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Frederic Tudor in 1806 Brings Cocktails and Ice Cream to the Rest of the World

In 1805, Frederic Tudor decided to make his fortune by selling ice to people in tropical climates.

Most people thought the 23-year-old was crazy, but Frederic Tudor knew something most people didn’t. His wealthy family had the luxury of an ice house, and he had experienced the joys of cold mixed drinks and ice cream in the summer. He figured he could get the rest of the world addicted to the stuff.

And so in 1806, he launched his business by sending to Martinique a brig full of ice cut from his family’s pond. He told his sales agent to give it away to bartenders.

“A man who has drank his drinks cold at the same expense for one week can never be presented with them warm again,” Frederic Tudor wrote.

His first venture failed, and so did his second, third and fourth. In the end, Frederic Tudor made his millions and revolutionized the way the world ate and drank.

Frederic Tudor

He was born in to a Brahmin family on Sept. 4, 1783, the day after the signing of the treaty that ended the American Revolution. His father, William Tudor, had studied law in John Adams’ law office, become George Washington’s first judge advocate general and started a lucrative law practice in Boston.

William Tudor liked to live large and followed the new upper-class fashion of drinking alcoholic beverages with ice. His 23-year-old son Frederic seized on the idea of bringing the luxury of ice from Massachusetts lakes and ponds to the tropical masses in the Caribbean.

In 1806, he sent his first shipment of ice to Martinique amid much derision. “No JOKE,” reported the Boston Gazette. “A vessel has cleared at the Custom House for Martinique with a cargo of ice. We hope this will not prove a slippery speculation.”

Ice turned out to be a harder sell than Frederic Tudor imagined. He was trying to sell it to people who had never once experienced anything cold. They didn’t have ice houses, and they didn’t know how to keep ice from melting. He and his partner – his brother William – lost money on the deal. William dropped out of the business, founded the North American Review and co-founded the Boston Athenaeum.

Failure

Frederic Tudor stubbornly persisted, sending another shipment of ice to Cuba. Again he lost money.

So did his father – in a real estate speculation gone disastrously wrong. Frederic Tudor kept shipping ice, losing money but learning ways to keep ice cold. Sawdust, for example, worked better than straw.

But then Frederic Tudor spent parts of 1812 and 1813 in debtors prison after his business partner swindled him.

He kept going. “Let those laugh who win,” he wrote.

He borrowed money, bought ice in Massachusetts and an icehouse in Cuba and set sail for the Caribbean. “Pursued by sheriffs to the very wharf,” he wrote. Finally, he made some money on his crystal blocks of Yankee coldness.

Smash

Frederic Tudor expanded his business to Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans, developing new sales techniques along the way.

He gave bartenders free ice for a year after teaching them how to keep it frozen in a ‘refrigerating jar’ and how to make cocktails like the Smash. He sold ice to Havana coffee shop owners and the keeper of the Tivoli Gardens after teaching them how to make ice cream.

During one mild winter, he faced an ice shortage. So he sent his ship’s captain to take a detour to Labrador and hack off part of an iceberg. Tudor also ventured to the Kennebec and Penobscot Rivers in Maine to find enough ice to ship.

In 1825 came another big turning point: Frederic Tudor met Nathaniel Wyeth, a hotel owner. Wyeth invented a horse-drawn ice plow that cut ice from ponds far more cheaply and efficiently than the laborious hand labor then used. Tudor hired Wyeth as his foreman and expanded his ice-cutting operation.

Harvesting ice

India

In 1833, Frederic Tudor gambled that a shipment of ice would survive the voyage to India. He was right. The arrival of the ice caused a sensation, especially among the colonial British administrators.

Henry David Thoreau heard about it. He watched as Tudor’s men divided Walden Pond into a chessboard pattern and cut ice into square, two-foot blocks. “The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges,” wrote Thoreau.

The same year he sent ice to India, Frederic Tudor, 50, met 19-year-old Euphemia Fenno. They married the next year and had six children.

