The Morthouse

obitoftheday: Obit of the Day: He Brought the Dead...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 19:15:26 -0500

Obit of the Day: He Brought the Dead to LIFE

A.B.C. “Cal” Whipple was a Pentagon correspondent forLIFE magazine during World War II. In February 1943, a photo was submitted by George Stock that showed the bodies of three American servicemen littering Buna Beach on New Guinea. They were shot during a Japanese ambush of the beach.

Mr. Whipple recognized the power of the photograph and pushed his editors to print the photo. At the time, and dating back to World War I, the U.S. had strict censorship of images showing dead servicemen.

It took seven months of discussions with President Roosevelt’s administration but it was published in September 1943. President Roosevelt finally decided to allow the publication of the photo because he felt Americans were becoming complacent about the loss of life among U.S. soldiers.

Cal Whipple, who became an editor for Time-Life Books, died at the age of 94 on March 17, 2013.

Sources: Greenwichtime.com and LIFE Photos

(Image is copyright George Strock/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images via the LIFE Photos.)

Kids know so much more than we give them credit for, and they...

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 19:37:00 -0600

Kids know so much more than we give them credit for, and they can internalize news events far more deeply than they let on.

Case in point: Shortly before my first day of kindergarten (at a school a few miles away from Sandy Hook Elementary, although that doesn’t really matter), there was a story in the news about a bus full of schoolchildren that overturned. Because of this, I white-knuckled pretty much every bus ride of my childhood, convinced that we were going to take a sharp turn and tip over and die. And I apparently never told anyone about this. (When I mentioned this to my always-rememberful mother this morning, she had no idea.)

Video: “Talk to Your Children About Death!” by Caitlin Doughty (the mortician of the “Ask a Mortician” web series).

Since exhumations are all the rage right now, I thought...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 12:16:00 -0600

Since exhumations are all the rage right now, I thought I’d share my favorite: Elizabeth Siddal, artist and model to the Pre-Raphaelites.

Siddal died of a laudanum overdose at the age of 32 in 1862 in London. Her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, left a journal containing the only copies of many of his poems in her coffin, tucking it away in her famous red hair.

Rossetti, drug- and alcohol-addled by the end of the 1860s, became obsessed with retrieving those poems so that he could publish them. Or, it seems, Rossetti’s agent, the slightly (or totally) shady Charles Augustus Howell, became obsessed with this. In any case, Howell exhumed her coffin in the middle of the night at Highgate Cemetery.

Howell reported back to Rossetti that she was remarkably well preserved and still beautiful. Whether this was actually true or not, the manuscript didn’t make it out so well preserved. A worm had burrowed through the entire book, leaving behind a big old wormhole.

More here and here.

Image: Siddal as “Ophelia,” by John Everett Millais, 1852, via Wikipedia/Google Art Project.

None can narrate that strife in the pines,A seal is on it...

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 20:27:00 -0600

None can narrate that strife in the pines,
A seal is on it — Sabaean lore!
Obscure as the wood, the entangled rhyme
But hints at the maze of war —
Vivid glimpses or livid through peopled gloom,
And fires which creep and char —
A riddle of death, of which the slain
Sole solvers are.

—Herman Melville, “The Armies of the Wilderness”

Image: Skulls remaining on the field and trees destroyed at the Battle of the Wilderness, 1864, Virginia. Source: Wikipedia.

This must be the cover of some punk or hardcore 7”,...

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 07:36:44 -0500

This must be the cover of some punk or hardcore 7”, somewhere.

Cover of LIFE magazine, October 31, 1960. Photo by George Silk. Source: LIFE Photo Archive, hosted by Google.

Illustration by Angelo Jank in the German art magazine Jugend,...

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 15:05:00 -0500

Illustration by Angelo Jank in the German art magazine Jugend, No. 13, 1897: “Der Tod im Baum.”

Smithsonian.com: The Great New England Vampire Panic

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 06:43:00 -0500

Smithsonian.com: The Great New England Vampire Panic:

Exhumations! Shenanigans! Connecticut! Read all about it:

Children playing near a hillside gravel mine found the first graves. One ran home to tell his mother, who was skeptical at first—until the boy produced a skull.

