by Jill Lepore
5. MR. AND MRS. MARSTON
1. William Ernst Hocking, a member of Harvard’s philosophy department, delivered Mount Holyoke’s commencement address. He spoke about the philosophy and psychology of power. True power is calm, he said. Hocking’s commencement address is printed in “Diplomas for 147 Seniors,” an unidentified 1915 newspaper clipping in the Mount Holyoke College Archives.
2. “Vogue of Bobbed Hair,” New York Times, June 27, 1920.
3. A copy of Vachel Lindsay, The Congo and Other Poems (New York: Macmillan, 1915), inscribed, “May 8th, She’s Twenty-Two! Bill,” is in the possession of MM. “The Mysterious Cat” is on p. 38.
4. “The Sphinx Speaks of the Class of 1915, Mount Holyoke College: A Biographical History . . . for our Thirty-second Reunion, June 1947” (South Hadley, MA: Mount Holyoke College, 1947), n.p., and “The Riddle of the Sphinx in Your Living Room, 1915–1970” (South Hadley, MA: Mount Holyoke College, 1970), 13.
5. The Llamarada 1915 (South Hadley: Mount Holyoke College, 1915), 174.
6. EHM to JE, November 16, 1983, in the possession of JE.
7. Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women, 120.
8. See the marriage notice in the Whitman (MA) Times, September 15, 1915, in Clippings file, WMM, Quinquennial File, Harvard University Archives.
9. EHM to JE, January 20, 1974, in the possession of JE.
10. EHM, “Tiddly Bits.” EHM to Caroline Becker (Alumnae Office), February 26, 1987, EHM Alumnae file, Mount Holyoke College Archives.
11. “Mr. and Mrs. Marston are living at 12 Remington Street, Cambridge, Mass.” Harvard Bulletin, in Clippings file, WMM, Quinquennial File, Harvard University Archives. 12 Remington Street was a development called Remington Gables; see the Remington Street folder, Cambridge Historical Commission: “At Remington Gables we have a suite consisting of Living room, Dining room, Reception hall, two chambers, Kitchenette and Bath, rent of which is $37.50 per month.” Newhall and Blevins to Robert J. Melledge, November 26, 1911. And: “Suite 102—To sublet from April 1th for remainder of lease—Oct. 1, 1914—Rent $42.50 per mo. Suite consists of Living room, Dining room, 2 Chambers, kitchenette, bath and piazza.” Newhall and Blevins, Revised Renting List, Remington Gables, Cambridge, April 13, 1914.
12. Holloway quoted in Andrew H. Malcolm, “Our Towns: She’s Behind the Match for That Man of Steel,” New York Times, February 18, 1992.
13. First Report of the Class of Nineteen Hundred and Fifteen of Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA: Mount Holyoke College, 1916), n.p. A copy of Fannie Merritt Farmer, Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, rev. ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1918), inscribed by WMM’s mother, is in the possession of MM.
14. Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women, 51. EHM to JE, April 19, 1974, in the possession of JE.
15. WMM, Try Living, 8.
16. WMM, transcript, Harvard Law School, class of 1918, Harvard Law School Registrar: Student Permanent Record Cards, 1893–1972, Harvard University Archives, call number 14258. Faculty members are not listed on the transcript, but I have consulted the law school’s course catalog. On Thayer and Wigmore, see Twining, Theories of Evidence, 7–9. James Bradley Thayer, Select Cases on Evidence at Common Law (Cambridge, MA: C. W. Sever, 1892).
17. Theodore Roosevelt said that Wilson’s campaign slogan (“He kept us out of war”) was an “ignoble shirking of responsibility.” Wilson countered. “I am an American, but I do not believe that any of us loves a blustering nationality,” he said in one campaign speech. “We love that quiet, self-respecting, unconquerable spirit which doesn’t strike until it is necessary to strike, and then it strikes to conquer.” Quoted in A. Scott Berg, Wilson (New York: Putnam’s, 2013), 412, 404–5.
18. Berg, Wilson, 417. John Milton Cooper, ed., Reconsidering Woodrow Wilson: Progressivism, Internationalism, War, and Peace (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 126.
