Cora Pearl, English Courtesan

11 Jul 2014 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

Among the historical parade of feted ladies of pleasure, Cora Pearl stands out as one of the most famous and desired of all. The original article I wrote can be found here.

Nineteenth-century Europe was a heyday for the infamous courtesans, essentially high-class prostitutes who occupied a nebulous ‘demimonde’ (or ‘half-world’) just outside the strictures of proper society. The best known courtesans often became fabulously wealthy through their associations with aristocratic men. Though courtesans were never fully accepted among the cream of Europe’s elite, they were often able to live an unusually independent lifestyle, despite sometimes humble beginnings and disapproving clucks from their society sisters. And perhaps no one embodied the spirit of the 19th-century demimonde better than the notorious Cora Pearl.

Cora’s Life in England and France

She was born Emma Elizabeth Crouch, in 1835 or 1838, possibly in Plymouth, England but more likely in London. Little is known of her childhood, except that she inherited some musical talent from her father, composer and cellist Frederick Nicholls Crouch. She received an education in France, a country she adored and would later make her permanent home. Back in London, she decided to try her hand as an actress, a profession that in those days was practically synonymous with prostitution.

She embarked on a career, but soon found she was attracting more attention for her feminine charms than her acting ability. Though photographs and contemporary written accounts portray a woman who was striking if not a great beauty, Cora apparently possessed sex appeal in spades, along with great intelligence, wit, and an independent spirit. This suite of qualities drew the attention of hotel owner Robert Bignell, who showered her with gifts and took her to Paris, where she decided to stay. She changed her name to Cora Pearl and started out on dual careers on the stage and in the boudoir.

The Code of the Courtesan

Unlike common prostitutes, who haunted taverns and street corners and serviced all comers for a few pennies, courtesans operated in an unspoken matrix of rules and etiquette similar to the high society paradigm. They often received clients in their own opulent homes, drummed up controversy and business by making conspicuous appearances at the opera and other society functions, and generally expected (and got) fabulous sums in cash and gifts in return for their attentions. Often they became the well-paid mistresses of royal patrons, and raked in the benefits before moving on to be kept by the next wealthy benefactor.

Cora and the Duke of Rivoli

This was certainly true in Cora’s case, as her titillating act on the Paris stage captured the heart of the Duke of Rivoli, who bought her two houses, along with a staff of servants to maintain them. He also gave her a taste for gambling, a habit that would cause her a great deal of misery further down the line. But in the meantime, Cora lived the high life, trooping around in diamond-encrusted boots, serving herself up at parties on silver platters or in tubs of champagne, and gliding around in up-to-the-minute fashions by lauded designers like Laferriére and Charles Worth.

Cora’s Lovers and Fortunes

Her lovers included Prince Willem of Orange (who would later become king of Holland), Napoleon’s half-brother the Duke of Maynard, and the emperor’s cousin Prince Napoleon. The affairs were certainly lucrative; by the end of the 1860s, Cora owned several houses, stables with sixty fine horses, and millions of dollars worth of dresses, lingerie, and jewelry. Her career on the stage and elsewhere had made her the talk of Paris. But of course all good things eventually come to an end.

Gambling Debts and Ruination

Cora had never been particularly good with money, and when gambling debts began piling up in 1876, she began selling off her possessions, though she was still able to retain enough to live comfortably for a while. During the Franco-Prussian War, she opened up one of her enormous houses to wounded officers and nursed them back to health, all the while waiting for the return of her exiled benefactor, Prince Napoleon.

Unfortunately in his absence Cora drew the obsessive and unwanted attentions of Alexander Duval, who gave her all his money before shooting himself on her doorstep. Though he survived, rumors spread that Cora had left him to die without summoning help, and the ensuing outcry essentially ruined her. A move to London proved fruitless, as the scandal was already known there, so she returned to Paris, a shunned woman with no wealthy men to help put her back on her feet.

Cora’s Mysterious Funeral

Though she never sank into destitution despite all her setbacks, it was in relatively downscale surroundings that she died in 1886 of intestinal cancer. A star at the last, her funeral was arranged by an unknown benefactor who turned the affair into the most lavish the city had ever seen. Whoever this mystery man was, he made absolutely sure that the world would never forget Cora Pearl.

Sources:

Hickman, Katie (2004). Courtesans: Money, Sex and Fame in the Nineteenth Century. Harper Perennial. ISBN: 0007743971.

“The Little Extras – The Society Divas: Cora Pearl.” The Divas Site. divasthesite.com

John Brinkley and the Goat Gland Fraud

10 Jul 2014 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

A 19th-century diploma mill doctor, Brinkley’s extraordinary career was a monument to full-scale quackery. The original article I wrote can be found here.

