Entries Tagged 'People' ↓

When Messrs. H. A. Everett and Albert Pack of The Detroit Railway, promised last November to have cars running in Detroit by July 1 the people were incredulous, as they did not know Messrs. Everett and Pack or their ability to accomplish the seemingly impossible. They had been accustomed to the old foggy method of the other lines and this was the basis of their doubt. The Detroit press of last week told how thoroughly they kept their promise and when the same two men promise a pyrospectacle of great magnificence, to celebrate the opening of their lines, that promise must be believed. The pyrospectacle, “Lalla Rookh,” which is to be given in Detroit, is now running in Cleveland and has won for itself the utmost of praise from the Cleveland papers. All kinds of superlative adjectives have been used their [sic] to describe its bewilderingly beautiful setting, tis graceful dances, its thrilling pyro-technical features and the perfection of detail and ensemble which marks the production. To properly celebrate the opening of The Detroit Railway will Tom Moore’s Oriental romance “Lalla Rookh,” environed by all the skill an thrilling accessories that the great Pain can invent, be brought to Detroit and presented on Boulevard Park, 14th and Avenue and the Boulevard, beginning July 23.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, July, 1895[/tags]

“Died at her residence, of a nauseous smell, Margaret Smith, in the 40th year of her age.” If in the mortuary column of this or every other paper, the expression “died of typhoid fever” was stricken out, and in it stead printed “died of a nauseous smell,” the frequency with which we should find these words occurring would not a little surprise and alarm us.

Is it, indeed true, that nauseous smells actually kill? That they are very disagreeable we all know, but that they are deadly not everyone is fully aware. We are accustomed to regard our olfactories as sources from which pleasure may be derived, rather than as monitors to warn us against unwholesome and destructive odors. Did we trust them in the latter capacity and heed their monitions, delicate and almost imperceptible as they frequently are, much sickness and many deaths would every year be prevented.

It is a fact now very well understood in the medical profession that all excrementitious matters of the human body received into the body again through the lungs, or the pores, or the mouth are direct and deadly poisons. They will kill as certainly as arsenic, or prussic acid, or a pellet of cold lead, if enough of them are taken.

Prince Albert died of a minute crevice in the mouldering mansion of an old London sewer that ran under a closet adjoining his summer sitting-room. The odor was imperceptible, but it made Queen Victoria a mourner all her days. One among the distinguished and lamented American dead in 1869 died of a water closet adjoining his office which was not properly drained. The papers said “typhoid fever,” and thousands mourned his “untimely removal from a field of extensive usefulness here, to his everlasting reward.” The clergy and pious people called it “an inscrutable and mysterious Providence;” the doctors said “imperfect sewerage.”

In the country there are fewer deaths from this cause than in the city, for reasons quite obvious: populations are not crowded together, and effete matters are returned more promptly to the soil. Yet in the most healthy localities typhoid fever sometimes occurs, and may always be traced to its only source.

In the summer of 1860 the writer of this article spent some months on the plateau of the Cumberland Mountains, that which, perhaps, the world does not afford a more salubrious region. Within a mile of our cottage an entire family lay prostrate with typhoid fever, and two of their number died. What was the matter there? In one large log cabin, imperfectly lighted and ill ventilated, ten persons, ate, slept, lived. There was carried on all the work of the family; the beds were never aired, the linen seldom ever washed, and the slops were thrown where ease and convenience suggested. To a healthy pair of lungs the atmosphere within and around the house was simply intolerable. But they had become accustomed to the odor, though it utterly refused to make peace with them.

As the warmth of the sun increases, more and more vigilance should be used by the house-keeper to keep everything in and around her premises perfectly sweet and wholesome. Dry earth will completely disinfect and deodorize every offensive substance. Where this cannot be applied, lime, dilute sulphuric acid, and copperas water form very good substitutes. Particular attention should be paid to the drainage of the sink, especially if that and the well are contiguous. Sleeping rooms should be thoroughly aired and sunned every day, and the bedding hung upon a line or fence at least once every week during hot weather. If these simple rules are religiously observed, whatever other diseases may affect the family, typhoid fever will not be among them.–Hearth and Home.

