Research: 19th & 20th Century Web Resources

By Eliza Tucker

Being a stay-at-home mom who lives in present-day Ohio but writes fiction primarily set in New York Century at the turn of the 20th century, I rely heavily on Web-based history resources. Here's a list of my most-used sites, and insight on how I employ them.

Google Books: While the Google Books project has been the source of contention for many in the publishing industry lately, their publications which fall in the realm of public domain can be a big help for researchers. Using the 'Advanced Search' feature, you can look up search terms within specific dates. You can search full texts of public domain books and even download most in PDF or EPUB formats.

New York Times Archive: Using the 'Advanced Search' function, you can search any day's release of The New York Times from 1851-1980, with specific dates and search terms. When I first started doing historical research, I lost eyesight on microfilm archives of this paper at our local library! Each article is viewable as a PDF download.

Library of Congress American Memory Project: This is a massive resource with collections ranging from Advertising to Women's History, African-American History to War and Military History. It takes a bit of time to navigate, but chances are if you're looking for very specific information, it's in here. The most fascinating of these fully viewable online collections is the Thomas Edison films of New York City.

Cornell University Making of America Archive: A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. This site provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.

Museums' Virtual Exhibitions, such as The Museum of the City of New York: The great thing about singular museums' exhibitions is that they change on a somewhat regular basis.

The Dictionary of Victorian London: Historical thriller author Lee Jackson has collected and organized articles and info regarding life in Queen Victoria's Britain. Includes unique maps! Even if you don't write in this period or time, it's definitely worth a look.

The Inflation Calculator: Need to know how much $5 meant to a person in 1816? A simple "form adjusts any given amount of money for inflation, according to the Consumer Price Index, from 1800-2007."

Small sites: One of my most-referenced sites right now is No. 9 Duane Street, which is chock full of info about the newsboys' lodging houses of the 1800-1900s.

Literature & Education: The Grand Street School

By Eliza Tucker

School isn't just for good little boys and girls.

In the 1870s, there thrived in the Lower East Side of New York City, a school open to children of all colors and creeds. Located near the intersection of Grand and Clinton Streets in a dry good shop owned by Prussian immigrant Wolfe Mandelbaum, The Grand Street School became the most highly esteemed school for young criminals in the United States.

By the time the school was established, Wolfe's wife, Fredericka, had become New York City's most well-respected receiver of stolen goods. She employed expert pickpockets and thieves who not only helped fill two large Manhattan warehouses with items that once belonged to the city's finest families, but took in children aged ten and younger to learn how to scam, cutpurse, and rob. Even the advanced classes in safe cracking, burglary, blackmail and conartistry were free of initial charge for astute students.

The best and brightest graduates of the Grand Street School were offered salaried positions, but they had to surrender anything they stole. This offering didn't last long: "Marm" Mandelbaum found several of these employees were double dealing by turning in their better finds to her rivals.

The Grand Street School only operated for six years, when, in an act of rebellion, a well-known police officer's son applied for training. Marm Mandelbaum realized the educational venture was too common and bad for her other businesses. In 1884, Marm Mandelbaum--New York's own Fagin--was captured in a sting operation led by the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

Fashion: Ready-to-Wear

By Eliza Tucker

From shop to store: prêt-a-porter sales have been a long time coming. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, clothiers' guilds limited the mass production of clothes, but by the 1700s, the US, China, and Europe could all boast flourishing clothing industries.

In 1820, the measuring tape was invented, which helped make consistent sizing methods. And in 1846, Elias Howe's sewing machine further increased the availability of clothes made en masse.

During the American Civil War, the demand for mass-produced uniforms was high. Sizes became standardized so that soldiers order uniforms to fit without much, if any, tailoring. After the war, men's clothes retained the standard sizing, making it easy to buy ready-made clothes.

Department stores grew in popularity. The first of these stores, Le Bon Marche ("the good deal"), opened in Paris in 1838. In New York, Alexander Turney Stewart opened his own store, aptly named AT Stewart, also called The Marble Palace, on Broadway (pictured). The Marble Palace officially became a department store in 1858, and by 182, it was linked with Macy's, B. Altman, and Lord & Taylor to form "The Ladies' Mile" on Broadway. In 1869, Stewart became a millionaire.

Other stores followed. In 1872, Bloomingdale's opened, and Bergdorf-Goodman opened its swanky doors in 1906.

Isaac Singer's electric sewing machine, which had come out in 1889, was another catalyst for ready-made clothing. Clothing factories popped up all over the world, since garment making had never been easier. Using an electric machines in an assembly line, even the most unskilled seamstresses could be of use, as they only had to learn how to make a single piece of clothing. This also created a way for clothing manufacturers to branch out into women's clothing, starting with shirtwaists, which are long, tapered blouses worn with flowing skirts.

