Newspaper Clipping of the Day

via Newspapers.com

Let us discuss Mr. Oliver and the Cats. The "Detroit Free Press," December 25, 1870:

The fact that Mr. Oliver lived in a uniform row of houses in the Fourteenth Ward, says the Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch, was the reason why he was unfortunate.

One moonlight night last week the noises made by the cats on his roof was simply awful. Mr. Oliver lay in bed trying in vain to get to sleep and grinding his teeth in rage, until at last the uproar overhead became unendurable. Mr. Oliver crept out of bed softly, so that his wife would not be wakened. He put on his slippers, seized a boot with each hand, and clad in the snowy robes of night, he opened the trap-door and emerged upon the roof. There were thirty or forty cats out here holding a kind of a general synod in the cool of the evening, enjoying the bracing air and singing glees.

As Mr. Oliver approached, the cats moved over to the next roof. Mr. Oliver advanced and flung a boot at them. They then adjourned suddenly to the next residence. Mr. Oliver projected another boot, and went over after the first one. In this manner the synod retreated and Oliver advanced until the last of the row of twenty houses was reached, when the cats arranged themselves in a line along the parapet, ruffled up their fur, carved their spines and spat furiously at Oliver. That bold warrior gathered up his boots and determined to retreat. He walked over a dozen houses and descended through a trap-door. He went down stairs to his bed-room, and opened the door. There was a man in the room in the act of walking up and down with a baby. Before Oliver had recovered from his amazement, the man flung the baby on the bed, and seizing a revolver began firing rapidly at Oliver. It then dawned upon Oliver that he had come down the wrong trap-door. He proceeded up stairs again suddenly, the man with the revolver practicing at him in a painful manner.

When Oliver reached the door he shut the trap quickly and stood upon it. The man fired through the boards twice, and then hooked the door upon the inside. A moment after Oliver heard him springing a watchman's rattle from the front window. As soon as the neighbors knew there was a man on the roof they all flew up stairs and fastened their trap-doors, and Mrs Oliver fastened hers, with the firm conviction that some predatory villain had entered while she slept and stole her Oliver. When he tried the door It was fast, and Mrs. Oliver was screaming so fiercely that he could not make himself heard.

By this time the street was filled with policemen, all of whom were blazing away at Oliver with their revolvers, while the young men in the houses across the street kept up a steady fire with pistols, shot-guns and miscellaneous missiles. Oliver, with every advantage of forming an opinion, said that Gettysburg was a mere skirmish to it. He hid behind the chimney and lay up against the bricks to keep himself warm, while the policemen stationed themselves all around the square to capture him when he would slide down one of the water spouts.

But Oliver did not slide. He sat out on the roof all night, with the bitter air circulating through his too trifling garments listening to the yowling cats and the occasional shouts from the picket line below, and thinking of the old Jews who used to pray from their house-tops, and wondering if Mussulmen were ever shot at or bothered with cats and policemen when they practiced their evening devotions on their roofs. And then he wondered how it would do to take off his night-shirt and wave it over the edge as a flag of truce! He concluded not to, because of the danger of a bullet from some misguided policeman not familiar with the rules of war. When daylight came, the neighbors rallied in a crowd, armed with all kinds of weapons from howitzers down, and mounted to the roof. Oliver was taken down and put to bed, and he now has more influenza for a man of his size than any other citizen of the Fourteenth Ward. He says he is going to move as soon as he gets well--he is going to move into a house that is next door to nobody, a house that stands in the middle of a prairie of some kind and he intends to stencil his name in white on the trap-door.

Let us hope Mr. Oliver also learned a lesson about throwing shoes at cats.

The Baltimore Borgia

Elizabeth Wharton, via Newspapers.com

Elizabeth "Ellen" Nugent Wharton was a sparkling ornament to 19th century Baltimore high society. She was, in the words of a contemporary, "highly prepossessing," with a vivacity and charm that won her many admirers.

