THE FIRST DISSENTER

I suppose someone had to be first, and John Billington was as  likely a choice as any other man. Rumor has it that John left England in 1620 to escape his creditors. That would not have been unusual in a time when debt was a crime.  And , if he was a Catholic, as others rumors indicate, that crime would also have driven John Billington to abandon the world he knew in England,  for the dangers of a distant, unsettled shore. But if John was seeking religious freedom, he did not find it, even on board the ship he took to America. Sixty-one of the passengers were either Anglicans or, like John, Catholics. But still they were despised by their shipmates, on board the "Mayflower", who were themselves the despised "Pilgrims Fathers".

John Billington was also middle aged, about 40 years old, rather ancient for an adventurer. He was accompanied by his wife, Eleanor, and their two young sons, John Jr. and Francis. And together their family was beginning a great adventure they were not welcomed upon. 

The voyage had been organized by a group who called (and saw) themselves as “The Saints”. And they were not pleased to find the financial investors in their dream had betrayed them. Not enough "Saints" had been willing to buy passage to America. so the investors had sold the majority of berths to what the Saints called "The Strangers". 

The 102 "Saints" and "Strangers"  found themselves stuffed aboard a leaky ship, just 90 feet long by barely 24 feet wide, giving them 2,160 square feet of living space (a moderate sized two bedroom house). Add a 20 man crew and "The Saints", seeking to escape the horrors of a multi-faith nation, found themselves imprisoned with and dragging it along with them. And they found the burden oppressive. They couldn't wait to get off this damn boat, and start oppressing "The Strangers". 

After two and a half months of living hell on storm tossed seas the Mayflower anchored at the edge of the New World, sheltered by a sandy cape. And it was here that "The Saints" faced what they called a “mutiny”. Through the myopia of history, we choose to describe it as "the birth of democracy in the new world".  The problem was "The Strangers" were not being landed where they had been promised, in the established colony of Virginia, but on unexplored and unprepared ground far to the north. And "The Strangers" were suspicious that this had been the intention of "The Saints" all along. And indeed that seems to have been the truth. Just to get "The Strangers" to disembark  "The Saints" were forced to compromise their faith, right on the edge of their religious paradise, and to sign the Mayflower Compact with "The Strangers", pledging to “…combine ourselves into a civil Body Politic…”

"The Saints" were not interested in any civic body. They sought the freedom to only live next to fellow saints.  Instead the had been forced to create a civil government in this new land, and not the mono-religious domain they had intended.  And one of the signatures bought by that accursed compromise had been that of John Billington. 

As if in punishment for this compromise of their religious purity, only fifty-three souls survived that first winter. Amazingly, John Billington’s family of "Strangers" survived intact – including Eleanor, who became one of only five adult women who lived to see the spring.  Both of John's sons also survived, another insult to the devotion of "The Saints",  many of whom had buried children and wives and husbands over the bitter winter.  The Billington clan had become a daily reminder that God’s Chosen had not been chosen. It must be they were being punished for the "Mayflower Compact".  More evidence was to follow. 

In the spring of 1623, the second full year the colonists were ashore, pressure from the "Strangers" forced the Governor, William Bradford (a "Saint", of course) to divide all property equally among the survivors, one acre per family member, no matter their religious affiliation. And thus the Billington clan received four acres of the best land, “…on the South side of the brook to the Bay wards”. It was yet another reminder of the success of "The Strangers".  These insults to the faith of "The Saints" would not be forgotten. 

Meanwhile, "The Saints" back in England had begun spreading rumors about the failure of the Plymouth Bay Colony, hoping to drive down the price of the stock,  making it easier for "Saints" to buy a controlling interest in the company.   And with each year they sent more "Saints" across the Atlantic, meaning to overwhelm "The Strangers" in Massachusetts Bay.  By 1624, the colony had grown to over 180 people. But two of the new arrivals, meant to build a Saint's majority, had in fact fed the growing tensions.

The Reverend John Lyford and Mr. John Oldham were both nominally "Saints". In fact Lyford had been sent out as the official priest for "The Saints" in the colony. 