Sears, Roebuck & Co., which had begun as a mail-order service in 1839, took on clothing manufacturer Julius Rosenwald as part owner in 1895. With the addition of ready-to-wear clothing available in standard sizes, the catalog grew from 320 pages, to more than 530. In 1925, Sears opened its first retail store. By the end of 1929, 319 stores had popped across America.

Ready-to-wear clothing had found a place in the middle-class, where people were too busy to make their own clothes but not wealthy enough to hire someone to custom-sew them. After World War II, haute couture ready-to-wear began to pop up in Europe from designers like Dior and Givenchy, names still expensive today.

Food & Drink: Cracker Jack

By Eliza Tucker

The more you eat, the more you want.

In 1908, Jack Norworth penned the song, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", the chorus of which became famous, and is still sung at baseball games today:

Katie Casey was base ball mad.
Had the fever and had it bad;
Just to root for the home town crew,
Ev'ry sou Katie blew.
On a Saturday, he young beau
Called to see if she'd like to go,
To see a show but Miss Kate said,
"No, I'll tell you what you can do."

"Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don't care if I never get back,
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
At the old ball game."

The official story tells that upon finding out his brother's secret for keeping the popcorn and peanuts from sticking together, Louis Rueckheim exclaimed, "That's cracker jack!" WH Rueckheim liked the term so much, he has it trademarked.

In 1899, Cracker Jack began to be sold in boxes, rather than tubs.

Henry Eckstein (1860-1935), a part owner and partner of the company, invented the "triple proof package" or "waxed sealed package," a moisture proof paper package to retain freshness. This new type of packaging allowed the company to mass produce and sell Cracker Jacks worldwide, and thus become a national icon.
-- What's Cooking America

In 1908, fifteen years after introduction of the molasses-covered candy and popcorn concoction at the World's Fair in Chicago, Norworth's song solidified the candy corn's place in American culture.

In 1912, Cracker Jack offered "a prize in every box." Some of these prizes? Miniature magnifying glass, tiny toys, booklets, Morse code charts, presidential cards, movie player cards, and novelty whistles. A collection of prizes can be found here.

In 1918, Sailor Jack and Bingo appear on the packages. Cracker Jack has been included in famous fiction works such as Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and the film Breakfast at Tiffany's. The US Navy's traditional uniform is called "The Cracker Jack," and July 5 is National Cracker Jack Day. Recently, a complete set (176) of 1915 Cracker Jack prize baseball cards was sold for $800,000 at auction.

Humans in Nature: Theodore Roosevelt, Conservationist

By Eliza Tucker

Theodore Roosevelt, Rough Riding trust buster American President, is renowned for his love of the outdoors and his legacy of environmental conservation still thrives today.

As a child, Roosevelt suffered from severe asthma, and was frequently ill. His parents were both tough and wise, and, once his health stabilized a little, decided to make sure young "Teedie" (as he was called then) spent much time out-of-doors, engaged in physical activity. To provide a place for him to remain active in poor weather, his father built a gymnasium in their home.

Roosevelt fell in love with outdoors, so much that, on his wedding trip to Europe with new bride Alice, he even climbed the Matterhorn. But when Alice and his mother died on the same day--Alice of liver failure after the delivery of their first daughter two days before; Mittie of typhoid--Teddy retreated into the wilderness, quite literally.

Roosevelt built a ranch in the Badlands of the Dakota Territory, where he got to know the West for all its wonders and dangerous, and learned Western riding, ranching, and all it entailed. As a deputy sheriff, his skills increased. The winter storm of 1886-1887 took out most of the animals on his ranch, and so he returned to New York where he engaged in politics.

Roosevelt served on the New York City police board, then as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Later he founded the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment during the Spanish-American War in Cuba, then won the title of Governor of New York and finally Vice President under William McKinley. After McKinley's murder, Roosevelt stepped into the role as president, but he could not forget the things he loved: the outdoors, physical activity, nature and animals.

By his term as president at the turn of the twentieth century,

**Forests throughout the country were depleted; some estimates indicated that only about 20 percent of the original woodlands remained in 1900
**Much of the nation's farmland, particularly in the South and East, had been exhausted by overuse and was marginally productive
**Extractive industries such as oil, gas, and minerals were proceeding at an unfettered pace
**Water rights were increasingly coming under the control of private parties, who often operated without concern for flood control or the preservation of natural features.

