the offensive smelling corpse, examined it all over with an apparent show of interest, touched it as the others had done, and passed on out of the room. The corpse didn’t bleed anew, and the “infallible” murder test was secretly voted a flat failure by scores of persons, who were not convinced of Williams’ innocence, simply because “Louis Sartain’s corpse failed to do its duty. It was too long in the grave,” so some of the well-seasoned, superstitious heads decided.

Williams was never punished for the crime; but retribution, swift and terrible, came to him a short time after the trial. There was a great mill and distillery combined in operation at Richmond-Dale at that time, and it was there that Williams and Joe Mounts met one day, while both were drinking. Mounts was a hard character. The two men got into a quarrel, and Mounts struck Williams on the head with a wooden roller, used about the mill in handling buhrs. A portion of Williams’ skull was crushed in, but he was not killed outright. A quack doctor named Allison was sent for, to dress the wound. Allison couldn’t get at the broken skull, to raise it up and restore it to its old position, so he took a common half-inch auger and bored a hole into the sunken piece of skull, in order that he could get a hold upon it and lift it back into place. Of course, Williams died. His injury was a fatal one, but even if it hadn’t been Allison would have finished him.

Life and Reminiscences of Hon. James Emmitt: As Revised by Himself, James Emmitt, 1888

James Emmitt [1806-1893] of Pike County, Ohio was a genuine Character. Much of what we read in his Reminiscences, a ghost-written autobiography “as revised by himself,” has a favor of tall tale about it. But an author of a Pike County history who knew Emmitt wrote: “For his recollections, he may be considered a walking history of Pike county, and from this source much herein is derived,” so we have no reason to believe that this account, lurid as it is, is false. He may have actually attended the trial as a 12-year-old boy or heard about it from eye-witnesses.

It is obvious that the psychology of the individual would account for some of the effectiveness of this method of forensic detection. A murderer less cool than Williams would naturally be afraid to touch the corpse of his victim and such would be noted by onlookers. It was also hoped that the murderer would be terrified or startled into a confession when confronted with the body.

The next case arose from a sensationally brutal case from 1833 Pennsylvania. Charles Getter murdered his wife Rebecca, to whom he had been married only ten days. He was engaged to another woman, but was brought before the Justice of the Peace by Rebecca who accused him of fathering her unborn child. To avoid being jailed, he married her “after an hour’s deliberation, in which he evinced much repugnance to the union.” He refused to live with Rebecca and was heard saying that he would be rid of her inside of three weeks. Her strangled body was found near her home shortly thereafter. A witness told of this variation on the bleeding corpse during the trial:

From the Philadelphia Intelligencer.

TOUCHING THE CORPSE

We did not suppose that the superstition of touching the body of a murdered person, to ascertain the murderer, had its believers in this country. We find, however, in the trial of Getter, who will be executed next Friday, at Easton, for the murder of his wife, the following passage of evidence.

“Julianna Leitz, sworn. If my throat was to be cut, I could tell before God Almighty, that the deceased smiled when he (Getter the murderer) touched her. I swore this before the Justices, and that she bled considerably. I was sent for to dress her and lay her out. He touched her twice. He made no hesitation in doing it. I also swore before the Justices, that it was observed by other people in the house. This was towards evening, when the doctor and jury (coroner’s) were gone.”

Columbian Register [New Haven, CT] 12 October 1833: p. 3

Even later was this example from South Carolina.

A Corpse Bleeds at the Murderer’s Touch.

The Columbia, S.C. Union contains the following account of a murder which was committed in Orange County on Friday, the 9^th inst. Jeffrey Heisey and Russell Wilson had some difficulty that morning about a place which Heisey bought for $6,000. He had just returned home and was sitting down at his house with a woman and two children, when he was shot through a crack in the window. The wound was a horrible one, shooting the whole under jaw away and throwing the tongue on the floor. The women and children were wounded. Mr. Heisey died almost instantly.

The verdict of the Coroner’s jury was that he was shot by Russell Wilson, who is now in jail. The old idea that if the murderer would place his hand on the corpse of the murdered man the blood would flow, was tested on this occasion, and we are reliably informed that the Coroner required all the jury to lay their hands on the body. When Russell Wilson touched the corpse, twenty-four hours after his death, the blood flowed full and free from the corpse. On the following day, while Rev. Mr. Guignard was delivering the funeral service over the grave of the murdered man, the premises of the minister were set on fire and utterly destroyed.

Jackson [MI] Citizen Patriot 31 January 1874: p. 2

Another other late examples of judicial touching of the corpse? Send to the squeamish chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com.

The Thornley Crape Threat

I have previously shared some instances of “coffin threats” in this forum, as well as writing about the lost art of “crape threats” in The Victorian Book of the Dead. Today we look at the early-20^th-century version of a gangster intimidating a rival by sending him a funeral wreath.

We can have no conception of how frightening it was to see crape tied to a doorknob or hung from a door knocker. Someone was dead—who was it? How did it happen?

Pish tush! you say. What’s a strip of black cloth tied around the doorknob? How could that possibly be frightening?

We have lost the thread of this deeply symbolic object: the fluttering banner of the Angel of Death. And when crape was tied to a door without a call to the undertaker, everyone shuddered, knowing that it was an omen of ill-will, a malign wish that the fabric of a once-happy home would be torn apart and that crape would shroud a house of death.

