You know what, fuck it. Figure skating is now my favorite sport. Unless there's another one that will let a competitor dress up in a silly costume and do all these silly jumps and wiggles and fall on purpose, IN THE OLYMPICS, there's no contest
As a former figure skater I feel obliged to point out how technically difficult that little Chaplin patter would be. See the kind of speed he's getting up to and then immediately moving into that "walk" - sometimes without even a brake manoeuvre. The momentum you build up when moving at speed has to get released somewhere so stopping like that is usually an easy way to topple over (not on purpose). In the true spirit of Chaplin he is making very hard and potentially dangerous things look easy.
Here’s the opposite story, though. With apologies because I don’t have the book in front of me, so I may get some details wrong, but I read this “Irena’s Children“ by Tilar J. Mazzeo.
Irena lived in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, and dedicated her life to rescuing Jewish children from the Ghetto, and her story is complicated in a lot of ways but - well, this story isn’t actually about Irena, per se.
It’s about a bus driver.
It’s about a day when she’s traveling across town by bus with a very young Jewish child, and partway to their destination the child looks up and asks a question - in Yiddish. and the whole bus goes quiet, because everyone knows what that means. And Irena thinks, okay, we’re going to die here today.
And she’s running through her options - all of them bad - and suddenly the bus stops, and the bus driver announces that there’s been a mechanical failure and the bus needs to return to the depot immediately. Everyone off, please.
And she stands and goes to get off the bus and the driver says - not you two. Sit down. So she sits down as everyone else leaves, because, well, what else is she going to do? the options are all still bad, at this point.
and when the bus is empty the bus driver says,
“Where do you need to go?”
And then he drives them as close to their destination as he can, and lets them off, and drives away. And Irena lives, and the kid lives, and they never cross paths again.
So a janitor got three people killed, and a bus driver saved two lives - not to mention all the other lives indirectly saved because Irena was able to continue her work.
I think about that almost every day now, to be honest.
We can’t all be Irena. I couldn’t be Irena. She was in a unique place with very specific skills and connections that let her do what she did. I am just one mentally ill librarian. I can’t be her. But - I can be the bus driver. Or I could be the janitor. Because it doesn’t matter what your job is. It doesn’t matter who you are. In a world like this, every single one of us has the opportunity to do massive harm or massive good. We can save lives or end them.
And that’s scary. but it’s also very comforting? at least for me. Because at the end of the day it means this: no matter of how small and helpless and unimportant you feel, you’re never powerless in the face of great evil.
Suddenly struck with a need to explain to you how boat pronouns work (I work in the marine industry).
When you're talking about the design of the boat, you say "it".
When the boat is still being built, your say "it".
When the boat is nearing completion, you can say "it" or "she".
When the boat is floating in the water you probably say "she", unless there is still a lot of work to be done (e.g. no engine yet) then you say "it".
When the boat is officially launched and operating, you say "she". If you continue to say "it" at this point you are not incorrect but suspiciously untraditional. You are not playing the game.
If you are referring to a boat you don't really know anything about you may say "it" ("there's a big boat, it's coming this way"). But if you know its name, it's probably "she" ("there's the Waverley, she's on her way to Greenock").
If you are talking about boats in general, you say "it" ("when a boat is hit by a wave it heels over")
If you speak about a boat in complimentary terms, it's "she" ("she's a grand boat"). If you are being disparaging it may be it, but not necessarily ("it's as ugly as sin", "she's a grotty old tub").
If she has a boy's name, she's still she. "Boy James", "King Edward", "Sir David Attenborough"? The pronoun is she.
If it's a dumb barge (no engine), you say it. But if it's a rowing boat (no engine), you say she.
I hope this has cleared things up so that you may not be in danger of misgendering floating objects.
The other night I reorganized the folder on my computer where I keep all the weird New York Herald personal ads I post.
Over the years I've been clipping these I've come across a handful of personals that were just straight up written in code.
