There's More to New Jersey than the Sopranos

20 Leprosy in the Laundry

100 There’s More to New Jersey . . . But in some other parts of the country there was outrage that the old way of keeping time had been taken away by the powerful railroads. A letter writer to a Kentucky newspaper demanded to know “if anyone has the authority and right to change the city time without the consent of the people, and what benefit Louisville can derive from it.” The newspaper agreed with the writer that the change was a Yankee attack on states’ rights. A leftist in Boston said that the change was a “piece of monopolistic work adverse to the workingman’s interest.” The voters of Bangor, Maine, voted overwhelmingly to hold on to their old time. But most Americans became used to the new system, and it was finally adopted by the federal government in 1919. Today the nation’s standard time remains much as Allen designed it in 1883. Allen became a nationally known figure. A New York reporter joked that he could be seen striding down Broadway with a precise step, as if on his own internal timetable. In his book Keeping Watch: A History of American Time, the historian Michael O’Malley writes that Allen’s invention of standard time was a milestone in the transformation of America from a collection of isolated, local communities to a modern, unified, industrial nation, dominated by big organizations like the railroads. There’s much truth to that. We can be nostalgic about an age when everything was local; when life was ordered by the bell in the village steeple. It was an age when there were no DVD players to program, no conference calls to make, and no jet planes to catch—a time when people weren’t slaves to that little god we strap on our wrists every morning. 20 Leprosy in the Laundry Anyone deluded enough to think that the good old days were better than our own era should spend some time leafing through the yellowed pages of antique newspapers (or more likely, reel- Leprosy in the Laundry 101 ing through microfilm versions of those papers). The press in the nineteenth century delighted in running stories of human misfortune, the more grotesque the better. These sordid accounts, which usually appeared on the front page, documented crime, accidents, suicide, illicit sex, domestic quarrels, and madness—all reported with some combination of moral outrage and sly humor. One might well ask why the papers gloried in that sort of thing. The answer is exquisitely simple—titillation sells newspapers. This lurid style of reporting had been perfected during the 1830s in New York penny press newspapers like the Sun and the Herald and soon crossed the Hudson to New Jersey. Herewith is a sampler of one dozen assorted bizarre headlines from New Jersey newspapers during the height of the Victorian age. The stories behind each headline reveal something of the quality of life—or lack of same—in that long ago time. “tired of life” Sussex Independent, 1884 This newspaper article from rural west Jersey tells the story of the unfortunate Joseph Berry, age twenty-three. Distraught over the fact that his wife had left him, Berry journeyed to a secluded spot near the home of his wife’s parents, where his spouse had presumably fled. There he swallowed poison, which caused him to cry out in agony. The commotion caused a physician to come to his aid. Said the account, “The Dr. administered the strongest emetics known to the profession, which caused the would-be suicide to vomit the vile poison in large quantifies,” and Berry survived. Perhaps as helpful advice to others contemplating self-destruction, the newspaper observed, “Had his groanings been less audible he would possibly have been permitted to die undisturbed.” “sentenced for killing her husband” Plainfield Evening News, 1887 This story tells of Mrs. Catherine Keevan of Somerville, who dispatched her husband by “crushing his head with a sugar bowl.” She was sentenced to nine years at hard labor for the crime. The newspaper observed that 102 There’s More to New Jersey . . . this might seem to be a short stretch in jail, but that given her age it amounted to a life sentence. Mrs. Keevan was sixty-eight. “not foxy by nature” Newark Journal, 1888 Political correctness was not a major concern for newspapers in this era, and this story uses vaudeville-style...