9 The Billiken Craze 9 Irish Clay Pipes 9 The Videophone 9 Berners Street Hoax of 1810
Wreck of the
SS Edmund Fitzgerald Catherine Howard The Rose Without a Thorn
BRING ON THE CLOWNS
oct/Nov 2017
HISTORY
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The Irish Clay Pipe — Page 8
CONTENTS
Jack Dempsey — Page 12
Bring on the Clowns — Page 21
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017 Opening Notes ........................................................... 6 Bluetooth; Chapbooks
The Irish Clay Pipe ...................................................... 8 Joseph Grandinetti looks at the history, popularity and decline of the iconic Irish smoke
Jack Dempsey: The Life of the "Manassa Mauler" ..12 Brian D'Ambrosio looks at the life of the heavyweight champion from southern Colorado
The Rose Without a Thorn ....................................... 16 Laura Grande tells how Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, continues to fascinate – and confound – historians
Bring on the Clowns ................................................ 21 Gloria Tietgens Sladek discovers that the clowning spirit is as old as civilization itself
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"The Most Famous House in All of London"........... 24 David A. Norris looks at the Berners Street Hoax of 1810 Cover Credit: Courtesy of the Jack Dempsey Birthplace Society
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History Magazine October/November 2017
Secrets of the Desert — Page 35
Wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald — Page 44
The Billiken Craze — Page 49
The Forward Pass..................................................... 31 David Funk looks at the play that saved the game of American football
The Secrets of the Desert ....................................... 35 David Lewiston Sharpe examines hermits, monks and early Egyptian monasteries
The Videophone: Unwanted Orphan.................... 40 Garry Berman suggests that the videophone concept may have failed in its early incarnations, but has become entrenched in 21st century life
The Wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald................ 44
Is Your Subscription About to Expire? Check the back of this magazine to see the expiry date. Call Toll-Free 1-888-326-2476 or visit www.history-magazine.com to renew or subscribe! Or see the order form on page 30 of this issue.
Laureen Sauls-Lessard looks back at the 1975 marine tragedy on Lake Superior
The Billiken Craze.................................................... 49 James Breig looks at how an odd toy captured the world, but cost its creator a fortune
Hindsight .................................................................. 53 A look at books and other media for your consideration
Questions or comments? Call 1-888-326-2476 or visit www.history-magazine.com October/November 2017 History Magazine
5
TRIVIA
BLUETOOTH:
Modern Technology or Viking King?
I
t is mid-tenth century Denmark and King Harald Blåtand has accomplished an almost impossible task. He has unified a number of warring factions, who were previously blood enemies, in the early Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Through extraordinary public works projects and abandoning pagan beliefs, he has forged an innovative, centralized economic system. Today, he is more commonly known by his unusual English name of Harald Bluetooth. There are several theories as to how he came by this name. One theory states that it is possible that he had a bad tooth that was dark − hence the name “Bluetooth”. Another supposes that because he was royalty, he dressed in blue and was given this nickname. King Harald reigned from 958 to 987 AD. According to author and historian Jonathan Clements, Harald accepted Christianity, possibly because of political expediency, in a time when much of Europe was heading in that direction. The move was advantageous when dealing with other rulers who had already converted. Harald also oversaw, according to Clements, the construction of five massive ring forts. “The Trelleborg forts were an impressive symbol of kingly power and are thought to have functioned as places to collect the king’s tax.” King Harald “…made a decisive step towards Denmark as a centralized kingdom”.
CHAPBOOKS
Public domain
Over a millennium later, in the latter part of the twentieth century, King Harald Bluetooth’s name once again became famous. An amazing achievement in modern technology enabled data to be wirelessly and securely exchanged between a number of different electronic devices. In the 1990s, the communications technology giant, Ericsson, commissioned an employee of theirs to “replace cables, without using more power than a cable….”. Dr. Jaap Haartsen and his associate Sven Mattisson developed what we now call
F
rom the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, first in Britain and then in America, peddlers known as “chapmen” hawked their trinkets and notions far and wide as they travelled through towns and across the countryside. These wandering vendors, although sometimes viewed with suspicion, were nonetheless met with a warm welcome wherever they went. They brought news and gossip to the ears of rural residents anxious to hear what was happening in faraway places, or even just a few miles down the road. These tradesmen carried with them an assortment of useful items – everything from scissors, gloves, ribbons and whistles, to buttons, spices, and seeds – but one of their most popular offerings was the humble chapbook. Chapbooks, “penny merriments”, or “pennyworths”, were short, inexpensively made, paper booklets, priced at about a penny each. Although the booklets were “cheap”, the word “chap” likely owes its origins to the Old English “céap” meaning, “trade”. Designed for the poorer classes, chapbooks covered every subject imaginable, with something for everyone, young and old. A typical chapbook was about fourteen by eleven centimeters (or roughly six by four inches) in size and ranged in length from eight to forty pages. Flimsy creations lacking protective covers, chapbooks were rarely long-lived. Some of them resembled do-it-yourself kits of yesteryear, with purchasers obliged to assemble the chapbooks themselves. They would slit the folded pages and then stitch or pin them together.
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History Magazine October/November 2017
Chapmen travelled from house to house offering their wares for sale. Chapbooks usually sold out quickly. The peddler, dated 1868. Library of Congress
The booklets might be well designed, or might suffer from poorly set type and off-kilter images. Enchanting woodcut illustrations accompanied the text, but no one minded when the pictures and text were mismatched. Chapbooks appeared as anonymous works, with content often lifted from unnamed sources. In an age of increasing literacy, pennyworths played an important role in transmitting folklore and
“Bluetooth” technology. Interestingly, Ericsson’s lab is located in Lund, Sweden which is, of course, in modern-day Scandinavia. The idea of what to name the new technology came from a totally different source. According to Intel Free Press News, one of Intel’s mobile computing engineers named Jim Kardach “was instrumental in bringing together Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia, and Toshiba to form the Bluetooth SIG in 1998.” SIG stands for Special Interest Group. Kardach played “mediator” and the companies “quickly agreed on a common goal to create a small, low-power consuming, low-cost, short-range radio with built in security and the ability to connect with other devices.” While the planning was going on, Mr. Kardach was reading a book about Vikings wherein King Harald Bluetooth
culture. Even in rural areas, some people could read, at least at an elementary level. A neighbor might read a chapbook to a friend, or school-age children might share stories from a chapbook with their parents. In this way, the contents of chapbooks circulated through communities. Some chapbooks were simple alphabet books. Others designed for children offered a selection of well-known nursery rhymes or fairy tales. Crime stories or certain humorous tales recounted in pennyworths were often meant for adults. One found collections of riddles and songs, moral tales and prophecies. Some religious groups distributed their tracts in chapbooks known as “godlinesses”. And chapmen had their own special chapbooks, providing maps and information about towns they would visit. In later years, abridged versions
was mentioned. He suggested naming the technology after the Viking who unified Denmark and much of Scandinavia. It made sense in light of the fact that the goal of this new technology was to unify electronic devices. The familiar Bluetooth logo also has significance. Harald Bluetooth’s initials, H and B were chosen. The early Scandinavians used the Norse runic alphabet so the symbols for H and B were combined to design the familiar logo. Now in 2017, in the twenty-first century, Bluetooth technology is used by a majority of consumer electronics ranging from medical devices, sport and fitness devices, cars, smart homes and TVs, and is in a constant state of development. Today, Bluetooth has united the technological world and King Harald’s name will live on indefinitely. — Bonnie Hart of popular fiction appeared in chapbooks; many people first read Robinson Crusoe, for instance, in this format. Serious philosophical works of a political nature, such as Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, reached a large audience thanks to its publication as a chapbook. As newspapers and novels became more widespread and available to a greater segment of the population, the sales of chapbooks declined. By Victorian times, they were referred to as “penny dreadfuls” and were considered distinctly “low class” and sensationalist in nature. But over time, pennyworths assumed new forms to suit modern tastes, evolving into magazines for adults and storybooks for children. The “chapbook” of our time, treasured once again as it was centuries ago, is an attractive vehicle for sharing poetry. — Sue Lisk
Volume 19 Number 1
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017 PUBLISHER & EDITOR
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October/November 2017 History Magazine
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IRISH HISTORY
The clay pipe given to me by my cousin, made at least a century ago in Andrew Curley’s shop in Knockcroghery, county Roscommon. Image courtesy of the author
THE IRISH CLAY PIPE
JOSEPH GRANDINETTI LOOKS AT THE HISTORY, POPULARITY AND DECLINE OF THE ICONIC IRISH SMOKE
A
t an extended family gathering in county Galway last summer, my cousin David Quinn placed a small weathered clay pipe in my palm. He had found it, remarkably unbroken, in a bog located within a few miles of the homestead of our ancestors. The gift embodied our shared passion for antiquity and it completely fascinated me. It had a bone-like patina from age and use. The pipe’s bowl was black inside with the soot of its last smoke, at least a century before. Barely visible on the stem was “A. Curley”. I learned this was Andrew Curley, operator of a bustling clay pipe factory in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Knockcroghery, county Roscommon. As we’ll see, the little town’s lifecycle in the industry mirrored the broader trajectory of clay pipe popularity in Ireland.
TOBACCO’S ARRIVAL Tobacco had been used for many centuries in the Americas by the time it crossed the ocean with returning European explorers and seafarers. Columbus’ journals refer to “certain dried leaves which gave off a distinct fragrance” received from natives and then naively discarded by the captain and crew. By the second half of the 16th century, tobacco smoking was introduced to England and by proximity, Ireland.
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Historical opinion varies on whom deserves credit for the introduction; be it formally by the likes of Sirs John Hawkins, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, or more clandestinely in port cities via Portuguese or Spanish sailors. What’s certain is that intrigued observers soon became users. Within a short span of years, smoking caught on at Elizabethan court and the Queen’s mimicking subjects fanned the flames of the fashionable new habit.
History Magazine October/November 2017
For the first hundred years, tobacco remained relatively expensive and was attainable only in small quantities to the middle/ lower classes. To render smoking economical, early pipes were made of English or Dutch clay and had tiny bowls that held just a smidgen of the prized commodity.
As tobacco use spread, sides were chosen: those touting its remedial and medicinal benefits versus the opposed, who warned of irreparable harm to bodies, minds, and souls (yes, the Church weighed in).
Sovereigns were also quick to impose taxation. But demand surged anyway and tobacco farming in the American colonies boomed in response. Relations improved between Spain and England as they carved up the “New World” and a favorable trade atmosphere enabled prices to ease.
A SMALL PLEASANTRY FOR THE PEASANTRY By the mid-1700s, clay pipes were commonplace in Irish homes. Over the next century and a half, even the humblest of thatched cottages had a niche near the hearth reserved for pipes. During these times, most of Ireland’s population lived an agrarian hand-to-mouth existence; their survival tied to subsistence farming on small holdings rented from wealthy (and often absentee)
landlords. Men and women alike turned to their pipes for a calming bit of respite from the desperation. The instrument of choice was the duidin (pronounced “doodjeen” - a diminutive of the Gaelic word duid, meaning stump). These portable short-stemmed clay pipes had “stumpy” bowls and were sturdy enough for frequent use, yet quite susceptible to breakage when dropped. But, broken duidins were actually inexpensive enough to be disposable. The notion of a “throwaway item” was previously absurd for the resourceful peasantry. Another novelty of clay pipes was their adornment in an otherwise harshly utilitarian world for household objects. Pipe makers often stamped decorative images into their products. Advertisements, political slogans and even Irish independence propaganda were popular themes, transforming the modest duidin into a form of personal expression.
IN GOOD TIMES AND BAD Clay pipes were fixtures in rural Irish life. They were wedged in mouths at weddings and wakes, and close at hand for all other occasions, be they private or gregarious. To ward off solitude and the elements, neighbors often assembled nightly in a hospitable home for storytelling, singing, and good old gossip. Picture it: the group huddled around an eloquent elder, who would set a wood splinter aflame in the turf fire, spark up his duidin and take a long draw. As he weaved an engaging tale, he would pause to take a puff, empty spent ashes from the pipe, to pinch some tobacco into the bowl, and/or to reignite it… cleverly keeping his audience suspended. The pipe itself was as vital to the story as its
An illustration of a farmer in rural Ireland with his duidin ca.1890. Library of Congress
witty ending. Traditional Irish wakes were a ritualistic fusion of ancient Celtic practices with Christian influences. The deceased would be laid out in their home and the viewing was at least a two-day vigil, a combination of grieving and carousal. Hosting a “proper” wake obliged the immediate family to provide adequate food, drink, and
at least a gross of duidins (12 dozen) – an absolute necessity. It would be ill-mannered for an attendee not to accept a pipe, and in doing so, they often said, “May the Lord have mercy upon their soul.” This custom led to a wake pipe itself being dubbed a “Lord ha’ mercy”. Since the body was not to be left unattended until the burial, proceedings carried through the night. Successive waves of mourners became unrecognizable in the clouds of duidin fumes. This wasn’t entirely unintentional. Old beliefs held that pipe smoke hid the corpse from unfriendly spirits, helping to usher the departed in a safe journey “across”.
THE CURLEYS OF KNOCKCROGHERY Manufacturers sprung up across Ireland, churning out clay pipes in the expected spots like Dublin, Waterford, Cork, Belfast, and so on. But near the country’s geographic center, the unassuming town of Knockcroghery became a center of productivity as well. Pipe making started there around
Some old fractured clay pipes found in Ennis, county Clare and the Shannon River near Limerick. Note that several have intricate designs imprinted on them. Image courtesy of the author
October/November 2017 History Magazine
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IRISH HISTORY Andrew Curley “pipe manufacturer” and family, including his son Patrick, in the 1901 census of Knockcroghery in county Roscommon. Image accessed at nationalarchives.ie
1700 and the first written reference to a Knockcroghery pipe maker, Thomas Buckley, appeared in the 1749 census of the Diocese of Elphin. In his 1832 Statistical Survey of the County of Roscommon, Isaac Weld devoted a few insightful pages to the place, saying it was “prosperous, owing to its little manufactory of tobacco pipes… which has been established for a considerable time.” Eight kilns sustained the town’s output of about 500 gross of pipes per week and Weld remarked that the “humble” Knockcroghery specimens were “as tough and as white as that of the pipes of superior size and workmanship from other countries.” Among the few criticisms was his astonishment that women weren’t permitted to work in production. Weld “attempted to use a few words in argument,” mentioning women’s utility in pipe making in Holland and other countries. His complaint was hastily snuffed out. The craft in Knockcroghery flourished through the next several decades, peaking near the turn of the 20th century. It was called “the home of the Irish (pipe making) industry” in a 1901 article in The Globe, a London
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newspaper. The same year, the Irish census shows 11 out of its 23 households involved in the trade, as were all four in Creggan, a small annexed townland. A handful operated onsite facilities and others had family members employed as pipe makers/finishers – including a few women! There were at least two larger clay pipe factories; one owned by Andrew Curley near the town center (the
maker of my duidin) and the other was William Curley’s, less than a half mile away. The two were not brothers, but likely shared some degree of cousinship. Andrew operated his busy pipemaking shop with his son, Patrick. William Curley’s business was somewhat grander in scale and he appears to have been a masterful marketer based on his prolific newspaper advertisements. In a lengthy letter in the Westmeath Examiner in April 1883, William Curley advocated for the importance of pipe making to Ireland as a native industry and boastfully proposed “I can give employment to twenty men and their families and…I can supply as good an article as any foreigner.” In October of 1885, via the Roscommon Messenger, William declared he could deliver his “celebrated tobacco pipes in any quantity which may be required to any part of the country…supplied by either rail or cart.” He added, his pipes “were so well known, that they did not need any recommendation (and)… were better value than those that could be obtained in England or Scotland.”
