Category Archives: 20th century

1930: ‘Snakes on a bi-plane’: rattler attacks at 4,500 feet

In August 1930, several US newspapers reported a real life case of ‘snakes on a plane’. Henry ‘Happy’ Wiggins, a Kansas salesman and amateur pilot, was flying his biplane at 4,500 feet when a rattlesnake appeared in the cockpit. The terrified pilot grabbed the serpent and pitched it out of the plane – but not before being bitten on the hand and the arm:

“I jumped back,” said Wiggins, still violently ill from the effects of the snake’s poison, “but the snake jumped after me. I tried to grasp it and pitch it from the plane but it coiled and struck me twice before I finally was able to fling it away.”

While Wiggins was engaged in his unique battle with the rattler, the ship hurtled down, out of control. Wiggins [eventually] righted the ship and landed so hastily in a pasture that he almost wrecked the plane.

Farmers took the hapless Wiggins to hospital, where he received treatment and was expected to make a full recovery. It was not established whether the snake had found its own way into the cockpit or been placed there deliberately. It is also unclear if Wiggins quoted Samuel L. Jackson (link NSFW).

Source: Gettysburg Times, August 27th 1930 and others. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1905: Ohio woman asks governor if she may wear trousers

In May 1905, an unnamed woman from southern Ohio wrote to the state’s governor, Myron T. Herrick, requesting “permission to wear trousers”. The woman was single and lived alone so had no father or husband she could ask:

“As reason for the request, she says she is forced to work out of doors in the management of a farm and male attire would be much more convenient for her than petticoats.

Press reports suggest that the governor replied, telling the woman that he could not grant permission for her to wear trousers – but he intended to consult the attorney general with a view to forming “an amendment to the laws to suit such a case”.

Source: The Washington Times, May 7th 1905. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1915: Housewives should be too busy for suicide, says judge

In 1915, a Philadelphia woman appeared in court charged with attempting suicide. The judge discharged Margaret Reeves without penalty – but not before giving her a stern talking to:

“A woman with a husband, a family and a home should be too busy to think about suicide,” was the gist of the lecture that Magistrate Harris gave to Mrs Reeves, of 87th Street and Laycock Avenue. Early in the week she attempted to end her life. She is the fifth wife of James Reeves, 65 years old, a mail clerk on the Pennsylvania Railroad.”

Source: The Washington Herald, August 9th 1915. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1939: Wife-slapping legal if you don’t kill her, says judge

The issue of whether or not husbands had the right to slap, spank or beat their wives befuddled American judges for much of the early 20th century. A sizeable majority of judges were opposed to domestic violence and dealt with it sternly. There are even two recorded cases of judges leaping the bench and assaulting wife-beaters themselves.

But there were also some notable dissenters. In 1939, a Chicago woman named Mary Kuhar petitioned for divorce from her husband John, a dance band drummer, on the grounds that he often slapped her. But unfortunately, she struck an unsympathetic judge, Philip J. Finnegan of the Circuit Court:

“Judge Finnegan… said it [wife-slapping] wasn’t just legal but also more or less a husband’s marital duty…

‘Under the law’, said Judge Finnegan, ‘cruelty must consist of violence great enough to endanger life. A slap does not endanger life. A man may slap his wife as hard as he wants to, if he doesn’t kill her. If more wives were slapped there would be fewer divorces.’

The judge threw out Mrs Kuhar’s claim, with a warning that “better evidence of cruelty must be presented” for him to grant divorces in the future.

Source: The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg), February 1st 1939. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1909: Doc’s asthma cure: tobacco, coffee, booze and cocaine

In 1909, Dr William Lloyd published a brief essay on asthma in the British Medical Journal. According to Dr Lloyd, asthma was “essentially a nervous disease” caused by nasal irritation and involuntary spasms of the bronchial muscles.

Contrary to popular opinion, he wrote, asthma could be easily treated. An attack could be subdued with a dose of ipecacuanha powder, a plant extract that causes vomiting. Some of Dr Lloyd’s other suggested treatments were less creative:

“The use of pipe tobacco smoking acts admirably in some patients… One of the commonest and most effective remedies is coffee. It acts better if given very hot and strong and without sugar and milk. Alcohol, chloroform and cocaine are remedies of value [for] checking an attack, however severe.”

Dr Lloyd continued to write on asthma, hay fever and other respiratory conditions until the 1930s. In 1925 his practice was flooded with patients after the Daily Mail claimed that Dr Lloyd had discovered a permanent cure for hay fever. The British Medical Association deemed this to be advertising, a practice against its charter, so Lloyd’s name was temporarily removed from the register. His hay fever ‘cure’ was also discredited.