But Lyford's willingness to conduct an Anglican baptism for the new child of "Stranger" William Hilton offended "The Saints".  These chosen by God saw no reason to tolerate religious tolerance for anyone but themselves. And Governor Bradford became convinced that Lyford and Oldham were both secretly corresponding with the stockholders back in England, contradicting the false rumors the English Saints had been spreading. 

Bradford was able to intercept some of those letters, and confront the traitorous "Saints" with telling the truth, catching them unprepared at a public hearing.  Both Lyford and Oldman were banished from the colony that very night. At the same meeting there was also an attempt to charge John Billington with being a member of the same "conspiracy",  but there was little evidence against Billington, and he was popular, (although it seems unclear how he could have been so, given the negative descriptions of him that survive) " The Saints" were forced to retreat and bide their time, yet again. 

The following year, 1626, James I of England died, and Charles I (above), a militantly devout Catholic, took the throne. The trickle of "Saints", escaping now from actual religious oppression in England, became a steady flow.  John Billington still had allies in Plymouth Colony,  such as John Cannon and William Tench, but the pressures created by the influx of new "Saints" drove both John's allies to leave the colony by 1627.

And in 1629 John Billington's eldest son died of an illness. With his death, some of the flame went out of the old man. He was fifty now, and weary of the constant fighting for his families' rightful place in the colony.  By January of 1630 there were almost 300 citizens in Plymouth colony, the vast majority of whom were now, finally, "Saints".  John Billington had become isolated. 

In the late summer of 1630 a man’s body was found in the woods near John Billington’s property. The body was identified in Governor Bradford’s correspondence only as "John New-come-er”. No rational for Billington to have murdered this mysterious man was offered on the record. Instead surviving documents allege that the motive was the result of “an old argument between the two men”. But this would seem unlikely, given that the dead man was, by every account, a literal “New-come-er”". 

Despite this glaring omission of motive, a Grand Jury was quickly convened and John Billington was charged with shooting the man in the shoulder with a blunderbuss, thus causing his death. 

But by this time there was little patience left in the colony for reason where the Billingtons were concerned. A trial jury wasted little time in finding John guilty of murder. And yet despite the singularity of this crime and possible punishment - Billington was the first Englishman in the colony charged with murder, and would be the first colonist to be executed - there is no record of any defense offered on his behalf. "The Saints" had won their war against John Billington, and they would write his history. And yet because there was a lack of any apparent motivation for the crime, Governor Bradford sought the approval for the execution of this "Stranger" from his own fellow "Saints" in the younger, larger and more purely Saintly Massachusetts Bay Colony, centered on Boston. Such approval was instantly supplied. 

On 30 September, 1630, fifty year old John Billington was hanged according to the methods of the day. He climbed a ladder. The rope was placed around his neck and the noose pulled tight. The ladder was kicked away. And slowly the life was strangled out of him as he danced at the end of the rope. The drop that quickly broke the neck would not become standard in hanging for another two hundred years. Plymouth Colony was thus finally rid of its most troublesome "Stranger" in a congregation of "Saints". The only even mildly generous epitaph written for John Billington came from the poison pen of Thomas Morton, another man who irritated "The Saints" who surrounded him. Morton wrote, “John Billington, that was chocked at Plymouth after he had played the unhappy marksman...was loved by many.” And that is a piece of information not even hinted at in the history written by "The Saints" - that John had been loved by many. 

Sixty years later the "Saints" would have to clean house again, this time in the village of Salem, and this time against their fellow "Saints" who were not saintly enough. Fourteen women and five men were hanged this time. Five others died in prison. All had been charged with being witches. What this re-occurrence of justice from "The Saints"  showed, was that even before there was religious freedom in America, there was religious hypocrisy.

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VICKBURG Chapter Eighty – Five

Henry Foster apprenticed as a bricklayer in the Ohio River town of Jeffersonville, Indiana. The city of 4,000 was a prosperous place, just across the river from Louisville, Kentucky and the Falls of the Ohio River (above).  

They had been been building and launching steamboats at Jeffersonville since 1819. By 1860 there were 6 ship building firms along an 11 mile stretch downriver from Jeffersonville to New Albany, Such prosperity meant steady work for a bricklayer. 

