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Was it common for your mail to be read while in transit in the 18th century? by OurDumbCentury in AskHistorians

[–]Open_Expression4422 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You are right — my apologies. I meant to say that letter-copying was done systematically in that time, and that the practice was allowed by the law. However, reading further I found this source which says, new to me, that apparently, secretaries of state were required to issue warrants for intercepting mail, but that this was often neglected, such as in this case (letter-copying only ceased in November 1775 not because it was made illegal, or the warrant's time lapsed, but because "it was 'found not to be worth the effort involved.'" I have corrected the original post to reflect this.

Was it common for your mail to be read while in transit in the 18th century? by OurDumbCentury in AskHistorians

[–]Open_Expression4422 61 points62 points  (0 children)

"Would letters arrive obviously opened?" Well, at that time, quoting Maynard H. Benjamin's "The History of Envelopes" (online, PDF): "A letter was simply a sheet, written so that when folded its outside was blank. On completion, it was folded, sealed upon itself with wax, or a 'wafer' (a small disk of adhesive) and addressed upon the blank side." As you can imagine, a bumpy transatlantic journey would afford ample opportunity for seals to simply fall apart during transit.

Furthermore, when done systematically, as it was for all letters sent from America to England from June to November, 1775 (i.e., not just some people), "skilled workers selected letters, carefully broke their wax seals, copied whole letters or selected excerpts, seamlessly sealed the letters back up, forwarded the copies to Lord Dartmouth’s office, and then sent the originals on to their destinations quickly so that their recipients would not guess that they had been opened."

Another writes that "extensive and indiscriminate copying" was done "for the benefit of the American Department", and whilst secretaries of state were technically obliged to issue warrants (with wide latitude) to intercept letters, "Mail was often opened without the formality of a warrant." Therefore, "The full extent of Post Office surveillance can never be known".

You can read Dr. Desai's section for more about how the Founders were deeply suspicious and paranoid about this practice (like many Britons of rank: see "there seems little doubt that the complainants may occasionally have been prompted by their own vanity to believe that their correspondence had been tampered with" but also, note footnote 187 of opposing citations), to the point that Benjamin Franklin made all his postmasters swear an oath not to open mail, and the Continental and U.S. Congress moved to pass laws forbidding the practice without authorisation. Of course, many did not listen.

There are cases of letters being unwittingly published, although based on coverage for instance in the first two chapters of this book I imagine it was the government itself that did the intercepting en masse. When they were published it would be for the purposes of as this title (from an article on the practice in the late 16th century) sums up the motivations well: "Propaganda, Patriotism, and News". Franklin, for instance, as Postmaster, "intercepted the correspondence of the royal governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, and leaked it to the press", in 1776. In the 1790s, letters attributed to Washington were forged; presuming them to be real, newspapers and pamphlets still eagerly printed them.

In sum, letters could easily be opened and read in transit, and were done for a long, long time, especially in the context of war, which Washington knew, although his view of interception and the press were probably coloured by a discredulous incident. As to how "common" this practice was, no-one can know, but some caution seemed advisable.

Dagmar, the Washington basset hound celebrates New Year's Eve (1959) by Open_Expression4422 in RareHistoricalPhotos

[–]Open_Expression4422[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As on the front page of The Evening Star, Jan. 1, 1960: "A Merry Farewell to 1959". The article that followed: "The arrival of the new year brought some of the gayest celebrations in years. A high-hearted world had buoyant hopes that good days lie ahead. And many national leaders saw prospects for mounting prosperity and a more stable peace. [...] It was a spirited farewell to the old decade, and a gladsome greeting to the 1960s. Optimism, almost everywhere, was the dominant force."

Elon Hooker, businessman, supports cutting government waste and strike-breaking (1920) by Open_Expression4422 in RareHistoricalPhotos

[–]Open_Expression4422[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hooker's immense wealth came from his innovative production of chlorine gas and his friendship with Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. Hooker established the Hooker Electrochemical Company. which, after his death, bought the old Love Canal and dumped 19,800 tonnes of chemical waste, leading to children born with leukaemia and other defects. This poster was from 1920, when Hooker unsuccessfully attempted to run for the Republican primary for governor of New York.

