Then again some folk’ll

Macon Daily Telegraph, August 22, 1908. Okay, who took the time to divide the excised phalange into two equal portions for the pups? Pretty sloppy reporting.

Jack the Dude-Kicker

San Francisco Bulletin, June 11, 1891. I appreciate it when some obliging newspaper editor has done all the gleaning and gathering for me. Thank you, nameless long-dead newspaperman.

An Englishman in New York?

The New Haven Register, April 24, 1891. I’d never heard of this murder case before, but it seems to loom pretty large in the wacky but tedious world of amateur Ripperology. The subsequent criminal investigation got oceans of ink in papers across the nation, which just goes to show the power of branding. Because it’s not like prostitute killings were rare at the time. (They never are.)

Magical negroes

Biloxi Herald, October 10, 1891. At last, some hard scientific data on this here blue gum phenomena. Which has to be real, because Yankee newspapers refer to it and most Southerners believe in it.
The persistent association of the BGN with hydrophobia (rabies) is interesting. It’s as if the BNG is a vector for rabies but doesn’t get the disease himself (and BGNs do seem to be exclusively male so far.)

Love bite

Dallas Morning News, March 25, 1891. Such are the perils of miscegenation between the red-gummed and the blue.

Assault with deadly gums

San Francisco Bulletin, March 19, 1890. Woah: murder charges for a septicemia death? (I assume that’s what’s going on here). This blue gum thing was huge from the 90s through the ‘Teens. Earliest reference I’ve found to it was in an 1888 medical journal. White people either write it off as a black superstition or, if they believe, invoke the authority of black folk knowledge. Awful lot of medical men are among the believers too.

Blue gum negroes are the new mince pie

The Daily Boomerang (Laramie, Wyoming), March 19, 1890. Judging from the sources I’m looking at, the deadly bite of the blue gum negro was a leading cause of death in the rural South at the turn of the century. You’d be better off eating mince in the shade of a upas tree than tangling with a BGN.

Chop on pop

Ths Brattleboro, Vermont, Reporter, June 14, 1806. Hoo boy, heref a meffed-up ftory about a terrfically unhappy family. Bafically a confpiracy of children to kill their drunken, violent old man before he killed again. Gotta feel forry for the kidf, though my guess is the teenage murdereff probabaly fwung for thif.

Chop shop

Medical News, March 30, 1895. First, that is one kick-ass opening sentence. Read it over a couple of times, roll it around in your mouth, and try to work it into an office-cooler conversation later in the afternoon. Second, given the dismal nutrition of ordinary poor kids at the time, just imagine the deprivation involved in the creation of these “Lilliputians.” Must have been a real balancing act keeping them alive while stunting them sufficiently to impress.

Yippie Ki-Yay

Springfield Republican , November 17, 1895. Said to labor under the hallucination that he is a vampire?! The first time I read that, I thought, ‘Who the hell has the nerve to question this guy’s monster credentials?’ But it’s true that he lacks the suavity of your classic, card-carrying 19th-century vampire type. Diet and behavior-wise, he could almost be a chupacabra foraging outside of its regular habitat, but those are reputed to be ugly suckers that wouldn’t long pass for human even in South Dakota.