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A PLACE FOR HISTORY'S DISCARDED PAGES
Welcome to Hushed Up History.
Our past is filled with forgotten stories that are shocking, incredible, and sometimes flat out unbelievable. We hope to also make them memorable.
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The townspeople all loved Josef, he was courteous, kind, and generous with all his neighbors. The children delighted in seeing him ride into town and loved hearing his stories. The only thing that could be better was visiting his home, filled with all manner of unique items with tales of their own that Josef was more than happy to tell. Josef Mencik was a historian, but he immersed himself in the past in ways that went far deeper than paper and ink. He may have been born in a more modern age but in his daily life Mencik was the last of the medieval knights.
As dedicated as Mencik was to history, he was extremely secretive of his own and there is almost nothing known about his early days. He never shared the names of any family members, his birthdate is a mystery, and there is no known record of where he was born with historians only able to narrow down that he was most likely born in the Böhmerwald region of Czechoslovakia. In approximately 1911 he ventured out into the world and set his sights on an aged castle in Dobrš. He decided to make it his own, but this was not going to be an easy task. The castle had been standing since the 14th century and when Mencik purchased it it was a ruin, severely damaged by a fire and countless rainstorms that left it a shell of its former self. But in this broken structure Mencik saw his ideal home and after purchasing it he began the long road to rebuilding it.
Böhmerwald region of Czechoslovakia via 1930s. Image via Wikipedia Commons.
Mencik’s idea of bringing his castle back to its glory days was meant in the most literal sense. He lived with no electricity, no plumbing, absolutely nothing representing the comforts available to him in the early 1900s. Where modernity was absent, it was replaced with beauty. The halls were lit with candles and torches and as time went on Mencik filled his home with rare antiques turning it into a literal living history museum, a time capsule of the days long past that he happily shared with anyone who wanted to see the collection of treasures. This full embrace of the medieval age extended far beyond a refurbished home and an extensive antique collection. Mencik lived his life as closely as he could to a knight, traveling on his beloved thoroughbred horse and wearing fine suits of armor crafted in France. Some accounts state that he even had a moat around his castle….filled with wooden alligator sculptures.
Josef Mencik in full armor. Image via DannyDutch.com.
Like so many parts of his past, it is unclear if he ruled his private kingdom alone. According to some accounts Mencik was married to a woman named Ema Mencikova and that they may have had two children, but this has not been proven. What is well known is that everyone who knew Mencik thought very highly of him. By all accounts he treated everyone with respect, was always willing to help anyone in any way he could, and he enjoyed spending time with his friends and neighbors. He was a regular patron of the local taverns where he would socialize with everyone, ending every visit with his personal ritual “to swallow a whole herringbone, which he then drank with a good glass of rum and then shouted menacingly.“
Everyone who knew Mencik personally knew of his genuine character, but his actions on one particular day in 1938 would make sure his story was told for generations.
Images of Josef Mencik on his horse. Image via DannyDutch.com.
In an early act of aggression, in 1938 Nazi Germany moved to invade Czechoslovakia in order to annex the predominantly German region of Sudetenland. As the Germans crossed the border through Bučina they were not anticipating any resistance, but what they were met with was more stunning and confusing than they could have imagined. As they crossed they were met by Josef Mencik, seated high upon his horse, dressed in full armor, and holding a very large halberd. He met them standing strong, ready, and defiant, but he also met them alone. As the crushing, modern machines of war rolled closer to the knight he did not flinch and he stood taller as they became more confused as to what exactly they were all seeing. Unfortunately, there is no written account to tell us about the words exchanged between the knight and the Nazis, but what is known is that instead of engaging or attacking Mencik, they all simply hesitated for a short while before continuing to march past him. As they went by some Nazi soldiers tapped their helmets at him, a signal that said they believed that Mencik was simply a delusional man not to be bothered with. As they moved past Mencik they walked into an early chapter of a war that would tear the world apart.
There are many differing opinions about the actions of Mencik against the Nazis with some feeling it was an act of pure bravery while others feel it was foolish. Regardless of opinions, it is technically true that he did successfully defend his castle home which was never taken during the war. In 1945 though, the fortress that Mencik brought back to life and made into a home where he welcomed everyone with open arms, was removed from his hands when the structure became part of the nationalization by the new Communist government. The last medieval knight Josef Mencik died only a few days later in November 1945 and was estimated to be in his late seventies.
For all his living days Mencik sought to bring the past back to life, not just for himself but also for the present to learn from and enjoy. Although he was probably heartbroken by his home becoming nationalized, today his castle is open to the public and serves as a museum, welcoming curious visitors just as he did. Josef Mencik, the last knight, passed away nearly eight decades ago but his private kingdom, his history lessons, and his story of bravery in the face of danger have withstood the test of time far longer than he could have dreamed.
The remnants of Mencik’s castle and more recent additions. Image via Michal Klajban / Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0
Tombstones are endlessly fascinating for the living. Etched in stone, decorated with their own alphabet of symbols, and telling the names (and sometimes a bit of a story) of those who walked the ground before us. We are as curious about these stone last pages in the book of life as we are about the time the body spent on earth with us. While death is promised to all, a formal burial is not. But, sometimes there are burials not for a person, but for a piece of them.
Stretching across thirty-one acres of Newport, Rhode Island are the Common Burial Ground and Island Cemeteries. The Common Burial Ground was founded in 1665 and contains 7,986 known dead from all walks of life and from multiple centuries. The number of actual inhabitants is likely higher though with hundreds more lost to the soil due to time, vandalism, and the fact that some earlier markers were simple wood planks that have long since disappeared.
By 1786 stone tombstones were heavily used and one such stone in the Common Burial Ground belongs to the Tripp family, which had to be used much earlier than anyone hoped. Wait and William Tripp were only ten and twenty-two months old when they were buried under their double headstone in 1780 and 1784. Two years later they were joined by their mother, but only part of her. Desire Tripp was the wife of William, a tanner, and they lived together in a “Large and commodious dwelling house” in Newport. On February 20th 1786 her arm was amputated by Doctor Isaac Senter who noted that the amputation took place and that the cost equated to approximately one month income, but sadly there is no record as to why her arm was amputated. On the tombstone of her children there are two carved faces of cherubs but in the center of the stone there is a carved arm to represent the arm of Desire Trapp also laid to rest at this location. Noted in an inscription along with the names and dates of she and William’s children, the epitaph reads “Also his Wifes/Arm Amputated Feb 20 1786”
The tombstone of Desire’s children and her arm. Image via Hopkins vastpublicindifference.com.
While it was highly unusual for a woman to have their arm amputated and to have it memorialized on a tombstone, Desire Trapp is far from the only person to have their limb buried in its own grave.
In 1898 Richard Bertram Barrett of San Jose, California was thirteen years old and living a normal life, until one day during a hunting trip he had a most unfortunate encounter with a shotgun. The shotgun blast damaged half of his left arm beyond all repair and the decision was made to amputate. The arm was buried under a tree in Hacienda Cemetery and has its own stone marker reading solemnly, “Richard Bertram Bert Barrett His Arm Lies Here May it Rest in Peace.”
Barrett went on to lead a very successful life, eventually becoming the Chief of Sanitation for the Santa Clara County Health Department and lived to see a road named for him in the same cemetery where his arm was buried. When he passed away at the age of seventy-four he was also buried, but not with his arm. Barrett’s final resting place is Oak Hill Memorial Park, a full eleven miles away from where his arm was buried sixty-one years earlier. Today the arm has become a part of local folklore with stories saying that the arm can be seen wriggling on the ground on Halloween night.
Grave of Bert Barrett’s arm. Image via Weirdca.com.
In some ways the Stanley Settlement cemetery in rural northern Georgia can double as a history book of its home of Fannin County with a church and burials dating back to the mid-1800s. Among the interred are Elisha Stanely and Elv Evan Hughes, the first people to be buried here, murdered for refusing to join the Confederate army and both thrown into a single grave. It is Elisha’s son Adolphus Buel Stanley though who has the honor of having one of the more bizarre burials inside Stanley Settlement. A flat stone simply reads “The arm of Buel Stanley 1864-1946 amputated 1915 caused by fishing with dynamite in Toccoa River below Stanley Cemetery…” it goes on to inform the reader that in 1946 Stanley did not join his arm in death. Instead “…His body is buried at Macedonia Church of Christ.”
Grave of the arm of Buel Stanley. Image via Historic Rural Churches of Georgia by Tom Reed.
Losing a limb is not typically something that anyone wants, but when Captain Samuel Jones of Washington, New Hampshire learned he was going to have to part ways with one of his legs he decided he was going to make the best of it. It was 1804 when the captain was doing some construction work and his leg somehow became trapped between a building and a fence. He was eventually freed but his leg had become so mangled that it could not be saved. Captain Jones was also the owner of a local tavern so while waiting for the doctor to arrive his friends took him to the tavern and they all drank to their heart’s content. Once the leg was removed (and Smith was sober) he decided he was not done saying goodbye and decided to throw his leg a full funeral including guests and a proper burial. The leg was interred at the local cemetery, but one day some local college kids decided they wanted to steal the tombstone. After it was located in a dorm the stone was set into the ground in concrete to ensure it would never disappear again. The rest of the life of Captain Jones gets very murky, and it is believed that he ended up in Boston or Rhode Island. He was not buried with his leg.
There have been many reasons and theories as to why someone would want to properly bury their limbs, sometimes with a full funeral. According to Captain Jones, he felt that burying the leg would prevent him from feeling something doctors were aware of but could not explain, phantom leg pain. While this might have seemed funny, this discomfort where someone can still “feel” pain in their missing limb was (and is) very real and in 1878 farmer Benjamin Waldron experienced exactly what the captain was concerned about.