--U-S-history.com

Roosevelt pushed legislation that would oversee the way America took care of its territory, and the 1902 Newlands Act brought the federal government into a position where it could better maintain and manage the nation's water.

In 1903, Roosevelt founded the National Bird Reserve, and later realized the extinction of American bison was near, and founded the American Bison Society. During his term, he set aside 194 million square miles for national parks and wildlife reserves.

Sports & Entertainment: Baseball Cards

By Eliza Tucker

As far back as the 1840s, baseball was a popular sport in the U.S. As with any tournament game, its players and fans wanted a way to show their support for specific teams and the sport in general, and so many people made their own cabinet cards with photographs of players or teams pasted onto wood or thick paper for the purpose of displaying their interests.

In years following the American Civil War, Peck and Snyder, a sporting goods company based in New York City, came up with a way to further market the game--and their business. By printing "trade cards" with famous players or teams on the face with advertisements on the back. These cards were not sold, but handed out on the streets, much like today's fliers.

During the 1870's to the 1890's, trade cards were popular form of advertising. In fact baseball theme trade cards made up only a fraction of the total trade cards. Trade cards depicted many subjects, including presidents, animals and comics. A popular type of baseball trade card were comic trade cards, which shown baseball scenes in a comical situation. Collecting trade cards and pasting them into scrapbooks became one of the country's most popular hobbies. Many of these baseball trade cards found today have some damage on the back where they were removed from scrap books. Collecting old trade cards is popular with some collectors today...

Goodwin & Co., another tobacco company in New York, issued the Old Judge cards, a small picture card that was inserted into packs of Old Judge brand tobacco. Goodwin & Co. produced these cards both as a 'stiffener' for their cigarette packs and to boost sales.
Cycleback.com

By the start of the first World War, the tobacco companies had released their hold on the baseball cards, but the prize prints had long since found their way into Cracker Jack boxes, gum packages, and even boxes from clothing shops.

Women: Police Matrons

By Eliza Tucker

Responding to demands made by the American Female Reform Society and the Women's Prison Association of New York City, in 1845, the city hired six women to work as "prison matrons." Their job was to look after female and minor inmates on Blackwell's Island and in The Tombs in Manhattan.

It wasn't until 1891 that women were officially inducted into the New York City Police Department. Before this,

...the task of searching female prisoners was performed by male officers, their wives, widows of policemen, or by the maid at the police station. The widows, known as "bedmakers," were paid out of the Policemen's own pockets. Female prisoners were not housed separately from the male prisoners. In addition, men and women (called "casuals") who came to New York City without money were often forced to find shelter at the station houses. In 1887, at various times, up to 42,000 of these homeless women spent at least one night in a station house.
~ New York City Police Department website

In 1891, after a case of a male police officer assaulting a 15-year-old female detainee, a bill passed that required male and female inmates to be housed separately, and for female officers to attend to female prisoners. After passing the civil service test and each garnering 20 recommendations by "women of good standing," four women were sworn into the position. They were assigned only to the second and fourth precincts, received one day off per month, and were paid $1000 a year (approximately $24,6000 in today's currency). Their rate of pay did not increase until 1918.

1892 -- Police Matrons required for every precinct.

1912 -- Police Matron Isabella Goodwin is the first woman to become a First Grade Detective.

1917 -- Police Commissioner Arthur Woods gives special patrolman's badges to two women, which allowed them to make arrests.

1918 -- Police Matron Mary Sullivan is the first woman to make Homicide Detective.

1919 -- Cora I. Parchment is the first African-American woman to join the NYPD.

These women women, along with their fellow works and the women's organizations that fought alongside them, pushed open doors occupationally, but they worked hard to protect the displaced, suffering women in our communities.

Weapons and Armies: The Tong Wars

By Eliza Tucker

All wars begin on smaller scales: a push for more freedom, a governmental revolution, or the desire for resources. New York City of the mid-1800s was no different. Dozens of gangs, small and large, violent and not-so-violent, ran the city with their support of the police through grafts and vice rackets.

Originally, life within the Chinese communities was dominated by a few large family and district associations with restrictive membership. As a protective response to their dominance mutual aid associations, so-called tongs, emerged. The tongs adopted the norms and values of the Triad subculture. Their secretive nature, combined with the fact that they could recruit members without traditional restrictions, enabled them to overpower the family and district associations and to take on the social functions of arbitration, protection and exploitation in Chinatown. A tong is not a criminal organization per se, but a natural means of obtaining and using mutually obligate bonds (guanxi) for both criminal and non-criminal purposes.