That is what drives this story of the Thornley Crape Threat. And not only is there a classic crape threat, the perpetrator may be our old nemesis, The Woman in Black.

THORNLEY

TIED CRAPE TO HIS DOOR

Grewsome “Joke” Played on F. J. Mills on the Anniversary of the Death of His Daughter

Special to The Herald.

NEW YORK, Jan. 25.— Frank J. Mills, a decorator, who lives at 563 A Lafayette avenue, Brooklyn, was greatly astonished yesterday morning when his office boy rushed around to the house from Mr. Mills’ place of business in Nostrand avenue, inquiring: who was dead in the family, “Why, what do you mean?” asked the puzzled Mills.

In answer the boy pointed to the handle of Mr. Mills’ doorbell. To his amazement Mills saw hanging from the knob streamers of black and white crepe, such as are used by undertakers to indicate that there has been a death in a house. As there had been no recent death in his family, Mills inquired of Mrs. Amy Thornley, who lives on a lower floor, whether any one in her household had died. She answered in the negative, and Mills began an investigation.

He learned that a man living next door, upon returning home late on the night before, had seen the crepe on Mills’ door and wondered at it. In the morning this neighbor had stopped in at Mr. Mills’ office and asked who was dead in the family. As the office boy had not heard he hurried around to the house to find out.

Mr. Mills said last night that he felt certain the “joke” was not the work of mischievous boy. The crepe had apparently been procured from some undertaker’s shop, but Mills cannot understand, he says, why it was placed on his door. By a peculiar coincidence, it was just a year ago yesterday that Mr. Mills lost a young daughter by death. [Other versions of the story report 3 years and that the dead child was a son.]

Yesterday he offered a reward of $25 for Information which would lead to the arrest and conviction of the persons who perpetrated the “joke.” Los Angeles [CA] Herald 26 January 1906: p. 3

The horrid prank panicked the neighbors.

Edward Laws, who lives next door to No. 563A, was the first to discover the crepe attached to the doorbell of the house of his neighbors, Frank J. Mills and Mrs. Amy Thornley. He was returning home at 11 o’clock on Tuesday night, and as he walked up the front steps of his residence he saw the black and white crepe fluttering in the moonlight at his neighbor’s door. The shock was terrible, he says, for he knows his neighbors intimately. He hurried indoors and woke his wife, who, on hearing that some one had died, wanted immediately to get up and go to her neighbor’s house. They decided, finally, to wait till morning, but they were so worried, they state, that neither slept all night.

Mrs. Thornley lives on the basement floor of the three story dwelling at 563A Lafayette avenue. She says she sat down by her front window about 7 o’clock on Wednesday morning to read the newspapers. She was surprised to notice that neighbors who passed, stopped and stared when they were abreast of her house. Mrs. Thornley was concealed because of the window curtains, and she states that she watched the strange actions of those among the passersby whom she knew for some time. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle 5 January 1906: p. 1

Enter the Woman in Black….

WOMAN-IN-BLACK WRITES “I LOVE YOUR HUSBAND”

“Murder for You” the Beginning of Her Letter to Mrs. Amy Thornley.

MYSTERY OF CRAPE ON A DOOR.

Weird Woman Chalks Insults on Stone Steps and Hides Notes in Graveyard Flowers—A New Advertisement.

Following with startling promptness upon the appearance in Friday’s Eagle of the advertisement in which a reward of $25 is offered for the “arrest and conviction of the fiend who placed black and white crape on doorbell at house 365A Lafayette avenue, Wednesday, January 3,” was the receipt yesterday by Mrs. Amy Thornley, one of the occupants of the house, of an anonymous letter, in which murder is threatened. Beside Mrs. Thornley and her family, Frank J. Mills, a painter and decorator of the Bedford section, lives there. The letter is particular to state that the crape was intended as a warning to Mrs. Thornley and was not for Mr. Mills and expresses the wish that ‘she may soon be sleeping by the side of her son,” who died five years ago. The peculiarity of this letter is the fact that it is composed of words cut from a copy of the Eagle, the words placed in such order as to form sentences. Several of the words are emphasized by being composed of letters cut from the headlines of the newspaper. The letter follows;

“MURDER for you. Crape is for Amy T., not for Mills. May you soon be sleeping with your dead son. Your husband will be MINE. I LOVE HIM.”
The envelope in which the communication was received is postmarked “Station B. 1 P.M., Jan. 8.” Post Office Substation B. is at 1266 Fulton street, near Nostrand avenue.

The last sentence of the letter is now considered by both Mrs. Thornley and Mr. Mills to shed some light upon the question of motive, and there is no doubt in the minds of either that the perpetrator is a woman. In fact, Mr. Mills has seen the woman several times, and under curious circumstances. Up to the present, both Mrs. Thornley and Mr. Mills have been somewhat reticent in regard to the matter of the mysterious woman, whose threatening letters have been an annoyance for the past five years. Not only have the missives been used as the means of expressing threats, but threats and abuse have occasionally appeared in words chalked upon the cement floor of the areaway leading into the basement of Mrs. Thornley’s house, and couched in terms that often were too vile to bear repeating.