Still, on 1 July, 1861, 23 year old Henry Foster signed up to defend the Union of the States for 3 years. Two weeks later in New Albany he was mustered in as a sergeant in Company “B”, of the 23^rd Indiana Volunteer infantry.  Approximately 15% of the 1,300,000 Hoosiers actually fought for the federal cause, most coming from the southern half of the state, which had been settled the longest. Henry remained a sergeant during drilling in Indianapolis and St. Louis. In 1862, after fighting at the battles of Forts Henry and Donaldson, he was promoted to Lieutenant.

Before the 1863 Vicksburg campaign the 23^rd Indiana was transferred to the 1^st Brigade of General Logan's division, of the XVII Corps under of Major General James Birdseye McPherson. They had their first major engagement of that campaign on Tuesday, 12 May at Raymond, Mississippi. At the very outset of the battle the 23^rd stumbled into a trap and suffered 127 causalities in the space of a few minutes – twice their losses at Shiloh.  As the Official Record put it, “The only thing that saved the 23^rd...(was) that the Confederates had never been issued bayonets.” 

Four days later the 23^rd was on the right flank at Champion Hill, where the regiment lost another 19 officers and men. The Hoosiers were also heavily involved in the attack on the Louisiana redan of 22 May, and suffered another 40 dead and wounded in the mine operation of 25 June. The surviving members of the regiment had become what could be termed “hardened veterans”.

As evidence of their hardness, Lieutenant Henry Foster had begun his own private war on the 3^rd Louisiana regiment. The bricklayer had earned a reputation as a marksman, and had taken to wearing a coonskin cap, like a later day Daniel Boone or Davy Crocket. Except instead of killing animals for food, Henry Foster was killing human beings and doing it with a swagger. During the first month of the siege of Vicksburg, Henry would gather provisions and, at night, crawl closer to the rebel lines and secret himself in a shell hole or “holler”. During the day, he would snip at any rebels who raised their heads above the redan's wall. It seems likely that Confederate William McGuinness lost his eye to 25 year old Lieutenant Foster's aim.

After the new forward position was constructed on 26^th June, Lieutenant Foster spent nights, assembling cross ties from the Vicksburg and Jackson railroad into what he called the “Coonskin Tower” (above).  His elevated spy post allowed Henry to look down upon the the Louisiana redan. The cross ties were thick enough to absorb most musket shots, and the rebel artillery could no longer spare the ammunition to obliterate the tower. Foster spent hours during daylight in its narrow confines, gunning down confederate soldiers.

The tower became infamous, and Henry and his mates from company “B” began selling 15 minute “tours” of the tower for 25 cents apiece. Legend has it that even General Grant paid a visit. And that while he was watching the rebels, one yelled for the “damn old man” to keep his head down. Where upon a Confederate officer chastised the rebel soldier's use of foul language. Then realizing who the “damn old man” was, shouted that the soldier should quickly shoot him. But by then, Grant had climbed back down. Or so the story went.

In another version, a private in the 4^th Minnesota infantry saw an older soldier in a rumbled uniform standing on an observation tower near the front lines. He shouted at the old man, “Say! You old bastard, you better keep down from there or you will be shot!” The old man paid no attention. When the north star boy started to shout again, an officer grabbed him and explained, “That's General Grant.” It was the kind of story soldiers often told at the expense of commanders who held the power of life and death over them. The tales were related with a kind of cold affection. But as far as I can tell, they never told those kind of stories about Confederate Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton.

Two Irish born brothers named Christie, Thomas and William, were servicing guns of the First Minnesota Light Artillery behind the 23^rd Indiana.  On 23 June William Gilchrist Christie had written home to his father that, “Spades are trumps here, and are likely to be for a long time yet.....There are a few deaths from 'secesh' bullets every week, and occasionally one from the premature bursting of a shell from our own guns...one of the 11^th Illinois infantry was, I fear, mortally wounded yesterday by a...shell from the first Missouri's Battery...his bowels were torn and both of his lungs visible.”  It should not be surprising that William then immediately added, “We have been amusing ourselves for the two past evenings in throwing shells over into the enemies' lines...” The boys from Minnesota had not been ordered to play this game. But idle hands had become the devil's plaything.