As I was going through the folder I noticed that almost all the coded ads were printed within a year or two of each other (specifically between 1850 and 1852). Looking a bit more closely I also began to realize that the same coded words and phrases were appearing across multiple personals - suggesting they were all written in the same code (which appeared to be a basic substitution cipher), likely by the same person/people.
Possessing multiple samples of the code, struck by the type of confidence that only hits at 11:30 at night, and having the little know-how remaining from a special interest in cryptology in middle school, I thought... I bet I can crack that.
So I took the longest coded personal I had at the time (the image directly above - I've since found a much longer one), cracked open a notebook and got cryptoquip-ing.
I had a few little hitches due to words being mispelled in the original ad and a few unclear letters due to poor quality newsprint, but I soon found myself with a mostly decoded message...
"This morning at elevn[sic] precisely be at Carter's bookstore two eighty five Broadway. As a prete?h ask for their directory. Don't fail."
I made myself a key (V and W are Q and Z, but as neither letter is ever used in an ad there's no way to tell which is which.)...
...and got to decoding the other personal ads and putting them chronological order.
Let's see what was worth encoding 175 years ago...
July 16, 1850 -
"You have arrived by this time I suppose my own dearest Josie. I shall wait ivpatiently[sic] for the Asia** hoping to hear from you. I went to vespers Sunday and sat in your pew. You are never out of my thoughts. I have written down all that has occurred which I thought would interest you. We will read it together on our first drive after your return. I kiss this on which your eyes will rest. Do not forget your own fond devoted Jerry."
** There was a Cunard Line transatlantic paddle steamer called "the Asia" launched in 1850, but I checked the dates it was in New York that year and neither voyage fits what's said in the messages.
---
September 12, 1850 -
"Welcome my dearest Josie; when can k[sic] see you."
---
September 17, 1850 -
"Not one word from you dearest while away or since you returndd[sic]. Have your feelings then changed, See last Thursdays Herald. I dare not see you for the first time at home."
---
October 10, 1850 -
"I’m sick with anxiety about you, love. Will you not see me."
---
The ads then skip almost two years (I'm planning to go through the intervening microfilm by hand at some point to make sure there aren't any sneaky ones I missed)...
June 3, 1852 -
"Dearest - I was very ill whne[sic] you wrote."
---
July 4, 1852 -
"Deareft[sic] - Just return[sic] from Albany write again to me box in post office."
---
July 7, 1852 -
"Today three oclock Jersey City ferry house."
---
July 8, 1852 -
"This morning at eleven south ferry New York side."
Street cars and omnibuses wait outside the South Ferry terminal in New York City, circa 1865.
---
July 13, 1852 (the original message I decoded) -
"This morning at elevn[sic] precisely be at Carters Bookstore two eighty five Broadway. As a pretexh[sic] ask for their directory. Don’t fail."
Carter's Bookstore (indicated by janky arrow) as seen in a panoramic view published in Gleason's Pictorial, March 18, 1854.
---
Another time skip, this time 5 months.
December 14, 1852 -
"Give me a da y[sic] dear."
---
And the final message (that I've found as of writing this)...
December 25, 1852 -
"Mnray[sic] at elevn[sic] Catharine Ferry New York."
It may not be the most thrilling of Victorian espionage, but it still feels pretty cool to read something no one else has read in 175 years.
I've gone through about 3 months worth of microfilm by hand and found two more coded ads that weren't picked up by the text recognition due to blurry newsprint, but it's a slog so it's going to take a while.
So what are our theories? Did these two crazy kids make it? What was keeping them apart? Why the two year gap? What were all the meetings for?
I had a quick look at New York marriage records, and I found a Josephine who married a Jerome on 17th July, 1853.
Here's the record:
Jerome's birth year is listed elsewhere on familysearch as 1830, and on his burial record as 1829. Josephine is also listed with the surname Shonon on familysearch - which looks a lot like a misspelling to me - and with the birth year of 1839 on her burial record.
