BY ANY OTHER NAME

I can think of no more misbegotten group of failures, frauds and grief stricken dullards than the people who collectively are responsible for one of the most vital and fundamental inventions of the modern world. But I have to wonder, if we called it something else, would it have become so ubiquitous? A rose may be a rose by any other name but would it inspire poets? But the subject of this essay...if it had been called anything else it might not have made it down this tortured path to fame and ubiquity.

It all started with a Parisian tailor named Barthelmy Thimonnier (above), who invented the sewing machine in 1830. I know, you think it was invented by Elias Howe, but that is because Elias Howe was a “patent troll”, an opportunist and a liar.

And it took so long because in January of 1839 a mob of 150 or so French "Luddiet" tailors smashed 80 of Thimonnier’s machines, burned down the factory making them and almost lynched Barthelmy. On 23 February five of the rioting tailors were sentenced to a month's imprisonment, 69 to eight days, and the 75th defendant was acquitted.

Not that the trial mattered to Barthelmy. With his investment left smoldering, Thimonnier died flat broke and forgotten in 1857. But first he had invented the sewing machine.

The vacuum he left behind was filled by the American Walter Hunt, who was a mechanical genius and a business boob from upstate New York.

Among other things, Walter invented the safety pin, U.S, patient #6281 (above), and a repeating rifle, and a bicycle and a road sweeper.

And then, in 1834, he improved on Thimonnier’s sewing machine (above).

What Walter Hunt actually invented was a sewing machine needle (above) with the hole - aka, the eye - at the pointy end. Regular needles, invented almost a million years ago, have the eye at the blunt end. But Hunt reversed that.

As the needle pushed through the cloth the eye carried the thread with it. When the needle stopped it formed a loop in the thread behind it, and a second thread (from the bobbin) was pushed through the loop. The needle was then withdrawn, pulling the loop tight or “locking” it, around the bobbin thread. This “Lockstitch” was sheer genius and a brilliant insight. But Hunt never did anything with it because he didn’t want to be lynched by American tailors and he was safely making plenty of money from his safety pin. And that opened the door for Elias Howe to slink through.

Elias Howe told at least two versions of how he "invented" the sewing machine.

In the sympathetic version he spent hours watching his poor wife Elizabeth (since dead, and unavailable to testify) support her family doing piecemeal sewing work . In the Freudian version, Howe dreamed about Indians shooting arrows through a blanket. In fact, both stories were pure horse manure.

In fact Howe had been a mechanic repairing looms in a textile mill, before he started living off his wife's sewing abilities, and that is where he learned all about shuttles and bobbins, and probably saw a version of Hunts sewing machine needle. Like a loom, Howe’s sewing machine, patient #4750 (above) granted in 1846, fed the cloth in vertically and the needle and bobbin worked horizontally. Because of this uncomfortable assembly, Howe’s sewing machine only worked sort of, and it was so clumsy that Howe couldn’t find anybody to buy it. He never made a dime selling what he claimed was his actual invention.

Then in 1850 Howe saw a demonstration of a machine which did work, built by a mechanic and an actor and one of the most foul-tempered bigamists in antebellum America, Mr. Isaac Singer (above).

Singer’s sewing machine put the needle vertical and fed the cloth in horizontally, which made the whole thing functional. But Howe noticed that Singer had 'borrowed' "his" lockstitch, which you may remember Hunt had actually invented but never patented. But Howe did. Anyway, Howe immediately demanded $25,000 in “royalties” (i.e. blackmail).

One of Singer’s long suffering business partners observed that, “Howe is a perfect humbug. He knows quite well he never invented anything of value.” Singer was typically more direct, offering to “kick (Howe) down the steps of the machine shop.”

But what eventually made Howe (above) a wealthy humbug was his patent for Mr. Hunt's lockstitch. As a magazine at the time noted, Howe had “litigated himself into fortune and fame.” But then this story is not about the sewing machine.

This story is about another patent Elias Howe trolled for, this one granted him in 1851. And just like his sewing machine, Howe’s patent for an “Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure” (above) did not work. And just like his sewing machine, rather than improve it, he just filed it away and waited to see if anybody else ever fixed it. But, since nobody else made his ugly and clumsy device work during his lifetime, Howe had nobody to sue and the device remained an obscure little footnote. And people continued to live with the original “Clothing Closure” device, the button.

Until civil war veteran, and traveling salesman Whitcomb Judson, desperate to support his wife and three daughters, missed with his street car invention.

