A delightful morning of murder and buggery
Oh, man, I love the internet. They’ve put the proceedings of the Old Bailey online! And it’s searchable!
It’s an excellent website, too: in addition to the 200,000+ documents (both scans and transcriptions) covering trials from 1674 to 1913, there’s a ton of good London history (and not much more politically correct than it absolutely has to be).
The Old Bailey is London’s Central Criminal Court and has been since…forever, amen. The current building (built in 1902) is on the site of the old Newgate Prison, but the two were originally side by side for the sake of convenience.
There is no better primary source of information about the lives ordinary people than trial transcripts. Where else can you learn what a murder victim had in his pockets in 1810, what a Victorian innkeeper keeps in the till, what timeless drunken ladies of the evening shout as they whale away on each other with a rum bottle and a tin teapot? Treasure, I tell you!
Naturally, murder trials are the besteses (the advanced search helpfully allows you to sort by crime). But permit me to draw your attention to sodomy offenses prior to 1790, where you will encounter what the site describes as “a vibrant, even joyful, world of men who pursued both homosexual experiences and a distinct lifestyle” — i.e. lots and lots of cross-dressing and buggery. (After 1790 the courts got squeamish and censored the transcripts).
If you have any pasty English genes floating around in your gene pool, I highly recommend plugging your surname into the thingie and seeing what your ancestors got up to. Hey, it’s England! There’s probably a coat of arms for cross-dressers!
See also: the complete Newgate Calendar, London’s Past Online. You can still visit the Old Bailey and attend a trial. I’ve always wanted to. But I made Uncle B take me to the Houses of Detention, the Old Operating Theatre and a fancy rat show so I’m not pushing my luck. I’d just as soon not be the subject of a trial at the Old Bailey, thenkyewverymuch.
June 10, 2008 — 10:23 am
Comments: 79
This isn’t very good blogging advice
Do you ever get sick of the sound of your own voice? I know I do!
I was hitting my blogroll this morning, leaving weasel droppings in various comment sections, and I caught myself thinking, “shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! Do you have to have an opinion about everything?”
I just backspaced over the comment and went for a walk. (Yes, now that you mention it, it was your blog…and it was a really great comment, too).
Not conducive to blogging.
Instead, help yourself to a really disturbing graphic of a weasel wrapped in duct tape. Somehow, I thought it would be funnier. I dunno. Maybe if it didn’t look so terrified. Maybe if I’d left it a breathing hole. (On a related note, the Duct Tape Bandit copped a plea and is expected to get ten years).
May 8, 2008 — 2:53 pm
Comments: 39
See the happy Nazis
Did y’all see this? A new photo album has turned up showing the staff of Auschwitz at play. There are few other pictures of Auschwitz before it was liberated, most notably the so-called Auschwitz Album which shows the death camp side of the death camp. The contrast is contrasty.
Included are eight new photos of Joseph Mengele, my own personal choice for Evillest Nazi. Hitler may have run the show, but he was pretty squeamish about getting his hands dirty. Mengele, on the other hand, just loved his work. Kids really responded to him, too…right up to the moment he dripped acid in their little eyes, trying to turn brown eyes blue.
The whole album is online at the Holocaust Museum.
Kind of a downer of a post, sorry. It is Monday. So very, very Monday.
September 24, 2007 — 12:15 pm
Comments: 82
A special weekend happy birthday to Dawn and the Camden Town Murder
So Dawn mentions it’s her birthday. So I think about what sort of graphic goes with “Dawn” and, naturally, the first thing that pops into my head is this little guy, above.
It was drawn by Robert Wood, a young commercial artist, in 1907. It’s a postcard mailed from Belgium inviting a woman named Phyllis Dimmock to a pub called the Rising Sun in the North London neighborhood of Camden Town. Phyllis was described at trial as a prostitute, but she may simply have been extraordinarily liberal with her favors. Also, she collected postcards. Isn’t that nice?
It is signed “Yours to a cinder, Alice.”
On the morning of September 12, Phyllis was found by her common-law husband lying in bed with her throat cut from ear to ear. There was blood in the basin and a straight razor beside it. Her postcard collection was strewn about the room, as if the murderer had tried unsuccessfully to find something. Or really hated postcards.
Later, this card turned up in the back of a drawer. When it was reproduced in the papers, an old girlfriend identified Robert Woods as the author. He talked her out of going to the police and asked her to give him an alibi. She couldn’t resist running her mouth about it, though, and word got out. He eventually admitted being the last person seen with Phyllis on the night of the 11th.
Long story short: tried and acquitted.