Benjamin Waldron was a twenty-five year old Idaho farmer and in 1878 he was working when his leg got trapped in a thresher, completely destroying it. He also went on to give his leg a proper burial in Samaria Cemetery, complete with a tombstone engraved with the image of a leg, the date of the amputation, and his initials. But something didn’t feel right after the burial, Waldron complained of pain, feeling it radiate from the leg that was no longer there, and saying that it felt uncomfortably twisted. When Waldron could not bear it anymore the leg was exhumed and sure enough, when the leg was buried it was placed in its grave at an unusual angle. Once it was re-buried in a better position Waldron finally felt relief and never felt the phantom leg pain again. Waldron finally joined his leg in the afterlife in 1914. He was also buried in Samaria Cemetery, but in a different location than his demanding leg.
Graves of Waldron and his leg. Image via Speaking of Idaho by Rickjust.com.
Waldron is not alone in his experience of feeling his disconnected limb from beyond the grave. Located in Mesquite, Texas there is a family cemetery called the Z. Motley Cemetery, serving as a permanent place of rest for members of the Motley family who still maintain it to this day.
In 1894 John Motley caught his arm in some gin machinery and as a result the seventeen-year-old was forced to live with only one arm. The arm was buried at the family cemetery but like Waldron, the young man knew something did not feel right about the arm he no longer had. He complained of feeling like there were ants crawling all over his skin. The arm was exhumed and shockingly they found that there was a way for bugs to get in and out and at the time of the exhumation they found the arm covered with ants. The arm was taken, sealed in an air-tight box, and reburied. Motley said he never felt the crawling phantom sensations again.
As luck would have it (or not), John Motley is not the only member of his family to have a separated limb buried in their family cemetery. In 1911 G.C. Motley was riding a horse when the animal took off causing him to fall and get his foot trapped in a stirrup. The injured foot became badly infected and doctors amputated it, giving it a resting place in the same Motley family cemetery as John’s arm.
Both G.C. and John Motley were buried in separate plots from their dearly departed limbs.
Marker for the Z. Motley Cemetery. Image via Nicolas Henderson Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
The phantom pains and sensations felt by Benjamin Waldron and John Motely and feared by Captain Samuel Jones were one factor in the burials of their limbs, but for others the need for a proper sendoff was rooted in a much more spiritual belief. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all have varying beliefs on the burial of limbs with some faiths believing it is required to bury the limbs in a grave intended for the person when they pass or in a grave specifically for limbs. Some believe that even though the limbs are to be buried, they are not entitled to the same ceremony and prayers as a whole body. According to some Christian belief systems, the limb was required for the soul to be complete in the afterlife where it would be reunited with its owner, leading to scenarios where limbs were exhumed only to be re-buried with their person.
Perhaps it is this lack of reunion that led to the legend of Richard Bertram Barrett’s arm to come crawling out every Halloween night…it’s still looking for its human buried eleven miles away because it wants to be reunited so it too can rest.
Evidence of amputations and limb burials go back tens of thousands of years. Whether carried out at a sacred burial location or marked with a professionally engraved tombstone detailing some bad timing with dynamite, this notion, this importance, this reverence in honoring all parts of the person has endured over millennia, adapting and evolving alongside the same human creatures the practice honors. Buried alone or with family members, there are stones all over the world that speak to the feeling that even the pieces deserve peace.
Michael Malloy was on the floor again. Day after day he came into Tony Marino’s speakeasy on Third Avenue in New York City, drank himself into a black hole, and passed out only to eventually stand back up and keep drinking. Malloy did this often but the problem was that he had stopped paying for his drinks…and Marino was getting tired of it. He thought he had a plan for getting the money he felt he was owed. He thought it was going to be easy. He was very, very wrong about Mr. Michael Malloy.
The details on Malloy are scarce. He was originally from Ireland and somehow made his way to New York City where he supposedly spent a short amount of time as a fireman before becoming homeless and wandering the streets, occasionally sweeping alleys and always willing to be paid in alcohol instead of coins. People assumed him to be about sixty years old but the only definite thing about him was that he could normally be found with a glass in hand until he could no longer stand on his feet.
In July 1932 Francis Pasqua, Daniel Kriesberg, and owner Tony Marino stood inside the speakeasy watching the Irishman slump over the bar. Business was getting rough for Marino, and it was Pasqua who offered him a solution, why not take a life insurance policy out on Malloy, claim to be family, and take the policy money once Malloy was gone? Pasqua was an undertaker by trade and he told Marino that after the man inevitably drank himself to death he would “take care of the rest.” The suggestion might have been shocking except that this was not a new scenario for Marino. One year earlier the ruthless speakeasy owner befriended a homeless woman named Mabelle Carson and somehow convinced her to take out a life insurance policy that named him as the beneficiary. On a freezing winter night Marino forced her to drink a large amount of alcohol and once she passed out he brought her to a building where he stripped off her clothing, soaked her and the mattress in ice water, and left her under an open window to die. The scheme succeeded and Marino easily collected the $2,000 from Carson’s policy. It worked once, and Marino and Pasqua had no reason to think it could not work again, especially when it came to someone like Malloy who had no connections to anyone and who everyone suspected was only a few sips from death every day. They raised their glasses and sealed the deal between them.
The location of the speakeasy run by Tony Marino on Third Avenue in New York City. Image via wikipedia.com.
Over the course of five months Pasqua, paid accomplices, and a shady insurance agent were able to obtain three different life insurance policies from Prudential Life Insurance Company and one with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. They also recruited more assistants for the plot with Pasqua getting one of Marino’s bartenders, a man named Joseph Murphy, to act as next of kin after Malloy took his last sip and hit the bar floor for the last time. Each of the involved would split the $3,576 from the insurance policies (approximately $54,000 today.) What could possibly go wrong? They were about to find out.
When Malloy staggered into Marino’s bar on a cold December night the owner had some wonderful news for him, he now had an open-ended tab. He was told that business had gotten more competitive, forcing the owner to loosen the rules, and Malloy was delighted to take advantage of it. He drank shot after shot..drink after drink…for hours…until he finally thanked Marino for his hospitality and decided to call it a night. He left the bar promising to be back and he kept his promise, returning the next night for another drinking session. But to the conspirator’s dismay the second night was only a repeat of the first and after several hours Malloy again walked out promising to see them soon. After a third night of pouring a massive amount of alcohol down Malloy’s throat the concern began to sink in. They were paying for the life insurance policies but now they also lost a substantial amount of money on three nights of nonstop alcohol to a man they were certain would not survive the first. When he entered the bar on night four exclaiming “Boy ain’t I got a thirst?” they knew something else had to be done.
One of the conspirators went to a local paint shop and bought some cans of wood alcohol, an extremely toxic substance used in paint thinner, pesticides, cleaning solutions, and fuel among other things. The first few shots that cascaded down Malloy’s throat were cheap whiskey, but once he was too far gone to tell the difference Marino made the swap. These were not shots laced with the wood alcohol, these were full shots of ONLY wood alcohol. Malloy took shot after shot of the poison and then, to everyone’s amazement, he left on his own two feet. The following night Malloy returned and the process was restarted, whiskey for a while, then the swapped shots. Once again Malloy drank to his heart’s content and walked out a fully living, fully breathing man. Then one night something was different, after multiple shots of pure wood alcohol Malloy dropped to the floor. Finally, the murderous group thought their plan was falling into place as they watched their target’s chest slowly rise and fall. He still had a pulse but it couldn’t be long now, so they waited and watched him believing he was finally approaching death. Until he started snoring. Hours later Malloy woke, rubbed his eyes, and requested some more of the “old regular” to drink.
Label for wood alcohol. Image via Medium.com.
As time wore on so did the cost of this ploy. Purchasing the wood alcohol, the insurance payments, and Malloy’s running bar tab was running Marino’s speakeasy into the ground and the group of them decided they needed a new plan before facing financial ruin. The group had gained some more accomplices and some suggested shooting or beating him and getting it over with but Pasqua suggested something to stay on the same route of subtlety. On his next visit they fed Malloy oysters laced with poison. He ate them with glee and washed shell after shell down with more shots of wood alcohol. Next, he was fed sardine sandwiches made from rotten sardines and filled with tiny sharp pieces of metal. He devoured it and asked for seconds. With desperation setting in Marino went back to his old methods and suggested they freeze him to death as he had done with Mabelle Carson. It was now deep into winter in New York City, surely if poison and sharp metal slivers couldn’t do it the cruel cold night would. They waited until Malloy passed out from drinking, hauled him outside through the snow and threw him onto a park bench. They tore off his shirt, drenched his unconscious body with water, and left him there to die a slow death. It was a surprise when Marino showed up to his speakeasy the next day and found Malloy in his basement. Murphy let him in when he showed up complaining of a “wee chill” half a mile from where they left him to freeze.
As the desperation to kill Malloy got stronger the plans to carry out the act became more unhinged. As the new year came and went and February arrived in New York City the seemingly ever-growing crew of people who signed up to be part of Michael Malloy’s death started throwing ideas into the air. One man named John McNally suggested running him over with a car and another accomplice John Maglione chimed in, claiming he knew a cab driver who would commit the deed, for a price of course. When Harry Green pulled up to the speakeasy a small crew of conspirators piled in carrying the heavily inebriated body of Malloy. They brought him to a quiet road and two of the men got out, dragged him down the road and held him up, arms outstretched, and prepared to leap out of the way last minute to avoid meeting death themselves. Green sped down the street with Maglione in the back seat, bracing himself for the impact of Malloy’s body. But it didn’t happen. Once the men let go of him and ran, Malloy somehow also jumped out of the way of the speeding car at the last second not once…but twice. Finally on the third attempt it all went according to plan. The men holding Malloy up leapt out of the way, Malloy stayed, and Green hit him head on. To be sure he was a goner the cab driver backed up over him in the street. The group of killers were certain the deed was done, but they could not check to be sure, another car was approaching and they all scattered before anyone could lay their eyes on the body of Malloy.
