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Henry Savage Puts The Showgirls in the Broadway Show

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At age 20, Mildred Taylor Mills’ future seemed stable. Heir to her father’s modest fortune, the Westport, Conn., girl was “for a long time considered the belle of Westport,” a local newspaper reported. In 1914, newly married and seemingly happy, 20-year-old Mildred shocked the town when she disappeared with the local postmaster – a married man more than twice her age. As her family made inquiries, the news that came back was not encouraging. Mildred had become a Henry Savage girl.

Mildred’s elopement wasn’t just a story worthy of a Broadway musical farce. She actually had landed in the middle of one.  As Broadway roared to life in the early 20th century, Henry Savage was one of its leading impresarios, and chorus girls were his trademark.

From Harvard to Broadway

Savage grew up in New Durham, N.H. After attending Harvard University and graduating in 1880, Savage created a prominent construction firm in Boston. By 1894, Savage had secured a fortune for himself as a real estate developer. Then he partnered with a firm to build a theater – the Castle Square Theatre on Tremont Street in Boston (It was torn down in 1933.).

Castle Square Theatre, ca 1896

Savage initially took an interest in the project as a developer. And the theater earned praise as a showpiece of construction for its Rococo/Renaissance style interior. Marble stairways lit with wrought-iron lamps lead from the main foyer to the upper balconies. The theater seated up to 1800 patrons, and it featured modern conveniences such as a elevators to the upper boxes and an early form of air conditioning that provided a comfortable experience even in summer.

Situated near train lines that served towns in all directions, the theater’s developers had located it as a perfect destination for a show and a night on the town. And it almost fell flat on its face.

Soon after the theater opened, investors wanted out and the theater management was jumping ship. Henry Savage astounded the world with his announcement that he would operate the theater himself.

What did a builder know about running a theater? Quite a lot, it turned out. After one struggle of a season, Henry Savage had the Castle Square Theatre up and humming.

Opera With an American Flair

One of Henry Savage’s first passions was opera. Specifically, he wanted to bring European operas to America – sung in English. Savage’s marketing targeted not the wealthy opera patrons who could travel Europe, but middle-class Americans, the majority of whom who might well go their whole lives without ever witnessing an opera. Savage and a group of like-minded producers intended to change that.

Savage’s approach to producing operas varied from the traditional model, where the big-name stars provided the draw. Realizing that he could not compete for the finest voices in opera, he instead employed lesser-known singers and promoted the opera experience itself, not the singular voices. He kept prices low, within reach of most people. If the voices were not absolutely top quality, they were very often exceptional, and many of his operas received rave reviews. (He had some clinkers, too.)

But Savage soon realized that staying rooted to the Castle Square Theatre limited his opportunities to increase sales. By taking his operas on the road, he could reach new audiences. He pushed into New York and Philadelphia, natural destinations, but competition soon sprung up there when others saw him succeed. So he also went to smaller cities in the Midwest and West.

Lightening Up

As time passed, tastes changed. And Henry Savage changed right along with them as he moved into the 1900s. He began importing comic operettas from Europe and elsewhere. Broadway in New York in this era had become an entertainment hub. Visitors flocked to the city to partake of a dinner, a show and night at the city’s clubs.

Henry Savage produced the operetta the Merry WidowSavage and other producers grappled with the challenge of keeping the pipeline of shows flowing, both importing plays from Europe and commissioning original works. The perfect formula for success for a musical involved a successful run on the stage, a traveling production of the show that carried it far and wide and its final evolution into a silent film. Not so different from today. And Henry Savage seemed a natural at surviving in that the rough and tumble world.

A Savage show would travel west moving from city to city, using the familiar template. Advance men traveled to a city to put up posters and place newspaper advertisements. The goal: build a ready audience before the theater troupe even set foot in the city.  In one instance, however, a Savage show arrived in Salt Lake, Utah, to find only minimal publicity. A strike had stopped the newspapers in the city. Savage directed that the production company publish its own newspaper – just one edition – to carry advertisements for the play. Starved of newspapers, the public warmly welcomed the publication and filled the theater seats.

To keep this operation churning, Henry Savage needed a steady stream of talent: writers, actors and, most importantly, chorus girls.

Henry Savage . . . Conniving Producer

Author P.G. Wodehouse and writing partner Gary Bolton documented the machinations of the industry in a semi-autobiographical fictional tale: Bring on the Girls: The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy, With Pictures to Prove It.

Wodehouse, who at that time wrote lyrics for the musical numbers that intertwined with the stories in the plays, described a fictional “Colonel Savage.” Wodehouse and Bolton described a money-grubbing, conniving Henry Savage who, among other things, tricks writers into churning out a never-ending supply of stories by luring them onto his boat and trapping them there.

