Ringing Down The Final Curtain: A Most Curious Assortment Of Cincinnati Deaths (2024)

During the 1800s, most Cincinnati suicides involved drinking carbolic acid, a phenolic compound used as a disinfectant. In the early 1900s, however, carbolic acid was almost replaced by a new suicide poison – Lysol disinfectant.

Lysol was first sold in Germany in 1889. Among the ingredients of early Lysol formulations were benzalkonium chloride and organic compounds called cresols (a type of phenol), both poisonous in significant quantities.

As early as 1894, medical authorities in Germany had estimated that 100 suicides each year in Germany were caused by a product just five years on the market. A single neighborhood in Berlin yielded 24 suicides by Lysol that year. By 1913, Lysol was the most popular means of suicide in Germany and Australia.

Cincinnatians followed suit.

• In 1905, Madge Holley of George Street (in Cincinnati’s red light district) attempted suicide by drinking Lysol on learning of her father’s death in Virginia.
  
• Daisy Sherman, aka Madge Simpson, 22, described as a harlot, committed suicide at 309 Longworth Street in 1908 by drinking Lysol. She died at the City Hospital.
  

• Lucille Allen, 32, living in an apartment at the corner of Sixth and Smith streets, committed suicide by drinking Lysol in 1909. She was upset over poor health.
  
• Mary Herbst, 42, of Sixth and Plum streets, attempted suicide in 1910 by drinking Lysol. She was despondent after the death of her husband six months earlier.
  
• Mary McCabe, 51, of 3703 Warsaw Avenue, committed suicide in 1913 by drinking Lysol to end a long illness.
  
• Margaret Wagner, 21, of 1011½ Mound Street, killed herself by drinking Lysol in 1914 when her husband threatened to divorce her and take their child.
  
• Lena McClanahan, 19, of 3072 Beekman Street, drank a bottle of Lysol in 1914 when her father reprimanded her for sitting up until after midnight with her intended.
  
• Tessie Ehling, a 14-year-old schoolgirl living at 654 Delhi Avenue killed herself in 1926 by drinking Lysol at a neighbor’s house.
  

After the 1930s, reports of Lysol-assisted suicides declined as other, more effective products became available. The reader will also note that all cases listed involve women. Men then as now used gunshots and hanging to kill themselves.

The images for Daisy Sherman and Tessie Ehling are from the very useful online digital resources of the University of Cincinnati Libraries.

The Archives and Rare Books Library at the University of Cincinnati houses a collection of more than 528,000 records of births and deaths in the City of Cincinnati from 1865 to 1912, when the collection of such vital records was transferred to the State of Ohio. The records, consisting of index cards, were compiled by the Cincinnati Health Department several decades ago and are considered the official and legal records of births and deaths for this time period. Among the death records are some archaic terms unfamiliar to today’s researcher.

Apoplexy

Among the most common causes of death among adults in Cincinnati, the Health Department records show 3,616 deaths by apoplexy from 1865 to 1912. These days, we use this old-fashioned term metaphorically, especially as an adjective – apoplectic. It was once the preferred term to describe the incapacity caused by a stroke or cerebral hemorrhage.

Bloody Flux

Intestinal distress killed many, many Cincinnatians over the years. The major epidemics wandering through the region, often spawned by non-existent hygiene, usually included various intensities of diarrhea. Dysentery, Cholera and Malaria all involved some degree of “flux” or bowel incontinence. If the usual fecal flow contained visible amounts of blood, it was known as the bloody flux and was commonly fatal. They didn’t know from electrolytes in those days.

Congestive Chills

Today, malaria is almost unheard of in Cincinnati and any local cases are almost certainly traced to foreign travel. Time was, however, when malaria was not uncommon in the Queen City. Few medical authorities in the 1800s connected the disease to a parasite transmitted by mosquitoes. Congestive chills was the term applied to cases eventually identified as malaria, especially if accompanied by diarrhea. “Malaria” is an Italian word meaning “bad air” and our ancestors believed malaria (or congestive chills) were caused by repulsive smells. In Cincinnati, around twice as many deaths were diagnosed as malaria compared to congestive chills.

Dropsy

The physicians of the Victorian era found themselves in a linguistic quandary. Over the Nineteenth Century, medical doctors gradually accumulated professional respect, chased charlatans from their ranks and sought to standardize clinical education and practice. This included renaming every disease with an appropriately scholarly Greek or Latin designation. Unfortunately, their patients only understood the ancient names for diseases, passed down through the centuries. Cincinnati recorded more than 2000 deaths from dropsy (a word dating to the 1300s), but only 298 from ascites, 169 from anasarca and only 61 from edema, all related terms for the buildup of fluid in bodily tissues. In all cases, whether the patient’s death was blamed on dropsy, ascites, anasarca or edema, the true cause was undoubtedly an undetected organ failure – usually the heart, kidneys or liver.

Erysipelas

Although they knew little about bacteria, our ancestors knew many diseases caused by streptococcal bacteria. Erysipelas was one such malady. Similar to cellulitis, erysipelas is generally confined to the uppermost layers of skin, while cellulitis infects deeper tissues as well. Even today, it is difficult to identify whether erysipelas or cellulitis is the cause of a fiery red rash. Nearly one thousand Cincinnatians died from erysipelas in the days before antibiotics.

Excessive Use of Chloroform

While not a common cause of death in old Cincinnati, overdoses of chloroform were not unheard of. Well into the 1900s, anyone could walk into the pharmacist’s and purchase opium, cyanide, cannabis, strychnine and a whole formulary of chemicals now restricted by prescription or law. In such an environment, abuse and misuse were inevitable and a several dozen Cincinnatians met their demise sniffing chloroform-laced handkerchiefs. This was almost equal to the number dying from opium or laudanum overdoses.

Fits

Back in the 1800s, people who believed in microbes were thought to be insane. In such an environment, understanding seizures or convulsions, whether caused by epilepsy or other conditions was essentially impossible. Consequently, seizures were described with all sorts of names, from folk maladies like “fits” to attempts at modern nomenclature like “paroxysms.” Whether the attending physician or the coroner opted for the traditional term or the new-fangled option, either conveyed clearly that no one really knew what the poor soul died from.

Goring By An Ox

It is often forgotten just how many more animals lived in Cincinnati in the late 1800s compared to today. The city’s transportation system was based on horses. People kept cows, chickens and pigs in their backyards. Businesses relied on mules and oxen for heavy-duty jobs. On a fairly regular basis, one or another of these beasts decided it had endured quite enough, thank you very much. The same coroner’s report [7 January 1868] reporting death by ox-goring recorded another victim “killed by a vicious mule.” Mad dogs, irascible hogs and runaway horses took their toll, not to mention poisonous snakes down by the canal.