DOWNTURN, THEN DEMISE IN FLAMES
In this photo from around 1900, an older member of the staff at Belmont House in county Carlow is enjoying her clay pipe, a typical duidin. Image by permission of Carlow Historian, Michael Purcell
History Magazine October/November 2017
William Curley died in the winter of 1909, succumbing to bronchitis. The 1911 census shows his widow Bridget as the owner of his pipe factory and down the road, Andrew Curley’s facility was carrying on as well. But the census revealed more. Compared to a decade earlier, the number of pipe making households in Knockcroghery dropped more than 50 percent. This reflected a wider reality that the industry was waning, in Ireland and beyond. Some pipe smokers were swapping their clays for briar and meerschaum models, but the
allure of mass-produced cigarettes was at the core of the decline.
During World War I, tobacco companies doled out complimentary cigarettes to military men and by 1916, they were included in soldiers’ daily meal rations.
The promotion paid off after the armistice, as millions of cigarette smokers returned to their homes and spread the habit – just as pipe-smoking Elizabethan courtiers had done over 300 years before. The tragic end of the Knockcroghery era occurred in the early morning hours of 21 June 1921, in the midst of troubled times during the War of Irish Independence. The afternoon before, a popular British Brigadier-General was boldly assassinated in Athlone, about 10 miles away. In the ensuing hysteria, misdirected vengeance placed Knockcroghery in the crosshairs. A sizable group of enraged “Black and Tans” (an appendage of the British military forces) disguised in plain clothes and masks, stormed the village. They summarily set the homes and shops ablaze; including the clay pipe factories. An article in the Irish Independent described the scene at Andrew Curley’s. His son Patrick said, “he was aroused by the crashing of glass. His door was burst in and two men wearing trench coats entered…without getting time to dress, he was put out at the muzzle of the revolver. The floor was sprinkled with petrol and the house set on fire.” In the wake of the chaos, all of the village’s buildings, save a scant few, lay scorched in complete ruin. Claims were filed, some
Some late 19th century/very early 20th century pipe heads unearthed recently in Knockcroghery; including specimens from both William and Andrew Curley, two bearing slogans of the Irish self government movement ("Home Rule" and "43"), a decorative weave design, and the popular "Ben Nevis Cutty" style. Image courtesy of the author
damages awarded, and there was rebuilding in the next few years, but clay pipe making did not resume in the community. Andrew Curley died at 85 years of age in October of 1923; the official cause of death was simply “old age”. But presumably the elderly pipe maker’s heart had shattered beyond repair, like one of his duidins, during the terrible events of June 1921.
UP FROM THE ASHES Ethel Kelly, coincidently a native of Athlone, moved to Knockcroghery and unknowingly purchased the prior home of Andrew Curley. Digging around her property while gardening, she unearthed multitudes of broken clay pipe bowls and stems. She researched and discovered the history of her home, and in 1997, Ethel’s artistic inclinations led
to a renaissance. With original molds from the 1890s and using traditional techniques, she began handcrafting clay pipes in her shop, which doubles as an educational visitor center. Visit online at www.oghamwish.com/storepage 2675925.aspx. Old Andrew Curley would surely be pleased and Isaac Weld’s objection proved visionary – it took an enterprising woman to bring back Knockcroghery’s clay pipe manufacturing! JOE GRANDINETTI is a CPA with a keen enthusiasm for genealogy, history, and ethnic culture. He contributes regular articles to Internet Genealogy and Your Genealogy Today magazines. He resides in Mountain Top, PA with his wife and children.
October/November 2017 History Magazine
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BOXING
Undated photo of Jack Dempsey. Courtesy of the Jack Dempsey Birthplace Society
J
JACK DEMPSEY: THE LIFE OF THE “MANASSA MAULER”
BRIAN D’AMBROSIO LOOKS AT THE LIFE OF THE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION FROM SOUTHERN COLORADO 12
History Magazine October/November 2017
ack Dempsey was born on the eve of 24 June 1895, in a log cabin in the frontier town of Manassa, Colorado. Hyrum and Celia Dempsey ......had stopped with their brood in the southern part of Colorado, in the San Luis valley, on a meandering passage from Mudfork, West Virginia. Around 1880, a missionary group of Latter-Day Saints visited Dempsey’s parents and converted them to Mormonism. Jack’s parents arrived in the company of “350 Mormon Saints”, as the original settlers adapted to the western soil. Hyrum Dempsey, a schoolteacher, descended from Irish stock and there was a hint of “Indian blood in both parents” revealed in Jack’s “blueblack hair and high cheekbones”. They named him William Harrison Dempsey and called him “Harry”, but at 16, he went his own direction and adopted his own names. The future heavyweight boxing champion was born into a community of pioneers that had been able to withstand cold, epidemic, hunger, pain and the rigors of frontier life. In his early years, Jack recalled enduring adversity and facing down any challenge that confronted him. While he never adhered to Mormonism in his adult life, he did often comment that his upbringing in Manassa was where he learned to “enjoy work” and “to look on the bright side”. Like other frontier boys, he loved the outdoors. He learned to fish, to swim, and to enjoy the beauties nature provided. Jack rode astride his horse, “Topsy”, and usually headed for the swimming hole near local “Dead Man’s
Gulch”. Another place of popularity was “the Devil’s Kitchen”, a rocky hill projecting from the bank of “Little River”, south of Manassa. The rocky formation provided ovens and tables and chairs for cooking and eating. Jack and his friends cooked hot dogs, boiled eggs, and baked potatoes. Jack attended church and Sunday school in the San Luis Stake Tabernacle, which was built the year that he was born. He’d ride burros on Sunday afternoons. He indulged and reveled in fisticuffs as a child. One incident occurred when a fellow student handed Jack some paper to be burned in the old pot-bellied stove which heated the room. Concealed in the paper was a shotgun shell. The teacher reprimanded Jack when the explosion disrupted the class and her instruction. Jack accepted the lecture without complaint, but as soon as school was dismissed, he soundly thrashed the guilty classmate. On a visit to Manassa years later, his first question was, “Is Mooney Daniels still around here? I liked that guy. He was the only boy in town I couldn’t lick.” Many locals were proud to admit that Jack had at one time or another rubbed their noses in the dirt. Dempsey’s father and his two older brothers worked as miners, and the family moved frequently around Colorado and Utah in pursuit of mining jobs. At the age of 8, Jack Dempsey took his first job picking crops on a farm near Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Dempsey started boxing in the Colorado mining camps in 1914 under the nom de plume of “Kid Blackie”. For about three years, “Kid Blackie” fought in mountain mining camps, often bare-knuckled for a dollar a fight, feeling lucky indeed when he received two. His transportation was the rods of railroad cars.
Between saloon bouts, he labored in the mines, shined shoes, picked fruit and hustled odd jobs, riding the rods on trains and sleeping in hobo camps. His good friend, Frank Daniels, recalled one of Jack’s “hobo trips” in one of Jack Dempsey’s biographies. “We went to Salt Lake City where we lived for a week in a saloon. You see, in those days we could get free food with an occasional five-cent beer. Jack carried with him an old worn-out pair of boxing gloves and often picked up a buck fighting anyone who cared or dared, to exchange punches with him. It was on this trip that I saw him kayoed by Jim Flynn in the first round in Murray, Utah. But it wasn’t long until the decision was well reversed.”
Jack Dempsey fights Jess Willard on 4 July 1919 in Toledo, Ohio. Courtesy of the Jack Dempsey Birthplace Society
Meanwhile, his older brother, Bernie, was boxing as Jack Dempsey, having borrowed the name of an old-time middleweight known as “the Nonpareil”. One night in Denver, Harry substituted for Bernie and was introduced as Jack Dempsey. At age 19, the name stuck. (Manassa was “only one of many stops for a drifting family”, but years
later, the fact that Mrs. Dempsey had given birth there inspired Damon Runyon, the sportswriter, to christen the new champion the “Manassa Mauler”.) Such was the start of a long, successful career. On 4 July 1919, Dempsey was to wrest the heavyweight championship from Jess Willard who weighed in 58 pounds heavier than Jack, five inches taller, and with an advantage of six inches in reach. Willard went down seven times in the first round, and “one left hook had broken his cheekbone in 13 places”. After two more rounds, the vulnerable Willard was spared further shellacking when one of his cornermen signaled surrender by throwing a towel into the ring. Dempsey drew boxing’s first million-dollar gate in fighting Frenchman Georges Carpentier on 2 July 1921 and boxing’s largest paid attendance in his rematch with Gene Tunney on 22 September 1927. (Tunney dethroned a rusty Dempsey, on 23 September 1926, in front of 120,000 fans in Philadelphia.) The second Dempsey-Tunney fight has remained one of the most discussed in the history of boxing. Seventy-four radio stations carried the Dempsey-Tunney bout to a potential audience of 15 million listeners. After Dempsey floored Tunney in the seventh round, Dempsey made the mistake of not returning to a neutral corner and the referee, Dave Barry, stopped the count and escorted him across the ring. Once undistracted, the referee began the count all over. Tunney rose to his feet at “9” – it was established that he had had about 14 seconds to recover – and won a solid decision, scoring a knockdown in the ninth round. Dempsey followers believed
October/November 2017 History Magazine
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BOXING
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Tunney was rescued by the long count; Tunney always insisted he was “in full control” throughout. In his autobiography, Dempsey conceded that he forgot all about the ‘neutral corner’ rule: “It’s hard to stop what you’re doing, standing over a guy and waiting for him to get up.” He continued to be active in the ring until 1940 when he retired to attend to his many business interests, include one as a successful restaurateur in New York City. While tallies vary and official records are murky, one source lists that he had a total of 81 bouts, winning 60 (49 by KO), losing seven times (the remainder were draws). In 1950, Dempsey was named by the Associated Press as the greatest heavyweight of the First Half of the Twentieth Century. Dempsey achieved eminence in a sport that has not always been free from suspicion of corruption, yet no breath of impropriety had ever been associated with his name. In a foreword to a biography he authorized to be written about himself, he set down his philosophy: “In looking back at my days in the ring, I pride myself that I always was honest with the public and with myself.” Sportswriter Grantland Rice said Dempsey “was perhaps the finest gentleman, in the literal sense of gentle man,” he had met in half a century of writing sports; Dempsey “never knowingly hurt anyone” except in the line of business. In 1979, Dempsey suffered a small stroke and was plagued by heart problems to the end of his life. He was hospitalized in April 1982 when a pacemaker was implanted. He spent most of his later years enjoying “a simple, private life” with his fourth wife. “The Manassa Mauler”, although buried in a New York City
Billboard advertising for the Jack Dempsey Museum in Manassa, Colorado. Courtesy of author’s collection
Jack Dempsey’s birthplace cabin Manassa, Colorado. Courtesy of author’s collection
cemetery on Saturday, 4 June 1983, lives on in the memories of those who remember him as one of the all-time sports giants. Dempsey appeared during the dedication of the Jack Dempsey birthplace museum 23 July 1966. At that time, Dempsey’s cabin – lined with photos of the highlights of his career – was moved to the city park and refurbished.
History Magazine October/November 2017
BRIAN D’AMBROSIO lives, works in, and writes from Missoula, Montana. He contributes regularly to multiple publications on a vast variety of subjects. His most recent contribution to History Magazine was a piece on American painter Grant Wood, which appeared in the June/July 2017 issue.
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ENGLISH HISTORY
THE ROSE WITHOUT A THORN
LAURA GRANDE TELLS HOW CATHERINE HOWARD, THE FIFTH WIFE OF HENRY VIII, CONTINUES TO FASCINATE — AND CONFOUND — HISTORIANS. WITH ONLY A SINGLE LETTER LEFT BEHIND, HOW MUCH CAN WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT THE YOUNG QUEEN?
A portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger which is believed to be that of Catherine Howard, although it’s unlikely we’ll ever know if it is or not. Public domain
T
he letter fits onto a single piece of parchment paper, its slanted cursive writing riddled with spelling errors, revealing the young age and substandard education of its writer. Addressed to a “Master [Thomas] Culpeper” this missive is the only known document that can be directly attributed to Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of England’s King Henry VIII. Throughout the centuries, this note – which inquires after the health and wellbeing of her alleged lover – remains the only source from which historians can glean information into the overall character of Catherine Howard. Unsurprisingly, this has proven to be a daunting task and, depending on which Tudor historian you speak to, some charge that the letter is not one of love at all, but of a young, easily manipulated queen desperately seeking to appease her blackmailer. Since her execution for adultery on 13 February 1542, the court of public opinion has called Catherine everything from naïve and dimwitted to a spiteful and “emptyheaded wanton.” Did Catherine actually carry out an illicit affair with the king’s friend and courtier, Thomas
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Culpeper, or was she under duress at the hands of a master manipulator who threatened her undoing? And, if she did consummate her relationship with Culpeper, what were her motivations for engaging in such risky behavior, especially so soon after the beheading of Anne Boleyn over similar accusations?
