Mugshot Histories: Send in the Clowns

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century an interesting form of biography became popular called mugshot histories. Publishers advertised their book with grandiose titles in states or regions to people who could then purchase an entry for themselves. Along with a glowing account of their lives they could pay more to get their photograph included in the book with their entry, thus the name mugshot. One Chicago based publisher A.W. Bowen & Co. released several of these books, including Progressive Men of Montana (1902), Progressive Men of Southern Idaho (1904), and Progressive Men of the State of Wyoming (1903). While doing some research on the Wyoming edition I came across the story of the traveling clown J. H. Foster.

The entry on page eighty-six opens with the usual glowing endorsement of Foster’s heritage. “Combining in his veins the chivralic devotion, gallantry, grace and geniality of France, and the rugged virtues of the Scotch-Irish race…is one whose life and career present unique features.” The phrase unique features vaguely hints at the difficulty the writer had of portraying his life in positive terms when it ran so contrary to societal expectations. His father fought for the Confederacy and “fortunes of war” had driven them from Kentucky. His mother was a native of Paris and there were ten children in the family when the father died and there is so little mentioned about those exact circumstances that it raises some questions.

When he was fourteen years old Mr. Foster joined an uncle who was “a celebrated clown connected with John Robinson’s circus” and the entry reports that he proved gifted enough to take over from his uncle with a scarce two-months experience. The difficulty of the work and his aptitude for it is emphasized in the piece as he toured the country “acquiring a high reputation and a great popularity.” These commendations were  secondary to the later assessment of his clowning career which was that “[he] demonstrated that ‘a circus man,’ could be a man of character and good morals, for during his life as a clown he never used tobacco, never used intoxicant and never used profane language.” The implication that a clown would do both is obviously implied.

In the late nineteenth century Americans developed an increasing mistrust of the traveling worker with some states drafting laws against hoboes and wandering laborers. An offshoot of this seems to have been a growing mistrust of all mobile workers and entries like the one for John Foster seem to indicate this is the case. They also set the stage for the vitriol against the Okies in the 1930s, so perfectly detailed in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. From Chapter IXX, “Sure, they talk the same language, but they ain’t the same. Look how they live. Think any of us folks’d live like that? Hell, no!” As the unknown writer for the Progressive Men of the State of Wyoming noted this is a unique entry and in spite of its bias it offers us a valuable and rare insight into the life of a clown at this time and the ways that wider society perceived them.

 

Brooklyn: Expertly filling gaps in our historical memory

In capable hands fiction can be a powerful tool for learning about the past. It can help humanize the past, making it more real for viewers, it can touch upon themes and ideas that are sometimes bogged down in dizzying historical narratives. While historians rightly wrestle with their own demons in an effort to try and engage people about their work sometimes movies are simply that much more accessible to the wider public. It is refreshing when a film so sensitively engages with the past. The new movie Brooklyn is a simple story, very familiar to Irish people, a young woman (expertly played by Saoirse Ronan) emigrates from Enniscorthy to New York in the mid-twentieth century. I left the cinema a little stunned at how completely it portrayed the people, the place, the challenges of the period.

One scene in particular stood out for me, one in which the young girl works at the parish hall in Brooklyn to give scores of local homeless men a Christmas meal. The priest, a relation of hers who organized a job and documentation for her to come to the US (illustrating the ties within the Irish diaspora), tells her that these elderly, unwashed men are all Irish. Looking at the disheveled crowd he educates her  “These are the men who built the roads, the bridges, the skyscrapers.” When the woman asks why don’t they return home, to Ireland, the priest looks surprised, “What home? Everyone they knew is dead…” A touching rendition of Casadh an tSúgáin by one of the men closes out the scene and references the Irish language some of emigrants would have spoken as their first language hinting at the jarring disconnect between their present and a past that they can never return to.

I cannot think of any other movie that so accurately depicts the life of Irish migrants and while it would have been easy for the film to become overly sentimentality at several points it never does and credit goes both to Director John Crowley and Screenwriter Nick Hornby for so expertly adapting Colm Tóibín’s book. I would put this alongside The Field and The Wind that Shakes the Barley as essential viewing for anyone hoping to gain some sort of perspective on twentieth century Ireland without ever opening a history book. Of course, after you finish watching them you should open up a history book!