As much as the theater impresario needed writers, the demand for chorus girls was even greater. Whenever a show bogged down and no amount of rewriting could help, there remained a singular solution – add more chorus girls. Wodehouse explained:

“How wonderful those girls always were. They did not spare themselves. You might get the impression that they were afflicted from some form of chorea, but the dullest eye could see that they were giving of their best. Actors might walk through their parts, singers save their voices, but the personnel of the ensemble never failed to go all out, full of pep, energy and the will to win. A hundred shows have been pushed by them over the thin line that divides the floperoo from the socko.”

Bring on the Girls

For the chorus girls, a role in a Savage production could be life changing – as a chorus girl distinguished herself on the stage, she might wind up in New York or promoted to a larger role. Many also exited the profession via marriage or pregnancy or simple exhaustion.

The news that Mildred Taylor Mills had departed Westport, Conn., for a life on the stage rocketed around the town. What’s more, people soon learned that Arthur Jelliffe – 45 years old and a former postmaster – had also disappeared. Jelliffe most recently had worked as projectionist at a movie theater, and he too had caught the theater bug.

Mildred the telephone operator had become Mildred the chorus girl. But the scene changed quickly in Westport. Mildred’s mother and sisters petitioned the court to seize control of her assets. Arthur Jelliffe’s wife, meanwhile, began preparing a lawsuit against Mildred for alienation of affection.

Mildred Returns Home

Poster for Henry Savage EverywomanIronically, Mildred had a role in “Everywoman.” This Henry Savage production told the story of a woman who ends up miserable because she forsakes true love. Instead, her vanity drives her to pursue fame. In the end of the play, the main character is bereft. With her youth and virtue gone she has no one to care for her. Women theater reviewers did not particularly rave over the play.

When made into a movie, producers refit the story with a happier ending. Mildred didn’t have such a grim ending, either. With the show reaching San Diego, Mildred’s family managed to reestablish communications. She agreed to return home. She and Jelliffe had no romantic connection. The only reason given for her flight to the stage was her general discontent.

As for Henry Savage, he continued producing Broadway hits, with his last production in 1925. He died in 1927 at the age of 68 having produced more than 50 shows.

Photos: Billy Rose Theatre Collection – NYPL Digital Gallery. This story last updated in 2022.

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David Wooster, Revolutionary War Hero, Befriends a Freed Slave

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David Wooster is known more as the person who gave New Haven’s Wooster Square neighborhood its name than for his heroism during the American Revolution. He’s even less known as an abolitionist.

Centuries after his death, the revolutionary war general got caught up in the Battle of Wooster Square, a conflict over symbols of ethnic and racial pride.

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David Wooster

On June 24, 2020, a crew hired by the city took down the statue of Christopher Columbus in Wooster Square, New Haven’s Little Italy. Italian-Americans protested the removal of the statue that symbolized their heritage. As the statue came down, they clashed with black, Native American and Latino protesters who said Columbus represented the evils of colonial conquest.

Two days later, a group of people met with state Rep. Roland Lemar to ask to rename Wooster Square after William Lamson, a black New Haven entrepreneur in the early 19th century. That did not sit well with the Italian-American community, which submitted a petition with 3,000 names asking to keep the name “Wooster Square.”

Perhaps a closer look at the life of David Wooster would change some minds (or not).

David Wooster

He was born into a well-to-do family in Stratford, Conn., on March 2, 1711, the youngest of six. His Puritan parents, Abraham and Mary, imposed a severe and sober discipline.

Wooster graduated from Yale College and then earned his master’s degree. In his early 30s he commanded the first warship built in Connecticut, the Defense, to defend the East Coast from pirates and smugglers. During his time on the Defense, “the shores of Connecticut were unpolluted by pirate invasion,” according to the oratory on the dedication of his monument.

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David Wooster house, now gone.

In 1745, David Wooster married Mary Clapp, the daughter of Yale President Thomas Clapp. They had four children and bought a gracious house in New Haven. The house survived British arson but not urban renewal. The Woosters entertained frequently, employed black servants and kept a phaeton for rides around town.

Siege of the Fortress at Louisbourg

In 1758 David Wooster led Connecticut forces at the Siege of Louisburg. His gallantry earned him the right to bring a ship of prizes and prisoners to France and England. The English feted him, and he was “gladdened with the sunshine of the royal smile.”

He also served six years in the French and Indian War, rising to the rank of colonel. Afterward, New York granted him 3,000 acres of Vermont, but he lost it to squatters. Nevertheless, he prospered. Both he and his wife inherited money, and he earned quick and substantial profit as a merchant.

