Category Archives: Animals

1848: Abraham Lincoln represents accused pig fornicator

In 1848 William Torrance of Illinois, represented by future US president Abraham Lincoln, filed a defamation suit against Newton Galloway. According to Lincoln’s submission, Galloway had uttered “false, scandalous, malicious and defamatory words” to Aaron Vandeveer and “diverse good and worthy citizens”. Among Galloway’s remarks were claims that Torrance had:

“…caught my old sow and f–ked her as long as he could…”

And:

“…knocked up my old sow and it is now bellying down [heavily pregnant] and will soon have some young bills.”

Torrance and Lincoln demanded $1,000 in damages, however, the case was thrown out and Torrance was ordered to pay costs.

Source: Torrance v. Galloway, 1848, Abraham Lincoln Legal Papers. 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.

1774: Boston Tea Party spoils the taste of fish

In May 1774, a Virginian newspaper suggested the quality of fish caught in Massachusetts waters had deteriorated, possibly because of the Boston Tea Party five months earlier:

“Letters from Boston complain much of the taste of their fish being altered. Four or five hundred chests of tea may have so contaminated the water in the Harbour that the fish may have contracted a disorder, not unlike the nervous complaints of the human Body. Should this complaint extend itself as far as the banks of Newfoundland, our Spanish and Portugal fish trade may be much affected by it.”

Source: The Virginia Gazette, May 5th 1774. 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.

1777: Earl meets watery end in well; dog survives

Simon Harcourt was raised to the peerage in 1749 after his military service to George II. Thereafter the 1st Earl Harcourt, he served as an advisor to the future George III and an ambassador on the European continent, including four years in Paris.

Harcourt met a watery end in September 1777, aged 63. While walking on his estate in Oxfordshire, the earl apparently fell head-first into a well while trying to rescue his dog:

“The body of Earl Harcourt was found dead in a narrow well in his park, with the head downwards and nothing appearing above water but the feet and legs. It is imagined this melancholy accident was occasioned by his overreaching himself in endeavouring to save the life of a favourite dog, which was found in the well with him, standing on his lordship’s feet.”

Source: Pennsylvania Evening Post, December 30th 1777. 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.

1683: Charlestown pastor sacked for baptising a bear

Atkinson Williamson was parson of St Philip’s, an Episcopal church in Charlestown, South Carolina, in the late 1600s. Several private letters from the early 1700s make mention of the fact that Williamson, sometimes referred to as “Williams”, was an alcoholic. Some report that he was removed from his position after an unseemly incident.

In one exchange of letters, South Carolinian gentlemen Thomas Smith recalls this as Williamson turning up to church drunk and being convinced to baptise a young bear:

“[He] was too great a lover of strong liquor, etc… Some wicked people… made him first fuddled and then got him to christen the bear.”

The incident was also mentioned by James Moore, the British governor of South Carolina between 1700 and 1703. After Williamson’s removal he remained in Charlestown and continued as a clerk of the church.

Source: Various, inc. letter from Thomas Smith to Robert Stevens, January 16th 1707. 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.

1895: Ladies, beware the intrusive axolotl

John G. Bourke was an American ethnologist who researched medical treatments and folklore among indigenous groups in what is now southern Texas and northern Mexico. Many of these ‘cures’ were reported to him by Maria Antonia Cavazo de Garza, a Mexican ‘wise woman’ in her early 70s. Bourke summarised some of these cures in an article written in 1895:

For dealing with epilepsy in children:

“Take a newly born pig and rub the naked child with this live piglet, from head to foot. The baby will break out in a copious perspiration and the pig will die.”

For the curing of asthma:

“Bake a tlalcoyote [American badger], bake it in the oven until dry, grind it up, mix with clean flour, add a stew made of Rio Grande jackdaw [a native crow], add a trifle of sugar. Put in the patient’s food and give in the first quarter of the moon… when the moon ends, the disease will end.”

And to assist with consumption, or tuberculosis:

“Take a black cat, kill it and extract all the bones. Rub the consumptive [patient] with the flesh from head to foot, and let him drink the cat’s blood mixed with warm water.”

Maria Antonia also told Bourke that women should be wary of the axolotl [Mexican walking fish]. This diminutive creature, she said, lived in the rivers and backwaters of the region, but was known to:

“..enter the person of the woman at certain times and will remain just as long as would a human foetus.”

One inside, the axolotl makes itself at home – while the unsuspecting female develops all the symptoms of pregnancy. Young girls going through puberty were particularly susceptible to this intrusion, so were warned to take care when swimming in ponds or rivers. The axolotl could apparently be forced out by drinking hot goat’s milk.

Source: John G. Bourke, “The medical superstitions of the Rio Grande”, 1895. 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.

1686: Unnatural sex position leads to unnatural birth

Cornelis Stalpart van der Wiel (1620–1702) was an esteemed Dutch surgeon. He had a busy practice in The Hague that received well to do patients from all over the Low Countries. Stalpart was also a prolific writer, recording new illness, injuries and physical anomalies. His brother was also a physician.

Writing in 1686, Slapart describes the curious case of Elisabeth Tomboy, one of his brother’s patients. Tomboy was a Dutch housewife who in January 1678 gave birth to a normal and quite healthy baby daughter. However on September 27th 1677, 14 weeks beforehand, Tomboy had gone into premature labour. Attended by Dr Stalpart Jnr and a midwife, Mrs Tomboy gave birth to a stillborn puppy:

“..being a bitch, about a finger long and having all its limbs.”

