I was going to say that you can't make this stuff up, but you CAN... only it would be very, very hard to get it this good. Also faking old newsprint this well might be time-consuming ;)

Yay for seriously weird local history.

the cries of roving bands of Canadian Lumberjacks

I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay.

(he's a lumberjack and he's OK)

Canadian Lumberjacks tried to kidnap the thaw? I mean, I know it comes to Canada a little later than to New Hampshire, but...

What? Oh.

Never mind.

On Wednesdays I go shoppin'
And have buttered scones for tea.

Every single thing about the whole affair was about as bizarre as could be. A giant TNH-post about the Thaw-Stanford-Nesbit-Velvet Swing events would be a perfect window to New York, 100 years ago.

The tale of Harry Thaw, Stanford White, and The Girl on the Velvet Swing has been written up in detail, available new or used from Amazon, Alibris, Abebooks, and (I expect) your local Barnes & Noble.

Now, what I find remarkable is the number of desperate criminals who've wound up in the almost-bordertown of Colebrook.

Teresa (7): Libraries, too. And there's at least a couple of movies: The Girl in the Velvet Swing and Murder of the Century. No, wait that second one is an episode of The American Experience. But it's available on DVD.

#7 Teresa: Now, what I find remarkable is the number of desperate criminals who've wound up in the almost-bordertown of Colebrook.

You mean like Christopher "The Beauty Queen Killer" Wilder in 1984? (Elizabeth Teague doesn't count because she was caught in Pittsburg.)

I think it's because it's real easy to recognize the folks who aren't from around here.

(chorus) On Wednesdays he goes shopping/ And has buttered scones for tea.

Serge, you wear high heels, suspenders, and a bra?

One of the quirks of american jurisprudence that has always fascinated me: if you get found not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity and locked up indefinitely, then as soon as you "recover" and are determined to be sane, you're free to go. I know the arguments for this are good on the face of them, but it's weirded me out since I was a kid.

Fragano @ 11... Nah. I wear only sensible shoes. I do have suspenders, but only for my Victorian time traveller's outfit.

Serge #13: What you are referring to, mon ami, Lumberjack Palin would call "braces". What he would call "suspenders" you would call a "garter belt".

Serge @ 13 ...
I do have suspenders, but only for my Victorian time traveller's outfit.

Egads! You'd mentioned time travelling, but I clearly missed the part where you mentioned cross-dressing! Not only that, but the sheer scandal of wearing garments short enough to display your suspenders!!! Egads! Not merely ankles, but knees and ... -thighs-!

And Now you Know. The Remainder. Of the Narrative.

Good DAY.

(How was-- ...what? Again?)

"...Now, what I find remarkable is the number of desperate criminals who've wound up in the almost-bordertown of Colebrook."

Teresa -
The truly amazing numbers would astound, except we never find out about the ones who are hidden from the just minions of the law by the efforts of those akin to the notorious James MacDonald, who are obviously trying to keep the small towns of New Hampshire as obscure as possible to maintain them as a safe haven for these dangerous crininals ...

xeger, I'm shocked, shocked! Limbs, sir, limbs! Not ankles and knees and thighs!

Fragano Ledgister @ 14:

It's always so much fun to watch when the American expats in England discover that one.

Linkmeister @ 18 ...
"... breasts and thighs and ... hearts" ?

xeger @ 15... the sheer scandal of wearing garments short enough to display your suspenders!!! Egads!

Well, if you click here, you will be exposed to a photo of yours truly weearing suspenders. Sure, you can't see them, but they are definitely there. Shameless and shocking!

Serge @ 21 ...
I must say that photo leaves far too much to the florid and overwrought imagination...

It all ties together somehow: the Flatiron District was Stanford White's old stomping ground.

In fact, his townhouse (the one with the infamous Red Velvet Swing) was right around the corner from Tor at 22 W. 24th Street - until it fell down a year or two ago.

If ever there was midtown address that needed a historical marker....

xeger @ 22... Dare I say that time travellers swing both ways?

Having perused the photos of the dramatis personae, I feel convinced that the real motive was Thaw's jealousy... of Stanford White's moustache. That's a moustache that would place well in the current World Championships.

ISTR reading that the title character of "Anne of Green Gables" was inspired by a random magazine photo LM Montgomery had clipped out... showing the face of Evelyn Nesbit. (I don't know if LMM ever realized the model's scandalous identity.)

Serge @ 24 ...
Dare I say that time travellers swing both ways?

