Spooky goings on. Sir William Crookes - Nineteenth Century Physicist and... Ghost Hunter?

Sir William Crookes (1832-1919) was a well-regarded chemist and physicist with numerous awards and recognitions to his credit. Perhaps more intriguingly, he was the first to bring the "scientific method" to bear on the question of psychic powers.

Crookes spent many years testing various aspects of psychic phenomena. Early in his quest to find answers in the sub-culture of psychics and mediums, a culture rife with fraud in the 19th century, Crookes was duped several times.  To fall prey to this avaricious intent significantly irked Crookes, and caused him to refine where his experiments were run.  Crookes had a laboratory in his home which he utilized for all his later experiments, testing the veracity of automatic writing, movement of heavy items with light contact or no contact, percussive sounds, alteration of the weight of objects, levitation of objects and humans, luminous appearances, appearance of hands both luminous and solid, appearance of forms and faces, and many other uncategorized oddities. 

Caricature of Sir William Crookes. Circa 1903. The caption read "ubi Crookes ibi lux", which is roughly translated as, "Where there is Crookes, there is light."

Like many big names of the Victorian era, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame, Crookes believed in the afterlife. Crookes cites a Professor Morgan when he describes his attitude toward the subject in his ‘Spiritualism viewed by the Light of Modern Science’ (1874):

"I have both seen and heard, in a manner which would make disbelief impossible, things called spiritual, which cannot be taken by a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, or mistake... The physical explanations I have seen are easy, but miserably insufficient.  The spiritual hypothesis is sufficient, but ponderously difficult."

Crookes's psychical experiments predated the founding of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in 1882.  The SPR went on to research the previously mentioned phenomena at an international level.

It is important to remember Crookes was not some common dabbler in science.  A brief list of his research would include, but is not limited to, meteorology, chemistry, economics, spectrometry, radiation, and cathode rays.  The cathode ray term lives on with us today in the truncated form of CRT (cathode ray tube) that many still use to view TV shows or surf the web.

Crookes is probably most famous for his "Crookes Tubes" which he developed during his studies of cathode rays, streams of electrons generated by electrical energy in a low pressure environment.   When these "rays" were found to have traits of particles they were termed corpuscles before receiving their final term of electrons.

Party tricks and spirits

Not all of Crookes’s tubes were for experimentation.  Many were made to entertain the well-heeled attendees of Victorian parties.   One can only imagine the anticipation of the guests as Crookes set up equipment that would make a Steampunk aficionado salivate.  Then, as the arcane machinery came to life with the loud spat of high voltage arcing, the tube would glow.  A darkened room lit by the stroboscopic effect of the spark gap oscillator and a glowing object of art the centerpiece - the perfect warm up for a séance. While it is not known if Crookes demonstrated his tube simultaneously with a séance, it is known that he did attend séances with a multitude of apparatus in tow.

Crooks performed many experiments and tested several spiritual mediums attempting to quantify spiritual power.  He designed many complicated testing mechanisms to record measurable changes in the physical world on paper.  Most of his experiments were carried out in his own laboratory under his terms mitigating the chance of deception.  During one of these "in house" experiments he generated a paper tape readout of Daniel Home (his most "remarkable" subject), changing the weight of an object suspended inside a glass case.

Another of his subjects was Miss Florence Cook who would call forth an entity who called herself Katie.  This was problematic for Crookes as mediums were notoriously finicky, with Miss Cook being no exception, insisting on darkness and seclusion behind a curtain.  However this did not deter Crookes who devised a different form of lighting (phosphorus lamp) and other adaptations to his home to accommodate her while meeting his experimental demands.

Crookes regretfully notes that he arrived in the eleventh hour of Miss Cook's career but he did spend several months working with her.  The crux of this series of tests can be boiled down to a single question: can a woman, barely 20 years old, so hoodwink a man and several hand-picked witnesses in his own home so that she appears to be in two places at once under the guise of low light conditions?  Under the scrutiny of Crookes and three or four other witnesses, Katie, Miss Cook's projection, did many things including shaking hands, exchanging embraces, holding babies, and having her photo taken.  Crookes also took great pains to measure Miss Cook’s and Katie's respective heights and builds, including face shape. Crookes's notes show them to be demonstrably different.  Miss Cook, demonized in the press of the time, was never proven a fraud by Crookes; in fact, he remained impressed by her veracity throughout his life, much to the detriment of his personal reputation.