19. A. Lawrence Lowell to Alfred C. Lane, November 2, 1916, Harvard University Archives, HUA 734.26.
20. Münsterberg’s address is given as 7 Ware Street in “Cosmopolitan Clubs to Convene During Recess,” Harvard Crimson, December 22, 1915. That the class was Elementary Psychology is reported in “H. Munsterberg, Psychologist, Is Fatally Stricken,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 17, 1916. See also “Munsterberg Dead,” Washington Post, December 17, 1916. That Münsterberg had, in the last years of his career, been chiefly regarded as a popularizer is well illustrated by the many mixed tributes of this sort: “Nowadays, when our magazines are loaded with ignorant expositions of Freud and Jung and every whiffler is driveling about the ‘sex-complex’ and the theory of dreams, it is well to remember that Professor Münsterberg was never a mere caterer to prurient curiosity or the vulgar love of wonders” (“Hugo Munsterberg,” New York Tribune, December 17, 1916).
21. Splash page, Wonder Woman #5, June–July 1943.
6. THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE
1. On the suffrage movement during Wilson’s presidency, see Christine A. Lunardini, From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, 1910–1928 (New York: New York University Press, 1986).
2. Berg, Wilson, 438. And see Jill Lepore, “The Tug of War: Woodrow Wilson and the Power of the Presidency,” New Yorker, September 9, 2013.
3. The best account is Lunardini, From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights, chapter 7. But see also Catherine J. Lanctot, “ ‘We Are at War and You Should Not Bother the President’: The Suffrage Pickets and Freedom of Speech During World War I,” Villanova University School of Law Working Paper Series, 2008, Paper 116.
4. A list of the members of this group appears in a visitor logbook kept by the Psychological Laboratory: Experimental Group, April 5–7, 1917, “Visitors to the Psychological Laboratory” (pp. 11–12), Department of Psychology, Harvard University Archives, UA V 714.392.
5. Robert M. Yerkes, “Psychology in Relation to the War,” Psychological Review 25 (1918): 85–115; quote on 94. See also Robert M. Yerkes, ed., The New World of Science: Its Development During the War (New York: Century, 1920), 354.
6. WMM, Class Note, Harvard College Class of 1915: Decennial Report (Cambridge: Printed for the Class of 1915, 1926), 178–79.
7. WMM, draft card, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 5, 1917, World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2005). According to WMM’s Harvard Law School transcript, his last day in residence during the 1916–17 academic year was June 21.
8. “Is there a chance to be commissioned as Chief Examiner in regular army service like the medics, or is the only opportunity open, in case the work is extended, a civil appointment as assistant examiner?” and “Is there any opportunity or need for research work, like Mr. Troland’s etc., which can be done in the Harvard Lab.?” WMM to Robert Yerkes, September 11, 1917, National Research Council Papers, National Academy of Medicine.
9. WMM to Yerkes, September 20, 1917, NRC Papers.
10. E. L. Thorndike to Yerkes, October 1917 (on National Research Council letterhead), NRC Papers.
11. Herbert Langfeld to Robert Yerkes, October 8, 1917 (on Harvard Psychological Laboratory letterhead), NRC Papers.
12. WMM to Yerkes, from Cambridge, October 9, 1917, with 12-page typewritten enclosure titled, “Report on Deception Tests,” NRC Papers.
13. Minutes of the Meeting of the Psychology Committee, National Research Council, October 13, 1917, NRC Papers. WMM reported: “In October, 1917, at the request of the Psychological Committee of National Research Council, tests of this type [systolic blood pressure] were conducted in the Harvard Laboratory, with a view to determining their value in government service during the war.” WMM, “Psychological Possibilities in the Deception Tests,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 11 (1921): 552–53. He cites the report in the Psychological Committee files, under the date of November 13, 1917. “This opportunity for a practical try-out of these tests was made possible by the liberal and patriotic attitude of the court and the energetic efforts of
Major Robert M. Yerkes and Dr. [James R.] Angell of the National Research Council,” WMM later acknowledged (WMM, “Psychological Possibilities in the Deception Tests,” 554). Robert M. Yerkes, “Report of the Psychology Committee of the National Research Council,” Psychological Review 26 (1919): 85, 134.
14. Telegram, WMM, Harold E. Burtt, and Leonard T. Troland to Yerkes, November 13, 1917; and WMM to Yerkes, November 13, 1917, an eight-page letter signed by Harold E. Burtt and Leonard T. Troland below a postscript reading, “The above is a correct account of Marston’s deception tests in which we have participated,” NRC Papers.
