Centenaries - whole and half

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1908 August 24 - While walking in an English woods, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Luard part. Caroline is later found shot dead. Charles is excluded as a suspect because he was seen, shortly after the shots were heard, at too great a distance, it is assumed, from the crime scene for him to have traveled. Despite this, he killed himself by stepping in front of a train a few days later. David Woodruff, a local tramp and ex-convict, was arrested in the case but was freed due to scant evidence. Some think the Luard Mystery was the work of John Dickman, a killer who was later hanged for a different slaying. He'd reportedly contacted Mrs. Luard about financial aid at one time. I'm pretty sure that Charles was innocent but I'm one of the few who's not willing to clear him 100%. The murder is unsolved.

[sdreid]

200 years ago - 1808 August 26 - Frau Glaser dies in her Bavarian home from arsenic. Her housekeeper, Anna Zwanziger had poisoned her so she could marry Herr Glaser. The plan didn't work out and Anna moved on to murder others in other households before being caught and beheaded by sworn in 1811.

[Graham]

Hi Stan,

Feast your eyes on this!

August 23, 2008
THE YEAR 1908
This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1908. One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes! Here are some statistics for the USA for the Year 1908 :

The average life expectancy was 47 years. Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub. Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles Of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!

The average wage in 1908 was 22 cents per hour.

The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME .

Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION! Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as 'substandard. '

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound. Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo. Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.

Five leading causes of death were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. The population of Las Vegas , Nevada, was only 30!!!! Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn't been invented yet.

There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day. Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, 'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind,regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.'

Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.

There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A.!

Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.

Cheers,

Graham

[sdreid]

Thanks Graham, those are stark differences. If I remember correctly, morphine was also marketed as a cure for opium addiction and it worked.

Looks like the servant field is the only place where we've lost ground, although in some traffic, I wish I could go 10 miles per hour.

[Simon Owen]

Its the 120 years anniversary for the Ripper murders as well this year , only a week until the 120th anniversary of Polly's death !

I wonder if this year will be an occasion when any missing evidence will turn up ?

[sdreid]

I wonder if this year will be an occasion when any missing evidence will turn up ?

Any idea what that might be?

[Mayerling]

100 years ago

Hi Stan,

1908 is memorable (to me) for the following criminally related events:

1) The odd "death" or disappearance of Belle Gunness as her "murder farm" was discovered.

2) The Luard Mystery

3) The electrocution of Chester Gillette for the "Big Moose Lake" ("American Tragedy") murder (actually in 1906).

4) The assassinations of King Carlos III of Portugal and his son the Crown Prince in Lisbon...a signal for the overthrow of the Braganza Dynasty in 1910 of King Manuoel.

To these you add the Tunguska Explosion.

But there is always another way to consider any year.

In 1908 ex-President Grover Cleveland died. Until March 5, 1909 there were no former living Presidents. Then Theodore Roosevelt became the oldest living former President.

In 1908 British Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell Bannermann had to resign due to ill health, and died shortly afterward. "C-B' managed the greatest victory of the Liberal Party after the 1880 Midlothian Campaign that re-elected Gladstone, when he returned the Liberals to power in 1905. His work set the stage for the reforms of Asquith and Lloyd George in the next decade and a half). Sadly, due to his short term (three years) he is not as well remembered as he deserved to be.

It was also the year that composer Edward MacDonald ("To a Wild Rose")
died. He is best known not for his music (somewhat above respectable) but for creating the music department of Columbia University and for creating the Peterboro Artist Colony in New Hampshire.

In 1908 J. Bruce Ismay and Lord Pirrie's plans for building the three largest and most luxurious ocean liners in the world were under way. Olymipic would come out in 1910. Titanic, of course, in 1912. Gigantic/Britannic in 1914.

1908 was the last complete year in the life of Police Detective Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino (who was to be murdered in Sicily the following year). The "Italian-American Sherlock Holmes" had been destroying the Black Hand and the Mafia in New York City, and was trying to get back to its source in Italy

It was a year that the following doomed figures were still alive: Hawley and Belle Crippen, George Joseph Smith and his victims, Frederick Seddon and his victim, Lord Kitchener, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Countess Sophia of Chotek, Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra (and their children),
Gregori Rasputin, Pyotr Stolypin, John Jacob Astor IV, Major Archibald Butt,
Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Strauss, Benjamin Guggenheim, Francis Millet, Harry Widener, Alfred Vanderbilt, Charles Frohman, Charle Klein, Justin Foreman,
Mr. and Mrs. Elbert Hubbard, Admiral H. L. A. Hood, Francisco Madero, Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Venustiano Carranza, Obregon. There are thousands of others