WHO WAS CATHERINE HOWARD? Although her exact date of birth is unknown, it’s generally accepted that Catherine was born in Lambeth, outside London, in the year 1523 to Lord Edmund Howard and his wife Jocasta (Joyce). Her father’s family descended from elite stock, earning an aristocratic pedigree thanks to her wealthy grandfather, Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. In fact, Catherine’s father’s sister, Elizabeth Howard, was the
History Magazine October/November 2017
mother of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, making the two women first cousins. However, despite their respectable lineage, Catherine’s father struggled to make ends meet and keep his family of 10 children properly fed and clothed. Himself one of about 22 children, Lord Edmund was ultimately left very little by way of his family’s estate. As a result of her father’s financial situation and her mother’s death when she was only five years old, Catherine was sent at the tender age of nine to live with her step-grandmother at Chesworth House near Horsham in Essex. Yet, the household of Agnes, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, was anything but idyllic. All the young women living under the Duchess’ roof shared a room called “the maidens’ chamber” which was supposed to be locked at night in an effort to protect the women’s virtues from the men who lived on the property. Unbeknownst to the lady of the house, however, many of the young men had their own set of keys and would come
and go around the premises as they pleased. With more than 100 people living on the grounds of Chesworth House, Catherine met more than her fair share of available gentlemen. Her first recorded affair occurred in 1536, when Catherine was only 12 or 13 years old, and was wooed by her decade-older music teacher, Henry Mannox. Although general consensus suggests that the two never consummated their relationship, there was just enough inappropriate interaction that it caught the notice of the other girls in the room. As Catherine later recalled during her interrogation for adultery against the king, “at the flattering and fair persuasions of Mannox, [and] being but a young girl, I suffered him at sundry [different] times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body.” This was not, however, the case with Francis Dereham. Mannox was soon cast aside in favor of the handsome gentleman-pensioner who also resided near the grounds of Chesworth. And it was this clandestine affair with Dereham that would later precipitate the downfall of Catherine. The pair almost certainly consummated their relationship and were precontracted (promised marriage) to one another by 1538, even referring to one another openly as husband and wife. “He lay with me naked and used me in such sort as a man doth his wife many and sundry times,” Catherine later told her interrogators. When the Duchess caught wind of the affair from a jealous Mannox, it caused her much distress and she immediately sent Dereham to live under the service of Catherine’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. Although it’s unknown what transpired between Catherine and Dereham as they were separated, it
would appear that the teen quickly lost interest in her suitor – especially after she was sent to serve as a lady-in-waiting to Henry VIII’s new queen, Anne of Cleves. However, the fast-paced life at court and palace intrigue proved more than Catherine could handle and she soon found herself in over her head. It was no secret that the king was displeased with his new bride, the plain-faced younger sister of the German Duke of JulichCleves-Berg. Henry and Anne of Cleves had married on 6 January 1540, after the prodding of Henry’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell who preferred Anne to other prospects because she identified as Lutheran. A Reformer at heart, Cromwell sought a religious ally after Henry’s last marriage to the Catholic Jane Seymour. But after a series of costly political blunders, not least of which was his insistence on the union with Anne of Cleves, Cromwell was ultimately executed on 28 July 1540. Henry’s seven-month marriage was annulled shortly before Cromwell’s death on the grounds of non-consummation. But the king didn’t mourn the dissolution of yet another marriage – in fact, he already had his eye on a potential new bride.
“A ROSE WITHOUT A THORN…” When discussing meteoric rises in history, few were as quick and unexpected as that of Catherine Howard. Contemporary documents report that, shortly after being appointed as lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves, Henry fell in love with Catherine. She was a pretty face and had a youthful exuberance – something the once handsome, athletic and playful king could appreciate. Henry wasted no time, quietly marrying Catherine on the same day as Cromwell’s execution.
Catherine was 18 or 19 when she was introduced to Henry – approximately 30 years his junior. Granted, the new teenage queen wasn’t particularly intelligent, but she was not, as many have surmised over the years, illiterate. And, while she was brought up poor, she still came from an illustrious family. After the debacle that was his brief marriage to Anne of Cleves, Henry also took satisfaction in being attracted to his new bride (although no authenticated portrait of her exists, contemporaries describe her as petite, pretty and fair-skinned). Henry was recorded calling his new wife a “blushing rose without a thorn”. In answer to this compliment, Catherine chose as her royal emblem a rose with a crown and declared her motto to be, “No other wish but his.” For her devotion, Henry lavished her with attention, gifts and expensive properties. While many Tudor historians posit that Catherine truly did care deeply for the king, as demonstrated by her genuine concern over his ongoing health issues, she was not immune from the attentions of some of the gentlemen at court, sometimes even welcoming the advances. She was young, impressionable and pleasure-seeking – and when Henry’s friend and courtier, Thomas Culpeper, made his presence known, Catherine fell under his spell.
THE MANY FACES OF THOMAS CULPEPER It was during 12 days in March 1541 that Henry fell ill and took to his private chambers, refusing to let his wife see him in agony (the ulcer on his leg, the result of a long-ago jousting accident, flared up on occasion and left the king incapacitated and in a foul temper). While Henry was out of commission, Culpeper and Catherine embarked on their affair. Culpeper composed himself well
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ENGLISH HISTORY
to his will? In Tudor England, a pre-contract was grounds for annulling a marriage, especially if engagement had been purposefully withheld from the king. Culpeper’s personal history of abusive behavior suggests his motivations, whatever they may have been in the end, were purely selfish and opportunistic. It’s unlikely that he truly held any genuine affection for the young queen.
THE LETTER
An official portrait of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein. Public domain
at court and earned the confidence of the king despite their age difference – Culpeper was in his mid-20s, the king was 50. But it was those close ties with royalty that had gotten Culpeper out of trouble a few years prior to meeting Catherine when he raped the wife of a parkkeeper and killed a villager who tried to intervene and stop the assault. Henry pardoned him, essentially citing a “boys will be boys” attitude. For all his good looks and seemingly personable nature, Culpeper had proved he had a dark side – but what was his motivation for entering an affair with a young queen, a dangerous decision under most circumstances, but especially when dealing with as erratic a king as Henry?
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By all accounts, the king was now overweight, crippled by his ulcerated leg and often in a foul mood – and his direct heir was his three-year-old son, Edward, who would be far too young to rule should Henry suddenly die. Was the timing of Culpeper’s seduction of Catherine mere coincidence or was he trying to wedge his way closer to the throne by wooing the potential queen regent? He would most likely have already been familiar with Catherine’s past dealings with Mannox and Dereham, having his own personal ties to Chesworth House through numerous companions who had also lived there. Could Culpeper have used his knowledge of Catherine’s sexual history and pre-contract with Dereham as blackmail to bend her
History Magazine October/November 2017
It’s here we must remember that, at the time Dereham seduced Catherine under her step-grandmothers roof, she was no more than 14 years old. And she was even younger than that when Mannox first made his attempts. Therefore, Catherine’s earliest interactions with men were, by and large, sexual in nature. To put it bluntly, she was taken advantage of by people who should have known better. And now married to a man in his 50s known for discarding wives and mistresses he deemed unworthy of his attention, Catherine continued to be easily swayed – as renowned Tudor historian Antonia Fraser pointed out in her book The Wives of Henry VIII, the teen was “reckless, [but] not devious.” And so it was that, eight months into her marriage to the king, Catherine penned the letter now made famous for its apparent professions of love for Culpeper. “I heard you were sick and never longed for anything as to see you,” she wrote. The letter, which now resides in the Public Record Office in London, continues: “It makes my heart die to think I cannot be in your company” and it’s signed, “Yours as long as life endures.” Catherine’s habit for indiscretion had finally caught up to her. As Alison Weir wrote in her book on the six wives, “[Catherine] had been playing with fire…and [was] incredibly foolish.” Where once
she could have gotten away with nighttime visits from suitors under her step-grandmothers roof, she wasn’t prepared for the gossip that swirled around court. The missive, with its misspelled words and crooked writing, has been analyzed to death. Once generally taken as clear evidence of the queen’s love for Culpeper, a more recent generation of historians dismiss the notion, suggesting instead that Catherine showed signs of being under duress. She appears eager to please, some suggest,
perhaps because he’s holding her past over her head as a warning. Catherine’s flowery language and the self-proclaimed “great pains” that were taken in writing to him are seen as discomfort with her current situation. However, it could still be argued that she cared for Culpeper, although it was likely more lust than love that the young teen felt. She took a great risk in writing to him, and it’s unlikely she would have done it unless she was gravely concerned about her lover’s
Catherine Howard’s letter, which now resides in the Public Record Office in London.
well-being. Like her concern over Henry’s poor health, Catherine was eager to please and wanted life to continue being pleasurable. Yet, her reckless abandon in writing what she likely saw as an innocent letter sent to a close companion would ultimately lead to her death, further highlighting her naivety and trusting nature.
THE ROSE’S DOWNFALL In the end, it caught up with her. Word got out that Catherine was less than truthful about her sexual history and Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, took it upon himself to inform Henry on 2 November 1541. According to the Act of Attainder, it was considered treason to marry the king without confessing your sexual history to him. It was now inevitable that Catherine would lose her life. Dereham was apprehended and confessed to the pre-contract under torture. Perhaps in an attempt to save his own skin, he pointed his interrogators in the direction of Culpeper. When the king learned of Culpeper’s betrayal and subsequent arrest, he was devastated. Henry’s reaction to the news was strikingly different than when he learned of the alleged affairs of his second wife, Anne Boleyn. He’d been indifferent, almost carefree, when Anne, her brother, George, and some close companions were put on trial and summarily executed. It becomes clear that even Henry had been aware that the claims against his former wife had been bogus – a convenient character assassination that gave him what he ultimately wanted…room to marry Jane Seymour and rid himself of the Boleyn family. But with Catherine, he was caught off guard. He was embarrassed that he hadn’t picked up on it and angered at the thought that
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the entire country knew he was a cuckold. He directed the majority of his anger toward Dereham for being the “spoiler” of his young bride. On 12 November, Catherine was confronted by Archbishop Cranmer, she was in “such lamentation and heaviness, as I never saw no creature, so that it would have pitied any man’s heart in the world to have looked upon her.” Cranmer, who’d had to negotiate the majority of the king’s marital entanglements over the years, was struck by her naïve and child-like response. It aligns with the character she displays in her letter – like many teens, Catherine lived in the moment, leaving potential consequences to be dealt with afterward. Like a child, she likely never, even in her wildest dreams, thought it would come to this. Henry never saw her again after her arrest. On 22 November, she was demoted from queen and was indicted two days later for leading “an abominable, base, carnal, voluptuous and vicious life” before marriage “like a common harlot…maintaining however the outward appearance of chastity and honesty.” On 10 December, Dereham received the full traitor’s death: by the laws of treason, he was hanged, drawn, castrated and quartered. Culpeper, being of higher rank and a former favorite of the king, had his sentence reduced and was beheaded. Always eager to please and devastated that she’d let the king down, Catherine requested a block so that she “might know how to place herself ” when her day of execution arrived. And so it was that on 13 February 1542 Catherine stood on the scaffold inside the walls of the Tower of London to say her final words. They were not, as legend would have it, a profession of love for Culpeper. Catherine never said, “I die a Queen, but I would rather die the wife of Culpeper” – although it does make for great television. In the end, during her final moments, she comported herself professionally, and with a clear head, admitted her shame for offending the king. Catherine was beheaded and taken to the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula for burial next to Anne Boleyn. Catherine Howard had been queen for 18 months and was no more than 20 years old at the time of her death.
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History Magazine, 82 Church St S, Unit 101, Ajax, ON, L1S 6B3 LAURA GRANDE is a magazine editor and amateur historian based in Toronto, Canada.
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History Magazine October/November 2017
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Public domain. Published before 1923, and public domain in the US
ENTERTAINMENT
Commedia dell’arte scene in an Italian Landscape, circa 17th/18th century by Pieter van Bredael (1629–1719).
BRING ON THE CLOWNS
GLORIA TIETGENS SLADEK DISCOVERS THAT THE CLOWNING SPIRIT IS AS OLD AS CIVILIZATION ITSELF
I
n the background, you hear the bellow of an elephant and the roar of a tiger. High on a bleacher beneath the Big Top, you enjoy the smells of hot dogs and pink cotton candy. Red and gold uniforms dazzle as the band plays “Entry of the Gladiators” or the rousing “Caesar’s Triumphal March”.
Twirling acrobats and daring aerialists thrill you. Their sequined costumes sparkle. Bareback riders balance on prancing horses as you watch enthralled. Still, something is missing. You join the crowd shouting, “Bring on the clowns!” But what is this fascination with clowns and how did it all begin? About 2500 BC, Egyptians were entertained by wandering jugglers and musicians. They were called court jesters, professional fools employed by a medieval ruler to amuse him. Sometimes they were called buffoons, wearer of the cap and bells. The fool often carried a Marotte, a stick with tassels and
a carved head. This stick was used as a protection for his master. He could be seen with a tail on his clothing and ears on his hood, signifying how empty-headed he was. Later, the hood became a three-pointed cap with bells. In England, Shakespeare gave the clown a speaking part in some of his tragedies – for example, the gravediggers in Hamlet. When a pygmy clown performed as a comic for Pharaoh Dadkeri-Assi, he brought riotous laughter to his court. Greek burlesque and traces of clowning in Rome are found in history as kings and nobles had clowns of their own. No one is sure where
the origin of the word clown was born, but it’s possibly Scandinavian for the word clod or lout. Clowns are loved the world over for their playfulness and irreverence. As early as 1818 BC, China enjoyed these pranksters. Ancient Greek comics were often padded to appear fatter than they really were. In Rome, the clown often wore a patchwork coat and a pointed hat. It was common for the clown to be the butt of tricks and abuse. And down through history, clowns have delighted most societies. In the Middle Ages, the clown was considered a professional actor. Commedia dell’arte was a type of Italian comedy, which had a stereotyped plot, improvised dialogue and stock characters. Acrobats, jugglers and clowns all performed in ancient times. In the sixteenth century, one of those clowns was Harlequin.
