THE BREEZE AT SPITHEAD

I don't believe 52 year old Vice Admiral John Griffith Colpoys (above) was an excitable man. He had served with honor in the Royal Navy through shot and storm since he was thirteen. But at about three in the afternoon of Sunday May 7, 1797, while floating peacefully at anchor and within sight of friendly shore, he threw a hissy fit. He lost his mind. His meltdown began just an hour earlier, when Edward Griffith, the Captain of the HMS London, who was also Colpoy's nephew, entered the Admiral's cabin and announced, “Sir, I am very sorry to acquaint you, that everything appears as wrong as ever with the fleet...” And at that instant, Colpoy's stable universe seemed to collapse around him.

The British Navy learned to sail in the Solent, the fifteen mile long, two mile wide strait between the Isle of Wright and the southern English harbor of Portsmouth. Just beyond the harbor entrance was the shallow anchorage called The Spithead, where for 300 years British warships had waited for off shore winds to carry them to conquer the world. And it was here, on 17 April 1797, that the British “Tars” manning the 16 ships of the Channel Fleet refused in unison to raise anchor until their long time grievances were finally addressed.

When the sailors' delegates rowed alongside to confer with the crew of HMS London, Admiral Colpoys had ordered his marines to repel them by force. Confrontation was avoided this time when Commander of the Channel Fleet, full Admiral Alexander Hood, ordered Colpoys to allow the delegates to meet with his crew. Hood sympathized with the “Tars”. And in response to the Admiralty Board's repeated orders to sail, he wrote, “Their Lordships desire me to use every means in my power to restore the discipline of the fleet...nothing in my opinion will be able to effect, but a compliance with their petitions.” Howe even ordered the captain of each ship to request that their crew supply a full list of grievances.

The 70,000 able seamen of the Royal Navy willingly endured death and boredom to keep Britain's enemies blockaded in their French ports. But they had not received a pay raise in 140 years. Two ounces of every pound of their meager daily ration of salted beef and maggoty biscuits were deducted as the “pursers' pound”.  Kidnapped (impressed) “landsmen”, were paid less and were increasingly replacing the volunteers whose sacrifices in 49 engagements large and small over the previous fifty years had allowed Britannia to rule the waves. The men wanted a pay raise, equity of pay among sailors, a full ration and promise of a pardon from the King for their “mutiny”. And they would not raise anchors until their demands were met.

A three man delegation from the Admiralty arrived in Portsmouth to negotiate with the sailors' delegates, and within three days had convinced the mutineers “not to lift anchor till every article is rendered into an Act of Parliament and the King's Pardon to all concerned.”  The sailors, who had taken an oath to act in unity, no longer trusted the Admiralty Board. The three man delegation retreated to London, and on Sunday 23 April, 100 copies of the King's full and complete pardon arrived in Portsmouth. With cheering thus ended one of the most polite rebellions in history – or it should have, but for two things.

First, the wind shifted. For two weeks the fleet was pinned against the lee shore, but in full communication about events in London. 

While they were still rocked at anchor, on 3 May, 1797, the Tory Party under Prime Minister William Pitt (the younger - above) guided the emergency appropriations bill to pay for the salary increase and improved food smoothly through the House of Commons. But in the House of Lords the Spithead Mutineers ran into their most dangerous opposition. 

The new obstacle was the Wig gadfly, Francis Russel, 5^th Duke of Bedford (above).  As a public speaker Francis was ‘intolerably prolix and heavy in style”, but two years earlier this 34 year old handsome odd ball had protested new taxes on the white hair powder used by members of Parliament by going “native”, at least on his head. For this he was widely celebrated in Liberal newspapers. But now this good friend of the heir apparent Prince of Wales, and a man who was always in favor of raising wages, demanded a full accounting. How much would the raise in wages, and better food for sailors cost the tax payers?

Normally the Duke of Bedford's gambit would have been nothing more than a minor irritation to William Pitts government. However, on 5 May a boat pulled alongside the 100 gun HMS Queen Charlotte at Spithead and tossed newspapers onto the lower gun deck. Within the day, every able seaman in the Channel Fleet knew “the seaman's cause” was threatened. The officers remained in the dark until, on 7 May, when the Captain of His Majesty's Ship “London”, John Griffith, informed his Admiral Edward Griffith Colpoys, that there was new trouble on board .

