A Remarkable Newspaper – Written, edited, set in type, printed and published by one man.

(Article originally published in 1902)

Up to the year 1888 the eighteen  thousand Italians domiciled in the United Kingdom were without a representative newspaper published in this country.  Owing to this, many engaged in business were hindered considerably in mercantile transactions owing to their ignorance of current affairs.  Immediately prior to the opening of the Italian Exhibition at Earl’s Court in 1888 the drawback became more than ordinarily apparent, and the situation was dealt with very effectively. The ” Londra-Roma ” appeared, and since then has gone on and prospered with age. For fourteen years the organ of the London Italian public has appeared regularly once a week.

At the time of its first appearance the readers of the “Londra-Roma” were unaware that its production was entirely the work of a young and energetic Italian who had come to England a little while previously. Since then, naturally, the knowledge is shared generally by his fellow-countrymen. Professor Pietro Rava, who founded it, was originally a teacher of languages, but he drifted into journalism without much effort.  In his capacity of general contributing staff, subeditor, editor,  compositor,  proofreader,  printer,  manager,  publisher, and advertisement canvasser, and bearing, as he does, the responsibilities of proprietorship, the Professor, it must  be admitted, has no easy task to perform in order to produce the “Londra Roma” with the regularity of a Fleet Street newspaper.

This remarkable newspaper consists of four sheets of closely-printed matter, and contains, including ’standing’ advertisements, about seventeen thousand words weekly !

Professor Rava has no need to go to the ant to learn what work means. He knows all about that. He rises early and goes to bed late-very late. The Professor’s plan is to set aside three days a week to prepare news, leading articles, reviews, etc. The main part of his copy written, the editor becomes a compositor, and enters the type-setting room, well-stocked with the usual requisites. Everything is set up by hand, as expensive type-setting machinery has not yet reached 16, Fitzroy Street. The Professor is one of the smartest ” comps.” in London, setting line after line with precision, correctness, and speed, subsequent ” corrections ” being seldom necessary. Proof-reading over, the Professor tackles late news and articles, sets them in type in due course, and completes the making-up for press. The ” Londra-Roma ” is then ready for printing, and as its circulation is by no means that of certain of our dailies, the issue is soon ready for publication, this process also being accomplished by the journalistic handyman.

This was published in a magazine in 1900, so it must have occured in the late 1800’s. Anyone know about this chapel?

“Consider a remarkable little mediaeval church which was discovered through a dream. A young woman living in a village near Pirot, in Servia, dreamed one night of a buried church. . She spoke of it to the prefect and the local  clergy,    but they  only   laughed   at her.

She persisted in her statements, however, and ultimately induced the people to dig at a spot she indicated. Here, to the intense surprise of everyone but the dreamer, the ruins of a mediaeval church were found. These were rebuilt as a tiny chapel, and since then hundreds of people have made pilgrimages to the place. The  chapel   is   simply  crowded  with   tablets, sacred icons, and other tributes of the faithful.

The woman whose dream led to its discovery is the presiding genius of the place, and receives so many gifts from the worshippers that she is already quite rich. Our photograph shows the dream-church and its discoverer, with her children.”

The striking photograph reproduced above shows a curious work of Nature near Thunder Mountain, Idaho, U.S.A. This gigantic monolith is eighty feet high, and about ten or twelve feet square at the base, tapering towards the top to about seven feet or less. The great rock poised on the top is estimated to weigh fully ten tons. The obelisk is known as the ” Sheepeaters’  Monument,” and the Indians have a curious legend to account for it.

Many years ago, they say, before the white men came, the Sheepeaters were  attacked  in   the  valley   below the shaft by a war party of Bannocks from the south. The conflict raged fiercely, but the Sheepeaters, fighting for their homes and hunting-grounds, ultimately defeated their foes. The Great Spirit was told of the battle by the Indians who had been killed in the fight, and gone to the happy hunting-ground. They told the Great Spirit of the valorous deeds of their tribe in defending their homes, and he said that he would build a monument on the battle-ground that should stand for all ages as evidence of the Sheepeaters’ prowess.