Organizing Chinatown: Race and Racketeering in New York City, 1890-1910
Jeffrey Scott McIllwain
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004

Photo: Mock Duck

When the tongs first emigrated to the American West, they served as mutual aid societies. Quickly the 'mutual aid' provided began to resemble the strongarm tactics of the mafia and Irish mob. The tongs spread across the US to Chicago, Boston, and New York City. In the early 1900s, two Chinese gangs took hold of the few Manhattan blocks known as Chinatown. Led by newcomer Sai Wing Mock, known as Mock Duck or "Clay Pigeon", the Hip Sings launched a war against the much larger On Leong Tong, led by press-and-police pet, Tom Lee.

Mock Duck, at age 22, politely asked the older, legendary Tom Lee for half the revenues of all of the On Leong gambling and prostitution rackets. After a long stare, Tom Lee laughed and walked away, without saying a word.

Two days later, Mock Duck set fire to an On Leong boarding house, killing two tong members. Shortly after, an On Leong member was attacked by two hatchetmen. Tom Lee replied to the attack with an order to kill all Hip Sing members, with an emphasis on Mock Duck.

Mock Duck survived stabbings and shootings, and began wearing a chain mail vest under his clothes. Known for his terrible aim with a gun, Mock Duck soon realized his best chance against the hatchetmen was to stoop to the ground, duck his head, shut his eyes, and shoot two pistols in any direction he pleased. Using this method, Mock Duck rarely failed to hit his attackers, but often hit innocent bystanders as well.

Tom Lee put a $1000 price on Mock Duck's head--that's almost $25,000 in today's currency--and the warrant fueled the fires in the Tong Wars. Meanwhile, Mock Duck was busy securing his tong's ties to the Four Brothers, China's oldest and most respected family guild. The Four Brothers joined the war against the On Leongs after Mock Duck promised them cultural power in New York. Mock Duck also drafted the two most dangerous hatchetmen in San Francisco, who are estimated to have murdered around 100 men in the Tong Wars.

While Tom Lee had the police force in his pocket, so Mock Duck appealed to the religious reformers for added support. He told the popular Rev. Charles Parkhurst about the good Chinese trying to live honestly, and about the terrible vices the On Leongs pushed upon them, such as the singsong girls (prostitutes) and the opium dens. Mock Duck provided Parkhurst with a list of On Leong's establishment, and Parkhurst used his favor with most of New York's upper class to force the authorities into action.

But Mock Duck kept the Ace up his sleeve. Tom Lee realized that Mock Duck hadn't given Parkhurst any addresses along On Leong's Mott Street, from whence the On Leong's highest revenue came. Tom Lee couldn't turn over any information about the Hip Sings in retaliation if he wanted to stay in business.

In 1906, Tom Lee finally conceded, only to try to rebuild the On Leongs in 1909. This time, the police involved themselves fully, working toward peace more than profit. These battles, fought within just five diminutive city blocks, were responsible for approximately 350 deaths.

Families & Children: The Children's Aid Society

By Eliza Tucker

For kids without families in Victorian New York City, orphanages and almshouses were the only alternatives to life on the streets. In 1853, Charles Loring Brace changed the future for the city's least fortunate when he founded the Children's Aid Society.

A minister working in Manhattan's notorious Five Points district, Brace was appalled by the slum's widespread abuse and neglect. Taking advantage of the Westward push, Brace and his reformers would place nearly 100,000 children with frontier-bound families. While many of these stories ended well, as Brace hoped, some of the children in the Orphan Trains found themselves in situations similar to or worse than the ones they'd left in the East.

Brace and the Children's Aid Society (CAS) continued their outreach programs within the city, by founding and sponsoring industrial schools for boys, girls, and young women, offering free out-of-city camps and excursions, providing free lunches for children enrolled in schools, and opening the first free dental clinics in New York.

The CAS set up several lodging houses in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn, designated for the abandoned, homeless, and orphaned children. These houses offered part-time schooling, but their occupants worked during the day, often as newsies, delivery or messenger boys, in factories or shops. The children in these lodging-houses often did well for themselves later in life. Having created their own family units comprised of other urchins, former CAS kids held reunions, stayed in touch, and became successful business partners.

Today, the Children's Aid Society continues its work as a privately funded organization, helping more than 150,000 children annually through camps, after-school and weekend care, foster care, legal advocacy, health and counseling, and cultural development.

Social Movements: The Coffee House Revolutions

By Eliza Tucker

I'm the first to admit it: I'm a coffee devotee. While coffee culture today is considered a status symbol--a sort of beverage bling--by critics, the coffee-house of eras past meant something entirely different.