Born in 1885 into a poverty-stricken North Carolina family, John R. Brinkley was nonetheless able to use his wiles, audacity, and alarming lack of scruples to become fantastically rich. He largely achieved this by selling useless patent medicines, at first through his clinics and later through constant hawking on his pioneering radio station. The greatest bulk of his wealth, though, derived from a simple operation he performed on both men and women, claiming the procedure would boost sex drive and fertility.

Brinkley’s Early Scams

John Brinkley had wanted to be a doctor from a young age, but for a while at least his hopes would be stymied. Leaving school at sixteen, he took a job as a mail carrier, then moved to New York to work as a telegrapher for Western Union. In 1906 he returned to North Carolina, where he married Sally Wike. The pair of them posed as Quaker doctors and sold patent remedies at their traveling medicine show. They then moved to Knoxville, where Brinkley assisted in a similar scam with a man known as Dr. Burke.

A year later, Brinkley and his wife had moved to Chicago, where he enrolled in medical school, albeit an unaccredited one called Bennett Medical College. Brinkley attended classes and worked as a telegrapher, but the tuition fees and the costs of raising a family were sending him into debt. He completed three years of study, but there was tremendous upheaval in his personal life; his wife left him several times, and though the pair reconciled and moved back to North Carolina, leaving his tuition unpaid, she and their two children finally left him for good after he had bought a medical certificate from a diploma mill in St. Louis. He then ended up in Greenville, South Carolina.

Fertility Treatments

In Greenville, Brinkley and another man set up shop, billing themselves as “Electro Medic Doctors” and injecting men with a $25 “fertility drug” that was actually colored water. The scam lasted two months, after which the two men fled town, leaving a trail of unpaid bills. Brinkley next turned up in Memphis, where he married Minnie Jones, even though he was still legally married to his first wife; then he made his way to Knoxville, where he was almost immediately apprehended and extradited back to Greenville on charges of writing bad checks and practicing medicine without a license. He and his partner Crawford were jailed, but settled out of court; Brinkley then moved on to Arkansas. After taking over another medical clinic there, Brinkley was able to earn enough money to finally pay off his debt to Bennett Medical College, and in 1914 he and his new wife moved to Kansas City where he finished his unaccredited medical degree at Eclectic Medical University; the diploma allowed him to legally practice medicine in eight states.

Goat Glands for Virility

An Army Reservist, Brinkley served briefly in World War I, but after being discharged due to illness he moved to Milford, Kansas, where he set up the clinic that would finally make him a wealthy and famous man. The clinic had 16 rooms, and though at first he made a respectable living treating victims of the 1918 flu epidemic, he soon turned to a more lucrative enterprise: Restoring virility.

Brinkley, noticing the randy exploits of the average billy goat, reasoned that by implanting goat testicles into the scrotal sac of a human male, some of the goat’s prodigious sexual appetite might be transferred to the man. He performed the procedure on dozens of men (and some women too, transplanting the testicles into their abdomens near their ovaries) at $750 a pop ($8,000 in today’s dollars). Every now and then the operation seemed to work, but more often than not, the patients saw no change or became ill, and an undetermined number died shortly after leaving the clinic; Brinkley was sued many times in the eleven years following 1930. Undaunted, Brinkley began prescribing his goat gland treatment for all sorts of different ailments, soliciting new customers through a massive advertising campaign. He even turned up uninvited at a transplant seminar in Chicago and demonstrated his procedure on 34 men, and later transplanted goat glands into a few film stars on a trip to Los Angeles. His public profile was growing, but all the attention and adulation bestowed on him by his loyal patients attracted the attention of the AMA, who began looking into his past and trying to discredit him.

Brinkley’s Radio Stations

During his stint in Los Angeles, Brinkley had toured a radio station, and immediately saw its advertising potential. By 1923 he had earned enough money to start his own station, KFKB, in Milford, which was possibly the first radio station in the state of Kansas. Brinkley used the station to promote his goat glands treatment and a line of patent medicines, but he also broadcast bluegrass and country music, astrological predictions, language lessons, and various other ephemera. His later segment, called “Medical Question Box,” was a huge success, earning him the unbelievable sum over $14,000 a week (over nine million dollars in today’s money) in revenue from medicine sales. But even as his star was rising, forces were gathering against him; several newspapers wrote articles describing his various scams, and agents from California even came to arrest him, though the governor of Kansas refused to extradite him. Thinking better credentials might get his attackers off his back, Brinkley traveled to Europe on a hunt for honorary degrees. The University of Pavia in Italy agreed to grant him one, but it was later rescinded by Benito Mussolini himself.

More heartache followed, as a competing radio station entrepreneur ran a series of unflattering stories on Brinkley, and the Federal Radio Commission refused to renew his radio license. Again undaunted, Brinkley responded by running for office several times (and losing), then finally packing up and moving just across the Mexican border, where he broadcast from a new 50,000-watt station he built, XER. From there he thought he could continue to hawk his medicines and bogus treatments safely out of the grasp of the Feds. But the U.S. government fought back, persuading Mexico to revoke his broadcast license and even later passing a law to crack down on these so-called “border blaster” radio stations that operated without a U.S. license; they called it the Brinkley Act.