For days no one saw Malloy in the speakeasy, but there was a problem. The one member of the dubious plot tasked with finding his body could not find him. He called morgues and hospitals claiming to be looking for his brother so the death could be confirmed and everyone could finally get their money from his insurance, but no one had any record of Malloy.
Five days later the door to Marino’s speakeasy swung open. In walked Michael Malloy. Battered, beaten, and saying he had no memory of what happened, only that he was drinking whiskey, some bright lights, and then waking up in Fordham Hospital desperate for a drink.
On February 21st 1933 the gang had had enough of the resurrecting Michael Malloy. By now the money was going to be split so many times and they had spent so much trying to kill him that it wasn’t even going to be a payoff as originally intended. Now it was just the point, Malloy had to die. After another night of heavy drinking, Malloy finally passed out and a group of the man dragged his body to a tenement building less than I mile away and brought his body into a room. They threw him down, wrapped his head in a towel, and stuck a long rubber tube in his mouth. The other end of the tube was attached to a gas light fixture. The gas finally accomplished what poison, metal, nature, and a car could not do. Michael Malloy was finally dead.
The room where Michael Malloy met his end. The arrow point to the gas pipe where the rubber tube was attached. Image via truecrimeedition.com.
Pasqua had a doctor friend who was willing to write a fake death certificate citing pneumonia as the cause of death and the man playing the part of Malloy’s brother went to claim the insurance money as soon as he could. When the agent asked to see the body they told him he was already buried. They whole murderous plot got all of them a grand total of $800. Marino bought himself a new suit with the money.
The death certificate of Michael Malloy reading pneumonia as a cause of death. Image via wikipedia.com.
They may have thought the story of Michael Malloy was over, but they were unbelievably naïve to think so. There were too many people involved in the plot combined with the fact that although Malloy was homeless and perpetually drunk, people knew him. When news spread that Malloy was dead it raised some eyebrows and the stories of him surviving massive amounts of alcohol, enduring a freezing night, and walking away from being run over had earned him some nicknames and an almost folklore-like reputation. People wanted to know what finally killed “Iron Mike” and soon the police began asking questions. They learned about the supposed “pneumonia”, they learned about the insurance policies and how Malloy was quickly buried, and they decided they had enough information to resurrect Malloy for real. His body was exhumed, examined, and there was no evidence of pneumonia, but there was a lot of evidence of carbon monoxide in his system. When the police questioned the doctor who wrote the death certificate and the cab driver who ran over a man for the price of $150 they told them everything. The next people the police would be speaking with were the people at Marino’s speakeasy.
The arrests happened fast. The doctor was released on bail, the cab driver spent a short time in jail, but Frank Pasqua, Tony Marino, Daniel Kriesberg and Joseph Murphy were all arrested and walked into court facing charges of first-degree murder. They were all convicted, all sentenced to death, and were all shipped to prison at Sing Sing.
Mugshot of Tony Marino. Image via wikipedia.com.
Mugshot of Francis Pasqua. Image via wikipedia.com.
On June 7th 1934 and July 5th 1934 Pasqua, Marino, Kriesberg, and Murphy were all executed by the electric chair, and it only took one try for each of them to depart this world.
The 1600s was a difficult chapter for human life. All over the world wars tore at the seams of land and families, and those that did not fall in battle found themselves vulnerable to falling from disease and plague brought on by forces that could not yet be understood. Many things that could not be explained resulted in further violence, fanaticism, death, and destruction dealt from one hand only to be horrifically felt by the other. Breakthroughs in science, exploration, and the arts collided with religious extremism and prejudice as humanity as a whole spun on, seemingly with chaos in every corner.
The Netherlands were one part of the world with turmoils erupting within their borders. In 1672 the country formerly known as the Dutch Republic was seeing the end of the “Dutch Golden Age” with simultaneous wars with England, France, and two German cities. The year 1672 would enter the history books as the Rampjaar, The Disaster Year. The Dutch people coined a phrase to describe this most unfortunate time: “The people were irrational, the government helpless, and the country beyond salvation.”
Allegory of the Disaster Year by Jan van Wijckersloot (1673). Image via Wikipedia.
Although it was obvious there were multiple problems facing the Dutch Republic in the 1672, some believed the problems took root decades earlier. William II Prince of Orange died of smallpox in 1650 leaving the Dutch with no official leader (referred to as a Stadholder.) It was this same year that Johan De Witt began to make his mark in the politics of the region. Johan’s family were bitter rivals of the Oranges and as De Witt began to move up the political ladder he allegedly (with the help of his powerful father who spent time in prison for his involvement in a coup d'etat of William II) quietly made moves and had words written into political documents to keep the young William III or any member of the Orange family from ruling. This allowed wheels to be set in motion to form a fully Republican regime with De Witt at the helm. After holding a number of high-standing positions he was elected to the role of Grand Pensionary of Holland in 1653, essentially making him the ruler of all Dutch provinces.
By the time the 1672 Year of Disaster loomed over the Dutch Republic the people had already endured enough war and horror to last a lifetime under the eye of Johan De Witt. There were the Anglo-Dutch Wars which threatened the land, but De Witt remained focused on the sea, taking every step possible to protect the economic interests in shipping and trading that filled his pockets while paying little mind to the forces surrounding the Dutch at their front doors. He also made it a point to delay the appointment of William III as captain general. The stubbornness of De Witt would have deep consequences when in May 1672 Louis XIV invaded the Dutch Republic, thus beginning the third Anglo-Dutch War.
Portrait of Johan De Witt by Adriaen Hanneman (1652). Image via Wikipedia.
As troops moved straight into the heart of their homeland the exhausted Dutch people felt betrayed by their leadership and all eyes turned to Johan De Witt. Some were content to simply, but loudly, voice their opinions that the House of Orange should take back their power by any means necessary. Others showed their feelings of anger and betrayal in much more aggressive ways. On June 21st 1672 Johan De Witt was attacked by a man who was armed with a knife and an intent to kill. The assailant did succeed in brutally stabbing him, but he survived. Johan’s brother Cornelis was also feeling the pressure of the simmering public and on July 24th he was arrested under charges of treason against the House of Orange. He was brought to prison in The Hauge where he was tortured in order to obtain a confession. While his brother was recovering from being nearly assassinated, Cornelis was refusing to confess to any wrongdoing and was eventually sentenced to exile.
Being attacked with a malicious blade changed De Witt and after a lengthy recovery he resigned from his position on August 4th 1672. At the time of his resignation his brother Cornelis was still wallowing in prison with his exile looming. On August 20th Johan visited his brother at the prison to assist him and see him off on what was supposed to be his date of forever departure from his homeland. It is unknown what the pair discussed that day, but it is almost certain they had no clue what was about to happen. Yes, Johan resigned and Cornelis was exiled, but the Dutch people were not ready to let the brothers walk peacefully away into a new chapter while they were left with suffering and debt that could follow them for generations. As the brothers talked in the prison they were attacked by a mob that were set on tearing them limb from limb.
The Murder of the de Witt Brothers by Pieter Fris. Image via Wikipedia.
What unfolded was a scene that was feral, ferocious, and that has gone down in history through eyewitness accounts and multiple pieces of art. The mob ravaged the De Witt brothers. They were dragged into the street, shot, stripped of their clothing, and taken to the public gallows. If the brothers thought their end would be found in a broken neck at the end of a hangman’s noose they were terribly wrong. Once strung up the mob began to take souvenirs. Some accounts report that their eyes were stolen, others say they were later cut into pieces and distributed to the masses, and while that is up for debate one thing that is certain is that their bodies were sliced open, their livers stolen, and the organs were then roasted and consumed by those in attendance. After a lifetime of prestige and twenty years in power, Johan De Witt departed life alongside his brother after being mutilated and cannibalized by his own countrymen.
The Corpses of the De Witt Brothers by Jan de Baen. Image via Wikipedia.
With De Witt gone power went to William III of Orange, the same man who had his appointment as captain general stalled by De Witt and the son of William II whose death was used by De Witt and his father to make the turn to the Republican force that they hoped would keep the House of Orange out of power for good.
Whether William III had a hand in planning the attack and death of the De Witt brothers is debated to this day with answers unknown.
Today the prison where the De Witt brothers spent their last moments on earth still stands and has been repurposed as a history and art museum.
In the hours between the evening of July 2nd and the morning of July 3rd 1929 Benny Evangelista had several visitors to his home that he shared with his wife and four young children. The first visitor came and went. The second, Vincent Elias, was visiting Benny to discuss a real estate matter and he walked through the house and made his way to the basement, a space that made many people uneasy. The third visitor was the Detroit Police Department. In an instant their day became very complicated and much more difficult, no one was going to want to talk to them about the Evangelista home on the corner of St. Aubin Street.
Benjamino Evangelista was an immigrant to the United States, arriving with his brother Antonio in 1904 after leaving Naples to pursue a better life. Beginning his new chapter in Philadelphia, Benjamino changed his name to Benjamin and probably looked forward to a bright future with his brother, but their relationship crumbled apart two years after arriving in the states. Antonio was a devout Catholic so he became concerned when his brother Benny began telling him that he was receiving visions from beyond, something that was completely unacceptable in his eyes. The two brothers that traversed the Atlantic together parted ways and Antonio sent Benny away to work for a railroad construction crew in York, Pennsylvania.
Benny Evangelista. Image via the-line-up.com.
Whatever camaraderie Benny missed from his brother he may have found again in one of his new co-workers. Aurelius Angelino became very close with Benny, and unlike Antonio, Aurelius never thought ill of Benny’s growing interest in the occult and his visions, mostly because he was also heavily interested in some darker mystical practices. But, this connection would also come to an end, and in a much more brutal way than the parting between Benny and Antonio. In 1919 Aurelius snapped, attacking his family with an ax and killing his twin sons in the process. He was captured and sent to live out the rest of his days in the Fairview State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, but Benny was deeply disturbed by what happened and in order to put distance between himself and the ax murderer he moved to Detroit, Michigan looking for his 3rd fresh start in fifteen years.