The accordion

One of Crookes's most spectacular experiments was the testing of Daniel Home "playing" an accordion without touching it, or only lightly touching it.  The accordion was purchased that day and was brand new.  There were several witnesses including a respected fellow physicist, a police sergeant, Crookes's brother, and his chemical assistant.  The mesh cage's largest opening was less than 2 inches by 1 inch and was placed on the floor and under a table with no room for foot or hand at top or bottom.  Home, whom had been watched by Crookes since when he was picked up, sat in an easy chair with his legs athwart the cage.  With Crookes one side and another witness on the other, they each placed a foot on one of his to detect any movement.  The cage was then moved out from the table, the accordion placed inside with its keys down, and Home grasped the accordion's higher end (without the keys) between thumb and forefinger and the cage was pushed back under the table, but not so far as to hide Home's hand, his other hand resting on top of the table.  The instrument moved with no noticeable movement from Home, a few notes were tentatively played, and Home removed his hand from the cage leaving the accordion floating and undulating inside.  Home then reached back in the cage and lightly touched the instrument which obliged him by playing a cheery contemporary tune.

Many people, such as the great early 20th century magician Houdini, have dismissed Crookes and his experimental findings.  Labeled credulous, wishful, a dupe, and many other unflattering terms, they look back and poke holes in his experiments.  One detractor suggests that Crookes must have purchased a self-playing accordion (which were available at the time) or that it was operated by Home with strands of catgut, while he played melodies on a mouth organ hidden in his bushy mustache.  Crookes's notes rebut all of his critics, many who appear to have not read his writings.

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy", 

Said the Bard.  Sir William Crookes made one of the firmer efforts to discover what was between heaven and earth, taking it out of philosophy and dragging it into the sunlight of the real world.

Crookes will likely remain an enigma to all those that study his life.

By Kevin O’Neill

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November 22, 1963. Dallas, Texas. The day that John F Kennedy was shot - Our image of the week

On the fiftieth anniversary of the day that John F Kennedy was shot, it seemed fitting that our image of the week looks at that event.

John F Kennedy was possibly the most charismatic President of the 20th century. His oratory skills can still provoke shivers down our spines today. His sense of style is timeless. But, he came to be known for the most tragic of reasons.

Having been inaugurated as President at the tender age of 43, he would leave us on November 22, 1963 after being shot in Dallas, Texas.

The first image below shows JFK with his wife Jacqueline Kennedy before the motorcade that they were traveling in that day left.

The second image shows JFK smiling at the crowds. Soon after, he was fatally shot.

Our final image shows the outcome of that day. The funeral of JFK on November 25, 1963.

To find out more about John F Kennedy, listen to our introductory podcast on him. Click here.

George Levrier-Jones

Jean Laffite - Enigma, Legend. American hero?

In this article, Cindy Vallar tells the tale of the legendary early 19th century pirate, Jean Laffite, a man who played a major role in fighting for America against Britain.

Jean Laffite first appeared in New Orleans in 1803, but where was he born?

Marseilles, Bordeaux, St. Domingue? No one knows, because he told different stories to different people. He was the son of aristocrats guillotined during the French Revolution. He fled the slave revolts on the island of Haiti. Yet his instinctive familiarity with the marshes and bayous from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico and his ability to converse in French, Spanish, English, or Italian suggest that he grew up in the region where he plied his trade.

A depiction of Jean Laffite

In 1803 New Orleans became part of the United States, but it was settled by the French, sold to the Spanish, and then returned to the French before Napoleon sold the territory to Thomas Jefferson. In spite of these changes, the city retained its French customs and language. Americans, including the new governor – William C. C. Claiborne – were not welcomed, partly because they considered the citizens of New Orleans to be lazy and lawless. They were aghast at the Creoles’ toleration of smuggling, which hindered merchant trade. Things came to a head between Claiborne and Laffite in 1813 when the governor issued a $500 reward for the privateer’s arrest. Within a week of the posting of those notices, new wanted posters appeared, offering $1,000 to anyone who delivered Governor Claiborne to Barataria. They were signed, Jean Laffite.