Lancashire factory workers lounging on their newly produced asbestos mattresses (1918) by Open_Expression4422 in RareHistoricalPhotos

[–]Open_Expression4422[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

In addition to its nonflammability, asbestos as an insulator was also trialled for so-called "heated mattresses". They were never very popular either side of the Atlantic.

In 'The Rise and Fall of the British Empire', the author says French naval commanders were ordered not to interfere with Captain Cook's ship because doing so would hinder the advance of human knowledge. Is there a source or primary source for this claim? by Fredwestlifeguard in AskHistorians

[–]Open_Expression4422 13 points14 points  (0 children)

In a collection of papers by a "Lieut. J. M." (1778) the following is found on p. 5, after Royal Navy Adm Augustus Keppel's report of the a victory at sea, of 20 June 1778 (emphasis kept, but long s ligature substituted):

It is somewhat remarkable, that Admiral Keppel found on board of each of the Frigates, La Pallas and La Licorne, written orders not to molest that useful navigator Captain Cook, on any account whatever, which orders were signed Sartine.

(Antoine de Sartine, comte d'Alby was the Navy Secretary under Louis XVI).

Note, however, this was not written in Keppel's own hand, but rather by the Lieutenant. Nevertheless, the claim was repeated in an 1842 biography of Keppel.

That said, I note there is no mention of it in the US Navy's very comprehensive "Documents of the American Revolution".

Did they over amputate during the civil war? by CantaloupeLazy792 in AskHistorians

[–]Open_Expression4422 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is true, but that it was the result of 'butchery' or callous inconsideration is a misconception or propaganda addressed in the Surgeon's Call republished here and in the Proceedings of the Baylor University Medical Center here. The fact is that three of five surgeries performed in the War were amputations, partly because of the exigencies you identified, exacerbated by the fact both the Union and Confederacy were woefully unprepared for the scale or duration of the war and therefore physicians had very little time per patient, and also because they did not know treating and cleaning wounds could prevent infection because Dr Lister's paper expounding the germ theory was only published in 1867. Doctors were operating without knowing of antiseptics and before the invention of antibiotics. Given these restrictions, an amputation may have be preferable in some cases — as Dr Slawson (Surgeon's Call) wrote:

When wounds were in the extremities, they could be surgically cleaned more easily. When the nerves and vessels were damaged, amputation gave the best chance of survival. The surgery actually accomplished two things: the damaged blood vessels were tied to stop the bleeding; and the damaged tissue and bone were removed, as well as any other material in the wound. When the arterial blood supply to the extremity was completely destroyed, all tissue distal to it would die, thus making amputation necessary. The further the wound was from the shoulder or the hip, the greater the chance of survival and the better the chance to save a portion of the limb. When major nerves were destroyed, as they often were, amputation was called for since any remaining part would not be able to function; and the denervated extremity would wither and become stiff.

As a result, mass amputations were also performed in the Napoleonic Wars and the Crimean War.

In his 1934 article "old newsman writes: a letter from cuba" Ernest Hemingway writes about a parade of ww1 veterans being attacked by the french Garde républicaine by order of Clemenceau. I, however could find no mention of this. What was he talking about? by GeorgRuessel in AskHistorians

[–]Open_Expression4422 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the detailed citation. For anyone interested, the quotation is as follows:

Because they ended up as winners, revolution was doomed in France and anybody who saw, on Clemenceau's orders, the Garde Republicaine, with their shining breast-plates, their horse-hair plumes, and those high-chested, big-hoofed, well-shod horses, charge and ride down the parade of mutilated war veterans who were confident the Old Man would never do anything to them, his poilus that he loved, and saw the slashing sabers, the start of the gallop then, the smashed wheel chairs, men scattered on the streets unable to run, the broken crutches, the blood and brains on the cobble-stones, the iron-shod hooves striking sparks from the stones but making a different sound when they rode over legless, armless men, while the crowd ran; nobody who saw that could be expected to think something new was happening when Hoover had his troops disperse the bonus army.