The following people were alive in 1908 and would be remaking the world in the next century: Marconi, Armstrong, Zworykin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Ford, Henry Royce, Louis Chevrolet, Ransom E. Olds, Edison, Tesla, Thompson, Rudolf Diesel, the Wright Brothers, Alberto Santos-Dumont, Count Zeppelin, Louis Bleriot, Glenn Curtiss, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindberg, Wiley Post, Richard Byrd, Ernest Shackleton, Robert F. Scott, Roald Amundsen, Nansen, Robert Peary, Frederick Cook, Douglas Mawson, Percy Fawcett, Manfred von Richtofen, Roland Garros, Frank Luke, Picasso, Braque, Mattisse, Renoir (father and son), Monet, Satie, Debussy, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Puccini, Richard Straus, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, Richard Rodgers and both Larry Hart and Oscar Hammerstein, P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, Eugene O'Neill, Pirandello, Shaw, Strindberg (who'd die in 1912), Twain (who would die in 1910), Kipling, Conan Doyle, Chesterton (for better or worse), Wharton, James (both Henry and William), Henry Adams, and many others. Also these performers: Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Pickford, Fairbanks, Bow, Hart, Gibson, Chaney Sr., the three
Barrymores (Ethel, Lionel, John), Valentino, Laurel & Hardy, George M. Cohan,
Will Rogers, Fanny Brice, W.C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson.

These political figures are thriving: Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, L. B. Johnson, Al Smith, Charles Evans Hughes, William Jennings Bryan, Wendell Wilkie, Herbert Asquith, Lloyd George, Bonar Law, Stanley Baldwin, J. Ramsey MacDonald, Nevil and Austen Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Clement Atlee, Anthony Eden, Harold MacMillan, Lord Home, Georges Clemenceau, Joseph Caillaux, Aristide Briand, Louis Barthou, Raymond Poincare, Kaiser Wilhelm, Chancellor Von Bulow, Bethman - Holweg, Alfred Zimmerman, Erich Ludendorff, Paul Von Hindenburg, Benito Musollini, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Herman Goering, Heinrich Himmler, Nicolas Lenin,
Joseph Stalin, Leo Trotsky.

The fact is people tend to forget that people not necessarily in the center of things can still be in a position to exist at that time...and be affected by the events and thoughts of the day.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Hi Jeff,

Yes, the oldest people on Earth now were born 15 or so years before 1908 and the oldest person on Earth in 1908 was probably born around 1798.

[Dan Norder]

Its the 120 years anniversary for the Ripper murders as well this year , only a week until the 120th anniversary of Polly's death !

I wonder if this year will be an occasion when any missing evidence will turn up ?

There's been a lot of interesting discoveries this year. A couple of them have already been publicized, and we have some pretty good ones ready and waiting for the Jack the Ripper conference in October.

[sdreid]

I just looked it up on a time period web site and, no kidding, a 120 year anniversary is called a Centivigintennial so be sure and add that to your spell-check.

[sdreid]

300 years ago - 1708 August 29 - A combined French Canadian and Native American detachment attacked and killed 16 settlers at Haverhill, Massachusetts.

[sdreid]

1750 years ago - 258 September 14 - Thascius Caecillius Cyprianus, the Bishop of Carthage, is slain by the Romans. He was later sainted.

[dougie]

4th september 1808
Part of the days entry in Wayne austens diary .
Dear Diary,
"Did you enjoy my sausage,Mr Austen?" Ned asked,this morning.
"I confess Ned I found it quite succulent and was impressed by its presentation" I replied,generously.He grinned proudly and removed my plate.I followed him into the scullery and there beheld such disorder that I almost squealed in shock.
.....a few more sentences are then followed by this somewhat enigmatic remark...
"come willy" I laughed "I shall show you my Knob before dinner"


Ill leave others to make of that sentence what they will,....sounds a bit sinister to me and might put the first sentences into perspective?
regards

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1958 October 24 - Bart Caritativo is executed in San Quentin. The houseboy killed two neighbors named Camille and Joseph Banks, a divorced pair who were still cohabiting. He left a fake will and suicide note at the scene which only inculpated him.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1908 November 27 - Clara Howell is beaten to death in Leeds by her drunken common-law husband, Thomas Meade. The killer claimed that the death was an accident since he only intended to give her a "hiding". He was convicted of murder and, after an unsuccessful appeal, he was hanged the following March.