Barataria lies on the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 miles south of New Orleans. It was home to buccaneers and fishermen, but Jean Laffite organized them into a company of privateers and smugglers. He built a house, cottages, warehouses, barracoons (stockades that held slaves awaiting auction), a cafe, gambling den, and brothel. His men numbered one thousand, came from many countries, and included navigators, gunners, carpenters, cooks, sail makers, and riggers. He devised laws to protect the men and their women from lawless rampages. Retribution was swift: cast adrift for molesting a woman, hanged for murdering a Baratarian. He prized the American Constitution, believing in its freedoms. He prohibited his men from attacking American ships, naming death the penalty for violation of this rule. His ships sailed under letters of marque from Cartagena, a republic of Colombia fighting for its independence from Spain. (A letter of marque allowed privateers to legally plunder ships of the country at war with the country who issued the letter of marque. Pirates attacked any ship without this legal document.) They plundered cargoes of Spanish and English ships for slaves, silks, spices, jewels, furniture, household goods, art, food, and medicines.

Laffite and war with Britain

Two years after the United States declared war on Britain in 1812, a boat was lowered from HMS Sophia and sailed into Barataria under a white flag. Aboard were two British officers, Captain Lockyer and Captain McWilliams. They sought Laffite’s help in infiltrating the bayous and capturing New Orleans. They offered him land, gold, and a commission in the Royal Navy. Laffite told them he would give them his answer in two weeks, but once the officers returned to their ship, he forwarded the letters to Governor Claiborne. The governor believed in the authenticity of the letters and sought to postpone a planned naval assault on the smuggling enclave, but the majority of his council voted to carry out the attack as planned. While Jean waited for the governor’s response, more ships appeared off Barataria. Since they flew the American flag, the Bartarians greeted them with enthusiasm, but the Americans destroyed Laffite’s fleet and stronghold, then captured fifty of the smugglers, including Dominique Youx.

In spite of this, Laffite sought out Andrew Jackson, the Tennessee soldier who came to protect New Orleans. Although initially against any offer from the “hellish banditti,” Jackson reassessed his decision after Laffite offered him two things he desperately needed: 7,500 flints with powder and 1,000 fighting men. Although the Battle of New Orleans was fought after the treaty to end the war was signed (but not ratified), there was little doubt the British would have captured New Orleans had Laffite and his men not fought under Jackson. The two batteries manned by Baratarians cut large swathes in the enemy rank. British casualties were enormous, but Jackson lost only thirteen men. President Madison pardoned Laffite and his men for their bravery.

For the next two years, Laffite tried through legal means to regain his property and ships confiscated when the Americans attacked Barataria, but he was forced to purchase them at the auction block. New Orleanians became less accepting of smugglers plying their trade. They wondered why a hero would violate the law. Jean felt betrayed and, in 1817, he sailed from New Orleans and established a new colony on Galveston Island. The colony prospered, but Laffite failed to prevent the influx of fugitives who defied his laws. In 1821 the American Navy delivered an ultimatum: leave or be blown to bits. Under cover of darkness, Laffite slipped away after setting fire to his stronghold.

Therein lies the final mystery of Jean Laffite. What happened to him? Did he die of fever in the Yucatan? Was he killed fighting pirates while at sea? Did he retire and raise a family, then die a quiet death in Illinois? No one knows. In death Jean Laffite continued to be what he’d been all his life – a legendary enigma.

By Cindy Vallar

This article is provided by Cindy from Pirates and Privateers. Click here to see more great pirate-related articles from Cindy.

Now, why not take a look at a former image of the week from New Orleans? Click here.

John F Kennedy’s Central Intelligence Agency – Trouble in Cuba and Vietnam

This is the third in a series of articles that explores the iconic CIA and its use as a tactical weapon by the US presidents of the Cold War (1947-1991). The Central Intelligence Agency – In the Beginning and The Central Intelligence Agency – Eisenhower and Asia’s Back Door are the preceding posts. 

