H.L. Mencken(1880-1956) and his fellow journalist at the Baltimore Sun, Robert Preston Harriss(1902-1989) in a 1949 photograph taken by photographer John T. “Jack” Engeman. R.P. Harriss began his career as Mencken’s assistant in the 1920s and remained with the Sun for the next six decades. (Henry Louis Mencken and Robert Preston Harriss, 1949, Jack Engeman, Slide Collection – slide_engeman-00, MdHS.)

Sixty-eight years ago today, Baltimore journalist, Henry Louis Mencken turned 65. In his diary entry for that day, he took the opportunity to ruminate on his life up that point:

“My sixty-fifth birthday, and I am, as usual, in the midst of severe hay-fever. I began taking vaccines from Dr. Leslie N. Gay last Winter, but they have failed completely, and I have been very uncomfortable. Nevertheless, I have managed to keep at my desk, and my record of my magazine days has made some progress since I resumed it in the early Summer…

When I was 40 I had no expectation whatever of reaching 65, and in fact assumed as a matter of course that I’d be dead by then. My father died at 44 and my grandfather Mencken at 63. Perhaps I have lasted so long because my health has always been shaky: my constant aches and malaises have forced me to give some heed to my carcass. To be sure, I have always worked too hard, and taken too little exercise; moreover, I have eaten too much and maybe also drunk too much; but on the whole I have been careful. If I live long enough I hope to add an appendix to my magazine chronicle giving my medical history…

I often wonder, looking back over my years, whether I have got out of myself all that was there. In all probability I have. I got a bad start and have vacillated more than once between two careers… Meanwhile I am getting my records in order, and even if I die tomorrow they will be in pretty fair shape. There is, indeed, probably no trace in history of a writer who left more careful accounts of himself and his contemporaries. I have tried hard to tell the truth. At bottom, this is probably subjectively impossible, but I have at least made the effort.”(1)

Mencken did indeed leave a careful account of himself, bestowing to posterity his vast array of professional writings, along with his beloved home, a diary, his personal collection of books, and a wealth of correspondence. Being one of the most celebrated journalists of his time, he also left his familiar visage well documented on film. And while there are hundreds of black and white photographs of Mencken, there may only be a handful of color images of the famed Baltimorean.

Who, where, and when? H.L. Mencken and unidentified men.
(Henry Louis Mencken and unknown men, not dated, John T. “Jack” Engeman, slide collection, slide_engeman-0004, MdHS.)

In early August, while examining a partially inventoried collection of over 1000 slides that had been sitting long untouched in the photograph storage room, the library staff came across the color 35mm transparencies of H.L. Mencken featured here. There is scant information available on the collection other than that most of the images were snapped by John T. “Jack” Engeman (1900-1984) a Baltimore photographer who was known for his photographs of the architecture and cultural life of the city. Other than that, most of the slides have very little additional identification, organized very basically by subject. Of the eight photographs of Mencken found, only the image of R.P. Harriss and Mencken above is identified. The remaining slides are simply organized under the heading “Mencken.” The fact that some of the photos are extremely blurry does not help in the identification process either.

We have a theory of where and when these photos were taken, and who some of the people in them are, but we’d like to poll our readership. If anyone has any insights on the photos, please add your ideas to the Comments section at the bottom of the post. In the meantime, just enjoy some rarely seen photographs – both in color and black and white – of the Sage of Baltimore. (Damon Talbot)

Click on the slideshow below to see more color images of Mencken taken by Jack Engeman as well as some rarely seen black and white images of  him from the Maryland Historical Society’s collection.(scroll over the image for captions) 

H.L. Mencken with unidentified woman and girl

Henry Louis Mencken with unknown woman and girl, not dated, John T. "Jack" Engeman, slide collection, slide_engeman-0, MdHS.

H.L. Mencken greeting unidentified men

Henry Louis Mencken greeting unknown men, not dated, John T. "Jack" Engeman, slide collection, slide_engeman-0007, MdHS.

H.L. Mencken and unidentified men

Henry Louis Mencken and unknown men, not dated, John T. "Jack" Engeman, slide collection, slide_engeman-0004, MdHS.

H.L. Mencken and two unidentified men

Henry Louis Mencken and two unknown men, not dated, John T. "Jack" Engeman, slide collection, slide_engeman-0003, MdHS.

An x-ray photograph of the head of H.L. Mencken taken by roentgenologist Dr. Max Khan in 1921.

X-ray photograph of head of Mencken, 1921, PVF, z24.2556, MdHS.

The following two photographs of Mencken were taken by longtime Baltimore Sun photographer Robert Kniesche during an undated photo shoot. Kniesche took dozens of photographs of Mencken over the course of his career.

Henry Louis Mencken, not dated, Robert Kniesche, PP79.1812, MdHS.

Mencken sitting for his bust.

H.L. Mencken, not dated, Robert Kniesche, PP79.1828, MdHS.