Ice King

Frederic Tudor finally achieved the success he craved, earning the nickname ‘Ice King.’ At one point he owned ice houses in Havana, Jamaica, New Orleans, Charleston, Mobile, Ala., Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Sri Lanka and Singapore.

But he had created a market for ice too big for one company to serve. By 1855, 12 companies shipped ice from the Boston area.

In the run-up to the Civil War, American ships carried more tonnage of ice than any other commodity except for cotton.

People had come to view ice as a necessity to preserve food and medicine. When the Civil War broke out, two-thirds of Boston and New York households received ice deliveries every day.

And in 1862, a bartender named Jerry Thomas published The Bartenders Guide, with recipes for America’s cocktails – most of which used ice.

Wenham Lake Ice

Between 1844 and the early 1850s, the remarkably pure ice from Wenham Lake in Massachusetts became a fashionable luxury among the British aristocracy. The best London hotels put up signs advertising Wenham ice. It was said you could read a newspaper through a block of Wenham Lake ice two feet thick.

Wenham Lake today

Wenham ice inspired the popularity of cocktails like sherry cobblers and mint juleps in London. No fancy dinner party was complete without it, and Queen Victoria insisted on it.

A competitor to Frederic Tudor, the Wenham Lake Ice Co., had promoted the stuff.

By 1850, Norway and Sweden began to export ice. One ice company bought Lake Oppegaard in Norway and rechristened it “Lake Wenham.”

Aftermath

Frederic Tudor died in 1864, his fortune said to amount to $200 million in today’s dollars. His estate in Nahant, Mass., became a country club. His great-granddaughter Tasha Tudor illustrated nearly 100 children’s books and received many honors for them.

The ice business thrived, with Massachusetts supplying ice around the world from ponds in Boston, Cambridge, Arlington, Ayer, Stoneham, Wakefield, Woburn, Andover and Lynnfield.

By 1880, 22 icehouses stored 30,000 tons of ice next to Jamaica Pond in Jamaica Plain. In Vermont, 5,000 men cut ice on Lake Champlain.

But artificial refrigeration eventually overtook the need for natural ice. The commercial ice maker, invented in 1854, allowed people around the world to make their own ice for cocktails and ice cream.

How To Make a Smash

Dissolve sugar in water in a cocktail shaker; add mint and spirits. Shake well with ice and strain through a fine strainer into a rocks or old fashioned glass filled with fresh ice. Garnish.

Images: Wenham Lake By Daderot. – Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1029494. Ice harvesting: Cutting the cross sections with a saw–ice harvesting, Conneaut Lake, Pa. Pennsylvania Conneaut Lake, 1907. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2018652316/. This story about Frederic Tudor was updated in 2023.

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The 1965 Drought, New England’s Worst Ever

It will probably be several centuries before the Northeast United States again suffers anything like the 1965 drought. It was the driest year of a 10-year dry spell that devastated farms and sent municipal leaders into a panic over the drinking supply.

There were actually two droughts: The agricultural drought, and the water-supply drought. Farmers tried to save their crops and fed their livestock in barns, while suburbanites were told not to wash their cars or take long showers.

There was a high pollen count, high fire danger and high prices for produce. Wells dried up. Rivers, ponds and reservoirs became stinking mud holes. The air was so dry foggy mornings disappeared along the coast.

According to climatologist W.C. Palmer, the 1965 drought was “such a rare event that we should ordinarily expect it to occur in this region only about once in a couple of centuries.”

The 1965 Drought

The 1965 drought actually occurred during 1961-69, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It began in 1960 in western Massachusetts, where precipitation was below average. Then in 1962 eastern Massachusetts dried up. The rest of the Northeast got little rain or snow.

From 1962 to 1966, 34 out of 46 months had below-average precipitation. The summer of 1964 was very dry. Overdrawn reservoirs weren’t replenished.

Then 1965 was the driest year on record since the late 19th century. The 1965 drought was most severe in northeastern Pennsylvania and southeastern New York. That year, Connecticut got only 29.45 inches of precipitation, far below the average of 46.15 inches. Maine was drier than in 1947, when fires destroyed nine communities and a quarter-million parched acres.