JFK delivering a speech

A very tired John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was sworn into office on a clear, windy, brutally cold January 20, 1961.(1) It wasn’t an easy day. Eight inches of snow had fallen the night before, causing a monumental traffic jam. The streets were littered with abandoned vehicles.  Former President Herbert Hoover missed the entire inauguration event because Washington National Airport was closed due to the weather.  An inauguration is an important national symbol that characterizes the Republic and the all-night effort to clear Pennsylvania Avenue greeted the sun with space to accommodate the large crowd that would gather to witness the duly elected president assume the helm of the ship-of-state.  

The snowfall of the previous night and the windy, frigid temperatures of inauguration day are also apt codes for the sea change that had already gathered momentum around the relationship between the new president and his intelligence agency, the CIA.  The CIA, as authorized by The National Security Act of 1947, was still fairly young, but Allen Dulles, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) was an old hand and seemingly enjoyed the game.  By 1961, the CIA, in its short life, had tripped the light fantastic around the globe; Col. Lansdale was merrily fighting rebels in The Philippines following which he ported his obsession with asymmetric guerilla warfare to Vietnam where he spent two-years as a houseguest and confidant of President Diem. Other CIA operatives overthrew governments in Iran and Guatemala, and raised general hell with Cuba and Chile. 

During the latter Truman and the Eisenhower administrations there was a trend to combine the Cold War objective of fighting the creep of Communism with business interests. Iran, for example, nationalized British oil interests and Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh refused to budge in spite of punishing sanctions. According to the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, “Eisenhower worried about Mossadegh's willingness to cooperate with Iranian Communists; he also feared that Mossadegh would eventually undermine the power of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a staunch anti-Communist partner. In August 1953, the CIA helped overthrow Mossadegh's government and restored the Shah's power. In the aftermath of this covert action, new arrangements gave U.S. corporations an equal share with the British in the Iranian oil industry.”(2)

In Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman initiated land reforms that seriously impacted the holdings of the anti-Communist, New Orleans-based United Fruit Company who controlled over forty percent of Guatemala’s arable land.  The Truman administration came to the support of American business interests by arming the anti-Arbenz rebels.  Under Eisenhower, the CIA finished the job by overthrowing the Arbenz regime and installing Carlos Castillo Armas.  Codenamed PBSUCCESS, the coup d'état was the first-ever clandestine military action in Latin America but it was certainly not the last.(3)

Kennedy and the CIA

After fifty years the controversy surrounding Kennedy and the CIA obscures the landscape like the white-out conditions in a blizzard.   At one end of the opinion spectrum, Marquette University’s John McAdams’ The Kennedy Assassination site concludes that Kennedy and the CIA had some rough spots but got through them. (4) At the other end of the spectrum is Dr. Jerome R. Corsi, who maintains that Kennedy and the CIA locked horns and never retreated. (5) Excellent research and the documented citations for both perspectives leave the reader with many questions.  One corner of this argument does not appear to be disputed; Kennedy consistently refused to use the U.S. military to support private sector interests.  In this matter, President Kennedy was a traditionalist. The military, in his opinion, was to be used only in defense of national security interests.  If we can escape the white-out conditions of the never-ending controversy, the political landscape, once again, becomes hard and navigable.  

As Kennedy came to office, covert CIA actions initiated by the Eisenhower administration were in play in both hemispheres.  Two noteworthy examples are the storm clouds that were gathering around the Diem brothers in South Vietnam and the vexing problem of Fidel Castro in Cuba.  For discussion purposes I have separated these two significant events, but during the early days of the Kennedy administration they were unfolding concurrently linked through the CIA node.

President Kennedy and DCI Allen Dulles

South Vietnam

South Vietnam was a U.S. government construct, a nation-building exercise illuminated by the Pentagon Papers.

“The United States moved quickly to prevent the unification and to establish South Vietnam as an American sphere. It set up in Saigon as head of the government a former Vietnamese official named Ngo Dinh Diem, who had recently been living in New Jersey, and encouraged him not to hold the scheduled elections for unification. A memo in early 1954 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that intelligence estimates showed "a settlement based on free elections would be attended by almost certain loss of the Associated States [Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam-the three parts of Indochina created by the Geneva Conference] to Communist control." Diem again and again blocked the elections requested by the Vietminh, and with American money and arms his government became more and more firmly established. As the Pentagon Papers put it: "South Viet Nam was essentially the creation of the United States."(6)