The Downfall of John R. Brinkley

His radio station out of business, his credibility in tatters, Brinkley spent the last few years of his life in bankrupt misery. He lost several lawsuits for libel and malpractice, he was investigated by the IRS, and then indicted by the USPS for mail fraud. He suffered three heart attacks, and eventually had to have one of his legs amputated. When he died in 1942 he didn’t have a penny to his name. The only lasting monuments to his legacy are the laws passed to thwart his fraudulent activities, and the mansion he once owned in Del Rio, Texas, which still stands to this day.

Source:

Brock, Pope (2008). Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam. Crown. ISBN: 0307339882.

John Singer Sargent’s Madame X

9 Jul 2014 / Jenny Ashford / 1 Comment

Though Madame X is today regarded as one of the great American paintings, Sargent’s masterwork shattered the reputation of its subject, Amelie Gautreau. The original article I wrote can be found here.

The woman known as Madame X was born Virginie Amélie Avegno in New Orleans in January 1859. Her parents were wealthy plantation owners, but after a series of tragedies — her father’s fall in the Battle of Shiloh, the death of her sister Valentine from fever — the eight-year-old Amélie moved to Paris with her mother.

The Avegno matriarch immediately began grooming her daughter for a good marriage. The goal was realized when Amélie was nineteen; the suitor was forty-year-old Pierre-Louis Gautreau, a banker and shipping magnate. As unglamorous as the match appeared, Amélie understood that once she was a married woman, there would no longer be the need to play the virginal maiden. As soon as the ink dried on the marriage certificate, Amélie set about plotting to conquer Paris.

A Free Woman

With money no object, Amélie was free to commission dresses from top designers; to attract maximum attention, she favored chic, simple gowns that accentuated her figure, rather than the fussy frocks popular at the time. She painted her lips scarlet, drew in her eyebrows in mahogany, and reddened the tips of her ears; it was speculated that she ate small amounts of arsenic to maintain her otherworldly pallor.

Her efforts were massively successful; from the moment she made her society debut in 1877, Parisian tongues were wagging about the singular American beauty. Slender and supernaturally pale, with waves of copper-colored hair swept back from her dramatic, sculptured features, Amélie Gautreau was clearly something new, a striking vision of the modern Parisian woman. Her ascent was rapid, the adoration of her public nearly absolute; but it was her association with respected painter John Singer Sargent that would precipitate her downfall.

The Artist and the Painting

Sargent had already won several prizes at the Paris Salons before he met his most famous subject in 1881. Two years later, after much pleading, Amélie agreed to pose for him, and Sargent rented a studio near the Gautreau home. A black dress was decided upon almost immediately, but Sargent went through many pencil and watercolor sketches trying to settle on the best pose. Because Amélie was flighty and hated to sit still, Sargent eventually ended up staying with the Gautreaus at their summer home in Brittany, so his subject would always be close at hand. Finally, after a long period of artist’s block, Sargent set to work.

Though the process of painting what would eventually become Madame X was trying for both artist and sitter — the pose Amélie had to hold was uncomfortable, and Sargent had a hard time matching her lavender skin tone, among many other problems — by March of 1884 it was ready to be sent to the annual Salon. Amélie herself, though she had not yet seen the finished product, thought the work to be a masterpiece, and apparently all of Paris was abuzz with news of the portrait before the public had actually seen it.

The Public Reaction and the Downfall

When the moment of truth came, however, both Amélie and Sargent were unprepared for the venom of the attacks. The portrait, critics cried, was ugly, obscene, scandalous; the fallen strap of the dress and its body-hugging quality screamed vulgarity, while Amélie’s famously pale flesh looked corpse-like. Overnight, Amélie went from the darling of Paris society to a laughingstock, and cruel caricatures of her appeared in newspapers and magazines. Sargent, for his part, received a severe blow to his reputation as well; besides that, after the fiasco surrounding the painting, the Gautreaus refused to buy it.

Later on, Sargent repainted the offending shoulder strap in its proper place. Despite all the setbacks, his career eventually recovered and flourished, and for the rest of his life he claimed Madame X was the best work he had ever done. He sold it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1916.

Amélie Gautreau continued to appear in society for three years after the scandal, but the press were far less effusive in their praise. As her thirtieth birthday approached, Amélie made a play for renewed attention by getting her portrait painted by other artists, but critics were quick to point out that Amélie was past her prime. After many slights about her faded glory, she became a recluse, rarely leaving her house, even as the once-disparaged Madame X was slowly building a following. She died in July of 1915, perhaps in the end a victim of her own vanity.

Source:

Davis, Deborah (2004). Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X. Tarcher. ISBN 158542336X.