His case was argued by Edward Marshall Hall, who went on to be become one of the most famous British barristers, evah. Wood was the first criminal defendant in Britain to give evidence at his own trial and still be acquitted (despite the fact that he didn’t make a very good impression). The case became known as the Camden Town Murder.
The execrable painter Walter Sickert lived in Camden Town at the time and painted several enigmatic, crap pictures of the Camden Town Murder. Several writers — most recently and famously Patricia Cornwell — think Sickert was Jack the Ripper. Which is tosh, rubbish and bullshit.
That makes Wednesday before last the hundredth anniversary of the Camden Town Murder. Happy birthday, Dawn!
September 22, 2007 — 2:39 pm
Comments: 14
“If I’m still alive tomorrow morning, we’ll eat my balls.”
Remember Armin Meiwes, the “Cannibal of Rotenburg”? No? He’s the German computer technician who advertised on the internet for a willing human sacrifice and found kindred spirit Bernd Brandes, another computer geek, in 2002.
Manfred Risse, the forensic scientist called in to identify the various neatly-packaged frozen parcels of meat in Meiwes’ freezer, has just written a book about it — “Last Supper of the Murderers,” due to go on sale in Germany September 20. No word yet on an English translation.
Risse (and the court) had to watch all four and a half hours of video of the death and subsequent butchery of Brandes, who actually gasped out that mind-twisty aspiration about his own balls while already horrifically (and fatally) injured.
Alas! He didn’t make it to breakfast. No balls-on-toast for you!
Germans. Foiled again by meticulous record-keeping.
September 19, 2007 — 6:19 am
Comments: 6
Art from the Weasel Collection
Happy garbage day! I tried and, once again, failed to put these items in a sack and leave them at the curb. These lovely objects are crafted from red, silver and blue glitter, Elmer’s white glue and burnt matchsticks. It’s a cross and a jewelry box. They were made by an inmate of the Tennessee Correctional System. My mother corresponded with him for a time. I do not wish to know why.
“What’s he in for?” I asked her, naturally.
“Murder, I think,” she said. “You hate to ask, you know?”
I didn’t know. My life had been free of this particular awkward social challenge.
I’m having an asshole of a week. Much to do at work, much to do at home. Trying to clear away some of the results of my twenty years of pack-rattery, among other unpleasant jobs. The fun will continue for some time, so you’ll probably get to meet lots of my stuff (in lieu of the usual thoughtful, high quality original sweasel content). Hope you don’t mind.
I need all the imaginary friends I can get.
July 30, 2007 — 6:17 pm
Comments: 21
Excuse me, there’s a weasel in the ballpit
That’s what the web reminds me of. It’s nothing like a super highway, it doesn’t hugely feel like an interconnected web. The way I do it, it’s more like swimming in a big, colorful, bobbly pit of information balls.
I’ve never actually been in a ballpit, for I am old. Wikipedia tells me they have hygeine issues — they’re full of children and unwashed balls. Bad stuff floats to the bottom and stays there. So, see, the comparison is perfect.
Anyhow…like so: click on a link in your own blogroll, then click on a link in his blogroll, then click on a link in her blogroll…and keep clicking links until you find yourself someplace utterly strange. I do that a lot. I was hoping to come up with a cool name for this activity, but I failed.
I am also (you may have noticed) a gigantic consumer of Wikipedia (not everything hippies do is stupid). I frequent link collecting sites like Fazed and Portent. I keep a whole page of international newspaper links that I add to (and occasionally remove from).
Here’s the problem: I use Opera, the original tabbed browser. And I drink. And I leave my desktop machine on all the time. So when I come down most mornings, I am confronted with twenty cool open Web pages and no earthly idea how I got to any of them. I think it’s important to attribute stuff properly. But then, life is full of important things I don’t do.
So please, share some of my colorful balls of unknown provenance…
Did you know there was a Daily Photo Blog community? Here’s a map of current participants. I got in through Milano Daily Photo. Bath and Budapest were good, too. I only really got to the B’s before I began to skip around. Some are better about updating than others, but I enjoyed the lot of ’em.
I really love ideas like this. They feed my sick delusional yearning for godlike powers of vision and…eavesdropping. Oh, yeah, like you wouldn’t eavesdrop if you were a god.
And so continues our proven interest in all things deer anus — behold, the Butt Out Tool.
This tool is the fastest, easiest way to disconnect the anal alimentary canal from deer or similar-sized game. Immediately after harvesting game, insert the Butt-Out Tool into the anal canal and twist until it grabs the membrane. Continue twisting another half turn, then steadily pull the Butt-Out Tool out of the canal. Extract 10″ of membrane, tie the membrane off and cut.