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ENTERTAINMENT
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Acting as a comic valet, he wore a black mask, and carried a bat, which he often used to hit his unfortunate victim. Clowning is a dignified art. Clowns must not do or say anything offensive. Clothing that’s in bad taste that the clown might wear is frowned upon. Everything, even the laughs, are planned by the professional clown. The first circus troupe in America, introduced in Philadelphia in 1724, featured a clown ropewalking and sword dancing. Small troupes traveled by wagons on rough, backcountry roads, and sometimes stretched canvas between trees and poles to make a tent. If it rained, they couldn’t perform. They weren’t paid unless there was a big audience. On the day of the circus, clowns led the parade into town, announced the time of the performance and entertained with wisecracks and funny acts. Ever since the first elaborately carved and brilliantly painted circus wagon rumbled down Main Street, clowns have fascinated crowds with tumbling acts and antics. Sometimes these funny or sad-faced comedians are called buffoons, jesters, fools, or jokers. In the circus itself, a clown is called a “Joey”. The name was given in honor of the English clown, Joseph Grimaldi, who lived from 1778 to 1837. He was famous for his expressive face and body and his sense of timing. He did the regular physical tricks such as pratfalls, tumbling and slapstick. He performed in fulllength acts and was a dominant figure at the time. Clowns honor a moral code that insists no “Joey” exactly copy another clown’s facial decorations or costume. One of the greatest American clowns was Dan Rice (1823-1900). He wore a beard and dressed like Uncle Sam. Because
of his popularity, he was paid the huge sum of $1,000.00 a week for two performances a day. That was even more than President Lincoln earned! In 1870, when his show played in Iowa in the town of McGregor, there were five brothers fascinated by his performance. Because of this, these brothers decided to start a circus of their own, which ultimately became the famous Ringling
Brothers Circus. The Ringling Brothers later bought another circus, Barnum & Bailey, and clowning reached an even higher pinnacle. Now oversized props, bright sparkling costumes and loud explosives gave the clown audience even more reason to laugh. In the late 1960s, there were less than 200 professional circus clowns in America. Because of this
The Strobridge Litho. Co., Cincinnati & New York: “The Barnum & Bailey greatest show on earth Wonderful Performing Geese, Roosters and Musical Donkey.” Public domain. Published before 1923. Library of Congress
History Magazine October/November 2017
declining profession, Irvin Feld, in 1967, purchased the circus and founded the first school to train clowns, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. After Feld’s death in 1984, Kenneth Feld, his son, took over. The college closed in 1997. But many of the school’s graduates were now teachers. Today’s clowns are now hired based on auditions. Clown college graduates offer the entertainment that clowns have given us for many years and will continue to offer the joy audiences have enjoyed since the beginning of clowning. Emmett Kelly, the famous tramp clown with his sootcovered face and down-turned white mouth, “Weary Willie”, will be remembered as the most popular. He was 40 years old when his sad-faced hobo in oversized rags found a home with the Ringling Brothers Circus from 1942 to 1956. Wearing tattered clothes, big floppy shoes, and a bowler hat, he charmed both young and old. Charlie Chaplin made millions laugh as “the Little Tramp clown”. Born in England, he and his brother Sidney, along with Stan Laurel, toured the United States with their vaudeville act. He made many silent movies, including “The Gold Rush” and “The Great Dictator”. After he developed his tramp personality, he became famous throughout the world. One of his sayings was, “A day without laughter is a wasted day.” America’s greatest clown may be Red Skelton. He made numerous movies, and had his own radio and television shows. Like other clowns, he had a tramp clown character in “Freddy the Freeloader” and “Clem Kadiddlehopper”. His father, who he never knew as he died before Red was born, had been a clown with the Hagenbeck & Wallace Circus. When Red Skeleton was only 16, he clowned
in the same circus his father had. He sang, did stand-up comedy and in 1936, he joined vaudeville. By then, he had made it to Broadway! Clowns have always been colorful. The black-faced clown used burnt-cork to darken his face. White-faced clowns often wore red and white striped leggings and shoes with pom-poms. They might appear half-bald with red hair sticking out in back, below a dunce-like cap. Some clowns walk on stilts. Sitting on a high wagon, they put their feet in the stilts, then slipped their costumes over their heads. Clowns are creative. Adrien Wettach caused the audience to roar in laughter with his struggle when a stool was too far from a piano – so he moved the piano! There are a few types of clowns. The classic clown is called the white-faced clown. Playing it straight, he is often the ringleader and the most intelligent type of clown. He wears white grease paint so that all the audience can see him. Whiteface is known as the court jester of the Middle Ages. The clown Pierrot had a flour-whitened face and it is believed that he started the whitefaced clown tradition. Then there is the Auguste clown: the funniest and least intelligent of the clowns. He wears a flesh-toned makeup and draws an outline around his features and wears a gaudy, oversized, bright costume where nothing matches. The greatest influences when developing the Auguste were the famous Fratellini Brothers. Albert Fratellini gave the clown his red nose, which has since become common with clowns. Still, the most popular of clowns is the tramp clown. With his unshaven face, and his tattered clothes and red nose he is the down-on-his luck clown.
Some people have Coulrophobia, an uncommon word meaning a fear of clowns. But most people find clowns fun, colorful, entertaining, and interesting characters. Hunter Doherty, a.k.a. “Patch Adams”, a young doctor who entertained as a clown for hospital patients in the 1970s, was born on 28 May 1945. He is an American physician, clown, author, and comedian who gathered volunteers from all over the world to travel internationally as clowns to entertain and cheer patients, orphans, and others. Since April 2015, he serves as Assistant Secretary of Health for Holistic Health. Big Apple Circus of New York has a Clown Care Unit that had its beginning in 1977. There are other hospital clown programs in US hospitals and many around the world, including Hong Kong, Austria, France, etc. More sophisticated than in the beginning, circuses today are often held indoors. Some clowns abandon traditional costumes and wear a small amount of makeup. Others, like Oleg Popov, a well-known Russian clown, wore slightly unconventional clothes, but his appearance and antics alone brought laughter to the crowd. Recently, the Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus had their final performance in May of this year, after 146 years under the Big Top. Still, the clowning spirit, as old as civilization, will continue to amaze and entertain. So, join me in urging, “Bring on the clowns!” GLORIA TIETGENS SLADEK is a freelance writer who loves to dwell in the history of ordinary things. She has written for children, women’s fashion, and Christian magazines.
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BRITISH HISTORY
Crowds of tradesmen and servants, as well as numerous police officers and a few high dignitaries, were all victims of the famous “Berners Street Hoax” of 1810. Public domain
“THE MOST FAMOUS HOUSE IN ALL OF LONDON”
DAVID A. NORRIS LOOKS AT THE BERNERS STREET HOAX OF 1810
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trolling through London one day in November 1810, playwright, writer, wit, and bon vivant Theodore Hook pointed to a respectable, but rather ordinary-looking house at No. 54, Berners Street, in Westminster, London. “I’ll lay you a guinea,” said Hook to a friend, “that in one week, that nice quiet dwelling shall be the most famous house in all of London.” Intrigued, Hook’s companion took the bet. To win that guinea, Hook set to creating one of the most elaborately embroidered practical jokes of all time: the Berners Street Hoax. Theodore Hook was born in London in 1788. His father, James Hook, was a writer of popular songs. Young Theodore was gifted with musical ability, quick wit, and charm. At the age of 16, he co-wrote a play with his father and made a name for himself in London’s social scene. His talents
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amused the fashionable world, but Theodore Hook lacked the discipline to apply himself to lasting achievements. Instead, his accomplishments came in the form of well-timed bon mots at social gatherings, and in increasingly elaborate and spectacular practical jokes.
History Magazine October/November 2017
Laying the foundations of his Berners Street plan, Hook (and perhaps some associates who were in on the scheme) sent hundreds of letters and messages throughout London. Then, he took lodgings on Berners Street, across from No. 54, and waited until the 27th of November. The first sign that Hook’s scheme was in motion was the cry of a chimney sweep early on the morning of the 27th. One, and then another, and then several more chimney sweeps appeared at the door, all of them clamoring to get to work at No. 54 Berners Street, the home of a lady known to history only as Mrs. Tottenham. “The neighborhood,” went one account, “resounded with the cries of ‘sweep’, uttered in every variety of tone, and proceeding from the crowds of sooty urchins and their masters …” Mrs. Tottenham’s servants tried to repel the battalion of chimney sweeps. Then, clattering toward the house came several horses pulling “heavy wagons, laden with chauldrons of coals”. The coal wagons ground to a halt, unable to maneuver past each other and hemmed in by chimney sweeps and passersby attracted by the commotion. “About a dozen traveling-chariots”, their drivers expecting to pick up passengers from No. 54, pulled up behind the coal wagons. Other carriages approached, and their drivers had to stop further and further from the center of the growing crowd. “Medical men with instruments for the amputation of limbs, attorneys prepared to cut off entails,” and professional men of every stripe, from the clergy to portrait artists,
stepped out of their stalled vehicles and tried to push their ways to Mrs. Tottenham’s door. Elbowing their way alongside the doctors and lawyers were several “cleanly, cook-like men,” with freshly baked wedding cakes for No. 54. Butchers, each bearing a leg of lamb, and fishmongers laden with their wares, followed them. An undertaker arrived with a coffin for the no doubt mortified, but still living, Mrs. Tottenham. Looking from his window, Hook watched the spectacle from his rented rooms. Below him in the street, at about 11 am, a splendid carriage jostled its way through the throng of tradesmen and bystanders. Accompanied by two liveried servants, out of the carriage stepped the Lord Mayor of London. When he learned he was the victim of a prank, the Lord Mayor stalked back into his carriage and ordered the driver to take him to the Marlborough Street Police Office. At the police office, the Lord Mayor told a magistrate that “he had received a note purporting to have come from Mrs. Tottenham, which stated that she had been summoned to appear before him, but that she was confined to her room by sickness, and requested his Lordship’s favor to call on her.” Informed that Berners Street was engulfed in chaos, the magistrate dispatched several police officers to keep order. In the afternoon, Berners Street “was in the greatest confusion, by the multiplicity of trades people, who were returning with their goods, and the spectators laughing at them.” When the police arrived from Marlborough Street, they found “six stout men bearing an organ, surrounded by coalmerchants with permits, barbers with wigs, mantua-makers with band-boxes, [and] opticians with their various articles of trade…”
Other dignitaries besides the Lord Mayor answered an invitation to Berners Street. Responding to letters promising to reveal a spectacular scheme of fraud, the heads of the Bank of England and the East India Company arrived at Mrs. Tottenham’s doorstep. Even royal personages were lured to the house at No. 54; accounts variously state that the Duke of York and Albany (a son of King George III), or the Duke of Gloucester (a nephew of the king) were taken in.
London writer, wit, and man-abouttown Theodore Hook planned and carried out the Berners Street Hoax. Public domain
New arrivals continued to swell the crowd. Hook himself described the scene in his semiautobiographical novel Gilbert Gurney, with Berners Street deluged with “… piano-fortes by dozens … two thousand five hundred raspberry tarts, from half-ahundred pastry-cooks – a squad of surgeons – a battalion of physicians, and a legion of apothecaries – lovers to see sweethearts; ladies to find lovers – upholsterers to furnish houses, and architects to build them – gigs, dog-carts, and
glass-coaches, enough to convey half the freeholders of Middlesex to Brentford…” The police tried to disperse the crowd, but a new wave of arrivals poured in after 5 pm. “Servants of every denomination” had come to see about new jobs. It took the police several more hours to clear the street, and they succeeded only because Hook had at last expended his entire arsenal of phony messages, orders, and invitations. Some similar pranks had unfolded recently in the city, but Hook’s version was much more ambitious in scale than anything attempted before. London’s newspapers carried accounts of the peculiar incident. News of the “Berners Street Hoax” spread through England’s newspapers and jumped across the Atlantic. By 1811, readers as far away as New Orleans and Kentucky were devouring press accounts of the tale. While many a Londoner was amused by the spectacular caper, some of those who were personally involved were outraged at the waste of their time. Some shopkeepers and merchants were out of pocket for lost or spoiled goods. And, bringing so many people into a tremendous and disorganized crowd gave London’s pickpockets a banner day. Some suspicion turned toward Hook, who was known in London society and theatrical circles for his mischievous sense of humor. This suspect, according to a later biographer, “… found it convenient to be laid up for a week or two by a severe fit of illness, and then promoted re-convalescence by a country tour.” By the time Hook returned to London, the trail of the perpetrator of the Berners Street Hoax had gone cold. Although he was later universally acknowledged with planning the prank, he never faced legal consequences for it.
October/November 2017 History Magazine
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BRITISH HISTORY Berners Street in Westminster, London, appears in the upper center of this map detail from 1830. Many of the narrow surrounding streets were jammed with crowds, carts, and carriages during the Berners Street Hoax. Public domain. Wikipedia
Through the influence of powerful friends including the Prince Regent (the future King George IV), Hook was appointed as treasurer of the island colony of Mauritius. Unfortunately, he knew nothing about finance or management. In 1817, he was arrested and sent to England for trial when a massive embezzlement scheme came to light. Legal proceedings over the Mauritius matter dragged on until 1824. Investigations found that low-ranking officials were the actual thieves, and Hook was found innocent of criminal charges. But, in civil court, he was held liable for the shortfall. He spent two years in a sponging house, a privately-run debtor’s
26
prison where one could live under house arrest in better conditions than in jail. In confinement, and after his release, he wrote numerous stories and novels, but never managed to pay off his debts. Before he died in 1841, Hook earned one more unique distinction. In the year 1840, Great Britain introduced the world’s first postage stamp. Shortly afterward, Hook received in the mail a picture painted on a piece of cardboard, with a stamp attached to it. In 2002, the item, regarded as the world’s first postcard, was sold at auction in London for £31,500. Fittingly for something involving Theodore Hook, the card was a joke. It was a satirical caricature of Britain’s postal workers.
History Magazine October/November 2017
Hook may have appreciated a little finale to his Berners Street Hoax. In 1821, US newspapers picked up a tale of a fantastic prank played on the resident of a house in London. After the story had spread to several papers, other newspapers published a note under the headline, “A Double Hoax”. The extraordinary tale of the Berners Street Hoax, which was, by then, ten years in the past, was spreading as a brand new story in US papers. DAVID A. NORRIS is a regular contributor to History Magazine,
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SPORTS
Sammy Baugh throwing a pass in a NFL game for the Washington Redskins against the Chicago Bears in 1942. This is just to show a good old illustration of a forward pass motion with a legendary quarterback and player in American football. Baugh is a College Football and Pro Football Hall of Fame member. Courtesy of the Associated Press
THE FORWARD PASS
DAVID FUNK LOOKS AT THE PLAY THAT SAVED THE GAME OF AMERICAN FOOTBALL
O
n the sandy beaches of Cedar Point, Ohio in the summer of 1913, Notre Dame quarterback Gus Dorais and tight end Knute Rockne practiced offensive pass patterns as time permitted when they worked there as lifeguards. It was in preparation of a showdown with Army that November that Notre Dame coach Jesse Harper scheduled in a highly-publicized match-up at West Point. Army had an open date on their schedule due to Yale disputing eligibility rules. Midwestern schools refused to schedule Notre Dame due to the belief that they didn’t have high enough academic standards and for their anti-Catholic views. But even on the sandy beaches where they practiced passing patterns, it was a sight unfamiliar to those that had been watching. When the game was in its infancy in the 1800s, the passing game – or forward pass – was virtually
unimaginable and wouldn’t be legal until after the turn of the century. The forward pass served as a way to not only open the playbook and speed the game up, but it very likely saved the game from extinction in America from its overly violent ways. On 1 November 1913, Notre Dame used the forward pass as a primary strategy to defeat a powerful Army squad that led to widespread media coverage and perception of them being the first
to use it. In that contest, Dorais completed his first 12 passes and threw for three touchdowns. One of his three touchdowns was when Rockne – a future head coaching icon – caught a 40-yard pass from Dorais after beating the secondary on the play. Notre Dame led 14-13 at halftime. After confusing Army with a heavy passing attack in the first half, Army geared up to stop it in the third quarter. But Dorais reverted to running the ball with Ray Eichenlaub shredding the Cadets defense. When Army switched back to stopping Eichenlaub in the last quarter, Dorais once again opened it up by throwing all over the confused Army defenders. Dorais threw for 243 yards and completed 14 of 17 passes in a 35-13 win for Notre Dame. Notre Dame had shocked the world, and it changed the public perception of fans and statisticians in the game of American football in the process. The game of American football had come a long way at that point, as it was initially played under rugby-type rules in an era where padding and protection were nonexistent – save for the few that wore leather helmets. On 6 November 1869, Rutgers and Princeton played the first historic game in New Brunswick, NJ on a field that was 120 yards long with 25 players on each side. Scoring resembled that in traditional soccer as a point was scored every time a goal was scored with the first team to reach six being declared the winner.
