A Story Forms: Point-to-Point or Dot-to-Dot

Being somewhat at loose ends for a post this week, I turned to the Historic Colorado Newspapers online to see what was up with Leadville in February 1880. Here's what the Colorado Miner (Georgetown, Colorado) had for Saturday, February 21, 1880, in a little column titled "Colorado. Points Pertaining to People and Places":

• Leadville reports for one week arrivals by the various stage lines at 832, and the departures at 501.
• D.W. Fuller, a Boston capitalist, fell from a bucket as he was ascending from a mine at Leadville, and was instantly killed.
• The State Bank of Colorado filed articles of incorporation yesterday.  The bank will do a general banking business in Leadville. The capital stock is $100,000 divided 1,000 shares at $100 each.
• At a ball of the Union Veterans Association in Leadville, a vote was taken to decide who was the handsomest lady in the room. The decision was rendered in favor of Mrs. Judge W.R. Kennedy, formerly Miss Lou. De La Mar, of this city.
• A man named W.E. McIvor was found dead in his bed in a cabin near Leadville, with his face badly torn and eaten by mountain rats. It was thought he was from Georgetown, but this is probably a mistake.
• An installment of 32 bunko-steerers, among whom were several noted highwaymen, reached Leadville on Monday last. Another hanging bee would be in order and do good.

Fairest of them all? - At the Ball, by Berthe Morisot

While typing these random bits into the post, I felt a story forming... completely fictional, of course. This is how it unwound in my mind:

 What if the Boston capitalist's fatal plunge down the shaft was not an accident? Maybe he came to Leadville because of the incorporation of the State Bank. Maybe he goes to the Union Veterans ball, and recognizes the judge's wife when she is named "fairest of them all." Maybe there is something dark in her past, something her husband knows nothing about, but the Boston capitalist does. He uses that knowledge for a little leverage. (Question to self: Leverage for what? Something to do with the bank incorporation, perhaps? Or something completely different, perhaps to do with the mine?)

Maybe the judge's wife, who is not the "shrinking violet" she appears to be, hires one of the "noted highwaymen" to neutralize said capitalist, so her secret remains hidden.

But what about McIvor, dead in the cabin? And, is it really McIvor or could it be someone else? In which case, where is McIvor? And are mountain rats really to blame for the lack of an identifiable face on the corpse?

I do believe there's a story here, built out of imaginary connections, from dot-to-dot until the picture is clear. Perhaps morning (and some caffiene!) will provide further insight.

A title would be nice as well!

Taxes and more taxes

Well, it's the time of year when I spend oodles of time sorting little receipt scraps, puzzling over credit card statements, and trying to interpret the chicken scratches from last year's check books. Yes, it's tax time.

But it's not even April! you may protest.

Ah, the tax man calleth and we must goeth, so that we can be prepared to submit final numbers for FAFSA, oh joy.

The tax man cometh.

Income tax of one type or another has been around in the U.S. a looong time, on and off since the Civil War, and becoming a permanent fixture in 1913. I bumped into an article from the Leadville Daily and Evening Chronicle, dated July 17, 1890, with the ominous headline "Has He Called Yet?" The "He" is not the Grim Reaper (although there are overtones of such), but Leadville's brand-new poll tax collector. On June 3, 1890, the Leadville city councile passed an ordinance for levyig and collecting a poll tax. The tax "is assessed against every able bodied citizen of Leadville between the ages of twenty-one and sixty years, and amounts to $2." Leadville planned to use the money collected to improve and repair the streets, bridges, and alleys of the city.

That $2 in 1890 translates to about $50 in today's cold hard cash... not an inconsiderable amount, really.

In 1890, one of these and...

... one of these covered your poll tax.

So, the ordinance has a clause that if a person didn't want to pay up, he (I'm assuming the "citizens" referred only to the male populace of Leadville) had the option of working one day under the supervision of the city. No pay, no work, off to jail you go.

As of the date of the article, no one had been hauled off to the hoosegow, but there were a number of folks looking for loopholes (some things never change!), claiming exemptions on the ground that "they are old firemen, old soldiers or have served in the state militia."

At least we don't have the tax man knocking on our door demanding that we either pay up or pick up a shovel . Although, right now, given the option, I wouldn't mind pulling weeds, picking up trash, or doing some other civic duty if it meant escaping the paper chaos that has invaded my table and taken over my life...

Sleep well... with help

I recently posted at the Poisoned Pen Press blog about headache/migraine cures that were sometimes used "way back when." Someone then commented/asked about "sleep aids" in the 1800s. Well, heck, ask me to investigate something from the past, and...

 Google books makes it easy to dig back into time and uncover such information. Here, for instance, is a bit of advice from DR. CHASE'S FAMILY PHYSICIAN, FARRIER, BEE-KEEPER, AND SECOND RECEIPT BOOK (I have a hardcopy, but image capture is so much easier than all that typing):

Hmm. Being scrubbed vigorously all over doesn't sound very sleep-inducing to me. And what, I wondered, does a flesh brush (circa 1880) look like?

It looks like this:

This, actually, is "Dr. Scott's Electric Flesh Brush," which was widely advertised starting in the early 1880s. According to the website American Artifacts: Scientific Medical & Mechanical Antiques, Dr. Scott (a bit--or perhaps a lot--of a medical quack) embedded slightly magnetized iron rods in his brush handles, claiming that curative powers could be provided by magnetism.

The rest of Dr. Chase's advice sounds like something you'd hear today: Get out and get some exercise during the day to sleep better at night.

I stumbled across another free historical ebook from the past that looks REALLY interesting regarding this subject (although a bit late for me, as it was published in 1891): INSOMNIA AND ITS THERAPEUTICS by Alexander William Macfarlane. The table of contents gives you an idea of the amount of detail you're in for, as it divides the causes (and cures) of insomnia into various categories: insomnia due to nervous system afflictions (overwork, shock, depressing emotions, hysteria, spasmodic neuroses, etc., etc.),  insomnia due to alimentary canal afflictions (gastric dyspepsia, intestinal dyspepsia, constipation, etc., etc.), and insomnia due to afflictions of the respiratory system and urinary system,  was well as (ahem) afflictions peculiar to females.

With Leadville, Colorado, perched at the 10,000-plus-foot mark in the Rocky Mountains, I can well imagine hordes of men and women, paging desperately through pages of books such as these, looking for "causes and cures" of sleeplessness, which might actually be due to altitude sickness.

An ingredient commonly used in tonics or imbibed "straight" to quiet the mind and body for sleep back then would have been in great supply at The Silver Queen Saloon--my ficitional drinking establishment in Leadville:

Alcohol

Sleep well!