Postcards from the Alligator Farm

I had long suspected that these images were merely imaginative artwork, similar to tall tale postcards. Today I learnt that, in fact, they’re halftone photographs with applied colour depicting fun for all the family at the Los Angeles Alligator Farm in the early 20th century:

Originally located in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Joseph ‘Alligator Joe’ Campbell’s Alligator Farm was relocated to tourist hotspot Lincoln Heights, California in 1907. The animals were loaded onto a train and a banner was hung from the side advertising the advent of the attraction.

After paying their 25 cents admission fee, visitors could enjoy the hundreds of alligators, of various sizes and ages, that lived in the back garden - and, as the postcards show, there were opportunities to ride the reptiles. In time, the farm began to supply alligators for the movie industry and feature in such films as ‘King Solomon’s Mines,’ ‘The Adventures of Kathleen,’ Walt Disney’s ‘The Happiest Millionaire’, and numerous Tarzan films.

Most famous was an alligator called Billy. Visitors to the farm would witness Billy sliding down chutes and wrestling underwater with famed alligator wrestler George Link, and, until the 1960s, most of the alligator jaws seen in films belonged to Billy, as he would automatically open his mouth when a piece of meat was dangled above him, just out of view of the camera. Billy was one of the alligators so domesticated that his owners could put a saddle on him and give their visitors a ride. Another highlight was 250lb Galapagos tortoise, Humpy. The owners’ children would put a saddle on Humpy and Billy each and race them around the garden. Humpy would regularly stray off the path but was invariably the winner.

In it’s hey day the farm was the most complete reptile collection in the world, as various other species of snake and lizard were introduced over time, and would entertain 130,000 visitors a year. 

[Mice Chat | Iconic Muse | Image Archeology | Image Sources: 1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6 : 7 | More black and White photographs]

The Anti-Flirt Club

The Anti-Flirt Club was an American club active in Washington, D.C., during the early 1920s. The club was composed of women who had been embarrassed by men in automobiles on street corners with the aim of protecting them from unwelcome attention in the future. The Anti-Flirt Club launched an “Anti-Flirt” week, which began on March 4, 1923.

The club had a series of rules, which were intended as sound and serious advice. These were:

1. Don’t flirt: those who flirt in haste oft repent in leisure.
2. Don’t accept rides from flirting motorists—they don’t invite you in to save you a walk.
3. Don’t use your eyes for ogling—they were made for worthier purposes.
4. Don’t go out with men you don’t know—they may be married, and you may be in for a hair-pulling match.
5. Don’t wink—a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the other.
6. Don’t smile at flirtatious strangers—save them for people you know.
7. Don’t annex all the men you can get—by flirting with many, you may lose out on the one.
8. Don’t fall for the slick, dandified cake eater—the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard.
9. Don’t let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you. Those are usually the kind who want to forget they are fathers.
10. Don’t ignore the man you are sure of while you flirt with another. When you return to the first one you may find him gone.

[Image Source: 1]

(Source: Wikipedia)

Virginia House: The House that Moved Homes

The house which would become Virginia House was originally built in the 12th century and served as a priory until Henry VIII split from the Catholic church and closed the hundreds of monasteries and nunneries around Britain. Over the next four hundred years the house would change hands numerous times, with each owner adding a personal touch; such as knocking down the surrounding monastic buildings and adding curvilinear Dutch gables to the front façade around 1620. The fortunes of the house rose a fell throughout the centuries with one owner entertaining Queen Elizabeth I there and another, in the early 20th century, being forced to sell it.

In 1925, Alexander and Virginia Weddell bought it at a demolition sale. They had it dismantled and rebuilt part of it in Richmond, Virginia, where they hoped the west wing would serve as a museum for the Virginia Historical Society. 

The company that was to demolish the Priory felt the stones would crumble in the process, so they decided to make a small explosion in the middle of the building and send only those stones that survived the blast to America. To their amazement, most of the stones fell intact. The more fragile ornaments were packed in boxes with sand to cushion them. The ship bringing the stones to America had to turn back to port as it was taking on water. Consequently, when the stones arrived in Richmond they were soaked in seawater and had to be washed and dried. The first group of stones arrived in Richmond in the spring of 1926. 

(Source: vahistorical.org)

Midgetville

Midgetville, or Tiny Town, is a name used to refer to real or legendary communities of “midgets”, people with forms of dwarfism who are normally proportioned, or collections of small “midget-sized” houses. As many of these places are legendary they are at times given qualities that might be more fanciful than real and even some “real” ones may play on mythology for tourism purposes. Hence some descriptions are not meant to imply anything concerning real people with dwarfism.

The “Midgetville” in Vienna, Virginia was a collection of six small cottages that were torn down in 2008. In 1892 the area was purchased by Alexander Wedderburn and in 1930 his son built six small cottages. The cottages were rented out but eventually became overgrown with ivy and trees, subsequently becoming associated with “Midgetville” legends bolstered by two coincidences: the nearby Bailey’s Crossroads, named for the Bailey family of Barnum & Bailey Circus, was used as a place to winter circus animals in the mid-1800s, whilst nearby Tysons Corner is the home of one of the Barnum & Bailey Circus headquarters. Those two facts are used to substantiate the legend that Midgetville was a retirement village for circus midgets. The legend is sometimes told with the midgets being xenophobic and throwing rocks at curious visitors to chase them away.

Another so-called Midgetville is located in New Jersey. At least six small houses, with small doors, smalls windows and small furniture inside are located on a secluded dirt road. Some have very ornate exterior decorations. There is one normal-sized house on the grounds, inhabited by an elderly, average height couple. Rumor has it that Alfred Ringling, famous for the Ringling Brothers Circus, built a few small-sized houses that had four-foot doors as a sort of retirement home for the little people acts in his circus. Again, visitors claim the “midget” residents are territorial and hostile and will shoot guns at outsiders.

[Images Sources: Top Row (VA) : Bottom Row (NJ)]

[With thanks to Vintage-Royalty]

(Source: Wikipedia)

The Great Escape of Ellen and William Craft

Ellen and William Craft were slaves from Georgia who escaped to the North, where slavery had been abolished, in 1848. As the light-skinned daughter of a mulatto slave and her white master, Ellen used her appearance to pass as a white man, and William posed as her servant.

Ellen cut her hair and bought appropriate clothes, traveling in jacket and trousers. She wore her right arm in a sling to hide the fact that she did not know how to write. Over the next four days:

• Ellen found herself sitting next to a friend of her master on the train. She feigned deafness to discourage his attempts to engage her in conversation.
• A slave trader offered to buy William, and a military officer scolded Ellen for saying “thank you” to her slave.
• In South Carolina a ticket seller insisted on seeing proof that Ellen owned William. A passing captain intervened and sent them on their way.
• In a Virginia railway station a white woman confronted William, mistaking him for her own runaway slave.
• An officer in Baltimore threatened again to detain them without proof of ownership, but relented. [Source]

On December 21, they boarded a steamship for Philadelphia, where they arrived on Christmas Day. Threatened by slave catchers in Boston after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the Crafts escaped to England, where they lived for nearly two decades and reared five children.

[Read their book, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, online here] [Image 2 Source]

(Source: Wikipedia)