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SPORTS
Rutgers won the game 6-4. In 1874, Harvard and McGill University played two games against each other with the second under rugby rules as it permanently replaced soccer-style of play. This was significant in that players were allowed to run with the ball in that second game. By 1880, the line of scrimmage was established as the starting point of a play. In 1882, significant changes and rules were added by Walter Camp. “The father of American football” – as he was referred to – created the change of possession if a team didn’t advance the ball five yards in three plays (or “downs”). This was especially necessary because it was common for teams to hold possession of the ball for entire halves of games. Later, he created a point system for touchdowns, field goals, safeties, and conversions. It wouldn’t be until twenty years later that it was settled that
touchdowns would be worth six points. Further, he had a hand in establishing the number of players on each side to eleven, and it’s been that way ever since. Other innovations would come along, but none quite set the tone for the viciousness, violence, and dirty play than mass-momentum plays that would eventually give the game a dark eye. By far, the most famous of these mass-momentum plays was the introduction of the “flying wedge” play by Harvard’s Lorin Fuller Deland in 1892. Deland invented the play after studying the military tactics used in previous wars, especially those under Napoleon Bonaparte. It’s commonly used as a successful and forceful strategy to combat enemy lines. It’s “V-like shaped” formation has also been used by police forces to counter riots. In football, it was designed to plow through defenders as well as provide a shield to protect the
The Notre Dame football team in 1913. Knute Rockne is the one holding the football and quarterback Gus Dorais is to his left. Both played a huge role in upsetting Army and forever changing the game in the public’s eye. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons
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History Magazine October/November 2017
team’s ball carrier. The end result usually meant a pile of bodies being tangled upon one another. Nonetheless, Deland practiced this strategy in the early fall of 1892, but saved using the play until the second half of the game against Walter Camp’s Yale squad in their championship game. Despite the play catching Yale by surprise, the Bulldogs prevailed in the game with a 6-0 win over Harvard. The play caught on at programs across the country, but it also helped escalate the number of deaths and crippling injuries in the sport for over a decade. In fact, Army and Navy were banned from playing each other from 1894 to 1898 because of the rough play between the two schools. In 1894, Harvard and Yale played in a game that was so violent in nature that it’s often referred to as the “Hampden Park Blood Bath”. This highly publicized contest between the two
helped to increase the negative reputation of the sport. From 1880 to 1905, it was reported that over 300 deaths occurred on the field as well as over 1,100 serious injuries. By 1905, football had reached a level of violence never seen before. That year alone, 19 deaths occurred on the field while 159 players were seriously injured throughout the season. The heightened amount of deaths and injuries on the field that year were more than enough to involve then-US President Teddy Roosevelt to get personally involved. Furthermore, Harvard President Charles William Eliot threatened to abolish football at the school if violence couldn’t be subdued. Roosevelt, a once strong advocate for the physicality and brutality of the sport, warned that if changes weren’t implemented that football would have to go. And because of the threat of Eliot, who ran what was then a highly profitable and powerhouse football program at the time, Roosevelt knew it had to be done as soon as possible. In March of 1906, a meeting was held that established what is today known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and began the turning point in solving many of the sport’s violent issues and dirty play. New and revised rules were put in place after the meeting at the request of Roosevelt. Among the changes were ten yards were now needed to gain a first down, 45-minute halves were reduced to 30 minutes, tackling out of bounds was forbidden, and six men were required to be on the line of scrimmage. But by far the most significant changes were the legalization of the forward pass and banishment of mass-momentum plays.
Teddy Roosevelt in 1904 as US President. He played a vital role in threatening to abolish the game of American football if changes weren’t made to stop the escalating deaths and crippling injuries in the game. That led to rules such as the forward pass being legalized. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons
Bradbury Robinson as a student at St. Louis University in 1908. He was the first to throw a legal forward pass in a football game in 1906. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The forward pass was not well received at first, and strategists saw it as a desperation gadget play instead of a primary way to advance the ball on offense. Another major reason it wasn’t initially accepted was because of the rule of turning the ball over at the spot of an incomplete pass – which was the equivalent result of a punt on an early down. The pass also had to be thrown five yards from behind the line of scrimmage as well as a minimum of five yards to the left or right of center. A pass twenty yards or longer was illegal. Those rules were revised in 1912. It also didn’t help that pass interference calls were many years away, so that in itself further decreased the odds of completing a pass thrown. As far back as 30 November 1876, illegal forward passes had been attempted in games. In a game between Yale and Princeton that day, Camp threw an underhand pass to Oliver Thompson for a touchdown – while in the process of being tackled – which would be allowed to stand after a Princeton protest and a referee’s coin toss. In 1895, in a game between North Carolina and Georgia, a forward pass was illegally used on a punt attempt when the punter tossed a pass that George Stephens ran 70 yards for a gamewinning touchdown. Ten years later, Fairmont College’s (now Wichita State) Bill Davis completed a toss to Art Solter in an experimental game that allowed the use of the forward pass against Washburn University. However, on 5 September 1906, St. Louis University Bradbury Robinson threw the first legal forward pass in college football history against Carroll College in Wisconsin. The pass fell
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SPORTS
34
incomplete. But his second attempt did not as he became the first player to throw for a legal touchdown when Jack Schneider caught a twenty-yard pass from Robinson. St. Louis ended up winning the game 22-0. During the season, St. Louis used the pass enough due to practicing it constantly – which led to an undefeated campaign for the program – under the direction of head coach Eddie Cochems. They outscored their opponents 407-11 during the 1906 season. Despite this, their contribution and innovation of using the pass has been obscured to some degree by Sammy Moore of Wesleyan being inaccurately named the first passer to throw for a touchdown a month after Bradbury Robinson first accomplished the feat. In October 1908, Purdue fell behind in a game against Chicago and used passes in a desperate attempt to get back in the contest. But Chicago intercepted a pass and returned it for a sixty-fiveyard touchdown as they routed Purdue in the game 39-0. The term “interception” had not yet been coined in football at the time. Seven years later, when Notre Dame shocked the football world by defeating Army using the pass as a primary strategy, it incorrectly persuaded many in society that they were the first to use it due to the mass amount of media coverage the game received. Furthermore, the movie Knute Rockne All American in 1940 implied they developed the forward pass. Nonetheless, the game at West Point served its purpose as Notre Dame put themselves on the map and discredited the notion of eastern schools being superior to those west of them. But more importantly, emphasis on the forward pass became
Knute Rockne running with the ball for a touchdown after catching a pass from Dorais against Army on 1 HM109 Forward Pass V2November 1913. Courtesy of the New York Times and Notre Dame Football Archives
more important as a result of the game, and was now an accepted strategy in American football. At the end of the month, Princeton completed a pass against Villanova from a halfback to end for a big play in the game. However, that was rare for an eastern school at the time to use the forward pass as Midwestern schools would use it with more regularity in their games. The forward pass slowly caught on, and curbed the violence in the game to a degree. It also began to become a game based more on speed and precision than that of brute force and strength. For the next several years, rules were revised for eligible receivers, passing only behind the line of scrimmage, and any player on the defensive side being able to intercept a forward pass by an offensive player. While the National Football League and Canadian Football League would eventually come along and use the play, it’s the forward pass that evolved to a focal point of strategy, in general, from the college game that allowed them to do so. The forward pass was the saving play in American football in more ways than one. It’s a play that is now most synonymous to the game we now watch. From legends such as Sammy Baugh, Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana, and Tom Brady, football on all levels
History Magazine October/November 2017
now revolves so much around the pass and play of the quarterback. In turn, the position is also the most scrutinized in sports due to the amount of responsibility quarterbacks have on the field. It took a number of players dying for Teddy Roosevelt to get involved and threaten banishment of the game. The game of football is now much faster and still violent in nature, but padding, helmets, and rule changes to protect players have also come a long way since the pre-forward pass era. However, controversy exists due to longterm health concerns of players. But without question, the forward pass – along with Teddy Roosevelt’s insistence – played perhaps the biggest role in advancing the game of football forward to becoming America’s most watched sport."
DAVID FUNK is a freelance writer and blogger living in North Carolina that has written extensively about sports history on his own website. He enjoys fitness training, traveling, and attending sporting events of all kinds – with baseball, independent wrestling, and college football as his favorites.
Loris Romito, Wikimedia Commons
EGYPTIAN MONASTARIES
Monastery of Saint Paul the Anchorite.
THE SECRETS OF THE DESERT
DAVID LEWISTON SHARPE EXAMINES HERMITS, MONKS AND EARLY EGYPTIAN MONASTERIES
I
n an English translation of writings pertaining to the ‘ancient monks of Egypt’, published in 1696, the Egyptian abbot Piammon reports that there were three sorts of monks in those early days – the last being of morally ‘reprehensible’ attributes, when compared with the best of them. A second more salubrious sort is the anchorites, of whom two in particular compete for the status of the ‘first monk’. These, Piammon wrote, ‘became already perfect in their conversation’, and ‘have chosen the secrets of the desert’. When we think of monasteries and monks, it is often the case that one would call immediately to mind the bells tolling in towers of an abbey; the floating, rhythmless chant of hooded, shuffling figures; and from a more practical perspective, their year-long toil in fields and fisheries. Yet the cycle of prayers and praise, and their
living fruitfully off the land, had its origin in the stark and burning silence of the Egyptian desert. The two personalities who loom large against this frugal, sandy scene are Saint Paul the Hermit (not to be confused with the latecomer disciple namesake of the New Testament) and Saint Anthony – he of the ‘Temptations’.
Both lived in the 3rd to 4th centuries AD, a little in advance of the time that Constantine was beginning to establish Christianity as the ‘official’ religion of Rome. Paul and Anthony seem to have found themselves in the stony sun’s anvil of Egypt’s eastern desert, between the life-giving river Nile and the Red Sea. Perhaps they also ‘found themselves’ in the new agey sense too. But what was it about the cleansing purity of the desert – or its vast vacuum – that drew these two men? One commentator, James Cowan, who has travelled with Saint Anthony as his ‘guide’, has
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EGYPTIAN MONASTARIES
written that their rejection of the world allowed them somehow to come to terms with ‘an elusive yet fecund emptiness’. It seems to have allowed Saint Anthony to clear his mind at least and, as he revealed when criticized by a philosopher for appearing to possess no books, read nature (his only ‘book’ according to his own terms) directly in ‘God’s language’. Saint Anthony’s early biographer, Saint Athanasius, said that Anthony ‘could not endure to go to school and had a strong desire to live like a plain man dwelling in tents, as we read in Jacob’. As for possessing no books, Athanasius goes on to suggest that in any case, ‘he held so fast, that his mind was as good as a library to him’. Paul the Hermit seems to have preceded Anthony, and his ‘monastery’ was a simple cave, at least traditionally. Despite their craving for solitude, it turns out – again according to tradition – that Paul and Anthony were living on two sides of the same mountain. A more nuanced term than ‘hermit’, both are described as anchorites. This derives from the Greek anachoresis, defining an act of ‘withdrawing’. Anthony’s sense of a loss of meaning, or a loss of belief, in terms of classical ideals – those of Rome, or Athens – forced him to step back and consider what he truly thought and felt, and what ideals in thinking and feeling potentially presented themselves, either for civilization or even for the soul. This was a time of transition. It was the era of the twilight of the gods, those ageless pantheons of pagan deities in their myriad manifestations.
BACK TO BASICS In some sense, the appearance and rise of monasticism was a kind of spiritual ‘re-boot’. It was a reaction to the youthful religion’s
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Emperor Maximinus II. Shakko,Wikimedia Commons
escalating submission to imperial pressures. Those early desert fathers developed a fundamental need to go back to first principles in a space devoid of distractions. As one writer has it, religious experience, acting by example, even an identification with the church as proof of sincerity – all aid in their formation of a monk’s life. Also, importantly, guilt plays a part too; alongside economic drives. In one way, some may have avoided obligations to the state – tax, significantly – for which a kind of hidden existence proved a useful exchange or alternative. It might seem too as if being a monk was a kind of equalizing maneuver. But some saw it as a way of proving themselves worthy of a more elevated position in the Church hierarchy – with an eye keenly fixed on the role of bishop, maybe even Pope. Even speaking more generously – and less cynically – a fairer analysis can see the unity of the hermitage, and its transformation into the community of monastic cells, as nevertheless presenting a paradox. The solitude of the
History Magazine October/November 2017
desert cannot be endured and won over; it is, oddly enough, something clearly to be shared, “Don’t you think this loneliness is inspiring?” Dialogue becomes a necessary development of retreat. Ultimately, for Anthony, he left the wilderness, and returned to be among people when matters required. After two decades in the desert, he attended his mind to the issue of Christian persecution in Alexandria, under the Emperor Maximinus II. The church historian Eusebius deals with the matter in part in the ninth book of his Ecclesiastical History. Maximinus had tried to impose propitiation (an atoning sacrifice) to the old pagan gods, by means of which to guarantee a control of Roman channels for produce and commodities. In the end, it failed, and ultimately, he backed down – allowing worship to continue and for churches to be built. Whether Saint Anthony had ‘plot turning’ influence is not entirely clear. He was heading for martyrdom, willingly. But this – if he thought it might have proved the route to ending the persecutions – was not the result. The likelihood of wider civil unrest would plausibly have proved the greater motivator, in backing down from imposing the might of the Roman pantheon on an increasingly pious Christian populous. Within a few years, in any case, Constantine had successfully vanquished the army of gods with his politically charged interpretation of monotheism – no doubt driven by an inner yearning for divinity unaligned, fundamentally, with much from any external spiritual source. It is a to-ing and fro-ing, as is much along the course of history, in which the rudder of morality can hold true, despite its fragility in the face of the storm.