Next spring there came a great snow-slide, and when the grass grew again there stood the monument, about ten feet high, and on the top the balanced rock. The monolith, they say, has grown larger each year, as the Great Spirit has been more pleased with the Sheepeaters. The enemies of the tribe, the Indians declare, were placed underneath the top rock, and there has been no trouble since. As a matter of fact, the monument – which is of a granite-like hardness – has been formed by the gradual wearing away of the softer rock formation surrounding it. A more striking natural monument it would be difficult to find anywhere in the world.

Here is an interesting true tale from an adventure  magazine published in 1898

AT   A   BEAR’S   MERCY.

THOUGH during my sojourn in Scandinavia I was in at the death or capture of one hundred and two bears, the larger portion of which were bagged when I was alone, so to say, and   though   often   in   considerable  jeopardy,   I   was   never wounded by those beasts excepting on a single occasion. The circumstances under which the accident occurred were as follows : -

On Saturday, the 29th of March, 1844, in company with Elg and two others, I was in search, in the more northern parts of the Wermeland Finn-forests, of a large bear that had for several preceding years committed much havoc amongst the horses and cattle.

He was not actually ringed, but his track having been seen very late in the autumn, we had reason to believe he was lying thereabouts. The snow was fully two feet in depth, but owing to the Dags-meja -  that is, the effect of the noonday’s sun upon snow or ice in the spring -  it was mashy, so to say, and consequently not only the skidor but the dogs sank nearly to the ground.

Our little party was drawn up at a distance of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty paces apart, on the face of a rather lofty and deeply wooded hill. My station was near to the centre of the line, and, as we were beating the forest below us, one of the dogs opened at some fifty paces in advance in a manner that assured me it was the bear he had fallen in with.

From the advanced period of the season, and the very unfavourable state of the snow, I feared that if the beast was once fairly on foot we might have very great difficulty in killing him. In all silence I therefore pushed forward as fast as I could, in the hope of getting a shot prior to his leaving the lair, and when near to it I took off my skidor, as well because some fallen trees obstructed the way as that my movements might be more noiseless.

The bear was lying near to the summit of a little knoll, and at the outer edge of a thick brake ; but on the side I approached him there was a small opening in the forest, so that my view was nearly unobstructed. Owing, however, to his being crouched beneath a sort of bower, consisting of several of the adjacent young pines which he had broken or torn down with his teeth and claws – a form of lair, by-the-bye, such as I never saw before or since -I was not aware of the beast until within some eight or ten paces of his bed, and  then  little  more  than   his   head,  which  was   obliquely  towards   me,  was visible; and though the dog stood baying immediately near to him, and though fully awake, as I saw by the rolling of his eye, he had not as yet at all changed his position; but from
the action of his head he was evidently on the point of moving off.                           .

Being perfectly prepared and my gun on the full-cock, I, as soon as I caught sight of the beast, levelled at the centre of his skull; but some boughs intervening, which it was to be feared might intercept the ball, caused me to desist from firing.

The next instant, however, I took rather a snap-shot at the outer side of his head, beyond the boughs in question. But the momentary delay caused by shifting my aim was very unfortunate; for in the interim he had seen me, and as I pulled the trigger he was in the very act of bolting from his couch, and my aim in consequence was very uncertain. Indeed, I am inclined to believe I missed him altogether.

Be that as it may, on the discharge of my gun the beast at once rushed towards me. I had still left my second barrel, with which I ought, no doubt, to have destroyed him; but owing to his undulatory motion I could not, though I attempted more than once, catch a satisfactory sight, and it was not until he was within three or four paces that I fired, and then somewhat at random.

Though my ball in this or the former instance (for in one or the other, as subsequently ascertained, it went wide of the mark) wounded him very desperately, it having entered his neck near the shoulder, and passed into his body, yet it was not sufficient, unfortunately, to stop his course, for in a second or two he was upon me -  not on his hind legs (the way in which it is commonly supposed the beast makes his attacks), but on all-fours, like a dog; and in spite of a slight blow that I gave him on the head with the muzzle of my gun -  for I  had  no  time  to  apply  the  butt -  he  at  once   laid me prostrate.