Excerpt from “Understanding the Reanimated”

6 Jul 201419 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

The full short story appears in my 2011 book, The Associated Villainies.

Daisy swayed back and forth in her chair, a thin stream of drool hanging from the corner of her mouth. She appeared not to notice it, and she appeared not to have heard Dr. Jenner’s question, so he gently repeated it.

“Why do you want to eat human flesh, Daisy?”

Her eyes seemed to meet his for a moment, and he drew in his breath, for he swore he’d seen a spark there, though of what he couldn’t be sure. Was it simply hunger? Or the effects of the drug the nurses came to inject every four hours? Or could it have been something else, perhaps nothing as profound as intelligence, no, but maybe a kind of rudimentary understanding at least… He didn’t want to get too excited; it had only been a flash, a second, but he couldn’t help his palms moistening.

“Daisy? Can you hear me? Do you understand?” He was leaning toward her now, closer than he should have really—the reanimated were still dangerous, despite the medication, and it never paid to be careless around them. But Daisy seemed far more responsive than any of the other patients he’d interviewed in the clinic. He realized that wasn’t saying much, but in this case he’d take what he could get.

She was swaying endlessly, like a snake looking for a place to strike. All of them did that, and he assumed it was simply a manifestation of their condition, filtered through the pharmaceuticals they were forced to take by law. She still didn’t speak—none of them did, or at least they never had when live humans were around—but her strange eyes were fixed on his again, and this time they didn’t simply drift away but held there, seeming to focus sharply behind their milky lenses. Dr. Jenner felt his pulse beginning to race.

“You do understand me, don’t you,” he said, whispering as if the two of them were sharing some delicious secret. “This could change everything.”

He sat there for another hour, firing questions at her and still getting no answers, but becoming more and more certain that he was getting through to her on some level, which was far more than he could say about any of the others. When he finally left the clinic, he called out a musical goodbye to Vera at the nurse’s station. “Any luck today, Doc?” she asked him.

“Yes, Vera, I think my luck is improving. You will call me immediately if any of them say a single word, won’t you?”

“You know I will. Have a good one.”

“Indeed. Good day, Vera.” Dr. Jenner left the clinic, not noticing the way Vera smiled indulgently and shook her head at his receding back.

Mary Mallon, the Original Typhoid Mary

5 Jul 201419 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

The Irish cook was responsible for infecting dozens of people in early 20th-century New York City. The original article I wrote can he found here.

Today, the term “Typhoid Mary” is used to denote someone who deliberately acts as a carrier of disease, or rather is aware that she is a carrier but does nothing to prevent infecting others. Urban legends about such people are quite common, and the phrase has even made the leap to tech jargon, describing a person who unwittingly spreads computer viruses. But the original Typhoid Mary was a real person whose life and death raised still-controversial issues about the trade-off between individual liberty and public health.

Typhoid Mary Arrives in America

Mary Mallon was born in September of 1869 in County Tyrone, Ireland, and in 1884 became one of the millions of Irish immigrants flooding into New York to seek a better life. She discovered she had a natural talent for cooking, and learned the skill to such an extent that she was very rarely out of work over the next several years. Although she was not financially secure by any means, working as a cook in a household was far better paid and more prestigious than other positions like maid or laundress. Mary Mallon even worked for some wealthy families, including that of the Vanderbilt’s banker.

The study of infectious disease was still rather rudimentary in those days, so Mary Mallon was able to work in several households between 1900 and 1907 before anyone began to discern a pattern. But pattern there was: The first house she worked in saw its residents infected with typhoid within two weeks of Mary securing employment there. At the next house, several family members contracted typhoid, and a member of the household staff died of it. All told, Mary Mallon is credited with spreading typhoid to at least 53 people and causing three deaths as she moved from household to household for employment.

Typhoid Spreads

At the time, the concept of a healthy carrier of disease was not widely known, so it’s probable Mary was not spreading the disease on purpose, at least at first. It was likely that Mary had suffered a bout of typhoid when she was younger and had recovered, but retained the bacteria in her body. The bacteria would have been present in her urine and feces, and unless she scrubbed her hands vigorously before touching anything, Mary could have easily spread the disease through her handling of food, or ironically through trying to care for family members who had contracted typhoid.

Scientist and typhoid expert George Soper was the first to see the trail of infection Mary was leaving in her wake, and in 1907 he tracked her down to ask for urine and stool samples to confirm his suspicions. Mary refused, insisting she was healthy and had never had typhoid. Soper’s next attempt was also a failure. Even when he offered Mary royalties if she would let him write a book about her, she furiously turned him away.

Forced Quarantine

Finally, drastic measures were taken. Dr. Sara Josephine Baker of the New York City Health Department went to the house where Mary was working, police officers in tow, and forcibly took Mary into custody, claiming she was a danger to public health. Mary Mallon was taken to a clinic on North Brother Island and quarantined for three years against her will. At the end of this period, she was offered freedom, provided she no longer worked as a cook; unsurprisingly, Mary readily agreed.

