Another Trojan Bit The Dust

 ANOTHER TROJAN BIT THE DUST

                                                     By

                                      E.M. Sanchez-Saavedra

                        BALLADE OF DIME NOVELS By Arthur Guiterman

GONE are the tales that once we read!


  And none that come within our ken


May equal those that filled the head


  Of many a worthy citizen


  Who thrilled with boyish rapture, when,


In retribution stern, but just,


  "The deadly rifle spoke — and then


Another redskin bit the dust!"



We had no malice, not a shred;


  For which of us would hurt a wren?


Not blood, but ink was what we shed;


  And yet, we bore ourselves like men!


  With Buckskin Joe and Bigfoot Ben


In clutch of steel we put our trust, 


  Until, deprived of oxygen,


Another redskin bit the dust.



On moccasin with silent tread


  We tracked our foes through marsh and fen.


We rescued maidens, sore bestead


  From savage thrall and outlaw's den.


  We feared no odds of one to ten,


Nor hatchet stroke nor bowie thrust,


  While still, in wood or rocky glen,


Another redskin bit the dust.

ENVOI

Take up the long neglected pen,


  Redeem its valiant steel from rust,


And write those magic words again: 


  "Another redskin bit the dust!"

            “Many a savage form bit the dust, and many a savage howl followed the discharge of his trusty gun.”

                                                Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, Malaeska; The Indian Wife of the White Hunter                                                     (New York: Irwin P. Beadle & Co., 1860), chapter 2.   

            Over sixty years ago, a number of dime novel collectors led by Albert Johannsen embarked on a quest to trace the origin of that quintessential dime novel phrase: “bit the dust,” when used in the sense of meeting sudden death. Articles in The Antiquarian Bookman, May 27, and July 1, 1950, and in the Chicago Daily Tribune, in August and September 1950, attempted to resolve this literary mystery.

Their search logically began with the Judaeo-Christian Bible. In Psalms 72 (King James Version), we find a promising lead:


          “They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him and his enemies shall lick the dust.”

            But on page 27 of volume 3 of The House of Beadle and Adams, Johannsen discounted the phrases “lick the dust” or “eat the dust” in the KJV as equivocal. I agree. The meaning here is humiliation, rather than violent death. He concluded,

            [the true first usage of] “bit the dust…must be credited to a dime novelist, Mrs. Ann Stephens, in 1839.”

            And that, so it seemed, was that!

             The honor of writing the world's first dime novel (Beadle's Dime Novels Vol. 1, No. 1) fell to a prolific editor and novelist, Mrs. Ann Sophia Winterbotham Stephens (1813-1886). She and her husband Edward published the Portland Magazine in Maine. She went on to edit The Ladies' Companion, Graham's Magazine, The Ladies' World, Peterson's Magazine, Brother Jonathan and Mrs. Stephens' Illustrated New Monthly, plus writing several books on needlework and a two volume Pictorial History of the War for the Union. In 1886, T.B. Peterson and Brother in Philadelphia issued her complete fiction in an edition of twenty-three volumes.

            Although Malaeska was first published in 1839 by William W. Snowden in The Ladies' Companion, an earlier and shorter version had appeared four years earlier. On page 206 of The Portland Magazine, Devoted to Literature, Volume I, 1834-5, and entitled The Jockey Cap, the now classic story of the unhappy Native American Malaeska and her Anglo settler husband featured the expression "bit the dust" . This periodical was published by Edward Stephens and edited by Ann. (The text reprinted by Beadle in Dime Novel No. 1, 1860, was essentially the expanded novel of 1839.)


          The question remains: did Mrs. Stephens originate the catchy phrase? The answer is a resounding No!

            With a little more effort, we can push the date back nearly ninety years -- the first-known purely English usage of “bite the dust,” dating from 1748, is by the Scottish author Tobias Smollett, in his translation from the French of Alain-Rene LeSage’s 1715 picaresque novel Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane, in Book III, Chapter II:

            In LeSage's original French, the sentence reads:

            “Nous fimes mordre la poussiere a deux de ses gens, et les deux autres s’enfuirent.”

            Smollett renders this as:


          “We made two of them bite the dust, and the others betake themselves to flight.”