By 1961, Southeast Asia was rapidly becoming a tinder box.  During a discussion of an Edward Lansdale report on Vietnam with Walt Whitman Rostow, the National Security advisor, Kennedy lamented, “'This is the worst one we've got. You know, Eisenhower never mentioned it. He talked at length about Laos, but never uttered the word Vietnam.”  Lansdale’s report brought the deterioration of South Vietnam’s political stability into focus for Kennedy as he remarked to Rostow that the “Lansdale's narrative was 'an extremely vivid and well-written account of a place that was going to hell in a hack.'…” (7)

Diem and his brother persisted in implementing domestic policies based on impressing the Catholic religion and requiring personal loyalties that accelerated the destabilization of the country.  The prevailing religion in Vietnam was Buddhism at the time and the Diems were persecuting Buddhists terribly.  Making matters worse were two notable supporters of the Diem’s, neither of whom had a clue about the national culture of Vietnam.  Senate Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield, a Montana Democrat, lectured in Far Eastern and Latin American history in his previous life. Mansfield was also a practicing Catholic.  While Mansfield openly admitted he knew nothing about Vietnam, he very much liked Diem and he was generally considered to be Congress’ resident Vietnam expert.  The second big player who knew nothing about Vietnam was Col. Edward Lansdale, a CIA asset who befriended and used the Diems but was only committed to his concept of counterinsurgency warfare.  The Pentagon Papers revealed that, based on Lansdale’s advice, Kennedy approved secret operations to "dispatch of agents to North Vietnam" to engage in "sabotage and light harassment”.

Growing involvement

The Diem brothers’ refusal to cease and desist acting on their paranoia, resulted in thousands of Buddhists and dissenters being imprisoned, tortured, and murdered.  The Geneva Accords permitted the U.S. to have 685 military advisers in South Vietnam. Eisenhower sent several thousand and, under Kennedy, the figure rose to sixteen thousand with some of them taking part in combat operations. Diem was losing. Most of the South Vietnam countryside was now controlled by local villagers organized by the NLF.(See Footnote 6)  It became clear that a new government was necessary if the U.S. was to be effective in keeping Vietnam out of Communist hands.  Kennedy authorized the overthrow with the provision that the Diem brothers would be extracted to live in exile. 

Henry Cabot Lodge, Ambassador to South Vietnam, received a cable (Cable 243) outlining the issues and actions that were the next steps in changing regimes or bringing the Diem regime into line with American interests, following the midnight raids on the Buddhist Pagodas on August 21, 1963.(8)  The Diem brothers would not or could not change direction and South Vietnam’s Diem government was overthrown in a military coup d'état according to play book.  What did not go ‘according to plan’ was the murder of the Diem brothers whose desperate calls for rescue went unheeded by the U.S. government that had put them in power.  The brutal assassinations of the Diems on November 2, 1963 haunted Kennedy.  By November 22, 1963, less than three weeks later, Kennedy himself would die from an assassin’s bullet(s).

“Kennedy learned of the deaths on the following morning when National Security Council staffer Michael Forrestal rushed into the cabinet room with a telegram reporting the Ngô brothers' alleged suicides. According to General Maxwell Taylor, "Kennedy leaped to his feet and rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face which I had never seen before." Kennedy had planned that Ngô Đình Diệm would be safely exiled and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. recalled that the U.S. president was "somber and shaken". Kennedy later penned a memo, lamenting that the assassination was "particularly abhorrent" and blaming himself for approving Cable 243, which had authorised Lodge to explore coup options in the wake of Nhu's attacks on the Buddhist pagodas.  Forrestal said that "It shook him personally ... bothered him as a moral and religious matter. It shook his confidence, I think, in the kind of advice he was getting about South Vietnam."   When Kennedy was consoled by a friend who told him he need not feel sorry for the Ngô brothers on the grounds of despotism, Kennedy replied "No. They were in a difficult position. They did the best they could for their country." 