Perhaps also unsurprisingly, Mary didn’t stick to the agreement. Clinic authorities secured her a job as a laundress, but the wages were significantly less than what she was used to, so using the pseudonym Mary Brown, Mallon got work as a cook again, going on to infect 25 people with typhoid. She was taken into custody again in 1915, and stayed in quarantine until she died of pneumonia in 1938. A post-mortem examination indeed found typhoid bacteria in her gall bladder. Though other “healthy carriers” were identified later, Mary Mallon was the first and most famous “Typhoid Mary,” a symbol of the constant struggle between an individual’s personal freedoms and the health of the community at large.

Sources:

Brunvand, Jan Harold. Curses, Broiled Again!: The Hottest Urban Legends Going. New York: Norton, 1990. Print.

Stradling, Jan. Bad Girls: The Most Powerful, Shocking, Amazing, Thrilling and Dangerous Women of All Time. New York: Metro, 2008. Print.

The Theft of Joseph Haydn’s Skull

3 Jul 201419 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

In the midst of royal intrigue and pseudo-scientific machinations, Haydn’s head spent many years traveling outside of his gravesite. The original article I wrote can be found here.

On May 11, 1809, Joseph Haydn slipped quietly into death at the age of 77. War was raging outside as the French laid siege to Vienna, but Napoleon had posted guards at Haydn’s home to spare the composer any danger. A French officer had even come to honor Haydn by singing an aria from The Creation. The relative tranquility that surrounded the composer on his final day, however, gave no hint of the bizarre events in store for Haydn’s remains.

Joseph Rosenbaum and Phrenology

The early 19th century was the heyday of phrenology, a “new science” whose practitioners claimed to measure intelligence and character by examining the size and placement of bumps on the human head. Doctors were becoming increasingly interested in collecting and studying skulls, and particularly liked to get their hands on the skulls of eminent persons, like great philosophers and artists of genius.

Joseph Rosenbaum managed the accounts of the stables belonging to the powerful Esterhazy family of Eisenstadt, Austria. Rosenbaum was a friend of the much older Haydn, and was also keenly interested in phrenology. He never made a great secret of the fact that he wished to study Haydn’s skull, and as he knew his friend was nearing death, Rosenbaum began to make plans to obtain the composer’s head after burial. Since he didn’t want to botch the job when the time came, he decided to do a trial run.

Practice Grave-Robbing

A well-known actress on the Vienna stage, Elizabeth Roose died in childbirth in October 1808. Rosenbaum had not planned to steal her head specifically, but when the opportunity arose, he grabbed it. About a week after Roose’s death, Rosenbaum and friend Johann Peter bribed a gravedigger to exhume the actress’s body and cut off her head.

The friends took their reeking prize to Peter’s home, where they and a Dr. Weiss proceeded to scrape the skin and muscle off the bone, scoop out the rotting brain, and bleach the skull clean by submerging it in quicklime. The experiment was only partly successful; the smell and mess had been far more horrible than Rosenbaum had expected, and lengthy immersion in the quicklime solution left the skull brittle and moldy. Rosenbaum decided that when it came time to swipe Haydn’s head, he would turn to the experts.

Taking Haydn’s Head

Less than a year after the Roose experiment, Haydn died. Shortly after the composer was buried in Hundsthurmer Cemetery, Rosenbaum paid the same gravedigger to purloin the head, which he then handed over to his trusted friend Dr. Eckhart and a team of “corpse bearers” at Vienna General Hospital. Their work on the skull was impeccable, and Rosenbaum could hardly contain his excitement. He had a fancy case made to hold Haydn’s skull; it was black with a glass front, and topped with a golden lyre.

The Prince and the Missing Skull

Rosenbaum and Peter kept possession of the skull for the next eleven years. But in 1820, Nicholas II of the Esterhazy clan, who had been Haydn’s patrons, belatedly decided to honor a family promise to move the composer’s remains from their modest digs at Hundsthurmer to a more spectacular tomb in Eisenstadt. The only problem was that when the body was exhumed, it was, of course, missing its skull.

The prince called in the Vienna police; their investigation turned up Johann Peter’s name. When interviewed, Peter claimed the skull had been given to him by the now-dead Dr. Eckhart, who had told him it was Haydn’s but had not told him how he had procured it. Peter apologized, telling police that had he known Eckhart had obtained the skull illegally, he would have turned it over to authorities immediately. Then he handed the officers a skull. When Rosenbaum was questioned, he gave police the exact same story, and for a time, the police were satisfied.