HMS London was a 177 foot long, 2,200 ton triple-decked 98 gun ship-of-the-line. It had taken five years and 6,000 oak trees to build her, and 4 acres of canvass, 27 miles of hemp and 750 sailors and Marines to sail her . She had 28 cannon on her lower deck, each throwing a 32 pound iron ball, 30 18-pounders on her middle deck, 30 12-pounders on her upper gun deck, eight more 12- pounders on her quarter-deck with two more on her forecastle at the bow. After thirty hard years of service she was still state of the art because naval tactics had not changed in a century. But the recent coating of her hull with copper had extended her tours of duty by years, beyond the endurance of the underpaid and badly fed men who had fought 49 naval battles over the last fifty years.

Colpoys ordered the seamen assembled on the aft quarter deck. In the meantime, he had Captain Griffith make certain the marines would back their officers. Colpoys then asked if the crew had any new grievances. Assured they had none, he pledged, “if you will follow my advice, then you shall not get into any disgrace with your brethren in the fleet, as I shall become responsible for your conduct.” He then ordered them below to close the gun ports. And as soon as the last sailor was below decks, the marines and officers were stationed at every exit. He now had the crew bottled up below decks. When grumbling was heard from below, Griffith asked if they should fire should the crew try to come on deck. Colpoys answered, “Yes, certainly; they must not be allowed to come up until I order them.”

They did not wait. The crew began edging up the hatchway. Taking the Admiral's orders to heart, twenty-five year old First Lieutenant Peter Bover threatened the mutineers with his flintlock pistol. A delegate dared him to fire, so Bover did, shooting the man in the chest. The enraged crew stormed the hatch, pummeling the Lieutenant. More shots were fired. The entire marine detachment, except two, threw down their arms and joined the crew. The shocked Admiral abruptly surrendered. It seemed that Admiral Hood had been right, after all.

The infuriated crewmen dragged Lieutenant Bover to the forecastle, and slipped a noose over his head. But just as they were about to string him up, a voice shouted, “If you hang this young man you shall hang me, for I shall never quit him.” The speaker was Quartermaster's mate Valentine Joyce, a seventeen year veteran of the service -, about as experienced as Admiral Hood. Joyce was stationed aboard the 100 gun Royal George, and must have just come aboard in the confusion, or been aboard for some time. One of the primary mutiny negotiators, his presence at this critical moment cannot have been completely accidental.

In all five officers and four sailors had been wounded. Three of the sailors would later die, including the man shot by Bover. The entire rebellious fleet now raised anchor and floated ten miles south, away from Portsmouth. They dropped anchor again off the east coast of the Isle of Wright., near the small village of St. Helens and the Bramble Bank. Four days later, on 11 May, Bover was handed over to civilian authorities to be tried for murder. (a jury would find his actions to be “justifiable homicide.”) At the same time Captain Griffith and Vice Admiral Colpoys were released on the beach. The Mutineers had a new demand, that certain objectionable officers were to be removed permanently. Oddly enough, Bover was not among them.

None of it was necessary. On 8 May rumors of the fresh rebellion had reached London, and the Wigs were suddenly aware they could be blamed. The additional budget of three hundred seventy-two thousand pounds was quickly approved on a silent vote, and only a gale prevented the fleet from learning the government had surrendered. That only left the new demand for removal of the worst officers. For four days the negotiations in St. Helens dragged on. The sailors unity did not waiver, and in the end Lord Howe, the new head of negotiations for the Admiralty Board, was forced to admit , it was “fit to acquiesce in what was now the mutual desire of both officers and seamen in that fleet.” as “the officers themselves had no wish to be foisted on crews which would not obey them.”

By 15 May the deal was finally done. In all 114 officers, including Vice Admiral Colpoys and four ship captains, were removed from ships at both St. Helens and those still at Spithead, and in the rest of the Royal Navy. None of the mutineers were ever punished..On 15 May 1797 Admiral Hood ordered the Channel Fleet to raise anchor and set sail for the French Coast. Not a single ship failed to follow his orders. The Spithead Mutiny was over.  The new one, at the mouth of the Thames, was just beginning.

- 30 -

BATS IN HER ATTIC

I can’t say she was beautiful, but then photographs are a poor record of personality. The newspapers called her “comely”, which the dictionary defines as “pleasing and wholesome in appearance.” But Dolly Oesterreich (pronounced "Ace-strike") (above) was not wholesome. She was, when our story begins, about 33 years old, an age at which a woman, so we are told, reaches the peak of her sensuality. However, I suspect that Dolly had always been skilled at seduction. Murder? Not so much.