            “Mordre la poussiere” means literally “to bite the dust.” The choice of phrase harks back to a much more ancient original. Both LeSage and Smollett, well grounded in the classics, turned naturally to the expression, thanks to their long familiarity with the works of Homer, where I believe the concept originated. LeSage (1668-1747) studied with the Jesuits in Paris and became fluent in Spanish. His first works were translations of Spanish literature, but he soon branched out into plays and original novels, some with Spanish settings, like Gil Blas, published in parts between 1715 and 1735, and Le Bachelier de Salamanque. His bawdy, picaresque novels matched the talents of Tobias Smollett as a translator.

             Born in Scotland in 1721, Dr. Tobias George Smollett was both a military and a medical man, who accurately portrayed the horrors of life aboard a warship in his first novel The Adventures of Roderick Random. As a qualified naval surgeon, Smollett witnessed the disastrous attempt on Cartagena in 1742. He left the Royal Navy, married a Jamaican heiress and returned to England. Although he took his M.D. degree in 1750, literature was his primary occupation. He produced several plays, novels, non-fiction works and translations and a multi-volume History of England before his death in Livorno, Italy, in 1771.

            Among military and medical personnel, who face violent death on a regular basis, a vast repertoire of graveyard humor and euphemisms has existed since antiquity. Expressions like "kick the bucket," "to snuff it," "croak," "wet work," and so on have equivalents worldwide. The classic Monty Python "Dead Parrot Sketch" features a full range, from "bleedin' demised" to "gone to join the Choir Invisible."

            The bulk of eighteenth-century education in Europe and the U.K. was taken up with the Greek and Latin classics, with some basic courses in maths, history and informal life lessons in the social graces. Students were forced to memorize thousands of lines of Homer, Xenophon, Herodotus,Vergil, Caesar, Cicero and other writers of antiquity. Those who went on to become writers found that their prose was shaped by the verses and phrases that had been crammed into their heads at school. The thundering metres of Homer, with lines ending in repeating catch-phrases, particularly stuck in their minds.

            While it is a truism that modern English owes more to the KJV and Shakespeare than to any other sources, we must not forget the works of the semi-mythical bards whose orally-transmitted epic poems have come to be credited to “Homer.” The Iliad and Odyssey, the two most widely transmitted books in Mediterranean antiquity, were probably first written down in the 8^th century BCE. Individual elements may well date from about 1,200 BCE, during the Greek Bronze Age. The Iliad in particular often describes violent falls and death by this almost jocular expression. Its stark image of falling flat on one’s face could not be more graphic.

            In order to round out the complicated hexameters of their epics and as a mnemonic device, the Greek bards used a repertoire of stock metrical epithets, such as “the much-roaring sea”, "Faithful Hector," “horse-taming Trojans” or “rosy-fingered dawn.” One common ending line used the expression “bit the dust” (“pethaino” or “daykono [h]o Skone” in Greek.)

The literary language of the Romans included many exact parallels to Greek poetic phrases. Vergil’s Latin equivalent in the Aeneid (Book XI, l. 669) is “humum mandere.”

            George Chapman’s verse translation of Homer's Iliad, begun in 1598, does not use the exact phrase, nor do other early rhymed versions. Translations of Homer made after Smollett's Gil Blas, employ it often. The 1809 edition of the Rev. James Morrice’s The Iliad of Homer, Translated into English Blank Verse, uses “bit the dust” in many descriptions of the violent ends of Greek and Trojan warriors. For example, in Book XI, lines 750-752:

                                                            Full fifty cuts

            I took; from each two warriors bit the dust,

            Slain by my spear.

            Samuel Butler’s later prose version (1898) translates the phrase in the same words:


          "Grant that my sword may pierce the shirt of Hector about his heart, and that full many of his comrades may bite the dust as they fall dying round him."

            Until proven otherwise, I think we may safely conclude that the concept, rather than the actual English phraseology, originated in the Greek epics of the post-Mycenean age, while the English expression derived from a French original in the early eighteenth century.

             A few further examples should suffice to demonstrate the common usage accorded the phrase long before Mrs. Stephens gained its immortality:

The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies, 1821, p. 493:

            (In a translation of a poem in Arabic, describing a fight with a British amphibious force, occurred the following line:)

            “We drove them to their boats; and many there were of them who bit the dust – who left their bodies at the Ahmoody Gate festering in the sun, a prey to the dogs.”

The Extractor; or, Universal Reportorium of Literature, Science and the Arts, Vol. II, March to July 1829, p. 146, “Defence of the Castle of Trinity:”

            “Ten minutes had elapsed since the firing began, and in that time many a brave fellow had bit the dust.”