Aside from the anniversary of Mencken’s birthday, the editors of underbelly have another reason to celebrate – tomorrow is the one year anniversary of this blog. On September 13 of last year our first post appeared, Maryland on Film@mdhs, promoting an event on October 13 exhibiting eight silent films from our collection. Since then we’ve been posting new content every Thursday, from tales of cockfighting in Baltimore County to the history of  Hampden’s plumbing. Thanks to all of the readers of the blog for tuning in.

Footnotes:

Fecher, Charles A., ed., The Diary of H.L. Mencken (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Publisher, 1989), 380-382.

Sources and further reading:

Arnett, Earl, “Photographer retains zest” The Baltimore Sun, August 21, 1974.

Fecher, Charles A., ed., The Diary of H.L. Mencken (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Publisher, 1989)

Goldberg, Isaac, The Man Mencken: A Biographical and Critical Study (New York: Simon & Shuster, Inc., 1925)

“John Engeman, photographer, dies,” The Baltimore Sun, August 12, 1984.

Obituary, “R.P. Harriss, Journalist, 87,” The New York Times, September 29, 1989.

Robert Kniesche at work.
Baltimore Colts vs Detroit Lions, October 2, 1961, Associated Press, PP79.2376, MdHS.(reference photo – copyright owned by the Associated Press)

When longtime Baltimore Sun photographer Robert Kniesche died in 1976, a colleague praised him as “one of the best cameramen The Baltimore Sun ever knew.”(1) Although far more obscure than his famous contemporary at The Sun, Aubrey Bodine, Kniesche left behind a body of photographic work that stands among the best produced by a Marylander photographer.

Born in Baltimore in 1906, Kniesche recognized his calling early on, and he left Baltimore Polytechnic Institute without graduating to pursue a career as a photographer. In the mid 1920s, The Baltimore Sun hired Kniesche on as a news photographer, his first stint with the newspaper. Kniesche joined the staff a few years after Bodine, who at the time was a commercial photographer for the paper.

Kniesche and Bodine became fast friends and often traveled around Baltimore together on picture-taking excursions. Together, they snapped photographs of many of the same subjects that would bring both of them acclaim later in their careers: images of the city at night, the harbor, and Baltimore industry. They were also drinking buddies. The pair, joined by Raleigh Carroll, a Sun reporter and Bodine’s housemate at the time, and another Sun photographer Leigh Sanders, lived “high and well on their $40 and $50-a-week salaries”(2) In the prohibition years of the 1920s, they frequented the various speakeasies in the area around Park Avenue where Bodine lived. Every year they would attend the annual Bal des Arts, a wild, costume themed party held by Charcoal Club, Baltimore’s historic art club established in 1885. According to one Bodine biographer, “a day or two before the ball they would get a supply of gin from the busy bootleggers. Bodine and Kniesche carried their gin and juice in two suitcases. They would meet in the basement of the Charcoal Club on Preston street to apply their makeup and start ‘to get a package on,’ an expression in those days for getting drunk.”(3) Over the course of their long careers, the two often found themselves in friendly competition in local and national photograph competitions.

Kniesche left The Baltimore Sun for a brief period in the late 1920s to work for the Chicago Tribune. He returned though in 1930, and aside from four years spent in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a pilot and flying instructor, where he attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander, Kniesche remained with the Baltimore paper for the next 40 years. In 1947 Kniesche organized the photographic department of the Sun owned WMAR-TV, the first television station in Maryland, and shot the first local films shown on the station. When he retired in 1971, he had been the chief of photography for The Sun’s morning, evening, and Sunday staffs for over two decades.

In 1957, the Press Photographer’s Association of Baltimore awarded Kniesche “Best in Show” for this photograph of the Ruxton train station. It was his second win in a row. The organization praised Kniesche in it’s annual publication: “Bob has always been known for his excellent aerial pictures but we’ll guarantee he rates tops in making Pictorial pictures as well.”
“Ruxton Station” (Whistle Stop, U.S.A.), 1957, Robert Kniesche, pp79.1466, z24-00611, MdHS.

As a photojournalist for Maryland’s leading newspaper, Kniesche documented virtually everything newsworthy, from presidential inaugurations, National Football League games, and aerial shows, to the opening of the oyster dredging season and city architecture. One of his early assignments after returning to Baltimore from Chicago in 1930 was to photograph the aftermath of Maryland’s first lynching since 1911.  On December 4, 1931, Matthew Williams, an African-American man accused of murdering his white employer, was lynched on the front lawn of the Salisbury courthouse on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Kniesche was with a group of reporters and photographers sent by The Sun to cover the event. In his memoirs, H.L. Mencken, Kniesche’s co-worker at the newspaper, wrote that, “all the reporters who were sent to Salisbury from the home office were threatened with violence and one of the photographers, Robert F. Kniesche, was saved from rough handling, and maybe even murder, only by escaping in an airship.”(4) Kniesche would go on to photograph the famed journalist on many occasions over the following decades.