Lead Colic

Also known as “Painter’s Colic,” lead colic was an often fatal condition of “obstinate constipation” caused by lead poisoning. All the best paints in Old Cincinnati incorporated lead compounds for bright and durable colors. In fact, lead was among the more benign pigments soaking into a painter’s intestines. The fashionable Paris Green shade was so chock-full of arsenic that the pigment itself was used to kill rats and insects, and sometimes ingested for suicide or murder.

Marasmus

Poverty, ignorance and a host of societal abuses created an epidemic of malnutrition in Cincinnati. Marasmus was just a fancy medical term for starvation, and hundreds of Cincinnati children died with this ailment listed on their death certificate. Inevitably, some other undiagnosed condition was the real culprit, whether diarrhea, scurvy, rickets, pellagra or some other deficiency.

Morbus Coxarius

Known as “hip-joint disease,” morbus coxarius was just one of many manifestations of tuberculosis in Cincinnati. In this case, the bacterial microbes consume the bones of the hip and upper leg, eventually causing a fatal infection. Among the other terms employed to describe diseases caused by tubercular bacteria were scrofula, phthisis, tabes mesenterica and consumption.

Old Age

Yes, people in Cincinnati, even in the Nineteenth Century, did survive into advanced senescence. In such cases, it was quite common – nearly 3,200 records between 1865 and 1912 – for the cause of death to be listed simply as “old age.” Most patients who earned that cause of death were 80 years old or more. There are a few examples in which the attending doctor (obviously a young whipper-snapper) listed “old age” as the cause of death for a patient barely 60 years old. Back then, living until 60 was a rare and wonderful thing, but still …

Puerperal Fever

Few diseases generate more anger among modern researchers than puerperal fever. Throughout the 1800s, giving birth in a hospital frequently resulted in the mother’s death from puerperal fever as doctors glided from autopsy to delivery without washing their hands. Even in an age when bacteria and viruses were unknown, European doctors, notably Ignaz Semmelweis, recognized that physicians needed to disinfect their hands before attending pregnant women. Despite ever-increasing evidence that Semmelweis was correct, many doctors refused to comply. One pig-headed traditionalist, Charles Meigs, of Philadelphia’s Jefferson Medical College, insisted, “Doctors are gentlemen and a gentleman’s hands are clean,” while thousands of Cincinnati women died. A related uterine infection was known as metritis.

Pyaemia

It was only gradually, after the discoveries of Louis Pasteur in the 1870s, that medical doctors agreed diseases could be caused by microbes. The “germ theory” wasn’t fully accepted until after 1900. Meanwhile Cincinnatians died by the thousands from infection. Pyaemia is just one of the common names for various forms of sepsis or “blood poisoning” including septicemia, toxemia and sepsis. Stomatitis refers to an infection of the interior of the mouth and killed more than 100 Cincinnatians.

Summer Complaint

The name of this disease conjures visions of some overly dressed Victorian croaking, “It’s too darn hot!” and then keeling over into eternity. Unfortunately, the reality was far more serious. Summer complaint killed nearly 300 Cincinnati children in the last half of the 1800s. The disease manifested as acute diarrhea, usually caused by unhygienic conditions, especially food contamination.

Teething

Between 1865 and 1912, the Cincinnati Health Department recorded 742 deaths of young children attributed to teething. Any parent who has endured a child suffering through this developmental landmark may be forgiven for believing that a lot of our ancestors just lost patience. That is not the case. It appears that, in those days when the germ theory of illness was just catching on, teething caught the blame for deaths caused by simultaneous infections, dehydration, cholera, typhus and so on.

Trismus Neonatorum

Obviously something that affects newborns, trismus neonatorum was a stiffening of the jaw, often indicating a fatal tetanus infection. Childhood in 1800s Cincinnati was fraught, with more than half the deaths reported each year involving children under 10 years old. Every disease now avoided through childhood vaccination killed thousands of Cincinnati children, especially diphtheria, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, and tetanus. Cincinnati children commonly died from smallpox, scarlet fever and the deadly duo of debility and inanition, collectively known as “failure to thrive.”

Both Monty Python and Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic both explored the concept of a joke so hilarious, anyone who heard it would die laughing. Jokesters would have loved Doctor William Osler. He once told a joke that really did kill people, including some in Cincinnati.

For a respected medical authority, Dr. Osler was quite the comedian. Under the pseudonym of Egerton Yorrick Davis, he mailed bogus research papers to distinguished scientific journals, which often published them. These fake articles usually involved gynecological or urological topics that were decidedly off-color. Osler’s most controversial joke was intended as self-deprecating humor. When it backfired, he spent the rest of his life trying to undo the damage.

It all began in 1905 when Oxford University in England invited Osler, one of the founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, to accept a distinguished professorship in medicine. Osler was 56 years old and, in a farewell speech to his Johns Hopkins colleagues, suggested modestly that his best years were behind him. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer [26 February 1905]:

“Not everybody understands so easily the professor’s parting joke with his old associates at Baltimore. Some people have taken seriously his solemn protestation that at 40 a man is comparatively useless, while at 60 he should be unobtrusively chloroformed.”

Problem is, although the newspapers reported it that way, that is not what Osler actually said. While he definitely stated his belief that men accomplish their best work before the age of 60, Osler’s comments regarding chloroform were quoted from British novelist Anthony Trollope. The Washington DC Evening Star [23 February 1905] published a verbatim transcript of Osler’s speech:

“In that charming novel, ‘The Fixed Period,’ Anthony Trollope discusses the practical advantages in modern life of a return to this ancient usage, and the plot hinges on the admirable scheme of a college into which at sixty men retired for a year of peaceful contemplation before a peaceful departure by chloroform.”

Although Osler jokingly endorsed the general concept, he credited a satirical novel as the source. This nuance was lost on the mass media, and headlines across the United States claimed that a top medical doctor recommended a peaceful death by chloroform for men over age 60.

Some readers agreed, and promptly killed themselves. On 21 August 1908, the Cincinnati Post reported:

“No less than 10 men and women over the age of 60 have taken their own lives in Cincinnati during the past year. Nearly all of these believed they had reached their limit of usefulness, in line with this theory supposed to have been advanced by Dr. Osler.”

The Post quoted an aged Cincinnati veteran who had retired to the Dayton Soldiers Home. Just before he killed himself, he supposedly told his acquaintances, “Dr. Osler is right. I am too old to be of any use to mankind.”