There’s video. (I definitely got this one from Fazed).
This tattoo artist apparently specializes in bulldogs and serial killers. Okay, I don’t recognize that very last one, but the one before that is Albert Fish, Eater of Children, and the one before that is Richard Ramirez. Not just serial killers, but badly drawn, especially losery serial killers. Would it be better if these tats were all on one guy, or spread out among several scary people with bad taste? I can’t make up my mind.
This one’s almost a year old, so you’ve probably seen it if you’re into gaming. I’m not and I hadn’t. It’s 1K Project II, a thousand cars racing through a game called Trackmania. I tried a couple of different addresses for the kid who made it, in case he had any remarks, with no luck. Then I found a page explaining how he did it — in French. My French, she is not so good — but I gather he cut together multiple walkthroughs to achieve the effect. This explains why the cars seem to have collision detection in some cases and not in others.
It’s very well done and seriously cool. Sometimes they look like shoals of fish and sometimes flocks of birds and sometimes swarms of bugs and sometimes bitchin’ cars.
Finally, this guy: Tim Knowles. He’s an artist in London of the kind that does stupid shit like ink up pine trees and put paper under them and let them draw pictures in the breeze. I know, I know…I can’t help myself. I went to a poncy art school. They polluted my mind.
Like, check out this drawing, which was made by this huge seismography thing in the back of a station wagon on the way to its own exhibition. Or the slideshow he made by mailing a box rigged with a digital camera to take a picture of its journey every ten seconds for 6,994 pictures (sadly, the whole slideshow is not online). Or these surprisingly evocative pictures of the full moon reflected in water.
Or you could, you know, bite me.
July 6, 2007 — 4:36 pm
Comments: 10
The hard work of being offended
The Smoking Gun put in a Freedom of Information request to the Department of Transportation of Wisconsin (and later of Florida) and got their hands on complaint letters people had sent about obscene personalized license plates. A surprising number were from cops; who knew cops were such tight asses?
I suppose the bureau shouldn’t, on balance, have issued MUFDYV, RUHRNY, COPUL8, FL8ME or HODAWG, but it’s the sheer puffed-up assholery of the complaint letters that astounds.
Like, the woman who wrote to complain about 4U HOES CC’ed two Senators, six State Representatives and demanded a followup letter. The IN2 XTC woman sniffed, “I know you shouldn’t ‘judge a book by its cover’ but his license number fit his appearance that day perfectly.” Like the DOT could do something about ragamuffin haircuts. Dear god, she probably wishes they could.
Can’t you just picture this lady?
While returning from an enjoyable evening out my husband noticed a license plate that absolutely amazed him. Being in the military he is, unfortunately, very often in situations where obscenity is at it’s [sic] very peak. for him to notice this and be disgusted that it actually got on the street proved to me that I am not just being overly prudish.
I will trust you to locate and replace this tag and whomever in your department allowed this on the street. I know that we cannot single-handedly clean up the whole world, but I would appreciate your assitance in at least keeping smut at bay.
The tag is a Florida tag, most probably Okaloosa County and reads: 4NIKATE.
And how about this pompous fuckwit? He’s given this one some thought, hasn’t he?
My family and I were recently driving in our local area and saw a small red sports car convertible with the personalized tag reading “RAIN SUX.” To an owner of a convertible who obviously likes to ride with the top down, I am sure that rainy weather is not what they like, but I found that phrase offensive, especially on behalf of my three children ages 4, 7 and 11.
I request that the Department revoke this license tag immediately and ask the owner that it be returned to a local tag office to be destroyed. Failure for the owner in doing this should result in the suspension of his driver’s license, similar to the action taken for failure to pay a traffic violation within a prescribed period of time.
I ask that I be notified in writing what action has been taken on this particular tag. Please respond within 30 days of the date on this letter.
The guys who complained about FAAHK and FOKEW (this last one wrote directly to the governer of the state) are seriously overthinking their plate interpretations. And, dude, IH8GOP too, and I vote for the bastards every four years.
If you’ve worked out that EMWOLB is BLOWME backwards, you probably should treat yourself to some books on tape. They have them free at the public library.
Okay, put on your thinking caps. This license plate has math. It’s 6Q 2Q and a little piece of tape is put between them as a minus sign. What’s 6Q minus 2Q? 4Q, of course. See, that’s what I’m talking about working real hard to get insulted.