In 1457, the first coffee-house opened in Constantinople (Istanbul), followed by two more in 1555 after approval by the Sultan--even though the ulema (scholars with specialized knowledge of Islamic law and theology) compared coffee to hard spirits. With the opening of these coffee-houses, the clientele was firmly established. In the 17th century, the Ottoman historian İbrahim Peçevi chronicled the coffee culture:

"These were enlightened gentlemen who are lively and addicted to amusement. They could gather as groups of twenty or thirty in each coffeehouse. Some of them reading books, discussing rules of good manners, as others were playing chess or backgammon. Some brought their newest poems or discussed art." (Peçevi, para.)

Most of these patrons were Kalemiyye (the Sultan's scribes) and itinerate teachers at the medrese--the professional social theoreticians of the time. As shops spread across the Ottoman empire, they became crowded, standing-room only venues for interaction and argument.

Around 1600, coffee entered Europe via Venice, and introduced to the New World by Captain John Smith, although some Canadian historians trace coffee's history in their country as being earlier than 1607. The first Europeans to commercially grow coffee were the Dutch, in their colonies in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), on the Island Java, in Indonesia, and then in South America.

By 1675, London coffee-houses gained political stature as they became lecterns in which every party and faction could preach. Coffee-houses became public schools for adults, even offering discourses on sciences and astronomy. The London coffee-house was open to all gentlemen, without regard to status or wealth. This rare offering proved to be as addictive to some men as the caffeine they consumed, riling the wives they neglected into starting an anti-coffee movement and a 1674 short work called The Women's Petition Against Coffee.

In the early 1700s, Louis XIV managed to get a single coffee tree from the Dutch, and the French guarded their King's coffee supply diligently. Americans began to grow their own coffee shortly thereafter, and by the mid-1700s, the coffeehouse culture spread through Europe. By the 1760s, more than 2,000 caffés had taken root in Venice alone.

In the early 1800s, Vienna developed a slightly more subtle coffee culture. As if returning to its roots, the scribes of the day gathered in kaffeehauses and were invited to stay all day, into the night. This leisurely approach to coffee was solidified by the tradition of headwaiter presenting a cup of coffee with a spoon balanced carefully over it, signifying an invitation to stay as long as the customer liked.

Coffee-houses grew in America until the turn of the twentieth century, when the old, moralistic Victorian class identified cafes with dangerous revolutionaries. Anarchism, communism, free love and other dangerous ideas were equated to café culture. The Great Depression saw coffee as an affordable staple--many families resorted to a dinner of coffee on bread--which only bolstered America's addiction to the drink. Rationing during World War II made coffee once again a luxury, but during the country's recovery in the 1950s and 1960s, coffee houses became a haven for beatniks and wanna-be revolutionaries once more.

Maladies & Treatments: Asylum

By Eliza Tucker

Mental health has been a concern since ancient times, with accounts of insanity reaching as far back as 630-562 BC. In an inscription apparently written by King Nebuchadnezzar II and translated by British archaeologist Sir Henry Rawlinson, the king admitted heavy depression:

"For four years the seat of my kingdom in the city...did not rejoice my heart. In all my dominions I did not build a high place of power; the precious treasures of my kingdom I did not lay out in the worship of Merodach, my lord, the joy of my heart. In Babylon the city of my sovereignty and the seat of my empire I did not sing his praises, and I did not furnish his altars; nor did I clear out the canals."

The famous Greek philosophers studied the mind continually. In works such as De Anima, De Sensu, De Memoria, and Parva Naturalia, Aristotle touches on ideas that would later be examined extensively by psychologists.

In the 8th century, Muslim physicians began to build psychiatric care facilities in which to observe, regulate, and treat patients with various ailments. Dream interpretation was a major focus for early Islamic psychologists, as the religion put a heavy emphasis on understanding the subconscious.

Bethlem Royal Hospital in South London began admitting society's outcasts and mentally ill in 1403, but by the early 1500s there were only 31 patients. Bethlem became widely known as a terrible near-prison in which the violent inmates were manacled and chained to walls or floors. Eventually known as Bedlam, Bethlem became one of the first freak shows upon its move to Moorfields. "Well" folks paid a penny to watch the exploits and lifestyles of the less fortunate--except on the first Tuesday of each month, when admission was, charitably, free.

In 1700, Bedlam's inmates were first called "patients," and in the "curable" and "incurable" wards were opened in the early part of the 1700s.

For Westerners, the lack of Christian values was to blame for all manner of insanity. Demon possession and immorality were considered viable causes for physical deformities, cognitive deficiencies and mental impairments, resulting in society's desire to separate the insane from the well. In the late 1700s, France's Bicêtre Hospital became a hotbed of reform.

