A Burglar Caught by a Skeleton & Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press

by Clay, Jeremy

  The little life that remained in the unfortunate animal was then rendered extinct by a blow or blows from a stick. A person expressed a desire to possess the dog’s skin. The skin was accordingly removed from the body and given to the man who had asked for it. Next, a man cut up a portion of the remains of the dog, which, it is positively stated, were roasted in front of a fire; and a further statement is to the effect that a man’s dinner basin was used to catch what was disgustingly termed the ‘gravy.’

  The landlady of the house at which the events occurred attempted to extinguish the fire and put an end to the proceedings, but she was prevented from doing so, and the portion of the dog was cooked. The remainder was fried, that which was cooked being eaten. Portions of the dog’s limbs were used to create ‘fun’ by some of the men, who rubbed them over the faces of their companions.

  The Illustrated Police News, March 20, 1880

  Beer v. Water

  At seven o’clock on Friday morning, on the farm of Mr George Melsome, Beacon Hill, near Amesbury, in Wilts, commenced a singular match for £5, lasting all day in broiling hot weather, during which the corn in the district around was being rapidly cut down.

  The contest which was under the auspices of the Church of England Temperance Society, was the result of a bet at a public meeting at Salisbury, and was between Mr Terrell, a Wiltshire farmer, who challenged his opponent first, and Mr Abbey, an Oxfordshire farmer and lecturer for the Society.

  The issue was who would do the most work in the harvest field, the former drinking beer and the latter water only. Fifteen acres to each ‘pitcher’ were allowed. The result was that beer won by above an acre. Mr Terrell from the first held a very considerable lead and at four o’clock the ground cleared by him was 15a. 3r. 16p., and by Mr Abbey 14a. 3r.

  The farmer who lost has handed over the sum to the Salisbury Infirmary. He pitched 19a. 2r. 26p. in less than twelve hours, against 20a. 2r. 7p. by his opponent.

  The effects on his body have been very severe. The ordinary labourer pitches about 12a. in a good day’s work. It is proposed to present the winner with a gold medal. So great was the strain on him that at four o’clock he was taken to a wood and ‘anointed’ with whisky, it is stated.

  The Grantham Journal, September 1, 1883

  Celebrating His Death-Feast

  Johann Kruger, well-known poacher and wood-stealer, of Neuendorf, near Potsdam, has met his death under circumstances of a very unusual and surprising character.

  It appears that the Royal keepers and gendarmerie were on the look out for him by reason of some sylvan dereliction he had recently committed, and that he had therefore taken to the woods, in the so-called Kiefernhaide.

  Being hard up for food and liquor, he contrived to steal a large dog and a quart bottle of corn brandy, which stores he conveyed to his hiding place, and there proceeded to make preparation for an al-fresco feast and carouse which would have been more appropriate to an Indian scout than to a Prussian poacher.

  After he had built up and lighted a huge wood fire he slaughtered the dog, skinned it, and roasted one of its legs, upon which he made a copious meal, washing down the ‘friend of man’ with deep draughts of fiery spirit.

  Having finished this strange repast – the relics of which, clean-picked canine leg-bones and an empty bottle, were subsequently found near the ashes of the extinguished fire – he must have stumbled, all but senseless from intoxication, over the pile of burning wood, and fallen into the flames; for his charred remains were discovered by the Royal foresters next morning literally burnt to cinders with the sole exception of the head, by which he was recognised.

  In surfeiting himself with roast dog and raw brandy, Kruger had unconsciously celebrated his own death-feast.

  The Shields Daily Gazette and Shipping Telegraph, May 3, 1880

  Shocking Death from Eating Putrid Fish

  Yesterday afternoon Dr Challice, the deputy coroner, held an inquest at the Woodman Tavern, White Street, Bethnal Green, on the body of Sarah Golding, aged seventy-four years, lately residing at No. 11, Winchester Street, Waterloo Town.

  The deceased was a silk winder, and on Wednesday night last she purchased two pieces of fried fish at a shop in Hare Street, Brick Lane, and ate them for supper.