Had not the beast been so very near me when I fired the second barrel, it is probable, from his wounded state, I might have got out of his way; but flight on my part, from his near proximity, was then too late; and once in his clutches, and now that my gun was discharged, totally unarmed, the only .resource left to me was to turn my face to the snow, that my features might not be mutilated, and to lie motionless, it being a generally received opinion in Scandinavia that if the bear supposes his victim to be dead, he the sooner desists from his assaults.

In my case, however, though I played the defunct as well as I was able, the beast mauled me somewhat severely, about the head in particular; my body also suffered greatly from his ferocious attacks, which extended from the neck and shoulder downwards to the hip.

Neither at the time of receiving my first fire, nor whilst making his rush, did the bear, as is usually the  case  when  enraged, utter his  usual half-roar, half-growl. Even when I was lying at his mercy, no other than a sort of subdued growl, similar to that of a dog when disturbed whilst gnawing a bone, was made by the beast; and so far from coming at me with open jaws, as one would suppose to be the case with a wild beast when making his onset, his mouth at the time was altogether closed.

The pain I suffered from his long-continued attacks on my body was bearable. When he had my limbs in his jaws, it more resembled their being stuck in a huge vice than anything else; but when his jaws grasped, as they did, the whole crown of my head -  during which I distinctly felt the fleshy part of his mouth to overlap my forehead -  and his fangs very deliberately seized my head, my sufferings were intense.

The sensation of his fangs slowly grating over the bare skull was not at all that of a sharp blow, as is often the case when a wound is inflicted, but rather, though very much more protracted, the crunch one feels during the extraction of a tooth.

From certain circumstances, I have reason to believe the bear continued to maltreat me for nearly three minutes. As I perfectly retained my senses the whole time, my feelings whilst in this horrible situation are beyond the power of description. But at length the incessant attacks of my gallant little dog drew the beast’s attention from me, and I had the satisfaction to see him retreat, though at a very slow pace, into the adjoining thicket, where he was at once lost to view.

Immediately after he left me I arose, and applied snow by the handful to my head, to staunch the blood which was flowing from it in streams. I lost a very large quantity, and the bear not a little, so that the snow all around the scene of conflict was literally deluged with gore.

From the wretched state of the snow and the distance, my comrades did not join me until a minute or two after my antagonist had retreated, and when I was on my legs bathing my wounds. Elg, whom I had called twice by name at the instant the bear was about to close with me, had no idea I was in jeopardy, but merely that I required his aid in killing the beast.

At first, from the pain of my wounds and the weakness consequent on loss of blood, which ran from my head so as almost to blind me, I thought myself much more hurt than I was in reality, and disabled for that day at least; so that, on my comrades coming up, I forthwith directed Elg to put an end to the wounded bear, whose tracks were deeply marked with blood, which he effected in about ten minutes, and within two or three hundred paces of the spot where the encounter between us had taken place.

Our prize,(Now in the British Museum, to which institution it was presented by the Earl of Selkirk) a male, was emaciated, from age as we imagined, and his fangs either broken or greatly blunted. To the latter circumstance my preservation, under  God, was  probably attributable, for  had  his fangs entered my person in every place where they left indentations, I must have been literally torn to pieces.

As it was, I  escaped wonderfully.    My body, to  be sure, was covered with severe contusions -  for the skin being only slightly raised, wounds they could hardly be called. My right hand and wrist were a good deal hurt, for at the commencement of the affair -  how, I know not -  I got my hand into the mouth, and even partially down the very throat of the beast. My skull, for a considerable extent, was laid bare in two places, one wound, by the doctor’s account on the following day, being eight, the other nine inches in length -   though parts of both were, of course, superficial; but from my hair being cut very short, and the fangs of the beast thus readily passing through it, I escaped being scalped, as would inevitably have happened had it been worn long, after the fashion of the Swedish peasantry.