Like Bodine, Kniesche was an artist and master craftsman. One reviewer noted that he seemed “to have made a fetish of focus, [delighting] in knife-edge precision.”(5) Both photographers had an affinity for certain subject matter and many photos that Kniesche took could be easily be mistaken for Bodine’s and vice versa: duck hunters silhouetted against an early morning sky; blast furnaces spewing out flames at Bethlehem steel; oyster tongers on the Chesapeake. Kniesche was particularly renowned for his aerial photographs and photographic essays. One award winning series of his photographs that accompanied a 1949 series of Sun articles entitled “Maryland’s Shame the Worst Story the Sunpapers ever told” helped expose the deplorable conditions then rampant in Maryland’s state mental health facilities to the general public.

Kniesche was also very fond of animals and images of baboons, tigers, monkeys, and especially house cats, can be found throughout the collection of his photographs at the Maryland Historical Society. In his obituary, The Sun noted that Kniesche’s images of animals were executed “with an often sensitive and humorous approach to their expressions, habits postures and activities.”(6) He often posed his subjects in amusing positions accompanied by a humorous caption.

Kittens…in jars.
Kittens in Jars, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79(unprocessed), MdHS.

His photographs won many awards and were exhibited both nationally and abroad as far away as Helsinki, Finland. His work was shown in cultural institutions throughout Maryland, including the Peale Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Kniesche rarely sold any of his prints, preferring to give them away to friends

The Maryland Historical Society has over 7,000 negatives and prints that Kniesche took over the course of his career. Most of these are part of  PP79, the Robert Kniesche Photograph Collection. At this point, 5,000 of the film and glass plate negatives are available to the public. The remaining 2,000 prints  are currently being processed and should be available by the fall of 2013.(Damon Talbot)

Click on the slideshow below to see more of Robert Kniesche’s photographs.

Packed house at Memorial Stadium for the 1958 All-Star Game.

All star game, Memorial Stadium, July 8, 1958, Robert Kniesche, PP79.1314, MdHS.

Kniesche took a number of photographs of “the Block,” the stretch of Baltimore Street which has served as the city’s adult entertainment center for over a century, documenting the various strip clubs, burlesque shows, penny arcades, and tattoo parlors.

Tattoo parlor on the Block, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP567.2, MdHS.

Musical entertainment on the Block.

Band in a club on the Block, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79.567.3, MdHS.

The Crown Cork and Seal Company was founded in 1892 by William Painter soon after he patented the ‘crown cork,’ the first bottle cap. Located on the corner of Eastern Ave and Kresson Street in Canton, the company was producing half the world’s supply of bottle caps by the 1930s. Kniesche captured this image of a fire that began when two storage sheds containing 3000 bales of raw cork ignited.

Fire at Crown Cork and Seal, Baltimore, November 8, 1930, Robert Kniesche, PP79.17, MdHS

“Water Ballet on Ann Street” - Kniesche won 1st Honor award in the Peale Museum’s 19th Annual Photo show for this 1960 photograph.

“Water Ballet on Ann Street,” Robert Kniesche, 1960, MC4028, MdHS.

Bethlehem Sparrows Point Shipyard in 1940.

Bethlehem shipbuilding, Sparrows Point, April 7, 1940, Robert Kniesche, PP79.324, MdHS.

In May of 1956 Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus’ last outdoor show in Baltimore under canvas tent was held at Herring Run Park. The show featured such performers as Glenn Pulley, the “Thin Man,” who weighed 62 pounds; Ella Mills, the 586-pound "Fat Lady" from Wisconsin; Harry Doll, a 30-inch, 38-pound 44-year-old who was known as the "World's Smallest Man.", a “Human Corkscrew,” and of course, clowns.

Clown, Barnum & Bailey Circus, last outdoor show in Baltimore, May 1956, Robert Kniesche, PP79.390.1, MdHS.

"Night Brakeman," 1957.

Brakeman, 1957, Robert Kniesche, PP79.1186, MdHS.

Alongside his pictorial and journalistic work, Kniesche produced a large number of abstract images, often marked by high contrast, such as this 1970 shot of a ship’s gangway taken through a fish-eye lens.

Fisheye on ship gangway, April 13, 1970, Robert Kniesche, PP79.1398, MdHS

Kniesche titled this image of an unusual piggyback ride, "Don't you hit him."

"Don't You Hit Him," undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79.2419, MdHS.

H. L. Mencken having his bust done.

H.L. Mencken, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79-1828, Negative#32, MdHS.

Like his fellow Baltimore Sun photographer Aubrey Bodine, one of Kniesche’s favorite photographic subjects was the sea, and he produced some of his most picturesque work when he turned his camera to the water. One admirer described a Kniesche photograph of log canoes on the Chesapeake as “one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen – and much more beautiful than anything in the Louvre in Paris.”

Oyster Boats, undated, Robert Kniesche, PP79.2583, MdHS.

Footnotes:

(1) “Kniesche, Sun Photographer, obituary,” The Baltimore Sun, July 10, 1976.

(2) Williams, Harold A., Bodine: A Legend in His Time (Baltimore: Bodine & Associates, Inc., 1971) p. 29.

(3) Ibid., p. 28.