Bestiality was the usual explanation for deformed births of this kind, however Stalpart, drawing on the investigations of his brother, offered an alternative explanation. He penned this part in Latin, to keep it from “common readers” and to spare Mrs Tomboy further embarrassment:

“Her husband was a coarse, crude drunk, shameless and utterly inhuman… from time to time he took her from behind, threatening her with clubs and iron pipe so that she would have to comply…”

Elisabeth Tomboy, Stalpart said, became so convinced that she would conceive a dog that she did. This story was repeated (though never corroborated) by other early modern medical writers, as evidence of maternal impression.

Source: C. Stalpart van der Wiel, Hondert zeldzame aanmerhngen, zoo in de genees-als heelkunst, 1686. 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.

1902: Zuni clowns drink urine, tear apart live animals

The Zuni are a Native American tribe whose ancestors lived along the Zuni River in what is now New Mexico. Like other American tribal groups, the Zuni had a rich cultural heritage, particularly in the production of arts and crafts.

They were also known for their lively communal events which included games, rodeos and entertainment by a group of clowns called the Koyemshi. Performances by the Koyemshi began with jokes and slapstick, much as one might expect from Western circus clowns. But Koyemshi clowns didn’t stop there, as government researchers reported in 1902:

“Each [Koyemshi clown] endeavours to excel his fellows in buffoonery and in eating repulsive things, such as bits of old blanket or splinters of wood. They bite off the heads of living mice and chew them, tear dogs limb from limb, eat the intestines and fight over the liver like hungry wolves… The one who swallows the largest amount of filth with the greatest gusto is most commended by the fraternity and onlookers. A large bowl of urine is handed to a Koyemshi, who … after drinking a portion, pours the remainder over himself by turning the bowl over his head.”

Today there are approximately 10,000 descendants of the Zuni (but no active Koyemshi) living in the United States.

Source: Bureau of American Ethnology, 23rd Annual Report, 1901-1902. 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.

c.79AD: Menstrual blood doubles as handy pesticide

Pliny the Elder, writing in the 1st century AD, lists the manifold dangers of menstrual blood – which can spoil meat, sour wine, dull sharp knives and send tame dogs mad. He also warns that men will die if they copulate with a menstruating woman during an eclipse:

“If the menstrual discharge coincides with an eclipse of the moon or sun, the evils resulting from it are irremediable… the congress with a woman [is] noxious [and will have] fatal effects for the man.”

Pliny does suggest harnessing menstruation for practical ends, such as eradicating pests from food crops:

“If a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating and walks round a field, the caterpillars, worms, beetles and other vermin will fall from off the ears of corn… This discovery was first made in Cappadocia [where] it is the practice for women to walk through the middle of the fields with their garments tucked above the thighs.”

Source: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, c.79AD. 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.

1641: One-eyed man hanged for fathering deformed piglet

In 1641, the people of New Haven, Connecticut, heard news that a monstrous piglet with human-like features had been delivered by a sow owned by Mrs Wakeman. Shocked local elders, convinced that the stillborn piglet had been conceived through an act of bestiality, asked locals to view it:

“The monster was come to the full growth as other pigs, but brought forth dead. It had no hair on the whole body, the skin was very tender and of a white colour, like a child’s; the head was most strange, it had one eye, in the bottom of the forehead, which was like a child’s… a thing of flesh grew forth and hung down, it was hollow and like a man’s instrument of generation. A nose, mouth and chin deformed but no much unlike a child’s, the neck and ears also had such a resemblance…”

Several were of the view that George Spencer, a local man with one glass eye, was responsible for the deformed piglet:

“A strange impression was also upon many that saw the monster (guided by the near resemblance of the eye) that one George Spencer… had been an actor in unnatural and abominable filthiness with the sow.”

New Haven leaders ordered the arrest of Spencer, who was often in trouble and was probably simple-minded. At first, he admitted to “forcing himself” on the sow, though this confession was later retracted.

Spencer was put on trial for living a life of “profane, atheistical carriage”. Witnesses testified that Spencer was deceitful, had bad manners, sometimes mocked religious holy days and often failed to pray. He was found guilty of bestiality with the pig, despite a lack of witnesses, and hanged in April 1642.

Source: Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven, 1641. 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.

1451: Squatting Swiss leeches banished, exorcised

In 1451, a landowner in Switzerland noticed that one of his ponds was choked with leeches, so great in number that they threatened his fish stocks. On the advice of his local clergyman, the landowner contacted the Bishop of Lausanne, Georges de Saluces.

Saluces immediately convened a hearing and ordered several of the leeches to be brought into Lausanne, to stand as representatives for the others and to receive his ruling. The outcome of the proceedings is recorded in Saluces’ memoirs and by other chroniclers, who report that the leeches were ordered:

“..to leave the district within three days. The leeches, however, proving contumacious [wilfully disobedient] and refusing to quit the country, were solemnly exorcised.”

Saluces’ decision to exorcise the leeches, while unorthodox and lacking any kind of precedent, was heartily endorsed by academics in Heidelberg. It also seemed to work:

“Immediately after its delivery the leeches began to die off, day by day, until they were utterly exterminated.”

Source: Cited in Georges de Saluces, eveque de Lausanne, 1844; and Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1862. 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.