Thursday, August 26, 2010

The Photographer Who Changed the World

After seeing the photos in my previous blogs that revealed the horrors of the slums of Five Points, in NYC, some of you wondered how the photographs affected the photographer. Here’s the answer.

The photographer who documented these slums was Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant who suffered in poverty when he first arrived in NYC in 1870. A writer and carpenter, he eventually got a job for the “New York Tribune”. He had a real heart for the poor and decided to take the night shift, where he took photographs of the harrowing victims of the Lower East Side. Robert Hughs said, "In the 1880s 334,000 people were crammed into a single square mile of the Lower East Side, making it the most densely populated place on earth. They were packed into filthy, disease-ridden tenements, 10 or 15 to a room, and the well-off knew nothing about them and cared less."

Riis wanted to change all that. He was one of the first to use flash photography, which enabled him to get photographs of the night, including the stale-beer dives where men (and women) would go to sleep for two-cents. They overpaid. “Usually, as in this instance, it is in some cellar giving on a back alley. Doctored, unlicensed beer is its chief ware. Sometimes a cup of “coffee” and a stale roll may be had for two cents. The men pay the score. To the women—unutterable horror of the suggestion—the place is free. The beer is collected from the kegs put on the sidewalk by the saloon-keeper to await the brewer’s cart, and is touched up with drugs to put a froth on it. The privilege to sit all night on a chair, or sleep on a table, or in a barrel, goes with each round of drinks. Generally an Italian, sometimes a negro, occasionally a woman, “runs” the dive. Their customers, alike homeless and hopeless in their utter wretchedness, are the professional tramps, and these only. The meanest thief is infinitely above the stale-beer level. Once upon that plane there is no escape. To sink below it is impossible; no one ever rose from it.”

The preceding was a quote from Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives, which was instrumental in creating awareness of the slums, and in eliciting change—for in the back of the book, Riis offered suggestions.
Riis’ photographs could not be reproduced at the time, but were the source and inspiration for ink drawings that appeared in many magazines and newspapers.

 The work of Riis inspired Theodore Roosevelt (at the time the New York police commissioner) and Lincoln Steffens, one of many who helped create investigative journalism. "He (Riis) not only got the news; he cared about the news. He hated passionately all tyrannies, abuses, miseries, and he fought them. He was a terror to the officials and landlords responsible, as he saw it, for the desperate condition of the tenements where the poor lived. He had exposed them in articles, books, and public speeches, and with results. All the philanthropists in town knew and backed Riis, who was able then, as a reformer and a reporter, too, to force the appointment of a Tenement House Commission that he gently led and fiercely drove to an investigation and a report which—followed up by this terrible reporter—resulted in the wiping out of whole blocks of rookeries, the making of small parks, and the regulation of the tenements."

 I am inspired by Riis. Without his photographs we might not know how things really were for the immigrants of the nineteenth century. The world changed for the better because of his tenacity./Nancy Moser

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Lying for a Living

Novelists sometimes get teased about "lying for a living." After all. . . we make it up, right?

I remember the first time I told someone that for every novel I write, I probably read at least two dozen works of non-fiction. "But. . . don't you just make it all up?" the wide-eyed and, I think, tempted-to-disbelieve person on the other end of that conversation asked.

Well, of course I make it up. I made up this paragraph for A Claim of Her Own:

"She would have recognized him anywhere. Even if he'd cut the brown hair that hung in ringlets around his broad shoulders. Even if he'd stopped wearing the long, heavily embroidered buckskin coat or abandoned his gleaming ivory-gripped pistols--always worn butt out. In fact, Mattie would recognize Wild Bill Hickok if all she could see whas his hands, because she'd spent more hours than she could count dealing cards to those hands down in Kansas, both before and after Bill's short stint as the sheriff of Abilene."

The thing is. . . to write that paragraph I had to know: What did Wild Bill Hickok look like? What did he wear? When was he in Deadwood? Would the truth fit the timeline of my novel? Why did he wear his guns that way? Did he cross-draw? Where would Mattie have had to have lived before coming to Deadwood, in order to have met and played cards with him? When was Wild Bill Hickok sheriff of Abilene, Kansas? Would that historical fact fit my imagined story? And all of that was just to enable one paragraph in a 100,000 word novel.