Haydn Skull Switcheroo

Later examination of the skull that Peter handed over showed that it could not have been Haydn’s, as it was the skull of a young man. Rosenbaum’s house was searched, but police turned up nothing. Prince Nicholas, embarrassed by the bad press the whole affair was causing, offered Rosenbaum a bribe to turn over the real skull. Rosenbaum did hand over another skull, which seemed to be that of a man Haydn’s age, and this skull was shipped to Eisenstadt and interred with the rest of Haydn’s remains.

The Real Skull Makes the Rounds

But the skull buried in Eisenstadt was not the one Haydn had possessed in life. Rosenbaum had in fact stashed the real skull in a mattress when the police came to search, and then had his wife Therese lay on it, knowing the officers would never ask a lady to get out of bed. Rosenbaum kept the skull until his own death was approaching, when he turned it over to Peter with the wish that it eventually be given to the Society for the Friends of Music. When Peter died, his wife tried to give the skull to the Esterhazy family, but ironically the family would not take it, as they thought Haydn’s skull was already in its tomb.

The skull of Joseph Haydn passed to Peter’s physician Karl Haller, who gave it to his mentor, famed pathologist Carl von Rokitansky. In the 1890s, the skull finally made its way to the Society for the Friends of Music. In 1946, another attempt was made to return the skull to Eisenstadt, but it wasn’t until 1954 that Haydn’s wandering skull was finally reunited with the rest of the composer’s mortal remains.

Source:

Dickey, Colin (2009). Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius. Unbridled Books. ISBN: 9781932961867.

Caravaggio’s Criminal History

2 Jul 2014 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

Caravaggio is considered one of the greatest and most influential artists in history, but his genius had an extremely dark side. The original article I wrote can be found here, and be sure to check out my graphic novel, The Tenebrist, a fictionalized account of Caravaggio’s tragic life and death.

Michelangelo Merisi was likely born in Milan in 1571, and later took the name Caravaggio after the small town where he grew up. During his short life he produced little more than forty paintings that survived, but what he lacked in quantity he more than made up for in spectacular skill, which brought him great fame and the admiration of many wealthy patrons. After his rather ignominious death, the groundbreaking techniques he applied in his work would inspire and influence artists for years to come. But Caravaggio’s great intelligence and limitless talent was undercut by a fiery temperament that often landed him on the wrong side of the law.

Caravaggio’s Early Life (and Crimes?)

The artist grew up in a middle-class family, and was apprenticed to Milanese painter Simone Peterzano in 1584, where he learned the craft of painting in oils, along with drawing and anatomy. At this point Caravaggio was a young teenager, but there is some hint that a taste for the low life was already starting to develop; though nothing appears in police records of the time, one of Caravaggio’s early biographers claims that some unknown crime was responsible for the artist fleeing Milan.

Caravaggio in Rome

Caravaggio finished his apprenticeship when he was seventeen, and spent some time back in his hometown over the next three years. When his mother died in 1592, he inherited a tidy sum, and used some of it to move to Rome later that year. He lived in poverty at first, but slowly his reputation grew, and by 1594 he was beginning to attract wealthy patrons. By the end of the 1590s, Caravaggio had become quite rich and famous, and was one of the most sought-after artists in Rome.

The ensuing years also saw the buildup of Caravaggio’s extensive rap sheet. Between 1600 and 1606, he appeared in police records fourteen times, and was jailed on at least six occasions. Most of these were minor offenses—insulting police, carrying a sword without permission, tossing a plate of artichokes at a waiter—but a few involved serious violence. While the Rome of the early 17th century was not the most law-abiding of cities, Caravaggio’s penchant for troublemaking was notable, especially in one so feted. His fame and powerful friends often came in handy, vouching for him and springing him from jail, but in 1606 he would drastically raise the stakes.

Caravaggio Commits Murder

It was May, and a friendly tennis game was about to turn ugly. Caravaggio lost money to his opponent, Ranuccio Tomassoni, and started an argument that soon escalated into a brawl, as both men began hitting each other with their tennis rackets. A challenge was issued, and later that evening Caravaggio and Tomassoni turned up armed for a duel. Caravaggio wounded Tomassoni on the thigh, and when Tomassoni fell to the ground, Caravaggio ran him through with the sword. Wounded himself, Caravaggio immediately went on the lam, spending several months in surrounding fiefdoms that fell outside the jurisdiction of Roman papal authority. He later turned up in Naples and continued painting commissions.

Caravaggio in Malta

In 1607, Caravaggio received news that the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, based on the island of Malta, had offered him a knighthood and some lucrative commissions. Caravaggio seized the opportunity, and was soon enjoying the patronage of the powerful Knights, and producing several major works over the next year. But even here, trouble found him; after causing some unspecified “insult” to one of the Knights, he was thrown into prison. With no wealthy patrons to bail him out, Caravaggio took matters into his own hands and escaped, fleeing to Sicily. The Knights subsequently stripped him of his knighthood, and there is evidence they set out in pursuit of their absconded jailbird.