Throughout the United States, the Post claimed, “hundreds of deaths” could be attributed to elderly people accepting Dr. Osler’s joke as fact.

While “hundreds of deaths” might seem like an exaggeration, many newspapers reported suicides found with clippings of Osler’s speech in their pockets, among them a Confederate veteran in Baltimore, a press agent in New York City, a butcher in New Orleans, and a contractor in Nebraska. The health officer in Cleveland, Ohio, claimed that more than fifty suicides in that city in 1905 alone could be traced to Dr. Osler’s pronouncement.

Some victims openly acknowledged the inspiration of Dr. Osler, even years later. The Pueblo, Colorado, Chieftain [17 January 1917] reported the death of Joseph P. Hanna, who drank poison in Salt Lake City and left a suicide note that read, in part:

“To the Coroner: This is just simply a case of suicide; not necessary to hold an inquest. I am sick and can’t get well. So life has no chances for me. I agree with Dr. Osler that everyone at 50 years should be chloroformed, especially if they are sick all the time.”

One decided skeptic about Osler’s influence was Dr. Otis L. Cameron, coroner of Hamilton County. While Dr. Cameron absolved Dr. Osler, he hardly offered a ray of hope for the county’s elderly. He told the Cincinnati Post:

“Dr. Osler never uttered it and I have never taken it seriously. It may have had some effect on old people. As a rule, however, they have other mighty good reasons for taking their own lives.”

Well, thank you for the encouragement, Doctor Cameron!

On the north side of Montgomery, a couple of nature preserves perpetuate the memory of Hazelwood, a once wild corner of Hamilton County. The Harris M. Benedict Nature Preserve is owned by the University of Cincinnati and the adjacent Johnson Preserve was donated to the City of Montgomery.

One hundred years ago, Hazelwood was rural enough to need its own deputy game warden. That role was filled by a truly eccentric gentleman named Louis Kuertz. Warden Kuertz knew the land around Hazelwood intimately and he knew many of the woodland creatures individually.

Rube, a crow, would alight on his hand or shoulder upon being called. When Kuertz hollered across the lake on his property, a turtle named Monte would rise from the lacustrine depths and waddle up to his feet. Kuertz was instrumental in having quail designated as a songbird – and therefore exempt from hunting – in Ohio.

Kuertz worked variously as a truck farmer, a cabinetmaker and as game warden, and passed along his devotion for the natural world to his wife, Anna Belle, and especially his daughter, Gertrude. When Gertrude was just 12 years old, she inspired newspaper coverage because she would trek into the autumn woods to help her father locate poachers. The Cincinnati Post [4 November 1914] noted that Gertrude knew how to identify snipe, plover and quail and was proficient with a gun and fishing rod.

“Gertrude also studies butterflies and flowers and prefers books on botanical and avicular subjects to fairy tales. In winter she goes about in the woods scattering food for wild creatures that otherwise might starve.”

Gertrude’s affection for animals extended as well to domesticated varieties. In 1916, the Post ran a series of articles, allegedly composed by a turkey named Trixey as that chubby bird awaited the arrival of Thanksgiving. With all the build-up, the Post’s readers would have expected a traditional and savory end to the gag. Instead, on Thanksgiving Day, the Post located Trixey “in full bloom of life, smiling pleasantly” at the Kuertz farm. Gertrude was there to explain:

“’We do not slaughter our pets,’ said Miss Kuertz proudly.”

The article went on to list other animals who would not provide sustenance to the Kuertz family, including a red-haired pig named Ruddy, Nana the pony, Bossie the cow and Nanny, a goat of unusual variety donated to the Kuertzes by the Cincinnati Zoo.

“Ganders and geese, ducks and drakes, pigeons and chickens and pheasants and quail – all immune from the swish of the butcher’s knife.”

Gertrude also had a pet hawk. Her interests extended to the vegetable kingdom as well. When the Association for Preservation of Wild Flowers launched a campaign in 1921, Gertrude served as poster girl, holding a sign encouraging flower lovers to leave enough blooms to reseed for the next year.

There came a time when Frank Mills Jr. came courting and the Kuertz family naturally wanted to be sure he was as committed to environmental matters as their daughter. Mills derived from a well-known Cincinnati family. His father, Frank Senior, was the longtime director of the Cincinnati Athletic Club. A nude photograph of the elder Mills hung for many years at the club as an example of perfect manly physique. Apparently the Kuertzes approved, for a wedding date was set.

These days, it is considered conventional, if not downright old-fashioned, to be married in a church. A century ago, church marriages were the gold standard. Pretty much the only alternative to a religious venue was the local magistrate’s office. No one got married outside. Unless you were Gertrude Kuertz.

When Gertrude and Frank Mills said their vows on 3 October 1925, it rather caused a stir in Cincinnati social circles because the ceremony took place under the trees at the Kuertz family farm out in Hazelwood. The Cincinnati Post [8 October 1925] devoted several columns to the event:

“In what church was she to be married? She knew no place more sacred than the woods in which she had seen Creation march among her trees and touch them with life and where she witnessed since her childhood the gentleness of the divine love, even to the least of creatures. The woods were to be her church.”

As irregular as it might have seemed at the time, Gertrude’s outdoor wedding was officiated by the very proper Dr. Edward P. Whallon, described as “a minister of the Old School” in an official history of the Presbyterian Church.

The wedding culminated in a good-sized banquet, also served under the boughs of the great trees, illuminated by several bonfires. After the wedding, Gertrude’s appearances in the newspapers were largely confined to the gardening columns. She and Frank, a chemist by trade, excelled at growing almost anything except corn. Frank told the Post [7 July 1965]:

“There are too many varmints around. First the chipmunks dig up the seeds, then the rabbits eat the tender shoots and if there’s any left, the woodchucks strip the ears.”

And, of course, Gertrude would be opposed to shooting any of the brigands.

Gertrude and Frank lived most of their married life in a house personally constructed by her father on the family farm, next door to the house she grew up in. They raised a son and a daughter there.

Louis Kuertz had his own idiosyncratic architectural style that involved knocking together a rough iron framework and covering it with layers of stone and concrete. Kuertz built several such structures, including a bell tower for the local school, in the Hazelwood area. The house Kuertz built for his daughter was known to the nearby community as the Gingerbread House. It looked very much like the houses pictured in fairy tale books and had unique touches including dozens of nooks and crannies and a fireplace sculpted to look like a tree. All the doorknobs turned backwards and all the light switches were installed upside-down. Louis Kuertz died in 1933 and his ashes were placed under a memorial stone on the family estate.