  Shortly afterwards she was seized with violent vomiting, when she called a lodger, to whom she admitted that the fish was stinking, but she was so very hungry that she was compelled to eat it.

  Mr Thomas Jarvis said the deceased died from congestion of the brain, brought on by violent vomiting and exhaustion through eating unsound fish, which was extensively vended in the neighbourhood among the poor. Verdict, ‘Died from eating putrid fish.’

  The Era, June 12, 1859

  An Extraordinary Glutton

  The city of Los Angeles, California, is just now honoured with the presence of an extraordinary glutton.

  He is a native of the Grand Duchy of Monaco, and seems to have had an eventful life. At the age of three years he could masticate coarse dried beef, and at nineteen had such a voracious appetite that the Grand Duke, fearing a famine in the small Principality, sent him as one of a purchased quota to Romania, whence he afterwards escaped to the United States.

  Immediately on his arrival at Los Angeles he ate 34lb weight of pork, pork fat, train oil, and tallow candles, and subsequently consumed all the cold joints of a good-humoured restaurateur, to whom he offered a 25c. stamp to cover the damage.

  The citizens of Los Angeles, like all Californians, have a fondness for ‘big things,’ and the result is that, instead of riding this ‘big eater’ out of the town on a rail, they have taken hold of him with their accustomed enthusiasm, and now offer to back him for a ‘square meal’ against the world.

  The Manchester Evening News, August 12, 1871

  A Curious Incident

  A curious accident is reported from Hirson, on the Northern Railway of France. A drunken man named Lefebvre contrived, unobserved, says the London Daily News, to mount upon a locomotive, left at the moment unattended at the station in that town, and, turning on the steam, started it down the line at an accelerated pace in the direction of Buire.

  Being ignorant of the practical working of the engine the man was powerless to arrest the mischief, and the locomotive, coming into collision with an empty carriage, dashed it to pieces. Finally, it was somehow turned into a siding, where, colliding with violence with the buffers, it was brought to a stand.

  Only five minutes later an express train passed down the line. The strangest part of the incident is that the drunken engine-driver is reported to have sustained no serious injury.

  The Shields Daily Gazette and Shipping Telegraph, September 24, 1890

  Topics of the Day

  A dealer in Connecticut lately sold a bottle of ‘the best brandy,’ which was handed to Professor Silliman, of Vale College, for analysis. He found it to be concocted on a basis of whisky, with additions of alum, sulphuric acid, an essential oil of some kind, tannic acid, cayenne pepper, burnt sugar, lead, and copper, all of which appear to have been found necessary to produce the peculiar cognac flavour so much admired.

  The Western Daily Press, Bristol, January 6, 1872

  A Wonderful Stomach

  An extraordinary gastronomical feat has been performed at Derby. A man, out of sheer bravado, while in a public house, cut up his fur cap and swallowed the pieces, then he ate up a newspaper, and, as a reward, asked the company for a few coppers.

  Five pennies were accordingly thrown to him, and on the suggestion of one of the company, these were sent after the newspaper and the fur cap.

  The silly fellow suddenly became ill, and was taken to the infirmary, where he is now paying the penalty for his rash act.

  The Shields Daily Gazette and Shipping Telegraph, May 26, 1882

  HEALTH and MEDICINE

  Preface

  The patient arrived doubled up with pain: breathless, faint and exhausted, clutching her chest, her lips tinged an alarming s
hade of blue.

  Doctors at St George’s Hospital in London knew just what to do. They treated her with an ether mixture and a laxative, and finished with a flourish, a new wonder drug that was fresh to the market, having been launched the year before as a cough suppressant.

  To scientists it was diacetylmorphine, but the pharmaceutical firm Bayer, seeking a snappier brand name, called it Heroin. You may have heard of it.

  The patient, alas, died a few days later, senior physician William Ewart told the annual meeting of the British Medical Association in 1899. Heroin wasn’t to blame, but its days as a moreish over-the-counter sedative proved equally short-lived.