Source: Dr William Lloyd, “Asthma: Its causation and treatment” in British Medical Journal, vol.1, January 16th 1909. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1911: Man has wife, 15, locked up – for acting like a child

In 1911, Charles H. Daly petitioned a Washington DC court, seeking to have his wife Edith institutionalised. According to Daly he married Edith in Rockville, Maryland about two years before. Since then she had conducted herself very poorly, “making faces” and being “impudent to her elders”. Attempts to restrain and discipline her had failed.

In short, Edith was behaving like a child – not unsurprisingly, since she was 15 years old:

“He has been unable to control his wife. So he haled her, gold wedding ring, marriage vows and all, before Judge De Lacy… a few days ago, and charged her with being incorrigible.”

The judge approved Charles Daly’s request and sent Edith to the House of the Good Shepherd, a reformatory for girls and young women in Burleith.

Source: Washington Times, January 19th 1911. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1909: Tony Blair shot dead in the henhouse

From Nolan, West Virginia comes the sad story of Tony Blair, who in 1909 tried scaring his little sister – with fatal results:

Source: The Planet (Richmond, Virginia) February 20th 1909. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1929: Patient expels live centipede from nose

In 1929, an Eastbourne doctor, J. Gordon Wilson, reported treating a patient who for more than two years had:

“…suffered from difficulty in nasal breathing, deafness, slight vertigo, and headache. For the past few weeks, however, one nostril seemed to be definitely obstructed, and tightness and irritation in his nose caused insomnia and sneezing. Involuntary nasal whistling occurred, from which he sought relief by breathing through the mouth.

The patient endured these symptoms for two years, until the problem resolved itself:

“One morning, when he was trying to clear his nose, a large and very active centipede was ejected through one of the nares [nostrils]. With some difficulty he captured the centipede alive and brought it to me in a box. Since that morning his nose has felt altogether more comfortable; the difficulty in nasal breathing and the local irritation have practically ceased… The patient does no gardening and has no recollection of smelling flowers at any time in the past two months.”

An image of the centipede, submitted with the doctor’s report, suggests it was around three inches long. An examination of sneezed-out arthropod and its former home appeared to verify the patient’s story. Dr Wilson found the inside of the patient’s nose to be distended and slightly inflamed, but otherwise undamaged.

Source: British Medical Journal, vol.1, no.3557, March 9th 1929. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1989: Man escapes electric chair, dies on electric toilet

In 1980, a 21-year-old South Carolina man, Michael Anderson Sloan, was charged with the murder of Mary Elizabeth Royem, 24. Miss Royem’s body was found in her West Columbia apartment. She had been sexually assaulted and beaten to death with an electric iron. Sloan, who also used the name Michael Anderson Godwin, was on work release from prison (for robbing a woman at knifepoint in 1977).

Sloan went on trial in 1981, was convicted of murder and sexual assault and sentenced to die in South Carolina’s electric chair. Sloan’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1983 after a retrial cleared him of the sexual assault. But as fate would have it, Sloan was still destined to die on an electric chair, albeit a different one:

“Convicted murderer Michael Anderson Godwin… has died after electrocuting himself, authorities said. Godwin was seated on a metal toilet and was apparently trying to repair earphones to a television set, when he bit into the electrical cord, said State Corrections spokesman Francis Archibald.

‘It was a strange accident’, Archibald said. ‘He was sitting naked on a metal commode’… Richland County Coroner Frank Barron said Godwin was severely burned in his mouth and tongue. Barron said that an investigation is continuing but that it appears the electrocution was an accident.”

According to press reports, Sloan was a model prisoner who spent his final six years obtaining two college degrees in education. He had dreams of being released on parole and working with young people.

Source: Spartanburg Herald-Journal, March 7th 1989. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1912: Washington woman has live frog in gullet for 11 months

In July 1912, US newspapers reported that a live frog had inhabited a Washington woman’s gullet for almost a year. According to the patient, Mrs V. L. King, the frog had been resident in her throat, oesophagus and upper stomach for around 11 months. She claimed to have swallowed a tadpole in drinking water back in August 1911 and in the ensuing months, it grew into a frog. By May 1912, Mrs King’s family members could hear the frog croaking in her chest.

After weeks of poor health and weight loss, Mrs King consulted surgeons, who dealt with the frog accordingly:

Strangely enough, claims of frogs taking up residence in early 20th century stomachs were not uncommon. In July 1906, Fred Hamm of Lakeview, Iowa vomited up an inch-long frog that had given him internal grief for more than a week. The following month, a Kansas farmer, Roy L. Steward, told reporters he had been harbouring a small frog in his oesophagus for several years.

Despite other reports of body-invading frogs in 1909 and 1911, there is no medical evidence or expert opinion that supports the notion of frogs growing to maturity inside the human body.

Source: The Citizen (Pennsylvania, July 31st 1912; The Spokane Press, August 7th 1906; The Brownsville Daily Herald, July 12th 1906. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.