Acting immediately upon the receipt of this last letter, because of its significance in connection with the story published in last Friday’s Eagle of the appearance of the crape. Mrs. Thornley turned the communication over to Mr. Mills, who in to-day’s issue again repeats his offer of reward, adding an extra clause having reference to the letter.

“Twenty-five dollars reward for the arrest and conviction of the fiend who placed black and white crape on doorbell at house, 563 Lafayette avenue, Wednesday, January3. Also for person who sent anonymous letter, mailed Monday, January 8, in reference to same. Address Mrs. Amy Thornley, Frank J. Mills.”

According to the story told the Eagle reporter last night by Mr. Mills and Mrs. Thornley, the mysterious woman whom they believe to be responsible for all the ghostly threats and jokes which they have endured for several years has been clever enough to elude many attempts to catch her.

The “mysterious woman in black,” Mr. Mills calls her, for he describes her as dressed entirely in black, wearing a black hat wrapped in a veil which drapes down over her face. She is of medium height. She has been seen by Mr. Mills at night as she has stepped into the little yard in front of the house and thrown a note into the areaway leading to the basement door, and although he has rushed to the door in order to catch her in the act, he has opened the door upon a vacant yard and a deserted street.

She has never appeared by daylight. Under cover of darkness, she has crept into the little yard, chalked her messages upon the cement sidewalk there; left her threatening notes upon the window sill or poked them under the door, and lastly, hung the real undertaker’s badge of the house of death upon the doorbell.

“Following the death of my son five years ago,” said Mrs. Thornley last night, “I received so many insulting and threatening letters that I finally turned them over to the police for investigation. Nothing was learned, however, and the annoyance continued. I could not visit my son’s grave in Evergreens Cemetery, but what I would find a note among the flowers or upon the headstone. Only a month ago, I was sitting here in the dining room late one evening when there came a sudden rapping at the window. I knew instantly that it must be the woman in black. I rushed to the door, for I am neither timid nor superstitious, but there was nothing to be seen.”

Mr. Mills is a deputy sheriff and a member of the Citizens’ Protective League. He has determined that he will clear up the mystery even if he has to give up considerable of his time in the effort. His stories substantiate those told by Mrs. Thornley in every particular. He has sat for hours at the parlor window, which looks directly out upon the street, in wait for the “woman in black. Once, late at night, he saw the woman approach the house from across the street after having entered the block from Nostrand avenue, which is 200 feet from No. 563A. The dark figure crossed to the gate leading into the front yard, opened it, and then tossed a note upon the steps leading into the areaway. Mr. Mills rushed to the door and down the front steps to the street. He had seen the woman run toward Nostrand avenue, and she must be fleet of foot, he says, for she had turned the corner by the time he had reached the sidewalk.

[This astonishing talent for melting away without being caught is a feature of the mysterious Women in Black, as I’ve shown in The Face in the Window and The Ghost Wore Black.]

On other occasions, Mr. Mills has stationed himself in the vestibule of the front door, but at these times the woman has failed to appear. Mrs. Thornley’s son, Frederick, has also taken his turn at watching.

Mrs. Thornley’s husband is a traveling salesman, and is at home but for a few days at a time. He is not a home at present, but Mrs. Thornley says she knows that he is as much in the dark as she as to the identity of the woman whose reason for the criminal annoyances of the five years has been jealousy of his love. Pending the result of the efforts of Mr. Mills to detect the “mysterious woman in black,” Mrs. Thornley says she expects to receive further threats from that party as a reply to this published account of her doings. The Brooklyn [NY] Daily Eagle 10 January 1906: p. 1

This article reveals the unsettling details that the persecution had been going on much longer than a few days and that Mrs. Thornley thought her son’s body had been tampered with at the cemetery.

Mrs. Thornley is a well-preserved woman with auburn hair and strong features. She was born in France and lived there most of her life.

Her husband, she says, is a traveling salesman for a German importing house in Manhattan and has been with them for twenty-two years. Her husband, she said, was in the South on a business trip, had been gone three months and was not expected home for some time. She said he did not seem much worried over the case.

THREATENING LETTERS.

“My troubles began,” she said last night, “when I buried my sixteen year [old] son [Percy] in Evergreens Cemetery, five years ago. Some weeks later, when I visited the vault, I found my son’s body had been shifted to the top tier. The attendants denied all knowledge of it. Six months later I began to get threatening letters in a woman’s hand. She said she loved my husband and wanted him.

“Several times at night when I was watching at the window, a medium-sized woman in black, with a veil, slipped in the yard and flung a letter on the grass or the stoop. No matter how quick I was in getting to the door, she was always out of sight. [This is so like Mills’s statement, it almost sounds like they compared notes—or colluded?]

“When I would visit my son’s grave I often found notes from the woman pinned to the flowers I had placed there. They were all threatening. Evening News [San Jose, CA] 20 January 1906: p. 3

Just as I was beginning to put Mrs. Thornley down as a trifle unbalanced, another witness saw the Woman in Black.

SAW THE WOMAN IN BLACK
But Young John Weiss Was Too Much Surprised, Maybe Frightened, to Grab Her.