(4) Mencken, H.L., edited by Fred Hobson, Vincent Fitzpatrick, Bradford Jacobs, Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work: a memoir (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press., 1994) p. 212.

(5) Johnson, Lincoln F., “Weekend by day: Kniesche photo exhibit at historical society,” The Baltimore Sun, June 30, 1978.

(6) “Kniesche, Sun Photographer, obituary,” The Baltimore Sun, July 10, 1976

Sources and Further Reading:

An American Tragedy, Underbelly

Charcoal Club Records, MS 1792

Crown History

Crown Cork and Seal Photograph Collection, PP33

Darkroom – Robert Kniesche: A Life Devoted to Baltimore and Photography

Johnson, Lincoln F., “Weekend by day: Kniesche photo exhibit at historical society,” The Baltimore Sun, June 30, 1978.

“Kniesche, Sun Photographer, obituary,” The Baltimore Sun, July 10, 1976.

Matt Williams, Archives of Maryland (Biographical Series)

Mencken, H.L., edited by Fred Hobson, Vincent Fitzpatrick, Bradford Jacobs, Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work: a memoir (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press., 1994)

Rasmussen, Fred, “Remember when circus shows took place under canvas Finale: the last time the big top was raised was in Baltimore was May 22, 1956 in Herring Run Park,” The Baltimore Sun, March 22, 1998.

Robert Kniesche Photograph Collection, PP79

Schoberlein, Robert W., “Maryland’s Shame”: Photojournalism and Mental Health Reform, 1935-1949,” Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 98, Spring 2003.

Williams, Harold A., Bodine: A Legend in His Time (Baltimore: Bodine & Associates, Inc., 1971)

An image of the remaining batches of Soper Papers from the sub-basement, and the caption reading “Don’t catalog until 3/88.” The 48E number was added during my preliminary survey.

After conducting a quick search of our website I figured out where I had seen the name before. Judge Morris Soper was identified by Baltimore lawyer, author, and professor Larry Gibson when he was helping us identify individuals from photographs of Morgan State University found in the Paul Henderson Collection in 2011. Soper had served as Chairman of Morgan’s Board of Directors for many years, so it was not surprising to find him captured in the photo below.(1) This got me even more curious. Who exactly was Soper? Why was this collection here? Why had it been gathering dust for so many years?

Morgan State’s Board of Trustees meeting with Governor McKeldin ca. 1950. Morris Soper is standing to the right of McKeldin next to Carl Murphy, the owner/editor of The Afro newspaper. Paul Henderson Photo Collection, MdHS, HEN.00.B1-073.

Who Was Morris A. Soper?

Morris Ames Soper’s (1873-1963) judicial service spanned more than a half-century. After being educated in the city schools of Baltimore in the late 19th century, he attended Johns Hopkins University and then went on to law school at the University of Maryland. He was admitted to the Maryland State Bar in 1895 and began practicing law in Baltimore. In 1898 Soper was appointed Assistant State’s Attorney for Baltimore City and was promoted to Assistant United States Attorney for the State of Maryland in 1900.

In 1912 Soper briefly served as president of the Baltimore City Police Board before leaving in an unsuccessful  election bid as a GOP candidate for Attorney General of Maryland. He quickly rebounded from his defeat and was appointed Chief Judge of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City. In 1923 President Harding appointed Soper to the Federal bench where he served as a District Judge, and by 1931 President Hoover had elevated him to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals representing Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maryland in the Fourth Circuit. Though he was based in Richmond, Soper kept an office  in Baltimore. Judge Soper held this position for 24 years until he entered pseudo-retirement in 1955.(2)

In his many years as a judge, Soper dealt with an enormous number of cases involving the Eighteenth Amendment, which established prohibition. During the Prohibition Era he padlocked over 165 Maryland buildings for violations of the Volstead Act. This came as little surprise as Soper had previously served as attorney for the Baltimore Reform League and was counsel for the Society for the Suppression of Vice earlier in the decade.(3) While serving on the Fourth Circuit, Soper made many rulings on tax cases, labor relations disputes, interstate commerce cases, and cases originating from the Federal Trade Commission and the Security Exchange Commission.

A pencil sketch of Morris A. Soper (1873-1963) by Stirling Hill. Morris A. Soper Papers (MS3121),Box 93E, Maryland Historical Society.

Most notably, Soper worked towards full equality for African-Americans. He viewed equality as “not only a matter of law, but a matter of conscience.” As early as 1937, Soper—from his position as Chairman of the State Commission on Higher Education for Negroes—was urging the Maryland legislature to admit African-Americans to the University of Maryland graduate departments. National attention was focused on Soper when he decided many of the early school desegregation cases that reached the Federal Courts in the wake of Brown vs the Board of Education in 1954. In 1955 Soper handed down the decision that required the University of North Carolina to admit three African-American students into its undergraduate college. The following year he wrote majority opinions on racial integration in Virginia public schools. Judge Soper served for over 30 years on the Board of Trustees at Morgan State College, and was chairman for much of the latter half of his tenure. He is credited as being instrumental in transforming the institution from a private college to a state supported institution.