  Using a powerful narcotic to tackle a cough may seem a tad disproportionate, but this was an era when consumption was rife, and when industrialisation, urbanisation, poverty, overcrowding and poor sanitation conspired to short-change Britons of their allotted three score years and ten in all manner of unpleasant ways.

  An age of disease inspired an age of remedies. From the travelling medicine men of the Wild West to the pages of the local press in Britain, miracle cures were everywhere.

  Proof, if it is needed, lies in the British Newspaper Archive. Pick a paper. Any paper. The Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald, say. On … eeny meeny miny mo … Saturday, February 23, 1889.

  On the front, an advertisement for Dr West’s Nerve and Brain Treatment promised a catch-all cure for conditions ranging from hysteria to depression to premature old age. 25 shillings bought a box containing six months’-worth of treatment. Expensive, but a small price compared to the ‘misery, decay and death’ you otherwise risked.

  A turn of the page reveals a riot of medicinal adverts, from Clarke’s world-famed Blood Mixture for cancerous ulcers and scurvy sores to Holloway’s ointment to ease ‘bad legs and old wounds’ to Electro Galvanic Suspensory Belts, which were just the thing, it seems, for ‘night troubles’.

  And then there was Dr J. Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne, which promised to ‘assuage pain of every kind’ from toothache to cancer. Dr Gibbon, of the army medical staff in Calcutta, swore by it, according to his frank testimony. ‘Nine doses completely cured me of diarrhoea’, he crowed, though considering the principal ingredients of Chlorodyne included chloroform, tincture of cannabis and laudanum, it’s possible Dr Gibbon wasn’t so much cured of diarrhoea as not especially bothered about it any longer.

  Prevention, though, was better than cure, and at the start of Victoria’s reign there were a number of medical men who believed one thing in particular needed preventing: pollution. Not the literal kind, but the sort Victorians euphemistically referred to as self-pollution.

  ‘Many physicians of high authority have maintained that two-thirds of the diseases to which the human race is liable have had their origin in certain solitary practices’, declared our old friend Eugene Becklard in his Physiological Mysteries.

  That figure, M. Becklard thought, was fancifully high, but he was pretty certain that consumption, impotence and lunacy were the effects of excessive fondness for one’s own company. Females were as keen on the hobby as males, he warned, making use of ‘large foreign substances to procure pleasure’.

  Ah. Perhaps that’s why Mrs Beeton recommended boiling carrots for two and a quarter hours.

  A Wonderful Recovery

  On Saturday at Eastbourne, a tradesman named Thomas Wickens was charged with attempting to commit suicide by driving four long nails into his head.

  Dr McQueen produced four long nails which he had with difficulty withdrawn from the head of Wickens. These nails had penetrated three inches, and gone through the brain; but to the surprise of the medical staff at the Memorial Hospital, Wickens had fully recovered.

  Wickens said he drove the nails into his head in succession with a hammer, and that he had felt better in his head since the occurrence. He is now sane and able to resume business; and, medically, his recovery is regarded as the most wonderful on record. The magistrate ordered him to be discharged.

  The Citizen, Gloucester, August 4, 1890

  An Extraordinary Cure

  The New York Sun gives the story of a cure effected on two violently insane patients in the Hudson County Lunatic Asylum, by the superintendent, Dr George W. King, formerly of Springfield, Massachusetts. His successful experiment was to place the two men together in a cell, each with the instruction to watch the other, who was insane. They sat from morning to night gazing compassionately at each other; in a week they were as quiet as if perfectly sane, and in two months were discharged cured.

  The Evening News, Portsmouth, March 15, 1886

  A New Way of Pulling Out a Tooth!

  The bravest among us often quail at the prospect of a visit to the dentist, and endure a very martyrdom from toothache rather than submit to the extraction of the offending tooth (says the Evening Standard).

  But when one’s courage is screwed to the extracting point, it is evidently to the patient’s advantage that the operation should be performed by a skilful hand, rather than by the unpractised one of the sufferer.