See, originally Whitcomb was not interested in replacing the button. This rather odd man liked to eat bananas and mushrooms because he thought the mushrooms gave him psychic powers. Judson’s “mushroom visions” told him was going to get rich designing pneumatic street cars. He was granted 14 patents for them,

They were a mode of transport powered by, as described rather unhelpfully in his advertising “…a screw, but without a thread; and this screw though always revolving in one direction, will send the (trolley) cars in either direction, and do this by a pure and simple rolling and not a sliding friction..”

It sounded mysterious and magical and vastly overly complicated, and was actually used for a few weeks briefly in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1890 before it broke down completely.

So, in 1893, as a back up invention, he marketed his patent #’s 504038 and 504037 as a “claps lock” for ladies high button shoes, and “…wherever it is desired to detachable-ly connect a pair of adjacent flexible parts.” Judson was clearly no technical writer.

Mr. Judson explained that “...each link of each chain (4 links per inch) is provided both with a male and a female coupling part…”. But sadly this coupling had a tendency to pop open, leaving the lady in question barefoot on the public way.

So, in 1896, Judson added “….a cam-action slider…” to his invention, now calling it his “C-curity Fastener”. The company he formed to exploit the C-curity (The Universal Fastener Company) did well, and the fungi lover was making money, but he never got as rich as he had expected. It was a shame the mushrooms never warned Whitcomb Judson about the dangers of eating too many mushrooms because he died of liver failure in 1909.

And that brings us to the dull Mr. Otto Frederick Gideon Sundback (above), a Swiss emigrant to Canada, working as an electrical engineer for the Universal Fastener Company, and married to the plant manager’s daughter, Elvira. In 1911 Elvira died, and to distract himself from his grief Gideon started fiddling with Judson's “C-curity Fastener”.

He added more teeth (the male coupler), ten to an inch, and widened the slider, and then he realized he could do away with the couplers entirely. All he needed was the teeth and the slider. Gideon called his invention the “'Separable Fastener”. It was granted Patent # 1219881, in 1917. Gideon even designed a machine to mass produce his fastener. But it remained a curious thing, attracting very little attention except on what were once ladies hi-button shoes, which were soon out of fashion And that was the death of the Separable Fastener... Until!

In 1923, Mr. B.F. Goodrich saw the new fasteners used on a pair of rubber galoshes his company was trying to sell the U.S. Army. B.F. was delighted, and in demonstrating the new rubber boots he told an employee to “Zip ‘er up.” And thus was born the onomatopoeia of the new invention, the name that sounds like the sound the Separable Fastener makes when it is used; the zipper. And the world has been a better place ever since.

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THE BELLE OF BEDLAM

I wonder what lawyer M.E. Leliter was thinking on the afternoon 27 April, 1908, when he was told Mrs. Belle Gunness was in the anteroom of his Main Street office in La Porte, Indiana (above). Her very presence made Leliter  uneasy. Still, you never think the worse, do you?  

Belle was a genial and pleasant 48 year old church-going woman, but substantial - and at 6 feet, taller than most men.  Community gossips said that Belle had been seen carrying two 100 pound hogs, one under each arm.. Still, "M.E." thought he could detect the aura of hidden pain behind Belle's sharp blue Nordic eyes.

In Chicago, the stout young Belle (above) had buried two of her children -  not an unusual tragedy in the nineteenth century.  But then,  in 1900,  her husband Anton Sorenson, had died of heart disease. 

With the proceeds from Anton’s two life insurance policies,  Belle and her three daughters had purchased a farm (above) on the northeast outskirts of La Porte Indiana, out on McClung Road past Pine and Fish Trap lakes. 

It was there a year later, on 1 April, 1902 Belle had married widower Peter Gunness.   But tragedy seemed to have followed Belle from Chicago.  That very summer, Peter’s young daughter (above, on Belle's knee)  had died after a short illness. And then in December, Peter himself had been struck on the head by a falling sausage grinder, and killed. Well, life on a farm was hard, and dangerous.  

"M.E". forced a smile as he stepped out to greet the lumbering,  280 pound now middle aged woman.  But this day Belle was not interested in pleasantries. Someone, Belle announced,  wanted to murder her.

Her tale had a tinge of unreality to "M.E,"'s ears.  He was one of the most prominent of the 14,000 citizens of La Porte,  Indiana. Fifteen passenger trains a day passed through La Porte (above) on their way to and from Chicago, 60 miles to the northwest.  Perched atop the prairie, the town was surrounded by farms, including the one owned by "M.E.", and, of course,  Belle's.  

But it was also home to the Meinaid Rumely Factory (above), whose 2,000 employees assembled steam powered thrashers  and were rushing to manufacture one of the world’s first internal combustion farm tractors, the “Kerosene Annie”.