Newspaper clips: “You dirty rat” in the mines

Certainly mining and industrial history isn’t everyones cup of tea – my friends decided to prohibit me from chatting about it whenever we talk – but I find history fascinating and so whenever I see weird anecdotes popping up as I browse nineteenth century newspapers I have to tell someone, so here is this post! Almost everyone is aware that nineteenth century mining was tough, dirty, and dangerous work. They usually aren’t aware that  mines in the United States were some of the most dangerous mines in the world at this time. Anthracite mines in eastern Pennsylvania were even more dangerous than the the notoriously deadly mines of Transylvania where workers were little better than serfs. If you can imagine such conditions allow one newspaper clipping to further colour the scene down in the bowels of the earth.

In the 1870s Eastern Pennsylvania was wracked with waves of strikes as miners tried to improve their pitiful wages. During these strikes the mine companies tried desperately to protect the mines from sabotage by their workers. Apart from dynamiting the mine the workers could also target the water pumps, as without pumps the mines would fill with water and it was costly in time and resources to reopen a flooded mine. On 13 September 1877 the Elk County Advocate reported there had been a stoppage of the pumps at the Van Storch mines. The paper continued “droves of large rats came out of the mine in search of dry land.” So far, so disgusting. “It was estimated at least ten thousand were thus drowned out.” That number should add a little more fuel to your imagination when you think of the sights, sounds, and smells of work down, down, down in the mines.

Liam Cosgrave: A paragon of Irish political ‘me féinism’

There are several remarkable features about Liam Cosgrave. None to do with his political career mind, I want to focus on his life after politics. It is a life that perfectly illustrates the rotten mindset at the heart of a corrupt civil and political administration in Ireland. The first surprising feature about Liam Cosgrave is that he is, as of the 8 May 2015, still alive. This will come as surprising news to most, who probably thought he had long ago shuffled off his mortal coil. But it leads to the second and more shocking feature of his life; that this man has used the Gardai as his own private security and transportation since he retired from politics in 1981. The fact that he neither sees this as a gross misapplication of state resources nor as a tragic example of heightened self-importance reveals the true character of the man. Like the vast majority of Ireland’s twentieth century political leadership he gained his political office through fortunate circumstance of birth (the son of W.T. Cosgrave) rather than merit, and was four years as Taoiseach between 1973-7.  He is a largely forgotten figure in Irish politics, his term as leader was sandwiched between Jack Lynch’s time as Taoiseach. All former Taoisigh and Ministers for Justice are entitled to Garda protection 24/7, as well as a Garda driver, supposedly for their protection. Again, let’s remember, if he ever needed Garda protection that time is long gone, since no-one knows he’s still alive.

Let’s do a few rough calculations. There are four Gardai stationed in a little hut in front of his house every day and every night. These Gardai are paid approximately €30,000 a year (that’s after the government claws back its share through taxes). Every day the Gardai “work” in the little hut guarding Mr. Cosgrave they are also paid a subvention of €10 a day. Multiplied by four and then 365, we get the figure of €14,600 a year for subs. So, four Gardai is €120,000 plus the subs of €14,600 and we come up with a modest figure of €134,600 a year to protect Liam from the public of Ireland that he so dutifully served. He retired from politics in 1981, which is 34 years to this date.

Liam Cosgrave has cost the state AT LEAST €4,576,400 (‘at least’ because I am not including the use of a driver and the state car which he availed of for decades). The waste is simply staggering even if we try and ignore the wasted manhours. It is this sort of waste and privilege amongst the elites in Irish society through generous pay, cushy pensions, golden parachutes and, most remarkably, a corresponding dearth in culpability when things do go wrong. This attitude covered in a thin cowl of patriotic credentials they inherited from their parents allows Liam Cosgrave and others like him ate greedily out of the trough and continue to do so. If the man ever had a patriotic bone in his body he would have done the right thing and refused his Garda protection decades ago.

Is it any wonder that 86 percent of Irish people believe that corruption is a serious problem in Ireland? I believe the Irish people are not just talking about the old brown envelopes famous during the Haughey and Bertie years but also more broadly about the general sense of entitlement and me féinism that is so prevalent in the political system.