The Dublin Penny Journal, Vol. III, No. 150, May 16, 1835, p. 368:

            “Dogs of all degrees bit the dust, and were caught up dead in stupid amazement by their owners.”

The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, Vol. VIII, 1836, p. 44:

            “There the Pantheon stands – its deities

Have bit the dust”

            I could go on belaboring the point, but further quotations would be superfluous. Albert Johannsen and his colleagues were incredible researchers, but they lacked an essential tool that has now become commonplace – the Internet “search engine.”

Dean and Son: Endless Mirth

Illustrated Review Jan 1 1874

 Dean & Son operated a juvenile printing and publishing house on Fleet Street, from 1947. The firm was one of the most successful for its early use of chromolithography in their Embossed Chromo toy-books. In 1892 Dean’s movable toy-books attracted the attention of toymakers in Vienna and Berlin. Cheap toy-books were first produced in England by Jemmy Catnach, late of the Seven Dials, at his Toy-Book Manufactory, and Johnny Pitts, of the Toy and Marble Warehouse. 

The life and times of James Catnach 1878

Lilliput: Cheesecake and Cartoon

Lilliput, Hungarian exile Stefan Lorant's second British magazine, (first was Weekly Illustrated in 1934) was launched in July 1937, followed closely by Picture Post in 1938. It was a pocket-sized digest containing humorous fiction, photography, illustrations and cartoons. Among the many contributors were Lilliput literary correspondent Maurice Richardson (author of The Exploits of Engelbrecht), Gerard Hoffnung, Walter Trier,  Nancy Mitford, Stephen Potter, Mervyn Peake, VS Pritchett, Ronald Searle, Robert Graves, Ken Russell, Aleister Crowley, Henry Moore, Ronald Searle, Patrick Campbell, Gerard Hoffnung,  and Sir Max Beerbohm.

Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Peake

Graham "Fred Bassett" comic strip artist

How to Read Nancy

Paul Karasic and Mark Newgarden would like to locate the following comic strips for reproduction:

FRITZI RITZ Thursday, April 24, 1930,

FRITZI RITZ from Sunday MARCH 2, 1947 in two different formats:

1. 1/2 pg broadsheet format (with Fritzi Ritz topper)

2. Full page tabloid size


Also remaining on the short list is any hardcopy issue of NY Evening Graphic from Sept./Oct. 1924 that ran one of Bushmiller's Mac the Manager strips.

The pair wrote the illustrated essay “How to Read Nancy” which was published with Brian Walker’s The Best of Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy [Henry Holt/Comicana] in 1988.

A link to the pdf is HERE

Canadian Authors Society

  

Canadian Authors Society, 2 April 1921, Utica NY Morning Telegram.

CANADIAN AUTHOR’S ORGANIZE SOCIETY; MANY PROMINENT

Lady of Snows Has Contributed Many Men and Women of Literary Genius

EMIGRATION TROUBLE

Most Talented Northerners Bring Gifts to American Market, Some to England

TORONTO -- April 1. --

A milestone in the growth of Canadian national spirit is marked by the formation, following a conference at Montreal, of a society of Canadian authors. Although the event is described as the “official birth of Canadian letters,” it would be a mistake to infer that there has been in the past no Canadian contribution to literature, says the New York World.

Heretofore Canada’s literary handicap has been that she has been unable to keep her authors at home. Compared with the English-reading public that beckoned from across the line to the south or from the motherland overseas, the home population could offer but slight encouragement to budding genius. Canadian loss has been American and British gain. In more than one American city there is a Canadian literary colony, and Canadian names dot the tables of contents of American periodicals and the lists of American book publishers.

HarveyO’Higgins, George Pattullo, Arthur Stringer, Robert Service, and scores of other current popular American authors are Canadian born and bred. Perhaps no fact bears more eloquent testimony to the closeness of relations and the similarity of outlook between Canada and the United states than the ease with which men and women whose entire upbringing to maturity was exclusively Canadian have been able with their ideas and inspirations to appeal successfully to the American public.

England has not attracted as many Canadian writers. Distance and some differences in taste are partially responsible. But Canada’s loss to England has also been substantial. Gilbert Parker is and outstanding example of the migration of Canadian writers overseas.

