Newspaper Clippings of the Thanksgiving Day

I always say, what better way to spend tomorrow’s holiday than by musing on the various ways your dinner can kill you?  The “Blue-Grass Clipper,” December 10, 1903:

Be careful when you go to kill your Christmas turkey. George Whitmore was scratched by the claws of the one he was preparing for his Thanksgiving dinner. Blood poisoning ensued which resulted in his death a few days later.

This next story can be summarized in two sentences:  Mrs. Frank T. Kuhen thought she knew how to properly can asparagus.  She didn’t.

The "Spokesman-Review," December 1, 1910, via Newspapers.com

The “Daily Milwaukee News” for December 1, 1866, noted that one Thanksgiving turkey nearly accomplished a fatal revenge:

Thanksgiving dinners, like all other events with which human agency is connected, are subject to catastrophes. On Thursday a gentleman residing in the Third Ward, having returned from service at the Union Baptist church, sat down with his family to accomplish the consumption of a turkey formidable in size and desperate to the last, as the conclusion very nearly proved. Having served the remainder of the family at table, he helped himself to a generous thank offering and proceeded to consume it.

While engaged in eating he attempted to swallow a mouthful which contained a fragment of bone. The hard substance lodged in the larynx and nearly produced death by suffocation. A physician was immediately sent for, and the bone extracted by a painful operation. The sufferer is now doing well, although yesterday morning his throat was so swollen that he could hardly speak.

Another Thanksgiving feast that ended prematurely appeared in the “Cincinnati Enquirer,” November 26, 1910:

Logansport, Ind., November 25.--Contrary to the advice of her physician and relatives, Mrs. Rose Blouser, aged 69, who has been bedfast for a year, insisted on sitting up and eating Thanksgiving dinner with the family. While at the table she collapsed and died a few minutes later.

This next story carries a moral: If one of your dinner companions appears to be choking to death, do not instantly assume they are joking.  The “Times and Democrat,” December 2, 1886:

Chicago, November 27.- -A fatal accident occurred Thanksgiving evening at the Centre House on Blue Island Avenue. A number of young men there were celebrating Thanksgiving dinner when one of them. Mr. Frederick W. Charlis, a French-Canadian, accidentally swallowed a part of the breast bone of a turkey. The young man's companions, observing his distress, but considering it more assumed than real, sent one of their number for a veterinary surgeon residing in the vicinity. The surgeon promptly responded, and taking a humorous view of the situation proceeded to apply a stomach pump, to the evident amusement of all present. Fred Sawyer, a half-brother of the afflicted young man, appeared upon the scene at this stage of the proceedings, and interposed an indignant protest against the method of treatment pursued by the surgeon, and that gentleman gathered up his instruments and beat a retreat.

By this time the young man's condition became painfully apparent to his companions and a regular physician was hastily summoned, but before he arrived the young man died in the arms of his half brother.

One doctor’s involuntary contribution to medical science was reported in the “San Francisco Examiner,” December 9, 1906:

NEW YORK, December 8. Noting with professional interest every phase of his malady, Dr. Edward J. McDonough of 304 East Seventy-ninth street, died yesterday of acute indigestion, caused by injudicious eating of Thanksgiving dinner.

The physician, whose reputation, professional and charitable, was very high, ate heartily of turkey on Thursday. At 11:33 p.m. he returned to his home, and with his two sisters, with whom he lived, ate of the cold bird.  He then retired. Yesterday morning he was heard groaning. He could scarcely rise from bed.

At his request the sisters got his instrument case. Dr. McDonough diagnosed the attack, took his own temperature, and then sent for a colleague, who agreed with him that acute indigestion was the trouble. The physician bravely bore up, and until insensibility overtook him observed every symptom and reported to Dr. J. L. Wollheim, who had been called. Knowing that death was imminent, Dr. McDonough determined that his last acts should be directed toward furthering the knowledge of his profession.