How easily the masses are duped, comrade..”Communism is dead, the Cold War is over”…I think not, quite the reverse in fact…

This from 1926, the year of the General Strike. One of my ancestors administered Strike pay to local  miners,( given by the Kremlin). I understand why many of the poor who are ground down by poverty might imagine such an “ism” to be their saviour. Sure hasn’t delivered on its promise.

(Newsclip from an adventure magazine ~ 1900)

Railwaymen in foreign lands often carry on their work under conditions that would appal their fellow-workers at home. On certain Central African railways, for instance, trains have frequently been charged by rhinoceroses and other large beasts ; and an unhappy telegraph operator on the Uganda Railway, on returning to his station, found the station-master and staff barricaded in a hut, while two big lions patrolled the platform ! He promptly wired down the line for “instructions.”

The edifice seen in the photograph shown  is rendered necessary by very similar conditions. It is a hut built for the pointsman at Walayar, a jungle station on the Madras Railway, and is intended to protect its occupant against the  numerous tigers which frequent the vicinity.

These ferocious brutes have in the past manifested an unholy taste for railway-men, and so it was found necessary to place the men at isolated spots in cages. The tigers have even been known to visit the stations, causing dire dismay among the staff and passengers.

(Newsclip from an adventure magazine ~ 1900)

This photo shows an oil “gusher”, and a tank containing 37,000 barrels of oil on fire at the “Spindle Top”  oil-field in Texas. Just 3 weeks after the great fire at Jennings, the tank seen on the left of the photograph was mysteriously ignited. Everything hereabouts, even the very derricks themselves, is saturated with oil, and when the great tank burst into flame the  fire  spread with lightning rapidity.

Everything on the surface was threatened, but there was no danger of the fire sapping out all the valued stores of Mother Earth, as from too much tapping the “gushers” had long since stopped spouting. The fire had not been burning an hour, however, when suddenly, with a roar like a cannon, a great ball of flame shot up from a well beside the burning tank, expanding into a huge sphere as it cleft the suffocating black smoke arising from the burning oil. It poised for a moment – balanced, as it were, on the point of the stream that followed it a hundred and fifty feet into the air – and then burst like a bomb, each of the smaller balls into which it broke flaming as they fell.

More mysterious even than the origin of the fire was this revival of the well’s gushing propensities. Why one well among so many, all doubtless tapping the same subterranean reservoir, should suddenly commence spouting is inexplicable.

No words of description are needed to attest the terrific grandeur  of  the scene depicted in the photograph, and the striking contrast between the slender fountain of fire and the great billows of jet-black smoke. One’s imagination reels at the thought of what might have happened if the conflagration had occurred when all the wells in this region were spouting.

After  a   time   the   tank   fire   was starved   out  by   the   drawing   off   of   the  oil from underneath it. The burning “gusher” presented a more difficult problem, but as luck would have it the stream of oil clogged in some way and the few flames left were soon extinguished, so that when a special train arrived from Houston, bringing a thousand excursionists all eager to see the great fire, there was nothing but the smoking wreckage to be seen, and an army of labourers already hard at work clearing the way for new derricks.

]]> http://blog.pictorialgems.com/oil-fire-at-spindle-top-1900/feed/ 0 http://blog.pictorialgems.com/caught-in-a-prairie-muskeg-1900/ http://blog.pictorialgems.com/caught-in-a-prairie-muskeg-1900/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 06:09:14 +0000 jules http://blog.pictorialgems.com/?p=843

(Newsclip from an adventure magazine ~ 1900)

This photograph represents an unpleasant and rather exciting experience which occasionally falls to the lot of the Western settler. The correspondent who sends us the photograph writes as follows :

” We were driving out to a ranch and had diverged from the trail in order to see a fine collection of brood mares, when we unluckily fell into a swamp. This proved to be a prairie ‘muskeg’ of the worst description. Both our horses got hopelessly bogged up, like flies in a treacle-pot. When they had been cut loose and the buggy removed, one, by mighty efforts, fought its way to safety, while the other, after a few desperate attempts to escape from the mud and slime, apparently gave up all hope of extricating itself. For three hours we hauled at it, cutting down branches of trees and doing everything else we could think of to give the poor beast a foothold.