Caravaggio’s Last Years

Weary and paranoid, Caravaggio still managed to complete three large altarpieces in Sicily before moving on to Messina in early 1609, where his temper caused more minor problems. Back in Naples later that year, he was nearly killed in a bar fight, but still managed to finish at least one painting in his nine months there.

Proving that he still had connections in high places, in 1610 Cardinal Gonzaga absolved Caravaggio of Tomassoni’s murder, thus allowing the artist to return to Rome without fear of prosecution. Taking a circuitous sea route back to Rome for reasons known only to him, Caravaggio landed in southern Tuscany and was immediately jailed, this time simply because he was mistaken for someone else.

Upon his release two days later, all his possessions had disappeared, and he seemed to have contracted an unknown illness, possibly malaria. He set off walking along the beach, and made it as far as Porto Ercole before collapsing, feverish and delusional. He was found and taken to a hospital, but only lived another two days, dying on July 18, 1610 at the age of 38. Fortunately for him, subsequent centuries have seen his artistic genius overshadow his troubled life.

Sources:

Moir, Alfred (1989). Caravaggio. Harry N. Abrams Inc. ISBN: 0810931508.

Robb, Peter (2001). M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio. Picador. ISBN: 0312274742.

Haitian Zombies and Puffer Fish Poison

1 Jul 201419 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

Do voodoo priests make “real” zombies using a powder containing tetrodotoxin? The original article I wrote can be found here.

In 1985, ethnobotanist Wade Davis published The Serpent and the Rainbow, a book in which he described his immersion into the world of Haitian culture, voodoo, and specifically the supposed manufacture of “real” zombies.

The book was partly fictionalized in a 1988 horror film of the same name, starring Bill Pullman. Both book and film chronicle Davis’ quest to discover the secrets of the mysterious powder that voodoo priests allegedly used to produce zombies, and ever since then the existence of a real-life zombification powder has almost been taken for granted. But is it possible to make a zombie in such a fashion? Or was Wade Davis the victim (or perpetrator) of a hoax?

Traditional Haitian Vodou

The traditional Haitian practice of Vodou (or voodoo) is an amalgam of Catholicism and certain West African animist religions that were carried over to the North American/Caribbean region by the slave trade. To some extent, it is a religion that’s greatly misunderstood by foreigners, who tend to focus on the lurid aspects of animal sacrifice and zombification in detriment to the more mundane aspects of worship. Perhaps for this reason, tourists visiting Haiti will often be entertained by supposedly “authentic” voodoo ceremonies that are in fact put on solely for their benefit and entertainment.

In a 2008 article in Skeptical Inquirer, professor of psychology and neurology Terence Hines argued that it was just such a situation that may have led Wade Davis to his questionable ideas about voodoo and the zombie powder. In The Serpent and the Rainbow, for example, Davis writes of witnessing a ceremony performed for tourists in which a woman apparently went into a trance and put hot coals into her mouth without injury; he immediately described this feat in terms of the supernatural, even though similar tricks are performed in circus sideshows the world over.

Tetrodotoxin Zombie Powder

The fulcrum of The Serpent and the Rainbow, however, was Davis’ hunt for the formula of the elusive zombie powder that houngans (voodoo priests) were supposedly using to produce “undead” slaves to work their plantations.

Davis claimed to have witnessed (and participated in) such a ceremony, and seems to have taken the results at face value. According to Davis, the powder was administered to a victim, who would then enter a state of catalepsy that was indistinguishable from death, and be buried alive. Later, the houngan would visit the victim’s grave and “awaken” the person, after which the victim would remain in a zombified state under the complete control of the houngan.

Davis was eventually able to procure some samples of the zombie powder, and he wrote that the main ingredient in the formula was the poison tetrodotoxin, or TTX, found most infamously in some species of puffer fish native to the Caribbean and the waters around Asia. Tetrodotoxin is the same substance responsible for fugu poisoning, a rare but regular occurrence in Japan where it’s most often caused by eating incorrectly prepared raw puffer fish.

Could TTX Create Zombies?

When Wade Davis’s zombie powder samples were analyzed, however, only one contained any significant amount of TTX, casting doubt on his entire hypothesis. And as Terence Hines points out in his Skeptical Inquirer article, even if the powder had contained TTX in large amounts, the effects of the poison on the body are not consistent with the reports of zombie plantation workers that had been taken so seriously by Davis.

Tetrodotoxin works by blocking sodium channels on the neural membrane, affecting the peripheral nervous system. At low doses, TTX causes nausea and numbness around the mouth, but as the amount ingested increases, victims may suffer motor difficulties, respiratory failure, and possibly cardiac arrest, followed by death. If medical intervention occurs in time, victims can generally recover in about a week.