His last act from the bench was striking down the barriers preventing a young African-American named Henry Gantt from attending the school of architecture at Clemson University. Less than two months later, two days after his 90th birthday, Judge Soper passed away after undergoing minor surgery at Union Memorial Hospital. Among the group of distinguished honorary pallbearers were Governor McKeldin and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Where did this Collection Come From?

As Judge Soper’s prominence became apparent to me, I quickly made the decision to put this collection at the top of the processing queue. I found some answers about the collections provenance in A Guide to the Preservation of Federal Judges’ Papers published by the Federal Judicial History Office at the Federal Judicial Center in 2009. I was surprised to read that:

“Neither federal statute nor the policies of the Judicial Conference of the United States make any provision for the preservation of federal judges’ papers. Judges’ staffs or the clerks of court cannot determine where the papers go, and the National Archives cannot accept the collections as part of the records of the courts. Nor are court funds available for the preservation of judges’ papers, and the federal records centers do not provide temporary storage of judges’ chambers papers…”

Basically, as is the case with the Soper Papers, the judge’s heirs often end up with the collection of papers, and if the collection isn’t thrown out (yes, this often happens), they often come to local libraries or historical societies.

When the Soper Papers were deeded to MdHS, they came with a 25-year restriction (from the date of his passing), hence the “do not catalog until 1988.” A quarter of a century is a long time for a collection to be forgotten about in a basement. Once it had already sat around for 25 years (1963-1988), it made it easy for it to sit another 25 years on top of that.  A combination of the restriction, the location where it was stored, the enormous physical size of the collection, and staff turnover, most likely dissuaded previous archivists from placing the task of processing the papers high on their queues. Being attracted to the bigger, dirtier jobs, and seeing the obvious importance of the subject matter, I was thrilled.

The Pre-processing Survey

The first step was literally schlepping the collection up a treacherous flight of stairs from the basement, and then to the library workroom on the second floor. Because sweaty librarians tend to gross patrons out, I was lucky to have volunteer Tom Pineo to help with the task.

MdHS volunteer Tom Pineo taking a breather in front of the Soper Papers. Photo by Damon Talbot

Due to the enormity of the collection and limited workroom space, we’re forced to work in batches, bringing up a few dozen boxes at a time. The next step in getting a handle on a collection of this magnitude is to conduct a pre-processing survey. This is an essential step in establishing the physical and intellectual scope of the collection before you can begin the processing, or arrangement of the papers. The more thorough and complete this survey is, the easier the collection is to process.

Because staff hours are precious (we have 6,000 patron requests a year!), and we have competing responsibilities, I needed to come up with the most efficient way to make this collection available to the public. In archival lingo, the method I have applied is “More Product, Less Process,” or MPLP for short. Though I would love to disappear with this collection into the library’s underbelly for ten years, and emerge triumphantly with an item-level description of 300 perfectly preserved boxes, it isn’t reality. I needed a common sense approach and a little bit of help. So my plan is to go through the collection somewhat quickly, box by box, resisting temptation to process, while I inventory. This inventory consists of detailed notes about subjects, date ranges, notable individuals, and court case files in each box. At the same time it includes  preservation notes for the processors, supply estimates, and the intellectual arrangement as  each box gets grouped into its appropriate  series.(4)

Once I get the approximately 300 boxes described, the processing plan can be implemented. At that point, the help of three graduate interns (pursuing library, archive, or history careers) will be enlisted. These interns will then use the survey and some guidance to give the collection some TLC. They will rehouse the papers in acid free folders, consistently label all the folders and boxes, and comb through the collection in finer detail than my initial survey. In the meantime, I will use my survey as a box level inventory which will  be placed in our catalog and made accessible to researchers. Though they may not be able to easily request the exact document they want, they can probably narrow it down to three or four boxes. This way the collection will be quickly accessible, while being processed to the folder level in the meantime. The main logistical problem with this method is that overstuffed boxes may expand into several boxes. Though physical rearrangement of the papers will be kept to a minimum, there are already several instances where material from one box needs to be separated.(5)

At this point I have surveyed the first 120 boxes and many interesting threads and subjects have already emerged. Below I have listed some of the people and subjects that have already made appearances in the collection. (Quick teaser- notable correspondence with Thurgood Marshall, H.L. Mencken, and my favorite Charles Ponzi!) In the coming months stay tuned for more intriguing stories brought to life by this collection. A box level inventory  to the Morris Ames Soper Papers (MS 3121), should be available to the public by late summer. (Eben Dennis)

Subjects

People -W. Calvin Chestnutt, August Chissell, Harry S. Cummings, Samuel K. Dennis, Der Doo, Armistead M. Dobie, Leroy Benjamin Frasier Jr, Phillips Lee Goldsborough, Clement Haynesworth, Louise Kerr Hines, Dwight Oliver Wendell Holmes, Howard Jackson, Robert F. Kennedy, Linwood Koger, William Preston Lane, Theodore McKeldin, Thurgood Marshall, H.L. Mencken, Clarence W. Miles, Carl Murphy, Donald Gaines Murray, Harry W. Nice, Emory Niles, Elliott Northcott, Sidney Nyburg, Herbert R. O’Conor, John J. Parker, Orie L. Phillips, Charles Ponzi, James H. Preston, George L. Radcliffe, Albert Ritchie, Simon E. Sobeloff, John O. Spencer, Roszel Thomsen, Millard E. Tydings, Arthur T. Vanderbilt.