Over the years, bits of the Kuertz farm were sold off. The Gingerbread House survived on a remnant acre until 1992, when it was sold to a developer by Gertrude’s daughter and was promptly demolished.

On the evening of April 3, 1974, your narrator interviewed a woman who found a perfectly new, pristinely crisp, twenty-dollar bill in her front yard. This random occurrence of good luck became newsworthy because her miraculous benefit had floated down into her yard from a passing cloud that had recently spawned an F5 tornado.

At the time, I was not a reporter exactly but everyone that evening became either a reporter or a source. The memory of that day remains so fresh and clear it seems impossible that it transpired exactly fifty years ago.

In the fading afternoon, a heavy storm blew in as I drove a clunky Ford Econoline van from the Hopple Street Viaduct onto Westwood-Northern Boulevard. I was, at that time, a senior at the University of Cincinnati desperately yearning to graduate and move on to the next chapter in my life. To cover tuition, I worked as a printer for the Western Hills Publishing Company. Our offices were on Davis Avenue in Cheviot and our printing presses occupied a floor in the historic Crosley Building on Arlington Street in Camp Washington. My duties as the junior member of the printing crew involved shuttling copy and page flats from the editorial offices to the typesetting and composing staff.

As I climbed out of the valley toward the English Woods housing development, hail scattered across the road. Hailstones rattled on the van’s roof, then pounded, then stomped. It sounded like some gremlin with a baseball bat hammering on the roof as ice balls the size of oranges smashed into the asphalt all around. Tree branches cracked and split and thatched the roadway.

Somehow, I made it to Cheviot and pulled into the Press parking lot. It was full of people, just standing around. I got out and looked at the van. The roof looked like a moonscape, there were so many dents in it.

“Hey! Look at this,” I shouted. No one turned or said a word. And then I saw why.

Stretching from the horizon halfway to zenith was the tornado. It was impossible to comprehend the scale. More than two miles away, we heard no sound except endless sirens calling to one another from every direction. Where we stood transfixed it did not rain. There was no wind. There was only the tornado.

“Look at all that paper swirling around,” someone said.

“Those are garage doors,” another answered.

We watched as the horrendous vision scraped its way northward, the finger of God plowing a furrow along South Road out in Mack. We watched as it withered and lifted and twisted into nothingness against a pallid sky, waving it seemed in farewell at last as it vanished. We stared at each other, silent, unable to find any words.

Gradually, we realized that all the lights were out. There was no power in the offices. The publisher sent me around the corner to a hardware store to buy all the candles they had in stock. It was going to be a long night.

At this point, for the benefit of readers younger than I, it is necessary to explain a few details. The cash register at the hardware store was mechanical. It did not require electricity, much less Wi-Fi, to operate. The editorial offices were stocked with manual typewriters. The telephones were landlines, on a separate network, and functioned even when the power was out. Everyone had a battery-powered radio.

Anyone with the ability to write a coherent sentence became a reporter. I was sent out, still wearing my printshop uniform, in the divotted Econoline, to gather eye-witness reports. I found a small crowd at the Western Hills Country Club who had been herded into a downstairs bar while the sirens howled. They queued up for every available telephone to check in with their families. I found people in shock, wandering through piles of rubble that had been their homes, clutching any random possessions they recovered. I saw ambulances backed up in a line, waiting for utility poles and power lines to be moved. I saw people wrapped in blankets, standing in the middle of nothing left, sobbing on each other’s shoulders.

There were people who swore they saw two funnel clouds and people who claimed there were four, twisting like snakes in the sky. There were people who confessed to being so transfixed by the surreal wonder of the twister that they stood paralyzed as it swooped down on their houses.

And, in the curious way the universe laughs at we mere humans, I found humor.

There was the guy who, in a dispute with his insurance company, was photographing damage to his roof when the warning sirens erupted. He saw the funnel approaching and dove into his basem*nt. When he emerged, his roof was gone, and so was the rest of his house, but he bragged that he had the photos to press his prior claim.

I talked to one of the rescue workers who told me about a kid, maybe 15 or 16 years old, who approached him and begged him to hide a bottle of vodka. The kid didn’t want his mother to know he had the bottle hidden in his bedroom – the bedroom that was now nothing more than a debris field.

Meanwhile, at the University of Chicago, Dr. Theodore Fujita drafted a questionnaire to be sent to almost every newspaper, every radio station, every television station in the country. Dr. Fujita asked a lot of questions about the duration and intensity of the 148 confirmed tornadoes reported that day. He and Allen Pearson of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center hoped to refine the tornado classification system they had created just three years previously. Someone at the Press filled out the questionnaire and sent it back.

A year later, having graduated from the university and transferred to the newsroom, I found a largish cardboard tube lying amid the usual pile of news releases and complaint letters that constituted our daily mail. On opening the tube – it was addressed to no one in particular – I found a map of the eastern United States titled “Superoutbreak Tornadoes of April 3-4, 1974.” Dr. Fujita, compiling all those questionnaires, had mapped and labeled every one of those 148 tornadoes.

In the center of the map, there was my tornado, the only tornado I have seen with my own eyes, officially designated as an F5 monster.

Although the city’s newspapers regularly cited unsafe conditions on the city’s streetcars , the trolleys were popular and heavily used by Cincinnati’s commuters. The hilltop neighborhoods would not have developed without mass transit. Even so, riding the streetcar included some unusual situations.

For instance, halitosis. The Cincinnati Enquirer [10 April 1898] reported that a delegation of women “whose sense of smell seems to have been abnormally developed” invaded the private offices of John Kilgour, president and general manager of the Cincinnati Consolidated Street Railway, to complain about the malodorous exhalations of his streetcar conductors.

“Only last week about 20 Cumminsville ladies rode into town with a conductor who had eaten onions for dinner, and so soon as they landed in the city they adjourned in a body to Mr. Kilgour’s office. Many ladies of Mt. Auburn are kicking, while a great many more who live in Clifton are up in arms. Walnut Hills has sent in her petitions, but from all sides the kicks and the petitions are from ladies, and all are down on onions as used by the street car conductors.”

The Enquirer, hopefully tongue-in-cheek, offered a variety of remedies for onion-hungry conductors including salting his onions with chloride of lime, strapping a horse sponge soaked in carbolic acid and asafetida to his mouth, and ingesting onion-heavy dishes such as Hamburg steak in capsule form. (It is not surprising that breath mints – not yet a common thing – are not mentioned here, but it is odd that cloves – on-hand at every saloon in town – are not listed as an option.)