As befitted a prosperous middle class community, just down the street from "M.E."’s office stood the new red sandstone Romanesque Court House (above), with oak paneled court rooms and stained glass windows. But Belle's accusations seemed more fitting to the lurid crime ridden alleys of Chicago than the small, quiet, proper and hard working Victorian style, La Porte, Indiana.

The potential assassin, said Belle, was Ray Lamphere (above), who until recently had been Belle’s hired hand. Six weeks ago, said Belle,  she had fired Ray, and he had threatened her and her two youngest daughters. “I'm afraid he's going to kill me and burn the house,” Belle told "M.E.".   Thank goodness Belle’s eldest daughter, Jennie, was safely away at a finishing school in Los Angeles.  Yes, Belle had spoken with the police. Twice she had charged Ray with trespassing. But, explained the angry Belle,  the police had refused to grant her a protection order, and had dismissed her allegation that Ray was insane.

Now, out of an excess of caution, Belle had come to M.E., to change her will.  She wanted to be certain that her estate would go to her children. And, if for some reason, they were deceased,  then Belle wanted all her property to go to a Norwegian orphanage back in Chicago.  "M.E." took down the information, and made an appointment for Belle to return in a few days to sign the completed document.

Then shocking news came with the morning light. There had been a terrible fire at the Gunness farm in the early morning hours of 28 April, 1908.

Despite the noble efforts of Belle’s new hired hand, and two passing men, no one had made it out of the house alive.  Eventually the ashes of the beams, walls and the furniture had crashed into the basement.

By noon the heat had retreated enough for workers to shift the ashes. There they found the pitiful bodies of Belle’s three children, Myrtle and Lucy Sorensen, and Philip Gunness, aged 5,  as well as the blackened, headless corpse of a woman presumed to be Belle.

And when the cops arrested Ray Lamphere (above), he blurted out, “Did widow Gunness and the kids get out all right?”  It seemed an open and shut case.  Except... when told of the bodies, and of the charges Belle had made against him the day before,  Ray was heard to ruefully say, “After all,  she wanted me killed because I knew too much..”  Was this the foundation for an insanity plea, or even self defense - from a woman?  But it did cause the police to pause for a moment.

And then there was the mystery of the woman’s body. When doctors examined the burned corpse they described it as belonging to a woman weighing no more than 150 pounds.  Neighbors who had sewn clothing for Belle were adamant that the corpse could not be her's.   So back to the ashes went the searchers. And what they found raised even more questions; they found men’s pocket watches, rings and wallets. A lot of watches, rings and wallets.

While the police were still mulling over this perplexing development, a man named Ray Helgelien arrived in town,  looking for his brother.  Andrew Helgelien (above) had responded to a notice in a South Dakota lonely hearts column. “Wanted — a woman who owns a beautifully located and valuable farm in first class condition, wants a good and reliable man as partner in the same”.  The lady needed help paying off the farm's mortgage, and offered matrimony and love in return. After exchanging several letters, Andrew had left home with $300 cash in his pocket.  

Ray had not heard from his brother for several weeks, and finally opened a final letter mailed to him, but arriving after he had left. It was post marked from La Porte (above). It read,  “My heart beats in wild rapture for you, My Andrew. I love you. Come prepared to stay forever.”  Having seen newspaper stories about the grisly finds in the burned out farm house, Ray suspected that Andrew may have done just  that.   Had Belle placed that notice?  The local post office confirmed that Belle had mailed and received 8 to 10 letters a day, for years. The searchers spread out across the farm and started digging.

First they found and disinterred the body of daughter Jennie,  who was supposed to have been away at school in Los Angeles.   Then, under the pig pen the searchers found the bodies of ten to fourteen men and women, many of whom had been last seen visiting Belle’s farm, or working  there as maids or cooks.

Included among these remains was a body identified as being that of Andrew Helgelien (above). In his corpse, as is in many of the others, the medical examiner found cyanide. The police were now more than willing to think the worst. 

How many victims had been fed to Belle’s hogs, or buried in undiscovered graves elsewhere on the farm? When finally added up the list of known and suspected victims reached forty.  Belle Gunness could well have been the most prolific, and one of the most hard working serial murderess in American history.

The jury at Ray Lamphere’s trail found him not guilty of murder, but guilty of arson. The jury also issued a statement asserting that Belle’s body had been found in the ashes. That did not match what the medical examiner had to say about the body. And Ray insisted to the day he died that Belle had escaped.