On 28 June, William's older brother, Thomas Davidson Christie, wrote a more circumspect note to their sister. “I do not very well know what to write you,” Thomas began, “for although there is plenty of what you might consider interesting (events) occurring around me, of the blood and gunpowder style, yet I see so much of it that I do not care to write about it....You will probably see some account of the blowing up of the fort...We are within 400 yards...and saw the whole performance, and opened on the rear of the work to cut up the rebel reinforcements as they hurried them up. Some other time I may give you a description of the assault.” This from the same man who was throwing random bombs into the enemy's trenches every night.

On the “enemy” side of the trench line was 32 year old civilian Henry Ginder. When the war broke out Henry had been an engineer working for the firm of Thomas, Griswold and Company, a weapons manufacturer, at the corner of Canal and Royal Streets in New Orleans. When that city had been captured, he had fled east with his family.  He left his wife in Alabama, and then continued to Mississippi, where Henry had joined the Confederate army as a private. Eventually his unit was assigned to Port Hudson, where his skills as an engineer made him valuable. In the summer of 1863 he had been ordered to Vicksburg, to prepare the fortifications there. During the siege Henry was constantly moving along the line, looking to repair the damage done by the Federal artillery.

In a letter to his wife he told a harrowing story. “Last night I was on foot returning from the scene of my labors, and I heard a 13 inch shell coming but couldn’t see it; it came nearer and nearer until I thought it would light on my head, when SPLOSH! It went into the earth a few feet to my left, throwing the dirt into my face with such force as to sting me for some time afterwards. The Lord kept it from exploding … Otherwise it would have singed the hair off my head and blown me to pieces into the bargain.”

The federal army was not aiming to injure civilians, not because of a moral aversion to doing so, but because their weapons simply did not have the excess power to waste on non-military targets. But to the civilians sheltering in the 500 of so caves of Vicksburg whether they were victims of the gunner's intent or incompetence made little difference. 

Lucy McRae was the daughter of wealthy merchant and Warren County Sheriff William McRae and Virginia born Indiana.  Lucy was 11 years old in June of 1863.  Her family could afford the safety of a cave.  But the choice almost cost her life.  “A shell came down on the top of the hill, buried itself about six feet in the earth, and exploded. This caused a large mass of earth to slide...in a solid piece, catching me under it…As soon as the men could get to me they pulled me from under the mass of earth. The blood was gushing from my nose, eyes, ears, and mouth.” 

One of the men who helped dig Lucy out from under the loam was the Reverend William Lord, who had been wounded by the explosion.  He noted that same night a baby boy was born in another part of the shared cave.

Above ground, still sheltering in her home, Dora Miller continued to send her slave Martha out every day with 5 dollars, looking to buy food.  Martha told her that “...rats are hanging dressed in the market for sale with mule meat - there is nothing else...It was said that when the rats were properly fried, they tasted like squirrel.”

By Tuesday, 30 June 1863, half of the Confederate soldiers in the Vicksburg lines were on excused duties or even hospitalized because of illness or wounds. And the most common illness was dysentery.  In the Washington Hotel (above), the Reverend William Lovelace Foster was nursing to those men. He noted that the structure, which had already been  hit once, was still, “...comparatively secure from those troublesome mortar shells...All the rooms were soon crowded with the sick and dying – Some in bunks and some upon the floor.   Everything was conducted as well as possible. But, Oh the horrors of a hospital!”

Doctor Foster had recorded those horrors back in May. “There lay a man... his face blackened - burned to a crisp with powder. His mother could not recognize him - Every feature was distorted - his eyes were closed - water running from his scalded mouth. His groans are pitiful - low – plaintive...a youth, not more than seventeen, lying on his back-with (his) eye entering his jaw - lodging there in the bone, which could not be removed... Here are several with their arms cut - There is one with his whole under jaw torn off - his shoulder mutilated with a shell.  Here is one with his arms (and_legs both amputated...There is one who had a pair of screw drivers driven into his jaw (and) temple. He floods his bed with blood...The weather is excessively hot. The flies swarm around the wounded...” .