By July, communities were declaring water emergencies. Towns banned water use outside, but police and water departments were besieged by people calling to report neighbors who watered their lawns or washed their cars.

Sahara

Golf courses dug wells and dredged ponds. Fairways burnt up as watering was restricted to greens and tees. Brae Burn in Newton, Mass., “may as well be on the Sahara,” reported the Boston Globe. Brae Burn dug 20 test holes to find water. All were dry.

Part of the reservoir in Cambridge, Mass., oozed muck. In Norfolk, Mass., the 20-acre Kingsbury Pond was a stinking sea of mud. Commuters from the western suburbs in Boston rolled up their windows in summer to avoid smelling the stench of the Charles River. Usually water was discharged into the river to dampen the smell of the raw sewage that flowed into it. Not during the drought.

Herring couldn’t swim from the sea to fresh water to spawn. The Town of Pembroke, Mass., banned herring fishing and helped the fish upstream by carrying them in barrels. By fall, millions of herring spawned in fresh water couldn’t make it back to the sea in the dried-up streams. Trapped in ponds, the seagulls feasted on them.

Pastures, hayfields and cornfields were burned out by the 1965 drought. Dairy farms in Fairfield County, Conn., lost most of their pasture grass, and wells went dry for a third of them.

The honey crop in Vermont was smaller than usual. So was the blueberry crop in Maine. Shade trees, such as the Norway and sugar maple, were damaged. Along Rte. 2 between Concord and Cambridge, Mass., Red Pine needles turned brown.

Emergency

In July 1965, President Lyndon Johnson ordered a study to find out what the federal government could do to help New England. Cities and towns got loans of pumps and pipes to access the deepest arts of reservoirs. Some Massachusetts towns borrowed vintage World War II pipes from Fort Devens and Romulus Air Force Base to reach water beyond normal sources. It didn’t work. The pipe was too expensive to transport.

President Johnson

Rockport, Mass., got approval to use water from a quarry, so long as it was treated twice with chlorine. Also in Massachusetts, Randolph, Holbrook and Braintree banded together to get water from a gravel pit. Fitchburg hired a rainmaker.

The next month, 11 Massachusetts counties were declared drought disaster areas. More than a hundred Massachusetts towns restricted water. Hanover considered a moratorium on building permits. Sandy Pond beach was closed in Ayer after hundreds of dead fish floated to the surface, deprived of oxygen.

Scattered Relief

By September, some parts of New England got rain. In western Massachusetts, rain changed brown pastures to green and grass and alfalfa returning to some farms. Cranberry growers were skating by. Some reservoirs filled to capacity.

The 1965 drought eased in Northern New England except for coastal Maine. In Grand Isle County, Vermont, too much rain left standing water in fields.

Then temperatures dropped.

The water problem worsened in November because the cold locked precipitation above ground. In southeastern Massachusetts, a cold snap destroyed a quarter of the cranberry crop. Cranberry growers didn’t have enough water to flood their bogs and prevent the berries from freezing.

Test wells throughout New England reached record lows and nearly a dozen towns along the coast had to draw down their emergency supplies. On Nov. 1, 1965, the Quabbin Reservoir fell to 59 percent of capacity, a drop of 17 percent in 12 months.

Car washes, service stations and ski areas couldn’t get water.

The 1965 Drought Continues

Quabbin Reservoir after the 1965 drought

By April 1966, the rainfall shortage increased to nearly 37 inches since the drought started in 1963, reported the Boston Globe. That almost equaled a year’s supply of rain.

People thought the drought ended with heavy rain in July and persistent fog along the coast. A dry August ended that hope.

A Boston College scientist suggested detonating dynamite, creating tiny earthquakes, could end the 1965 drought. The disturbed soils would the presence of water and suggest areas for drilling, he said.

By October 1966, farmers said the drought had ended. But the water-supply drought had not. There wasn’t enough water in wells, water tables and reservoirs.