The obvious reason why they might want to communicate in code is that Josephine was at most 14 in 1850. Which is a bit grim and not quite the romantic story I'd hoped to find.
Here's a link to the marriage record (you might need a familysearch account to see it).
I don't know how to assess the likelihood that this was them? Neither Josephine nor Jerome were especially common names in the 1850s, but they weren't wildly unusual either (and Josie and Jerry could both equally be short for something different).
What I've tried and so far failed to do is find a birth record for Josephine, in order to confirm a) her surname and b) where she lived, to see if I can figure out what the church might have been, and cross-reference that with the various locations they met at, to see if those would be nearby. Josephine's burial record lists her as a lifetime resident of 130 8th Avenue, which would be a strike against her being Josie, as that's a pretty long walk away from any of the meet-up spots. But I don't think that's conclusive. I might have more of a go tomorrow.
Well, I've got approximately no further at all. I can find absolutely zero record of Josephine Behannon anywhere before her marriage.
I also had a look through the passenger list of the Asia, which left Liverpool for Boston on the 13th July 1850 and found no matches. The Asia definitely wouldn't have reached Boston before the 17th July anyway, but that seems like the kind of error someone might make. (Or maybe the Asia was bringing post from Liverpool or Halifax? That could be implied by Josie having "arrived" in July and then being welcomed back in September. But then why put a notice in a New York newspaper?)
There are also passenger lists here but no Josephines or Behannons to be found.
Anyway @yeoldenews thank you for sharing this mystery, and I'd love to know if you uncover any more messages!
Thank you so much for looking into this! I had come across Jerome and Josephine early on and tagged them as a lead worth following up on, but hadn't gone that in depth yet myself.
I dug for an hour or so just now to see what else I can find about them.
The "lifetime resident" in Josephine's death record is likely referring to New York State and not that specific address as I can only document the couple living there in 1870 and 1871. They seem to have bounced around from place to place after their marriage - mostly on the Lower West Side - and were never at the same address for more than a year or two.
(For the record, Josephine's age is also all over the place depending on the source - making her anywhere from 9 to 27 when the first messages were posted - which is honestly not that unusual for mid-19th US records, especially in big cities.)
Unfortunately I haven't been able to confirm where either Josephine or Jerome were living prior to their marriage. I checked the full marriage record you posted above, which contains more information than the index, but both their places of residence just say "New York".
Jerome does not appear in any New York City or Brooklyn directories prior to 1855.
There was a widow named Mary Bohannan living about 12 blocks north of Carter's Bookstore in the early 1850s who is a potential candidate to be Josephine's mother as there were no other Bohannan (or a dozen similarly spelled names) families recorded in Manhattan at the time.
I crudely mapped out all the meeting locations mentioned in the messages and they were kind of all over the place. This did reinforce one of my earlier impressions which is that one half of the couple lived in Brooklyn. Jerry specifies what side of the ferry crossing to meet at (the NYC side) for both their South Ferry (yellow) and Catharine Ferry (green) rendezvous. I can't think of why he would feel the need to specify that if they both lived in Manhattan. With the Jersey City Ferry (red) he doesn't specify which terminal (I marked both) - presumably as they would have no reason to meet in New Jersey.
Jerome and Josephine are both buried in Brooklyn (as are two of their children who died young), but that's more likely the result of an 1852 law which prohibited new burials in Manhattan, than it is with any association they had with the borough in life.
Neither Jerome or Josephine are marked as being illiterate on either the 1860 or 1870 Census, but paging through the surrounding neighborhood it looks like no one was marked as illiterate at all - which makes it just as likely that a tired census worker wasn't asking all the questions they were supposed to as that that particular district had a 100% literacy rate.
And of course all of this depends on whether the Josie and Jerry of the personal ads ended up together and were using their real names to begin with.
Unfortunately in situations like this, even if you find extremely strong evidence there's really no way to definitively prove it.