Mais oui! I hear that they also come before and after themselves...

Xopher @4, it would make more sense if they were big fans of the late John Thaw, except for that pesky date thing. Time-travelling lumberjacks?

When you are time-travelling to the late 19th/early 20th Centuries, you may wear garters, suspenders, braces or all three, if you wish -- no gentleman (or lady) is going to peek.

Dr. Psycho @ 29 ...
I, sir, am no gentleman.

AYK Bob, was that before or after the area was a red light district?

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Doctorow's Ragtime, either the book or the movie. In the movie Norman Mailer played White. I cannot recall if he wore a white mustache or not at this late date.

Ah, the days of informal immigration/emigration procedures...

The Canadians used to tie ropes to 'planes and drag them over the border, I hear.

Both Harry Thaw and Evelyn Nesbit were originally from Pittsburgh -- my Pittsburgh, that is, the one in Pennsylvania, the one that kept its H when burghs all around the U.S. were losing theirs, like the Pittsburg near Colebrook. (Simplified spelling be danged.) So everything about this whole sordid story is local to me.

Here's a series of facts tying these things -- my tenuous ties to the Thaws and Jim's narrative -- together, with some science (though not science fiction) being part of it:

My alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh, has a building called Thaw Hall, named for Benjamin Thaw, Sr., who was Harry's grandfather. When I was an undergrad, it was home to the Engineering Dept., but now it's the home of the Physics and Astronomy departments. This is fitting since Benjamin Thaw was an alumnus of the Western University of Pennsylvania, and in his memory his son William (Harry's father) gave the Allegheny Observatory, owned by the University -- by then renamed the University of Pittsburgh -- money for improved instruments including, in 1914, a then-huge 30-inch telescope, still "the third largest refractor in the United States".

The Thaw family made a lot of its fortune from the Pennsylvania Railroad ("William Thaw was the majority stockholder in the Pennsylvania"), for which at the time my Great-grandfather Fundis worked. (Later *his* son William [my grandfather], and still later my dad and my aunt, also worked for the Pennsy.) But -- appropriately for the last bit in Jim's story -- the Thaws were also involved in banking!

No evidence I can find that they had anything to do with baked goods, though, except presumably eating them.

FIRST IRATE LUMBERJACK: Come on, fellows! Going to New Hampshire!
SECOND IRATE LUMBERJACK: Why?
FIRST IRATE LUMBERJACK! Get Thaw back!
SECOND IRATE LUMBERJACK: What, thomeone thtole it?

As long as we're going for tenuous connections, I found out several years ago through genealogical research that I'm related to one of the doctors who testified as to Thaw's insanity.

The more I've read about Thaw, the more I'm convinced that, technically, my g'g'g'-whatever-uncle may have been completely right. That was one seriously disturbed man who needed to be locked up.

Harry Thaw's brother, Benjamin, was a member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, the group that maintained (or, rather, failed to maintain) the dam that gave us the Johnstown Flood.

Speaking of wealthy New Yorkers shot for the love of pretty actresses, there's always "The Tragedy That Startled the Continent" (6th of January, 1872) when Jubilee Jim Fisk (of 313 West 23rd Street), was gunned down by Edward S. Stokes on the stairs of the Grand Central Hotel over the affections of Josie Mansfield.

Jubilee Jim was best known (aside from his scandalous personal life) for the Erie War in which he, Daniel Drew, and Jay Gould took on Cornelius Vanderbilt, and for his later attempt to corner the gold market. But he is also remembered for the fast and unstinting aid he sent to the victims of the Great Chicago Fire.

The Grand Central Hotel (opened 1870, and at that time the largest hotel in America), was located at 673 Broadway. A century later, the Grand Central Hotel, renamed the Broadway Central Hotel and sunk by degrees to a welfare hotel, collapsed (03 August 1973), killing four residents.

So far as I am aware at this time, neither James Fisk, Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Boss Tweed, Daniel Drew, nor Edward Stokes ever visited Colebrook, though any of them might have passed through if they ever visited The Balsams.

Cornelius Vanderbilt appears as a character in our novel, Land of Mist and Snow.

The life of Jim Fisk was fictionalized in the film The Toast of New York.

The murder of Stanford White is an incident in E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime.

E. L. Doctorow is related to our own Cory Doctorow.

I am more and more under the impression that Colebrook, NH is the nexus of Secret History of the U.S. Am I wrong?