After all these warnings about the dangers of eating turkey, you’re probably thinking you’ll be safe sticking to dessert, right?  Well, just to completely ruin your Thanksgiving, I present the most epic anti-holiday pie rant I have ever been privileged to read.  The “Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel,” November 25, 1882:

Thanksgiving Day is the one national festival which is peculiarly and thoroughly American. Other nations undergo annual sufferings from noise and gunpowder which are analogous to those which are associated in our minds with Fourth of July. Christmas is the common property of the Christian world, although Russia celebrates her Christmas some weeks later than other nations, in order that Russians residing in foreign countries may obtain a double supply of Christmas presents. Thanksgiving Day, however, was the invention of the New England colonists, and though it has since been universally adopted by the American people, no other nation has imitated it. We alone express our annual gratitude by the sacrifice of turkeys, and it is, hence, greatly to be desired that the one exclusively American festival should be in all respects perfect and beyond reproach.

It is impossible to deny that in active practice our method of celebrating the day is open to one serious objection. In spite of the progress which we have made towards a higher morality than that of the last century, we still adhere, on Thanksgiving Day, to one barbarous and demoralizing ceremony. To a great extent the hot New-England rum of our forefathers is banished from our dinner-tables, but the no less deadly and demoralizing pie forms part of every Thanksgiving dinner, no matter how moral and intelligent its consumers may believe themselves to be.

The Thanksgiving array of pie is usually of so varied, as well as lavish a nature, that it seems cunningly devised to entrap even the most innocent palate. If mince-pie alone were set before a virtuous family, it is quite probable that many of its members would have the courage to turn in loathing from the deadly compound, but the Thanksgiving mince-pie is always accompanied or preceded by lighter pies, in which weak-minded persons think they can indulge without injury. The thoughtless matron—for thoughtlessness, and not deliberate wickedness, is indicated by the presence of Thanksgiving pie—urges her guests to take a little chicken-pie, assuring them that it cannot injure a child. The guest who tampers with the chicken-pie is inevitably lost. The chicken-pie crust awakens an unholy hunger for fiercer viands, and when the meats are removed, he is ready and anxious for undiluted apple or pumpkin pie. From that to mince-pie the transition is swift and easy, and in nine cases out of ten the man who attends a Thanksgiving dinner and is lured into touching chicken-pie abandons all self-restraint and delivers himself up to the thraldom of a fierce longing for strong and undisguised mince-pie. Hundreds of men and women who had emancipated themselves by a tremendous effort of the will from the dominion of pie, have backslidden at the Thanksgiving dinner, and have returned to their former degradation with a fiercer appetite than ever, and with little hope that they can find sufficient strength for a second effort towards reformation.

The chief evil of the Thanksgiving display of pie is, however, its terrible influence upon the young. It is a well-known fact, however revolting it may seem when rehearsed in cold blood, that on Thanksgiving Day many a foolish mother has herself pressed pie to the lips of her innocent offspring. To the taste thus created thousands of victims of the pie habit ascribe their ruin. It is a common spectacle on Thanksgiving evening to see scores of children, mere babes in years, writhing under the influence of pie, and making the night hideous with their outcries. Physicians can testify to the appalling results of the pie orgies in which children are thus openly encouraged to take part. The amount of drugs which is consumed by the unhappy little victims on the day following Thanksgiving Day would fill the public with horror were the exact figures to be published. How can we wonder that children who are thus tempted to acquire the taste for pie by their own parents grow up to be shameless and habitual consumers of pie! The good matron who sees a haggard and emaciated man slink into a public pie shop, and presently emerge brushing the tell-tale crumbs from his beard, shudders to think that the unhappy wretch was once as young and innocent as her own darling children. And yet that very matron will sit at the foot of a Thanksgiving table groaning with pie, and will deal out the deadly compound to her children without a thought that she is awakening in them a depraved hunger that will ultimately lead them straight to the pie shop.

All the efforts of good men and women to stay the torrent of pie which threatens to engulf our beloved country will be in vain, unless the reform is begun at the Thanksgiving dinner-table. Pie must be banished from that otherwise innocent board, or it is in vain that we try to banish it from shops, restaurants, and hotels. May we not hope for a great moral crusade which will sweep pie from every virtuous table, and unite all the friends of morality in a vigorous and persistent attack upon the great evil of the land.

I hope this post has inspired all my fellow Americans to celebrate the holiday in appropriate style.  I think we’re allowed a few peas and a glass of water.