A wet spring in 1967 ended the drought. Above normal rain and snow from February to May filled the reservoirs. On April 25, 1967, Malcolm E. Graf, Massachusetts Water Resources Commissioner, stated the four-year drought, worst in New England history, was over.

Photo: Quabbin Reservoir By Solarapex at en.wikipedia, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11535183. Cracked mud By Rosser1954 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90076337. This story about the 1965 drought was updated in 2022.

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The 1918 Flu Epidemic Kills Thousands in New England

As World War I raged in Europe, New Englanders died at home from a foe more deadly than bullets: the 1918 flu epidemic.

Victims of the 1918 flu epidemic

The granddaddy of infectious disease epidemics, it killed 50 million people. Some estimates sago as high as 00 million people. Unusually, it struck healthy young adults hardest. It could have killed as many as 10 percent of all young adults in the world.

More people died from the 1918 flu epidemic in a year than from the Black Death in a century. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS killed in 24 years. In fact, no other disease in history killed as many people.

The close quarters and massive troop movement of World War I quickened the spread of the disease and helped it mutate. The Boston area was especially susceptible because of the soldiers and sailors moving through the city.

The 1918 Flu Epidemic Comes to Boston

On Aug. 27, 1918, several sailors on Commonwealth Pier in Boston were reported to have the disease. The next day, eight cases were reported. On the third day, the toll rose to 58 cases.

The sailors were sent to Chelsea Naval Hospital, from which the disease spread to Boston and the rest of Massachusetts.

On September 8, the 1918 flu epidemic traveled 40 miles to Fort Devens, which held 50,000 soldiers. Fifteen days later, there were 10,500 cases of the flu reported at Devens — as many as at the other 24 army camps combined.

Most who caught the flu suffered the usual symptoms–cough, fever and aches. But as many as 20 percent had it worse, with chills, fever, vomiting, delilrium and blood spurting from the eyes, ears and nose.

The military camp became a hellhole of death. Soldiers clutching blankets lined up outside the hospital in the rain while cots overflowed into hallways and onto porches. Doctors had to step over piles of corpses to watch an autopsy.

100 Deaths A Day

A doctor wrote a letter to a friend describing the horrors of the 1918 flu epidemic at Fort Devens, where they had to stack up bodies like cordwood in the morgue.

Tending a patient at Fort Devens.

“These men start with what appears to be an attack of la grippe or influenza, and when brought to the hospital they very rapidly develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen. Two hours after admission they have the mahogany spots over the cheek bones, and a few hours later you can begin to see the cyanosis extending from their ears and spreading all over the face, until it is hard to distinguish the coloured men from the white. It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes, and it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate…

“It is horrible. One can stand it to see one, two or twenty men die, but to see these poor devils dropping like flies sort of gets on your nerves. We have been averaging about 100 deaths per day, and still keeping it up. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a new mixed infection here, but what I don’t know.

“My total time is taken up hunting rales, (crackling sounds from the lungs) rales dry or moist, sibilant or crepitant or any other of the hundred things that one may find in the chest, they all mean but one thing here — pneumonia — and that means in about all cases death.”

All they could do to prevent it was to cancel all gatherings of soldiers.

Ayer

The impact of the 1918 flu epidemic spread beyond the military camp to the nearby town. The doctor wrote,

…the little town of Ayer is a sight. It takes special trains to carry away the dead. For several days there were no coffins and the bodies piled up something fierce, we used to go down to the morgue (which is just back of my ward) and look at the boys laid out in long rows. It beats any sight they ever had in France after a battle.

By late September, the flu epidemic struck 50,000 residents of Massachusetts and spread beyond the commonwealth. So many young men got sick the Army canceled a draft call though it badly needed them for the war effort.

By October 1, Massachusetts alone had 75,000 cases of the flu. The next day, the city canceled its Liberty Bond parades and sporting events, closed churches, canceled school and put the stock market on half-day. By Oct. 7, t least 1,023 people died from the 1918 flu epidemic in Boston alone.