The mysterious woman in black has been seen again. She appeared on Nostrand avenue early last evening, but disappeared so quickly that some people in the neighborhood are beginning to believe in ghosts. John Weiss, it was, who saw the woman this time. He is 17 years old, and works in the office of Frank J. Mills at 302 Nostrand avenue, who lives with the family of Mrs. Amy Thornley, at 563a Lafayette avenue. Mrs. Thornley is bearing up well, despite the nervous shock following the hanging of crepe upon her doorbell and the anonymous letter of Tuesday, in which murder is threatened.

Mr. Mills left his office, which is around the corner from The Thornley house at 5:30 yesterday afternoon .John Weiss remained at the office. About 6 o’clock, John saw a dark figure passing to and fro on the sidewalk in front of the office. His heart jumped into his throat, he says. Four times the woman passed the door, each time pausing in front of it and looking in. On the last round, however, she came up to the door, crouched down in front of it, John says, and with her hand shading her eyes, glared searchingly through the glass of the door into the office.

John doesn’t know now why it was that he did not rush out and grab the woman. He says he wishes now that he had. For some reason, John says, he was unable to move. The eyes of the woman-in-black transfixed him for the moment. When he came to she was gone.

John went around to No. 563a and told Mr. Mills, who notified the nearest policeman. The Brooklyn [NY] Daily Eagle 12 January 1906: p. 2

How many people saw the crape-hanger? Only Mills, the office boy, and Mrs. Thornley? Is there a possibility that the Woman in Black who so transfixed young Weiss was Mrs. Thornley in disguise, seeking to bolster her credibility? The article is ambiguous about whether he actually saw her face. There were conflicting reports over whether Mills saw her only once or several times.

Let us look a little more closely at the main actors in this enigmatic story. Initially I thought that the perpetrator might have been the estranged Mrs. Mills, or that it might have been a cry for help from a lonely wife whose husband was away for months at a time. Other than these articles, very little is found in the papers about Mrs. Thornley, except her husband’s obituary in August, 1925 and her own in December of 1926.

However there is much to learn about the other occupant of the house, Mr. Mills.

Frank J. Mills, described as a “decorator” – a painter, separated from his wife Maria in 1899. He later became a real estate broker and was involved in local politics. In 1900 he complained to the police about a man named Weil, who had represented himself as selling advertising for a weekly paper, but who had taken Mills’ money without placing the ad Mills had ordered. Weil was arraigned for petit larceny, but was released on bail and committed suicide by swallowing acid.

In 1903 Mills is described in an article about the Law and Order League—a citizens’ patrol organization–as “one of the mildest mannered men that ever tooted a police whistle. There is a shrinking modesty about the man that it seems impossible to associate with the custody of handcuffs or the possession of a night stick. But he is valorous, too having served a spell in the Forty-seventh Regiment, and seen service with that command in Porto Rico.” In this article Mills and a colleague were ridiculed for supposedly putting rowdy people off streetcars. [The Brooklyn [NY] Daily Eagle 14 September 1903: p. 20]

In February of 1906, Mills mysteriously lost $1,550 and his bank book. He went to a theatre to “transact a little business” and thence to the bank where he discovered his loss. In September of that same year, it was reported in The Brooklyn Eagle that Mills claimed that he saved two young ladies from drowning at the Parkaway Baths—a swimming pool. A few days later Parkaway Baths Superintendent Phelan wrote and said that Mills had nothing to do with the rescue. The Eagle rather testily noted that they had just printed what Mills had told them about the incident.

In March of 1907, while Mills was described as living with his wife, Mills’s pregnant dog, Bess, “a brindle bull valued at $150,” was mysteriously stolen by burglars who did not bother to steal valuable jewelry lying in plain sight. The dog’s collar was left in the Mills’s trash can as if to taunt the couple. In short, Mills was a man to whom things happened.

Mrs. Thornley, with the years of threatening letters ignored by her husband and the police and her belief that her son’s body had been moved suggests a similar model of weird episodes. What, if anything, this means, I’ve no clue.

The same pattern pops up as a minor theme in phantom attacker stories, as well as in the lives of troubled polt vectors: chaotic lives, odd incidents, domestic infelicity–and frequent mentions in the papers. In a chapter in The Face in the Window called “The Death Bed Promise,” a dying Simon Fisher forced his wife Linnie to promise to never marry her lover, Walter. She broke this promise within a scandalously short time and was repaid by visits from Simon’s threatening ghost. Swirling in the wake of this story were dozens of news items in the small-town paper about peripheral characters– children and siblings—involved in unsolved mystery threats, beatings and disappearances. It was like an on-going soap opera and I didn’t even tell the whole of it. Is there some common thread in the chaos of disordered lives that generates bizarre fortean stories?

In an unpublished story from my files of a phantom attacker of a young woman, the multiple newspaper articles about her unhappy life and her persecution at the hands of a mystery assailant grew more dire and ambiguous with each day. Like so many similar fortean tales, that phantom attacker story simply disappeared from the media without resolution—just as the Thornley Crape Threat Case seemed to have come to an abrupt end with no corpse to validate the crape–and no Woman in mournful Black.