Yale President Theodore Dwight called him a “brave, generous-minded man, respectable for his understanding and for his conduct both in public and private life, ardent in his friendships and his patriotism, diffusive in his charities and steadfast in his principles.”

A Letter

In 1773, Wooster received a letter from Phillis Wheatley, the first published African-American poet. She had astonished Bostonians with her work. They couldn’t believe a young black slave could write such poetry. Wheatley proved them wrong, and moved to England. There she became the darling of abolitionist circles and tried to publish her first book. So she asked Wooster for help.

She apparently didn’t know him, but knew of him through a servant of his neighbor, a Mr. Badcock. She must also have assumed he would sympathize with her.

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Phillis Wheatley , victim of the slave trade.

Wheatley in her letter asked Wooster if he would help sell her first book of poems. John Wheatley, she wrote, had just given her her freedom, and she knew she’d have to make her own way in the world. She asked Wooster if he would use his influence with the gentlemen and ladies he knew to subscribe to her poetry. (Back then, people subscribed to books before their publication.)

“The more subscribers there are, the more it will be for my advantage as I am to have half the Sale of the Books,” Wheatley wrote. “This I am the more solicitous for, as I am now upon my own footing and whatever I get by this is entirely mine, & it is the Chief I have to depend upon.”

For God, for Country and for Yale

Wooster believed ardently in independence from Britain–and for enslaved people. In the war’s early days, Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen got credit for seizing Fort Ticonderoga, but David Wooster helped plan the attack and lent money for it.

In May 1775, the Connecticut General Assembly appointed the 64-year-old businessman a major general of a militia regiment. Before marching off to war, he assembled his regiment on the New Haven Green and led them in prayer. His pastor, Jonathan Edwards, also an abolitionist, couldn’t make it.

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Center Church on the Green today

Wooster then led patriot forces in the ill-fated expedition to Quebec and returned home. He received a new command of the Connecticut militia, and he paid his men and officers with his own money. Still, he hoped his country would repay him. So he asked for receipts. But British soldiers burned his house after his death with the receipts inside. His wife ended up in debtors’ prison.

Battle of Ridgefield

Charged with the defense of Connecticut, he got word that on April 25, 1777, British Gov. William Tryon had invaded Connecticut at Westport with 2,000 troops. Tryon’s forces marched 20 miles north toward Danbury to destroy military supplies.

Along what is now Rte. 28, the British ravaged the land. They then burned Danbury.

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Troop movements during Tryon’s raid.

Wooster and Benedict Arnold, who happened to be staying in New Haven, responded to the British with 700 militiamen and Continental Army soldiers. The British retreated toward Ridgefield, burning houses along the way.

On April 27, Benedict Arnold barricaded the center of Ridgefield. He received reinforcements, but the British drove them off in a running battle down Main Street. Wooster tried to rally his undisciplined militia with the words, “Come on, my boys, never mind such random shots.” A ball then hit him in the back, severing his spine. A small Masonic stone memorial marks the place where he fell from his horse at the intersection of the Post Road (Route 1) and Patriots Bank.

His men carried him from the field to a nearby house. The surgeon told him he had no hope. Wooster suffered agonizing pain for the next five days. His wife Mary came to his deathbed, but he didn’t recognize her until the end. He died on May 2, 1777.

Condolences

After Wooster’s death, poet Phillis Wheatley  wrote a letter of condolence to his widow – one lost to history until rediscovered around 1980. In it, she thanked Mary for selling her poems to their friends. She also praised David Wooster while pointing out the hypocrisy of those who supported independence from Great Britain but not for the enslaved.

“I sincerely sympathize with you in the great loss you and your family sustain,’ Wheatley wrote.

“You will do me a great favor by returning to me by the first oppy those books that remain unsold and remitting the money for those that are sold–I can easily dispose of them here for 12/ Lmo. (12 shillings lawful money) each–I am greatly obliged to you for the care you show me, and your condescention in taking so much pains for my interest–I am extremely sorry not to have been honour’d with a personal acquaintance with you.”

Wheatley also enclosed a poem, one not terribly admired by critics, that lauds Wooster as a martyr for freedom:

He nobly perish’d in his Country’s cause
His Country’s Cause that ever fir’d his mind
Where martial flames, and Christian virtues join’d.

Wooster Square

Long after their deaths, developers built a desirable residential neighborhood around a square named after Wooster. Sea captains and prosperous businessmen bought homes in Wooster Square. Then, following a typical urban trajectory, the neighborhood declined as industry moved in. Then in the late 19th century, Italian immigrants crowded into the old buildings and ran shops and restaurants.

wooster-square

Houses in the Wooster Square Historic District.

In the 1930s, one entrepreneur, Frank Pepe, established Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletena on the first floor of Wooster Street.