After moving to Michigan it would seem that Benny finally found the prosperity and peace he was looking for. He found work as a carpenter, found a second source of income in real estate, he married a woman named Santina and began his new family. Feeling comfortable in this new chapter he also revived an old interest, his practice in the occult. This time though, it was no secret part of Benny’s life, he became very open about his beliefs and soon began selling his services to the people of Detroit.
Word of Benny Evangelista spread quickly through the city, a mystical healer who saw visions, spoke to God himself, and who could create hexes, potions, and whatever else one might need to make it through the tough city days where life was difficult and full of both human and non-human obstacles. After moving the family to their home on the corner of St. Aubin Street he converted the basement of the house to a an almost makeshift “worship space”, filled with tables, alters, bottles, ingredients, knives, and jars among other paraphernalia. The space though, was not a pleasant one. It was said that Evangelista conducted much darker business in his lair including animal sacrifices, intense chanting, and creating bizarre depictions of gods handcrafted by the “healer” himself. Also stacked around the space were copies of the book he wrote, The Oldest History of the World Discovered by Occult Science in Detroit, Michigan, the first in a planned four volume series documenting what Benny said was told to him straight from God. Walking past the house it was possible to see into the basement and if it was the right angle someone might be able to catch a glimpse of the “Great Celestial Planet Exhibition”, a large collection of human figures and planets made from paper mâché, wax, wire, and wood that were hung from the basement ceiling surrounding a handmade “eye” that could light up. One did not have to hope for a peek at the basement though, for the price of five whole cents Benny would take anyone down for a tour of his ritual space.
Some of the wax figures hanging in the basement of the Evangelista home. Image via the-line-up.com.
Tours of the basement were one thing, but Benny had other ways to make his practices profitable. People went to him to solve all the problems they could not through his mystical means, charging up to ten dollars for his services, an amount of money that could equate to days working in some of the local factories. Benny was not cheap, but he also was not overly successful and many of those who sought out his services later complained that nothing was cured, nothing was solved, and he was just a scam artist. That is, if anyone from the predominantly Italian Catholic community was even willing to admit they spoke to the self-proclaimed healer.
On July 3rd that hesitancy to talk was going to become much, much stronger. Vincent Elias walked into the Evangelista home with real estate on his mind but once inside he noticed something else, the house was quiet. Benny shared the home with his wife and four small children between eighteen months and seven years old, the last thing that should have greeted Vincent was silence. He walked down to the basement, and it was there that he found Benny, seated at his desk, his hands folded in prayer, and his head removed and sitting on the floor at his feet. Also under the desk were three photos of a child in a coffin, one of Benny and Santina’s children who died years earlier. And what of Santina? When police arrived at the Evangelista home they found the worst case scenario. Santina was dead, nearly decapitated and partially dismembered, and all four of the Evangelista children were deceased.
The news of the absolutely horrific murders dominated headlines in the coming days and the big question was “Who?” Yes, Evangelista was beyond eccentric and had crossed many paths with his work as a carpenter, his real estate dealings, and as a “healing mystic” but could anyone be so dissatisfied with Benny that they would brutally and ruthlessly murder him and his entire family? Neighbors and clients gathered around the house to learn about the horrors inside but no one in the heavily Italian and Sicilian neighborhood would speak to the police. Authorities were unable to get a single statement from any of Benny’s clients or neighbors. All they had on that morning was the terrible scene inside the house and a single bloody fingerprint on the doorknob.
One of the headlines about the Evangelista murders. Image via newspaper.com.
Very slowly pieces started to fill in the puzzle, but the picture was not made any clearer. When police spoke to Benny’s doctor it only confirmed what was already known, that he was a religious fanatic. Benny’s lawyer told police he was recently involved in several lawsuits stemming from his real estate business but they were all very minor cases, nothing that would warrant murder. Without an obvious suspect they began to look outward. In searching the house police did find a six-month old letter that simply stated “This is your last chance.” With this letter came a new theory, perhaps the Evangelista family were all victims of the criminal group known as the “Black Hand” that regularly preyed on Italian immigrants. The gruesome and extreme killings fit the bill for an organized crime hit but the problem was that by the time this letter would have been sent the Black Hand had already moved on to bigger people and ploys, not even operating under that name, and highly unlikely to target a man and his family for some sort of singular, low-level disagreement.
There were two clients of Benny’s that the police did become curious about. On the night before the bodies were found a man named Umberto Tecchio visited Evangelista at his home in order to make a final payment on a house that Benny sold him. He visited the home accompanied by his friend Angelo Depoli and after leaving the Evangelista home both men went out for some drinks. The police brought Umberto in for questioning based on the fact that an ax, a knife, and freshly-cleaned boots were found behind a barn at the boarding house where he lived. There was also the fact that Umberto stabbed his brother-in-law to death three months earlier. But, with no real evidence and no confession Umberto was let go. The second client was of interest not because he was at the scene hours before the bloodbath was discovered, but because they were never there at all. The night before the killings Benny spoke to a watchman that was looking over a house that was about to be torn down. Being a carpenter, Benny told the watchman he had arranged to purchase the lumber and scheduled a truck to help him take it. He would meet the truck at the abandoned house with a cash payment and the lumber would be delivered to his home. It is obvious why Benny never arrived the next morning, but the crew hired to haul the lumber also never showed up. Again, nothing could directly tie the two occurrences together and the theory was dropped.
Benny, Santina, and three of their children. Image via hankslore.com.
There was one other possibility that also could not be proven, but even the thought of it proved to be chilling. The reason Benny Evangelista ended up in Detroit was because his close friend and fellow student of the occult Aurelius Angelino murdered his children with an ax and was sentenced to Fairview State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. In 1923, six years before the slaughter of the Evangelista family, Angelino escaped the hospital and was never seen again. Is it possible that over the course of six years Angelino was able to track down his former friend multiple states away and then brutally murder him and his family just like he had done to his own before once again slipping away and disappearing into the darkness? If it was Angelino, the Evangelista family may not have been his only targets. Two weeks prior to their killing another brutal murder took place just under nine miles from Detroit in River Rouge, Michigan where the bodies of Mrs. Henry Cipinski and her three children were also found horribly mutilated.
The funerals for the members of the Evangelista family took place on July 6th 1929 and over three thousand people attended. Some were clients of Benny, others believed he was a fraud, but everyone was shocked about the end that came to him, his wife, and their four children. Police were on site for the funerals all day to ensure the scene stayed peaceful but also to see if anyone suspicious showed up. No one in attendance caught their attention and the funerals went on uninterrupted.
In March of 1930 a newspaper headline printed a misleading story claiming that a witness to the crime had been found. Although they technically were right, it would not help shed any light on the crime. At some point during the killings, the family dog escaped the house. Nearly a year later a woman found a stray dog and upon reading the tags discovered it once belonged to the Evangelista family. She adopted the dog and newspapers dubbed the pup the “only witness” to the horror.
The two-story home where the Evangelista family lived on the corner of Saint Aubin Street and Mack Avenue was eventually demolished and the site was never rebuilt on, leaving an empty dirt lot to tell the tale of one of Detroit’s most notorious murders.
To this day the case of the Saint Aubin Street Massacre is unsolved.
The former site of the Evangelista home today. Image via Google Maps.
The Pakistani town of Charsadda has witnessed first-hand how quickly war and time can transform a place. Originally called Dheri, the town is said to have been originally settled by Pashtun tribes from Afghanistan who were fleeing persecution. The location of Dheri attracted a great deal of attention and over time it became heavily populated by the Sikhs who established a monopoly of businesses there. In the 1830s aggressive hands brought a time of change to the town and its inhabitants. Some endured the shifts, some succumbed, and in one case there are some responsible entities that are still standing outside in their chains nearly two centuries later.
In 1835 the town of Dheri’s name was changed to Sikho Dheri and in the same year Maharaja Ranjit Singh laid the foundation to Fort Shankar Gah, which would also undergo a name change in 1876 and then become known as Shabqadar. The Maharajah built a formidable Sikh army, trained by European generals with experience in major battles like the Battle of Waterloo, and they helped keep an eye on some of the many factions that were looking to take power in the region surrounding Shabqadar. By 1840 the Maharaja had passed away but his son Maharaja Sher Singh was in power, and he was there when the fort was attacked by a large number of Mohmand warriors. It was a bloody battle that lasted until the morning sun rose, and in the end the Sikhs were victorious in pushing the opposing forces out of the fort. They may have come out the victors, but it came with a high human cost. Infuriated, Maharajah Sardar Sher Singh demanded to know who was responsible for the warriors getting into the fort and he demanded an investigation be carried out to determine who was behind the breech in security.
One of the Europeans that trained the Sikh army as part of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s court was General Ventura Jean Baptiste, and he just happened to be in the area. After being recruited to conduct the investigation as to how the warriors were able to gain access inside the fort General Baptiste poured over the incident gathering evidence and examining the facts. Finally, after two days, he had his culprit.
When General Baptiste announced his verdict it was shocking, but the accused had nothing to say. He formally declared that the doors, the twelve-foot tall wooden doors to the fort, the doors that failed to hold back the invasion, were the guilty party. A jury of two men agreed and the two doors were sentenced to be imprisoned by chains for one hundred years.
The fort doors under arrest at Shabqadar. Image via travelpangs.com.
It is unknown exactly why the blame was officially placed on the doors as opposed to any of the people involved in the altercation. Each door was chained to a tower, and although their sentence ended in 1940, they still remain there to this day. A plaque tells visitors of their alleged crime and sentence, reading:
“The weeping willows: In the winter of 1840, a Mohmand Lashkar (War party) succeeded in breaking down these gates. The then Sikh Maharaja Sher Singh (Ranjit Singh son) had them court martialed for treason. The French General Jean Ventura headed the proceedings which lasted two days, having found them guilty as charged, the gates were sentenced to 100 years’ imprisonment. They are languishing enchained ever since.”