The events Jim describes are clearly an important part of American history. I think they deserve to be recorded in a mural on the walls of Le Rendevous, the place around which so much of that action revolved. Perhaps the artist might also be persuaded to save a small patch of the wall for a celebration of Mme. Daeron's victory over the INS.

Does anyone out there know a mural artist who would be inspired by this subject matter?

So far as I am aware at this time, neither James Fisk, Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Boss Tweed, Daniel Drew, nor Edward Stokes ever visited Colebrook

That, in itself, is highly suspicious.

TNH at #31: (W)as that before or after the area was a red light district?

I'd sort of assume "during". The city's red light district spent a century or so following the "White Light" district as it shifted uptown; given how fashionable Madison Square was at the time (what with White's new Madison Square Garden, and Delmonico's restaurant just down the block, etc.), I'd assume that the red light district was nearby. I'd don't know specifically about 24th Street in 1900-1905, though.

(Where's Luc Sante when you need him?)

In their reports, many investigators used the terms "brothel" and "call flats" interchangeably. Ruth Rosen noted this shift in Lost Sisterhood. She took the introduction of the term "call flat" to indicate a new system, considerably different from the elaborate red-light district brothels that existed at the turn of the century. Because many cites had clearly identified red-light districts where police and city officials tolerated segregated prostitution, Rosen's assumption is probably correct when viewed on the national level. However, since New York's brothels had been located throughout the entertainment districts of the city in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and were never segregated into a single identifiable district, the scattering of call flats throughout the city in the 1920s does not indicate a radical chance in the organization of prostitution. Rosen, Lost Sisterhood, 69-85

-- Love For Sale, Elizabeth Alice Clement, page 294

Emphasis mine.

A similar but less violent incident up around Pittsburg — citizens crossing the border to spring a comrade out of jail — caused an international incident among all three countries.

That would be the United States, Canada, and the Indian Stream Republic.

From City of Eros by Timothy J. Gilfoyle, page 384:

After plotting over 5,000 individual addresses with prostitution, I found the following neighborhoods breakdowns from 1870 to 1919. The figures below are percentages found in each neighborhood.

Neighborhood 1870-1879 1880-1889 1900-1909 1910-1919

Total number 434 619 426 [1,196 (Man.) 1,251 (all)] [2,196 (Man.) 2,423 (all)]

Wall Street 6 .6 0 0 .1

East R. Docks 9 10 4 4 .7

(Old) West Side 1 .2 0 0 .1

Five Points 4 6 3 2 1

Lower E. Side 10 15 27 12 6

SoHo 10 7 2 5 .7

East Village 16 11 7 5 2

West Village 16 11 7 5 2

Tenderloin 23 28 35 42 32

Lexington 4 8 1 7 7

Above 59th and other .2 3 1 4 50

After 1900, uptown neighborhoods like Morningside Heights (the new home of Columbia University after 1897), Manhattanville, Hamilton Heights (near the City College of New York), and Washington Heights reported significant amounts of commercial sex.

Gilfoyle goes on to say that the apparent decrease of houses of prostitution in the period 1890-1899 was probably due to incomplete reporting, since New York was a "wide open" town at the time.

(I regret that I am unable to format this info as a table in this post.)

So, to break that out, in 1900:

Wall Street 0% n=0

East R. Docks 4% n=48

(Old) West Side 0% n=0

Five Points 2% n=24

Lower E. Side 12% n=144

SoHo 5% n=60

East Village 5% n=60

West Village 5% n=60

Tenderloin 42% n=502

Lexington 7% n=84

Above 59th and other 4% n=50

"After ten years during which a crew of moneyed libertines had made life almost as unsafe for virgins as did the Minotaur, a revolver made New York safer for other girls. They are safe."

Jim @ 38

I guess you missed my comment @ 32. I didn't know that Cory Doctorow is related to EL Doctorow, but I might have guessed if I had considered it.

Jim, E.L. isn't nearly as sure.

Re 48: Jiiiiiimmmmmmm!

All the connections here are tenuous. What's one more?

Ms. Nesbit was a Gibson Girl.

Charles Dana Gibson and Robert W. Chambers were art students together. Robert W. Chambers wrote The King in Yellow. I transcribed The King in Yellow (now public domain) while living in Colebrook.

Colebrook, in 1915. The white building on the left is the bank building mentioned in the story. Behind it, the green building with the cupola, is town hall. To the right, across the street from town hall, the statue is the Civil War memorial.

All three are still here.