The city slated Wooster Square for urban renewal in the 1930s, but plans changed by the late 1950s. Postwar prosperity allowed preservation and gentrification to make the neighborhood, once again, a desirable place to live.

By 2004, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., called Pepe’s New Haven pizzeria a “thriving community treasure.”

iconic-food-pepe

Frank Pepe’s exterior.

And then in 2020, another battle – over a statue and a name.

With thanks to Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation Vol 1, edited by David Dabydeen, Sukhdev Sandhu.

Images: Center Church on the Green, By Dicklyon – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79216980. Frank Pepe’s By Krista – frank pepe exterior, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38640336. This story was updated in 2022.

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A Brahmin Suffragist Suffers a Night of Terror in Prison

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On the night of Nov. 14, 1917, 63-year-old Mrs. John Winters Brannan wrapped herself in her heavy sealskin coat to protect herself from the thugs about to hurl her into a cold, filthy prison cell. A scene of violent confusion had suddenly surrounded her and the 32 other suffragists in the Occoquan Work House. The next 12 hours would ever after be known as the night of terror.

Police had arrested the suffragists picketing in front of the White House, taken them in vans to Union Station and put them on the train to Lorton, Va., 20 miles away. There, more vans picked them up and took them to Occoquan, where they waited in the matron’s office.

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Silent Sentinels picket the White House. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The women began to notice shabbily dressed men milling outside. Then the workhouse superintendent, William Whittaker, burst into the room. “Seize these women, take them off, that one, that one, — take her off.” The men began manhandling the women, shaking one suffragist violently, throwing another to the floor.

Mrs. John Winters Brannan, though stunned, said to the superintendent, “I will give my name under protest.” Then she started to walk toward the desk.

“Oh, no, you won’t,” shouted the superintendent. “Don’t talk about protest; I won’t have any of that nonsense.”

It was exactly that intransigence – there’d been a century of it — that drove Eunice Dana Brannan to suffer through a night of terror for women’s rights.

Eunice Dana Brannan

Eunice Dana was born on Aug. 27, 1854, in Westport, Conn., the youngest of four children of Charles Dana, founder of the New York Sun and confidante of President Abraham Lincoln. Her ancestor, Richard Dana, had arrived in Cambridge, Mass., from England in 1640, founding a Boston Brahmin dynasty.

In the decade before the Civil War, Charles Dana worked as managing editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune and made it the leading voice of anti-slavery. He also believed in equal rights for women, an uncompromising position his daughter would adopt.

She married John Winters Brannan, a prominent doctor, in 1882. They had two sons and a daughter who later joined the woman’s rights movement.

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Eunice Dana Brannan, 1917. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

A 1917 photo of her reveals a regal society matron in a jeweled dress with an elaborate coiffure. She was ‘an aristocrat of intellect and feeling,’ according to a colleague in the women’s rights movement.

Suffragist

When Eunice Brannan got involved in the women’s rights movement, the idea of standing on a soapbox to harangue strangers horrified her. But she traveled to England in the 1890s to see for herself the tactics used by the Pankhurst sisters, women’s rights activists who called themselves suffra-gettes.

In 1897, she told the Political Equality Club in Geneva, N.Y., that she had changed her mind when she saw the Pankhursts’ orderly outdoor meetings.

But over the next decade English suffragettes made little progress toward the vote. To gain attention for their crusade, the suffragettes began to smash windows, fight with policemen and go to jail.

Mrs. John Winters Brannan did not approve.  Around 1908, Munsey’s Magazine reported, ‘Mrs. Brannan is said to have reduced a young English-American suffragist to the freezing point by the icy question, “And I suppose you have been in jail” leveled at her on the moment of introduction.

But decades and decades of work — organizing, marching, petitioning, campaigning — had not brought women full voting rights except in 11 U.S. states.

Mrs. John Winters Brannan would change her mind about going to jail.

Silent Sentinels

President Woodrow Wilson did not publicly support a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. On March 4, 1917, the day of his inauguration for a second term, the suffragists picketed outside the White House.

Calling themselves the Silent Sentinels, they picketed nearly every day, rain or shine, wearing white, gold and purple sashes. They held banners that said, “Mr. President How Long Must Women Wait For Liberty.” And they made it impossible for Wilson to enter or leave the White House without seeing them. Eunice Brannan was among the pickets.

Wilson put up with them for a while, even inviting them in for coffee. They refused. Then in April 1917 the United States entered World War I. That month, police started arresting the suffragists for obstructing traffic. The courts released them quickly.

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Police arrest two of the Silent Sentinels. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The women kept it up, and they started getting prison sentences. Then the prison sentences got longer and longer. In July, Eunice Brannan was among a group of suffragists sentenced to Occoquan Work House. One suffragist had a high-ranking husband who complained to Wilson, who pardoned them all after three days.