Will Stop Drain

The formation of a Society of Canadian Authors will not stop the drain on Canada’s literary resources for it will be many a long year before this country will offer rising genius and opportunity comparable with what he can find in New York or Boston or London. But it is a sign of the time nevertheless. It at least marks an awakening consciousness of existence on the part of Canadian literature.

Besides, some of the exiles are returning, finding, as one of them says, that contact with his native soil is the truest source of inspiration. Bliss Carman, the poet, after several decades in New York, has been revisiting the home of his youth, reading his poems to capacity audiences, and he may remain permanently.

Many think he is Canada’s most distinguished poet. His work, of which for many years he published a volume a year, has remained distinctly Canadian, with Canadian atmosphere and outlook, despite his foreign residence. There is an agitation to create a new post of Canadian poet laureate and to make Carman the first incumbent of it.

ArthurStringer has returned to a country place near Chatham, Ontario. Peter McArthur, after many years abroad, is running a farm at Ektrid, Ontario but still finds time to write prolific articles and an occasional book. Ralph Connor (Rev. C. W. Gordon) is filling a Presbyterian pulpit at Winnipeg. He was never long from Canada, and his novels are perhaps the most widely read of any un-expatriated Canadian.

 Stephen Leacock at McGill. 


StephenLeacock, the humorist, a professor of economics at McGill, Prof. Peniham Edgar, the essayist, Marjorie Pickthall of Victoria, and Isabel Ecclestone of Vancouver, are some of the Canadian authors who have achieved international fame and rewards without leaving their native land. These and a hundred others assisted at the birth of the Canadian society. 


To them in their task was brought a message from one of the exiles, Basil King, another Canadian, whose name is familiar to hundreds of thousands of American readers. The spirit of his message was that there must be eternal peace between the three great remaining powers of the world, the United States his home for many years, England and France. His message for Canadian authors was that Canada was in a unique position to interpret these three peoples to one another, because of her neighborship to the United States and her derivation fro the two stocks overseas. Canadians, he said, resented some things, both in England and the United States.

 Job Pointed Out. 


“But,” he said, “resentment is not my job. Resentment never got me anywhere. I must realize that people are up against tremendous difficulties, and they do things that may irritate me. But my job now is to make America and England see America. I must try to make the old world understand the new world viewpoint. Above all, we must be Canadians. We must be ourselves.” 


A similar message was given to Canadians by Sir Phillip Gibbs, the war correspondent. Judging by the responses of Canadian authors it will not be their fault if this triple entente cordiale does not flourish.


Prof. McMeecham of Halifax, whose recent article “Canada a Vassal State” (to the United States) has caused much comment, eagerly abetted the formation of the Author’s Society. He declared the outstanding characteristics of the Canadians as a race was diffidence. There has been skepticism as to the existence of a French literature here, yet had not a French-Canadian poet been crowned by the French Academy? Again, had not Sam Slick founded the American school of humor and had not a Canadian woman (Sara Jeanette Duncan Cotes) written a real novel of affairs in the “Imperialist”?


The chief criticism of Professor McMeecham’s “Vassal State” article has come from French-Canadians, who point out that 3,000,000 French in Canada are entirely unaffected by American tastes and customs and form a great bulwark, as in the past, against American influence and aggression in Canada. 


Two Canadian universities have now established chairs in Canadian literature. Poetry has hitherto been Canada’s most distinctive achievement. Fiction is developing and now first attempts are being made in dramatic literature. A one act tragedy by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay is said to be a masterpiece. It is shortly to be produced at Hart House Theater, Toronto, one of the most exquisite “little theaters” that can be found anywhere in the world.

Victorian Comics

Oh! My Tooth!

copied from Wilhelm Busch's Tale of a Tooth

Humbug Hero, Some Episodes in the Life of Kit Carson Jr.

 Digging into the background of the stage actors who were also dime novel heroes can be fraught with difficulties. It was said of Texas Jack Omohundro that he had the name “Texas Jack” copyrighted to protect himself from the many impersonators who appropriated the name for money or fame. There were at least one half dozen obituaries of “Texas Jack’s” (including a notorious train robber) and just as many dead “DeadwoodDick’s.” “Kit Carson Jr.” was another name that was widely assumed. There was a real Kit Carson Jr., son of the famed scout, but he never appeared on the stage or in a dime novel romance. One “Kit Carson Jr.,” described as “a son of the old scout,” killed his father and mother-in-law in La Junta California in 1912 then mounted his horse and escaped through Bent Canon. This prompted a letter (25 Nov) to the Editor of Variety, part of which read:

“My name is and always was Kit Carson, Jr. I am the grandson of Kit Carson the frontiersman, and have abundance of proof in St. Fe, N.M. Have met seven presidents, King Edward, Queen Victoria, and have wined and dined with nobility. Now the point: Unscrupulous degenerates have introduced themselves as “Kit Carson, Jr.” If you ever meet them, put up 20 to 1 (make it 1000 to 1) that you can find Kit Carson, Jr. Just keep this letter as a reference.