Approximately two hours west of Shabqadar is another unfortunate prisoner. In 1898 a British Army officer named James Squid was stumbling through the town of Landi Kotal after having a few too many drinks and he saw a threatening figure, a Banyan tree. Convinced that the tree was moving, and even following him, he ordered the mess sergeant to place the tree under arrest. The sergeant obliged, placing the tree in multiple heavy chains extending from the branches to the ground.
The Banyan tree under arrest. Image via amusingplanet.com.
Visitors today can still visit the tree, which tells its story through a sign that plainly states:
“I am under arrest. One evening a British officer heavily drunk thought that I was moving from my original location and ordered mess sergeant to arrest me since then I am under arrest.”
Though originating as what some might see as a humorous story, the tree is seen by many as a solemn reminder of the chapters of Pakistan’s past that are deeply intertwined with the British. Pakistan gained their independence from England in 1947 but when the Banyan tree was arrested it was in the midst of British colonialism. Today the image of the tree in chains represents that oppressiveness and how the people of Pakistan were treated during that time and represents the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), laws drafted specifically in opposition to British Raj and their rule. As expressed by a local photojournalist, the tree “shows the oppression of British rule in the subcontinent and just imagine if a British officer could put a tree in chains then how were they treating the locals of that era?“
Today both Shabqadar and the Banyan tree are visited by thousands of people each year as tourist attractions but their stories go far deeper than just inanimate objects officially placed under arrest. The failed fort doors and the innocent tree tell stories of both individual incidents and whole timeframes that are written deeply into the complex and rich history of Pakistan and how it is still imprinted on the country today.
This chained, century-old tree in Pakistan is a perfect metaphor for colonialism by Ishaan Tharoor. September 3 2016.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/09/03/this-chained-century-old-tree-in-pakistan-is-a-perfect-metaphor-for-colonialism/
When gold was discovered in California on January 24th 1848 it changed the landscape of the country with approximately 300,000 people swarming to the state from all over dreaming of striking it rich and finding fortune in the ground. Undoubtedly, the California Gold Rush was familiar to Henry T. “Pancake” Comstock, a Canadian miner and acquaintance with brothers Ethan Allen and Hoesa Ballou Grosh. The Grosh brothers were veterans of the California gold fields and in the fall of 1857 they discovered a promising ore deposit in Virginia City, Nevada. But, before they could claim the land both brothers tragically died. Hearing of their deaths, Comstock took it upon himself to take over their cabin, open their belongings, find the documentation connected to their find, and essentially claim it as his own. In the spring of 1859, two miners named Peter O’Riley and Patrick McLaughlin began to work the area around Six-Mile Canyon when they made a huge discovery, a deposit of silver ore, but their elation was short lived. Comstock claimed the men were working on land he had already claimed for “grazing purposes” and he proceeded to threaten them to the point that in order to avoid issues the miners made him a partial owner in the claim, later named the Comstock Lode.
Mining on the Comstock. Image via wikipedia.com.
The men had no idea what they had discovered. The Comstock Lode was a massive deposit of silver ore, the first of its kind in the United States, and news about new riches found under the earth brought back the excitement of the California Gold Rush from less than ten years earlier. From its discovery in 1859 to 1882 the Comstock Lode yielded what would today amount to over ten billion dollars worth of ore. However, none of the men who discovered the claim never saw that level of wealth. Patrick McLaughlin sold his 1/6 interest in the claim for $3,000 but the money was quickly lost and he died after working multiple odd jobs to scrape by. Peter O'Riley held on to his interests at first but eventually sold them for approximately $40,000. He used the money to invest in other endeavors including a hotel and another venture into mining but his attempts were unsuccessful. He lost everything, was declared insane, and his life came to a close in a California asylum.
Henry Comstock sold his interests and went on to open various shops in Carson City and Silver City. He too lost everything in bad business decisions and in September 1870 he died in Montana after shooting himself in the head.
Henry T. “Pancake” Comstock. Image via legendsofamerica.com.
When the Comstock Lode was discovered it completely transformed Virginia City, Nevada. Once a small mining town it was quickly filled with hundreds of thousands of prospectors, driven by the re-ignited dreams of fortune just waiting to be dug up. The influx of people brought everyone imaginable to Virginia City, and it quickly transformed into a place where law dared not tread. Filled to the brim with bordellos, saloons, and opium dens, the city became the darkest definition of the wild west. In 1872 Mark Twain published his semi-autobiographical novel Roughing It where he wrote about his travels by stagecoach through the American West and later the islands of the Pacific. In the book he writes about his trip to Virginia City stating that “Two days before I lectured in Virginia City, two stagecoaches were robbed within two miles of the town.” Twain himself was later robbed at gunpoint once he arrived in the city, losing his money and a gold watch.
Dreams, greed, and human beings all swept through the west and Virginia City, but there was one more thing that was keeping all of their minds occupied, a card game called Faro. Played using one deck of cards and being fairly easy to learn, gamblers quickly made Faro the dominant card game of every gambling hall in the west from 1825 to approximately 1915. One man who was well versed in the game was a Virginia City gambler named “Black Jake” who decided he was going to capitalize on its popularity, buy himself a Faro game table, and make himself rich taking cash out of every pocket he could. He was known for being a greedy man, but one night in 1861 karma came back strong and the table turned on its owner with Black Jake losing multiple rounds and $70,000 in one night. With absolutely no way to pay out that amount of money, the equivalent of two million dollars today, the disgraced gambler grabbed his pistol and took his own life at the table. With Black Jake gone the table needed a new home, and a few years later it found a new owner whose name has been lost to time. This new owner operated the table for exactly one night where he too lost everything, including his life. It is unknown if he chose to take it himself, or if it was taken from him.
Playing Faro in a saloon circa 1895. Image via wikipedia.com.
Having claimed two lives, the table was stored in the back room of where it was last used, The Delta Saloon, where it would sit undisturbed for decades. It wasn’t until the late 1890s that wealthy businessman Charles Fosgard laid eyes on the table, and he was happy to buy it. Fosgard had a lot of money, but he was looking to reinvest it and in Virginia City with its thrill-seeking gamblers looking to strike it rich in the saloons when they couldn’t in the mines, it made perfect sense to Fosgard to bring the notorious table out of retirement. After converting it into a blackjack table, Fosgard went into business.
One night a drunk miner sauntered into The Delta Saloon and made his way to the blackjack table. To Fosgard’s delight the miner lost hand after hand until he only had one thing left to offer the businessman, his gold ring. He bet the ring against a five dollar coin and finally, he won a hand. Then he won another….and then he won another. The miner and Fosgard went face to face over and over again and a crowd grew to watch as the businessman was forced to hand over everything. By the end of the game the miner was the new owner of Fosgard’s stagecoach, his share in a local gold mine, and $85,000 (over 2.5 million dollars in today’s money.) Fosgard’s fortune was decimated and he did the only thing he could think of, he pulled out his gun and took his life at the same table as the previous two owners (and in the same way as not only them, but also the less-than-legit founder of the Comstock Lode that brought them all there.)
The table was soaked in enough tragedy and it was put out of commission with a new dubious nickname of The Suicide Table. Year after year, and as the population of Virginia City depleted, the story of the table only grew and it was eventually made a feature of The Delta Saloon. People came from all over to see the table, guided by a sign that cheerfully read “See the Suicide Table” in bright paint as you approach the building that had been restored as faithfully as possible to how it was in its heyday in the 1800s. The table itself was also restored, brought back to its original state as a Faro table. It stayed a Delta Saloon attraction for decades, saw in new centuries, and lived quietly with its tragic past and infamy.
Vintage postcard showing The Suicide Table on display at The Delta Saloon. Image via ebay.com.
Then, on March 11th 2019, Virginia City was shaken when a gas explosion occurred at The Delta Saloon. Amid the damage sat The Suicide Table, unscathed other than receiving a coating of dust. Movers were brought in and the table was relocated to the Delta’s sister saloon, The Bonanza Saloon, right across the street where it remains on display under protective plastic housing.
The Suicide Table is still a major attraction in Virginia City, attracting the gaze of thousands of people lured in by its horrific past. In a time and place that encompassed the lawless American West like Virginia City, there are many shocking tales to tell. But standing out in the crowd is a simple Faro table, created as a game of chance, and tied to at least four lives suddenly lost in the bloody name of greed.
London had a problem on its hands. By the mid 19th century the city already had an extremely long and storied history but with the turn of the century came the masses. The lure of the city, with its industry, its jobs, and its connections to the rest of the world caused the population of London to double by 1850. The streets and structures were packed with humanity and all the debris, pollution, and chaos that came with it. And while these were all major problems facing the city, time was running short on finding a solution to one of the biggest issues. The problem was not brought on by the living, one of the most urgent matters was being caused by London’s dead.
Previous to the mid-19th century the typical way to dispose of the dead was to bury them in one of the many small church graveyards in family plots or an unmarked place of eternal rest. With the massive influx of people filling the London streets it also meant a level of death unseen by a city that was poorly equipped to deal with the bodies stacking up. The living population doubled, but the land set aside for the dead remained at only approximately 300 acres scattered throughout 200 small burial sites.
Illustration Cemetery at Bunhill Fields, Finsbury, London, 1866. Image via nhm.ac.uk/discover/a-history-of-burial-in-london.html.