While the society ladies petitioned the streetcar company for pleasanter olfactory experiences, younger women blamed courtship hurdles on the streetcar schedule. Many young men back then lived in town but courted fair maids out in the tonier suburbs up the Millcreek Valley. The city’s streetcars ran late enough to get their dates back home to Glendale and Wyoming, but not late enough to convey the ardent swains back to town. According to the Cincinnati Post [16 October 1902]:

“Maidens of the Mill Creek Valley are making a strenuous effort to secure better street car accommodations for the young men from the city who take them to theaters. At present these young men have to walk anywhere from seven to 14 miles to the city, according to the part of the Mill Creek Valley in which the girl lives, and a long, lonesome promenade by night has proved enough to take the keen edge off many an incipient and promising love affair.”

According to the Post, parents were mum on the issue and those who did voice an opinion thought the streetcars ran late enough as it was.

Meanwhile, the folks who rode the streetcars during the normal business hours had regular trials of their own, among them Cincinnati’s beloved totem, the pig. The Commercial Tribune [13 February 1898] reported a situation in which a fattened hog on the way to the slaughterhouse decided to delay the inevitable by napping under the wheels of a streetcar, causing a delay of some minutes.

“But why growl, and fuss, and fume, and blame the Consolidated? It can’t help it. It might make a thousand laws against pigs getting under the car, but every now and then a pig would break the rules.”

The Commercial Tribune described a situation in which a horseshoe, cast off by some farmer’s dray, settled into the groove in which one of the city’s cable car’s lines ran. Cars backed up for blocks as gripmen and conductors and then passengers and passersby attempted to remove the blockade or offered advice on how to make it disappear.

Coal deliveries regularly brought streetcar service to a standstill. The Commercial Tribune opined that basic geometry dictated that coal wagons and streetcars did not mix:

“Take the great big lumbering coal wagons. It is all they can do to turn around in a narrow street. When they dump a load of coal something more than half a street is needed. It matters not to the driver that a loaded street car is coming with forty or fifty passengers, some of whom will be docked if they are late. He must get that coal off.”

Cincinnati has always loved a parade, but parades played hob with streetcar schedules. The Commercial Tribune dreaded the disruption the Grand Army of the Republic reunion in 1898 would inflict on the city’s transit system.

“When the veterans are here this summer there will be a blockade that will be a blockade unless arrangements are made in the line of march to permit some of the [streetcar] lines to continue in operation. If 40,000 veterans are to be in line, and this is by no means improbable, it means a winding mass of humanity that will cross every line of cars near and far, a line that will be hours passing any given point.”

Even when the streetcar routes ran smoothly, commuters complained about the outrageous fares charged by the streetcar companies. When Cincinnati charged five cents for a ticket and a penny extra for a transfer, Columbus, Cleveland and other cities offered eight tickets for a quarter, with free transfers.

Complicating matters, Cincinnati had multiple transit companies operating with totally different fare structures. The big player in town was the Cincinnati Street Railway Company, owned by the Kilgour family, followed by George Kerper’s Consolidated Lines based around the Mount Adams Incline, the Mount Auburn Cable Line, the Main Street Line and other players. A mourner wishing to place flowers on the grave of a loved one in Spring Grove Cemetery had to pay a ten-cent fare to ride an electric trolley to the end of that line at Knowlton’s Corner, and then pay an additional ten cents to ride a horse-drawn trolley out to the cemetery.

Overcrowding was a perennial issue. The Cincinnati Post – possibly exaggerating – recorded 117 passengers stuffing one struggling car. An editorial cartoon recommended that the transit company directors should be drafted to personally pull one of the overloaded cars.

Many of the streetcars were “open,” meaning they were not enclosed at all and even those cars fully encapsulated with windows had open platforms at the front and rear of each car on which overflow passengers had to stand. A Cincinnati Post cartoonist advised commuters to bring their own pot-bellied stoves along for the ride.

The “modern” trolley cars introduced in the 1920s must have seemed like celestial chariots to Cincinnati’s long-suffering strap-hangers.

Talk about optimism! In 1905, the Cincinnati Post ran a contest looking for ideas on how Cincinnati could increase its population to 600,000 in time for the 1910 census, only five years hence.

Although Cincinnati was still a growing city – no census marked a decrease in our city’s population until 1960 – any notion that the population might top half a million, much less 600,000 was beyond ambitious. It was flat-out crazy. Still, the progressive Cincinnati Post [16 November 1905] persisted, announcing monetary prizes for the best ideas on how to achieve a population explosion in a few short years.

“If someone should start a 600,000 club in Cincinnati, it would become the biggest organization in the world. This is evident in the fact that every one in Cincinnati, and nearly every one in Southern Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia, would join it. Not only are the people of Cincinnati interested for the greater city, but those outside the city also.”

In the event that folks needed a little incentive beyond civic pride, the Post offered monetary rewards for the best ideas on how to increase the city’s population to 600,000 by 1910. First prize was $50, second prize was $25 and five third prizes of $5 rounded out the awards. From November 1905 into mid-January 1906, the Post published ideas as they arrived and interviewed city dignitaries about the ingenuity of the contest.

Among the celebrities interviewed about the initiative was Joseph B. Foraker, former governor of Ohio and current U.S. Senator from Ohio. He told the Post [15 November 1905]:

“Keep building skyscrapers. One can scarcely realize the great change that has come to the city. Why, from my window they are jumping up until the city is looking like an oil field. They are filled, too, just as rapidly as they are built. Make room for the people, and they will come along.”

Compared to some of the other ideas submitted to the Post, Senator Foraker’s suggestion was rather tame.

J. Louis Bunn, a house painter, suggested rerouting the Ohio River from Coney Island to Sedamsville southward into Kentucky, so that Covington, Newport, Bellevue and Dayton would be transplanted to Ohio and therefore become part of Cincinnati.

Frank Boies, a shoe-cutter, was convinced that closing all saloons on Sunday would do the trick.

Harry Dilg, an express delivery driver, lobbied for more championship prize fights being hosted by Cincinnati.

A contestant who signed his entry “Stranger” made a list of obstacles to Cincinnati’s growth. Would Cincinnati ever achieve 600,000 population? According to “Stranger”:

“Not as long as the Traction Company is not compelled to give the people better service. Not as long as the sweeping of any old rubbish, especially paper, off the sidewalk and into the street is allowed. Not as long as property-owners or their agents are indifferent to the appearance of property that has become vacant. Not as long as corporations are not compelled to think of others as well as themselves. The worst case of this kind will be found in the so-called ‘waiting room’ at the foot of Art Hill, sometimes called the Lock-st. Incline. W. Kesley Schoepf [president of the Traction Company] would not think of using it as a garage for his automobile, yet he expects patrons to ‘wait’ in there until one of his 5-cent carriages that you are compelled to stand up in half the time comes along.”