Sadly, her personal life had more than its share of tragedies. In the late 1860s, her husband, Major Henry Wharton, died suddenly and mysteriously. Not long afterward, her only son, Harry, joined his father in the grave, leaving Mrs. Wharton with no consolation except the large life insurance policies she had taken out on her unfortunate menfolk. When her brother-in-law Edward Wharton and his daughter also passed away during a visit to her home, her friends greatly sympathized with poor Elizabeth. Mrs. Wharton's only remaining close family member was her daughter, Nellie. Nellie Wharton's health also took a dramatic downturn during this period, but fortunately, she survived.

In late June 1871, an old friend, Eugene Van Ness, paid her a friendly social visit. Van Ness, a bookkeeper, kept the records of Mrs. Wharton's accounts at the banking firm of Alexander Brown & Sons. On June 28, another of Mrs. Wharton's friends, General William Scott Ketchum, also came to spend the weekend at her home. The object of his visit was not just pleasure, but business. Some time back, the General had loaned Mrs. Wharton $2,600. He wanted the loan repaid before she set out on a voyage to Europe which was scheduled for the following week.

The ever-hospitable and popular Mrs. Wharton had a full house of weekend guests. Aside from the General, the widow was still playing hostess to Eugene Van Ness and his wife, as well as three or four other friends. It was a cheery, convivial group.

Well, cheery and convivial until the evening of Ketchum's arrival, when both he and Eugene Van Ness became extremely sick. They were too ill to return to their homes. Van Ness remained in an dangerous state for several days, but he eventually recovered. Unfortunately, although Mrs. Wharton was the most attentive of nurses, the General died a week later. One of the last things Ketchum ever said was, "Mrs. Wharton has poisoned me with a glass of lemonade."

Witnesses was inclined to wave off this ungallant statement as a "jocular remark." But when an autopsy was performed on General Ketchum, everyone stopped laughing. This post-mortem revealed that he had some twenty grains of tartar emetic in his system. Ketchum's physician was inspired to examine the glass Van Ness had used before falling ill, and darned if that didn't contain tartar emetic as well.

Mrs. Wharton's preparations for her European trip were abruptly interrupted by her arrest for murder.

While the widow sat in jail awaiting trial, the police found many interesting details about her recent activities. It turned out that she had recently bought a large quantity of tartar emetic. She blandly explained that she had used it all for "a mustard plaster which she placed on her breast."

It also emerged that immediately after Ketchum's death, his waistcoat--which contained Mrs. Wharton's note for the $2,600--had unaccountably vanished. Shortly afterward, it reappeared--minus the note. Mrs. Wharton had an explanation for that, too. She stated that she had repaid the loan--in cash--and the General then destroyed her note. Not only that, but the Ketchum estate owed her $4,000. That was, she said sweetly, the amount of some bonds the General had been holding for her. (These alleged bonds were never found, and Mrs. Wharton had neglected to obtain a receipt for them.)

As for Eugene Van Ness, it turned out that he had been keeping two sets of accounts for Mrs. Wharton: one for official public view, and another, private one, detailing certain dodgy financial transactions she preferred not to let the world know about. (Although Mrs. Wharton came from a wealthy family, she was always recklessly extravagant--she had a particular obsession with fancy clothes--which led to frequent issues with "cash flow.")

Edward Wharton's widow, M.J.A. Wharton, now came forward, asserting that Elizabeth had poisoned Edward and their daughter. She claimed that the motive was that Elizabeth had owed Edward $2,500. She explained that at the time her husband and daughter died, she had accused Elizabeth of their murder, but her relatives dismissed her charges, saying that her "mind was affected."

Meanwhile, the "Baltimore Sun" reported on a curious detail from Elizabeth's early life. When she was twenty, she issued invitations to her upcoming wedding, to a Mr. Williamson. On the appointed day, her many friends and relatives arrived at her family's mansion, eager for the gala event. Miss Nugent, decked out in her lavish bridal finery, greeted them like a queen. The stage was set for a fairytale wedding. All it needed was the groom.