Cuba

While the South Vietnam pot was coming to a boil in the Eastern Hemisphere, the Cuban kettle had boiled dry with the Bay of Pigs and was heating up a second time with Operation Mongoose in the Western Hemisphere.  Without getting into the ‘why’ of it, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy left the door open to depose Cuba’s new dictator Fidel Castro during the fourth presidential debate.(9)  The New York Times the next day ran the story as the lead item on the front page with the headline: "Kennedy Asks Aid for Cuban Rebels to Defeat Castro, Urges Support of Exiles and Fighters for Freedom." James Reston wrote in the Times that "Senator Kennedy (has) made what is probably his worst blunder of the campaign.”(10)  After Kennedy was inaugurated, DCI Allen Dulles came calling to cash the Bay of Pigs check and Kennedy approved the invasion as had been planned under the Eisenhower administration except that he refused to commit the U.S. military support. 

George Washington University’s National Security Archives Bay of Pigs Chronology provides a wonderfully detailed account of the invasion and reads like a spy thriller.  Prior to the invasion factories and cane fields were fire bombed using white phosphorus and other incendiaries, E. Howard Hunt and others made covert trips into Cuba to check the lay of the land, small aircraft overflew Cuba taking pictures and reporting back to the CIA (at least one was shot down by Castro’s forces), communication stations on remote islands were constructed in preparation for command and control of the prospective invasion, and exiled Cubans were trained.  The exiles wanted to return home to the country they remembered and American business interests wanted the island playground back in their domain.

The pressure was on to execute the invasion and, in April, about three months after Kennedy’s inauguration the green light was given. “On April 15, 1961, C.I.A. pilots knocked out part of Castro's air force, and were set to finish the job. At the last minute, on April 16, President Kennedy called off the air strikes, but the message did not reach the 1,511 commandos headed for the Bay of Pigs. Three days of fighting destroyed the invading force. A brigade commander sent his final messages: ''We are out of ammo and fighting on the beach. Please send help,'' and: ''In water. Out of ammo. Enemy closing in. Help must arrive in next hour.''(11) The help never came and 1500 Cuban exiles fighters did not come back.

To his credit, President Kennedy assumed full public responsibility for the debacle although he allowed the blame to spread through leaks and rumors.  Kennedy fired Allen Dulles and threatened to break the CIA apart.  The fiasco that was the Bay of Pigs, however, did not deter the effort to rid the Western Hemisphere of Castro.  In November 1961, Operation Mongoose was born with a primary objective to identify mechanisms to get rid of the Cuban leader and the CIA was not the lead player.  Robert Kennedy and General Maxwell Taylor were the operation’s overseers.  Col. Edward Lansdale was recruited to coordinate activities between the CIA, Defense Department, and State Department. 

Operation Mongoose employed intelligence collection, sabotage operations, and identifying and recruiting leaders within Cuba who could overthrow Castro. But there were other methods used. With Lansdale’s obsession on asymmetrical warfare, a subset operation known as the Northwoods operation was developed. This considered using faked and real terrorist activities which could be blamed on Castro and used as a provocation for invasion.  It has never been decisively determined whether or not assassination plots were a component of Operation Mongoose.(12)  The Church Committee did, however, uncover a 1962 memo from Lansdale to Robert Kennedy claiming that "we might uncork the touchdown play independently of the institutional program we are spurring."  Operation Mongoose was ‘officially’ ended in October 1962 with the advent of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The ‘official’ efforts to ‘get Castro’ fade from the presidential office in October 1962 and go deep underground.  The next blip on the ‘get Castro’ radar appears in New Orleans in the rabid anti-Communist, anti-Castro corporate culture at the United Fruit Company upon whose trustee board the fired DCI Allen Dulles sat.  The United Fruit Company story must be told at another time, however.

The CIA and Kennedy in perspective

President Kennedy’s fractured relationship with the CIA meant, for his term in office, a reduced CIA influence on foreign policy and affairs.  Kennedy, however, did recognize the usefulness of covert operators and plausible deniability’s lack of presidential fingerprints.  Publicly Kennedy was shamed twice by CIA failures and fired the powerful Allen Dulles.  Did Kennedy really forget and forgive as some analysts portray or would his ego have driven him to keep his promise to break up the CIA?  Certainly, Kennedy attempted to dilute the CIA influence during Operation Mongoose.  Kennedy’s assassination ended all of the speculation of the CIA’s relative political standing as the status quo quickly returned under the Johnson administration.