Because this was Griswold, Connecticut, in 1990, police initially thought the burials might be the work of a local serial killer named Michael Ross, and they taped off the area as a crime scene. But the brown, decaying bones turned out to be more than a century old. The Connecticut state archaeologist, Nick Bellantoni, soon determined that the hillside contained a colonial-era farm cemetery. New England is full of such unmarked family plots, and the 29 burials were typical of the 1700s and early 1800s: The dead, many of them children, were laid to rest in thrifty Yankee style, in simple wood coffins, without jewelry or even much clothing, their arms resting by their sides or crossed over their chests.

Except, that is, for Burial Number 4.

In case you needed a reason to have a good cry today. Via The...

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 19:02:53 -0500

In case you needed a reason to have a good cry today.

Via The Order of the Good Death.

oldrussia: The bride bed with Death. By Viktor Korolkov.

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 09:07:59 -0500

oldrussia:

The bride bed with Death.

By Viktor Korolkov.

obitoftheday: Obit of the Day (Historical): The Battle of...

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 08:25:27 -0500

"Confederate dead by a fence on the Hagerstown road"

Bloody Lane

"A lone grave on the Battle-field of Antietam"

"Confederate soldier who after being wounded had evidently dragged himself to a little ravine on the hillside where he died."

Untitled

obitoftheday:

Obit of the Day (Historical): The Battle of Antietam (1862)

September 17, 1862 marks the 150th anniversary of not only the deadliest day of the U.S. Civil War but also in the entire military history of the United States. By the end of that late summer day, 3,654 Federal and Confederate soldiers lay dead on the Maryland battlefield. All told there were 23,000 casualties combined for North and South.

The leaders of the opposing forces were General George McClellan (U.S.A.) with his Army of the Potomac and General Robert E. Lee (C.S.A.) bringing with him the Army of Virginia. The battle began at 5:30 a.m. on the 17th and lasted 12 hours. From the start, the advantage was McClellan’s. Not only did his forces far outnumber Lee’s, 75,000 to 55,000, but McClellan had forewarning of Lee’s strategy when a corporal and sergeant discovered a copy of the Confederate battle plans, known as Special Order 191, wrapped around three cigars. But McClellan took advantage of neither, waiting 18 hours after finding the orders to attack Lee and leaving 25,000 troops completely inactive during the battle.

For all the loss of life the battle is deemed by historians as a “draw.” However since Lee was the one who fled the battlefield President Lincoln determined it to be a strategic, if tenuous, victory. (He did however fault McClellan for his complete lack of leadership and failure to press the Confederates after the battle. Eventually McClellan would be removed from command, and the general would actually run against Lincoln for president in 1864.)

The “victory” mattered for Lincoln because it gave him an opportunity to announce the Emancipation Proclamation, the document that would free the slaves - in Confederate territory. (Lincoln would not free the slaves in the U.S. for fear of alienating the border states, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky, who allowed slavery.) Had Lincoln issued the Proclamation after a Federal loss, it would have appeared to be a move of desperation. The Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863.

Sources: www.civilwar.org, www.thehistoricalarchive.com, wikipedia.org, and my history geek brain

(All images are photographs of Antietam taken by Alexander Gardner, a Scottish photographer, who took 70 photos of the battlefield and its dead.

Top left: loc.gov - “Confederate dead by a fence on the Hagerstown road”, September 1862. Facsimile. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (145) Digital ID # cwpb-01097

Top right: npr.org - “Bloody Lane”

Center: npr.org - “A lone grave on the Battle-field of Antietam”

Bottom left: shorpy.com - “Confederate soldier who after being wounded had evidently dragged himself to a little ravine on the hillside where he died.”

Bottom right: nationalparkstraveler.com - Untitled)

vintagegal: Vampira, 1954

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:54:54 -0500

vintagegal:

Vampira, 1954

Lydia Dwight Dead; made by John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery;...

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 08:54:27 -0500

Lydia Dwight Dead; made by John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery; England; 1674. Source: V&A Museum.