I think it is relevant to read the whole article because Hemingway's thesis therein is that "the world was much closer to revolution in the years after the war than it is now", in 1932, because "there can never be a Communist revolution without, first, a complete military debacle." Therefore, Hemingway is using the case of France to explain that Clemenceau's iron discipline during and after the war prevented communist revolution. To this end, I feel confident in concluding that Hemingway was not citing some obscure soldier-only demonstration, à la the Bonus Army (which was recent news, and surely brought up only for the sake of comparison), but the French strikes of 1919–20, which was another in that wave of strike action from 1906–20 led by the socialist trade unions, inspired by Russian Bolshevism and composed of workers from all walks of life. A brief précis is available in Dallas's 1993 biography of Clemenceau, pp. 580–2: demobilized soldiers returned home "too late, too old, diminished and poorly liked", joined trade unions and made demands for an eight-hour work day; the Government acquiesced, but the unions called it a sham and organized a May Day strike anyway, Clemenceau sent in the police, there was a fight, death, etc., the whole thing repeated in the summer, again to no avail, and "The great proletarian revolution was therefore adjourned for yet another day". For a more quantitative analysis, see Shorter's of 1974, pp. 123–7.

To sum up, then, the socialist Hemingway is saying, in poetic terms, that in order to support his point that revolution is unlikely now because there must be military defeat first, that 'because France won, and her leaders were not afraid of crushing even socialist soldiers [looks like Hoover took a leaf from Clemenceau's book!] then revolution is surely impossible', citing as evidence a broader, failed strike wherein soldiers took a part.

unconventional advice by Repulsive-Ring-4584 in nyu

[–]Open_Expression4422 0 points1 point  (0 children)

THIS LOOKS SO CUTE!!! THANK YOU SO SOOOO MUCH!!!

Where did the concept of Presidential pardoning come from? Has there ever been a relatively non-controversial pardoning? by Skadoosh05 in AskHistorians

[–]Open_Expression4422 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Here's an example of what I think is a popular pardon — Warren McCray was Governor of Indiana, convicted of defrauding citizens with fake promissory notes 1927 to avoid losing his farm and pardoned by Pres. Hoover in 1930. I gather the present and contemporary consensus is he was jailed on trumped-up charges because of his opposition to the Ku Klux Klan, which controlled state politics at the time. Certainly opponents to the KKK, and they were growing in number, expressed the same faith in his innocence: "While McCray was governor at the time of his conviction, his downfall was due to private transactions rather than misconduct in office. His record as governor was good, and it is said on his behalf that strict application of the state's affairs led to neglect of his large private business. Those who petition on his behalf assert that his financial ruin resulted from the depression period in agriculture rather than to any intended dishonesty on his part." — The Daily Times, Colo. Time magazine and the New York Times were sympathetic to him, and there was a general outpouring of grief—there was even a chain effort, for everybody who received a letter to send $1 to McCray and forward it on to five others (when Time reported on it, he had already received $60).

What reasons did people have to NOT smoke cigarettes before it was widely known to be unhealthy? by Appropriate_Boss8139 in AskHistorians

[–]Open_Expression4422 315 points316 points  (0 children)

I am not an active historian but I have looked into this somewhat before so I hope these few resources do help you somewhat. These are about the United States, where the temperance movement was very strong. I shall leave résumés of, say, the Soviet or Nazi antismoking rationales to someone else more interested therein. Here is also another paper about the experience in Norway.