In August, the suffragists unfurled a banner that said,

“Kaiser Wilson Have You Forgotten Your Sympathy With the Poor Germans Because They Were Not Self-Governed? 20,000,000 American Women Are Not Self-Governed. Take the Beam Out of Your Own Eye.”

More Arrests

In October, police arrested one of the suffragists’ leaders, Alice Paul, and the court sentenced her to seven months in prison. To protest her sentence, a larger-than-usual contingent of women picketed the White House. Police arrested them. A judge released them.

The suffragists went right back to the picket line. Again, police arrested them. A judge released them again.

The suffragists returned to the White House picket line. The police arrested 33 and, this time, the judge handed down sentences from six days to six months.

The prisoners came from all over the country and from all walks of life: the great-great-granddaughter of Revolutionary Gen. Artemas Ward, a Framingham, Mass.,  shopkeeper, a Romanian immigrant, the country’s only woman geologist, a 73-year-old Floridian with a bad leg and three munitions workers from Bridgeport, Conn.

Eunice Brannan got 45 days. She told the judge, “The responsibility for an agitation like ours against injustice rests with those who deny justice, not those who demand it.”

The Night of Terror

The night of terror began when they arrived at Occoquan Work House. Eunice Brannan wrote a deposition about it, and another prisoner, Doris Stevens, included it in her book, Jailed for Freedom.

“… I . . . saw the guards seizing the different women of the party with the utmost violence, the furniture being overturned and the room a scene of the utmost disturbance,” wrote Brannan. “I saw Miss [Kathryn] Lincoln lying on the floor, with every appearance of having just been thrown down by the two guards who were standing over her in a menacing attitude.

“… The whole group of women were thrown, dragged or herded out of the office on to the porch, down the steps to the ground, and forced to cross the road … to the Administration Building. During all of this time, . . . Superintendent Whittaker was . . . directing the whole attack. . . .

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A cell in Occoquan Work House.

The thugs hurled the women into freezing, filthy stone cells, where they had no privacy.  An exposed toilet in the cell could only flush from the corridor, so the women had to ask the same guards who’d abused them to flush the toilet for them.

More Terror

Eunice Brannan looked across the corridor and saw Kathryn Lincoln. Brannan asked whether she was all right after the guards had thrown her to the floor.

Instantly Superintendent Whittaker rushed forward, shouting at her, “Stop that ; not another word from your mouth, or I will handcuff you, gag you and put you in a strait jacket.”

The guards shackled Lucy Burns’ hands to the top of the cell, so she had to stand all night.

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Lucy Burns in prison. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

They slammed the frail Dorothy Day down on an iron bench. When they hurled Dora Lewis into the cell, her head struck the iron bed. Alice Cosu saw her pass out and suffered a heart attack.

Mary Nolan, the 73-year-old Floridian, wrote that Alice Cosu was vomiting. “We called and called. We asked them to send our own doctor, because we thought she was dying. . . . They [the guards] paid no attention. A cold wind blew in on us from the outside, and we three lay there shivering and only half conscious until morning.”

Eunice Brannan thought of the offense with which they had been charged — obstructing traffic, — and felt their treatment was out of all proportion to the offense. She also concluded the superintendent, the matron and guards must have had the support of higher authorities.

The Next Day

The day after the night of terror, Mrs. John Winters Brannan put on prison clothes. A guard gave her a cup of skimmed milk and a slice of toast, and then took her to the sewing room. There she was went to work sewing on the underpants of the male prisoners.

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Doris Stevens, Mrs. Hopkins and Eunice Brannan in prison garb, probably in July 1917. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Marines from Quantico stood as sentinels outside the workhouse. None of their friends or family had any word about their situation. Matthew O’Brien, their attorney, tried to visit them but couldn’t. The phones to the Women’s Congress headquarters were tapped.

Finally, one of the marine sentinels went to the women’s headquarters and said ‘unknown tortures’ were going on. O’Brien, got a court order and forced his way into the workhouse. Still he couldn’t see his clients.

Some of the women refused to eat, including Lucy Burns and Dora Lewis. On Day 7, they prison officials force fed them. Lewis wrote that five people seized her and held her down. The doctor forced a tube down her throat, “I gasping and suffocating with the agony of it.”

9 Days After the Night of Terror

Finally O’Brien got a writ of habeas corpus to show cause why the women should be detained in a Virginia prison after their arrest in Washington, D.C. The hearing started nine days after the night of terror, on November 23, in a little courthouse in Alexandria.