The groom...who never showed up. Servants were set off to find the tardy Mr. Williamson. They returned with the disquieting news that "Mr. Williamson had not contracted the marriage and knew nothing about it." Elizabeth's father, naturally troubled by this episode, spoke of sending the girl to an asylum. Before this could be arranged, she eloped with Henry Wharton, to whom she was said to be "passionately devoted."

Elizabeth was clearly a great deal more interesting than your average Southern society lady.

Mrs. Wharton stood trial only for the death of General Ketchum. Her lawyers managed to get any reference to the suspiciously simultaneous illness of Eugene Van Ness omitted from the evidence presented to the jury. Like most poisoning trials, the case against Mrs. Wharton suffered from a lack of direct evidence. Even though she had unquestionably purchased tartar emetic, no one had actually seen her actually put any of it in the drinks and medicines she served Ketchum. The motive offered was also fairly unconvincing. Mrs. Wharton was a well-to-do woman who, her lawyers argued, had no need to murder one of her oldest and dearest friends for the sake of $2,600.

Mrs. Wharton's trial, via Newspapers.com

As is usually also the case with alleged poisonings, her trial was dominated by a battle between medical "experts." The doctors brought in by the prosecution argued that General Ketchum had died as the result of poisoning by tartar emetic. The defense, however, presented an impressive team of physicians who insisted that the chemical analyses done by the prosecution experts were hopelessly inept and inaccurate. These worthies--with the aid of a working model of Ketchum's stomach, which must have greatly entertained jurors--maintained that the General had died from perfectly natural causes, such as "cerebro-spinal meningitis."

As so often happens When Experts Collide, the jury was left in a state of utter confusion, leaving them no alternative but to acquit Mrs. Wharton. She was still under indictment for the poisoning of Eugene Van Ness, but after the fiasco of the Ketchum trial, the State threw up its hands and dropped that charge, leaving Mrs. Wharton free as the proverbial bird.

I regret to say that Baltimoreans failed to share the court's confidence in Mrs. Wharton's innocence, and the nickname given to her by contemporary newspapers--"The Baltimore Borgia"--had an unflattering tendency to stick. As crime historian Edmund Pearson noted, "a number of years had to pass before there was any real rivalry for an invitation to one of her week-end parties."

Weekend Link Dump

This week's Link Dump is sponsored by a celebrity, the formidable Carlyle.

And some guy who probably thought he could dance as well as a cat.

Photo by John Swope, 1962

Who the hell shot Annie Dorman?

Where the hell is Bach?

Why the hell did the ancients bury dogs as if they were family members?  Why not?

Watch out for that tombstone madness!

Want to know where all the bodies are buried?  London, that's where.

Antarctica's first best-selling book.  All right, Antarctica's only best-selling book.

The dark side of digging up the dead.  All right, the especially dark side of digging up the dead.

Money-madness leads to death.

Money-madness leads to ghosts.

Let's talk Japanese shape-shifting raccoon dogs.

A look at early 20th century embalming.

The American voice of Nazi Germany.

An 18th century (accused) serial killer.

The mystery of the ancient bronze hand.

"The Dating Game," 8th century style.

You know, maybe holding a mass public event during an epidemic isn't such a great idea.

I am eternally grateful to SC reader Floodmouse for letting me know that in Russia, one can become a professional baby moose impersonator.



In case you're in need of an Egyptian magic spell, here you go.

The Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants.

Some real life "Weekend at Bernie's."

A UFO con man.

On the old practice of photographing the eyes of the dead.

On the old practice of informing bees when someone dies.

What the well-dressed 10th century woman was wearing.

Psychoanalyzing Hitler.

Historical examples of delayed executions.

Famed caricaturist George Cruikshank.

How French Revolutionaries changed time.

Bruce Lee, zombie celebrity.

The world's oldest known animal.

Coals to Newcastle, Iceland edition.


That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a lethal weekend house party.  In the meantime, here's my favorite Fleetwood Mac song, from the time when they were a band instead of an extended soap opera.

Any other Southern Californians remember the late great KNX-FM?  I'm pretty sure that's where I first heard the song.  There was a time when it seemed you couldn't walk into a Los Angeles shop or restaurant without KNX playing in the background.  I can't hear this song without being transported to Westwood Village, circa 1980...Ah, the old days, when this town was still fun...