Philippe Pinel, physician of the infirmaries at Bicêtre, and Jean-Baptiste Pussin, "governor" of Bicêtre came together to assess the 200 men in the mentally ill ward. Using an "empirical approach" of humane treatment, Pinel prohibited the use of painful "treatments" such as bleeding and purging, and instead visited each patient frequently, capturing each with conversation instead of manacles.

In 1834, the Vermont Asylum for the Insane opened in Brattleboro, Vermont, in the United States. Instead of treating patients like criminals, the Vermont Asylum offered sanitary living conditions and eventually expanded into work programs, exercise and recreation, specialized education, and spiritual guidance. In the mid-1800s, more asylums were founded and in the United States and Australia, even the architecture was specially designed to aid in the treatment of the insane.

The public received a widely-received, if particularly tame, literary look into the madhouse when The New York World published "Ten Days in a Madhouse", a serial by 24-year-old reporter Nelly Bly. In the introduction of the Ian L. Munro publication of the story, Miss Bly writes:

I am happy to be able to state as a result of my visit to the asylum and the exposures consequent thereon, that the City of New York has appropriated $1,000,000 more per annum than ever before for the care of the insane. So I have at least the satisfaction of knowing that the poor unfortunates will be the better cared for because of my work.

This is running long because I hate to feel like I'm reducing a history of a topic so universal and important, but here's hoping these quick snapshots will turn out!

The Love Cycle: Romance Novels and the Working Girl

By Eliza Tucker

At the turn of the twentieth century, London, Paris, and New York attracted dreamers and bohemians. Young suburban women who, when finished with as much school as their parents deemed necessary, shuffled into big cities in search of employment. Excited by stories of girls making the munificent sum of $8 per week, young women went from milliner to florist, factory to laundry-room in search of the ideal job and the ideal wage.

The Industrial Revolution set more than just machines in motion. Working-class women were thrust into close proximity to men on a continual basis in every part of their lives. Girls were allowed to walk city streets, to dine with men in certain establishments, and to date without supervision without suffering much in the way of tarnished reputations. In many ways, the working-class woman enjoyed more freedom than the lady of fashion.

With literacy on the rise, romance lived in the dress factories and sweatshops, where the hopeful young employees read books during breaks, hoping for better lives. In The Long Day by Dorothy Richardson, the narrator considers the role of fiction in the lives of working girls of her era, New York City in 1905:

Promptly at half-past twelve the awakening machinery called us back to the workaday world. Story-books were tucked away, and their entranced readers dragged themselves back to the machines and steaming paste-pots, to dream and talk as they worked, not of their own fellows of last night’s masquerade, but of bankers and mill-owners who in fiction have wooed and won and honorably wedded just such poor toilers as they themselves.

This entertaining discourse over the daily task of box-making follows:

IN WHICH PHOEBE AND MRS. SMITH HOLD FORTH UPON MUSIC AND LITERATURE

Don't you never read no story-books?" Mrs. Smith asked, stirring the paste-pot preparatory to the afternoon's work. She looked at me curiously out of her shrewd, snapping dark eyes as she awaited my answer. I was conscious that Mrs. Smith didn't like me for some reason or other, and I was anxious to propitiate her. I was pretty certain she thought me a boresome prig, and I determined I'd prove I wasn't. My confession of an omnivorous appetite for all sorts of story-books had the desired effect; and when I confessed further, that I liked best of all a real, tender, sentimental love-story, she asked amiably:

"How do you like 'Little Rosebud's Lovers'?"

"I've never read that," I replied. "Is it good?"

"It's fine," interposed Phoebe; "but I like 'Woven on Fate's Loom' better--don't you?" The last addressed to Mrs. Smith.

"No, I can't say that's my impinion," returned our vis-à-vis, with a judicious tipping of the head to one side as she soused her dripping paste-brush over the strips. "Not but what 'Woven on Fate's Loom' is a good story in its way, either, for them that likes that sort of story. But I think 'Little Rosebud's Lovers' is more int'resting, besides being better wrote."

"And that's just what I don't like about it," retorted Phoebe, her fingers traveling like lightning up and down the corners of the boxes. "You like this hot-air talk, and I don't; and the way them fellows and girls shoot hot-air at each other in that there 'Little Rosebud's Lovers' is enough to beat the street-cars!"

Phoebe goes on to tell the story of 'Little Rosebud's Lovers,' which is complete with an exotic setting (South Carolina), two lovely sisters (but only Rosebud had a demeanor to match her physical beauty; the other, Maud was jealous and spiteful), and Harvard-grad lover (who turned out to be 'a villain of the deepest dye'). The story-book fans go on to discuss the plot holes in a way that would fit well on a current-day lit forum:

"Where did she get the money to come to New York with?" interrupted the practical Phoebe. "That's something I don't understand. If she didn't have no money to hire a room at a hotel down in South Carolina for overnight, I'd like to know where she got the money for a railroad ticket."