For 15 years Dolly had been married to Fred Oesterreich (above), a man whose only selling point as a husband was that he was wealthy. He owned an apron factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he was constantly berating his 60 seamstresses to work faster.

He pinched every penny and drove himself as hard as he drove his employees. Of course, he was better paid. As a result of his dedication to his job, the Oesterreiches grew richer. And Dolly grew lonelier. So it should have come as no surprise in 1913, when Dolly asked her husband to dispatch a particular repairman she had seen about his apron factory, to fix her personal sewing machine.

His name was Otto Sanhuber  (above) , and when our story begins, he was all of 17. Again it seems, the photographs do not do him justice, either. To the casual observer he looked like a mousy milk toast of a man. But Dolly must have recognized that, beyond Otto’s nebbish exterior, loomed an undiscovered Hercules of passion.

Dolly (above) answered Otto's knock attired only in a robe and slippers. She showed him to her bedroom, where she kept her Singer. She lounged on the bed while Otto adjusted her bobbin. Dolly brushed back her hair. Otto tightened her belts. Dolly lifted a leg. Otto greased her shuttle shaft. Dolly let her robe fall open. And according to Otto, he threaded her needle eight times that first afternoon.

They began by sneaking assignations in the Oesterrich home while Fred was at work, but a needling neighbor warned Fred about the man who was constantly coming and going from his house. Dolly was forced to hem and haw an excuse. Then the lovers substituted Otto’s depressing rooms, and then a hotel. But every rendezvouses ran the risk of uncovering their affair. Eventually, Dolly conceived a simple pattern for their love. Otto quit his job and moved into the attic of the Oesterreich home (above). A curtain was thus drawn and there would be no more comings and goings - none visible to the neighbors, anyway.

The thread of Otto’s life had found his spool. The hook of Dolly’s life had found her eye. For three years they pulled the wool over Fred’s eyes. For three years Otto slept above his mistresses’ marriage bed, slipping out of his hidden attic room by day to help Dolly with her housework, and once the dishes were done, to pump her treadle and spin her crank. There were loose threads, of course, that threatened to unfray the fabric of their affair. But with a little tacking, awl was mended.

Eventually Fred got the notion of moving his factory to Los Angeles, and in 1918 he bought Dolly a grand home on North St. Andrew’s Place (above)  in that city. Dolly made certain the new home had a tidy tiny attic room, so Otto would feel comforted too. Life was a perfect fit for Dolly and Otto. And Fred. As long as Fred never noticed how much it was costing him to feed and clothe one woman.

This happy scene unraveled on the night of Tuesday, August 22, 1922, four years after the move to Los Angeles. Fred and Dolly returned from a dinner party and a fight broke out. Fred lost his temper and actually struck Dolly. And that was when Otto, listening upstairs, rushed to the rescue from his hidden room,  carrying a .22 pistol. Now why did he have one of those? The two men struggled. Otto’s gun went off three times, and Fred went down. His string had run out. A few moments later the police arrived to discover an apparent house robbery gone bad. The husband was dead on the living room floor and the hysterical wife was locked in the hall closet. Still, there was something that made the police suspicious. When sweated by the cops, Dolly insisted the couple had never fought. The police, many of them married men,  knew that had to be a lie, but they couldn't prove it.

Dolly was arrested, and charged (above) with the murder of her husband. While she was in lockup Dolly pleated with one of her lawyers, Herman Shapiro, to do her a tiny  favor. Dolly claimed to have an addled half-brother named Otto who lived in her attic, and who must be running short of food by now. Already under Dolly’s beguiling influence, Herman agreed to deliver sustenance to the man.

When he tapped on the hidden attic door, a bespeckeled little face appeared and wolfed down the food, and talked; he talked as if he had no one to speak to for years. He was, in fact, explained Otto, a sewing machine repairman who had come to fix Dolly’s machine years before, in Wisconsin,  and stayed to be her “sex slave”. Otto said nothing about Fred’s murder, but Herman was no fool. Being a lawyer, he kept his mouth shut.

Without knowledge of Otto, the Police case against Dolly (above, center)  fell apart, and she was released. But Herman Shapiro found he now cottoned to Dolly, and he insisted that before anything happened between them, Otto had to go. 