Doctors could do nothing to contain the disease. They desperately searched for a vaccine and treatments, but failed. They could do nothing but wait and hope.

The flu epidemic began to subside in mid-October. Later estimates put the number of Massachusetts flu deaths at 45,000 from Sept. 1, 1918 to Jan. 16, 1919, but public health officials now consider those numbers low.

Connecticut

Doctors and nurses at Fort Devens.

On September 11, the first case of flu in Connecticut was reported in New London. Within a week it spread throughout the state. In Hartford, four Yale students walked into the hospital. They felt ill on the train to New Haven and decided to get off. Twenty-four hours later, all four had died.

Doctors turned the Hartford Golf Club into an emergency hospital. Within five weeks, there were 325 reported deaths in Hartford; 294 in Waterbury, 209 in; New Haven and 69 in Bridgeport had 69 deaths. Still, the flu epidemic didn’t hit Connecticut as hard as Massachusetts. The commissioner of health urged all nurses and doctors to resist requests for help from Massachusetts.

Public health recommendations from the 1918 Illustrated Current News, New Haven.

Elsewhere in New England

After Massachusetts and Connecticut, the flu epidemic hit Vermont hardest. Public health officials reported 6,000 cases during the last week in September. The largest outbreaks occurred in Middlebury, St. Johnsbury, Lydonville, St. Albans, Montpelier, Barre, Randolph and Northfield.

In Portland, Maine, hospitals overflowed with flu patients. A Maine doctor asked the surgeon general to quarantine ships in Portland Harbor because he feared Canadian soldiers returning from the war would inundate the city’s hospitals.

The disease affected rural New Hampshire less than the rest of New England, but still killed many. At the epidemic’s peak, a public health worker in Berlin wrote,

It is hardly possible for me to describe the conditions in this community. I am the only experienced public health worker here with the exception of the staff. Saturday, I cared for forty patients, from four to nine sick in one family.

One of the first flu deaths reported in Rhode Island was of John Stanley Hardman, a hospital apprentice in the Naval Reserve. He died 36 hours after contracting the disease while nursing two flu patients in late September. His fiancee sat by his side as he died; they had intended to marry on Oct. 1.

Rhode Island public health officials opened emergency hospitals in Pawtucket, Woonsocket, Warwick and Westerly.

The flu epidemic finally ended suddenly in the summer of 1919. People had either died from it or developed an immunity. The flu strain had also mutated into a less lethal disease.

This story about the flu epidemic was updated in 2022.

Image: Postcard of Camp Devens PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14506829.

If you enjoyed this story, you may also like to read about the great throat distemper epidemic of 1735 here.

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The Festive Murder Trial of Jessie Costello

In the summer of 1933, the murder trial of a brassy Peabody, Mass., housewife named Jessie Costello captured the world’s attention.

Jessie Costello. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Festive crowds gathered around the Salem courthouse to see the buxom diva. Costello smiled coquettishly throughout the proceedings, oblivious to the death sentence hanging over her head. She instead basked in her celebrity while insisting she had not poisoned her firefighter husband.

A British crime writer called it ‘the most astonishing crime-farce within living memory.’

Jessie Costello

Jessie Costello was born Sept. 15, 1902 in Peabody. She grew up into an uninhibited flapper with short skirts, bobbed hair, an outgoing personality and an ample bust.

At 21, she married William Costello, a grim Irish-Catholic firefighter. People who knew him said he spent much of his time praying and the rest worrying about his indigestion. They had four children. Soon, Jessie found her marriage too confining.

Peabody Fire Capt. William Costello. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

She started an affair with a stolid, married policeman, Edward McMahon. She called him ‘Big Boy.’ Journalists would call him ‘the kiss-and-tell cop.’

One day in February 1933, a door-to-door fudge saleswoman named Nellie Ayers came to the Costello home. Jessie Costello agreed to buy a pound of fudge and went to get her purse.