Kit Carson, Jr.

Flat Rock Ind.

P.S.: Have never killed anyone; been a preacher in Oklahoma, not a bad man.

The actor “Kit Carson Jr.” had replaced “Texas Jack” in the Buffalo Bill Combination in 1875 and failed in a short-lived attempt to tour in his own melodrama in 1876. In 1877 Frank Starr published Samuel Stone Hall’s dime novel Kit Carson, Jr., the Crack Shot of the West. A Wild Life Romance by “Buckskin Sam.”  The cover featured a striking image of the stage “Kit Carson Jr.,” an actor whose real identity has been a source of puzzlement to writers ever since. E. M. Sanchez-Saavedra unearthed the name of the actor in a scrapbook at the Smithsonian (see HERE) which held an annotated photograph which was the obvious source for the dime novel cover. The annotation read:

“Jim Spleen, alias Kit Carson, Jr. of Baxter Springs, [Kansas]. Genl. Sherman told me he posed as the son of Kit Carson and tried to enter West Point through that deception – but could not pass examination – in grammar & figures.”

Buckskin Sam (he weighed 125 pounds)

Since Buckskin Sam had been employed as a Texas Ranger J. C. Dykes, author of an article titled Buckskin Sam, Ranger and Writer, searched the Texas Archives for the background to Kit Carson, Jr, the Crack Shot of the West.

“The Texas Archives reveal that Sam was a member of Captain Edward Burleson’s company of mounted rangers in 1860. Joseph Carson, age 26, was the Second Lieutenant of Burleson’s company, and while Sam makes “Kit Carson, Jr.” somewhat younger in the novel, it seems likely that Lt. Carson was the model for Sam’s hero.”

It seems that Jim Spleen’s image was attached to the novel Kit Carson Jr. because of his fame (he received good reviews for his portrayal) in the Buffalo Bill stage plays. But why would Frank Starr wait two years, long after Kit Jr. had left Buffalo Bill and failed on his own, to publish the dime novel?

Kit Carson Jr. was Buckskin Sam’s first novel and was described in his obituary in the Omaha Daily Bee 19 Feb 1886.

“… eventually Col. Prentiss Ingraham and Buffalo Bill befriended him, discovered that he had unusual facility for description, and advised him to write fiction based on his own personal experiences. So Sam turned in to a cheap publishing firm a story called “Kit Carson, Jr.” The manuscript was so crude that they could not use it as it was, but they discerned merit in it, and advised him to have it edited for them to read. He then bargained with a professional writer, an Oxford graduate, to lick the narrative into readable shape. This partnership lasted until Sam’s death.”

Jim Spleen, aka “Kit Carson Jr.,” a man born with the gift of gab, “whose eloquence charmed a crowd,” had his own story to tell (Batavia News 21 Nov 1878) during a visit to Paterson, New Jersey:

“At the depot he went into the baggage room, took off his broad brimmed hat, his buckskinned suit and his long haired wig, revealing under the masquerade a bright looking young man of the world, a shrewd canvasser. “You boys are fools,” he said to the depot folks, “to be slaving out your lives here for $40 or $60 a month. I tell you the people like to be humbugged. -- Nobody could sell this book till I took hold of it and passed myself off as “Kit Carson, Jr.,” and now I’m coining money. Last night I cleared $50 in Middletown, and tonight $35 in Paterson. I’m making big pay. Boys, there’s nothing like it. The people will pay well for being humbugged. Give up your railroad job and buy a wig, a broad brimmed hat and buckskin suit, and then take the agency for a frontier story book. You’ll get rich. Come, let’s have a drink!”