No newspaper contest, of course, would be complete without an entry from an adorable schoolgirl. The Post [28 December 1905] prominently blazoned the ideas of 13-year-old Gladys Schultz of Linwood, who wrote her contribution in verse:

“Annex all the villages in Hamilton County;
Give all small manufactories a bounty.
Exempt from taxation all chattels;
Help the businessman fight some of his battles.
Tax real estate all it will stand –
The banker can lend a helping hand.
Fill the Mill Creek Valley above high-water mark.
Build factories thereon with space for a park.
An underground railway, with a boulevard top,
Our unsightly canal will make a beautiful spot.
A union depot for all railroads to come in,
Will bring 600,000 by 1910!”

The Post encouraged contestants to submit multiple entries and John Miller, a harness maker, complied by compiling 36 ideas into a single entry. Mr. Miller [11 December 1905] covered quite a bit of territory with his suggestions, ranging from the mundane …

“22. For Cincinnati to send a letter of thanks to President Roosevelt and Secretary Taft for the good they did in the last election.”

… to the idealistic.:

“36. Abolish capital punishment.”

Along the way, Mr. Miller lobbied for more monuments, an eight-hour work day, honest elections, free schoolbooks in the public schools, more parks along the riverfront and better service at the city hospital.

The winner of the big $50 prize was Marion L. Pernice Jr., assistant advertising manager of the Fay & Egan Company, manufacturers of woodworking machinery. His suggestion boiled down to essentially one word: Advertise! Pernice suggested that all goods manufactured in Cincinnati be labeled “From Cincinnati” and that only goods manufactured in Cincinnati be eligible for that slogan. All suburban manufacturers would lobby for annexation to Cincinnati to carry that prestigious mark.

Alas, the contest did not achieve its stated goal. Cincinnati’s population in 1905, approximately 340,000, reached only 364,000 in 1910. Evan worse, the census of 1910 marked the first time since 1830 that Cincinnati was not ranked among the largest 10 cities in the United States. It would be 1950 before Cincinnati achieved 500,000 residents and 60 years of population decline followed until an uptick in the 2020 census.

And yet, no serious discussion about re-channeling the Ohio River.

It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie. For nearly three weeks in the autumn of 1872, Cincinnati was paralyzed by a virus with no known cure.

Humans were not susceptible to this virus. It only affected horses, but the entire operation of Cincinnati life and business depended primarily on horses. When the city’s horses were incapacitated, Cincinnati screeched into paralysis.

The strange episode began one evening in October when Dan Rice’s circus rolled into town. Four of the horses showed symptoms of some sort of respiratory illness and were taken to veterinarian George W. Bowler for treatment. Dr. Bowler readily identified the affliction as the “Canadian horse disease” that was then infesting the northern tier of states but doubted it would spread beyond his stable on Ninth Street.

Alas, Dr. Bowler’s optimism was unfounded and the next few days found cases throughout the downtown area. Journalists struggled to name the disease. “Epizooty” was a common label, but newspaper reports invoked “equine influenza” or “hippo-typhoid-laryngitis” or “epiglottic catarrh” or “epizootic influenza” and even “hipporhinorrheaeirthus”! Whatever they called it, the disease would hobble a city absolutely dependent on horse power to operate at all.

Josiah “Si” Keck, presiding at the Board of Aldermen, introduced a resolution to draft squads of men for duty at the city’s firehouses. With the horses out of commission, only manpower could replace horsepower to haul the heavy steam-powered fire engines of the day. Thankfully, only a few minor fires were reported during the height of the contagion.

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer [11 November 1872], other horse-dependent companies tried different alternatives:

“The United States Express Company has prepared to follow the example of the Eastern Companies. All of their horses, twenty-two in number, being completely disabled, they will at once substitute steers, and the streets of this city will show the curious spectacle of express wagons drawn by the propelling force of a farmer’s haycart.”

Historian Alvin F. Harlow, writing in the Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio [April 1951], noted that the bovine substitutes were simply not cut out for jobs readily accomplished by horses:

“The oxen, with great, wild, pathetic eyes, slobbering, swaying slowly through the streets, were a strange spectacle to city folk, and were followed by crowds of children for a day or two, until the novelty wore off. But as agencies of traction, they were a disappointment. Not all of them were well broken to the yoke; few men in town knew how to drive them, and as they are—with the possible exception of the tortoise and the two-toed sloth—the slowest walkers in the whole zoological category, they did not accomplish much in a day, according to city standards.”

Just think of an entire city operating on the capable talents of horses, now immobilized by an unseen microbe. Garbage piled up as the city’s sanitation wagons stood idle. “Garbage” back then meant kitchen and table scraps which, even in the chill of autumn, ripened malodorously in unattended cans. The situation was even worse at the city’s slaughterhouses. Even though the butchers had stopped working – there were no wagons available to deliver the slaughtered pork and beef – there were likewise no wagons to dispose of the offal and trimmings. The stench was indescribable.

Cincinnati’s streetcars were horsedrawn in 1872. It would be a decade before electrical trolleys debuted. The entire commuter system of the city shut down and the Cincinnati workforce, from C-suite executives to the lowliest laborers, had to hoof it. Harlow describes an exhausting scene:

“Towards dusk each evening the great trek homeward began, and from then until 9 P.M. the streets were thronged with business men, clerks, bookkeepers, warehouse and factory workers, trudging wearily. To reach their work again at 7 or 7:30 next morning, when most people’s day began, soon proved too much for some of them, and they took to sleeping in their places of business; which in turn became less and less necessary, as those businesses were compelled to shut down for lack of transportation.”

Even funerals were affected. Teams of undertakers pulled hearses to the depot of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton railroad, whose tracks ran along the front of Spring Grove Cemetery. Mourners followed along on foot until the hearse was loaded on the train, then rode out for the burial. Other cemeteries put interments on hold for the duration.

The city faced the serious prospect of starvation. Food arrived in the city by rail and by river, but there were no carts to carry it from the wharf or the depot. Fresh vegetables rotted down by the river while families went hungry just a few blocks north. Farmers from the suburbs refused to bring their crops into Cincinnati for fear that their own draft animals would succumb to the dread epizooty.

As humans attempted to fill the horse’s role, every wheelbarrow in the city was drafted into use and some sold for astronomical sums. Even so, as noted by Harlow, human power had its very fragile limits:

“If the load was very heavy, as for instance, hogsheads of tobacco, massive machinery or an iron safe of a ton weight, ropes were also attached to each side of the wagon and passed over the shoulders of two files of straining men, while three or four others, their feet striving for toeholds in earth or cobbles, pushed against the wagon’s tail until shoulder-bones threatened to wear through the flesh.”