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Well, this is...odd.  The "Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Weekly Herald," October 10, 1806:

The following account of an extraordinary phenomenon that appeared to a number of people in the county of Rutherford, state of North Carolina, was made the 7th of August, 1806, in presence of David Dickle, Esq. of the county and state aforesaid, Jesse Anderson and the Rev. George Newton of the county of Buncombe and Miss Betsey Newton of the state of Georgia, who unanimously agreed, with the consent of the relators, that Mr. Newton should communicate it to Mr. Gales, Editor of the Raleigh Register and State Gazette.

Patsey Reaves, a widow woman, who lives near the Appalachian Mountain, declared, that on the 31st day of July last, about 6 o’clock P.M. her daughter Elizabeth, about 8 years old, was in the cotton field, about 10 poles from the dwelling house, which stands by computation, six furlongs from the Chimney Mountain, and that Elizabeth told her brother Morgan, aged 11 years, that there was a man on the mountain.

Morgan was incredulous at first, but the little girl affirmed it, and said she saw him, rolling rocks or picking up sticks, adding that she saw ‘a heap of people.’ Morgan then went to the place where she was, and called out, said that he saw a thousand or ten thousand things flying in the air. 

On which Polly, daughter of Mrs. Reaves, a good four years, and a negro woman, ran to the children and called Mrs. Reaves to see what a sight yonder was. Mrs. Reaves says she went about 3 poles towards them, and, without any sensible alarm or fright, she turned towards the Chimney Mountain, and discovered a very numerous crowd of beings resembling the human species, but could not discern any particular members of the human body, nor distinction of sexes; that they were of every size, from the tallest men down to the least infants; that there were more of the small than of the full grown, that they were all clad with brilliant white raiment; but could not describe any form of their garment; that they appeared to rise off the mountain south of said rock, and about as high; that a considerable part of the mountain’s top was visible about this shining host, that they moved in a northern direction, and collected about the top of Chimney Rock. 

When all but a few had reached said rock, two seemed to rise together and behind them about two feet, a third rose. These three moved with great agility towards the crowd, and had the nearest resemblance of two men, of any before seen. While beholding those three her eyes were attracted by three more rising nearly from the same place, and moving swiftly in the same order and direction. After these, several others rose and went toward the rock. 

During this view, which all the spectators thought lasted upwards of an hour, she sent for Mr. Robert Siercy, who did not come at first; on a second message sent about fifteen minutes after the first, Mr. Siercy came, and being now before us, he gives the following relation, to the substance of which Mrs. Reaves agrees. 

Mr. Siercy said, when he was coming, he expected to see nothing extraordinary, and when come, being asked if he saw those people on the mountain, he answered no; but on looking the second time, he said he saw more glittering white appearances of human kind than ever he had seen of men at any general review; that they were of all sizes from that of men to infants; that they moved in throngs round a large rock, not far from the Chimney Rock; that they were about the height of the Chimney Rock, and moved in a semicircular course between him and the rock, and so passed along in a southern route between him and the mountains, to the place where Mrs. Reaves said they rose; and that two of a full size went before the general crowd about the space of 20 yards, and as they respectively came to this place, they vanished out of sight, leaving a solemn and pleasing impression on the mind, accompanied with a diminution of bodily strength. 

Whether the above be accountable on philosophical principles, or whether it be a prelude to the descent of the holy city, I leave to the impartially curious to judge. 

George Newton 

P.S. The above subscriber has been informed, that on the same evening, at about the same time in which the above phenomenon appeared, there was seen by a gentleman of character, who was several miles distant from the place, a bright rainbow, apparently near the sun, then in the west, where there was no appearance of either clouds or rain; but a haze in the atmosphere. The public are therefore at liberty to judge, whether the phenomenon had any thing supernatural in it, or whether it was some unusual exhalation or moist vapor from the side of the mountain, which exhibited such an unusual rainbow.