One can see, however, that the role of reformer in monasticism shows how retreat, reflection and, frankly, revival feed the driving force in its movement. To revive obedience to laws and practices of the church could be seen to regroup collective effort – through encouraging an individual way of life that consolidated inner resolve – and reinstate those practices that had waned or which had become lost. It would not have to mean a life severed from all association, but recognition that social organization can sometimes prove to be its own worst enemy. Realigning core thoughts and principles must have seemed the only way, if the corruption and power-playing of empire were to be truly eradicated.
THE ‘AR T’ OF SOLITUDE The patriarch Saint Jerome wrote a biography of Paul the Hermit, the Vita Pauli. In this he describes the meeting between the two ascetics, a journey which is colored by a series of fantastic encounters. On his way to Paul’s hermitage, Anthony meets a hippocentaur. This is a creature half man and half horse; then he finds himself confronted by a faun, another invention of antiquity – or mythology – appearing in front of him before his final purifying handshake with Paul. Anthony’s erstwhile co-traveler, James Cowan, emphasizes how men like Saint Anthony ‘usurped the position of the oracles in late antiquity’; well, late antiquity itself had already begun to see a decline in such portents. The moral essay writer Plutarch, a priest of Apollo, spoke of the ‘obsolescence of the oracles’ before his own day in the early 2nd century AD. Certainly, something was in the air. Similarly, in the centuries in which Plutarch was writing and in
Diego Velazquez - St. Anthony the Great and St. Paul the Hermit. Wikimedia Commons
which Saint Anthony makes his appearance, the old gods of Egypt were still actively entertained. But it was also a time of transition for them. Before long, the temples on the island of Philae deep in the south of Egypt were closed, as Christianity gained the upper hand. In the painting by Diego Velazquez, the painter presents a kind of storyboard with the actual meeting between Anthony and
Paul in the foreground. In one sense, the opulent art of Velazquez presents part of the ostentation to which the monks life stands in opposition. But adopting the story of Anthony, he convincingly, if provisionally, approaches humility. By the time they meet, Paul the Hermit had already been living in seclusion in the desert for ninety years – according to tradition. Artistic license, indeed – if not tradition – is the driving force it seems not merely for the storyboard painting by Velazquez. The original biography, the Vita Pauli by Saint Jerome, appears to be something of a fictionalization of events too. His narrative draws on the learned tradition of Classical literature which puts the skill of the writer center-stage in the business of storytelling. Jerome – patron saint of librarians – was keen to show Paul the Hermit as a man educated in terms of the Greek and Latin heritage. This contrasts with the history Athanasius, addressing the life of Saint Anthony: ‘his mind was as good as a library’. The ‘university of life’ was not sufficient for Jerome’s projection
Grünewald Isenheim Altarpiece (St. Anthony on right). Wikimedia Commons
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EGYPTIAN MONASTARIES
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of Paul the Hermit. And so, it was important to show that Anthony was on the back foot in terms of his ‘natural erudition’ opposing the learning of Paul. It is Anthony who journeys two days to visit Paul; it is Anthony who hurries to be there, in time to see the ancient anchorite before he dies and presumably attempt ‘last rites’, but arrives late when Paul has already ascended – like Christ or Elijah – into the vaporous embrace of heaven. Paul has already been ninety years in the desert; Anthony spends twenty – roughly 286-306 AD if history holds true – before ‘giving up’ and returning to civilization. Also, tellingly, the life of Anthony by Athanasius is frustratingly reticent on the topic of the elder hermit. This, in part, supports the notion that Jerome may indeed have made the whole thing up – if he is attempting to gain the upper hand in claiming for Paul the primordial status of the first monk, for the subject of his exercise in classical hagiography (the writing of the lives of saints). It is all a little like a written record of a debating society – irrespective of fact, what matters is how persuasive the argument presented proves to be. Can Jerome and Athanasius, between them, argue effectively across the debating chamber of Early Christian self-sacrifice for their respective pet saint or ascetic? It has also been argued that Jerome was writing up an oral tradition passed down – or even invented – by means of which a single individual can be credited with the volition of a whole movement enacted by a community. One figure, after all, from late antiquity itself, supports the statistical fact that upwards of 50,000 monks inhabited urban, rural and desert sites across
Monastery of St. Anthony Egypt. Credit: Tentoila, Wikimedia Commons
Monastery of St Anthony. Credit: Berthold Werner, Wikimedia Commons
History Magazine October/November 2017
Egypt. The desert, says Athanasius himself, was ‘turned into a city, by monks that left their estates and houses’ for ‘the Heavenly City’. So it was for Anthony and, therefore, following Athanasius’ broader assessment, surely a larger contingent way beyond the scope of one man’s power to motivate. But we should not diminish the inspiration of someone such as Anthony; even if there was
something in the air already, it could have taken one person to give it a push. Figures such as Martin Luther, speaking for the Reformation and Protestantism, mustered comparable leverage. Despite his disillusionment with loss of pagan spirituality, Anthony’s realignment with a perceived ‘soul’ of nature – or a reacquainting with the essence of the natural world – brings him back to the same fundamental
phenomenon. The pantheon of gods is simply a prism which colorfully refracts a single source for spiritual origins; each god is one aspect of the same divine essence. Similarly, the variety of nature even in the desert shows God, for Anthony, multiplied infinitely despite apparent unity. Hence, I suppose, his perfunctory rejection of libraries when one encompassing tome for him will suffice – the world itself.
FURTHER READING Booth, Phil, Crisis of Empire: doctrine and dissent at the end of late antiquity (Berkeley, CA: U. of California, 2014) Cowan, James, Journey to the Inner Mountain: in the desert with St Anthony (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2002) Rebenich, Stefan, ‘Inventing an Ascetic Hero: Jerome’s Life of Paul the First Hermit’, in: Jerome of Stridon, ed. A. Cain and J. Lössl (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009) Tracts theological. I. Asceticks, or, the heroick piety and vertue of the ancient Christian anchorets and coenobites. II. The life of St. Antony out of the Greek of St. Athanasius (London, 1696-7)
DAVID LEWISTON SHARPE is a freelance writer and musician based in the UK. He has published on Egyptology, history, language, and the arts. He is currently researching and writing a book on the phenomenon of the creative impulse, Rhythms of the Soul; elements of his research are presented in this article.
Here’s some of what’s coming... Bat Masterson ● Frederick C. Crawford Boston Press and the Halifax Explosion Jessie Harlan Lincoln • Colonel Park Marcus Whitman • Baron de Steuben Henry Bosse • McSorely’s Pub • Revenge of the Swiss Final Contents Subject to Change
www.history-magazine.com October/November 2017 History Magazine
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COMMUNICATION
THE VIDEOPHONE: UNWANTED ORPHAN
GARRY BERMAN SUGGESTS THAT THE VIDEOPHONE CONCEPT MAY HAVE FAILED IN ITS EARLY INCARNATIONS, BUT HAS BECOME ENTRENCHED IN 21ST CENTURY LIFE The 1964 ad introducing the Picturephone to the public. Author’s collection
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mong all of the Big Ideas that have been developed and introduced to the masses for acceptance or rejection throughout the past hundred years or so, one would think the concept of the videophone should have been an outrageously popular innovation for home use. Its best facets were perhaps not so much geared for quick phone calls between friends planning to meet at the local shopping mall or restaurant, but more for those separated from loved ones by thousands of miles, and perhaps waiting months or years between opportunities to see each other in person. After all, having a chat on the phone is all well and good, but wouldn’t having a real face-to-face talk truly be “the next best thing to being there?”
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History Magazine October/November 2017
Evidently not – at least not from the mid-1960s onward, when, despite a good deal of hype and advertising, the Bell System’s Picturephone flopped – several times. Just to backtrack a bit through history, the idea of being in one place while seeing the image as well as hearing the voice of another person transmitted from a distant location began to make the rounds not long after Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone. Bell himself once predicted, during the earliest days of experimental television, that “the day would come when the man at the telephone would be able to see the distant person to whom he was speaking.” As early as October of 1906, The New York Times reported in an editorial that two American inventors, William Thompson and J.B. Fowler, working independently, had each invented an apparatus that could supposedly transmit both sound and images simultaneously. Each man even called his own device a “televue”, but details were not released pending their applications for patents. Their work on their respective devices did not come to fruition. But the growth of radio and early development of television in the 1920s and 1930s gave new life to the idea of a combination telephone and video
contraption. Indeed, various early experiments with television could also be counted as tests for primitive versions of the videophone, especially when sound and images where transmitted together between laboratories. A year after Scots inventor John Logie Baird made headlines by presenting a working apparatus that transmitted live, moving images through the air, a major step forward took place in 1927, when a television experiment achieved what might be considered threequarters of a successful videophone transmission. In Washington, DC, Secretary of Commerce (and future president) Herbert Hoover sat before an apparatus to deliver a brief speech to a small group at the Bell Telephone laboratory in New York. After Hoover spoke, others in the room in Washington, including AT&T Vice President J.J. Carty, took turns in front of the transmitter, and carried on their own twoway conversations with the participants in New York. However, the New York group could only receive the images, not send their own. “The speaker on the New York end looked the Washington man in the eye as he talked to him. On the small screen before him appeared the living face of the man to whom he was talking.” In April of 1930, it was announced that AT&T and Bell engineers in New York City successfully conducted an experiment with 2way television, and what we would now refer to as the first ever twoway video chat. A participant in each lab – one at the AT&T building in mid-town, the other in lower Manhattan – sat in a small booth directly facing the camera behind a glass plate, which also served as a viewing screen. Each was able to see and hear his counterpart in a lab elsewhere in the city. A year later, a two-way video transmission between novelist
Fannie Hurst and her husband also took place at the AT&T building and Bell Laboratories a few miles away. It was not reported at the time whether or not there was an audio component to the connection (if so, it would have been via telephone line), but the spouses, at the very least, were able to smile and wave to each other for the duration of the transmission. Hurst described it as “the greatest thrill of an eventful life.” Experiments also took place in England and Germany throughout the 1930s, as part of each country’s efforts to create a fully functioning electronic television system. But the true era of the videophone, such as it was, began in August of 1956, when Bell Laboratories announced the development of the “Picturephone” and demonstrated the invention with a link-up between New York and Los Angeles. Bell technicians reported the results of their successful experiments at a joint meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers and the West Coast Electronic Manufacturers Association. The system, they said, was designed to use regular phone lines for the audio portion of the calls, but users of the 2 by 3 inch screen would need an extra wire installed for the video portion. However, unlike television, which transmits images at 30 frames per second, the picturephone could send only one picture every 2 seconds. The development team freely admitted that many technical obstacles needed to be overcome before the Picturephone could enjoy widespread use. On 20 April 1964, the Picturephone was demonstrated for the public for the first time at the Bell Pavilion of the World’s Fair in New York. The first conversation took place between William Laurence, science consultant to the Fair and former science editor of The New York Times, and Donald Shaffer,
managing editor of the Anaheim Bulletin, who was at the Bell exhibit in Disneyland. Visitors to each exhibit on opposite ends of the country were encouraged to have their own video conversations with whoever happened to be on the other end at any given time. Several weeks later, Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon Johnson, helped inaugurate regular Picturephone service between New York, Washington, and Chicago. For the event, she conducted a conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Wood, a scientist with Bell Labs. Wood spoke from a specially-constructed booth for the videophone, located in the Grand Central Station terminal. Two other identical booths were installed, one at the Prudential Insurance building, and one in the National Geographic Society building in Washington, DC. Also present at the event were two teenagers, both born deaf – Howard Mann of Chicago, and Laura Rabinowitz of Queens, New York. They demonstrated one truly profound use for the device, which enabled them to see each other from a thousand miles away and have a conversation with each other using sign language. But the service heralded on that day was limited to those three public Picturephone booths, although each booth was big enough to hold five people. At a cost of $16 to $27 for three minutes, however, demand was limited. Another possible use suggested for the Picturephone system involved stay-at-home shopping. A 1966 Time magazine essay, predicting what daily life would be like in the year 2000, spoke of how “the housewife should be able to switch on to the local supermarket on the video phone, examine grapefruit and price them, all without stirring from her living room.” However, skeptics warned that “remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will
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COMMUNICATION A new and improved version several years later did little to boost interest. Author’s collection
flop – because women like to get out of the house, like to handle the merchandise, like to be able to change their minds.” Indeed, in the late 1960s, it seemed the only place most people would see two or more individuals having a live conversation via video was on television programs with sci-fi elements, such as The Man From U.N.C.L.E and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. In 1970, an improved version of the Picturephone was introduced, for office and/or home use. The system still needed 3 pairs of wires to connect both sound and picture, as well as an amplifier every mile along the way to boost the signal; long distance service would still not
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be available just yet. But AT&T company officials remained relentless in their optimism, despite a still wary public. In 1970, using the city of Pittsburgh as its guinea pig, the company announced in an ad that “Picturephone service is a reality in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By the middle of 1971, it will be in Chicago and Washington, DC. By 1976, it will be established in 27 cities around the country.” But the video component still offered only black & white video at 250 lines of resolution, and a screen five inches square. Moreover, the voice and image of a transmission were not in total synch. The ad pressed on, with an
History Magazine October/November 2017
almost unnervingly honest assessment of its own product: “Unfortunately, Picturephone service can’t be everywhere at once. Because to prepare for it means building and installing a new kind of network over the framework of the existing one. And it means creating a different kind of telephone circuit (transmitting a picture over phone wires requires a circuit capacity 300 times wider than the one that carries a voice).” But the copy promised a big payoff: “As facilities grow, users will find countless new possibilities for Picturephone service. Discussing layouts, viewing charts, and getting computer information via a picturephone/computer hookup are just a few of the areas being pursued right now.” One Bell official that year kept himself perched firmly on the fence, by speculating that “Picturephone will either be a large success, and growing, or it will have flopped” by the end of the decade. Some engineers, not employed by Bell, suggested the fanciful possibility that two-way phone conversations would ultimately use the television set itself, rather than a separate device for videophone functions. In theory, the Picturephone system was to have 100,000 subscribers nationwide by 1975, 1,000,000 by 1980, and 3,000,000 by the mid-‘80s. But a year after the installations in Pittsburgh, only 33 picturephones were in use in the entire city, and, by 1973, the effort to market Picturephone nationwide was abandoned – but not forever. In 1992, AT&T tried yet again, unveiling a color Picturephone, and then introduced a wireless version in 2000. The concept still failed to catch on with the public. As tech writer Frederic D. Schwarz concluded in an issue of American Heritage Invention and Technology, “Picturephone remains one of technology’s most prominent
examples of an elaborate solution in search of a problem.” In practical terms, it became apparent that people answering phone calls at home didn’t necessarily want to be caught off guard not looking presentable (or fully dressed), or catching a glimpse of a messy home exposed to the videophone caller. And, of course, the option of switching off the unit’s camera tended to defeat the purpose of having it at all. But the story wasn’t over yet. As has been the case in many aspects of modern life, the exploding growth of the Internet throughout the 1990s brought with it new possibilities for communication, unforeseen only a decade earlier. The free Skype service, created by a small group of European inventors in 2003, and owned and operated by Microsoft since 2011, had once again made live video chats not only possible, but far easier and more common than in the struggling Picturephone days. Skype, in particular, has become a widespread means not only for friends
and relatives to video chat, but also for those such as servicemen in the military to connect with their loved ones from half a world away. Expectant wives of those in service have been able to have their far-off spouses “present” in hospital delivery rooms. The simple placement of a laptop or smartphone beside a bed has allowed many military fathers stationed overseas to witness the arrival of their newborns in real time. Apple’s Face Time has also become an influential player in the video chat realm since its introduction in 2010, and earlier this year, the Canadian-based Kik video chat app company bought the popular Rounds app, allowing up to six users to video chat simultaneously. Back in the realm of pop culture, an Emmy-winning episode of the hit sitcom Modern Family, airing in February of 2015, cleverly reflected the explosion of live video chat use in recent years, and reached an apex of sorts in how self-referential mass media has become. Titled “Connection Lost”, in which a
perceived family crisis throws the Pritchett and Dunphy households into an escalating panic, the entire episode is presented solely via laptop and smartphone screens throughout a running series of streaming video connections among the family members. So, while the original incarnation of the videophone failed to catch on with the public in the 1960s, the concept refused to die, and virtually crept up on us in these early years of the 21st century. It has become commonplace, without the fanfare and almost desperate pleas for acceptance that accompanied the original Picturephone’s troubled existence. GARRY BERMAN is the author of five books on various aspects of entertainment history and popular culture, including Best
of the Britcoms, We’re Going to See the Beatles! and For the First Time on Television. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Karen.