Graves were dug hastily, just for the bodies to reappear above ground after a heavy rain. Plots were dug only for the shovels to hit unexpected layers of bones. Old bodies were dug up and discarded to make room for the fresh corpses. The London burial crisis was in desperate need of a solution and in 1830 Parliament thought they had it with the creation of the “Magnificent Seven,” seven massive, privately run burial grounds that lay just outside the borders of the city. They were sprawling, picturesque, beautifully maintained….and woefully expensive. The only problem that the Magnificent Seven solved was how to die if you had deep pockets. The vicious cycle continued. The dead infected the living, plagues and epidemics swept through the streets taking more souls and adding to the piles of bodies that only further infected those who survived the last miasma. In 1842 a Royal Commission was established to investigate the crisis and the findings were grim. It was determined that London simply had no more graves to give, there was no room, and digging a new grave would inevitably unearth a current tenant. There would have to be a solution, but things became much worse when a wave of cholera swept through the city in 1848, lasting a year, taking over 14,000 lives, and completely decimating any thin sense of optimism someone may have had of finding a quick and efficient answer for disposing of the dead. The already overwhelmed city soon became crushed over the influx of bodies and the accompanying decay and disease. By 1851 the epidemic had slowed and the Act to Amend the Laws Concerning the Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis, also known as the Burials Act, was passed forbidding any further burials to take place in the most heavily populated areas of London. There was simply no other option, the burial grounds that did exist were not good at hiding the overcrowding problem from the world and the ground was actually growing taller due to the sheer amount of humans in various stages of decay that were packed inside. According to an 1852 account David Bartlett remarked:
“Many times in our walks about London we have noticed the grave-yards attached to the various churches, for in almost every case, they are elevated considerably above the level of the sidewalk, and in some instances, five or six feet above it. The reason was clear enough—it was an accumulation for years of human dust, and that too in the centre of the largest city in the world.”
Even Charles Dickens commented on the heights of the growing graveyards, saying that they were “"conveniently and healthfully elevated above the level of the living.“
While the halt on new burials within the city put a stop to the rampant unavoidable exhumations in the burial grounds it led to another question. How do we prevent any new cemeteries from becoming just as full down the road? London was going to continue to grow and people were not going to stop dying, a plan needed to be in place.
Sir Richard Broun and Richard Sprye were entrepreneurs who believed the growth of London was partially due to the recent industrialization, and they also believed that industrialization could be an answer to the burial problem by using a new and controversial addition to the city, the railroad. The pair crunched the numbers and presented their plan. A 500-acre tract of land twenty-three miles outside of London in the village of Brookwood would be purchased and the already existing London and South Western Railway would dedicate one train a day to the purpose of transporting the dead to the new Brookwood Cemetery in dedicated coffin trains. The bodies would be kept at the cemetery until families arrived for the funerals by dedicated train, a fast and efficient way to attend that would otherwise require an agonizingly long horse and carriage ride of over ten hours. Broun estimated that the cemetery could hold 5,830,500 individual single-depth graves, enough to last 350 years before the burial ground would be full. Some people were against the railway, feeling it was demeaning to the dead, but on June 30th 1852 the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company (LNC) was formed. But, there were numerous roadblocks before things could officially get underway.
Great Seal of the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company. Image via wikipedia.com.
For one, the entire operation had to be built from the very beginning, and there were some very differing ideas as to how the project should proceed. Broun and Sprye knew what they wanted, but consulting engineer William Cubitt denied idea after idea. By September 1853 Broun and Sprye were out of the picture, an entirely new Board of Trustees was in place, and work could finally begin on the railway. A 2,200-acre tract of land stretching to Brookwood was purchased, and a railway line was constructed branching off from the main rail line leading directly into the westernmost section of land where the cemetery would begin. Just over one year later on November 7th 1854 the cemetery opened under the name Brookwood Cemetery with the Bishop of Winchester consecrating the ground dedicated to Anglican burials. At the time it was the largest cemetery in the world and the burials began fast, the first train left the London Necropolis Railway station on November 13th carrying the first to be buried that same day, the stillborn twins of a Mr. and Mrs. Hore.
The opening of Brookwood Cemetery and the London Necropolis Railway made dignified death accessible to all. Boasting the same gardens and grandeur of the luxury cemeteries, people could afford to bury their loved ones without risk of finding graves already occupied, without fear of them unintentionally resurrecting, and knowing they were being laid to rest away from the pollution and hazards of burials in London before the Burials Act was passed.
The company had a private terminal in London’s Waterloo Station and when a person died their body was transported there to lay in storage underneath the archway until it was time for their burial. The terminal for the Necropolis line was separate from the London and South Western Railway and it housed two mortuaries, the boardroom for the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company, and separate waiting rooms for those attending first-, second-, and third-class funerals. On occasion, these waiting rooms could be used as makeshift chapels if there were family members who were unable to make the journey to Brookwood Cemetery. This separate terminal prevented hearses from blocking the street but it also allowed mourners to arrive at the railway in private. Once arrived, the families and friends of the deceased gathered at the train station in the morning and boarded railcars that were separate from the cars dedicated to carrying the dead.
First-class funerals got the mourners first-class train tickets but also allowed them to select a grave location of their choice and guaranteed them that a permanent memorial would be erected by the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company. Second-class mourners had less control over burial location and had to pay an additional fee for a stone. Third-class was reserved for the pauper burials where expenses were paid at the expense of the parish. Because of this, the parish decided where the grave would be located and there was no permanent marker. It may seem like all the control was given away, but here in Brookwood Cemetery even the paupers were promised their own, private resting place rather than being disposed of in a mass grave. Large numbers of graves in the overcrowded London burial grounds were even dug up and the bodies moved to Brookwood, finally giving them their own place of rest.
Third class ticket to Brookwood Cemetery. Image via wikipedia.com.
The train cars themselves also had their own class structure and people were separated into either Anglican or Noncomformist in first-, second-, or third-class seating which were all very similar with the exception of some differing decorative elements. Once inside the cemetery itself there were two different stations, North Station for the Nonconformists and South Station for those belonging to the Church of England. Each station were single-story structures made primarily out of wood and they served as much more than just a station stop. The buildings were the funeral reception areas, it was where cemetery staff lived inside built-in apartments, it was where upper class mourners could select pre-made headstones, and it’s also where the “refreshment rooms” were. Each station was fully licensed to serve alcohol during normal business hours, and they catered to more than just the mourner. A relative of a member of the cemetery staff once recalled: “In addition to catering for mourners, who mostly came down from London by train, we also had local people who walked through the cemetery calling in for afternoon tea…” The refreshment rooms were also where the train crew stayed while the funeral was going on and on at least one occasion in January 1867 the driver of the train became too drunk to drive back, leaving a fireman to drive the train back to London.
North Station of the Brookwood Cemetery. Image via wikipedia.com.
By 1896 congestion had become an issue and the London and South Western Railway proposed that they would provide the Necropolis Railway with a new station in exchange for their old terminal. An agreement was signed in May 1899 and on February 8th 1902 the new Necropolis Railway terminal opened. The new four-story building held the company offices, mortuaries, storerooms, waiting rooms, ticket offices, and a dedicated chapel space for those unable to travel to the cemetery. Portions of the London and South Western Railway were then widened to accommodate the growing Waterloo station and the original site of the Necropolis Railway was destroyed in the construction.
Although the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company solved a massive problem for the dead of the city, the long-standing phenomenon envisioned by Broun and Sprye came to an end sooner than they anticipated. When Broun and Sprye proposed their revolutionary burial solution the numbers they presented were staggering, an ability to bury millions of bodies and have burial spaces available for the next 350 years. But, in the first twenty years of operation Brookwood Cemetery had only seen approximately 3,200 burials a year. The first indication of the decline came in October 1900 when the railway eliminated Sunday services, but the real death blow came just over forty years later.
On the night of April 16th 1941 London experienced one of the worst nights of the London Blitz with bombs raining down on the city, starting thousands of fires and taking 1,000 lives by the time it ceased. The terminal for the Necropolis Railway was destroyed with only the platforms, first class waiting rooms, and offices surviving. The train itself was described as “burnt out” and the station was immediately closed down with decisions about the future of the railway to be figured out after the war. When the time came to revisit the train line in 1945 there were major obstacles standing in the way of any hopes to reopen. The cost of rebuilding the station, the trains, and fixing the now-neglected tracks was going to be substantial and the fact that use of the line was beginning to decline even before the war made repair and reopening seem unnecessary. The Necropolis Railway was officially, and unexpectedly, permanently closed.
The London Necropolis Railway after the bombing of the London Blitz. Image via wikipedia.com
The London and Southwest Railway (which became the Southern Railway after 1923), and the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company began negotiations to determine what to do with the facilities. In December 1946 it was decided that the waiting rooms, caretaker areas, and the platforms themselves would be owned by Southern Railway while the office and other remaining portions would continue to be owned by the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company to either use or dispose of. They sold the site to the British Humane Association in May 1947 and the offices were relocated to Brookwood Cemetery.
As time went on the railway, and the practice of transporting the dead by rail, faded into obscurity. Portions of the property where the 1902 terminal was located was built over for new offices, the North and South Stations became North Bar and South Bar serving refreshments until they also closed, and the rails to the line into the cemetery were removed in 1947 leaving the former track bed to become a dirt path and eventually a walkway. Today there are still some remnants of the London Necropolis Railway peeking through to the modern day. In London the second building that served as the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company offices and the entrance to the first-class terminal on Westminster Bridge Road is still standing as well as some iron columns that once supported the tracks in Newnham Terrace. The North Station inside the cemetery was demolished in the early 1960s because of dry rot and South Station was closed in 1967 and used as a mortuary and storage building for five years. In September 1972 a fire broke out in South Station totally destroying the building leading to its demise by bulldozer that same year. All that remains of the two stations now are their platforms. One building that is still alive and utilized is the chapel that once belonged to South Station, now restored by the St. Edward Brotherhood who use the chapel and maintain a shrine there for the bones of St. Edward the Martyr.
In 2007 a piece of rail track laid out on the former track bed and a plaque were dedicated as a memorial to the railway and the tens of thousands of souls who found their final place of rest after taking a ride on a train.
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The memorial placed for the railway in 2007. Image via wikipedia.com.