So, in 1923, Otto moved out of the attic. He went to Canada and established his own life. He even married (above). But, eventually, in search of work,  he moved himself and his new wife back to Los Angeles. In L.A. he got a job as a porter in a hotel. And Otto might have lived there happily ever after with his devoted wife, if only Herman Shapiro had kept his big fat mouth sewn shut.

In 1930, eight years after Fred’s death, Herman finally realized the seductress (above) from Milwaukee was never going to marry him, after he discovered she was secretly seducing her business manager, Mr. Ray Bert Hendrick. Maybe the lady just couldn't help herself. A lawyer scorned, Herman went to the police and spilled the beans. He confessed the details of his encounter with the man in the attic. 

The police checked the long since abandoned Oesterreich homes in Wisconsin and Los Angeles and discovered Otto’s hidden abodes, and the veil was stripped from their eyes. Dolly's life quickly unraveled. 

Otto was arrested, and he made a full confession about the night he burst out of his hidden room to confront the violent Fred, and how he shot him dead.. 

And he showed (above) his tiny room where he hid while the police searched the night of the shooting.

And Dolly was arrested again. And charged with murder again. 

Otto was convicted of manslaughter. But, since the statute of limitations for manslaughter was eight years, which had just run out, Otto was released immediately after his conviction. He then faded from history. I wonder if his marriage survived the revelations.  

Dolly’s trial ended in a hung jury, the majority favoring her acquittal. She was never retried, and lived out the rest of her life over a garage, surviving on the meager remains of the fortune that Fred had amassed - which would have infuriated Fred, had he not been dead. In the end I guess Dolly was still needling poor hardworking unaware Fred.

Dolly did remarry in 1961, at the age of 75 (above, center). Her new husband was her long time business manager, Ray Bert Hendrick (above, left). She died just two weeks later.

It brings to mind the way that Leo Tolstoy began his novel Anna Karenina; “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.  And this family was surely particularly unhappy, because whatever it was that Otto and Fred and Dolly were doing together, they were doing it tailored to fit their very own odd shaped frames.

- 30 -

AMERICAN NARCISSIST

I can see him clearly, as if he was standing next to me at this moment. And yet his image remains hazy. According to his drivers' license, he was five feet, nine inches tall, weighed 150 pounds and had gray hair. He was also described as “ ...a slight hollow-chested man”, of 46, with thin lips. And yet he remains an enigma. A neighbor, when shown several photographs of him, said, “ "I knew him well and he never looked like that.” And he was not just a physical enigma. Howard Kittle, the Clinton County agent and Farm Bureau manager, received a letter from him, and admitted that if anyone else had written it “I would have thought sure he was insane.'” But that was before - when he was an elected community leader, a trusted guardian of the communities' wealth and its future. Afterward - the Clinton County Republican-News was forced to wonder, “Is the building of a modern institution which equips children to meet the problems of the world a burden - or is it a privilege?” You see, the man at issue was a anti-tax warrior and an American narcissist.

Bath in 1927 was a little farm town of about 300 people 10 miles northeast of Lansing, Michigan. “(It) had a ( grain) elevator, a little drugstore, and you knew everybody within 20 miles” said a life long resident. In 1922 rural Clinton County closed its scattered one room school houses. They used $8,000 of their own hard earned money to buy five acres of ground just south of Bath. They borrowed $35,000 to build a two story Consolidated School building. Here, classes would be divided by ages, to protect the younger children from bullies. With fewer teachers, higher standards could be required if the instructors, even a college teaching degree. And amenities such as a library, lunch programs, athletics, music and art were added. And buses picked children up at their front doors and returned them safely home each night. It was the foundation for the secure world we grew up in. And it was not cheap.

The future always costs. You either invest in it, or if you refuse, it proves much more expensive trying to catch up.  In 1922 property taxes in Clinton county were $12.26 per thousand dollars of valuation ($160 today, or over $16%). In 1923 those taxes had gone up by half to $18.80 ($235 today). This was not the decision of a few liberals. This was debated for years within the community. And over time the decision was to invest in the future of Clinton County, in the counties' children, and spend the money. Three years later, eager to eliminate the debt quickly, the elected leaders of Clinton County paid off $7,200 of their obligation, and taxes topped out at one dollar higher (to $240 per thousand in today's dollars). It was expected taxes would now start to drop, but that did not take into account the rising inflation of the late 1920's, and the selfishness of one egomaniac who chose not to have a future.