Corporate names- American Bar Association, American Sugar Refining Corporation, Baltimore Bar Association, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Baltimore Police Department, Baltimore Trust Company, Commission on Higher Education of Negroes in the State of Maryland, Druid Ridge Cemetery Company, Goucher College, Loudon Park Cemetary, Maryland State Bar Association, Morgan State University, Pennsylvania Railroad, Provident Hospital, State Commission on Higher Education for Negroes, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Wheeling Steel Corporation.

Topics- Civil Rights, Criminal Law, Criminal justice, Interstate Commerce, NAACP vs Harrison, Prohibition, School Desegregation, Steamship accidents, Volstead Act.

Footnotes:

(1) Morgan State even named their library in his honor in 1939.

(2) President Eisenhower allowed Soper to remain serving the courts “from time to time,” which he did until two months from his death at the age of 90 in 1963.

(3) Stay tuned for a future post about this very subject centering around some fascinating correspondence between Soper and H.L. Mencken

(4) A series basically divides the collection into large chunks or groups, similar to the chapters in a book. In the case of the Soper collection there will probably be 3 or 4 series including correspondence (chronological), chamber papers or case files, and subject files (A-Z).

(5) An important principle of archival theory is original order. The collection should reflect the order it was kept in before it came to an archive. In the case of the Soper papers, the material within boxes will be kept in order, but boxes next to each other on the shelf had no rhyme or reason. Occassionally boxes appear to have been arbitrarily combined, in which case effort will be made to place them back in their original context.

]]> http://www.mdhs.org/underbelly/2013/06/06/morris-a-soper-papers-coming-soon-or-25-years-late/feed/ 1 http://www.mdhs.org/underbelly/2013/01/10/the-death-of-sport/ http://www.mdhs.org/underbelly/2013/01/10/the-death-of-sport/#comments Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:38:53 +0000 mdhslibrary http://mdhslibrary.wordpress.com/?p=975 Among the many mysterious photographs in MdHS’s collections, two of an elephant stand out as particularly unsettling. Buried in the Subject Vertical File, an artificial collection that was compiled throughout the years, in the Photographs and Prints room is a folder labeled “Animals–Elephant–1898–Hanging.” In this folder rests two tattered and faded turn-of-the-century prints of an elephant being hanged. (They’re pretty disturbing, so we’ve saved the more disturbing of the two for the end of this post. Scroll to the bottom at your own discretion.) We’ve long wondered what the two photographs could possibly represent. Who would hang an elephant? Why hang an elephant as a public spectacle? And what would the Humane Society, which had been operating in the United States since 1866, have to say about this?

Mysterious photo no. 1. Scroll to the end of the story to see no. 2. SVF Animals Elephant Hanging, 1900,  no. 1, MdHS.

One persistent rumor floating around the library goes that the elephant was hanged to death as punishment for killing or harming a handler. Noted skeptic H.L. Mencken, then a rookie journalist writing for The Baltimore Herald, covered the event, which as it turns out actually took place on June 7, 1900.* Mencken unfortunately adds to our confusion in his memoir, Newspaper Days 1899-1906, where he wrote offhandedly about the episode in a passage on the tenacity of press agents:

“The [incident] I remember best was the hanging of a rogue elephant, for I was assigned to cover it. This elephant, we were informed, had become so ornery that he could be endured no longer, and it was necessary to put him to death. Ordinarily he would be shot, but Bostock [the elephant's owner and well-known animal showman], as a patriotic and law-abiding Englishman, preferred hanging, and would serve as the executioner himself.” (Newspaper Days 1899-1906 [1941] 33-34.)

Frank C. Bostock, the “Animal King.” Image taken from eBay. This tag sold for nearly $400!

In part Mencken’s memories were accurate. Frank Bostock, the owner of Bostock’s Zoo or Wild Animal Show as it was alternately known, was an Englishman and he did in fact oversee Sport’s hanging. The rest of Mencken’s memories, undoubtedly jumbled over time, do not align with the facts.

Part of the confusion can be explained by the fact that, as disturbing as it sounds, there were actual punitive elephant executions in the early twentieth century. Topsy the elephant was electrocuted to death in 1903 for allegedly killing three men—one of them a severely abusive trainer who reportedly fed him a lit cigarette. Thomas Edison even filmed Topsy’s gruesome execution for posterity. The fact that electricity and moving pictures were relatively new and novel inventions can only partially explain why Edison would have filmed this horror. In 1916 Mary the elephant was hanged for allegedly killing her trainer. The heavily doctored photo evidence of this murder pales in comparison to the photos of poor Sport.