"Well, that's just all you know about them swells," retorted Mrs. Smith. "I suppose a rich man's daughter like that can travel around all over the country on a pass."

The banter continues for a chapter, and gives us a great look into the origins of romance, while the book glimpses how average girls fit courtship and passion into otherwise taxing lives. Write on, romance authors!

Holidays & Celebrations:November 11, 1918

By Eliza Tucker

On November 11, 1918, the Allied Forces and Germany signed an armistice agreement that signaled the ceasefire on the Western Front. This marked the end of World War I, even though fighting continued in other regions, such as Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

In the United States, the truce was met with great celebrations, even though the country's involvement in the war had only lasted a little over a year and a half. A year later Americans were still feeling the effects of the war, and a good number of soldiers who had not been reported dead had been left behind. New York City, with the rest of the country, planned elaborate meetings and parades to remember the day the truce was made, and no social leader gave up the opportunity to remind his audience of Patriotism and to preach against the continuing threats of anarchy and communism. The following quotes are pulled from a November 12, 1919 article that ran in the New York Times.

With a note of solemnity that contrasted sharply with the delirious joy with which the singing of the armistice was greeted a year ago, city, Sate, and nation yesterday observed the second Armistice Day with tributes to the memory of the heroic dead.

Combined with the eulogies of heroism that rises supreme in the history of the conflict were warnings from clergymen, from soldiers, and from statesmen to make swift action against Bolshevism and other forces of disintegration so "that these dead shall not have died in vain."

In all the exercises in observance of the first anniversary of the signing of armistice which brought to a close the world's greatest war to the most impressive moment was when audiences stood with bowed heads in a moment of silent prayer for those who perished on the fields of battle. None of the speakers failed to point out, and none of the audiences failed to recognize, that those who paid most dearly for victory were the soldiers whose names were missing from the muster rolls when the guns were hushed.

More than 100 separate meetings and memorial services were held in this city yesterday under the auspices of the American-Legion and the veterans of the regiments and military organizations which took their part in the war. In the schools the pupils heard tales of new heroes whose bravery rivals that of the outstanding figures of other wars. In many sections of the city these pupils joined the veterans in impressive pageants of victory.

Throughout the city the joyous celebration of the signing of the armistice was forgotten. Remembered only was the feeling that every citizen felt when he saw that immense field of gold stars borne past in tribute to the dead.

In cities throughout the country the same note of solemnity prevailed, and in none was the ceremony of paying tribute to the fallen a minor part of he exercises. Six States had set aside the day as an official holiday, and in their proclamations the Governors had expressed a desire that the Armistice Day should be observed in the same manner as Memorial Day had been observed since the idea was adopted, in tribute to the veterans of the civil war.

In twenty-two other states, where no holiday had been proclaimed, exercises were held under the auspices of the State Governments and the State military forces took part in the ceremonies. In the State, the New York Guard turned out to aid in the membership drive of the American Red Cross, which had set aside this day to make a special effort in memory of those who were killed or wounded on the battlefields.

The rest of the article is available here (.pdf file)

The 1919 push to make Armistice Day a national holiday succeeded. America isn't the only country to recognize the truce annually. In Australia, Canada, and the UK, it's called Remembrance Day; in South Africa and Malta it's Poppy Day per the red poppies worn in recognition of the poppies that bloomed in many of the Belgium burial grounds, as referenced in John McCrae's famous poem, "In Flanders Field." On November 11, Poland celebrates Independence Day, per its reinstatement of sovereignty after 120+ years of foreign rule. In New Zealand and France it's still called Armistice Day. After World War II, the US renamed Armistice Day "Veteran's Day."

As for me? I celebrate the day as the advent of the holiday season by remembering the celebrations for peace that took place nearly ninety years ago.

Here's hoping for peace on earth, and good will toward men. May these things begin in your home and spread into your community.

Standards of Beauty:The Price of Beauty in the 1860s

By Eliza Tucker

In an essay entitled, "A Lady of Fashion", historian Herbert Asbury looked at the price of keeping couture in the decade following the American Civil War. He detailed the usually painful trends in garment construction and cosmetics, and the price thereof.

"The butterfly of the eighteen-sixties and the early eighteen-seventies staggered forth under the burden of an infinite variety of beautifying apparatus constructed of steel, iron, wire, cotton, wood horsehair, and wool, all attached to her person by straps, tape, and mucilage."