The waters of Lake Superior have a notorious history with those who have tried to interact with it. Responsible for over 500 shipwrecks and allegedly taking the lives of nearly 10,000 people, it has earned the nickname “Graveyard of the Great Lakes” through the most accurate and unfortunate means. Rising up over these infamous waters on the edge of a rocky cliff is the sixty-four foot tall Big Bay Point Lighthouse, a structure that seems cheery despite the unfortunate tales churning under the surface of the lake below it. This lighthouse has seen many things during its 127-year history but the water is not the only place that has seen its share of tragedy.
The lighthouse at Big Bay Point opened on October 20th 1896 with its white light blazing 150 feet above the water every twenty seconds to warn ships traveling nearby. The lighthouse keeper was provided with a two-story brick structure on site that could house him and his family on one side of the building and his assistant and his family on the other side. On the thirty-three acres of land there was also two cisterns, an oil house, a garage, two brick outhouses, a dock, a well house, and a brick fog signal building all situated outside a forest. It takes a certain kind of person to live the life of a lighthouse keeper, and they sometimes have very strict requirements for their crew.
The first lighthouse keeper of Big Bay Point was H. (Harry) William Prior (sometimes written as Pryor). William was the eldest of three brothers who all had experience tending to lighthouses, but it was William who became notorious for his impossibly high standards and a temper that matched his gruff red hair. William was the ruler of his domain and his extremely detailed logbooks paint the picture of a belligerent man who felt his crew was lazy and untrustworthy no matter what they did. On November 11th 1897 William left the lighthouse in order to attend the funeral of his only sister, a six-mile journey that he did on foot. When he arrived back on November 18th 1897 and saw how his assistant Ralph Heater ran the lighthouse in his absence he made his extreme disappointment known. In his logbook he wrote:
“I can not [sic] see that the assistant has done any work around the station since I left. He has not the energy to carry him down the hill and if I speak to him about it he makes no answer but goes on just as if he did not hear me; he is so much under the control of his wife he has not the hart [sic] to do anything. She has annoyed me during the season by hanging around him and hindering him from working, and she is altogether a person totally unfit to be in a place like this as she is discontented and jealous and has succeeded in making life miserable for everyone at this station.”
The sheer disdain for Heater and his wife became a theme in the logbooks. On January 1st 1898 Prior wrote about how Heater “claimed” he hurt his back, but any thought that Prior might be concerned for his coworker is quickly dispelled by the entries in February where he writes: “Mr. Heater arrived from Marquette at 6 p.m. and walked the entire distance of 33 miles in 12 hours, including two rest stops over an hour each … pretty good gait for a lame man.” This was followed by an entry on February 27th reading “Mr. Heater came across the ice to the other side of Big Bay with his wife. It is Sunday and his back is not lame today.”
Perhaps it was best for both men that Heater ended up leaving the lighthouse and his role was taken on by George Beamer, but soon after his new post began he left to serve in the Spanish American War. Upon his departure he left his wife Jennie to take his place at the lighthouse making her the only woman to ever serve at the Big Bay Point Lighthouse. Once returned though, Prior and Beamer were constantly fighting, Beamer kept insisting he could not work because he hurt his back, and by October Prior was writing:
“Asst. Beamer complains of being sick and talks of leaving the station to go home to Detroit. He is too high strung for a light keeper’s asst, between himself and his wife this season I imagine that I am keeping a Home for the Helpless Poor instead of a U.S. Lighthouse. I and my family having to do the greater part of the work while they receive the pay.”
Michigan Lighthouse Keeper crew and families. Image via mynorth.com.
On November 1st 1898 Prior dismissed Beamer, his last written thoughts on him being “this Beamer…is without exception the most ungrateful and the meanest man I have ever met.” The two problematic assistants were gone, but this meant Prior needed a new assistant and his reputation was making it difficult to find a suitable replacement. Since no outsider seemed to meet his high standards, he decided to look within the lighthouse grounds and he soon made his nineteen-year-old son George his new assistant.
Perhaps the two had an understanding or they simply knew each other well enough to work together, but for over a year George and William tended to the lighthouse side by side. Then, in April of 1901 tragedy struck the Prior family. While working one day George slipped and sliced his leg down to the bone. There are differing accounts if William was there and they sought immediate treatment or if George, fearing his father’s temper, waited until he simply could not wait anymore. The nearest hospital was located in Marquette, Michigan and the thirty-mile journey by boat and then on foot had to be nothing short of agony. Young George was checked into the fifty-bed facility on April 18th and that night William, the ever-meticulous record keeper, noted in his logbook “he will have to remain in hospital for treatment.”
The injury and any delay in treatment would prove to be catastrophic to the young assistant. The wound was too severe to simply stitch up and it became infected. Eventually gangrene set in and quickly took over the tissue in his leg. Treatment and medication stopped working and almost two months later on June 13th George Prior died in the hospital. On that day his father wrote in his logbook, “1:30 p.m. Keeper summoned to Marquette to bury his son who died this morning.”
William Prior had a reputation for being the most difficult, the most demanding, and the hardest of iron fists but everything fell apart on that June morning. The death of his son completely shattered him and he spiraled into a deep state of depression. The work fell to the side and the entries in the logbook became less frequent and shorter until June 27th when the entry simply reads “General work.” That was the last entry written by the lighthouse keeper. On June 28th 1901William Prior disappeared. He was last seen walking into the woods on the grounds of the lighthouse and despite an extensive search he simply could not be found. The following fall his widow and four children piled onto a boat and headed for Marquette never to return to the lighthouse.
The following November 1902 a man named Fred Babcock was walking through the woods around the Big Bay Point Lighthouse when he made the horrible discovery. Hanging from a tree approximately half a mile from the lighthouse was a skeleton with some tufts of red hair still visible. An entry was made into the logbook that day and it read:
“Mr. Fred Babcock came to the station 12:30 pm. While hunting in the woods one and a half mile south of the station this noon he found a skeleton of a man hanging to a tree. We went to the place with him and found that the clothing and everything tally with the former keeper of this station who has been missing for seventeen months.”
Newspapers reported the finding in cold detail, writing about how the rope was tied “around the fleshless neck” and without mentioning the death of George, only reported that “…a few months over a year ago, Mr. Pryor wandered off in a fit of temporary insanity, and was never seen again…”
Unfortunately, another tragedy would be tied to the Big Bay Point Lighthouse almost fifty years after the body of William Prior was found in the woods. In 1941 the lighthouse was automated and like many other lighthouses it became a training location for the United States Army and the National Guard. In the 1950s large guns were installed on the cliff to use during practice shooting over Lake Superior and the soldiers camped out in the surrounding fields and woods. One of the men stationed at Big Bay Point was Korean War veteran and member of the 768th anti-aircraft battalion at Camp McCoy in Wisconsin, 38-year-old Lieutenant Coleman Peterson who was there with his wife Charlotte. Lt. Peterson was known to be a very jealous man and on at least one occasion he and Charlotte had gotten into a fight outside the nearby Lumberjack Tavern because he accused her of flirting with another soldier stationed near the Big Bay Lighthouse.
The Lumberjack Tavern was less than five miles from the lighthouse and it was frequented by those stationed there. On the night of July 31st 1952 Charlotte was out drinking at the tavern and she returned back home with a black eye. When her husband confronted her about it, she told him that the owner of the tavern raped her. Peterson left for the tavern and when he arrived just before 12:30 a.m. he walked through the screen door, went straight up to the bar where owner Maurice (Mike) Chenoweth was standing, and shot him six times at point blank range with a 9 mm German Luger automatic pistol. With Chenoweth dead behind the bar he calmly turned around and walked back out into the night as if the entire scene never happened.
Peterson was arrested and when he was brought into court on September 15th 1952 he was represented by John D. Voelker. Voelker used a defense called “irresistible impulse”, stating that Peterson killed Chenoweth due to a bout of temporary insanity. It was a defense that had not been used since 1886 but after only a few hours Peterson was found not guilty by reason of insanity on September 23, 1952. But, as stated in the court, this insanity was only temporary. He was examined days later, declared sane, and released to resume a normal life. Some accounts state that he fled the region, never paying Voelker and soon divorcing Charlotte. No evidence was ever found pointing to Chenoweth being guilty of the crime.
Peterson was free but John D. Voelker was not done with this case. Under the pen name Robert Traver he wrote the book Anatomy of a Murder based on the Peterson murder case. The book was on the bestseller list for sixty-five consecutive weeks and has sold more than four million copies in twenty languages. In 1959 the book was adapted into a film starring Jimmy Stewart. A rare occurrence at the time, parts of the film were shot on location at the Lumberjack Tavern where the original murder took place and in 2012 the film was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
The Lumerjack Tavern with sign advertising Anatomy of a Murder outside. Image via remax.com.
Today, the Lumberjack Tavern is still standing, its walls filled with newspaper clippings and with signs out front proclaiming it as the actual place where the crimes of Anatomy of a Murder unfolded. The Big Bay Point Lighthouse also still stands in the same place where tragedy unfolded in 1901. Today, it operates as a bed and breakfast and its current owners are well aware of its history, partially because there are reports that its past is still very much present at the lighthouse. As told by the current owner to NorthernExpress.com in 2021, “It was haunted when I acquired it…” and there have been reports of footsteps, things moving in other rooms, faucets turning on, lights turning on and off, and some report seeing split-second glimpses of the red-haired William Prior in mirrors, still watching over the lighthouse he lived for and that eventually took the lives of both him and his son.
When the Big Bay Point Lighthouse was officially opened it was meant to be a literal beacon, guiding those away from danger. Its light could not save everyone though, and within its first fifty-two years both William Prior and Lieutenant Coleman Peterson succumbed to “temporary insanity” and became tied to some of the darkest chapters of the lighthouse’s history.
Big Bay Point Lighthouse circa 2019. Image via Rossograph on Wikipedia.com
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Sources:
The Tragedy and Haunting at The Big Bay Lighthouse by Mike Sonnenburg. June 6th 2016. lostinmichigan.net/tragedy-haunting-big-bay-lighthouse/.