One of the earliest experiments in European ceramic sculpture, this object was commissioned by the father of the dead child in order to capture her likeness and perpetuate her memory. It was a personal and private sculpture, reflecting the grief of the little girl’s family, and perhaps not intended for open display in the house. […]

Lydia Dwight was six years old when she died on 3 March 1674 (1673 by the Old Calendar). The fact that the next daughter was also christened Lydia does not suggest lack of grief on the part of the parents, but was usual practice in an age noted for its high infant mortality.

Photograph by Charles Van Schaick, undated. Black River Falls,...

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 08:00:18 -0500

Photograph by Charles Van Schaick, undated. Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Source: Wisconsin Historical Society.

European American man layed out on a lounging sofa, dressed in a suit. Probably a corpse lying in state.

ellamorte: In Colon Cemetery in Havana, Cuba is the site of the...

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 07:51:05 -0500

ellamorte:

In Colon Cemetery in Havana, Cuba is the site of the celebrated ‘boneyard’. A single grave in the cemetery cost $10 in rent for five years. At the end of the five years, if the remains were not claimed, the bones were thrown into the boneyard, (sometimes known as ‘bone pile’) by the cemetery authorities.

Wish I knew the backstory here. Shanghai Corpse Backlog,...

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 07:39:13 -0500

Wish I knew the backstory here.

Shanghai Corpse Backlog, December 1946. Photograph by John Florea for LIFE. Source: LIFE Photo Archive, hosted by Google.

First World War-era cartoon by Dutch cartoonist Louis...

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 10:53:19 -0500

First World War-era cartoon by Dutch cartoonist Louis Raemaekers.

day-without-sun:

To Your Health, Civilization.

hominisaevum: 16/17th Century skull with Sator Square The Sator...

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 12:57:27 -0500

hominisaevum:

16/17th Century skull with Sator Square

The Sator Square is a word square containing a Latin palindrome featuring the words SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS written in a square so that they may be read top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top, left-to-right, and right-to-left.

One likely translation is “The farmer Arepo has [as] works wheels [a plough]”; that is, the farmer uses his plough as his form of work. Although not a significant sentence, it is grammatical; it can be read up and down, backwards and forwards.

If “arepo” is taken to be in the second declension, the “-o” ending could put the word in the ablative case, giving it a meaning of “by means of [arepus].” Thus, “The sower holds the works and wheels by means of water”

The Sator Square is a four-times palindrome, and some people have attributed magical properties to it, considering it one of the broadest magical formulas in the Occident. An article on the square from The Saint Louis Medical and Surgical Journal vol. 76, reports that palindromes were viewed as being immune to tampering by the devil, who would become confused by the repetition of the letters, and hence their popularity in magical use.

source: The Macabre And the Beautifully Grotesque

Too bad my birthday was last week. Next year,...

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 14:37:06 -0500

Too bad my birthday was last week. Next year, right?

wnycradiolab:

Have you always wanted to sit inside a skull? Well, uh, here you go, weirdo.

nevver: J’accuse!

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 20:18:27 -0500

nevver:

J’accuse!

Here’s one of my favorite segments from the 1990...

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 11:24:00 -0500

Here’s one of my favorite segments from the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, which was filmed between the mid- and late 1980s in New York City.

After I saw it for the first time a couple of months ago (I’m not sure what took me so long), I started Googling the people featured in the film, only to find that many of the most memorable characters are dead. For instance, Venus Xtravaganza (“What is wrong with you, Pedro? Are you going through it?”) was found strangled under a bed in a hotel room in 1988.

Dorian Corey’s story is much, much stranger, though better documented. She’s the red-haired old-timer dropping knowledge in this clip. After her death in 1993, a half-mummified body—wrapped in Naugahyde, shot in the head, and believed to have been dead since the late 1960s or early 1970s—was found in a closet in her cluttered Harlem apartment. In 1994, New York Magazine published an article about it: “The Drag Queen Had a Mummy in Her Closet.”

I won’t spoil the story (go read the article), but here’s some wisdom from Raul Figueroa, a detective in the New York City medical examiner’s office:

People just wrap a body in whatever’s available. It’s just spontaneous. You wrap it up. Then you put it in a suitcase. Then you put it in the closet. Then you just look at it periodically and wish it would go away.