I shall not use his name because of something Neil Kaye, forensic psychiatrist at Jefferson Medical College told Time Magazine in April of 2007. He said, “We glorify and revere these seemingly powerful people who take life. Meanwhile, I bet you couldn't tell me the name of even one of (serial killer) Ted Bundy's victims.” So let me just share headlines from the New York Times, dated Wednesday, May 18^th, 1927, to explain what this man did. “Maniac blows up school, kills 42, mostly children; Had protested high taxes...He then kills himself and 3 others by Dynamiting Auto...Children Pinned in Debris. Others hurled against walls or out windows – Searchers still hunt for missing. Agonizing scenes in yard. Distraught parents find little ones dead beneath blankets...”. The early numbers were wrong, of course. The maniac killed eight adults and 34 children at the school, that day. The last little victim, nine year old Richard Fitz, would die of infection caused by his injuries, a week short of a year after the Bath School Disaster, and that was the name of one of this selfish bastard's victims.

Just before he murdered the children, the maniac had bludgeoned his wife to death, restrained all his animals in a burning barn, killed every fruit tree on his farm, and burned all his expensive farm equipment. Interestingly, it was figured by the cleanup crews, that he could have paid off his mortgage and his property taxes by selling most of his well maintained farm equipment, which, according to his neighbors, he rarely used. Neighbor M.J. “Monty” Ellsworth wrote later, “He was at the height of his glory when fixing machinery or tinkering...He spent so much time tinkering that he didn't prosper.” The maniac also stood out, as a farmer, for his meticulous appearance. He changed his shirt quickly should a spot of dirt appear on it and was often seen sitting on his front porch, in a smoking jacket, puffing on a cigar. But his primary interest, his obsession, was in cutting taxes.

The maniac had been elected to the school board in 1924, two years after the new school had opened and the first election after the new higher tax rate had been announced. In 1925, after the death of Maude Detluff, the board's treasure, he had been appointed to fill that position. His book keeping was, like his appearance, meticulous. After his suicide, his books showed “a long and detailed explination” of a 22 cent discrepancy. But in the spring of 1926, when he ran for election to the job, the voters had rejected him. Once again, the majority approved investment in the future About this time the maniac stopped paying the mortgage or insurance on his farm. The previous owner, his wife's relatives, eventually began foreclosure proceedings His crops began to rot in the fields.

There is a story that decades earlier, a promising career as an electrician in St. Louis had been cut short by a fall and a serious head injury. So farming was the maniac's second choice. He married and moved to Clinton county right after the First World War. He might have over paid for his farm, because land prices were inflated at time. And his wife was afflicted with tuberculosis, a wasting disease. The Klu Klux Klan would even alleged his Catholicism encouraged him to destroy the school because it was not a Catholic school. But even if all of that were true, none of it would justify the cold blooded murder of 36 innocent children, and eight adults. And all the maniac was focused on was his high taxes.

Before the school was built, he had opposed it. Once it was decided to build it, he insisted it should be a 10 grade institution, instead of 12. He opposed the inclusion of a library, or athletics or music. And he lost each argument. Once the building was constructed, he had enough supporters to win election to the school board, where his obstinacy continued. He even opposed giving the superintendent a paid vacation each year, and then argued it should only be one week, not two. And as he lost each of these arguments, his obsession grew, day by day. Words used to describe him during this time were “surly”, “obstinate”, “impatient” “arrogant” “closed mouth”. Eventually he began to invest his money not on his farm, or his wife, but on explosives, and to sneak them into the basement of the school house, rig them with a timer and set them to explode early on a Wednesday morning, just after classes had begun.

The day after the bombing while still in shock and grief, the Clinton Country Republican newspaper ran an editorial, which explains the connection between the maniac's crime and his anti-tax fever. “That he was insane there is little doubt. But he was not always insane. To start with he was merely antagonistic. Then he became radical.. He was the victim of the progress of his own lack of balance...What a terrible price to pay for narrow-mindedness. What an awful calamity for one peaceful little community to bear for one man's lack of ordinary American ideals...Never before have we known of aversion of the cost of education taking such terrible form. There are, however, many people who unthinkingly hamper and discourage the progress of good schools and other institutions for the welfare and happiness of the public. What are we going to do about it?”

It is almost a century later, and the question begs to be asked of the Tea Party and the radicals who have taken over the Republican Party - those who object to investing in the future because they do not believe they have one. What are the rest of us going to do about it?

- 30 -