The suffragists filed into court one by one, shocking some of the spectators. Some were so weak they had to lie on the benches. Eunice Brannan collapsed, and court officers took her to a sofa in an anteroom.

Three of the most brutally abused women didn’t appear in court. The judge asked why. The defense said they were too ill. O’Brien retorted the prison officials didn’t want people to see their injuries. The judge ordered the three to be brought in the next day.

Testimony About the Night of Terror

On the morning of November 24, Eunice Brannan got a chance to talk to her husband, now the chairman of the board of trustees of Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He testified during the hearing that day:

“I find Mrs. Brannan in a state of almost complete collapse from the shocking treatment to which she has been subjected in Occoquan Workhouse … Today is the first opportunity I have had to hear my wife’s full story, though I have been in Washington three times this week, attempting to find out the actual conditions of her imprisonment.”

The superintendent had forbidden her to describe her treatment to anyone, he said. Brannan said he noticed the look of terror that came into the faces of all the women prisoners when William Whittaker stepped near them.

“From my wife’s account it was evident that the suffrage prisoners were deliberately terrorized when they entered Occoquan and were treated with great brutality by the men guards, who handled them and knocked them about with the fury of thugs, under the immediate direction of Mr. Whittaker himself, who called out that the men ‘would be glad to get their hands on them and handle them rough.’”

Brannan concluded the suffragists had broken no law, since the Constitution guarantees their right to petition and the Clayton Act makes picketing in the District legal.

Not Guilty

“If they are guilty of an offense it is trivial in comparison with the outrageous insults and brutal treatment to which they have been subjected.”

The judge ruled for the women, saying they could be paroled pending appeal. Eunice Brannan and two others agreed to their release, fearing prison would kill them. The others insisted on serving out their sentences in the Washington District Jail.

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Julia Hurlbut, Eunice Brannan, 1918, probably in front of National Woman’s Party headquarters in New York City. Note Brannan’s coat. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Vindication for the Night of Terror

News of the night of terror sparked protests across the country. In March 1918, four months after the night of terror, a judge ruled they’d been illegally arrested, convicted and detained in Occoquan Work House.

In 1918, Eunice Brannan burned one of Wilson’s speeches in Lafayette Square. “We have forgotten the history of our country if we have forgotten how to object, how to resist, how to agitate when it is necessary to readjust matters,” she announced

On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

With thanks to David Dismore, “Today in Herstory: The “Silent Sentinels” Go Back to Court — This Time, to Seek Justice,” feminist.org blog. And to Chas Wells, Biographical Sketch of Eunice Dana (Mrs. John Winters) Brannan, Alexander Street, and Doris Stevens, “Jailed for Freedom.” This story updated in 2022. 

 

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When Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Honeymooned (and Partied) in Westport, Conn.

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In 1920, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in Westport, Conn., so he could write, she could swim and they could both party their brains out.

The Fitzgeralds reigned as the king and queen of the Jazz Age. He was 23, she was 19, and their reckless high spirits – plus their drinking — had gotten them kicked out of several New York hotels.

American literature probably owes a debt of gratitude to the New York hotel managers who disinvited the Fitzgeralds. It was in Westport, after all, that Scott met a wealthy neighbor who inspired Jay Gatsby.

About a year after Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in Westport, they visited his family in Minnesota. Here Zelda is pregnant with their only child.

Westport

When Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in Westport, the town had not yet evolved into a tony New York suburb. But it was getting there. A 50-mile train ride to Times Square brought commuters to Times Square, and it began to attract literary and theater types from New York.

In the Fitzgeralds’ era, Westport brought literary critic Van Wyck Brooks, Dorothy and Lillian Gish and Broadway producer John Williams for weekends in the country. A New York culture took root in the town, and by 2014, the local historical society exhibited many of the 767 New Yorker covers produced by artists living in and around Westport.

Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Martha Stewart, Sandy Dennis, Harvey Weinstein and Shirley Jackson all made their homes in Westport.

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Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in this Westport, Conn., house. Image Courtesy Google Maps.

How Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Honeymooned

The Fitzgeralds blew into town in a secondhand sports car in May of 1920. Neither had a clue how to keep house, so closets filled with dirty laundry and neither of them cooked. Eventually they hired a house boy named Tana.

Earlier that year, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s debut novel, This Side of Paradise, sold out within four days of publication. It won him celebrity, a healthy income and Zelda’s Sayre’s hand in marriage.

Scott and Zelda wed on April 3, 1920 in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and frolicked in New York City. But Scott needed to get back to writing his second novel, and so they honeymooned in Westport from May to September. Zelda rented a large colonial home where he had a separate room in which to write. She could also swim every day. Their neighbor, a multimillionaire named F.E. Lewis, let her cut across his property to walk to Compo Beach.