It's seems very likely that Junior's stage-show agents commissioned Frank Starr to supply a dime novel for their short-lived venture and Junior lived off the avails for the rest of his life. Soon after another article THE NEW HUMBUG, repeated the above story of the “dapper youth, who had taken this unique method of selling an unsalable work,” and ended: “The humbug referred to in the above was at the Potsdam fair and tried to lasso the flying machine.” On 1 October Junior was in Geneva where he lassoed delighted street Arabs and harangued a large crowd in front of his hotel, holding them “spellbound for three mortal hours” with topics ranging from scout life to the merits of the “greenback.”

“… taking his statements as true, he is the greatest traveler now living, although but 26 years of age. He scored without mercy the administrations of Grant and Hayes for mismanagement of Indian affairs, which has resulted in the loss of so many lives and so much treasure. This “scout” is a model temperance man, if we may believe him -- asserting that he never tasted strong drink, beer, wine, cider, tea or coffee -- never smoked tobacco in any form, nor ever played a game of cards, nor indulged in gambling of any kind. He denounced Mormonism, but held it to be respectable as compared with the practices of the Oneida community. The scout sold quite a large number of books containing an account of his romantic life and adventures.”

When Kit Carson Jr. appeared in Oswego with Dr. Redwing, a heavily muscled patent medicine salesman, he added to his ‘biography’ thus:

“Kit was born in Texas… was with Buffalo Bill for several years on the plains and in show business; was with General Custer in several fights… is a crack shot and last year went to Russia and took part with her sharpshooters in the Balkans… temperate, never drank a “taste” in all his life… He is a good talker and during his stay here will deliver lectures on the streets and sell books.”

On 22 Sept 1879 the Evening Auburnian reported that “the scout of the plains, who sometime since delivered street lectures in this city, was assaulted on a rail road train near Canajoharie. The Utica Herald said Carson and his wife Caroline W. Carson were on their way from Syracuse to Amsterdam, for sporting purposes:

“At Fort Plain three tramps boarded the train. One of them quite drunk came into the car and without provocation or cause, according to the affidavit of Kit Jr. walked up to him and struck him in the face twice, inflicting ugly wounds. While Kit was getting his revolver from his satchel the tramp struck Kit’s wife, Caroline W. Carson, in the face, fearfully bruising her. The fight at this time was quite exciting, the passengers all endeavoring to get a crack at the tramp. At this station the tramp and the Carson’s got off -- the former being placed in the hands of Officer Barrett. The tramp, who gave his name as Charles Phelps of Albany, was arraigned before Justice Charles W. wheeler on two charges of assault and battery. Mrs. Carson’s clothes were considerably torn and her face was very much bruised.”

Kit Carson Jr.’s last appearance was addressing a temperance meeting on 5 Jan 1880 at Talmadge Hall in New York City. Kit Carson Jr. “formerly attached to the Buffalo Bill combination,” died 5 March 1881, with his wife at his bedside. While staying at the Reed House in Chattanooga he was taken sick with smallpox and removed to the pest house. His age was given as thirty-five. Most newspaper accounts gave his birthplace as Texas, but none ever gave his true name, Jim Spleen, and what name, I wonder, was engraved on the flim-flam man’s tombstone in 1881?

Assassinations, Conspiracies and Secret Service Weekly

b

President Garfield Tribute 1881

 ASSASSINATIONS, CONSPIRACIES AND “SECRET SERVICE” WEEKLY

By E.M. Sanchez-Saavedra

Every once in a while, a contributor to popular culture will produce a work that may only be described as prophetic. A classic case is the accurate description of atomic weapons that appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in March 1944. Fearful that the top-secret Manhattan Project had been compromised (it had been – but that is another story) the FBI descended on editor John W. Campbell to investigate how author Cleve Cartmill (1908-1964) had obtained his technical information for “Deadline.” Eventually, Campbell and Cartmill convinced the Feds that all the scientific details had come from unclassified published technical journals. Earlier in the century, H.G. Wells had prognosticated in The World Set Free (1914) that nuclear fission could be harnessed to produce superweapons, but Cartmill outlined the nuts and bolts necessary for a practical application.

Since 1865 four sitting American presidents have been murdered, and one wounded, by assassins. Others have been the intended targets in botched attempts. With the exception of Abraham Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth, the gunmen belonged to no cabals, although conspiracy theorists have had years of fun trying to prove the existence of widespread plots. Guiteau, Czolgosz, Oswald and Hinckley proved to be what they seemed: unstable loners with a misshapen grievance and a hunger for notoriety.