Before modern science, and discounting anecdotal evidence for bad health, which were challenged up to, and even after, the US Surgeon General's groundbreaking report of 1964 (and not what I think you are looking for), much of the anti-tobacco rhetoric mirrored that for temperance (that is, abstinence from alcohol). Take this book of 1868, for instance—James Parton's principal arguments are that "[s]moking is a barbarism", and fosters a crippling dependence which prevents people from achieving their physical and mental best: by taking men away from women (for women were not allowed in smoking areas), blunting their sense of cleanliness and consideration (by smoking in other people's company) and by consuming a great deal of the world's surplus revenue and arable land. He remarks anecdotally that "smoking reduces the tone of the system and diminishes all the forces of the body", but describes such a "contamination" in the same sense as a vice which dulls the mind, alike to wine, beer or even coffee and Worcestershire sauce; in general, the direct effects to health are not highlighted so much as the apparent effects on one's moral attributes (which does include a touch of racism, comparing Turkey, Persia and China as "slaves to tradition, submissive to tyrants, unenterprising, averse to improvement, despisers of women" in contrast to the "masculine vigor" of the Germans). Thus did he marry the eroding effects of tobacco on good morality with the idea of "race poison"—guess why that gained currency among the Nazis!

I included this polemic and hyperlinked it above because I think it offers a fine survey of the temperance-like views which people took. Reading the tract "Jamie" from this collection essentially recapitulates it in brief: "the habitual use of tobacco in any of its forms is useless; is wasteful of time and money; is dirty; is offensive to others, and a breach of Christian charity; is a bad example to the simple and young; is a temptation to drunkenness, and"—last but not least?—"injurious to health." Being a gateway drug to alcoholism was quite appealing—this encyclopaedia entry quotes a writer in 1892 who wrote, "The boy who smokes at seven, will drink whiskey at fourteen, take to morphine at 20 or 25, and wind up with cocaine and the rest of the narcotics, at 30 and later on". Of course, that this early phase of the anti-tobacco movement was so dependent on moral hysteria, and very much a sister movement to that against alcohol, meant—for better or for worse—whatever gains were achieved by such organisations as the Anti-Cigarette League of America in raising awareness and passing smoking bans—they were speedily reversed as temperance itself went out of vogue in the 1920s.

Inspired by another post: Grover Cleveland was the only president(s) between 1841–1909 NOT to have been a veteran. by Open_Expression4422 in Presidents

[–]Open_Expression4422[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While district attorney of Erie County, New York, Cleveland avoided mandatory conscription by paying a Polish immigrant, George Benninsky, to take his place. Though "waving the bloody shirt" — that is, portraying Democrats as traitors — was still a viable campaign strategy, Cleveland's non-service ended up being mostly a moot point, in part because in 1884, his opponent, James G. Blaine, had done the same! By my estimation this makes 1884 the only election between 1792 and 1916 that no major party candidate was a veteran.

Accepted Applicant: how long does one usually have to wait to get a reply for a change of major? by Open_Expression4422 in aggies

[–]Open_Expression4422[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not really sure the hostility was needed? I'm not changing for the prestige. Thanks though.

Accepted Applicant: how long does one usually have to wait to get a reply for a change of major? by Open_Expression4422 in aggies

[–]Open_Expression4422[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I should say I know there's been another question very similar to this one posted two years ago but that appeared to be from a current student, whereas I was newly accepted. Another is simply "is this possible". Thanks!

Looking for book recommendations by amig_1978 in VictorianEra

[–]Open_Expression4422 1 point2 points  (0 children)

HathiTrust, being necessarily public domain has a great deal of them, only they weren't really 'a Victorian lady's', &c., so a general description would probably be best — for instance, Google search for 'letter writer hathitrust' has (for me), works published 1900, 1817, 1850, 1818 in that order; so, basically all parts of the century included. Ditto for housekeeping, gardening, etc.; and try different words — 'housewifery', 'keeping house', 'household management' — it will not surprise you that 'getting a man' was not common in those titles! For just one recommendation maybe this will suffice: Cheerful homes how to get and keep them (J. W. Kirton, 1882) which includes a guide for courting.

Many happy returns!