Compo Beach

Lewis had inherited a fortune – what would amount to $300 million in today’s dollars — and he lived on a 175-acre estate called Longshore.

Today, it’s the Inn at Longshore, hosting corporate events and destination weddings. Back then, Lewis threw extravagant parties that Scott and Zelda attended. They weren’t the only celebrities he invited. Dancer Anna Pavlova, magician Harry Houdini and movie star Marie Dressler came too. At one party he featured camels, elephants, vaudeville acts and a cowboy and Indian show. Theatrical producer David Belasco, mentioned in the Great Gatsby, came, and John Philip Sousa wrote music for one of his parties.

Drinking Again

When Scott and Zelda didn’t go to New York for weekend parties they invited friends to stay with them. They drank heavily and fought often.

A Princeton friend came to visit and wrote,

 Went to visit Fizgeralds in Westport…stayed drunk for two weeks straight. Atmosphere of crime, lust, sensuality, pervaded the home.

Another classmate, critic Edmund Wilson, found the couple ‘reveling nude in the orgies of Westport.’

They tore along the Boston Post Road in their sports car with occasional stops at roadhouses to replenish their gin supply. Then Zelda wrecked the car by driving over a fire hydrant.

At a party, they reported a false fire alarm. According to one story, the firefighters asked where the fire was and Zelda pointed to her breast and said, “Here.”

Westport from across the Saugatuck River in 2010

Gatsby

After the Fitzgeralds honeymooned in Westport, they moved to a New York City apartment near the Plaza Hotel. They later moved to Great Neck, Long Island, from 1922 to 1924, then to Paris, all the while spiraling downward into alcoholism, madness and early death. Scott managed to finish only four novels.

For many years, people thought Scott Fitzgerald patterned the setting for his masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, on Long Island.

Then in 1996, a New Yorker writer named Barbara Probst Solomon asked whether Gatsby included a blend of their time in Great Neck and that first beachy summer when Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in Westport?’

Author Richard Webb, Jr., grew up in Westport, and he was sure the answer was yes. In 2018 he published his book, Boats Against the Current: The Honeymoon Summer of Scott and Zelda: Westport, Connecticut 1920.

fitzgerald-honeymooned-book-cover

The book that tells the story of how Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in Westport.

The title alludes to the ending of Gatsby, one of the most famous in American literature:

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

This story about how Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned in Westport was updated in 2023.

Images: Westport in 2010 by WalkingGeek via Flickr, CC by 2.0. Compo Beach by Carol M, Highsmith, estport United States Connecticut, 2011. August. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2012630296/.

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Marion Donovan, Westport Housewife, Defeats Diaper Rash and Makes $1 Million

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Marion Donovan was always destined to be an inventor. Inventiveness was in her blood. Her brothers, father and uncle had all invented ingenious factory machines. But Donovan’s inventions would come in a more domestic setting.

Brochure for Baby Boaters invented by Marion Donovan

Brochure for Baby Boaters invented by Marion Donovan

Marion Donovan

Born in South Bend, Ind., on  Oct. 15, 1917, her mother died when she was seven. Her father raised her. He and his identical twin brother had invented a lathe tool used to make automobile parts and gun barrels. They ran the South Bend Lathe Works, which Marion visited often after school. Her father encouraged her to innovate new things, and helped her design a new kind of tooth powder when she still went to elementary school.

She graduated from Rosemont College in Pennsylvania, and then went to New York City for a job as assistant beauty editor at Vogue magazine. In 1942, she married James Donovan, gave up her job and moved to Westport, Conn., to raise their three children.

Marion Donovan

Donovan put her mind to one of the major issues a young mother faces: keeping a baby dry and comfortable. The state-of-the art technology at the time was cloth diapers fastened with safety pins and covered with rubber baby pants.

The rubber pants produced diaper rash, but not using them produced a wet baby and a sopping crib. Lightning struck one day for Donovan when she took inspiration from her shower curtain. She began the design process of cutting and sewing the curtain into what she would name the “Boater.”

The Boater

The Boater was a simple plastic sheath into which a diaper was inserted. It was then snapped in place around the baby, swaddling it in comfort while protecting the furniture. Because it still allowed some air circulation, it minimized diaper rash. And snaps to keep it in place avoided sticking the baby with safety pins.

Donovan just had one other problem to conquer: the ignorance of the manufacturing industry. She approached the firms selling products to moms, only to hear repeatedly that they had no need for her innovation.

Undeterred, Donovan tapped into her familiarity with manufacturing and made the Boater herself. When the Boater debuted in 1949, she realized instant success. Saks Fifth Avenue couldn’t keep them in stock.