She returned screaming that her husband lay dead on the bathroom floor. Then she told Nellie Ayer she couldn’t think of sweets at a time like that and sent the indignant candy peddler away.

An autopsy on Bill Costello, performed after he was embalmed, revealed he died of cyanide poisoning.

On March 17, 1933, Jessie Costello was arrested for the murder of her husband.

Jessie Costello goes to court. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Buxom Prima Donna

The trial began without much fanfare, but soon Jessie Costello captured the public’s imagination. Reporters made much of her overripe attractions. One went so far as to write, ‘all the modest sex appeal of Lady Godiva plus clothing but minus horse was hers.’ She was called a ‘buxom prima donna’ and a ‘glamorous siren.’

The 12 male jurors found the fun-loving widow fascinating. One asked if he could send her a box of candy as a token of his esteem. Four of the jurors formed a barbershop quartet and sang Sweet Adelaide and My Wild Irish Rose during breaks.

The bailiff sent her roses every day. Crowds cheered her as she cantered to and from the courtroom into a limousine. Men sent her as many as 500 love letters a day. She even posed for photographers at the cemetery, putting flowers on her husband’s grave.

Jessie Costello leaves Salem courthouse. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Inside the courtroom, she blithely dismissed the evidence, including the pharmacist who sold her the poison and the friends who testified the victim had been in the best of health.

She denied ever seeing a gelatin capsule like the one found in her husband’s stomach, despite testimony she had purchased a box of capsules four months before his death.

She claimed Bill Costello had been so tormented by indigestion he killed himself, and that her relationship with Ed McMahon was purely spiritual.

Kiss and Tell

Edward McMahon played the villain in the courtroom drama. He revealed on the stand that he had slept with Jessie Costello. He went into such lurid detail the newspapers declined to print his testimony. One enterprising publication, though, printed his words on the stand in a little red booklet that sold like hotcakes.

The jury, according to journalist Edmund Pearson, was ‘as helpless as twelve rabbits under the influence of those glittering ophidian eyes.’

Finally, they acquitted Jessie Costello of murder. The large crowd gathered outside the courthouse burst into cheers with the announcement of the verdict.

Jessie Costello heads for Broadway after her acquittal. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Show Biz

She immediately headed for Broadway, where she received $1,100 just to appear on a New York stage for four days. The exclusive rights to her life story garnered her another $2,400. Jessie was also given a theatrical agent and a maid.

She turned down a $20,000 contract for a 10-week burlesque appearance because — incredibly — she thought it unrefined. She bought beautiful new clothes and vacationed with the elite, where she gave interviews to Walter Winchell of the New York Daily Mirror and Ed Sullivan of the New York Daily News

Hollywood studios begged her for screen tests – until the Hollywood censors objected. But Jessie Costello’s 15 minutes of fame soon ended.

It took her a while to realize it, though. She went back to the burlesque houses she had previously shunned and offered her services. They no longer had any interest in her.

Jessie Costello Finds Religion

She went to work as a hostess in a Boston tavern owned by Jack Sharkey. Then in October 1933 she announced she found religion and would appear on stage with ‘the noted Los Angeles Evangelist, Mrs. Aimee Semple MacPherson.’

Jessie Costello and Aimee Semple MacPherson. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Jessie, however, upstaged Aimee Semple MacPherson with her vivacious hymn-singing, hip-shaking performances. MacPherson released her from the Lord’s service.

Jessie Costello and her children were evicted from their lavish new home and she disappeared from the headlines. Then a New Hampshire farmer came to the door of her apartment, where she and her children lived on welfare. He asked her to marry him, but she said no. “I shall climb again,” she said.

She didn’t.

Jessie Costello died at 68 on March 15, 1971 in Peabody. Nearly 200 people came to her funeral, including the mayor and the chief of police–her son, Robert Costello.

With thanks to the Strange Company blog, which posted Justice and Jessie Costello. This story was updated in 2023.