While this struggle was proceeding it occurred to me to take a photograph.

The camera was stood on a tussock of grass, the tripod sunk in the mud, and as we all slowly subsided together the exposure was made. I am pleased to add that we were eventually able to recover the poor animal alive. A team of strong horses was fetched from a neighbouring ranch, a long rope carried from the bank out to the unfortunate horse, and before it could realize that relief had come it was hauled out to dry land on its back, shivering and groaning, but safe.”

By Dorothy von Heisman.

(Published 1903)

The story of one of the most remarkable frauds ever perpetrated upon a life insurance company. How two men and a woman obtained fifty thousand dollars by means of a clever plot and got safely away with the money. The fraud was only discovered by the merest accident.

ONE of the cleverest frauds ever practised upon a life insurance company took place about sixteen years ago in a remote village in Wisconsin, in the United States. Huntley, a scattered hamlet of eight hundred inhabitants, was the terminus and single station of a branch line of the C.M. and L.R.R. Every morning a discarded engine drew a melancholy-looking coach containing a solitary mail sack – and on rare occasions a passenger – up to our little village; but for this we should have been cut off from the outside world completely.

It was an indescribably dull and sleepy little place, where the men congregated at the one store in the evenings to discuss the crops and the price of hay, and where the women looked upon a funeral as their only recreation. My father had charge of the plan of the village cemetery, and when a death occurred a lot was selected from this plan, and my father gave the necessary instructions for the digging of the grave.

One hot afternoon in August our frontdoor bell rang. Now this door was never used save by the minister when he made his periodical call, and with the curiosity of a country girl I rushed to the door to see who the unexpected caller might be.A well-dressed, middle-aged man stood on the steps, hat in hand. He inquired for my father. I replied that he was not at the house and asked if I could take his message. He replied that his name was Barber, and that he had brought his wife’s remains to the village for burial, as it had been her home as a child. He came, he said, from Boscobel, fifty miles distant, but having arrived too late for the branch train he had been obliged to hire a team and driver to bring him from the main line station, fifteen miles away, to Huntley. He said it was very necessary that he should leave by the fast train at six o’clock ; to do this he must first see the body buried and then make the return drive.

My father was summoned at once, the stranger was given the plan of the cemetery, and he immediately chose a lot and begged that no time should be lost. My father promised to make all possible speed, and, securing the necessary tools and a man to help, started at once for the cemetery, while the stranger said he would go for the team and driver and join them at once. He looked worn and seemed very nervous and troubled, but that, of course, was to be expected.

I evaded my work and followed the men out to the graveyard, as the country people called it. It lay beyond the outskirts of the village – a dreary, melancholy – looking place. A broken fence and a number of forlorn – looking pine trees added to its neglected appearance. The better-kept graves were a mass of myrtle and wild pinks, with here and there a brilliant poppy, but for the rest it was given over to weeds and decay.

I found my father and his helper hard at work. The waggon containing the coffin was drawn up under the shade of the trees just outside the fence. The husband of the dead woman sat near in gloomy silence, while the driver lay asleep on the grass.

The law provides that a grave shall be six feet long, six feet deep, and four feet wide. It was already three o’clock. If the stranger was to arrive in time for the train a good hour and a half must be allowed for the return journey. As the time went by the stranger began to exhibit great impatience and anxiety. He suggested that a little less than the required six feet would suffice, and offered the men extra pay if they would hurry the work.

At last the grave was finished. The gentleman said that funeral services had already been held, so the waggon was drawn as near as possible to the grave, and the men prepared to lower the coffin into the earth. The coffin bore on the outside a doctor’s certificate stating that Mrs. Mary Barber had died three days previously in the township of Barton, of consumption, and that he, the attending physician, testified to the same. Here followed the name of the physician, Dr. John Gray, and the date, August 16th, 1886.