The Kennedy administration lasted just 1036 stormy days. His last day, like his first, was preceded by a storm in Dallas, Texas.  As on Kennedy’s inauguration day, the storm cleared and Kennedy elected to have his convertible open to the people; the better to relate to the people.  That, of course, worked well for the assassin(s).  I find it interesting where the ubiquitous Allen Dulles shows up; on the United Fruit Company Board of Trustees and on the Warren Commission investigating the death of the man who fired him.  The Diem brothers may have been assassinated but Fidel Castro, the object of so much time and effort, outlived them all.

By Barbara Johnson

Barbara is the owner of www.coldwarwarrior.com, a site about the men and women from all the cold wars who worked so hard for something they believed in and played so hard they forgot the pain.

This article has been published as we approach the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F Kennedy. We shall be posting about JFK on Twitter and Facebook this week.

To find out more about John F Kennedy’s life, listen to our podcast on him. Click here.

References

1.       NOAA’s National Weather Service Forecast Office; Presidential Inaugural Weather; http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/Historic_Events/Inauguration/Inauguration.html

2.       University of Virginia; Miller Center; American President: Eisenhower Foreign Policy A Reference Resource; http://millercenter.org/president/eisenhower/essays/biography/5

3.       The Cold War Museum; Guatemala 1954; Article 1 of 2; http://www.coldwar.org/articles/50s/guatemala.asp

4.       Marquette University; Craig Frizzell and Magen Knuth; Mortal Enemies? Did President Kennedy Plan on Splintering the CIA?; http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/jfk_cia.htm

5.       Dr. Jerome R. Corsi; Who Really Killed Kennedy?: 50 Years Later: Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination; http://www.amazon.com/Really-Killed-Kennedy-Assassination-ebook/dp/B00EMFH0M0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379766666&sr=8-1&keywords=who+killed+president+kennedy+corsi 

6.       A People's History Of The United States; Howard Zinn; Chapter 18: The Impossible Victory: Vietnam; http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnimvivi18.html

7.       George Washington University National Security Archives; The Wall; Episode 9; INTERVIEW WITH WALT ROSTOW; http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-9/rostow1.html

8.       George Washington University National Security Archives; Cable 243; http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/vn02.pdf

9.       Commission on Presidential Debates; October 21, 1960 Debate Transcript; The Fourth Kennedy-Nixon Presidential Debate; October 21, 1960; http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=october-21-1960-debate-transcript

10.   George Washington University National Security Archives; Chapter 3; Into Politics With Kennedy and Johnson; http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/cia/Chapter%203%20--%20Into%20Politics%20With%20Kennedy%20and%20Johnson.htm   

11.   New York Times; TIM WEINER; February 22, 1998; C.I.A. Bares Its Bungling in Report on Bay of Pigs Invasion; http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/22/world/cia-bares-its-bungling-in-report-on-bay-of-pigs-invasion.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

12.   George Washington University National Security Archives; July 25, 1962; Brig. Gen. Lansdale; Review of Operation Mongoose; http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/620725%20Review%20of%20Op.%20Mongoose.pdf  

Slavery in Brazil – A family scene… Our image of the week

This week’s image of the week shows family life for slaves in 19th century Brazil.

The Atlantic slave trade is part of a very dark past. Many died while being transported thousands of miles from Africa to the Americas. And those that survived faced a terrible life. Brazil was one of the principal countries to which slaves were exported – some four million arrived there. What’s more, it was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery - in 1888.

However, slaves had to live. And in the picture we see the life of a Brazilian slave family, as depicted by German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas. In the painting there is a small house with slaves going about their daily business. The daily routines of the people in the picture make the scene a lot more real and lifelike. We can but wonder what was going through their heads.

We have an article about what happened to slaves after they were liberated in the USA in issue 2 of our magazine, History is Now. Its out next week…

Click here for more information on the magazine.

George Levrier-Jones 

The downfall of the Kingmaker and Prince George’s treachery – The Wars of the Roses 1469-1471

In the next in our series on the Wars of the Roses, this article looks at the terrible Prince George and his role in the downfall of the Kingmaker, The Earl of Warwick.

It follows our introduction to the Wars of the Roses available here and our article on Edward III’s descendants and the causes of the Wars of the Roses available here. Later were the battles of the war from 1455-1464 and most recently the Kingmaker.

