Street Sweepers &   Alderman Mud Harper's Magazine   Touching position of the New York Alderman who prefers being smothered in mud and slush to conceding an iota of his imaginary dignity.   (See the official Report on the Reasons why the Board of Aldermen won't confirm any Street Inspector the Mayor may name.)                           Streetsweeper  in Operation      Keeping streets clean, particularly in large cities has always been a challenge.   In a pre-mechanical world when nearly every conveyance depended on horse power, horse shit was more than just a political problem.       Moreover, cows and pigs were kept in the city before zoning laws. Feral cats and dogs roamed the streets. Dead animals and animal waste added to whatever humans contributed throwing out food scraps and emptying chamber pots.      Crossing a street after a rain storm was particularly problematic as dirt and dung created slime.   Hoping for a penny tip, children at street corners armed wit

Coal Gas--The Original Gaslighting Rembrandt Peale      One of America's leading painters of the early 1800s was the first to use gas lighting. Rembrandt Peale opened the first American museum of any sort in Baltimore in 1806.  Trained in natural science as well as fine arts, Peale sought a way to illuminate his paintings using methods beyond candles and sunlight.  Candles and oil lamps were dim and expensive; sunlight was unpredictable. Peale had studied in Europe and was aware of early experiments in England using coal gas lamps to illuminate several streets and a town square.               Coal gas--later called town gas-- is produced by burning crushed lumps of coal in an oxygen starved atmosphere to produce methane and hydrogen, both of which burned brightly, as well as small amounts of nonflammable but poisonous gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and nitrogen.                Peale's museum was so successful in lighting for night time exhibits a consortium

  Amalgamationist & Abolitionists "Amalgamation"--the code word for sexual relations between the races--was feared.  "Amalgamationists vs Abolitionists"      Anybody liberal enough to publicly espouse the view that Blacks were human and deserved the same legal rights as Whites was labeled "an Amalgamationist." Further, it implied legal inter racial marriages.   It was possible--quite common, in fact--to be an abolitionist and not  an amalgamationist.        Abolitionists were considered a Northern fringe group of eccentrics demanding the impossible.  Abolitionists existed before the founding of the republic, but the movement stirred the South's ire starting in the 1830s.      In modern terms they were a bit like PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals.) For example, most people do not think animals should be treated with mindless cruelty--that does not mean most people think chickens should have the vote or allowed to serve on a jury with ba

    A DUCK OF A WIFE Litchfield CT April 7, 1859             A duck of a wife, whose husband went for a day or two on a bit of a lark, thus advertises him:             LOST, STRAYED OR STOLEN—An individual whom I, in an unguarded moment of loneliness, was thoughtless enough to adopt as my husband. He is a good looking and feeble individual, knowing enough to go in when it rains, unless some good looking girl offers her umbrella. Answers to the name of John. Was last seen in the company of Julia Harris, walking, his arm around her waist, up the plank road, looking more like a fool, if possible, than ever. Anybody who will catch the poor fellow and bring him carefully back so that I can chastise him for running away, will be asked to stay for tea. —HENRIETTA A. SMITH A Runaway Woman? RUNAWAY WIVES AND RAILROADS Jan 14, 1860 NY Times             The Charleston Mercury , with the view of settlement of the Slavery question, has been looking into the state of Northern moral

  We Were Warned A Long Time Ago             In 1856,  an American woman,  Mrs. Eunice Foote,  performed a series of experiments demonstrating that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere would significantly raise the temperature of the climate. Moreover, she showed it would be very slow to cool back to normal--much slower than unpolluted air. The results were published in a scientific journal in November 1856.          Of course she could not be admitted to the professional scientific organizations. No women were allowed. On the other hand, she was married to a respected judge and inventor. And her paper was only 557 words long, about the length of a short news story or slightly longer than usual letter to the editor.          Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays: By Eunice Foote From the American Journal of Science and Arts   Nov 1856 Pages 382, 383 From a paper read before the American Association August 23 rd 1856             My investigations have had for