It is such a minor mystery although it received much coverage in its day. I am not sure why I care so much about a defunct tradition of textile intimidation. But if you have other sources that reveal the culprit or the motive, I’d be pleased to hear from you. Chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

Side notes of no real relevance: In the censuses, Mr. and Mrs. Thornley are described as “aliens.” (non-citizens.) The house where all this occurred is still standing.

Boiling Bodies: 1877

Boiling Bodies.

For a week or more absurd stories having been afloat about the “wholesale” boiling of human bodies in a building on the Groveport pike. The local press, knowing that there was nothing in the report worth noticing, or that had not been noticed, made no mention of the matter for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, when anything of this kind gets started, there is no telling where it will stop. The result in this instance is that several persons have examined the graves of friends to see whether the same had been disturbed. These friends were led to believe that cords of skeletons were being made, and that to keep the boiling kettles going the grave-yards were being ransacked every night.

The facts are as stated in The Dispatch two or three years ago. Dr. Blesch has an establishment for the articulation of skeletons of all kinds. He sold to the Agricultural College the horse, cow, sheep, hog, dog, cat, monkey, ant-eater, hyena and antelope, and placed in the museum of the Columbus Medical College the skeleton of an elephant. The bones of these animals, except those of a domestic character, were obtained from Sells Brothers’ menagerie. Human bones received for articulation come from dissecting tables. Two or three years ago, when Dr. Blesch made his exhibition of skeletons at the State Fair, The Dispatch and other papers gave particulars.

All that need be said at this time is that, for sensational purposes, stories have been circulated that are not founded on facts. No body was ever taken there with the flesh on. All came from dissecting tables. The Columbus correspondents of the New York Herald and Cincinnati Enquirer visited the place and satisfied themselves that there was nothing in the story, except what we have stated. Yet irresponsible parties have excited some people in that locality until they don’t know how to keep cool. For example, Jacob Fisher, in company with Aaron Fisher, Jacob Fisher, Jr., Mahlon Taylor and others, opened the graves of the late Mrs. Jacob Fisher, Sr., and of the late Mrs. Joseph Fisher, having heard that the same had been molested. They found the contents of the graves undisturbed. But so greatly disturbed were the feelings of Mr. Fisher by these stories that he declared, had the bones been missing, it was his intention to shoot Dr. Blesch and a man named Schneider.

The truth is, bones are boiled in both Medical Colleges; in almost every back room of a doctor’s office where students are—i.e. small bones of the body—and in all the large cities three are establishments like the one operated by Dr. Blesch. Before shooting anybody, gentlemen who have reason to feel aggrieved at the bone boilers, should make some effort to investigate the veracity of sensationalists who give currency to stories of this kind.

Columbus [OH] Evening Dispatch 5 April 1877: p. 4

How the Widow Married the Driver of Her Late Husband’s Hearse: 1893

QUINN TELLS A PRETTY ROMANCE.

How Widow Doyle Married the Man Who Drove Her to Her late Husband’s Funeral.

IN WEEDS ONLY A FEW WEEKS.

Says Flannigan Was a Theological Student in Dublin, but He Ran Away From Home.

BECAME A HOSTLER HERE.

If He Hadn’t Followed the Wrong Hearse, Quinn Says He Wouldn’t Have Won a Bride.

Quinn says that if Flannigan had not become confused on the Sunday he drove the Widow Doyle to her first husband’s funeral and followed the wrong hearse to Calvary from the Brooklyn side of the river he would still be slaving in the North Moore street livery stable instead of doing the World’s Fair in a style befitting a gentleman of means. And Quinn is a man whom all Flatbush says you may believe.

Quinn attributes Flannigan’s present position to a series of accidents of which the one mentioned above is the culmination. In the first place, Quinn says, Flannigan’s father selected a profession for his son which was distasteful to the latter, causing him to strike out for himself. Coming to America he was compelled to go to work in a livery stable. Then he was ordered to drive the hack hired by the Widow Doyle, and for losing sight of the hearse, which he expected to follow, he was discharged. In desperation he appealed to the widow to intercede with his employer in his behalf, which she did. And finally he wooed her himself and won her. The time that elapsed between the funeral and the marriage, Quinn declares, was less than six weeks.

NOW FOR THE DETAILS.

This is a brief outline of the remarkable tale Quinn tells. To go into the details, which he also furnishes, carries you to Ireland. It was there that Flannigan was born twenty-six years ago. He was named William Frederick. His father, a wealthy Dublin merchant, wanted him to enter the ministry and, looking toward that end, sent him to college.

Flannigan studied theology for a while and then revolted. His father, however, wouldn’t listen to a change of plans. He insisted that the young man should become a minister. So Flannigan concluded to come to America.

He arrived her last April with very little money but lots of grit. He tried to get a place as a bookkeeper or a clerk, but was unable to find any vacancies. In desperation he applied for a job as hostler in a North Moore street livery stable, which he got.
This particular livery stable where Flannigan worked makes a specialty of furnishing carriages for funerals on Sundays. Ordinarily the proprietor has enough coachmen for all occasions. On the Sunday in question, however, he was short a man, and so he pressed Flannigan into the service.

It so happened that the funeral Flannigan’s coach was assigned to attend was that of William Doyle, and the occupants of the coach were the Widow Doyle herself and a relative. This in itself wouldn’t have significant if Flannigan hadn’t got confused and followed the wrong hearse to Calvary from the Brooklyn side of the river, as mentioned in the opening paragraph.