Hines points out that the main symptoms of tetrodotoxin poisoning — namely total muscular flaccidity and inability to move, breathing difficulties, and lack of oxygen to the brain — would seem inconsistent with the image of the shambling zombie slave toiling on a plantation from sunrise to sunset. In his view, Wade Davis was taken in by trickery, or perhaps simply saw in Haiti what he wished to see.

Sources:

Davis, Wade. The Serpent and the Rainbow. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.

Hines, Terence. “Zombies and Tetrodotoxin”. Skeptical Inquirer May/June 2008: 60-62.

Stand With Xenu

1 Jul 2014 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

A fun anti-Scientology shirt I made. It can be found here.

Female Serial Killer Belle Gunness

30 Jun 201419 May 2016 / Jenny Ashford / Leave a comment

In the early 1900’s, Belle Gunness murdered dozens of men and children for insurance money, and may have faked her own death in a fire. The original article I wrote can be found here.

Though female serial killers are far rarer than their male counterparts, history provides a handful of startling examples that women are capable of the same callous viciousness as men who kill. Perhaps one of the earliest and most horrific examples is that of Belle Gunness, a Norwegian immigrant who was suspected in the deaths of more than 40 people.

Belle Gunness’s Early Crimes

Born Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth in Norway in 1859, Belle came to America in 1881. Three years later she married Mads Sorensen; the pair bought and ran a candy store. The business later burned down, as did the couple’s Austin home; though there were rumors of arson, the insurance company paid the claim. In 1900 Sorensen died, supposedly of a heart condition, though the first doctor to examine him suspected strychnine poisoning. Sorensen’s family accused Belle of murder, and there was an inquest, but evidently nothing came to light to prevent Belle from collecting on the $8,500 life insurance policy.

Belle’s Farm in La Porte, Indiana

With the proceeds from her husband’s death, Belle bought a farm in La Porte, Indiana and moved there with her two daughters (two other children had died in infancy, either from poisoning or acute colitis). Shortly after Belle took up residence, the boat and carriage houses burned to the ground, bringing another insurance payout. In April 1902 Belle married Peter Gunness, whose baby daughter died of unknown causes a week after the wedding. Peter only lasted until December, dying when a piece of machinery supposedly fell from a shelf and smashed his skull. A coroner’s jury was convened, but Belle maintained her innocence, and escaped prosecution. She then cashed in to the tune of $3,000.

Belle Gunness’s Personal Ads

In 1906 Belle began running ads in Midwestern area newspapers, seeking “a gentleman equally well provided, with view of joining fortunes.” First to reply was John Moo of Minnesota, who arrived with $1,000 and vanished within the week. Bachelor number two was George Anderson, who awoke one night to find Belle looming over his bed with a frightening expression on her face. He grabbed his things and bolted from the house, never to return. He was apparently the only suitor to escape the farm at La Porte.

More men and disappearances followed: Ole Budbsurg, last seen withdrawing a large sum from a La Porte bank in 1907; Andrew Helgelien, who vanished after cashing a check for $2,900; Thomas Lindboe, who Belle had hired as a handyman. But the one man who was always present was farmhand Ray Lamphere, who claimed to love Belle. He became jealous of Belle’s steady stream of suitors, so Belle fired him in early 1908, claiming he had threatened to kill her and burn her house down. In fact, the house did go up in flames that April; the bodies of three children and a headless woman were found in the smoking ruins. Investigators speculated that the woman was not Belle, who was much taller and heavier than the body found. However, a piece of bridgework found later was identified as Belle’s by her dentist, so the corpse was laid to rest under Belle’s name. In the meantime, the sister of Andrew Helgelien had arrived in La Porte, and at her insistence the police dug up the yard around Belle’s home. There they found the remains of more than forty men and children, including Helgelien, Belle’s adopted daughter Jennie Olson, John Moo, and two unidentified children.

Ray Lamphere Confesses

Ray Lamphere was put on trial for murdering Belle and burning her house. He was convicted of the arson charge and sent to prison, where he died of consumption less than a year later. Before his death, he claimed that Belle was still alive, and that the headless woman found after the fire was a housekeeper that Belle had dressed in her clothes; she then planted her own bridgework next to the body to throw off police. Lamphere said that Belle had murdered 42 people, either by poisoning them or hitting them in the head with a cleaver. She then cut up the bodies and buried the pieces, or fed them to her hogs. It was estimated that Belle had netted more than $250,000 from her crimes.

Belle Gunness’s Legacy

There were sightings of Belle for years after her crimes were discovered, and there were even ballads written about her. In 1931 a woman called Esther Carlson was arrested in Los Angeles for poisoning a man for money, and though two witnesses claimed the woman was Belle, their story was never proven, and Esther Carlson died awaiting trial.

In late 2007, the headless body was exhumed for DNA testing to see if Lamphere’s tale was true. The Chicago Tribune reported that the bodies of three children were found in the grave with the supposed body of Belle Gunness, but the exhumation yielded too little DNA to definitively identify any of the remains.