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SHIPWRECKS
SS Edmund Fitzgerald c. 1971. Photo by Greenmars, Wikimedia Commons
THE WRECK OF THE SS EDMUND FITZGERALD
LAUREEN SAULS-LESSARD LOOKS BACK AT THE 1975 MARINE TRAGEDY ON LAKE SUPERIOR
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he Chippewa say that when the underwater panther takes a ship, it doesn’t give it back. They call this stormy force Mishipeshu and he lives under the waters of Lake Superior, a.k.a. Gitchee Gumee. He seduces mariners with crystal waters so clear that you can see all the way down to the stones on the bottom, and then suddenly erupts to lasso his cold dragon fog breath around another victim. It was one of these foggy squalls that captured the SS Edmund Fitzgerald on 10 November 1975, taking her down. All hands on the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, known as “The Pride of the American Side”, were lost that day. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Marine Accident Report documents the ship was in a severe storm and operating on a reduced speed. There were no distress calls heard by other vessels or shore stations. The sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald is the most mysterious and notable maritime tragedy attributed to a fresh water lake in the world. The tragedy took the
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lives of 29 men who were sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands. Their loss affected dozens of families and friends of the shipping industry. The 729-foot ship was headed from a mill in Superior, Wisconsin to Zug Island in the Detroit River when it sank. The voyage was to be the last for the ship’s Captain Ernest McSorley before he retired. A crewmember
History Magazine October/November 2017
named Robert Rafferty was not even scheduled to be on board, but was filling in for another member who was sick. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was named after Edmund Fitzgerald, president of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company. The Great Lakes Engineering Works built her, and the engine by Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It was christened on 8 June 1958 in River Rouge, Michigan and it’s maiden voyage followed on 24 September. She was the largest ship on the Great Lakes, measuring 729 feet and weighing 13,632 tons. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause of the accident was from sudden massive flooding of the cargo hold and the collapse of one or more hatch covers
and a list. Also, before the hatch covers collapsed, flooding into the ballast tanks and tunnels through damage on the topside and into the cargo hold through nonweather tight hatch covers caused a reduction of freeboard and the list. The hydrostatic and hydrodynamic forces imposed on the hatch covers by heavy boarding seas at this reduced freeboard and list caused the hatch covers to collapse. Freeboard is the distance between the waterline and the main deck of a ship. The angle of list is the degree to which a vessel heels (leans or tilts) to either port or starboard. A listing vessel is stable at equilibrium, but the distribution of width aboard (often caused by uneven loading or flooding) causes it to heel to one side. Contributing to the accident was the lack of transverse (slanting) weather tight bulkheads in the cargo hold and the reduction of freeboard authorized by the 1969, 1971, and 1973 amendments to the Great Lakes Load Line Regulations. The waters of Lake Superior are legendary. No one knows exactly how many victims Mishipeshu has claimed, but according to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, there are over 6,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, having caused an estimated loss of 30,000 mariners’ lives. Approximately 550 wrecks are in Lake Superior (with at least 200 along the treacherous coastal shoreline where there is no safe harbor between Munising, Michigan, and Whitefish Point). Many are yet to be discovered. The Edmund Fitzgerald lies just 15 miles to the northwest of Whitefish Point. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem The Song of Hiawatha dates back to 1855 and mentions the waters of Gitche Gumee as the shining bigsea-water. The 1878 dictionary of Father Frederic Baraga, the first
one written for the Ojibwa language, refers to Lake Superior as otchipwe-kitchi-gami – the sea of the Chippewa people. Lake Superior is the largest fresh water lake in the world, containing an eighth of the world’s fresh water. At its deepest point, it measures 1,333 feet in depth, with an average water temperature of 34 degrees F. Approximately two hundred rivers and thousands of streams feed into it, but the grand waters only have one outlet – Saint Mary’s River that connects it to Lake Huron. It extends 350 miles in length and up to 160 miles in width. Lake Superior rests in a
cradle of ancient Precambrian rock on the southern tip of the Canadian Shield. The Chippewa tell of the great underwater Mishipeshu and that he is the ultimate metaphor representing the power, mystery and natural danger that comes from these sacred waters. With razorlike spikes on his back, the face of a lynx or panther, and the body of a sea serpent, this creature demanded respect. The Chippewa offered tobacco and prayer to the creature spirit before they embarked out onto the waters in their canoes. The calm waters of Lake Superior can be quickly
The National Transportation Safety Board map of probable course of SS Edmund Fitzgerald and Arthur M. Anderson. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons
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SHIPWRECKS
transformed into raging squalls and huge waves from the northern, northeast, and northwestern gales that often suddenly crop up. These gales sweep over the open water, quickly picking up momentum and causing huge waves, some up to 40 feet high. Pictographs of Mishipeshu can be found in several areas around the Great Lakes including at Agawa Bay, Lake Superior National Park, in northern Ontario, north of Sault Ste. Marie. Mishipeshu is the most important of the underwater animals for the Chippewa. They were said to live in the deepest parts of lakes and rivers, where they can cause storms. Some traditions believed the underwater panthers to be helpful, protective creatures, but more often, they were viewed as malevolent beasts that brought death and misfortune. They often needed to be placated for safe passage across a lake. As late as the 1950s, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation performed a traditional ceremony to placate the Mishipeshu and maintain balance with the Thunderbird. Their emblems appear together on ancient native garb representing these powerful creatures of the water and the sky and the Canadian Museum of History includes an underwater panther in its coat of arms. The remains of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald were found 15 miles west of Deadman’s Cove, Ontario on 14 November 1975 by a US Navy Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft equipped to detect magnetic anomalies with submarines, piloted by Lt. George Conner. It lay in two pieces. The Navy conducted further surveys and other research expeditions followed including: ● In a 1980 research dive expedition, marine explorer JeanMichel Cousteau, the son of
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Jacques Cousteau, sent two divers from RV Calypso in the first manned submersible dive to Fitzgerald. The dive was brief and speculation was that the Fitzgerald had broken up on the surface. ● In 1989, the Michigan Sea Grant Program organized a three-day dive to survey the Fitzgerald. The primary objective was to record 3-D videotape for use in museum educational programs and production of documentaries. Supporting participants included the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Geographic Society, the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS), and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. ● In 1994, Canadian explorer Joseph B. MacInnis organized and led six publicly funded dives to Fitzgerald over a three-day period. Harbor
Branch Oceanographic Institution provided Edwin A. Link as the support vessel, and their manned submersible, Celia. The GLSHS paid $10,000 for three of its members to each join a dive and take still pictures. ● In 1994, sport diver Fred Shannon of Deepquest Ltd. organized a privately funded dive using a Delta Oceanographic’s submersible. They conducted seven dives and took more than 42 hours of underwater video while Shannon set the record for the longest submersible dive to Fitzgerald at 211 minutes. ● In 1995, MacInnis led another series of dives to salvage the bell from Fitzgerald. The Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians backed the expedition by co-signing a loan in the amount of $250,000. ● In 1995, divers Terrence Tysall and Mike Zee were the only people known to have touched the Fitzgerald wreck. They set records for
Relative position of the bow and stern sections of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald as mapped by the United States Coast Guard. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons
History Magazine October/November 2017
The bell from the SS Edmund Fitzgerald on display at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. Photo by Duchene9, Wikimedia Commons
the deepest scuba dive on the Great Lakes and the deepest shipwreck dive, and were the first divers to reach Fitzgerald without the aid of a submersible.
Now the family members of the crew could find peace with successful access to it. The Canadian Government and family survivors of the crew gave their approval to access the ship and the bell was recovered on 4 July 1995, as they watched from onboard the ship Northlander. A series of dives using a specially designed dive suit called the “Newtsuit” by Phil Nuytten of Vancouver, BC was used to recover the bell. A diver named Bruce Fuoco used the system at a depth of 535 feet along with a special underwater cutting torch to separate the bell from the roof of the pilothouse. He cut the original bell from the SS Edmund Fitzgerald and replaced it with a replica that had the names of the crewmembers inscribed on it. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald Crew Members were: - Michael Armagost - Frederick Beetcher - Thomas Bentsen - Edward Bindon - Thomas Borgeson - Oliver Champeau - Nolan Church - Ransom Cundy - Thomas Edwards - Russell Haskell
- George Holl - Bruce Hudson - Alan Kalmon - Gordon MacLellan - Joseph Mazes - John McCarthy - Captain Ernest McSorley - Eugene O’Brien - Karl Peckol - John Poviach
- James Pratt - Robert Rafferty - Paul Riippa - John Simmons - William Spengler - Mark Thomas - Ralph Walton - David Weiss - Blaine Wilhelm
Afterward, the family members placed a wreath on the water following the bell recovery. The bell was then transported aboard HMCS Cormorant to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, where it was displayed to the public. On Friday, 7 July, the bell was formally presented to the family
members by Diane Cunningham, Ontario Minister of Inter-Governmental Affairs. In a ceremony titled “Call to the Last Watch”, the bell was then tolled 30 times, 29 for each man who lost his life on the Fitzgerald, with the final toll for all sailors who have died on the Great Lakes. There are some who are superstitious and believe there is a curse of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. On 23 February 2015, a US freighter called the SS Arthur M. Anderson was trapped in ice near Conneaut Harbor, about 75 kilometers northeast of Cleveland, but Canadian coast guard ships Friggon and the Samuel Risley came to their rescue. Two Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers also freed both the Anderson and a US icebreaker that were stuck for five days on southern Lake Erie where the ice was up to three metres thick. The SS Arthur M. Anderson was the last ship in radio contact with the SS Edmund Fitzgerald before it sank in 1975. It was also the first rescue ship on the scene in a vain search for Fitzgerald survivors. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald rests 530 feet below Lake Superior, but it is not forgotten. It is forever memorialized in Canadian singer and songwriter Gordon Lightfoot’s song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society also sponsors an annual Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Ceremony at the museum at Whitefish Point in Paradise, Michigan. LAUREEN SAULS-LESSARD is a freelance writer living in the Missouri Ozarks. Her stories are featured in several magazine publications including History Magazine and Wild West Magazine. She likes to collect antique silver and metalware of historical significance.
October/November 2017 History Magazine
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THE BILLIKEN CRAZE
JAMES BREIG LOOKS AT HOW AN ODD TOY CAPTURED THE WORLD, BUT COST ITS CREATOR A FORTUNE
I
n the 1980s, an engineer who worked on space missions for NASA submitted an application to the US Patent Office for “a toy squirt gun which shoots a continuous high velocity stream of water”. Dr. Lonnie Johnson, who perfected the Super Soaker in his garage during his off-hours, became a multimillionaire. Eighty years earlier, a demure illustrator and art teacher named Florence Pretz created a small statue of a squat, Asian-featured elf. Called the Billiken and nicknamed “the god of things as they ought to be”, it became an international fad. It seemed as if everyone had to have one on their office desk or home mantel, predating such later
TOYS
Florence Pretz’s Billiken drawing on her 1908 patent application. Public domain
20th-century “gotta-haves” as hula hoops and Cabbage Patch dolls. But her 1908 creation brought Pretz almost no monetary reward due to predators who duped her out of her rightful income. Pretz’s story of artistic achievement and financial failure began when she brought the Billiken into existence in Kansas City, Missouri, where she was born in 1885. “I was playing with some modeling clay one day and ‘Billy’ began to take form,” she would recount later. “I hadn’t the slightest idea that anyone would want to buy him.” But that genesis account omits part of the story of the Billiken’s birth. In fact, Pretz had already worked as an illustrator for “While Billiken Slept” and follow-up short stories that ran in 1907 in Canadian West magazine. For tales of Billiken the Fairy, she drew cherubs with gossamer wings and antennae who flitted around the pages. A year later, Pretz got a patent so she could begin selling her new version of the Billiken, now in the form of three-dimensional statues and dolls. The cherubic fairy of 1907 had been transformed into a chubby, grinning, wingless god. “Get one,” an early advertisement trumpeted, “the latest fad – makes a nice present – brings good luck.” Another crowed, “Get a Billiken, the God-of-Things-as-They-Oughtto-Be.” The ad quoted Billiken himself as promising, “As long as I smile at you bad luck can’t harm you….Grin and begin to win.” As sales zoomed, a magazine for storeowners crowed about “The Craze for ‘Billiken’” and introduced Pretz, based on her own words, as a “girl artist, whose luck was down at the heels….One day, seized by a freakish impulse, she
October/November 2017 History Magazine
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TOYS
made Billiken, and…said to herself: ‘There’s my mascot.’” Another magazine dubbed the image “the latest thing in novelties,” while The New York World newspaper described the artist as feverishly making statues “as fast as her hands could turn them out.” In fact, the artist realized early on that she could not meet the growing demand for Billikens on her own. Pretz turned to investors who guaranteed her a monthly income of $30 from the mass production and sales they could oversee. While a magazine article declared that she was “making a small fortune” from her statues, she earned only the promised $360 annually and nothing more. As for the investors, they raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just a year after the toy hit the markets, a Seattle, Washington, newspaper headlined a full-page article about her with the words “Little God of Luck an Ungrateful Wretch!” The subhead noted, “Brought Luck to Everybody but His Maker.” As a result, a men’s club in Seattle took pity on the forlorn creator of the fad and raised $1,000 for her. The artist thanked the group, but declined their gift. Meanwhile, newspaper ads for Billikens grew larger in size, and the price doubled to $2. “I’m all over the land,” the new ad ran. “Thousands of men and women believe in me.”
drive-in movie theater in Alaska took the title, as did an oil company, a motorists’ club, a women’s group in California and a Class B baseball team in Indiana. In Cairo, Illinois, a Great Lakes steamship was christened Billiken. Perhaps the oddest use of the Billiken image was by a hat store in Hawaii that stuck a drawing of the toy on its newspaper advertisement. To M. McInerny Ltd., the sketch would draw attention to its Stetson hats and Italian imports. The ad’s last line assured buyers that “Billiken will smile on you for your choice.” Recognizing that another fad had been supplanted, The Duluth News-Tribune informed
readers that “the billiken has taken the place of the Teddy Bear”. The statue also transmogrified into dolls and drawings. Newspapers began running full-page illustrated stories, such as the adventures of “Billiken and Bobby”, a series in a Washington, DC journal. Readers soon noticed that the most famous resident of that city, President William Howard Taft, resembled a somewhat elderly Billiken. When the Chief Executive summered in Beverly, Massachusetts, the locals were “inclined to regard Mr. Taft as a sort of Big Billiken,” the New York Times disclosed. The craze also showed up in vaudeville
What had begun as a doodle in an artist’s notebook and a clay model boomed into a nationwide craze.