So far all was well, but when the three men tried to lift the box out of the waggon, preparatory to lowering it into the grave, they found that they were unable to move it. My father expressed his surprise at the weight of the coffin, whereupon the stranger replied that the remains were enclosed in a metallic casket.

Three men were called in to assist, and finally, after great effort, the coffin was placed on two stout leather straps and made ready to lower into the place prepared for it. Almost instantly, however, the straps snapped and the coffin fell with a thud into the grave. The men were astonished at this, for the straps were new and capable of bearing a great weight. However, nothing was said, the grave was rapidly filled up, and the stranger paid his bill and drove away.

As soon as they were left to themselves the men began to talk of the extraordinary weight of the coffin, and later on, when they assembled at the store for their usual evening gossip, the talk began to take the definite form of suspicion.

Meanwhile the men who had been present at the grave had related the circumstances to their wives, and the result was that what the men lacked of imagination the women supplied. By bedtime everyone in the village and even some people in the surrounding country were in full possession of all the facts, which each one coloured to suit his or her imagination. Never before had the sleepy village known such excitement. Speculation of all sorts was rife, but by-and-by it got down to the one ugly word, ” Murder.” The stranger had given absolutely no information in the few hours he had been in the village. He had spoken to no one save at our house, and there he had merely said that his wife had lived in the village as a child. As he had not given her maiden name, however, the information afforded us no clue.

Of course, no definite accusation could be made until it was certain that a crime had been committed, but next morning a meeting was held, and the three principal men of the village, the doctor, the minister, and my father – who was also the local justice of the peace – decided, with the full consent of all the villagers, to have the grave opened. It was noon before all the arrangements were completed, but immediately alter dinner the people began to hurry toward the cemetery by twos and threes and in groups of half-a-dozen.

In dead silence they stood around the grave, and as the men threw out the earth and brought nearer to their eyes what each one believed to be the evidence of a dreadful crime, even their breathing became hushed, and they stood there motionless under the blue sky, with the hot sun beating down upon them. Not a sound was to be heard above the noise of the spades save the sighing of the wind in the pine trees and the clear call of a meadow-lark from the adjoining field. Presently the shovels in the hands of the two men at work gave out a scraping sound, and the men asked for more help in order to raise the coffin. This was a difficult task, but finally it was accomplished and the casket laid ready to open. One of the villagers, a carpenter, stepped forward, tools in hand. His tanned face turned a shade paler, and the hand that held the chisel trembled a little. The people stepped back and then surged forward. The coffin opened readily and revealed a strong, handsome inner case of metal.

Slowly the screws of this shell yielded, and two men stepped forward to raise the lid. Those who stood near enough to see fell back. Slowly the men raised the lid.

They found inside what no one in their wildest imaginings had thought of – stones! About fifty stones of varying sizes, each one wrapped in paper so that it might give no sound. One by one the people came up and looked wonderingly in and turned away. The real truth of the matter had by no means dawned upon them yet and the mystery seemed deeper than ever. The coffin and box were returned to the grave, the earth was filled in, and the people slowly retraced their steps to their homes.

There could be no doubt, however, that something was wrong. It was finally decided to telegraph to the station where the casket was put on the train, but all the information gained was that at three o’clock in the morning of the preceding day two men had driven to the railway station in a waggon containing the casket. They came, they said, from their home in the country, showed the official in charge a doctor’s certificate properly made out, and asked for the usual permit to take a corpse by train. There had been no reason for refusing, so the forms were filled out, and one man, taking a ticket, accompanied the remains, while the other drove away at once.

The great weight of the coffin had been noticed, but the two men had helped in placing it on the train and had explained that it contained a metallic shell. Moreover, they had arrived barely in time to place the body on the train, and there had been no time for questions.