Funny How Time Slips Away At Wotton

Wotton's Church of St. John, via Colin Smith/Wikipedia

I have never been one of those people who lament that they can't live in some past era. For all the modern world's great and grievous flaws, it has one thing going for it that can't be beat. It can be summed up in two words: indoor plumbing.

However, my greatest dream is to be able to hop in a time machine and briefly visit any historical scene I choose; for even just an hour or so, to be given the chance to make a personal assessment of Richard III or Mary Queen of Scots, or look into the face of Jack the Ripper. For that reason, my favorite Fortean stories are those accounts of what are usually called "time-slips," and it is the only example of Forteana I'd want to personally experience. Spontaneous Human Combustion is messy, not to mention fatal. Poltergeists are rude. And just try to explain blood oozing from the walls to your insurance company. Time-slips, on the other hand, are generally just good clean anomalous fun.  Among the most interesting of these alleged "visits to the past" was experienced by an English bookseller and his wife during a seemingly ordinary excursion.

In the summer of 1954, Eric Barton and his wife Irina felt the need for a brief holiday. Both were feeling generally tired and stressed by life, and thought a bus trip to the country would revive them. They missed their intended stop, and wound up riding to the small village of Wotton Hatch, most famous for being the birthplace of famed diarist and gossip John Evelyn. Since they were there, the Bartons decided to examine the Evelyn family church, named after St. John the Evangelist.

When the couple left the churchyard, they turned to the right, where they found themselves on a badly overgrown path flanked by high, unkempt bushes. The Bartons followed this path uphill to a clearing with a wooden bench. They sat down there to eat their lunch and enjoy the view of the valley below. In the distance, they heard the sounds of someone chopping wood, birds singing, and a dog barking. Otherwise, all was quiet. It all should have been an idyllically peaceful and soothing atmosphere, but for some reason they couldn't identify, the Bartons were ill-at-ease. They had a strange sense of something being "off."

And then suddenly, these bucolic sounds ceased, and a peculiar hush fell over the scene. An icy terror crept over Mrs. Barton. She knew that things were very wrong indeed, but she still could not say how. Then three men wearing what looked like clerical garb entered the clearing behind her. Although she had her back to them, she somehow just "knew" they were there. One looked friendly, but the other two, in Irina's words, seemed to "radiate hatred and hostility." She wanted to get away, but stayed frozen in place, unable to move. Then the feeling of fear abruptly passed. The men vanished. Eric noticed that Irina's arm felt icy cold, like that of a corpse.

The pair quickly left what felt like an accursed spot, but they found themselves suffering from weakness and mental confusion. After staggering off, the Bartons collapsed on the grass, unconscious. After a period of time they found themselves in Dorking, without being able to remember how they got there. They thankfully took the train back home to Battersea.

Irina remained haunted by her experience. Two years later, she returned to Wotton Hatch, curious if she could recreate the inexplicable events of that day. She tried following the same path she and Eric had taken from the churchyard...only to find that the landscape had completely changed. There was no overgrown path, no hill, no clearing, no wooden seat. According to a local woodman, there had been none of these features on the estate in living memory. Eric revisited the area himself, and confirmed that it was completely different from what they had seen.

At this point, the Bartons realized that things were getting seriously weird. They contacted the Society of Psychical Research, but due to some bureaucratic confusion, their report was overlooked. In 1973, they repeated their story to solicitor and SPR member Mary Rose Barrington, who delivered a paper about the Bartons to the Society in the following years. Barrington researched the area around the Wotton church, and was able to verify that the hill and bench described by the Bartons did not exist, and, as far as anyone knew, never had been there. However, Barrington found an intriguing entry in John Evelyn's diary for March 15, 1696. He wrote of the recent execution of "three wretches," one of whom had been a priest, for the crime of attempting to assassinate King William. The men were hanged at a location matching that of the now-vanished landscape observed by Eric and Irina Barton.

Were these the three sinister men observed by Irina Barton? And did the Bartons indeed visit the area around Wotton Hatch churchyard...but only as it had existed in the late 17th century?