Not content just to own one, people began to name everything after the toy. Dogs, horses and pigs were dubbed Billiken. A
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This full-page Billiken tale appeared in The Washington Star in 1909. Public domain
History Magazine October/November 2017
venues, such as “The Dancing Billiken” by Payne and Lee, who claimed to be the “Originators of the Billiken in Vaudeville”. Ed Wynn, who would later host his own TV variety series and appear in such movies as “Mary Poppins”, performed on stage in a sketch titled “The Billiken Freshman”. The Washington Post declared that the bit “captured top honors” as well as “enthusiastic applause”. A recording, “The Billiken Man”, was released (and can be heard on YouTube). “Billiken, Billiken, you funny creation,” the lyrics go, “you look so cute, that you’ve a queer fascination.” Quickly, the doll went international. In Sydney, Australia, female auctioneers vied for a free trip to London by showing off their skills in a contest that asked them to pitch three items: an ostrich boa, a silver salver and a Billiken. A down-under magazine informed readers that “both in London and America now the craze is for a ‘Billiken,’…a little, red-headed, ivory-finished alabaster figure four inches high.”
As 1909 came to an end and money poured into the Chicago bigwigs’ coffers, Pretz grew angrier. A Missouri paper reported that “she has smashed the last of the idols she formerly had prized. She turns aside from the shop windows to avoid seeing one. She disliked even to talk of ‘Billiken.’”
The exasperated artist firmly told a reporter that “I’m out of patience with the whole subject.” Asked if she wanted to see one of her creations, she responded, “I do not,” and vowed to throw it
WHERE DID THE WORD‘BILLIKEN’ COME FROM? The origin of the word “Billiken” is murky. The Oxford English Dictionary’s entry, with a lower-case ‘b’, defines the word as “a small, squat, smiling figure used as a mascot” and presents its earliest usage as 1914. The OED’s quotation is from “Man Upstairs” by P.G. Wodehouse: “When you send a girl three bouquets, a bracelet, and a gold Billiken with ruby eyes, you do not expect an entire absence of recognition.” The venerable dictionary surmised that the word is “probably” the combination of the male name Billy and the suffix “kin”, a diminutive. However, both the word and the fad appeared earlier than 1914. Florence Pretz’s patent application is dated 6 October 1908, and she illustrated what were called “Billikens” for 1907 stories in a Canadian magazine. Moving farther back in time finds “Mr. Moon: A Song of the Little People,” a poem published in 1896 by Bliss Carman, a Canadian poet (1861-1929). His verse begins, “O Moon, Mr. Moon,/When you comin’ down?/Down on the hilltop,/Down in the glen,/Out in the clearin’,/To play with little men?/Moon, Mr. Moon,/When you comin’ down?” The poem later goes to this section: “O Mr. Moon,/We’re all here!/Honey-bug, Thistledrift,/White-imp, Weird,/Wryface, Billiken,/Quidnunc, Queered.” Billiken can be found even earlier as a surname. An 1885 Minnesota newspaper shared the comic (and probably fictional) story of Mrs. Billikens versus a rat. A journal in Louisiana, dated 1893, announced an upcoming concert by local people, including Minnie Billikens. A search of the surname at Ancestry.com turned up nearly 500,000 responses, the earliest being Milton Billiken, a Civil War veteran from New York State. Whatever its origin, Florence Pretz’s Billiken remains the most famous of all.
against the wall if someone handed her one. It’s a good thing that she averted her eyes because, although the craze waned, it lasted well into the 19-teens, as the name Billiken marched on. Terriers, collies, Airedales and French bulldogs sported the moniker in dog shows. A company sold Billiken Shoes for children, and a housecleaning outfit in Utah took the name. Schools were offered scripts for “The Billiken Frolic”, a play written for eight boys, and a 1915 college songbook included
words and music that began, “I’m the god of Luckiness, observe my twinkling eyes”. A vaudevillian named Kate Elinor dubbed herself “The Human Billiken”. In 1914, a book titled, “Who Was Who 5000 B.C. to Date,” listed among the famous “Bs” – Buffalo Bill Cody, Bismarck and Billiken, “a funny little fellow who…made many people laugh.” In Argentina, a weekly children’s magazine named Billiken was founded in 1919 and continues to publish nearly a century later. Even the Japan Society, situated
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TOYS Pretz drew illustrations for a 1920 Spanish schoolbook. Public domain
on Broadway in New York City and dedicated to AmericanJapanese amity, noticed that the divine statue with its Asian appearance had been “adopted in Japan and is widely worshipped there as ‘the god of America’s success.’” In Chicago, the Bud Billiken Club was established to support poor black children, among them famous jazzman Lionel Hampton. The club survives to this day. Another musician of the era was singer Billiken Johnson, known for a singular talent: imitating train whistles and other sounds, which also can be heard on YouTube. Even The American Magazine of Art took notice of the toy, albeit not positively. In a critique that demanded better American war memorials, the author bemoaned that, without such efforts, they would remain “in the same class as the Teddy bear and the Billiken,” which were “hardly to be classed among our major civilizing forces.” As the money continued to roll in, but not in her direction, Pretz remained “very loath to speak of her famous invention,” reported The Omaha World Herald. She confided to a reporter that she
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had “consulted lawyers and did what I could [to win back her copyright] but without success.” Had she prevailed, she guessed that she would have become a millionaire. Absent the rights to her creation to pay her bills, Pretz returned to illustrating schoolbooks, magazine articles and department store ads for Bullock’s in Los Angeles. She had moved there with Robert Smalley, a car dealer from Lincoln, Nebraska, whom she married on Valentine’s Day 1912. Ten years later, newly divorced from Smalley and the mother of a daughter named Jane, Pretz lived with her parents in California. There, she came up with a new idea: Pot Hounds. As reported in Crockery and Glass Journal, the “little plaster figures…present the alley pup in all his glory.” The idea went nowhere. Seven years later, Pretz tried again to reprise her Billiken success by obtaining a copyright for a wrapping paper with an “ornamental design.” It was yet another grasp at what was no longer reachable. Both the creator and her creation faded into obscurity. In 1908, the word “billiken” appeared only 65 times in a search
History Magazine October/November 2017
of scores of US newspapers. A year later, that number soared to more than 3,000, only to recede into the hundreds in subsequent years. Florence Pretz Smalley, 84, died in California on New Year’s Eve 1969, but her creation lives on in the 21st century at St. Louis University. Its sports teams are nicknamed the Billikens because, in 1911, a chubby coach was thought to resemble the idol. While green-coated leprechauns raise cheers at Notre Dame and a Trojan soldier in armor sparks excitement at the University of Southern California, the Billiken mascot rouses SLU students to shout for their alma mater in a tribute to a forgotten fellow Missourian whose creation once fascinated the world.
The Billiken squats at St. Louis University. Wikipedia.org
JAMES BREIG is an awardwinning writer who has been a syndicated TV critic, an essayist on subjects ranging from religion to flags, and a historian who specializes in the 18th-20th centuries.
HINDSIGHT
OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017
DEFIANCE
THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF LADY ANNE BARNARD by Stephen Taylor
Born in Scotland in 1772, Lady Anne Barnard lived at the heart of Georgian society. She wrote one of the most popular ballads of her day, captivated Sir Walter Scott with her poetry, rubbed shoulders with the Prince of Wales, and dazzled Samuel Johnson with her repartee. Lady Anne’s charisma and talent were undeniable; she was well known as both a beauty and a wit. However, she was also seen as an eccentric – an artist defined by her defiance of convention. Lady Anne had romantic affairs with several prominent men, but she married none of them. She preferred to live independently – even traveling alone to Paris during the upheaval of the French Revolution. When she did marry, it was to an impoverished army officer many years her junior. The pairing scandalized polite society. Hounded by gossip, the couple escaped to the Cape Colony – England’s first African possession – where Lady Anne painted the vibrant landscapes and penned her memoirs. An indefatigable diarist, she proved herself one of the extraordinary chroniclers of the era. Stephen Taylor draws on Lady Anne’s private papers, including six volumes of her never-before-published memoirs, to construct a vivid biography of her remarkable life. Illustrated with Lady Anne’s own drawings as well as portraits by her contemporaries, Defiance offers a lively and wholly absorbing portrayal of a woman far ahead of her time.
1944 DIARY
by Hans Keilson
Hans Keilson’s 1944 Diary, written while he was in hiding from the Nazis in the Dutch city of Delft, was rediscovered among Keilson’s papers in 2011 following his death at age 101. While in Delft and living with members of a Dutch resistance group, Keilson was working on two “masterpieces”, the novels Comedy in a Minor Key and the Death of the Adversary, both published in the United States in 2010 by FGS. Damion Searls, the translator of 1944 Diary from the German, calls the diary a “spiritual X-ray of the mind and heart” behind the work Keilson produced during his time underground. In addition to the two novels, Keilson also wrote dozens of sonnets to Hanna Sanders, a young Jewish woman also in hiding, with whom he was having an affair. These sonnets appear in translation at the back of this volume. This diary is as much a document of Keilson’s survival as of the moral and artistic struggles he faced during 1944. Both harrowing and beautiful, it is a revelatory look at one of Europe’s most important novelists at a key moment of the twentieth century. Published by Farrar, Straus, Giroux 256 pages; ISBN: 978-0-374-53559-9 Price: $25.00 (US) $35.00 (CAN)
Published by W.W. Norton & Company; 400 pages; ISBN: 978-0-393-24817-3; Price: $28.95
October/November 2017 History Magazine
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BOOKS
IT’S ALL A GAME
THE HISTORY OF BOARD GAMES FROM MONOPOLY TO SETTLERS OF CATAN by Tristan Donovan
Board games have been with us longer than even the written word. But what is it about this pastime that continues to captivate us well into the age of smartphones and instant gratification? In It’s All a Game, British journalist and renowned games expert Tristan Donovan opens the box on the incredible and often surprising history and psychology of board games. He traces the evolution of the game across cultures, time periods, and continents, from the paranoid Chicago toy genius behind classics like Operation and Mouse Trap, to the role of Monopoly in helping prisoners of war escape the Nazis, and even the scientific use of board games today to teach artificial intelligence how to reason and how to win. With these compelling stories and characters, Donovan ultimately reveals why board games have captured hearts and minds all over the world for generations. Published by Thomas Dunne Books; 304 pages; ISBN: 978-1-250-08272-5 Price: $26.99 (US) $37.99 (CAN). Also available in E-book.
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ROBERT E. LEE by R. David Cox
Robert E. Lee was many things – accomplished soldier, military engineer, college president, family man, agent of reconciliation, polarizing figure. He was also a person of deep Christian conviction. In this biography of the famous Civil War general, R. David Cox shows how Lee’s Christian faith shaped his crucial role in some of the most pivotal events in American history. Delving into family letters and other primary sources – some of them newly discovered – Cox traces the lifelong development of Lee’s convictions and how they influenced his decisions to stand with Virginia against the Union and later to support reconciliation and reconstruction in the years after the Civil War. Faith was central to Lee’s character, Cox argues – so central that it directed and redirected his life, especially in the aftermath of defeat. Published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; 368 pages ISBN: 978-0-8028-7482-5; Price: $26.00 (US) 21.99 (UK)
THE ZOO
THE WILD AND WONDERFUL TALE OF THE FOUNDING OF LONDON ZOO: 1826-1851 by Isobel Charman
The creation of a zoo in Dickensian London – when only one other existed across the world – is a story of jaw-dropping audacity. It is the story of trailblazing scientists, rival zookeepers and aristocratic naturalists collecting amazing animals from all four corners of the globe. It is the story of a weird and wonderful oasis in the heart of a swirling city, and of incredible characters, both human and animal – from Stamford Raffles and Charles Darwin to Jenny the orangutan and Obaysch the celebrity hippo, the first that anyone in Britain had ever seen. Against a background of global Empire, domestic reform and industrialization, this is a new history of a new world. Published by Pegasus Books; 368 pages ISBN: 978-1-68177-356-8; Price: $27.95
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History Magazine October/November 2017
Heritage Travel! Now Available Your Genealogy Today
presents — Tracing Your Ancestors: Heritage Travel: Tips, Tricks & Strategies
This new edition to our Tracing Your Ancestors series is co-authored by genealogy educators and lecturers Lisa A. Alzo and Christine Woodcock. Here is some of what is included in the issue: Ten Things You Should Know Before You Go; How to Hire the Right Guide; Awesome Travel Apps for the Heritage Traveler; Immersion Genealogy; Build an Itinerary with Trello; Journal Your Journey; Preparing Travel to Your Ancestral Homeland; Social History Museums; Food, Family & Folklore; After the Tour: Prepare to Tell Your Story; Speaking Your Ancestors’ Language, and more.
68 Pages. Magazine format.
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