Lizards in the Bowels and a Tame Zebra
Between 1848 and 1868, as now, people are fascinated by the bizarre, scandals, new inventions, and habits of remote nations. The stories below taken from the Library of Congress massive collection of newspapers.
A man in Maine passes a 7 inch lizard; a groom dies upside down in the outhouse an hour before his wedding; a thousand virgins sail for Washington state; “the first balloon ascent by man on horseback,”; a little girl realizes God’s having trouble lighting his gas lantern; tame zebras. P.T. Barnum’s new museum in New York City demonstrated the public would pay for the bizarre or unusual.
Lizards in the Bowels
A live lizard 7 inches long and 2 1/2 inches round was passed from the bowels of a gentleman in Maine, and both man and lizard are doing well. “Old Bourboun” (sic) in small quantities is a remedy for lizards, but too much of it makes snakes in the boot.
Dead Serious
An idiot in Germany was told to watch a corpse. The corpse was a living man and the intention was to fool the poor idiot. Presently, the body moved — the idiot told it to be still. On failure to mind, the simpleton seized a hatchet and dispatched the bogus dead man. Served him right.
Birmingham, Alabama-Death in the Outhouse
On Sunday the 25, a most melancholy event occurred in Birmingham. A young man named William Eustace, by trade a chaser, was affianced to a young woman residing at Loknield Street East. The wedding-day, fixed for Sunday last, found the bride dressed in her wedding attire. Ten o’clock was the hour for the meeting of the parties before they went to church, but the husband elect came not. The clock had struck twelve when tidings arrived that the dead body of the bridegroom lay within a few yards of the house where he was expected. It appears that, punctually to the time, young Eustace dressed in his wedding suit had arrived within a door or two of his intended’s house, when he had occasion to go to a place of convenience. Neighbors who saw him enter the place were surprised, after the lapse on an hour that he did not make his appearance. An entrance being effected, the poor man was found quite dead upon the floor: inference being made that he must have been seized with a fainting fit while upon the seat, and that falling forward, he had got jammed within the narrow space between the seat and the door, and thus was suffocated. The ring was found in Eustace’s pocket.
A Boatload of Virgins — -Fall, 1865
A Mr. Meyer is in New York loading a ship with young women whom he proposes to take to the Washington Territory.
He has already some seven hundred and he wishes to get one thousand when his capacities will then be exhausted and the ship will sail for the Pacific slope. In noticing this movement, a New York Paper says:
virgin women who have agreed to emigrate and are awaiting the time for the steamship to sail. About two thirds of them are from Massachusetts — mostly from Boston and Lowell — and the remainder from New York, with Ohio, Illinois and other Western states. The passengers include a number of men — ship makers, machinists, and other merchants — and a few families; but the ladies are as so great in the preponderance that the enterprise may be regarded solely as affecting the weaker sex.
Touching this matter, the Chicago Times makes this pithy and severe, but perhaps in the main truthful remarks:
Necessity, ….(has torn) several hundred lovely young white girls in the Bay State from their families and will sell them to the highest bidders in Washington Territory, thousands of miles away. Who will weep over this rude violation of the family circle? No one. Philanthropy goes complacently along with the transaction and says nothing because the matter has no votes.
But aside from the political aspects of the case. There is no reason why anyone should stay these adventurous damsels. We learn fallen women are rigidly excluded, although we are not informed as to the method in which Mr Mever distinguishes between who is “fallen” and who is “saved.” His recipe appertaining such differences if put into the open market would find a ready sale.
But, as we said, we wish these young women success. They will get what they cannot have in Massachusetts — husbands. There is a large surplus of virginity in that state which the men cannot submit to for the reason probably they have other things to care for. They prefer to propagate Puritanism rather than themselves. And these young women have to emigrate. They go in search of what Massachusetts lacks — men, and they will probably get them. They are right in leaving Massachusetts. No other state would allow its young women to go abroad in search of men. It would be serving the male population of that state just right if every woman would emigrate. In such a case, men would be in no worse than now, while the women would be better.
“Nothing to Wear”
Richmond, Virginia
SINGULAR FACT — Clam shells have been found by the workmen engaged in digging down 14th street (across Council Chamber Hill) six feet below the present surface. When it is recollected that 50 feet of “top dirt” was removed earlier, it seems incomprehensible how they ever got there. The shells have the appearance of being turned into black marl. They have, nevertheless, unmistakably, been clam shells at some remote period.
A reporter in New Orleans views the freak show and among other entertainments the Mammoth Mule — 1858
The mammoth mule was well and receiving the visits of an admiring public. We did not drop in to see him, for his picture outside was more than enough. So were the pictures on and over the other tents at the foot of Esplanade Street. That gallant Tom Thumb of a fellow in circus clothes was still remorselessly cutting the throat of the terrible Russian bear, whilst at an adjoining tent the awful anaconda was still squeezing the vital spark out of a three year old bullock. At another tent, Hercules in pink tights and a blue diaper was just preparing, as he had been for months past, to swallow a chair with a boy in the bottom of it. The same Hercules, on the same canvas, was doing other unheard of things.