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Denton Crocker Writes a Love Letter From a Train, 1943

Denton Crocker spent World War II fighting the Allies’ deadliest enemy in the South Pacific: the mosquito. Malaria struck as many as 65 percent of the troops stationed in that theater. The U.S. Army formed units of scientists and science students to identify the mosquitos that carried the disease. The units also educated servicemen on things they could do to prevent malaria. They called themselves bug chasers.

Denton Crocker and Jean-Marie Jensen, newly engaged

Denton Crocker was drafted into the Army in January, but he was deferred until he graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in biology. He toyed with the idea of being a conscientious objector, but he decided Germany’s aggression had to be stopped. He was inducted on June 29, 1942, in his hometown of Swampscott, Mass., and was immediately sent to Fort Devens in Ayer, Mass. Ten weeks later he was sent to Camp Pickett in Virginia and began training at Sanitary Technician School and Officer Candidate Preparatory School. While home on leave in November, he asked Jean-Marie Jensen to marry him. She said yes.

Crocker was eventually selected for the 31st Malaria Survey Unit, Medical Department. He was relieved he wouldn’t have to bear arms. On Aug. 16, 1943, he left for Camp Harrahan in New Orleans to join a newly forming unit. He served in the jungles of New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines.

After the war, Crocker married Jean-Marie, earned a graduate degree, chaired the Biology department at Skidmore College and fathered four children. His son and namesake, Denton ‘Mogie’ Crocker,’ was killed in the Vietnam War. (Read about it here.)

He also wrote a memoir of his service. It included letters to his parents and Jean-Marie, photographs and a journal kept by his friend Robert Roecker. He called it My War on Mosquitos. In his introduction, he wrote:

There were some more stressful times. I travelled from Milne Bay, New Guinea to Finschhafen, New Guinea on a Liberty ship full of 500lb bombs. I was strafed and bombed on Morotai in the Moluccas and on Mindoro in the Philippines. In a convoy going to the Philippines I watched a torpedo plane release its torpedo at the ship behind us before being destroyed (the torpedo narrowly missed). I saw kamikaze planes crash into ships. I was a part of the initial landing on Mindoro (unopposed on land). These were not happy times. As my friend and foxhole-mate Bob Roecker used to say, “Denny and I are enormously loyal to our country. We tremble with patriotism in our foxhole.” But I have to say that the overriding memories of the whole experience are of vast convoys sailing peacefully in the moonlight, of a tropical island with the sun rising behind it, of a waterfall high in the mountains of New Guinea, of feather stars and convoys on a coral reef. These and many others like them have given my life a dimension and enrichment that I otherwise probably would not have had.

Here is his letter to Jean-Marie on Aug. 16:

To JM, Aug. 16, 11:30 a.m.:

I am writing to you from the train, so the penmanship will probably be poor, but I am thinking of you so much that writing makes us seem closer together. We boarded the train at 2:00 a.m. this morning, and got Pullmans, so went right to bed. Got up at 6:15, ate in the dining car and have been sitting around doing all sorts of things since.

–Time out for lunch–

Denton Crocker

Had a good meal with lamb, milk, squash, lettuce, lima beans & ice cream. I was going to mention before lunch some of the things men do in the car. Of course there is the inevitable card game with plenty of money changing hands, lots of yelling and good natured cursing and threats. In one end of the car, a fellow was reading a Steinbeck short story to a couple of others and at the other end. Cassel was in the midst of a heated argument with someone about the finite and the infinite.

We’re in Tennessee somewhere now. The country is rolling, but not so much so as western Virginia. There are occasional small outcroppings of rock which Gossington thinks is soft like limestone. Most of the farmland seems to be planted with corn. Mourning doves and mockingbirds are common.

The coaches on the train are very crowded, with people sitting on suitcases in the aisles. I feel guilty with all the luxury we are having. We just went through Jefferson City, Tenn., will nick the NW corner of Georgia and will be in Birmingham, Alabama at 9:00 pm. For the rest of the trip I’ll probably be in bed.

10:30 p.m.

We’re late in Birmingham, I just went to bed and am lying all by myself in an upper berth. I miss you terribly much darling and can’t help but think that each minute is taking me farther and father away from you — I love you.