[tags]Michigan Argus, June, 1870[/tags]

The women in the Neudorf convent prison were all so kindly in their ways, so peaceful and good-humored, they differed so completely from our preconceived ideas of criminals, that we were puzzled to imagine what could have brought them into prison, says a writer in the Cornhill Magazine. We had never a doubt that their offenses were of the most trivial nature and we said so. The superior gave us one of her odd, humorous smiles.

“Did you notice that woman in the corridor?” said she. “She is Marie Schneider.”

That insignificant-looking little woman who had stood aside with a gentle, deprecative smile to allow us to pass, Marie Schneider? Why, in any other place one would have set her down at once as the hard-working wife of a struggling curate, so throughly respectable did she look. And she is Marie Schneider, a European celebrity with more murders on her conscience than she has fingers on her hands!

“And you let her stay here?”

“We have nowhere else to put her,” the inspector, who had joined us, replied, “and we don’t hang women in Austria.”

Nor is she, as we soon found, the only notoriety in the place. One of the prisoners is a delicate-looking girl, with large brown eyes and golden hair–a type of beauty almost peculiar to Australians. She has a low, cooing voice and a singularly sweet, innocent expression.

“What on earth can that girl have done to be sent here?” I whispered.

“Done,” the inspector replied, grimly, “set a house on fire in the hope of killing a man with his wife and five children.”

The girl must have had extraordinarily sharp ears, for, though we were standing at some distance away, she heard what he said, and she gave him a glance such as I hope never to see again in my life. It was absolutely diabolical; had there been a knife within reach the man would have died on the spot. Yet only a moment before she had been looking up into my face with a smile an angel might have envied.

Several of the prisoners are in the convent for killing their own children; some for killing, or trying to kill, their husbands; others for stealing or embezzling; others, again, for no more serious crime than begging. There are all degrees of guilt there, in fact, and all ages, from girls of 16 to women of nearly 80. And they all live together on terms of perfect equality; for there are no distinctions of rank there–no one is better or worse than her neighbor. When the convent door closed behind them they have done, for the time being, not only with the outside world, but with their own past. They start life afresh, as it were.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, March, 1896[/tags]

1. The reference appears in a story about Jesse Pomeroy, who has appeared on Odd Ends before.[back]

Fire Marshal Whitcomb has been pretty busy taking testimony in regard to fires lately, and while speaking about examining witnesses the other day he mentioned several curious things he had noticed. He says that in every case where he has discovered a pyromaniac he has had his suspicions of the person’s guilt aroused by a peculiar smile which plays around the mouth of the guilty one when under examination. It is hardly a smile, rather a peculiar puckering of the corners of the mouth, an expression almost indefinable, but it seems to mean, “Well, I’m too smart for you to catch me, anyhow.” The marshal says he can recall a dozen cases where he noticed this smile and at the time had no other cause to suspect a witness, yet by following these smiling ones he has obtained the most convincing testimony of their guilt an almost invariably confession from the guilty ones themselves.–Boston Transcript.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, April, 1896[/tags]

“Bathing and the use of soap,” says Prof. Checkly, “is 40 per cent more injurious to the human race than any other form of stimulation to which people are addicted. If I should bathe a man, in proportion, as much as he drank, I’d kill him in one-half the time. This is called the age of hurry and feverish excitement; critics complain that people are unwilling to take time for anything. As a matter of fact, hours of precious time are worse than wasted daily in the bathroom. If men would preserve their health, there are three things they must do: First, leave soap alone; second, get the skin loose from the tissues of the body; third, get rid of the idea that regularity in the matter of sleep and meals is necessary to physical well-being.”

“What are the objections to the use of soap?” asked a reporter to whom the professor’s original views were a revelation.