And now, after the first mine had wiped out 50 men in the 3^rd Louisiana redan, Dr. Foster wrote, “The sixth week (of the siege) had now closed...Our fate seems to stare us in the face. Still we hear rumors...Can't our government send us relief?...Will all the blood shed be spilled in vain? For the first time dark doubts would cross my mind.”

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TOILET HUMOR Chapter Six

I have learned that whether your story is considered a drama or a tragedy is often determined by where you chose to end it. Consider the tale of the Great Stink of 1857, which concluded with the construction of the London sewers, conquering cholera and typhus by pumping the fecal focus eastward to the Thames estuary. It was for the 19^th century Londoner a glorious conclusion, the return to the Garden of Eden toilet – flushed out of sight, out of mind. But a mere 50 years (1907ish)  later there was so much human crap in the estuary, it was beginning to stink up even the North Sea.. And a nation that lived on fish and chips began to worry their story might yet turn into a Cockney Oedipus Rex. But England – and the human world - was offered salvation when the British East India Company moved their headquarters from Calcutta to the west coast of the subcontinent.

Over sixty years, beginning in 1687, the civil servants of the British Raj used native labor to transform seven islands into a new city and port, built and organized to English standards, and overwhelmingly occupied and operated by Indians. 

By 1890 Bombay was a metropolis of almost a million inhabitants. To Mr. C. Carkeet James, Chief Drainage Engineer for the Metropolitan District, there were “...few if any cities in India of greater interest or higher educational value to students of sanitation.” Along Bombay's wide boulevards and narrow winding streets, trained English soldiers and engineers rubbed shoulders with a rising Indian middle class and uneducated textile workers, and even afflicted beggars. And it was the latter who inspired the so called Lepers Acts.

By the end of the 20^th century we realized the only way to contract leprosy is to be in the 5% of the population with the genetic defect that makes you vulnerable to the bacteria leprea or lepromatosis. But as late as the end of the 19^th century, leprosy was still one of humanities' most feared infections. Seemingly at random, perfectly healthy individuals would suddenly display skin lesions, which gave the disease its Latin name, lepra or “scaly”. The illness progressively destroyed the nervous system. Extremities would lose feeling. Injuries went unnoticed and untreated, often leading to the loss of toes and fingers, even ears and noses. Most suffers eventually became blind. Long before then, the afflicted were expelled from their communities, unwanted and considered unclean, drawn to the cities where they could survive only by begging.

Under the various Lepers Acts all sufferers in Bombay were prohibited from handling “any article of food or drink or any drugs or clothing intended for human use, bathe, wash clothes or take water from any public well or tank...drive (or)...ride in any public carriage.” Thus ostracized, most lepers were reduced to starvation, and local police were empowered to arrest “without a warrant any person who appears...to be a pauper leper.” Noted a journal at the time, “One of the results has been to free the city of Bombay from the beggars who used to extort alms by the exhibition of their sores about the public buildings, schools, water tanks, etc.”

Mitigating its cruelty, the act also ordered the creation of leper colonies, where an infrastructure of professionals could feed and clothe the afflicted - “chiefly vagrants and beggars”. And in typical Victorian fashion, the staff also tended to their moral shortcomings by providing work that gave them a sense of dignity and helped to mitigate the expense of their care. 

In 1890, in the Matinga section of Bombay , the recently abandoned quarters of an artillery battery, were converted into leper colony dormitories (above). The barracks stood on thick concrete foundations, raising it above the mud and filth. The dormitories for the patients were outfitted with running water, a kitchen and mess rooms.