Among the worst effects of the pandemic was the inability to dispose of dead horses. Horses died in Cincinnati at the rate of twenty or thirty a day at the height of the disease in November 1872, and there was nothing available to haul the carcasses out to the reduction plants, where they might be turned into soap fat or fertilizer. Alderman Si Keck, who owned one of these “stink factories,” found a partial solution by renting a small steam-powered truck from one of the city’s pork-packing plants but could still handle only a few of the equine corpses.

By the end of November, new cases and fatalities had diminished considerably. As December opened, the city was almost back to normal, with a new appreciation of the four-legged residents who truly powered our city.

Only one case of a human contracting the epizooty was recorded in 1872. Joseph Einstein was a well-known dealer when Cincinnati’s Fifth Street was the largest horse market in the United States. Einstein spent weeks, around the clock, nursing his stock and developed symptoms remarkably similar to those afflicting his horses. Several local doctors confirmed that he had somehow succumbed to the dread epizooty.

Just as mysteriously as it appeared, the epizooty vanished, and never visited Cincinnati to that degree ever again.

How many Cincinnatians subscribed to Popular Mechanics magazine in 1912? And how many of those subscribers recognized, in the September issue, a tiny article on Page 414 that laid out the future of the Queen City? It all seemed so innocent:

“The city pedestrian who cares not for traffic regulations at street corners, but strays all over the street, crossing in the middle of the block, or attempting to save time by choosing a diagonal route across a street intersection instead of adhering to the regular crossing, is designated as a ‘jay walker’ in Kansas City. Kansas City recently adopted a new ordinance for the control of foot traffic as well as vehicles, and ‘jay walking’ is to be prevented as rigidly as ‘jay driving.’”

That squib appeared adjacent to another brief item on how the brand-new town of Speedway, Indiana allowed only motorized vehicles on its streets, banning anything pulled by horses. In combination, the two articles sounded the death knell for a way of life that had existed for millennia.

Look at the illustrations that grace the old books about Cincinnati. There is no such thing as jaywalking. The streets were owned and enjoyed by the people. Pedestrians share the road with wheeled vehicles, crossing wherever convenient, even stopping in the middle of the street to chat. Horse-drawn carriages and wagons hauled passengers and freight. Men pulling handcarts and pushing wheelbarrows dodge the throng. The only motorized vehicles were the electric street cars, and they were confined to their tracks.

During election season, Cincinnati’s streets filled with torchlit political parades. On at least one occasion, a parade filled Vine Street from Fourth Street to McMicken with chanting men waving flaming brands, lighting the clouds above with a rosy glow. When any dignitary showed up in town, they were expected to speechify from their hotel balcony and people thronged the street below, halting traffic as they cheered. People crossing the street from any direction weren’t “jay walking.” They were just “walking.” The automobile changed all that.

Horse-drawn vehicles and electric streetcars killed a fair number of people, but the motor car quickly notched more than a hundred fatalities and many more injuries every year. Local media often blamed the victims. The Cincinnati Post [8 January 1916] piled on:

“Fourth-st. is the mecca of Cincinnati’s jay walkers. Most of the jay-walking is done between Vine and Race-sts. The other day we counted 20 persons crossing the street at different points at one time – and none was using a cross-walk. Fortunately accidents are rare on this street because of the extreme care exercised by autoists.”

It appears not to have occurred to the writer that this behavior, just five years previous, would have been considered normal.

The hammer landed in 1917. Cincinnati joined the ranks of other auto-infested cities that criminalized jaywalking. The new law went into effect in May of that year, restricting automobiles to no more than 8 miles per hour in the business district and 15 miles per hour in residential districts. For the first time, pedestrians were restricted to sidewalks and crosswalks. Pedestrians – literally – fought the new law. According to the Post [23 May 1917]:

“Theodore Mitchell, 38, agent, 631 Maple-av, is the first person to be arrested on a charge of jay-walking since the new traffic ordinance went into effect. Traffic Patrolman [Edward] Schraffenberger charged Mitchell attempting to make a short cut at Fifth and Walnut streets. When reminded of his mistake, Mitchell became angry, Schraffenberger said. Mitchell, charged with disorderly conduct and violating the traffic ordinance, was cited to appear in court Thursday.”

If you’d asked the cops, however, they would unanimously aver that the chief violators were women. The Post [21 May 1917] quoted Police Lieutenant Charles Wolsefer:

“The women are awful. They just don’t pay any attention at all. Just take a look at them crossing on Race-st.”

The reporter did so, and counted 48 jaywalkers, of whom 37 were women. A few days later, another Post reporter followed another policeman on patrol who confronted 25 jaywalkers, of which only two were men.

Among the first arrested was Miss Ella Bright of 538 Howell Avenue, Clifton, a teacher at Woodward High School. Miss Bright did not care for the attitude of the city policeman who accosted her. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer [7 June 1917]:

“She declared she had been upbraided unduly by an officer because she crossed the street in a manner which was a violation of the traffic laws after alighting from a street car.”

In August of that year, Mrs. John Mongan, 4217 Glenway Avenue, Price Hill, was arrested for striking a police officer who grabbed her arm as she executed a “Dutch Cut” (diagonal jaywalking) across the intersection at Sixth & Race.

Former U.S. President William Howard Taft, then on the law faculty at Yale, was visiting his hometown that year and blithely jogged across Sixth Street near Main, only to be corralled by Officer Joseph Schindler, who gave the law professor a little legal lesson.

The Post even enlisted its “boy reporter,” 12-year-old Freddy Printz, to test the city’s ability to enforce the new jaywalking regulations. On 7 July 1917, Freddy reported his fruitless attempts to get bawled out by a police officer. Despite blatantly jaywalking at five different locations, he only earned a polite reprimand from one officer.

While the local constabulary was doing their best to enforce the new laws, the automobiles were merciless. On 21 May 1918, the Post reported on the 25th traffic fatality of the year. The victim, a 12-year-old girl, was the twelfth child killed by an automobile that year.

Curiously, although Cincinnati outlawed jaywalking, the city had omitted one very important detail that might have contributed to compliance with the new law. A letter signed only “Chicagoan” appeared in the Post on 13 June 1917. The writer suggested that, like other cities attempting to get pedestrians to cross at intersections, Cincinnati should assist pedestrians by painting white lines on the street to mark approved pedestrian crossing paths. Cincinnati’s mandatory crosswalks were unmarked!