“There are vital objections,” was the reply. “The skin, it is acknowledged, bears a most important relation to the body. First, it acts as a protective agent, covering the sensitive tissues of the flesh. Second, it acts as the agent of the mind, conveying all sensations of heat, cold, friction, and the like. Third, it directly aids all the other organs of the body, taking up the work of each in turn, when for any reason they become unable to perform their functions. The skin assists all the organs of secretion and excretion in the entire system, and for that reason great attention should be paid to keeping it in a healthy condition. Although realizing its important functions people instead of protecting this wonderful covering of theirs, try by every means in their power to destroy it. Soap does not cleanse the skin. When the skin is dirty it is unhealthy, and the organs within the body can never be cleansed by all the soaps in the world. The only stains, blots, etc., on the skin that people need to get rid of cannot be removed by soap. Some other chemical ointment or fluid has to be resorted to to obliterate them. As far as regards the dust and dirt which naturally adheres to the body, dust and dirt, being earthy and material, are much better brushed off than washed off, and soap does not aid in the process.”

The blow gun is one of the most remarkable savage devices in which compressed air is used as a motive force. The blow gun is a simple tube of cane, smoothly cleared of the joint partitions, through which light darts, feathered with a tuft of down or pieces of pith, are propelled by the breath. The blow gun is used for killing birds and small animals. Frequently the arrows are poisoned, rendering the light dart effective on larger game. The chief merit of the blow gun is its accuracy and the silence with which it may be employed. The penetration of the blow gun dart is greater than would be imagined. At the distance of fifty feet I have driven a blunt dart one-quarter of an inch into a pine plank. It is stated that the range of the blow gun among some tribes is from eighty to 100 yards. The blow gun is a tropical device and may be looked for in regions where bamboo or cane grows. Nevertheless, these tubes are often made of hard wood, single or of two pieces hollowed out and joined together. Frequently one tube is thrust inside of another to secure rigidity. The examination of many of these blow guns [inspires?] a great respect for the ingenuity and mechanical skill of the workers. The North American specimens are from the Chetimachas of Louisiana, who frequently combine the tubes in series, forming a compound blow gun, and the Cherokees of the Carolinas. From Central America, the Indians of Honduras and Costa Rica; from South America, several Amazon tribes from Ecuador east and from British Guiana employ the blow gun.

Brooklyn detectives say that Daniel Evans, 19 years old, with no home, is the greatest “fit fakir” they have met professionally in the course of a long and varied experience, says the New York Tribune. He has been pretending to “take fits,” they say, with a regularity and perfection that has gained him lots of money from sympathetic persons, but which at least led him to jail, where to-day he languishes under the supervision of a “minion of the law,” who nervously watches Daniel Evans in case he should “take a fit” there.

Evans is the young man who has been visiting hotels and churches, where he had fits and fits and fits. After one fit he would have a collection taken up for his benefit and then he would seek another field and have another fit. He worked this novel scheme in various places in New York city and Brooklyn; in the former city at the Fifth Avenue hotel, in the latter at the St. George hotel and at other places. After each simulated fit Evans would collect money to pay his fare to Fresno, Cal., “where his poor old father lived.” He did this at the St. George a few weeks ago. He went to the Grace Methodist Episcopal church, Seventh avenue and St. John’s place, and had a fit and a collection in the middle of the Sunday evening services.

Last Sunday night he went to the First Reformed church, Seventh avenue and Carroll street, and had a fit there. The Rev. Dr. James M. Farrar, however, thought that Evans was having fits for value received and that his schemes was a fradulent one to gain money and sympathy. So after Evans had called at the “Dutch Arms,” a club connected with the church, Dr. Farrar informed Detectives Reynolds and Weiser, who arrested Evans.

A post-mortem examination on the body of James Ellis, aged 65, who died in Leavenworth, Kan., showed death to have been caused by a pin, swallowed perhaps in childhood.