Beginning in 1881, a wave of terrorism aimed at heads of state caused panic in Europe as self-proclaimed “Anarchists” and “Nihilists” attacked monarchs and presidents in Russia, France, Italy and Spain, bombed the Greenwich Observatory and triggered World War I by killing Austria’s heir-apparent. Anarchists were blamed for violence in American labor disputes, such as the bloody 1886 Haymarket Riots in Chicago.

Although Lincoln’s death was brought about by Confederate sympathizers and President James A. Garfield had been shot by a deranged office-seeker acting alone, by the mid-1890s many feared that America’s capitalistic government would become a target for anarchist violence. Increased immigration from eastern Europe bolstered a growing unease about a potential "Red Menace." Within this atmosphere, the appearance of a nickel weekly detective yarn dealing with an anarchist assassination plot against William McKinley was not a complete “shot in the dark.”

McKinley Assassination 1901

On December 7, 1900, issue number 98 of Secret Service: Old and Young King Brady, Detectives hit the newsstands. That week’s story was The Bradys in Washington; or, Working for the President, by “A New York Detective.” The lithographed colored cover shows a recognizable William McKinley recoiling from a knife-wielding thug as the two Bradys struggle to subdue the miscreant in front of the White House.

As dime novel detective stories go, The Bradys in Washington is one of the better ones, involving a conspiracy between a group of anarchists with Russian and Italian names (Ivan Novgorod and Picoli) and a gang of homegrown thieves (Pugsley, Yank Swipes, Fancy Fred and Dublin Dan), who plan to use the assassination as a distraction while they tunnel under the U.S. Treasury and clean it out. Of course the hired muscle are all Blacks. The two Bradys uncover the plot, telegraph a warning to the president, and hurry to Washington. They arrive in time to foil Novgorod's knife attack.

The author knew that Washington, D.C. is honeycombed with tunnels of all descriptions, ranging from covered waterways, to sewers, to secret passages connecting government buildings. Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, these passages have been accorded a high level of security. (One of the more original theories about the 1963 Kennedy assassination postulated that additional gunmen targeted the presidential motorcade from sewer gratings in Dallas. The fact that this was later proven impossible did nothing to diminish the idea’s appeal.) In the nickel weekly, the Bradys are hurrying the would-be assassin off to the hoosegow when the pavement disintegrates and the three men fall literally into the laps of the would-be Treasury thieves working in a subterranean passage. The criminals capture the detectives and succeed in stealing eighty gold bars.

Leon Czolgosz Mugshots

McKinley Memorial Stereos

After some thrilling escapes and recaptures on both sides of the Potomac, the Bradys are suspended over a well with a candle ablaze under the rope, so they might have time to agonize over their predicament. Through an athletic feat, Young King Brady manages to chew through the knots and the detectives escape, just in time to foil a second attempted assassination. During a military parade, they spot Ivan Novgorod about to hurl a dynamite bomb. Young Harry disarms him and Old King Brady throttles him until the troops arrive. Next, they recover the gold bars and land the entire gang behind bars.

President McKinley invites the pair to the White House and offers to reward them.

"Sir," answered Old King Brady, "we are pleased to know that we have been of service to a gentleman of your exalted position. We wish no reward except that which comes of a clear conscience in following the line of our duty…What we have done for you we would do just as cheerfully for the humblest citizen in the country."

The complete story may be read HERE

Lincoln Assassination Pictured by Albert Berghaus

Most of the Old King Brady novels were penned by Francis Worcester Doughty (1850-1917), who created the character. A good storyteller with a wide range of interests, he commenced his writing career in the 1870s, to supplement his income as a traveling salesman. In 1882, he became a full-time novelist, churning out dozens of serials and factual articles for Frank Tousey publications, such as Young Men of America, Boys of New York and Happy Days. These were reprinted in Tousey’s lines of nickel weeklies through the 1920s. He was an avid collector and student of coins, stamps, books, gemstones and archeological relics.

The character of Old King Brady first appeared in 1885 in Old King Brady the Sleuth Hound in Tousey’s New York Detective Library. Doughty wrote the bulk of Tousey’s Secret Service weekly himself, adding new stories to his Old King Brady tales from earlier weeklies. In these later tales, the detective is joined by Harry Brady (no relation) and the talented linguist and investigator, Alice Montgomery, to form the Brady Detective Bureau. Secret Service was one of Frank Tousey’s more popular weeklies, running 1,374 issues between 1899 and 1925. After issue 726 (1912) all stories are reprints of earlier numbers. Besides Doughty, Walter Fenton Mott, Lurana W. Sheldon and Luis Senarens wrote for this series.