The exaggerated hourglass figure was a must-have for dames of postbellum New York: a small, rounded head, full chest, tiny waist, voluminous skirt, and diminutive feet. The dentist of the day went far above simple teeth-whitening when it came to cosmetic procedures, and would regularly "provide plump cheeks...by filling them out with hard composition pads running upward along each side of the mouth. These were called 'plumpers,' and some were so large as to give the appearance of mumps. They often shifted position, so that a woman wearing them was apt to speak in a sort of whispering mumble."

False calves, cotton or wool padding for the arms, foot wrapping, and pads for "sharp and angular knees" all contributed to the desired effect. Wigs, false curls, and "ratting" were popular, and once the hair was piled, knotted, or braided into place, it was topped with powder, flour, glitter, or gold dust. The "widow's peak" was so vogue that women clipped or shaved their head around the hairstyle.

While tattooing was still improper, it was all the rage to paint the palms of a woman's hands in a vivid color, either solidly or with shapes or patterns, and to delicately trace the veins on the back of the hand with blue ink. Women painted their eyes with India ink and dropped or rubbed Belladonna to dilate their pupils. Not surprisingly, most society women eventually went blind.

The crème de la crème in New York didn't just paint their faces, they had the makeup set with a plastic enamel. Shops advertised the ability to keep the face and bosom enameled for up to a year (this cost $1000, almost $15,000 now), but there are no records to indicate that any woman had this done. Arsenic and white lead were the bases to these skin enamels, and if properly applied it did not interfere with muscle movement. "It was eventually abandoned because the flashier branches of society carried it to ludicrous extremes."

In The Women of New York, George Ellington gives us a very long, very detailed price list of what it took per annum to keep a fashionable woman in New York: approximately $20,000 a year. That's $300,000 of our US dollars. Can you imagine? If you want to check out Mr. Ellington's views of New York's women (and the infamous price list), you can read The Women of New York online.

reference: Herbert Asbury, "A Lady of Fashion", All Around the Town, 1929

Thursday Thirteen: Gangs of New York

By Eliza Tucker

In New York City, the gangs of the 19th and early 20th century had some "killer" names--even though historically not all gangs were violent, and worked instead as racial, religious, or vocational unions.

1. Daybreak Boys
2. Dead Rabbits
3. Old Slippers*
4. Cherry Hill
5. Bowery Boys
6. Five Points
7. Midnight Terrors
8. Plug Uglies
9. Gophers (as well as the Lady Gophers and Little Gophers)
10. Roach Guard
11. Hudson Dusters
12. Whyos
13. Swamp Angels**

* Great name, huh? They were a bunch of angry kids--bookbinders apprentices--who made life heck for residents around the Manhattan street Old Slip, according to Luc Sante in Low Life.

** Wouldn't think about a New Yorker relating much to the swamp, eh? Consider that much of Lower Manhattan was more or less wetland and eventually drained and filled in.

The Dreaded Backstory

Here's a classic post from Eliza Tucker.

You've got a cast of characters, you've got a basic story, you've got some subplots. You've taken the time to get to know your characters and to explore your environment, both fictional and historical. You sit down to start your rough draft. You develop your voice, and everything's going pretty smoothly, considering this is one of the most difficult parts of the creative process.

But with every well-developed character comes a history, sometimes sordid, sometimes plain. Either way, your character has skills, she's been places, she's seen stuff, and she thinks a certain way for a reason. And if you've got your reader hooked at all, they're going to want to know about all of this.

This is tricky, though. You want to convey the full, multi-layered masterpiece that is your tale, but you don't want to sacrifice the prose, flow or voice. I've found that Anne Perry can get away with injecting pages of backstory in her books, but I'm no Anne Perry.

As for me, I just read Sara Gran's Dope and felt as if I had a good understanding of everything, even though I couldn't point out a single instance of "infodumping". It helps that I know the city so well, I'm sure, and that the 1950s aren't totally foreign to me.

With my WIP I've set a rule about backstory: all backstory has to be said in 100 words or less, and each instance has to be at least a page apart. It's not a hard and fast rule, of course, and it may sound extreme, but I need it. I tend to dive long and hard into backstory, and I don't like flashbacks much.

I rely heavily on prologues, but I don't like it. I do try to maintain voice between prologues and the MS-proper.

So here are my questions to you:

1. What books have you read that have seamlessly filled the reader in with character or social history?
2. Do you have any rules that help regulate the insertion of backstory?
3. Do you think prologues are the best way to build the character or social history?
4. And readers: what do you prefer? Prologues? No prologues?