It’s a fun fact, the kind that comes out during parties, trivia games, or just in casual conversation. “Hey, did you know Abraham Lincoln is in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame?” As odd as it may sound, it is partially true. Before he became one of the most important figures in American history young Lincoln was many things, a self-taught student, rail-splitter, and a boatman to name a few. But, one of the biggest turning points of his life came to him as a young clerk where a simple show of athletic prowess would tie him to a murder trial decades later.
By 1831 Lincoln was living in New Salem, Illinois and working as a clerk in a grocery store owned by Denton Offutt while studying law. He was only twenty-two years old but the six-foot-four-inch tall Lincoln had developed a reputation for being a formidable wrestler with an undefeated string of wins in the catch-as-catch-can style of hand-to-hand wrestling. This type of reputation spread quickly in the rough and tumble town of New Salem, and it caught the ears of The Clary’s Grove Boys, a nearby gang of men who spent their days drinking, fighting, pranking people, and spreading a general storm of rowdiness wherever they traveled. Offutt was continually impressed by his new employee, openly bragging about how Lincoln was mentally and physically superior to any of The Clary’s Grove Boys and that he could easily take any of them down in a fight. The Clary’s Grove Boys heard the claim loud and clear and their “champion” Jack Armstrong was up for the challenge.
The accounts of the fight between Abraham Lincoln and Jack Armstrong vary depending on the source. Some accounts say that the battle lines were drawn clearly between Lincoln and Armstrong while others say that Lincoln bet Armstrong ten dollars that he could find a man who could beat him and on the day of the fight no one showed leading to Lincoln calmly stating “Look here, Jack, my man isn’t here yet, but rather than lose that ten dollars I will wrestle with you myself.” Armstrong was no small opponent, but he had no idea who he was tangling with when he locked arms with Lincoln. Given his reputation as being a bully the entire town came out to see the brawl and the two men exchanged blows and grappled with each other, each unable to pin the other to the ground but with Lincoln clearly having the upper hand. Accounts say that at one point Lincoln grabbed Armstrong by the neck and held him at arm’s length while shaking him, laughing as other members of The Clary’s Grove Boys struck his legs with zero effect. There is an unclear picture as to who even won this fight, but what is known is that at the end of it a battered and bruised Armstrong shook Lincoln’s hand and declared “Boys, Abe Lincoln is the best fellow that ever broke into this settlement. He shall be one of us.”
Print “There was a Man: Abe Lincoln Licks Jack Armstrong” by Harold von Schmidt for the July 1949 issue of Esquire Magazine. Image via www.lincolncollection.org.
The fight with Armstrong changed Lincoln’s entire persona in New Salem, making him a beloved and well-respected figure in the town. He became a voice of reason to the hijinks of The Clary’s Grove Boys, sometimes stepping in as mediator and diffusing disagreements before they came to blows. He also got his first taste of leadership, later being appointed as captain of the local militia unit and moving on to serve in the Black Hawk War. Perhaps the most surprising outcome was the bond between Lincoln and Armstrong who became extremely close friends after their brawl. As years went on Lincoln was welcomed into the Armstrong family home of Jack and his wife Hannah and he would often stay there both for friendly visits and when he found himself without work. When Jack and Hannah welcomed their son William into the world in 1833, Lincoln would often rock the baby to sleep during his visits. No one in the room could have predicted how their paths would cross one day.
Lincoln’s career in politics and law continued to grow steadily over the next decades but while Lincoln was building his fabled career in law the twenty-four year old William “Duff” Armstrong found himself on the other side of it. In August of 1857 a religious camp meeting held in Mason county Illinois was winding down after multiple days of congregating. On August 29th 1857, the night before the meeting was to officially conclude, Duff and some others were spending time around the whiskey wagons and they decided to sample the goods. After drinking heavily Duff lay down on a bench to sleep off the effects of the alcohol and he was left alone until approximately 8pm when a local farmer by the name of James P. Metzker rode his horse into the vicinity. Metzker was also intoxicated and he made the fateful decision to grab the sleeping man’s leg, spit in his face, and drag him to the ground waking the sleeping beast of Armstrong and causing the two of them to get into a heated brawl. According to Duff’s brother, A.P. Armstrong, the two men eventually stopped throwing fists and decided to have some more drinks together. He goes on to state that after this friendly exchange Metzker proceeded to get into another fight with another man that was drinking with them named J.H. Norris. Eventually Metzker left the scene on his horse, falling off several times in the process but eventually making it home. The only three that truly know what happened that night are Armstrong, Norris, and Metzker, but two days later Metzker was dead, having succumbed to two fractures to his skull that doctors concluded could not have come from him falling off his horse. The Mason County Sheriff arrested both Norris and Armstrong for the murder of James P. Metzker.
William “Duff” Armstrong. Image via hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu.
Armstrong was facing certain peril. Accused of cold-blooded murder alongside Norris, who had already escaped jail for a murder charge once before, the outlook was bleak. While awaiting trial in jail his father Jack Armstrong died but the man had a deathbed wish, he wanted to call in a favor from his old friend, the young attorney Abraham Lincoln, and ask that he defend his son in court. Hannah Armstrong wrote to Lincoln and his response was swift:
“I have just heard of your deep affliction and your son’s arrest for murder. I can hardly believe that he can be capable of the crime alleged against him. It does not seem possible. I am anxious that he should be given a fair trial at any rate, and the gratitude for your long-continued kindness to me in adverse circumstances prompts me to offer my humble service gratuitously on his behalf.”
Lincoln packed his bags and traveled to Beardstown, Illinois ready to defend the man he once rocked to sleep as a baby in the battle for his life.
The Beardstown Courthouse where the Almanac Trial took place still standing today. Image via abrahamlincolnonline.org
The trial began on May 8th 1858 and the charges against Armstrong and Norris were grim, the indictment stating the Norris struck Metzker in the back of the head with a large piece of wood before Armstrong struck him in and around the right eye with a “slung-shot”, a metal weight held in a long strip of leather, causing “mortal bruises” that lead to his death. The prosecution greatly rested on the words of Charles Allen, a man who claimed he witnessed the assault and knew it was Armstrong and Norris because he could clearly see them by the light of the full moon overhead. It may have seemed like and open and shut case, Norris had a criminal past and Allen clearly saw the men attack Metzker. But then it was Lincoln’s turn to speak.
Up until this point Lincoln sat quietly in the courtroom, “with his head thrown back, his steady gaze apparently fixed upon one spot of the blank ceiling, entirely oblivious to what was happening about him, and without a single variation of feature or noticeable movement.…” When the time came for him to cross examine Allen, Lincoln had very specific questions for the star witness. When asked for details about that night Allen repeatedly insisted he saw it all happen from approximately 150 feet away, the brutal scene being lit by the full moon overhead “about where the sun would be at one o’clock in the afternoon.” Lincoln asked more questions, pressing him about the location and time of the crime over and over again. The camp meeting was taking place in a very densely wooded area that was quite dark at night. Lincoln joked, did Allen have a candle with him in order to see? But the witness persisted that he saw it all happen clearly in front of him and that his certainty was fully placed in what he saw under the light of the bright full moon. He was given every opportunity to change his words.
When Lincoln was satisfied that Allen was given a proper chance and that he had made himself clear about the moon lighting his view of the crime, he submitted into evidence an almanac that contained information about the night the assault occurred. The defense was swift and crushing. The pages of the almanac contained a wealth of information, including the position and phase of the moon the night of August 29th 1857 and it simply did not match the account of the witness. The volume was inspected by the court, the attorneys, and by Judge Harriott all of which confirmed the information on the page, at the time of the assault the moon was no where near a position to be illuminating the scene. Rather than being directly overhead as Allen stated, Lincoln said the moon was in fact setting, which would have left the scene amid the heavy forest in significant darkness, certainly not illuminated brightly enough to see the distinct faces of Armstrong and Norris.
Lincoln for the Defense painted by Norman Rockwell in 1962 depicting Lincoln during the Duff Armstrong trail. Image via https://www.lincolnshrine.org/
Everything the prosecution had deflated within moments as members of the jury and some in the courtroom burst into laughing. Judge Harriott commented that Lincoln was wrong about one thing, that according to the almanac the moon would have been coming up at the alleged time instead of going down as he stated. Lincoln’s response was simple, “It serves my purpose just as well, just coming up or just going down, as you admit it was not over head as Mr. Allen swore it was.”
With a simple turn of a page all credibility of the prosecution was destroyed. Lincoln had other evidence including a doctor stating the injuries to the front of Metzker’s face were the result of the blow to the back of his head, but it did not matter. The almanac sealed the deal in the minds of many present in the courtroom. As the jury went into the jury room Lincoln approached Hannah Armstrong and told her that her son would be “cleared before sundown”, a prediction that quickly came true. Within an hour the jury unanimously voted to clear Duff Armstrong of all charges.
After being reunited with his mother and getting a talk from Lincoln about how he needs to care for his mother and become the man his father was Duff Armstrong went on to live a long life, dying on May 5th 1899 at sixty-six years old. Norris, the man who allegedly inflicted the blow to the back of Metzker’s head, was convicted and this time he was unable to avoid jail. He was sentenced to eight years in a state penitentiary.
“The Almanac Case” became on of the most well know chapters in the law career of Abraham Lincoln and was even used in campaigns against him during his senatorial race and his later run for the presidency where opponents alleged that he used an altered almanac to keep his old family friends safe. Lincoln became the sixteenth President of the United States just two years later in 1860. He was honored by the National Wresting Hall of Fame with the Outstanding American Award in 1992. Today, visitors to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame can visit the Lincoln Lobby with a mural showing the famous brawl between Lincoln and Jack Armstrong that would lead to a lifelong friendship and save Armstrong’s son only two years before Lincoln became President of the United States.