Disposable Diapers

By 1951, companies could see the commercial potential for the Boater. Donovan sold the rights to her Boater patents for $1 million. But she hadn’t finished innovating. Having worked with the Boater for years, she pursued the next logical innovation in diapers: the disposable diaper.

Again, Donovan tried to interest companies in her idea, but they had no interest. Who would want disposable diapers?

Donovan then turned her entrepreneurial mind to other inventions. They included a space-saving closet hanger system and soap dish insert that minimized soap scum buildup. Over time she accumulated 20 patents. Finally, she trained as an architect at Yale and then designed her own home in Greenwich, Conn.

As for the disposable diaper: evolution was impossible to stop. Europeans created and sold disposables. As their success blossomed, American companies quickly fell in line and Victor Mills created the first American disposable for Proctor & Gamble in 1956 – Pampers.

This story updated in 2022. 

 

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Frederick Law Olmsted Plans A Cemetery or a Hundred

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Chances are good you’ve encountered the work of Frederick Law Olmsted more than once in your lifetime. You’ve probably set foot in his parks or on his school campuses, or maybe you read his magazine. Quite possibly you also had some interaction with the Red Cross.

Frederick Law Olmsted by John Singer Sargent

Frederick Law Olmsted by John Singer Sargent

Olmsted was born in Hartford on April 26, 1822, to a modestly prosperous family. He worked as a seaman, a farmer, a surveyor, a social reformer and a journalist. Then he found his niche as a landscape architect. He also helped found the weekly magazine The Nation.

Olmsted co-designed Central Park, headed the first Yosemite commission and led the campaign to protect Niagara Falls. He designed the U.S. Capitol Grounds and planned both the Great White City of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and Boston’s “Emerald Necklace” of green space.

The list goes on. He designed Elm Park in Worcester, Mass., considered by many to be the first municipal park in America. He also designed the 735-acre Forest Park in Springfield, Mass.

Groton School, campus designed by Frederick Law Olmsted’s firm

His firm designed dozens of academic campuses, including Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Yale University, the Groton School, Berwick Academy, Pomfret School, the University of Maine and Phillips Academy. They also designed Shelburne Farms in Vermont, Providence Butler Hospital in Rhode Island, Arnold Arboretum in Massachusetts and Seaside Park in Bridgeport, Conn.

Olmsted Goes South

Frederick Law Olmsted spent five years traveling the South for the New York Times (then the New York Daily Times), reporting on the slave economy.

He didn’t like what he saw. Olmsted concluded the cotton monopoly did more harm than good. He then reported that slavery made the slave states inefficient and backward. His observations had a big impact on the national debate about slavery.

Central Park in 1901, lower end of the mall

Then he co-designed Central Park with Calvin Vaux – the largest public works project in the country. When the Civil War broke out, Olmsted became executive director of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, a precursor to the Red Cross. He administered medical relief, setting up field hospitals and hospital ships. Olmsted also distributed food and hospital supplies along the entire battlefront.

He had an almost maniacal belief in system and organization, for which he received much criticism.

Frederick Law Olmsted, Planner

Witold Rybczynski credits Olmsted with pioneering the concept of planning in a big industrializing country. “This recognition was not yet widely shared, which is why he was often misunderstood,” wrote Rybczynski. In A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century,  Rybczynski quoted Olmsted’s mentor.

“He looks far ahead, & his plans & methods are sometimes mysterious,” wrote the Rev. Henry Whitney Bellows.

“[His critics] think him impracticable, expensive, slow — when he is only long-headed, with broader, deeper notions of economy than themselves, & with no disposition to hurry what, if done satisfactorily, must be thoroughly.

Olmsted designed Willowbrook Cemetery in Westport, Conn.

Rybczynski also offered an anecdote that demonstrated Olmsted’s farsightedness. Montgomery Meigs, quartermaster general of the U.S. Army, wrote him a letter five years after the Civil War. Meigs, who respected Olmsted, asked his advice in landscaping national cemeteries.

Olmsted then replied the cemeteries should be designed to establish dignity and tranquility. He warned Meigs to avoid the current fashion for elaborate and artificial gardening because it would disappear.

To create a sacred grove for the war dead, he recommended just two things. First,  building a simple wall to enclose the cemetery. Second, he told Meigs to plant trees indigenous to the cemetery’s region. To save money, he should plant nurseries next to the cemeteries. And if land weren’t available for nurseries, he suggested planting seedlings between the tiers of graves.

Olmsted died on Aug. 28, 1903, and is buried in Old North Cemetery in Hartford.

This story last updated in 2022.

Images: Central Park By …trialsanderrors – Lower end of mall, Central Park, New York City, 1901, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11159061. Willowbrook Cemetery in Westport, Conn., By Jllm06 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56543924.

 

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