Finally, my favorite:
To whom it may concern,
I am flabbergasted over the fact that I saw a Florida license plate, Brevard County, with the vanity plate of FUCT 24-7. You would think that there is some guidelines to a license plate. Obviously not! You cannot read that plate without saying a foul word. Please receive this letter as a written complaint.
The sweet part? All the i’s are dotted with little hearts.
April 18, 2007 — 5:43 pm
Comments: 12
Gruesome lesbian chainsaw murder shocks US
Oh, man, is that a fabulous headline, or what? It should actually be “gruesome deaf lesbian interracial chainsaw murder shocks US.” Or it would shock the US, I feel quite sure, if any of us had ever heard of it.
Odd, that. If you do a Google News Search on “lesbian chainsaw murder,” you get hits on the Age (Australia), the Independent (UK) and the Australian. Plus the story’s local paper, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. But that’s all. Lord, does the international community love rummaging through each other’s dirty laundry.
Here’s the opening paragraphs of the story in the Age:
The trial in South Dakota of a deaf, black lesbian accused of murdering a rival and dismembering her with a chainsaw has shocked the rural midwestern US state.
Daphne Wright, 43, could become the first woman sent to death row in South Dakota, which has not executed a prisoner in more than 60 years.
Wright is accused of kidnapping and murdering a heterosexual deaf woman, Darlene VanderGiesen, 42, whom she thought was spending too much time with her girlfriend.
Emotional testimony and gruesome exhibits filled the first week of her trial, and worse is to come: prosecutors are expected to show jurors a video of a pig being dismembered with the same type of chainsaw Wright bought two days after VanderGiesen disappeared.
VanderGiesen’s mother sobbed and stepped out of the courtroom as jurors passed around her daughter’s charred brassiere on Thursday.
But she managed to sit stoically as a maintenance worker described finding her daughter’s head and navel wrapped in bags and bed sheets that other witnesses linked to Wright.
A navel? How the bloody hell do you find a navel? That’s like finding a nostril! Surely what they found was a piece of abdominal skin including said object.
The Sioux Falls Argus Leader version is full of charming local color:
In the early afternoon of Feb. 3, 2006, Darlene VanderGiesen’s parents arrived at her eastside Sioux Falls apartment to search for their missing daughter.
Meanwhile, Daphne Wright bought a 1.5-horsepower electric chainsaw at an Ace Hardware and Hefty trash bags at a Walgreens.
It’s like you’re actually there, isn’t it?
The happy Sioux Falls reporter who filed this update pretty much used up his whole year’s irony quota in one cogent observation:
Jessica Lichty, forensic chemist at the Sioux Falls crime lab, observed the upper body at the scene. She told jurors she recognized the remains as VanderGiesen, who had gone missing Feb. 1.
Lichty said she could see the woman’s face through a clear, plastic bag, which carried a sticker that read, “Warning: Plastic bags can be dangerous. To avoid danger of suffocation, keep this bag away from babies and children.”
The trial is taking place in Minnehaha County.
Well, of course it is.
April 9, 2007 — 8:02 am
Comments: 9
Shall we play a game?
I read a lot of True Crime. The first thing I do when I pick up a TC title is page to the middle and look at the pictures. Then, not knowing anything about the story, I play a game I call “Victim, Perp or Copper?” You know, look at the faces, not the captions, and see if I can tell who’s who in the melodrama.
Most murders involve lowlifes who kill other lowlifes, but those don’t tend to have books written about them. Unless it’s a serial killer of the hooker-slaying variety. So, you know, just because the picture is a mugshot, doesn’t mean it’s not a victim.
It’s axiomatic that murderers don’t look like the monsters they are, but it ain’t necessarily so. Some murderers do us all a favor and look explicitly batshit insane.
“Is the man you saw in this lineup?”
“Yes, sir. That’s the man. The hunchback with the pentagram tattoo. The one singing ‘I’m a Little Teapot’ while driving a salad fork into his temple. I never forget a piece of silverware.”
White collar mayhem is a little harder to pin down. Nice people keep their batshit crazy on the inside.
The three people pictured here are all Britons. Brits have a very low murder rate, but they make up for it in quality. British murders are either very twisted or weirdly pointless (well, not today — it’s mostly drug dealers shooting it out these days).
So, let’s play a short round of “Victim, Perp or Copper,” shall we? These three people are from three different incidents. I flipped through Ye Giante Booke of Murther and picked three that (as you may have guessed) look nothing like what they are.
When you’ve made up your mind who’s who, click on each picture to find the answer.
February 26, 2007 — 6:31 am
Comments: 11