Artists and their models have attracted uncharitable suspicion for centuries. A nude woman behind closed doors with a bohemian man? Fervid imaginations erupted in the form of novels, movies and Broadway shows to insinuate all sorts of hanky-panky.

In Cincinnati, the male gaze was no less intense, though, in typical Midwest fashion, Queen City men indulged in their fantasies vicariously, enlisting disreputable journalists such as Lafcadio Hearn to actually infiltrate a painter’s studio. Hearn’s exposé in the Cincinnati Enquirer [18 October 1874], headlined “Beauty Undraped: What A Wicked Reporter Saw In An Artist’s Studio,” was very much on-brand for our most peculiar scribe. The premise of the article involved a local artist informing Hearn that a “ravishingly beautiful female model” had been procured for a sitting by one of Hearn’s artist acquaintances. Hearn’s source was most likely his pal, artist Henry Farny.

Of course, Hearn cadged an invitation to the atelier and did his best to imitate a student artist or a wealthy patron or both. Inside, while a couple of students sketched on paper tablets, the master daubed a canvas mounted on an easel. Hearn was gobsmacked by his first glimpse of the naked nymph:

“She lay at full length upon a long sofa, unclad and unadorned save by the matchless gifts of nature, her white limbs lightly crossed, both hands clasped over her graceful little head, and her luxurious blonde hair streaming loose beneath her in a river of tawny gold.”

By the close of his brief essay, Hearn was overcome by the vapors and had retired to a convenient divan, cigar dangling from his tremulous lips.

For the artists themselves, nudity was business, just another product line like flowers or landscapes or grandiose portraits of corporate magnates. Posing was also business for the models, and good times yielded fewer models than recessions. The Cincinnati Post [27 March 1907] headlined a report “Prosperity Causes Famine In Models.” The recent boom in business, according to the newspaper, created a scarcity of models because so many other, less demanding, jobs attracted women and men who declined to sit motionless for hours underdressed in a drafty studio.

“All the artists are busy preparing for the spring exhibition, and without models they can’t paint pictures.”

In Cincinnati, only Wilson Russell, who apparently possessed a classic “dad bod,” was committed to posing full-time. Russell was recruited to portray “Burgomasters and peasants, devils and St. John the Baptist.” His repertoire serves as a reminder that nudity was rarely a necessity in the art world. Cincinnati artists churned out all sorts of subjects, from religious icons to genre scenes, from civic murals to family portraits.

Posing was hard work. The Commercial Tribune recounted the declining career of a once in-demand model who fell asleep while posing and had been ignored by artists ever since. Even a strapping young man was unprepared for the rigors of artistic modeling:

“An artist was lately searching for a youth with a finely developed physique to pose for the figure of a stalwart Roman. After many discouraging efforts, a young athlete was found. He performed feats of strength for the edification of the artist. Notwithstanding his accomplishments, after he had been posing for, perhaps, fifteen minutes he became so fatigued that he gave up in despair. He has not since been seen about the ateliers.”

Sometimes it was the artists who turned models against posing. Arline Haworth, an in-demand model, told the Cincinnati Post [13 November 1903] that women artists were the worst:

“Who wants to pose for women? They open the windows, give you a cold, scold you when you get tired and discuss your weak points most unfeelingly right before your eyes. Those girl students at the Academy won’t paint me, I guess. Not while there is a man artist left in this burg.”

Others found the chores of standing stock-still more appealing. If you look up at the sculptural frieze above the cornice of Memorial Hall, you will see multiple statues of soldiers and sailors, all of them replicating the virile form of James Rollins, known as the “best man-model” in the city. Rollins told the Post [23 February 1909] that years of posing had cured his chronic pleurisy. Rollins posed for painters and sculptors on the side. In his day job, he was a butler for one of Cincinnati’s Blue-Book families.

Cincinnati artists, in their own way, promoted a diversity of subjects. African Americans frequently posed for local painters. Martha Ward, an African American woman, was among the go-to models at the Cincinnati Art Academy for many years before her death in 1904.

Native American models also enjoyed artistic favor, especially for Henry Farny and his Fourth Street colleagues Joseph Henry Sharp and John Hauser. Farny was particularly attached to a Sioux tribesman known locally as Indian Joe, but among his people as Ogallala Fire. Farny got his friend a job as janitor at the Cincinnati Art Club on Fourth Street. The Art Club offered generous flextime and Ogallala Fire could take off for weeks at a time if a decent vaudeville gig came around.

Modeling was among the routes followed by young folks, mostly women, to careers on stage or in films. One of the ingenues discovered by the Cincinnati art crowd was Autumn Sims, who left small-town Indiana for the lures of Cincinnati’s Fourth Street, where she was proclaimed the “ideal type of American beauty.” Throughout the 1920s, in addition to gracing the downtown studios and the Art Academy classrooms, Miss Sims parlayed her good looks into a handful of film roles and prominent placement in a couple of magazine advertisem*nts for cosmetics.

Cincinnati had some scandalous models, such as Elizabeth McCombs, who graced hundreds of life-sized posters advertising Cincinnati’s Fall Festival. Miss McCombs had the eye of many Cincinnati artists, but she also acquired a taste for beer and for the better things in life. She was pursued by a German baron, who decided that money was more important than beauty and transferred his affections to a Cincinnati heiress. When the police raided an after-hours saloon on Liberty Street, Miss McCombs was hauled into court and attempted to disguise herself but everyone in the courtroom knew her on sight.

Although they continually complained about the dearth of women models, Cincinnati artists were not desperate enough to hire just any young thing who strolled through the door. Farny told the Post [1b August 1904] about one such applicant who wandered in from deep in Kentucky, drawn by the allure of romance. To quote Farny:

“She was a six-foot, slab-sided woman with a face like half-ripe blackberries, and sunburnt hair, twisted in a hard, tight knot at the back of her pear-shaped head.”

The applicant refused Farny’s offer of a position as a cleaning lady, her head full of the romance she had read about in some dime novel or unsavory magazine.

Other applicants were more warmly received, although some were considerably timid about the prospect of that romantic stuff. The Post [11 July 1907] reported the arrival of a young woman, identified by the pseudonym “Miss Peachblossom” at the “Little Bohemia” on the top floor of the Harrison Building on Fourth Street. It was summer and female models were nonexistent in Cincinnati, so when she knocked on the door of David Rosenthal, she was immediately admitted and offered an opportunity to sit the very next day. She appeared promptly on time, in the company of her mother and a maiden aunt, who sat on either side of the model while the artist painted, determined that Miss Peachblossom would be exposed to as little romance as was humanly possible.