For the next decade, sightings of Belle (above) were reported from all over America and Scandinavia. But the most intriguing story was that of Esther Carlson, who in 1931 was arrested in Los Angeles,  the location of Jennie's supposed finishing school.  Esther was charged with the murder of a Norwegian immigrant, which matched Belle's preferred victims.  Like Belle, Esther's motive was alleged to be theft of the victim's money.  Also like Belle, Esther's weapon of choice had been cyanide. But nothing was ever proved, and Esther died in jail while awaiting trial.

But two expatriates from La Porte identified photos of Esther Carlson (above) as Belle Gunness. The ages and time lines seemed to match,  Belle would have been 71 years old in 1931, and if Belle had lost weight,... Could they have been the same person?  Did Belle slaughter every human being close to her, pin it on a simpleton fall guy, and escape to California, where she went on making a living by killing?   If that seems a far fetched a tale, remember that it is the nature of most people, that when they hear of a tragedy,  their first thought is sympathy,  and almost never of evil - even though sometimes that is exactly what a tragedy is.

                                                  - 30 - 

THE ORIGINAL FAKE

 

I want to introduce you to Ching Ling Foo (above), “The Original Chinese Conjurer” who was the most famous magician to ever come out of China -  according to his advertising.  In 1898, when he brought his show to America, he offered $1,000 to any magician who could duplicate his act.  The offer may have been a mistake.

Because, shortly thereafter, another magician, under the name Ching Ling Soo, began doing just that: and also billing himself as the “Original Chinese Conjurer”, and the  "Marvolous Chinese Conjurer".  Suddenly there were two originals.

In January of 1905 Foo opened his show at London's Empire Theatre (above), in Leicester Square, only to discover that for the previous month,....

...and directly across the street, at the Hippodrome Theatre (above), Soo had been running his identical show -  advertised with near identical posters.  

The two began campaigns of trash talk, accusing each other of fraud and name calling that kept the theatre critics working their pencils to the nub, and the audiences jammed into their seats at both theatres.

Eventually Foo offered Soo $2,000 for a 'trick off' in front of the press. On the appointed day Foo was there but, alas, Soo was not. The London Weekly Dispatch asked, “Did Foo fool Soo? And can Soo sue Foo?” Alas, those questions were never answered.  But the publicity kept both men headlining around England and America for most of the next decade.

Then, in March of 1918, Soo was performing on the stage of the Wood Green Empire Club (above) Theatre in London. The climax of Soo's show was his performance of his most famous trick, a variation on “The Bullet Catch”, which he called “Condemned to Death by the Boxers”. 

In this trick audience members loaded marked bullets into a rifle, and then watched recruited soldiers or policemen fire the gun directly at Soo’s chest.  Soo always caught the marked bullet in his hand (or his teeth) to thunderous applause.

The secret behind this trick is obvious. No human reflex, not a human hand or or a mouth,  can move fast enough to catch a bullet.  So the marked bullet has to be transferred by hand before the gun or guns are fired. The method of disguising the transfer varies from magician to magician, and that is what requires the skill. The trick is to distract and entertain the audience.  And not get shot. It was  Chung Lee Soo's most famous gag. 

Or at least it was until 23 March, 1918, when after the guns fired, Soo collapsed.  Was it just another dramatic stunt?  Seconds passed.  But eventually,  as horrified cast members rushed to his aid, Soo was clearly heard announcing, “Oh, my God. Something has happened. Lower the curtain”, in perfect English. The Marvolous Chinese Conjurer died the next morning at the Cottage Green Hospital.

At the inquest into his death Soo’s widow, Sue Seen, (who also appeared occasionally as his male Chinese assistant) testified sans her stage makeup as Miss Olive Path,  her real identity, She explained that the rifles were real and capable of firing real bullets, but...

...with a special hidden chamber. Cocking the rifle forced the bullet loaded by an audience member to drop out of the way, clearing space for a second bullet, which was made out of paraffin. It would dissolve with the force of the exploding gunpowder, allowing Soo to produce a bullet he had supposedly caught. It was and still is an amazing gag, when it works.

But over time there had been a buildup of black powder residue which fouled the gun's chambers. On that terrible night the real bullet remained jammed in the chamber and blocked the safe paraffin round from entering. And so when the bullet was fired, it was really fired. And Soo was really killed.

The inquest had also determined that Soo, the other “Original Chinese Conjurer” , was not actually Chinese. His actual name was William Robinson (above and below).

Robinson was actually a Caucasian from Brooklyn, New York,  and he had worked as a magician under the name “The Amazing Robinson”....

...with Olive (above)  as his assistant, until he had hit upon the idea of grafting onto the success of Ching Ling Foo, the actual original "Original Chinese Conjurer" -

- who by the way actually was Chinese but was actually named Chee Ling Qua. (Confused yet?) The lesson here is that the only people who can trust magicians are their rabbits. And not always.

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