Denton Crocker died Feb. 19, 2012, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Photos courtesy Library of Congress. With thanks to the Library of Congress, Veterans History Project. This story was updated in 2017.

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James Cook Ayer, Sarsaparilla King of Lowell, Mass.

In 1843, James Cook Ayer mixed up a cherry cough medicine in a Lowell, Mass., apothecary while his boss was on vacation in Europe.

The cough medicine, known as ‘Cherry pectoral,’ marked Ayer’s first step on the road to a fortune. It was followed by a strong laxative called Cathartic Pills, a blood medicine called Sarsaparilla that was supposed to cure syphilis, a cure for malaria called Ague Cure, and a hair restorer called Hair Vigor.

James Cook Ayer would become the most successful patent medicine manufacturer of his age. He accumulated one of the great fortunes of the era, an estimated $20 million.

Advertising

He was born May 5, 1818 in Groton, Conn. His father died when he was seven, and at 13 he was sent to live with his uncle, a manufacturer who later became a mayor of the new city of Lowell, Mass. He attended public schools in Lowell; one of his classmates was Benjamin Butler. At 19 he became an apprentice to an apothecary, Jacob Robbins. He also studied medicine with a local doctor, Samuel Dana, eventually graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a medical degree in 1860.

Ayer was more interested in selling medicines than in practicing medicine. When he was 22, he bought the apothecary shop for $2,486.61 with money borrowed from his uncle. He paid him back in three years.

Physicians happily prescribed Ayer’s medicines, but the real secret to his success was advertising. He spent $140,000 a year on advertisements that promoted the benefits of his medicines with charming, whimsical illustrations. He distributed millions of free copies of an almanac that hawked his cures.

Ayer advertised cherry pectoral as a cure for ‘coughs, colds, asthma, croup, laryngitis, bronchitis, whooping cough and consumption.’ His most popular product, sarsaparilla, was ‘a real blessing that purifies the blood, stimulates the vital functions, restores and preserves health, and infuses new life and vigor throughout the whole system. He recommended it for jaundice, dyspepsia, pimples, boils, ringworm, female weaknesses and ‘lassitude and debility peculiar to the Spring.’

Ka-Ching

Ayer built a state-of-the-art factory in Lowell to produce vast quantities of medicines that made him a fortune. He employed 150 people. In one year the factory processed 325,000 pounds of drugs, 220,000 gallons of spirits and 400,000 pounds of sugar. He sold his products around the world, and the factory continued to produce drugs until the 1940s.

In 1855, Ayer brought his brother Frederick into the business. With the profit from their patent medicine business they invested in textile mills and other ventures.

Quack?

Some doctors criticized Ayer’s medicines, partly because they cut into their business, and partly because Ayer advertised so heavily – something they though unseemly.

He was accused of using misleading advertising to sell quack medicines and miracle cures. His defenders say Ayer’s claims were well within the bounds of medical knowledge in the 19^th century.

Cherry pectoral contained three grams of morphine – but that was a lot less than doctors were prescribing at the time.

Some of Ayer’s products contained small amounts of alcohol to preserve the plant material that comprised his medicines.

But certainly some of his products did not live up to their billing.

But Some Medicines Did Work

Sarsaparilla didn’t work. Hair Vigor didn’t work. But Ague Cure contained bark from the cinchona tree – which later became known as quinine and was very effective in fighting malaria.

James Cook Ayer

Cherry pectoral did not cure lung ailments, as advertised, but it did treat the symptoms of a cold, which helps patients improve.

In 1874, Ayer managed to win the Republican nomination for Congress from the district representing Lowell. He lost, because of his ‘cold manner.’ According to his obituary, opposition to his candidacy was so strong he became unhinged. He grew so violent he ended up in an insane asylum in New Jersey for months.

James Cook Ayer died at the age of 60 on July 3, 1878 in Winchendon, Mass.

The town of Ayer, Mass., was named after him.

This story was updated in 2022.

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