The six legged cow, with two live legs growing out of her shoulders, was doing well and taking dimes, in a house near the vegetable market. This cow is, in the poetic language of the exhibitor, “the purtiest and docilist animal yer ever see.”
On the levee opposite Jackson Square, were wonders too numerous to mention. The canvas pictures were almost as enticing enough to extract a beggar’s last dime. There were death-defying men of pigmy size in mortal combat with elephantine bears; dreadful boa constrictors lunching on the mightiest of beasts; a lady in bloomer costume standing tip toe on a slack wire; the same gentleman going through military evolutions, with his leg for a musket; and, what-not else. The groaning of the hand organs, banging of the harps, the squeaking of the fiddles and pipes, inside and outside the tents, added not a little to the attractiveness of these refined and intellectual feasts for the million.
To anyone with appetite to see what coarse food feeds the appetite of the levee population, it would take a whole day to go along the levee and go into the dime and two bit shows which cluster about the ferry landings.
And taken from a British newspaper in 1859 and reprinted by a Troy, N.Y. newspaper
AN HEIRESS MARRIES HER FATHER’S BUTLER.
A Yorkshire paper says: “The past week has revealed another of those ill-assorted marriages which sometimes occur to the great annoyance of respectable families. The bride in this instance is the only daughter of a family residing in a village a few miles from Sheffield, who have been accustomed to move in the most aristocratic society in this part of Yorkshire. It appears the young man had been a servant abroad to one of the sons of the family, and on returning home had been installed as the butler. By what qualities he gained the affections of the young lady is not for us to speculate, but the result was that some three years ago they secretly married in a church in London. The secret, however, was well kept; and what is still more extraordinary, if true, it is asserted that one little cherub, if not more, has blessed the secret union, all unknown, of course, to its unsuspecting grand-parents. The bridegroom continued to occupy his position of butler until last week, when a lady visitor, who had been made acquainted with the strange union, broached the subject to the young wife’s mother, who has very recently been bereaved of her husband. The disclosure created the most painful feelings, in which, however, the offending daughter does not appear to have shared. The result of the disclosure was that the ex-butler and his wife left the parental roof for the north. At Victoria Station, in Sheffield, where they took the train, the young lady displayed the utmost gayety of manner with several persons to whom she was known and to whom she introduced her husband. It is stated that the young lady has become possessed of considerable fortune by the death of her father, who it is believed would, had her ill-assorted marriage come to his knowledge, have left her differently circumstanced. A fear of the consequences of parental anger is assumed as the motive for the long and strangely successful concealment of the wedding.
A Tight Rope Over the Falls
BLONDIN — The noted devil-may-care loose, tight rope performer made another trip across the Niagari (sic) river last Wednesday. His last reckless performance was better calculated to shock the nerves of timid men than anything yet done on that “line.” He went over blindfolded and enveloped in a sack. He turned somersaults, stood on his head on the rope long enough to have his photograph taken, and went back with a wheel-barrow before him and gave an exhibition of fireworks on the route. Mrs.Blondin, saw him perform — for the first time.
And to make sure there was not an inch going to waste, newspapers often ran columns of what we’d call factoids now. These from an Iowa newspaper in 1860 are typical.
News and Items (it begins)
St. Louis, Mo., has a population of 144,939, consisting of 1,019 free blacks, 1,245 slaves, 73,320 white males and 63,346 white females.
The whole number of criminals reported by State authorities of New York is 10,020, half of them females, and over 10,000 of them the victims of intoxicating liquors.
Another fool died lately in New Jersey from overeating hard boiled eggs.
The young folks in Cincinnati, have lately taken to marrying while on the street cars, thus saving the expense of wedding parties. Those street cars accommodate passengers by making rapid connections.
Two members of the New Hampshire Legislature had a knock down a few days since. They are preparing to run for Congress.
Typos then and now
Attempting to make a joke at women’s expense, a minister — or the editor — said something much funnier.
A minister recently remarked to his congregation that our blessed Lord appeared to a female after the insurrection, in order that the glad tidings might spread sooner.
And a Raleigh, NC paper in 1856 reporting on winners at the State Fair in the dairy section:
DIARY(sic)
Best jar of fresh butter, W.B. Williams, 1st premium $3 (I wonder if the cow could be milked for calendars, too. )
And cute stories, too. God could prevent forest fires long before Smokey the Bear —
LIGHTENING AND THE LAMPS OF HEAVEN —
We find the following unique explanation of electrical phenomena in the New York Knickerbocker.
A little girl, the idol of a friend of ours, was sitting by the window during a violent thunderstorm, apparently striving to grapple some proposition too strong for her childish mind. Presently a smile of triumph lit up her features, as she exclaimed, “Oh, I know what makes the lightening; it’s God lighting his lamps and throwing the matches down here.”