FLANNIGAN GETS CONFUSED.

The funeral of William Doyle was a big one. There were more carriages in line than the eastside had seen for many a day. This is easily understood when it is known that the deceased was worth at least $25,000.

The procession moved from Henry street to the East River ferry at the foot of Grand street. Driver Flannigan’s position in the line should have been immediately behind the black plumed hearse drawn by two black horses in heavy mourning trappings. Driver Flannigan was green on the box of a coach, however, and instead of getting near the front of the procession he got crowded near the rear.

When the ferry was reached there were so many carriages in line that they could not all get on the same boat. One of those which had to wait for the second trip was the coach containing the Widow Doyle driven by Flannigan. But the curtains were drawn and the widow didn’t know it.

Upon reaching the Brooklyn side of the river Driver Flannigan saw a hearse waiting at the head of a line of carriages. It was a black plumed hearse, too, drawn by two black horse in heavy mourning trappings, and it was only natural that Driver Flannigan should have pulled his coach into the line.

It looked also as if they had been waiting for him because the procession got under way immediately after he joined it.

A SURPRISE FOR THE MOURNERS.

In due time the grave in Calvary was reached and the many mourners alighted. Widow Doyle was among them. They gathered around the open grave, and then apparently for the first time the widow made observations through her heavy widow’s weeds. The result was startling. The faces of the mourners were strange to her.

“Theses are not my relatives,” she shrieked. “This is not the casket which contains the remains of my beloved husband.”

Quinn, of Flatbush, suggests that you can imagine the sensation this announcement caused.

Driver Flannigan lost control of most of his senses on the spot. The more Widow Doyle hysterically assailed him the more demoralized he became. She demanded that he drive for his life and find the grave where her husband was to be buried, and he lost no time in getting away.

Flannigan found the grave in a remote corner of the cemetery just as the undertaker was preparing to lower the casket. He had waited as long as he could for the missing widow and had concluded to go on with the funeral, as it was nearly time to close the cemetery gates.

The casket was over the open grave when the gathered mourners were suddenly enveloped in a shower of dust. When it cleared away Widow Doyle was among them. She threw a handful of earth on the lowered casket and then explained the trouble.

DRIVER FLANNIGAN DISCHARGED.

Widow Doyle called at the livery stable on the following day, and as a result of her visit Flannigan was discharged.

At this point it should be stated, on the authority of Quinn, of Flatbush, Flannigan got his first opportunity to utilize his collegiate education.

Having noted that Widow Doyle was young and handsome, and being young and handsome himself, he decided to ask her to intercede in his behalf. With this idea in view Flannigan called upon the widow. His eloquent language, Quinn says, impressed her and she granted his request. As a result he got his old job back.

The action of the story quickens here. The acquaintance between the Widow Doyle and Flannigan ripened, and on July 28 they were married. The funeral occurred on June 23.

Upon the death of Doyle his widow came in possession of something like $25,000, Quinn says. So it isn’t strange that Flannigan gave up his job as hostler when Widow Doyle became his wife. They went to live in a cosy little flat in Second avenue, and Flannigan then secured a place in a mercantile house easily enough.

They have since broken up housekeeping, stored their furniture and gone to the World’s Fair. At least that is what Quinn, of Flatbush, says.

If you want Quinn to tell the story in his own inimitable way you will find him at No. 194A Ninth street, South Brooklyn.

New York [NY] Herald 21 August 1893: p. 5

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Well, really. Where was the undertaker in charge of the Doyle funeral, Mrs Daffodil would like to know? He should have been there directing the order of the funeral carriages and making everything run as smoothly as a casket on casters. Flannigan, in losing his job, was more to be pitied than censured. Still, since one so rarely finds such a happy ending in the wake of a death and the loss of a position, Mrs Daffodil will have to stretch a point and suggest that the negligence of the undertaker was a blessing in disguise.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

The Society of American Widows: 1916

NATION’S WIDOWS ORGANIZING TO CARE FOR THEMSELVES!

Omaha, Neb., March 30. The widows of the nation are organizing!

Led by Mrs. Bessie C. Turpin of Omaha, widows have founded a union to prepare for the avalanche of widows that will sweep down upon this country at the end of the European war and to better the lot of all widows in this man-made world.

“All classes in the world except widows are organized,” says Mrs. Turpin, “and there are no persons more in need of the help that comes through co-operation.

“Most widows are mothers, and when these women are suddenly thrown upon the world to support themselves and children they find almost insurmountable obstacles. We are organizing to help them solve these problems.

The Society of American Widows is no joke. It has a real program, and Mrs. Turpin has taken up the work so seriously she has lost her job as bookkeeper at the Booth fisheries.

But she has not allowed a little thing like that to block her campaign to organize the millions of widows throughout the country.

Here are some of the things the widows’ society plans to do:

Obtain from merchants a 10 per cent discount on all purchases.

Establish a sewing department, employment bureau, reading, rest and lunch rooms and a day nursery in the business districts in all large cities.

Build profit-sharing apartment houses, including gymnasium, music and assembly rooms, to be occupied by widows and their families at low rentals.

Publish a monthly magazine to deal with the widows’ problems and arouse interest in the movement in every city.

