I’ve had to buy so many research books lately, I finally broke down and got Variety Obituaries, Vol. 1: 1905–1928. It was expensive, but worth it: I was curled up in bed last night reading about everyone from the famous (Valentino, Wallace Reid, Olive Thomas), to old-timers even I’ve never heard of, and such sad stories as Edith Carper, a Follies Girl in her very first show, who died of accidental gas poisoning in Atlantic City on the eve of her stage debut in 1918.
And yes, they called me “Wednesday Addams” when I was a kid.
Did you have a headless doll named Marie Antoinette? Did you have a “My Little Guillotine”?
Actually it is kind of fun (and somewhat ghoulish) to read old obituaries. Heck, I like reading the obits in the local daily. Some of them get quite involved and tell just about everything about the dearly departed’s life. Sometimes the obit will say that the newly deceased was “borne up to heaven on the wings of angels.”
Sigh All the deaths I’ve ever witnessed have not bee near as exciting. They’re all “take one last breath and die” type deaths. No angels anywhere.
Obits are tiny little biographies—and as a biographer, I find them fascinating. The 1905–28 obits are of old minstrels, early film pioneers, 19th-century stage stars, people who died in WWI and the flu epidemic (as well as a few who died from dat bootleg gin) . . .
Some things that stand out are how really easy it was to die young back then: there are a lot of people in their 20s and 30s dying after surgery, of pneumonia, childbirth, minor accidents.
Another is how many people killed themselves with gas—you never hear of that anymore. Wouldn’t that kill everyone else in the house? Why didn’t the buildings blow up? It seems like a fairly quick and painless way to go, but you could take the whole neighborhood with you!
You lucked with Wednesday Addams - I received the moniker of “Ghoul” after a class trip to Norway. In Oslo we waited by a cemetary for our bus to collect us. While all the other teens ignored the cemetary, I wandered through it snapping pictures and making etchings of unique grave markers.
It fascinated me to see markers dating back to the 17th century, seeing entire families buried together, and it also saddened me to see so many infants.
A couple years ago someone in my family found the obituary for some great-great-whatever from more than a hundred years ago. He’d died in a railroad accident and the obit was REALLY detailed. Very macabre. Apparently, CSI isn’t the first thing to take advantage of our fascination with gruesome deaths.
Forgot to add, I used to write obituaries for a radio station. And if I didn’t get them done in time for the 12:00 news, my phone would ring off the wall…little old ladies bitching me out because their friend’s obit wasn’t on the air. It was kinda surreal.
It’s companion site, Find a Death, is one of the few web-sites that I’ve given money to in order to keep it running. Pictures of houses, hospitals, the celebrities themselves, more detail than you could want on their last days, just really cool.
A. A saucy, coquettish, intriguing maidservant in comedies or comic opera.
B. An actress or a singer taking such a part.
C. A young woman regarded as flirtatious or frivolous.