It's a good thing I adore the research part of writing historical fiction. Photographs of Wild Bill Hickok aren't hard to find. I used the one above after learning what Deadwood was like in 1876. I could honestly visualize a man dressed like this walking what Mattie sees as "the frenzied and filthy" main street in Deadwood.

As to Wild Bill's guns, those weren't the only weapons I had to research, because Mattie needed to pack, too. What would a young woman carry to defend herself back then? After thinking I knew, I decided I'd better verify my selection. It't not always possible to double check everything, but laziness shouldn't be one of the reasons I make a mistake.

I asked friend and fellow novelist Stephen Bly ( what he thought of my choice. His reply began, "Steph. . . sending a lady alone into Deadwood in 1876 is a dangerous thing. . . " and then he showed me the scale of the pistol I had given Mattie next to what she likely would have carried (a Colt pocket pistol). There was no way Mattie would have "hidden" the weapon I chose in the specially-constructed pocket she sewed into every dress she owned. None. Stephen Bly not only saved me from making a big mistake, but also made me laugh when he ended his advice, "...if you really want her safe in Deadwood...give her a double barreled sawed off 10 gauge shotgun. Of course, if she had to fire it, the recoil would knock her into Wyoming." Mattie does end up having to fire a double barreled shotgun...and I made sure to have the recoil knock her a "fur piece." Just not quite into Wyoming.

Another source, Wild Bill Blackerby, was kind enough to show me the "Cavalry Twist." Wild Bill Hickok didn't cross draw, and if I had had him do so in my novel, that would have been a bad mistake. A lot of people know a lot about Wild Bill Hickok!

In the process of researching A Claim of Her Own, I learned about placer mining, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, small pox (not to be the topic of a future blog), and a man named Reverend Smith who became the prototype for my fictional preacher Aron Gallagher. (That's me at Preacher Smith's grave in Mt. Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood.) Of course I also stopped and photographed the most recent "Dead Man's hand"

someone left at the base of Wild Bill's impressive monument. The stone wall in the foreground of the photo of Wild Bill's grave is where Calamity Jane is buried. And by the way. . . Mt. Moriah Cemetery isn't the original graveyard used in 1876 ... or in my novel. Ingleside was the first cemetery. The bodies were exhumed and moved to Mt. Moriah later. I couldn't have Mattie going up the hill to Mt. Moriah in 1876 to sing at Wild Bill's funeral for more reasons than one. Mt. Moriah wasn't there yet, and Hickok's funeral happened in his friend Charlie's camp.

I may lie for a living, but I do try to make certain it's convincing thanks to my spending time with my literary nose to the grindstone. Now that I think about it ... who invented the grindstone? what kind of 'stone' is it? how much does one weigh? how long does it take to sharpen?

Have a blessed Lord's day, friends ... I have some research to do!

--Stephanie G.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

The Children of the Streets

The immigrant slums of Five Points (what's currently the Lower East Side in New York City) were hell for the children who lived there in the nineteenth century. Children were street-wise by a ridiculously early age. And what did they encounter on the streets?  Danger from horses, carts, and lack of food, gangs, criminals, boredom, freezing temperatures, and an absence of supervision. 

To make ends meet both parents had to work, often leaving the children to fend on their own, to take care of each other, or even to find ways to make money themselves.  They sold what they could find: scrap wood, bits of coal, newspapers, or stale bread.  Or they'd steal.  Or gamble.  Now, living in an age when we're wary of letting our children walk a few blocks to school or go to the mall by themselves, this freedom--and its consequences--is beyond comprehension.

And then there were the orphans. Tens of thousands of them (who actually had parents, or not) all alone, without anyone to love or hold them. It tears my heart out to see the pictures of children huddled together in the cold.

The photo below is of a mere baby playing in the hallway of a tenement near the communal water tap. Did this child live?  Flourish? Was she hungry?

There were organizations who tried to help. The New York Foundling Hospital, the Children's Aid Society, and other organizations did their best to take in the poor children, often sending them out West to willing families (ever hear of the Orphan Trains?) One orphanage used to put a crib outside its door so mothers would leave their baby there rather than on the curb.  But it kept filling up so quickly, they had to bring it indoors.//Nancy Moser

Monday, August 16, 2010

A Dozen Kids? Are you CRAZY?!