Mrs. Turpin has been able to go on with the work of organizing widows by the generosity of wealthy persons. She has been presented a checking account equivalent to two months of the salary she received keeping books for the fish company.

Any widow in any town or city who wants to start a local branch of the widows’ organization can have full information by writing Mrs. Turpin at 2415 Dewey Ave., Omaha, Neb.

“There are more than 2,000 widows in this city alone, and most of them are mothers,” says Mrs. Turpin. “It is therefore safe to say millions of children in America will also be helped by our society.

“We will try to win co-operation of business men. Already the outlook in Nebraska and Iowa is bright.

“I have found that widows number among the lowest percentage of persons receiving aid. We will not offer charity to widows. If we find one destitute we will help her on her promise to pay when she can.

“We aim to place all widows in an independent position so they may face the world without fear for the future, and, if necessary, take care of their children as well, as if there were a good husband at their side to fight their battles for them.”

The Day Book [Chicago, IL] 31 March 1916: p. 15

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil has not been able to find that the American widows’ union ever gained much of a foothold, even though the intrepid Mrs Turpin was sadly correct about the avalanche of widows at the end of the Great War. Yet perhaps there was a different outlook in the States, for in 1919, English widows were said to be in high demand.

WIDOWS FAVORED

Single Girls Abandoned in England for Women Who Have Plenty of Experience

London, Friday, Aug. 15. Traditionally attractive, the widow is becoming even more popular with “marriageable” men in Britain.

“Why did I marry a widow? Well, just imagine you were buying a horse; you’d buy one that had been broken in. In any case you’d have more sense that to put a fresh young thing straight into harness and expect it to carry you and your dog cart into town without a mishap,” quoth one sturdy swain who possessed the heavenly gift of logic and had reached the stage of fat-and-forty, when Comfort so often cuts out Cupid.

“The same with a woman. Take my advice, marry a widow; you’ll find she is well trained for domestic life. The worst is over. She has no illusions about men.”
This growing popularity of the widow is creating quite a stir among “bachelor girls.” They prefer the name to that of spinsters. Their protest is to the effect that widows have had their share and they ought to stand aside and let others have a chance. [See a previous post on this subject.] But widows are in great demand….

The widow holds strange power. Many girls say if they wore widow’s weeds and a ring they would have proposals in no time.

“More widders is married than single wimmen,” said the immortal Sam Weller. He’s right—in England. Seattle [WA] Daily Times 15 August 1919: p. 14

Several chapters about widows, along with a myriad of other items on the oddities of Victorian mourning will be found in The Victorian Book of the Dead, by Chris Woodyard, which is now available as a paperback and in a Kindle edition. The book is a look at the popular manifestations and ephemera of Victorian death culture. In addition to mourning novelties, burial alive, strange funerals, ghost stories, bizarre deaths and petrified corpses may be taken as read.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead and on Twitter @hauntedohiobook. And visit her newest blog The Victorian Book of the Dead.

Haunted by a Death-bed Promise

Kosicky cintorin, Cemetery in Kosice, Frantisek Klimkovic, 1849
https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/asset/kosicky-cintorin-cementery-in-kosice/yAEb96eieM0q9g

Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the living.

-Edna Ferber-

In researching my various books from the Ghosts of the Past series, I’ve run across a minor theme of “death-bed promise” hauntings. Husbands or wives, from the hopelessly moral elevation of their death-beds, would ask their spouse to promise to never marry again. Some of this was undoubtedly anxiety about how a stepmother—proverbially wicked—would treat the children. I’ve written about a step-mother’s sinister haunting here. Some of these requests, however, seem to have sprung from sheer jealousy and control issues, like those of Simon Fisher, who haunted his family after his wife broke her coerced promise not to marry her “affinity.”

The stakes were high. Family, friends, and society might censure those who broke their promises. Weddings were called off under duress from the dead. This widower foolishly seems to have thought his late wife would not notice or haunt him if his bride kept her maiden name.

Kept Wedding Secret, Wife Asks Divorce.

William J. Latchford made a death bed promise to his first wife that he would never remarry, and so he made his second wife, Mrs. Mitzie Latchford, 709 Fifth avenue, keep their wedding a secret, she testified before Superior Judge Mogan yesterday in seeking a divorce. They were married in Santa Ana August 5, 1926, and separated in Los Angeles on November 6, 1926, as a result of his painful cautiousness, she declared. He insisted on her using her maiden name of Weiss, she said, and made her remove her wedding ring when they went out in public. Her mother, Mrs. Jeannette Weiss, acted as her corroborating witness. San Francisco [CA] Chronicle 15 April 1927: p. 3

But, as the following two stories make clear, the dead had an uncomfortable way of reminding the living of their promises.

Death bed promises, it seems, even in Ohio, [!!!] cannot be broken with impunity. Owen Clark, of Cleveland, promised his young wife that he would never again pull in double harness. After meeting a handsome widow named Mrs. Murphy, he repented of his rash promise. The nuptial day was set, and Owen saw a ghost, for on that morning he made his will, then he called on an undertaker, and approved a bill for a respectable funeral for one. These cheerful preliminaries arranged, the bridal couple drove to the church and before the last words of the service could be pronounced he fell dead. Mrs. Murphy gets $40,000, but is still a widow. The Democrat [Wichita KS] 29 August 1891: p. 1

There is a temperance subtext in this next tragic story, which may be relevant or may be merely the paper’s editorial position. A change in the widower’s personality is noted, but was it the drink or guilt over his “infidelity”? Or was it the dead wife standing at the foot of the bed?