Weekend Link Dump

This week's Link Dump is sponsored by the talented black cats of...The Black Cat.

Watch out for those haunted paintings!

Watch out for those haunted bathrooms!

Shoreditch's strange storm.

Documents relating to Shakespeare's early years.

Why you would not want to be married to John Steinbeck.  (It's been my observation that writers generally do not make good spouses.  They're REALLY wedded to their manuscripts.)

The first English novel was basically an all-cat religious Animal Farm.

Early Modern barber shops.

"Golf Digest," CSI.

Napoleon's English supporters.

This Is Your Octopus On Drugs.

Why fortune-tellers really need to be their own clients.

Why you really, really need to be careful around wool shears.

Question of the week: if you get hit by a meteorite--but live to tell about it--does that make you lucky or unlucky?

Indian prisoners-of-war during WWII.

The (perhaps) sad end of James Garfield's dog.

While we're talking about Garfield, he inadvertently caused a lawsuit.  After he was dead.

The eerie history of the Hall of Dreams.

This week's health tip: wear gold, don't drink it.

They call these two "history's worst hoarders," but it alarms me how much this resembles my house.

Georgian era stand-up routines.  Take my Irishman, please!

The life of Marie Antoinette's daughter.

Of ghosts and hurricanes.

A policeman's unsolved murder.

Some owl superstitions.

Another busy day at Tyburn.

The earliest known photos of an American brothel.

When cleaning your teeth with sulfuric acid seemed like a good idea.  Yes, it's the Victorians.

When Hyde Park had a Cheesecake House.

A lively day in court.

A newly-unearthed Egyptian necropolis.

The dreadful fate of a London elephant.

More on the Black Ghost of Devonshire.

And we're outta here for this week. See you on Monday, when we'll talk time-slips. In the meantime...Hoy Hoy!

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

via Newspapers.com

I keep a file of stories that I call "Mini Mysteries": true crime cases where there isn't enough information available for a full blog post. Among them is this newspaper item from the "New York Tribune" of August 2, 1922, describing the day when death was on the menu of a popular eatery.

Two more deaths were added last night to the four caused by arsenic in pie served at the Shelbourne Restaurant, 1127 Broadway. Charles Roman, sixty-three years old, a manufacturer, of 1148 Lexington Avenue, died in Mount Sinai Hospital, arid Joseph Laubheimer, thirty-eight years old, of 11 West Sixty-fifth Street, died at his home.

Four others died earlier in the day and at least 100 more were affected, many so seriously that they had to have hospital treatment. More deaths are looked for. It has been impossible to obtain a complete list of those suffering from the poisoning because most of them are being treated at their homes.

The four who died yesterday morning are:

Hyman Bernstein, thirty-two years old, Warren Avenue, Palisade, N. J.

Lillian Getz, eighteen years old, 1262 Brook Avenue, Bronx.

Ida Weissburg, twenty-five years old, 976 Kelley Street, Bronx.

Jacob Pfeffer, fortv-eight years old, 1981 Eightieth Street, Brooklyn.

Mr. Pfeffer was an advertising man, with offices at 318 Broadway. He was well known among Jews in this country and Canada as a forceful editorial writer for Jewish newspapers. At one time he was connected with "The Jewish Daily News" and at another period published "The Jewish Weekly," a paper cf his own.

He was born in Galicia, Austria, and came to this country about twenty eight years ago. He was a prominent member of the Independent Order Brith Abraham and one of the lodges of this organization was named for him.

District Attorney Banton will summon every employee of the restaurant to appear before him to-day in an attempt to fix the responsibility and to find a motive for placing the poison in the pie served in the restaurant on Monday. Samuel Drexler, head of the firm which operates the restaurant, is helping the District Attorney in every possible way. Drexler went to the Bronx and to New Jersey yesterday to see if he could identify the dead persons among those who ate in the restaurant on Monday. In this connection Mr. Banton declared that it might be difficult to establish legally the fact that those who died did actually dine in the restaurant, and therefore, ho said, he wished that all those who ate there on Monday would communicate with him, as they might be helpful on this point.