First, I want to thank Vince for providing me with the idea for this week’s blog when he wrote, “so much of what we think we know is wrong.” Immediately, a topic came to mind, because what I thought I knew was wrong.

What do most of us think when we see photos like this one? (Count the children, folks.) What did I think when I learned that the woman sitting in the buggy in the next photo had babies in 1872, 1875, 1877, 1880, 1883, 1885, 1886, 1889, 1891, and 1894?

Show these photographs to a group of twenty-first century

women, share the list of birth dates, and it won’t be long before the topic of birth control comes up. “They didn’t have a choice.”

“If they’d had a choice, they never would have had so many babies.” “No wonder women died in childbirth so often. They had to be worn out! Who wouldn’t be?”

Those musings would likely lead into a discussion of the women’s rights movement and advances in medicine—all of it assuming that no woman in her right mind would want a dozen kids. I tend to look at these photos and title them, “I am woman—I am tired.”

Luna Sanford Kellie taught me to reconsider my assumptions about pioneer women and large families. She came to Nebraska in 1876 and kept house for her father and brothers until her husband finished business in the east and joined them. By late that fall, Luna, J.T., and their first child were living in their own soddy. Luna wrote, “We always planned for a large family. When Aunt Sophy asked me how many children I was going to have I told her ‛as many as I can.’ And J.T was of the same mind …we thought twelve the least number that would do us and fifteen would be better.”

Enter another assumption: “Well, of course they wanted a big family. They needed boys to work the farm!” And again, assumptions would tend to lead to a discussion of how female children were less valued in an agrarian society than males. But Luna Kellie said that one reason she wanted a large family was that children in small families learned to be selfish. She wrote, “so selfishly are they raised no one can live happily with them.” Luna would eventually give birth to thirteen children. She worked alongside her husband in the fields, planted an orchard, raised her children, published a Populist newspaper on her kitchen table, and, when she was in her seventies, homesteaded alone outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Obviously she was an exceptional woman. She was bright, articulate, and energetic. And she wanted at least a dozen children.

We all see history through a lens colored by our personal world view. That’s unavoidable. But history lovers, historical novelists, and historians alike should beware of putting our value judgments and our assumptions on others. We should remember that women of the past were just as diverse as women in 2010, and that the generalizations historians make based on their studies are just that—generalizations.

And to every generalization there is an exception—and an exceptional woman.

--Stephanie G.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Where the Immigrants Lived

If you were an immigrant traveling to America via New York city in the last half of the nineteenth century, New York might have been but a pause on a longer journey. But if you planned to stay in New York and check out those heralded “streets paved with gold” you often ended up—you often looked for—an area of the city where there were others of your kind. And that place for Italians, Jews, Irish, Russians...was Five Points. If you’ve seen the horrendously violent movie, “The Gangs of New York” (I do NOT recommend it--I couldn't get through it) you know that in the 1840’s and 50’s this area of what is now the Lower East Side was not for the faint of heart.

Five Points, and Mulberry Street, the area where the Scarpellis live in my novel Masquerade, at one time was a neighborhood for the middle class. But when they had water problems because of an underground spring, the area was abandoned to the poor. It was the first American slum. In 1880 there were 37,000 tenements housing nearly 1.1 million people. Most were one or two room apartments.  There was no running water and the bedrooms often had no windows at all.  The buildings were so close together people could hand things across the alley, window to window.
More than 100,000 immigrants lived in rear apartments (behind other buildings) that were wholly unfit for human habitation. "In a room not thirteen feet either way slept twelve men and women, two or three in bunks set in a sort of alcove, the rest on the floor."  There were also rooms where people could sleep for five cents a night, stranger next to stranger.
Most people--if they could get a job--worked 12-14 hours a day. There were thousands of homeless children on the streets, often abandoned by their parents.  I can't imagine the angst of those mothers and fathers, not being able to provide food or shelter... In the summer months 3-4 babies would suffocate in the airless tenements every night.

