Dana Sleeth died on April 6, 1936. He was 50 some years old. Bizarre, eh? For the 1930s, 50 seems like a young time to die. His father and mother lived into their 70s. Strangely enough, they all died with in three years of each other-- his dad Asa died in 1935, Dana died in 1936, and his mother Mattie died in 1937.
The other strange thing about this kind of historical work is that it's easy to create situations in your head that fully explain the data you have on hand. But then if you add just one more variable, your explanation is so far off, it's almost laughable.
This is how our explanation of Dana's death played out:
First, we had the young age and no explanation.
Then we found a page or two written by his daughter talking about Dana's love to drink. She said that he drank often, occasionally over-doing it. (which, given that it was Prohibition era, makes sense.)
Aha! we though. He was an alcoholic, and probably shot his liver. Death=explained.
But how boring. Entirely pedestrian.
And then we found a letter from his friend, Homer Bone, asking why he was in the Portland sanitarium, dated the day before he died. This was shortly followed by a letter from Eleanor Roosevelt, thanking him for the nice things he wrote about her in his recent column. This was dated a day or two after he died. So he never received the letter. Isn't that awful? I would be so bummed if Eleanor Roosevelt wrote me a letter that I never received. I mean, along with being bummed about being dead.
And then we found his obituary. Turns out, he was drawing a bath of (scalding) hot water, fell in, and was burned so badly, he died a few days later.
So now these questions remain:
Could you really get bath water that hot back in the 1930s?
How on earth do you fall into the bath? Was he drunk at the time?
How did they treat burns like that back then? How bad were the burns?
Unless we come across more letters from his kids or wife, I doubt we'll ever know the answer.
What a bizarre way to die. At least it's more interesting that liver failure or something.
Edited to add: We've now found that Dana had written several newspaper columns discussing the danger of slipping in hot baths. Poor guy! He didn't even take his own advice!
Friday, February 12, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
"I am on a still hunt for a sugar daddy that has some dough for hell-raising purposes" Homer T Bone
Alright! Today was an awesome day in the archives. We dealt entirely with correspondence between Dana and his friends and family. He was an active letter writer, and his editorials often attracted responses from across the nation. Conveniently, he saved most of it, including the envelopes (which are surprisingly helpful to connect names to places and dates.) So even though we've barely scratched the surface of Dana's personal writing, we already know his opinions on birth control (good), big business (bad) and socialism (good). Margaret Sanger, pioneer of birth control in the early 20th century, wrote him a letter, expressing her thanks for his latest newspaper column. Upton Sinclair (he of The Jungle fame) addressed him by his nom de plume "The Hill Billy" and offered to send Dana any of his books that he found interesting.
Perhaps the most intriguing though, is his six years of correspondence with Mr. Homer T.Bone, future senator from Washington. We first have letters from Bone from 1930, when he decided that he had no money to run for Senate, and no one had enough money to fund him. By 1931, he had decided to go for it, and in 1932, he was elected to the Senate. He was a firm socialist, and was appalled at the apathy of the lower classes (whom he called 'serfs'.) It's surprising to me that he could ever get elected. In his letters, he rails against private corporations and profits which undercut the common man. He sends Dana lists of organizations that are considered "communist." The League of Women Voters and the Society for Safer Schools among them. It's also interesting to read the subtext of the letters. Beyond the indignant cries against capitalism, there's a sense of loneliness and isolation. He often hopes to come down to Portland to share some crayfish and a (then illegal) drink, or urges Dana to come up, offering up his best room (complete with Gideon Bible!). And then there's a man named Tom Burns. Bone often mentions how he'd like to clasp hands with Burns again.
And this is why history is awesome on two fronts:
1) I get to learn all the gossip about people, but because they're dead, no one cares, and I still get all the guilty pleasure of knowing these people's secrets.
2) People back in the 1930s were struggling with the exact same issues that we are today. You could have changed the date on Bone's letter, and I would have thought that it was written by some Tacoma hipster who liked type writers. There was almost no difference between the issues being discussed then and now. While it's disconcerting on one hand to see that we are, in some respects, grappling with the same issues 80 years later, it's also reassuring to know that the world hasn't really gone to hell in that time. No matter what the pundits like to tell us, there was never a magical "better" time when business and individual worked together in harmony or the two political parties got together and sung Kumbaya across the aisle (the Era of Good Feelings aside).