A special meeting of the Board of Health was called yesterday afternoon by Acting Health Commissioner Monaghan, at which Drexler and his attorney, Harry H. Oshrim, were present. As a result of this meeting, the license issued to the Shelbourne Restaurant was revoked pending tho investigation by the District Attorney's office, the revocation to take effect immediately. After the meeting, Ole Salthe, chief of the Bureau of Food and Drugs of the Health Department, said that chemists of the department had made an analysis of a sample of the pie crust taken from the restaurant and found that it contained arsenic in considerable quantity. All the ingredients which were used in the making of the pie dough were analyzed and found to be pure.

"In my opinion," said Mr. Salthe, "the arsenic was maliciously put into the pie dough." He also announced that samples of all the food served in the restaurant were in the possession of the Health Department and that these would be analyzed as soon as possible.

The District Attorney's investigation has failed so far to reveal any one on whom guilt may be fastened. Mr. Banton thought it possible rat poison (which contains arsenic) or some similar substance might have been mixed with the dough by mistake in place of some of the proper ingredients.

Charles Abramson, a baker, who left the employ of the Shelbourne Restaurant on Saturday, was questioned by the District Attorney's office. Later he was held as a material witness and was released in $100 bail. According to Mr. Banton. he is apparently not to blame.

The examination of witnesses disclosed yesterday that Abramson had been connected with the restaurant for three months, coming into its employ when Louis Mandell, the former baker, quit to go into business for himself. A couple of weeks ago Abramson heard that Mandell had not succeeded in his new venture and had sold out. Believing that Mr. Drexler would desire to take Mandell back, Abramson got another job, and a week ago Monday told Mr. Drexler that he would quit on last Saturday. Mr. Drexler then re-engaged Mandell, who came to work on Monday morning. Abramson also came down that morning to instruct Mandell in the number of pies to bake for the trade that day. According to Mandell there were two pies left over from Saturday (the day Abramson quit) and the crusts of these were thrown away. There was also about five pounds of dough left over and, as was the custom, he mixed this with about two pounds additional, which he made, to compose the amount to be used for that day.

It was also found during the investigation that the baker's helper, a man called Louis, whose full name and address were not available last night, always came very early in the morning and prepared the basis of the dough and that when the baker himself came all he had to do was to add the proper amount of shortening and whatever other ingredients were necessary for the actual process of baking. It was also the duty of Louis to take care of the dough left over each day and see that it was placed in the ice box so that it might be used with whatever new dough it was necessary to make the next day. Louis will be summoned for questioning to-day.

The first knowledge of arsenic in the pie crusts came from the restaurant management. Several people came to Mr. Drexler after lunch and declared that the pie must be bad for it burned their throats. Mr. Drexler turned to his brother-in-law and partner, Frank J. Rosenthal, and said, "Frank, you have a sweet tooth. See if anything is wrong with those pies." Rosenthal tasted several of them and said they seemed all right to him. However, a short time later he was taken violently ill and Mr. Drexler, becoming alarmed, sent a sample of the crust to Bendiner &, Schlessinger, chemists, of 47 Third Avenue, who, after an analysis by Dr. Israel Schwartz, made a report showing that there was considerable arsenic in the crusts.

While most of the victims are supposed to have been poisoned by eating the pie, at least one of them declared yeptcrday that she believed there was poison in some, of the other dishes. Miss Sadie Brown, of 1118 Forest Avenue, the Bronx, one of those made ill by the food, asserted that a woman sitting next to her in the restaurant ate nothing but a small portion of beef a la mode, and nevertheless became violently ill in a short time.

So, where did the investigation into this seemingly utterly senseless mass murder go? Absolutely nowhere. Although it was logical to presume that the food was poisoned by one of the small number of people with access to the restaurant's kitchen, police were unable to find sufficient motive, means, and opportunity to lead them to any one suspect. The crime was never solved.

Unsurprisingly, the Shelbourne closed its doors for good. And it took some time before New Yorkers rekindled their taste for pie.