15. Yerkes, “Report of the Psychology Committee,” 134.
16. Herbert Langfeld to Robert Yerkes, October 16, 1917, Robert M. Yerkes Papers, Yale University Manuscripts and Archives, box 30, folder 565, and WMM, “Psychological Possibilities in the Deception Tests,” 556, 566. How the study came to be authorized can be found in Yerkes to WMM, December 1, 1917, and WMM to Yerkes, December 4, 1917, NRC Papers.
17. “Demand Release of Pickets,” New York Times, November 9, 1917, and “Suffragists Will Use Ballots to Resent Jailing of Pickets,” New York Tribune, November 12, 1917.
18. WMM to Yerkes, December 12, 1917, NRC Papers; Yerkes to Mr. A. Bruce Bielaski, Chief of Bureau of Investigation, Dept. of Justice, January 15, 1918, and Bielaski to Yerkes, February 23, 1918, NRC Papers. That Hoover was at this meeting is also recalled by WMM in WMM to Albert L. Barrows, Executive Secretary of the NRC, July 29, 1935, NRC Papers. Yerkes to Major Nicholas Biddle, December 18, 1917; WMM to Yerkes, December 19, 1917, NRC Papers. WMM to Yerkes, December 19, 1917, NRC Papers.
19. WMM, “Systolic Blood Pressure and Reaction Time Symptoms of Deception and Constituent Mental States,” 134–39; WMM to Yerkes, January 21, 1918, and WMM to Yerkes, February 23, 1918, NRC Papers. The investigation rekindled his avidity for the law. “While engaged in deception testing of criminal and spy cases,” he later wrote, “I became genuinely interested in the law.” WMM, Try Living, 8–9.
20. Yerkes, “Report of the Psychology Committee,” 135; Yerkes to WMM, March 5, 1918, NRC Papers; Yerkes to Dean Roscoe Pond, April 2, 1918, and Pound to Yerkes, April 5, 1918, NRC Papers. Marston was “deficient in one second-year course.”
21. “Passed Bar Examinations,” Cambridge Chronicle, August 3, 1918. EHM, “Tiddly Bits.”
22. “October 22, 1918. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, Sanitary Corps; assigned to Psychological Division and stationed at Fort Oglethorpe, GA; transferred to Camp Upton, NY; to Camp Lee, VA; discharged May 9, 1919,” U.S. Adjutant General Military Records, 1631–1976 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2011). This is at variance with Marston’s account: he says he took a leave of absence from law school in his third year.
23. EHM, “Tiddly Bits.”
24. “Battle for Womanhood,” Wonder Woman #5, June–July 1943.
25. WMM, “Psychological Possibilities in the Deception Tests,” 567.
26. “A sufficient psychological background probably exists to qualify an expert upon deception in court,” he concluded. Ibid., 567–70.
27. Yerkes, “Report of the Psychology Committee,” 135–36.
28. I haven’t been able to locate letters between WMM and JHW from 1919 and 1920, but the later letters make clear that their correspondence began about this time. On March 15, 1921, WMM sent JHW a reprint of the article, “written at your suggestion for the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.” WMM to JHW, March 15, 1921, Wigmore Papers, Northwestern University Archives, box 90, folder 12.
29. WW comic strip, June 10, 1944.
7. MACHINE DETECTS LIARS, TRAPS CROOKS
1. United States of America, Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900), Atlanta Ward 7, Fulton, Georgia; Roll: 200; Page: 11A; Enumeration District: 0083; FHL microfilm: 1240200, as available at Ancestry.com, 1900 United States Federal Census (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2004).
2. “A Glimpse in Advance of a Section of the Suffrage Parade,” Chicago Herald, May 18, 1916. Many thanks to Allison Lange for this clip and other references. And see Allison Lange, “Images of Change: Picturing Women’s Rights from American Independence through the Nineteenth Amendment,” PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2014.
3. EHM to JE, January 11, 1973, in the possession of JE.
4. “Mole Men of the Underworld,” Wonder Woman #4, April–May 1943.