  A Frenchman residing in the environs of Paris held a contrary opinion, and it is still doubtful whether his error may not cost him his life, owing to the unusual manner in which he played the role of dentist.

  He had long been suffering from toothache, but obstinately refused to have recourse to a dentist, and at length, finding the pain unendurable, took the following uncommon method of extraction.

  To the tooth he attached firmly a long string, to the string a heavy stone, thus armed he proceeded to the topmost storey of the house he occupied, opened the window, and hurled the stone into the air.

  The weight of the stone and the length of the string produced so violent a shock, that not only was the tooth pulled out, but with it a portion of the man’s jaw, his neck being so painfully twisted that he fainted.

  Hours ensued ere consciousness returned. When he ultimately recovered his senses it was found necessary to remove him to a hospital, where he now lies in a most precarious state. Should he quit the hospital a living man, it is hoped he will also be a wiser one.

  The Alnwick Mercury, March 2, 1878

  Cured by Lightning

  A remarkable case of paralysis being cured by lightning is reported from Bad Beyhausen.

  A Berlin doctor ordered a patient of his who had been paralysed in both feet for many years to take the baths, not for a cure as that appeared hopeless, but thinking the invalid might possibly derive some slight benefit from the waters.

  The patient was ordered to be as much as possible in the open air, and was in the habit of sitting outside the house in a bath-chair.

  Recently a violent thunderstorm came on, and everybody in the house forgot the sick man was outside. Suddenly a vivid flash of lightning and a terrific crash of thunder reminded them of the fact, and they were just about to go in search of him when the invalid appeared in their midst, walking without any difficulty. From that moment, he has appeared to be completely cured.

  This case, the Hoyaer Wochenblatt says, has excited great interest among the medical men; some of whom believe the cure to be effected merely by fear and the intense desire to walk, others think that the electric current may have assisted the paralysed limbs to move.

  The Huddersfield Daily Chronicle, September 7, 1891

  Strange Adventure

  A correspondent writes to a contemporary: ‘An Oxfordshire woman met with an experience a few days back which should act as a warning to intending visitors to lunatic asylums.

  ‘The person in question journeyed to Littlemore, a village four miles distant from Oxford where there is an asylum, with the intention of visiting a female patient. The porter, having admitted her, is said to have duly passed her on to one of the matrons with the words “to visit a female patient;” but the nurse appears to have caught only the last words of the sentence, and a mistake resulted which cost the visitor a good deal of unpleasantness, to say the least of it.

  ‘The stranger was ta
ken to the top of the building, under the belief that she was going to see her friend, and then she was suddenly shut into an empty room. Shortly afterwards a nurse entered, and, to the consternation of the visitor, at once proceeded to undress her. Protestations and remonstrances were alike unavailing, and firmly, though not unkindly, the poor woman was stripped and placed in a bath, after which she was forcibly put to bed.

  ‘By this time the mistaken lunatic was of course in a frantic state of alarm, which only favoured the belief that she was really a mad woman. Where the gruesome farce might have ended it is not pleasant to contemplate; but by a lucky accident the mistake was discovered later in the day, and the unfortunate woman was set at liberty with profuse apologies.

  ‘It is satisfactory to hear, under the circumstances, that no complaint has been made as to undue severity on the part of the nurses.’

  The Western Daily Press, Bristol, November 15, 1884

  Singular Accident and Extraordinary Cure

  On Saturday afternoon an accident, which was nearly proving fatal, happened to a man named Adam Drewe, employed at the Ironworks, Seend, near Melksham.

  It appears that the large iron tube, about thirty feet in circumference, through which hot air is blown from the engine, sometimes gets obstructed by ashes, and then a man has to creep into it for the purpose of removing them. This was the case on Saturday, and Drewe, who is a powerfully-built man, got into the tube for the above purpose.

  Not making his re-appearance, a man was sent into the tube to search for him, and found him jammed in a narrow part of the tube, in an insensible state. After some difficulty he was pulled out, still insensible, with several scars and burns on his body.