GHOST OF FIRST WIFE DROVE HIM TO KILL HIMSELF

George Vedder Had Broken Oath of Loyalty made at Her Deathbed.

TOOK ANOTHER BRIDE

It Was Only a Short Distance From Saloon to Reservoir After Haunting Began.

A shadowy figure from the other world, standing silently beside the bed of George Vedder and constantly reminding him of solemn oath that he would be faithful to his love, sent the man to the bottom of Fort Field Reservoir, a suicide. The story came to-day to the surface as Yonkers folk talked of the strange things that had happened In the Vedder home.

The stories followed the funeral of the man, which took place yesterday. The Vedder home is at No. 410 Walnut street, In the midst of a colony transplanted from the Continent. It has its mysticism, its superstition, its picturesque customs, and all of the stage setting for the weird narrative that is here to follow.

Ten years ago there came from Russia in the steerage of a big liner a young fellow who had determined to make his way in the world. In the same ship came a young girl, fair to see, and of strong character. A voyage friendship grew between the two. The man was Vedder; the woman, or more properly, the young girl, was Mary Ivanko.

Becomes George Vedder’s Wife.

As they had together left the same region, Fate ordained that they should be neighbors in the New World, Both were employed at the Smith Carpet Works at Yonkers. Both saved money and prospered. The friendship ripened. The young woman left the works and went to preside as the wife and mistress of Vedder’s home.

Three little ones were born to the Vedder home. Joe, now seven, Mary, five, and George, three years of age, completed the little nest when early last fall the young wife fell ill. It was during her illness that she became obsessed with the idea that George would marry again, and that another would come to take her place in the home. She asked Vedder to swear upon a sacred ikon that he would not marry again in case of her death and he readily consented. October came and the young wife died.

Wife In Name Only.

Also he watched petite Mary Gopopski, just past twenty, scarcely more than four feet tall and with a face that looked like the pictures of the Madonna. He remembered that she had been kind to him. It occurred to him that she might be kind to the children. He evolved a scheme for a proposal unique in its nature.

She was to marry him, yes; but she was to take the place of a wife only in relation to the care of his dead wife’s children. His own heart was in the grave. Would she care for the children and give up her place in the mill?

She would.

Then there came changed times for the Vedder home. The man was a different person from what his neighbors and friends had known. He found his way sometimes to Joe’s saloon. There had been a premonition of the change three days before the wedding when the man came into neighbor Wlasty’s home, his hair standing, his face pale and his limbs trembling.

“Down there,” he had cried then, “I can’t stand to look in her eyes.”

The neighbors thought him drunk and let the outburst pass without comment.

But the man passed the whole night on the floor in a nearby apartment and dared not return to his own room. The wedding passed. The new wife saw her husband fall in a fit from his bed. She heard him scream, “She is standing there at the foot of the bed; she is standing there! She won’t say anything, but she is looking at me!”

Then, in the dead of the night, the sacred Ikon dropped from its niche and was shattered.

The man was horrified. He wandered over to Joe’s saloon and took a drink. The saloon man, noting his stare, asked questions.

“Mary’s come back,” said the man.

But his lips were sealed beyond that expression. No effort would get him to explain to the outside world what he meant by that statement. Only the Wlasty family knew all of the story. There came night after night the ghostly visitation. The white-robed figure would appear to the man, take its place at the foot of the nuptial couch and gaze at him.

Saturday morning the man was sad and depressed. He went to the bank and drew $300. He brought the money to his wife, who, thoroughly confused by the strange turn of events, did not question him. Then he left the house. Late in the afternoon when he had not returned friends went in search of the husband. They found no trace of him.

As they returned to report the failure of their search they met men bearing the body of a suicide from Fort Field Reservoir. The body was that of Vedder.

He had done his penance for the broken oath, for the vow of eternal love that was not kept.

The Evening World [New York NY] 28 February 1911: p. 1

It’s all very romantic to force such an oath, but surely the dying wife must have worried about how Vedder could take care of the children and work at the same time. Mrs. Vedder did not seem to have been as concerned about inflicting an unsympathetic stepmother on the little ones as she was about enforcing sexual fidelity.

There is something more than a little disingenuous about the notion of the widower trying to fool his dead wife (and, perhaps, his neighbors) with a marriage “in name only” and “only in relation to the care of the children.” How gullible does Vedder think his late wife was, that she would fall for a claim of a mariage blanc? If this truly was a marriage in “name only,” how was it that the second Mrs. Vedder was present when her husband fell out of the nuptial couch in a fit? No wonder he was racked with guilt.

“Mary’s come back.” Simple. Laconic.

A death sentence.

Other examples of death-bed promises about remarriage haunting a bereaved spouse? I wonder if these stories could be associated with changeling wife tales, so fraught with ambiguity for the widower, where the wife’s ghost announces that she is not really dead, but has been taken by the fairies? chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com