5. Brief sketches of Wilkes’s life can be found in Donald W. Swinton, “Clinton Woman, 92, Believes It’s Never Too Late to Vote,” Clinton Daily Item, undated clipping, 1981 (in the possession of BHRM), and Mary Frain, “93 Years Old; She’s Lived Every Day of Life,” Clinton Daily Item, October 15, 1982, 183. My account of MWH is also much informed by BHRM, interview with the author, July 14, 2013.
6. Sue Grupposo, interview with the author, July 15, 2013.
7. EHM, “Tiddly Bits.”
8. MWH to JE, June 14, 1972, Steinem Papers, Smith College, box 213, folder 5.
9. WMM, Graduate Record Card, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University Archives, HAIH63 UA1161.272.5. EHM, Graduate Record Card, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe.
10. The birth and death dates for Fredericka Marston are given as January 7, 1920, on EHM’s entry for Mount Holyoke College’s One Hundred Year Directory, 1936, Mount Holyoke College Archives.
11. They are on a ship’s passenger list as leaving Hamilton, Bermuda, and arriving in New York on August 9, 1920, Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1820–1897 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M237, 675 rolls); Records of the U.S. Customs Service, Record Group 36; National Archives, Washington, DC, as made available by Ancestry.com, Passenger Lists, 1820–1957 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2010).
12. Evans, Born for Liberty, 187.
13. Quoted in Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 194.
14. EHM, Graduate Record Card, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe. In 1920–21, EHM took two semesters of Psychology 20a and one semester of Psychology 20b. WMM took those same three courses as well (two semesters of Psych 20a and one of 20b), along with another psychology laboratory course.
15. EHM to Jack Liebowitz, January 5, 1948, DC Comics Archives.
16. EHM, “Tiddly Bits.”
17. It is true that Holloway was not proficient in German; she took two semesters of it at Mount Holyoke and earned a D and a D+. EHM, Transcript, Office of the Registrar, Mount Holyoke College.
18. Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women, 127, 131.
19. EHM, autobiographical statement submitted to the Mount Holyoke College Alumni Office, August 18, 1986; EHM, “Tiddly Bits.”
20. EHM, “Tiddly Bits.”
21. “New Mass. Corporations,” Cambridge Chronicle, March 27, 1920. WMM is listed as the incorporator of the Tait-Marston Engineering Company, of Boston, foundry and machine shop. Its offices are given as 60 State Street, Boston, in display advertisement, Tait-Marston Engineering Company, American Machinist, vol. 52 (June 24, 1920), 328. The company was dissolved in 1924, according to Acts and Resolves of the General Court [Massachusetts], 1924.
22. “New Incorporations,” New York Times, March 17, 1920.
23. Forte appears in a photograph in one of the Marston family photo albums, helping Marston do tests on the porch of a house on Lowell Street. On Fischer, see Harvard Alumni Bulletin, vol. 22 (April 29, 1920), 719; Boston Legal Aid Society, The Work of the Boston Legal Aid Society: A Study of the Period Jan. 1, 1921 to June 30, 1922 (Boston, 1922), 28: Marston, Forte & Fischer donated fifty dollars to the society.
24. WMM, Class Note, Harvard College Class of 1915: Decennial Report, 178–79.
25. “Machine Detects Liars, Traps Crooks,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 14, 1921. The publicity material was picked up by trade journals, too: see, e.g., “This Machine Det
ects Liars,” Science and Invention 9 (1921): 618.
26. WMM, Class Note, Harvard College Class of 1915: Decennial Report, 178–79.
8. STUDIES IN TESTIMONY
1. The experiment is recounted in WMM, “Studies in Testimony,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 15 (May 1924): 5–31.
2. American University: Announcement for 1922–1923, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Washington, DC: American University, 1922), 12–13. This course catalog describes courses offered in the academic year 1922–23. WMM, however, had begun teaching at American University during the previous academic year, even though his courses were not then listed in the catalog; he was apparently a late addition to the faculty. In a letter dated March 30, 1922, he describes the experiments as “just concluded” (WMM to JHW, Wigmore Papers, Northwestern University Archives, box 90, folder 12). In academic year 1921–22, the winter term began on January 2, 1922, and ended on March 18, 1922. The spring term began on March 20 and ended on June 3. For the calendar, see American University: Announcement for 1921–1922, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Washington, DC: American University, 1921), 2.