Although the content of Secret Service is generally well written, cleverly plotted and includes some interesting factual tidbits, the series is marred by a blatant racism. A large proportion of the stories deal with stereotypical Chinese criminals, replete with tong wars, highbinders, opium dens, white slavery and smugglers of illegal immigrants. Others are set in the American southeast, and feature stock black river thugs, lazy field hands and the occasional Voodoo queen. In a number of adventures out west, Mexican “greasers” and skulking Indians are often the villains. Urban crooks tend to be suave sharpers or Bowery goons. Several of Brady’s foes are medical doctors.

Depicting the nation’s chief executive on a dime novel cover was fairly unusual at the time, but the truly shocking aspect of this tale would become apparent nine months later, as the real William McKinley lay dying from a real assassin’s bullet. The shooter, a Polish-American farm boy named Leon Frank Czolgosz (1873-1901) was, as might be suspected, emotionally disturbed. The unemployed factory worker had absorbed a hodgepodge of anarchistic and socialistic ideas from speeches by Emma Goldman and others, and became determined to stalk William McKinley and kill him. He had no personal animosity towards his victim and viewed him merely as a symbol. He followed the president to the Pan-American exposition in Buffalo, NY, and on September 6, 1901, joined a receiving line of well-wishers at the Temple of Music waiting to shake McKinley’s hand. Using a cheap revolver concealed in a handkerchief Czolgosz shot twice, mortally wounding his victim before the presidential guard detail wrestled him to the ground. Czolgosz was rushed to trial on September 23, a mere nine days after McKinley died of his wounds. Convicted in three days, the assassin died in the newfangled electric chair on October 29, 1901, refusing to express remorse.

As a direct result of this third successful presidential assassination, Congress belatedly charged the U.S. Secret Service with the duty of presidential protection. Ironically, a Secret Service contingent, some Buffalo detectives and an eleven-man army detail surrounded the President, yet were unable to spot Czolgosz as a threat until after he fired! (McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, habitually carried a loaded revolver. Yet during his third-party bid for the presidency in 1912, Roosevelt was shot while delivering a speech. Despite a bullet in his chest, he finished his address before seeking medical attention!)

President McKinley 1901

In the outpouring of rage and grief following McKinley’s murder, mass marketing flooded America with dignified and kitschy tributes to the fallen leader. Middle-class parlors displayed memorial stereographs and black-bordered portraits on the wall. A callous popular song, “White House Blues,” also known as “The McKinley Rag” endured for years in country music repertoires (See lyrics below.). In equally questionable taste, Thomas A. Edison, whose laboratory had developed the electric chair (partly to discredit rival George Westinghouse’s Alternating Current system), filmed a panoramic view of Auburn Prison plus a stark reenactment of Czolgosz’ execution. It may be viewed HERE

White House Blues

McKinley hollered, McKinley squalled

Doc said to McKinley, "I can't find that ball",

From Buffalo to Washington

Roosevelt in the White House, he's doing his best

McKinley in the graveyard, he's taking his rest

He's gone a long, long time 

Hush up, little children, now don't you fret

You'll draw a pension at your papa's death

From Buffalo to Washington 

Roosevelt in the White House drinking out of a silver cup

McKinley in the graveyard, he'll never wake up 

He's gone a long, long time 

Ain't but one thing that grieves my mind

That is to die and leave my poor wife behind

I'm gone a long, long time 

Look here, little children, (don't) waste your breath

You'll draw a pension at your papa's death

From Buffalo to Washington 

Standing at the station just looking at the time

See if I could run it by half past nine

From Buffalo to Washington 

Came the train, she's just on time

She run a thousand miles from eight o'clock 'till nine,

From Buffalo to Washington 

Yonder comes the train, she's coming down the line

Blowing in every station Mr. McKinley's a-dying

It's hard times, hard times 

Look-it here you rascal, you see what you've done

You've shot my husband with that Iver-Johnson gun

Carry me back to Washington 

Doc's on the horse, he tore down his rein

Said to that horse, "You've got to outrun this train"

From Buffalo to Washington 

Doc come a-running, takes off his specs

Said "Mr McKinley, better pass in your checks

You're bound to die, bound to die"

A 1926 recording of the song by Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers may be heard HERE

Life 1963

Francis Worcester Doughty