Further telegraphing elicited the fact that the man had arrived at the station on the main line the preceding evening in time to catch the fast train, had bought a ticket for Chicago, and had departed. The police in Milwaukee were communicated with, and some weeks later we heard the true particulars of this remarkable case.

It appeared that two years previously a man named Wilson, accompanied by his wife and her brother, a Dr. Gray, had rented a small farm in a remote part of Wisconsin. They did not say where their last residence had been, merely giving out that they came from the State of New York. Their new home was in a thinly-settled region, their nearest neighbour being ten miles away, and nearly all the farmers in the district were foreigners.

Mr. Wilson gave out that he had come West and taken a farm on account of his wife’s ill-health. She was never seen at all, and her brother made no attempt to practise his profession.

At that time there was but one life insurance company in the United States that took women as a risk, and then only at a very high premium. Shortly after their arrival in Wisconsin Mr. and Mrs. Wilson went to Milwaukee, the nearest large city. Here Mrs. Wilson applied for an insurance policy, and after passing a very rigid medical examination the life insurance company insured her life in her husband’s favour for the sum of fifty thousand dollars, which – at that time, at least – was the maximum sum issued on a female life. Returning to their home the couple kept strictly to themselves.

By degrees Mr. Wilson gave out that his wife’s health was failing, and as her brother was a physician no comment was excited by the fact that no other medical man was called in. Finally, after two years’ residence, the end came. Mr. Wilson drove to a town about thirty miles away, where he was a perfect stranger, and there bought a metallic coffin. On his return home he went to his nearest neighbours, who were Swedes and had but a slight knowledge of the English language. He told them that his wife was dead, and that he was going to take her to her birthplace, where the funeral services would be held, for burial. When the neighbours called the coffin was already closed, Mr. Wilson explaining that it had been necessary to do so. Meanwhile, some days before, Mrs. Wilson had driven during the night to a railway station thirty miles away across country. Here she had taken a ticket for Chicago, and then presumably for New York, the nearest seaport.

The husband and brother locked up the house which contained only the barest necessaries – and started in the night for the nearest railway station, taking the “remains ” with them. After seeing the husband safely on his way the brother probably took the next train to New York and joined his sister.

The husband after leaving our village went at once to Chicago, arriving early the next morning. He went direct to the office of the insurance company, to whom he had already sent word of his wife’s death, together with the certificate of her brother, Dr. Gray. Everything had been properly done; the company had no reason to dispute the claim, and it was immediately paid in full, and by noon Wilson was on his way to join his wife.

They were never caught. So much time had been lost before the real facts of the case were discovered that they were able to make good their escape, and are probably enjoying their ill-gotten gains somewhere to-day. They were certainly clever enough to have decided on a safe hiding-place before they launched their project.

These people’s plans had been well laid and carefully matured. They chose a residence remote from, everyone, made no acquaintances, and finally chose as a burial-place one of the most isolated and forsaken villages in the United States. Had they not overdone the business in the matter of weight in the coffin, the fraud would probably never have been discovered, the insurance company would not know that they had been duped into paying fifty thousand dollars to a rascal, and little Huntley would have missed the greatest excitement that it has ever known.

Experience is a great, if costly, teacher, and nowadays the life insurance companies have grown very wary. A fraud of this kind would be painfully unsuccessful if tried today, for a policy is seldom or never paid at once, and under no circumstances until an agent of the company has assured himself that there really is a corpse.

(Newsclip from an adventure magazine ~ 1900)

This striking photograph shows a unique accident which happened recently at Marcus Hook, on the Delaware River. The French barque Alice and Isabelle was lying at the Standard Oil Company’s pier, after her cargo had been unloaded, when suddenly, after a few preliminary shakes to warn the crew, she deliberately turned over until her yard-arms rested upon the pier, thus preventing her from capsizing completely.

Not a man was injured, and only a few ropes aboard the ship were broken. It is surmised that, her water-ballast tanks being almost empty and the ship thus being top-heavy, the wind acting on her high freeboard threw the vessel over. It was fortunate for all concerned that the ship listed towards the pier instead of towards the river.