Also, Bone was a very eloquent and quite snarky writer. But between pot-shots at newspaper editors and Prohibitionists, some times he was just ridiculous. I really wish we could read what Dana wrote back. I'm sure that he was just as good.
Here's another one of his gems (regarding his desire to get into politics): "I neigh like an old war horse when I smell the smoke of battle, and long to set my manly brisket against the cold steel of the enemy, but dammit, I want some shock troops and latrine cleaners to go along on this gory path to Glory."
Next time: Dana's untimely and totally bizarre death and letter he never received that he really should have.
Perhaps the most intriguing though, is his six years of correspondence with Mr. Homer T.Bone, future senator from Washington. We first have letters from Bone from 1930, when he decided that he had no money to run for Senate, and no one had enough money to fund him. By 1931, he had decided to go for it, and in 1932, he was elected to the Senate. He was a firm socialist, and was appalled at the apathy of the lower classes (whom he called 'serfs'.) It's surprising to me that he could ever get elected. In his letters, he rails against private corporations and profits which undercut the common man. He sends Dana lists of organizations that are considered "communist." The League of Women Voters and the Society for Safer Schools among them. It's also interesting to read the subtext of the letters. Beyond the indignant cries against capitalism, there's a sense of loneliness and isolation. He often hopes to come down to Portland to share some crayfish and a (then illegal) drink, or urges Dana to come up, offering up his best room (complete with Gideon Bible!). And then there's a man named Tom Burns. Bone often mentions how he'd like to clasp hands with Burns again.
And this is why history is awesome on two fronts:
1) I get to learn all the gossip about people, but because they're dead, no one cares, and I still get all the guilty pleasure of knowing these people's secrets.
2) People back in the 1930s were struggling with the exact same issues that we are today. You could have changed the date on Bone's letter, and I would have thought that it was written by some Tacoma hipster who liked type writers. There was almost no difference between the issues being discussed then and now. While it's disconcerting on one hand to see that we are, in some respects, grappling with the same issues 80 years later, it's also reassuring to know that the world hasn't really gone to hell in that time. No matter what the pundits like to tell us, there was never a magical "better" time when business and individual worked together in harmony or the two political parties got together and sung Kumbaya across the aisle (the Era of Good Feelings aside).
Also, Bone was a very eloquent and quite snarky writer. But between pot-shots at newspaper editors and Prohibitionists, some times he was just ridiculous. I really wish we could read what Dana wrote back. I'm sure that he was just as good.
Here's another one of his gems (regarding his desire to get into politics): "I neigh like an old war horse when I smell the smoke of battle, and long to set my manly brisket against the cold steel of the enemy, but dammit, I want some shock troops and latrine cleaners to go along on this gory path to Glory."
Next time: Dana's untimely and totally bizarre death and letter he never received that he really should have.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Coming Soon to a Theater Near You
So I think I'm going to start posting again. Unfortunately, I'm not going on some crazy adventure in Europe or South America or anything. No, the most exciting part of my life is my new practicum in the archives of Lewis and Clark.
Yeah, I'm that cool.
Along with my roommate, I'm processing a collection from a local Portland family active from the mid 19th century to the mid 20th century. We have Bibles, school books, letters, more Bibles, periodicals, photographs, more Bibles, a bonnet, and other stuff we don't even know about yet.
I'd like to begin to articulate what I think about history and how even this kind of history is important. And it will be good practice for my thesis! (Ah my thesis, ever looming like a frightening spectre in the dark, waiting to swallow me whole.)
So stay tuned, and I'll walk you through our awesome special collections archives and the cool things that I get to work with three times a week! I promise I'll try and make it interesting! If I can't see it to the internet, how will I ever make it in the big leagues?
Yeah, I'm that cool.
Along with my roommate, I'm processing a collection from a local Portland family active from the mid 19th century to the mid 20th century. We have Bibles, school books, letters, more Bibles, periodicals, photographs, more Bibles, a bonnet, and other stuff we don't even know about yet.
I'd like to begin to articulate what I think about history and how even this kind of history is important. And it will be good practice for my thesis! (Ah my thesis, ever looming like a frightening spectre in the dark, waiting to swallow me whole.)
So stay tuned, and I'll walk you through our awesome special collections archives and the cool things that I get to work with three times a week! I promise I'll try and make it interesting! If I can't see it to the internet, how will I ever make it in the big leagues?
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