After searching through microfilm of Baltimore’s major newspapers at both the H. Furlong Baldwin and Enoch Pratt libraries, the mystery of the photos is now solved and it’s unlike anything I could have expected. The truth of Sport’s sad tale is as follows.

In 1900 when crowds still got excited about world fairs and expositions, Frank Bostock, internationally known as a top animal trainer in Paris, London, New York, and Chicago, was transporting his Wild Animal Show from New York to Baltimore. Bostock, known as “the Animal King,” had recently started a zoo at the old Cyclorama building at Maryland and West Mount Royal Avenues, now the site of University of Baltimore’s Gordon Plaza. (Baltimoreans today also know this as the plaza where the Edgar Allan Poe statue sits.) The Cyclorama building once housed a giant painting of the Battle of Gettysburg, but by the 1880s visitation slowed and the art was removed. Before Bostock took over, the building served as a roller rink, a bike riding school, and as a venue for evangelical revivals.

The only known photo of the Cyclorama which housed among other things Bostock’s Zoo until it burned down in January 1901. Unknown photographer, Sunday Sun Magazine, April 18, 1965.

“Bostock’s Zoo would not have been anything like what we think of today as a public zoological garden,” says Dr. Nigel Rothfels, author of Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo. Though many of his animals were trained, most were simply stored in cages as they would have been in circus menageries at the time. Bostock was also involved in the Elks’ Exposition located at North and Greenmount Avenues. The Elks planned to open their attraction in June. It was to include a veritable greatest hits of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Barnum’s Circus, an exact reproduction of the Chicago World Fair Midway, and Bostock’s Wild Animal Show which replaced Hagenbeck’s Zoo in the Baltmore midway.

In mid-May 1900, on a train bound for Baltimore, somewhere in New Jersey, two of Bostock’s elephants, Jolly and Sport, began to roughhouse. By all accounts this wasn’t unusual for the two pachyderm friends, but on this day and on this train there were grave consequences. Sport backed into the door of his boxcar, which gave way to his considerable weight, and was ejected from the moving train. According to The Sun, “He emitted a terrible scream that drowned the locomotive whistle and the clatter of the train and startled the brakemen into instant activity.” His spine irreparably damaged and unable to get up on his own, Sport was lifted by a derrick back onto the train to continue his trip to Baltimore.

Once at his destination, veterinarian Dr. Robert Ward examined Sport and advised ending the animal’s life as the most humane option. The recommendation opened a debate on methods. A precision rifle shot to the brain was ruled out as too risky in the case of a miss. Poison was deemed too dangerous as some believed elephants could go violently out of control, harming or even killing those nearby. The final choice came down to hanging by rope or electrocution, the latter ruled out at the last minute for unspecified reasons. Most accounts portray Bostock and his staff as highly distraught over the loss of Sport and firmly in favor of hanging as the least horrific form of execution. He even took care to consult with the local Humane Society who agreed that hanging was the most merciful way to end Sport’s suffering.

“The Hanging of Sport” by Tom Barg, The Baltimore News, June 8, 1900, page 12.

In a strange twist of fate, further misfortune beset Bostock’s enterprise when Jolly mysteriously dropped dead the day before the hanging. According to his handlers, Jolly, a seventeen-year-old Indian elephant had been very depressed since his friend Sport’s accident. On Tuesday evening Jolly was given half a gallon of rye whiskey, on Bostock’s orders, in an effort to lift his spirits and the following morning died within minutes of his daily exercise routine. Heart failure was the diagnosis.

When the day arrived to end Sport’s suffering, Baltimore newsmen flexed their typewriters. “Misfortune of elephantine proportions” began the account in The Baltimore American. The Baltimore News led the morning with the least accurate headline on the matter, “To Be Electrocuted.” The Herald‘s cub reporter Henry Mencken went on in true tabloid style, ”Like a common murderer, James W. Sport, the Asiatic elephant of the Bostock Midway Carnival Company, was hanged… at the Bolton freight yards of the Northern Central Railway, where he had been incarcerated since his condemnation.”

Accounts differ on the extent to which Sport suffered. The Baltimore American reports that he went quietly, “…if [Sport] felt any pain after the first tightening of the fatal noose, it was not discernible.” But The Sun and Herald told of how he “trumpeted wildly” and “struck dismay to the hearts of those about him.” Most agree that he was gone within nine minutes, hanged from a freight yard derrick able to support his two tons of girth. An estimated two thousand spectators gathered for the hanging, some on rooftops. At first authorities attempted to hold the crowds back, but the Bolton Street yards proved too porous. Despite Mencken’s retelling in his memoir, there seems no proof that Bostock or any promoter touted the hanging beforehand. No tickets were or could have been sold given the freight yard venue and it seems unlikely that it was a stunt to promote Bostock’s business, already operating in the confines of the wildly popular Elk’s Exhibition.