At the end of May 1891 Mr. W.M. Acworth, local Commissioner for the Metropolitan Asylums Board, informed his sponsors back in England, “With accommodation for 190, I had yesterday 226 inmates, but fortunately a new ward has just been completed, and this over crowding will temporarily cease, though only temporarily. If I had room for 500 I could fill the asylum in a week.” In not much longer than that, maximum capacity was reached, 68% male, 32% female, and about 40 children. But the corporation that governed Bombay resisted fully funding the colony. The first year's monsoon caused the colonies' cesspits to over flow, and the flood of fecal waste from the lepers alarmed the surrounding population. By May of 1892 “The Times of India” observed, “ The Matinga Asylum is seriously overcrowded with lepers... (because of a) lack of rupees...land for the extension of the asylum lie still idle... Unless something is done to remedy this state of things, our streets will again be overrun with homeless lepers, and Mr. Acworth’s labors in the cause of these afflicted people will practically be brought to naught.”

Public and political pressure forced the East India Company to open its purse. With acquisition of the additional land, and additional funding, Mr. Acworth turned to the chief drainage engineer, Mr. James (above, 2nd from left) for a solution to the colonies' cesspit problem . What Mr. C.C. James built was a chemical-mechanical stomach to re-digest the human waste, much the same way a cow's multiple stomachs re-digests their feed.

First, Engineer James built several enclosed 19,000 gallon (settling) ponds. Here the solids sank to the bottom, where the oxygen loving (or aerobic) bacteria converted the poop into a black sludge, and pooped out their own waste, carbon dioxide. This bubbled to the surface, forming a scum which was periodically skimmed off. When the slowing production of scum indicated the aerobic bacteria had eaten themselves to death, the oxygen depleted sludge was pumped uphill into one of several air tight holding tanks, where the slow anaerobic (oxygen hating) digestion began. An American engineering journal cheerfully explained the processes, as if in a new car brochure. “The anaerobic bacteria are provided along with the sewage and practically no difficulty arises in retaining their services on the works beyond providing them with space and time in which to carry out their labors.” Their work reducing the sludge could take up to six weeks at an ambient temperature between 78 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit, all the while pooping out methane gas. And this was where Mr C. Carkeet James showed his engineering skills.

At the Matinga colony the methane was captured, and feed to 3 horsepower 4-stroke methane gas motors (above) designed by German engineer Nikolaus August Otto. The Otto engines required 22 cubic feet of methane per hour to slowly raise the sludge the 8 feet between the settling pools and the anaerobic tanks. As figured by engineer James, each patient produced 3 – 4 cubic feet of methane per day, meaning that on a good day each engine needed 7 to 8 patients visiting the latrine for each hour of pumping – a goal easily met. In fact, so much methane was produced the engines could also provide electricity to light the dormitories.

After 6 – 8 weeks each anaerobic tank was left with a bottom layer of carbon heavy sludge covered by “gray water” - clean but not pure enough for human consumption. The sludge was compressed and used for land fill. 

The “gray water” was allowed to cascade down hill, during which it was aerated again, and used to irrigate and fertilize the colony's 6 acre farm. The workers were patients/inmates, who were 84% Hindu vegetarians – and 9% Muslim and 10% Christians. Besides feeding themselves, the bumper crops were sold, and, according to Mr. Acworth, “Profits from the farm wholly maintain 50 lepers located therein”. In 1904 the colony was renamed the Acworth Leper Asylum, and after World War Two, the Acworth Hospital. It still operates in modern Bombay, renamed Mumbi.

The process was not self supportive, but was publicly heralded as an example for the world. But the world did not beat a path to the lepers' back door. It was still cheaper to just dump your poop in the nearest river or bay, even when it occasionally washed right back into your front yard. It was not until the middle of the 20^th century that many in the industrialized world began to realize that the Garden of Eden toilet has always been a myth.

According to the World Health Organization, exposure to human waste kills a child somewhere every 20 seconds - 1.4 million dead children each year - “more than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined”. Of the world's 7 billion human beings, over 2 ½ billion are still living surrounded by their own (200 million tons of) poop. World wide, according to author and sanitation authority Rose George, 20% of girls drop out of school because they have no safe place to relieve themselves. “Providing a latrine can mean the difference between illiteracy and education.” Providing every human being with a way to treat, clean and reuse even a high percentage of their poo, would not make humanity self supporting. But it would be a step in the right direction.  And in the long run, cheaper than pretending we can clean up the mess by pretending it isn't really  there. 

It is true that shit happens. But it is not true that you just have to live with it. Because in the case of shit, you can't.

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