Mulberry Bend was one of the worst stretch of slums and in 1896 it was demolished to be turned into Columbus Park. Chinatown and Little Italy encroached, as did federal buildings to the south. If you'd like to see more pictures and a virtual tour, go here, to the Tenement Museum site: New York Tenement Museum

In future blogs I'll tell you a little about the children, how people earned a living, and the man who took it upon himself to change things. //Nancy Moser

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Characterization in Fiction

One of my weaknesses as a writer is imagining faces. I know, I know. Fiction authors are supposed to have overactive imaginations. I do--just not when it comes to faces. Thankfully, it hasn't been a problem since I began collecting faces. It all started at an auction in a small town in southeast Nebraska. Among the boxes of things I planned to bid on were Victorian whites, redwork pillow covers, a Featherweight sewing machine, and a shoebox filled with old photographs. As I sat on one of the soon-to-be sold couches chatting with another auction goer, the woman revealed that she was a distant relative of "the deceased" and had helped organize the estate auction.

"Now, who on earth is going to want that box of old pictures?" she wondered aloud. "But the auctioneer said to put 'em out, and not a single one of us knew a soul in them, so. . . "

I smiled. "I want them." And so it began. It's been many years since that auction, and I've continued to collect old photographs. In fact,there's an entire shelf of "anonymous relatives" in my office, along with photographs of farmsteads and draft horses and Tin Lizzies and houses and rodeos and more.
Sometimes, a photograph inspires a character. This young lady (you gotta love that hand-on-hip) inspired Sarah, the orphan train run-away in Sarah's Patchwork.

The two more mature ladies to the right appear in Sixteen Brides. Do you recognize them?

Meet Miss Fannie Rousseau, soon to star in her very own post Civil War adventure whereupon
a young lady from St. Charles, Missouri, ventures aboard
a steamboat bound for Fort Benton, Montana and encounters
gamblers and other assorted unsavory characters. I don't know about you, but I'm thinking this wide-eyed innocent has a few lessons to learn. Stay tuned!
And in case you were wondering. . . that auction? Bought the Victorian whites, the redwork pillow covers, and the Featherweight sewing machine. If only they could talk. . .
Stephanie G.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Grasshopper Pie?

Pioneer women’s letters and reminiscences and diaries contain references to homesickness and loneliness, prairie fires and drought. My first heroine, Jesse King (of Walks the Fire), had to bury a child along the Oregon Trail. Karyn Ritter (of Karyn’s Memory Box) and Ruth Dow (of Sixteen Brides) got caught in a prairie fire. And if there’s ever a sequel to Sixteen Brides, Ruth et al. will have to deal with grasshoppers. Several waves of Rocky Mountain Locusts (aka grasshoppers) destroyed a lot of hope by consuming crops and everything else in their wake in the 1870s. Nebraskans remembered:

"My mother, brother and I came from Westfield Mass. to Kearney. . . Then when everything was bright and green came the cloud which meant grass hoppers. We had wooden side walks, as we walked through the three or four inches of grasshoppers on the walks it sounded like we were shuffling through paper. They ate the onions out of the ground to the husk, and every green thing there was. Many houses were unpainted and looked gray and was weather beaten, but after the grass hoppers ate the outside fuzz they looked like new lumber."

“Mrs. Myers tried to save the garden by placing carpets and quilts over the plants but it was useless as they ate every bit of the garden. . .”

“I had some young celery plants in the garden that I was especially proud of and I covered them with some large pie-plant leaves in the morning. When I came home at noon the pie-plant leaves were eaten and the celery leaves were eaten--not a scrap of anything green remained. . . The grasshopper brigades also ate all the leaves on my little trees, leaving them as bare as in winter.”
Another woman described trying to save her garden, giving up, and heading for the house. By the time she arrived, the grasshoppers had eaten the STRIPES out of her dress! Now, I’m not particularly afraid of bugs (we won’t talk about arachnids,) but I would not like to have to beat grasshoppers off my dress on my way in from a futile attempt to save my garden! (Must have been vegetable dye creating those stripes, eh?)

“Hoppers” ruined many a settler in their day. The devastation left in their wake resulted in both a mass exodus from homesteads and a mass aid effort in the East. The grasshopper problem left a very real danger of starvation in its wake. Folks in the East responded by sending everything from clothing to food to seed for replanting. Some relief barrels contained some fairly interesting (and not particularly practical) items. More on that in another post. For today, I’m thankful that the worst garden disaster I’ve faced this year was trying to keep my tomatoes watered.