Jolly and Sport were taken to the Elk’s grounds where their remains were sold to local furriers Messrs. Dumont & Co. of 318 Light Street. An autopsy revealed that Sport’s spine was broken, confirming that a mercy killing was in fact the kindest thing to do for him. Nothing revealed why Jolly met his end. Although young for an elephant, zoo-kept elephants during this time period often only lived just seventeen to nineteen years.**

The only known photo of the remains of the Cyclorama building a.k.a. Bostock’s Zoo. Unknown photographer, Sunday Sun  Magazine, August 2, 1953.

Business resumed as usual for Bostock who still had two elephants left, Big Liz and Little Roger. But it didn’t go on in Baltimore for much longer. On a freezing cold night at the end of January of the following year, Bostock’s Zoo caught fire due to faulty electrical wiring located in the ceiling and burned to the ground. Some 300 animals including lions, polar bears, pumas, jaguars, monkeys, and others perished in the flames. Bostock refused to open the pens to free the animals at the expense of the public, but that did not stop rumors of wild animals running amok from flying around the city. It was a gruesome thing that the picture at right cannot even begin to capture. Despite the carnage, many old enough to remember have fond memories of Bostock’s as evidenced in the old “I Remember…” series the Sunday Sun Magazine used to run in the inner cover. Bostock left Baltimore for New York City and in 1904 the animal king opened Bostock’s Arena at Dreamland in Coney Island. It too burned down, along with the rest of Dreamland, in 1911—the day after he reportedly sold his interest in the business.

Bostock’s  short-lived Baltimore enterprise operated concurrently with the Baltimore Zoo, though the latter  got its start at Druid Hill Park in 1876 by an act of the Maryland state legislature. Newspaper men and advertisements of the day used the term zoo to refer to both, but we should not mistake them as similar entities. Bostock was a showman who trained and worked his animals for entertainment purposes. He regularly moved exotic stock around the country, not unlike a traveling circus. Although news accounts portrayed him as a man who cared deeply about his livestock, this should be weighed against the fact that some of his animals, like Jolly, were valued at $10,000. But neither should Bostock be remembered as a man who sold tickets to an elephant lynching.

Two bears and a camel. Residents of the Baltimore Zoo at Druid Hill Park. Reference imagess, photographer unknown, ca. 1927, MC7785-1 and MC7785.

Similarly we should not put the Baltimore Zoo on too high a pedestal.  By the 1890s, the public zoological garden boasted a modest collection including sheep, deer, camels, monkeys, an alligator, and some birds.*** The Baltimore Zoo, which did not become the Maryland Zoo in name until 2004, grew its collection at a much slower pace. It didn’t get its first resident elephant until 1924. Her name was Mary Ann and she is reportedly buried somewhere on the Druid Hill grounds. While the public zoo provided somewhat more stable environments for its animals than Bostock, zoological practices in the 1900s were still lacking by today’s standards.

The tale of Sport’s untimely demise was reduced to the words “elephant 1898 hanging” on a mislabeled photograph folder. Inaccurately remembered by a famous newspaper reporter, the elephant that apparently never hurt anyone could have been remembered as a rogue or killer of man as rumors and mistakes innocently become facts—such is history. Mencken, writing his memoir some forty years later, would certainly have more clearly remembered Sport’s hanging had he reviewed his own coverage in the pages of The Herald. Today thanks to microfilm and historic newspaper scanning, we are able to piece together what really happened to Sport. (Joe Tropea)

Formerly mysterious photo no. 2. Sport the elephant was euthanized on June 7, 1900.  SVF Animals Elephant Hanging, 1900,  no. 1, MdHS.

* Accounts in the following major newspapers confirm that these photos are from 1900, not 1898: Baltimore American, Baltimore Morning Herald, The Baltimore News, The Baltimore Sun, and The New York Times. Unequivocal proof is found in the Baltimore American of June 8, page 12, where a nearly identical photo to the one above can be seen. This article is based on accounts in the above mentioned publications from June 6-8, 1900.

** Mott, Maryann, “Wild Elephants Live Longer Than Their Zoo Counterparts,” National Geographic News, December 11, 2008. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/12/081211-zoo-elephants.html

*** Hoage, R.J. and William Diess editors, New Worlds, New Animals: From Menagerie to Zoological Park in the Nineteenth Century.

Special thanks to Dr. Nigel Rothfels and The Maryland Zoo for invaluable help and guidance with this article.

Sources and further reading:

Jensen, Brennen. “Beastly Night,” City Paper, July 2, 2003.

Hoare, Ruth Mohl. “I Remember … The Enchanting Old Bostock Zoo,” Sunday Sun Magazine, October 2, 1960.

Mencken, Henry Louis. Newspaper Days 1899-1906 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1941.)

Rothfels, Nigel. Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2002.)

Shaffer, F. Ward. “I Remember … When Fire Swept Bostock’s Zoo,” Sunday Sun Magazine, August 2, 1953.

“Rare & Vintage: Souvenir of Frank Bostock’s Coney Island”

Vannorsdall Schroeder, Joan. “The Day They Hanged Mary the Elephant in East Tennessee,” May 1, 1997.