Prince George – the Duke of Clarence – was the worst type of man. Born the third son, he was never happy with his lot in life. Unlike his younger brother, Richard, who was loyal to the Plantagenets through thick and thin, George supported his family only when it suited him best. After years of watching his lecherous brother, King Edward IV, run England’s monarchy and nobility into the ground, George began to get rather restless.

Prince George, Duke of Clarence

Queen Elizabeth Woodville had still not given the King a son despite being pregnant every year of marriage. This made Prince George heir to his brother’s throne. But it was a shaky arrangement as Elizabeth was almost supernaturally fertile and it was only a matter of time before she bore a boy and bumped George further down the line. This the turncoat Prince could not allow. When the Earl of Warwick began sniffing around for a new ally against the King, George jumped at the chance. In a secret wedding in Calais, the Duke of Clarence married Isabelle Neville – Warwick’s eldest daughter. This went against the King’s wishes. The plan was to kill the King and put George and Isabelle on the throne. Had George been a smarter, less egotistical man he would have understood that Warwick was using him, plain and simple. But George honestly believed that he deserved to be King and Warwick was simply helping him along. And so, on July 26 1469 at the Battle of Edgecote Moor, George captured his brother and took him prisoner. It took King Edward IV eight months to escape and rally an army to counter-attack his treacherous brother and Warwick. Edward’s army defeated his enemy so thoroughly that the rebels shed their coats as they retreated. Hence the name of the battle – Losecote Field.

After Warwick’s humiliation, he and George fled to Calais, leaving Edward back in charge. The rebels planned to make an alliance with their former enemy, Margaret of Anjou – the wife of mad King Henry VI and mother to the Lancastrian heir. In order to achieve this new alliance, Warwick had to literally beg on his knees. Margaret was not convinced, but she was in a precarious position as she was living on the charity of the French court and her household was becoming a drain on the French King. The French King is also believed to have encouraged the alliance. But Margaret wanted more than promises and apologies from a kneeling man. She wanted an emblem. Warwick suggested the marriage of Margaret’s son, Prince Edward, to Warwick’s youngest daughter, Anne Neville. Margaret accepted, although some historians believe that she was only using Warwick for his army and planned to put Anne aside as soon as Prince Edward was King.

This is where Warwick made his final mistake - he backed the wrong horse.  He simply put his plans with George aside and married his youngest daughter to Henry VI’s son. His new plan was to put Henry back on the throne, wait until he died (or kill him) and rule through the new King.

Although Warwick was a brilliant soldier, he was lacking in common sense. Simple truths were lost on him; most notably the truth that if George betrayed his brother, he would surely betray the kingmaker too.

The return of Warwick

Armed with his new ally, Warwick returned to England and led an army against Edward. But he forgot one vital little piece in this jigsaw puzzle of deceit … He had trained Edward. The King was a great fighter just like him. We can, of course, never know what Warwick was expecting from his adversaries, but we do know that he severely under-estimated Edward and Richard. Edward and Richard’s Yorkists crept up slowly and silently in the night, hidden by mist and darkness. On the morning of April 14 1471, while the Lancasters were rising from slumber, the Yorkists attacked. In the confusion and fog, some of Warwick’s soldiers actually stabbed each other. When the word, “treachery” ricocheted across the battle, even more Lancastrians killed one another. And as for Warwick himself, the mighty Earl was pulled off his horse, had his armor pried open and was stabbed in the neck. Warwick was so influential that without him the Lancasters were simply lost. Those that weren’t mauled on the battlefield retreated and ran for their lives. The body of the kingmaker was hanged for four days to quell rumors of his survival and to further break the Lancastrian spirit. This battle, the Battle of Barnet, marks the downfall of the House of Lancaster.

It took three weeks for Margaret of Anjou and her son to get to England. They had been held back by winds across the channel. The news of the defeat and death of Warwick was such a blow that Margaret ordered the tired army to march to Wales in order to recruit more men. And where was George in all of this? He had gone back to his brother, begging forgiveness. Edward was said to have known that his brother would return with his tail between his legs. The three brothers then marched to Wales, hoping to intercept the Lancastrian army before they made it over the River Severn and joined the angry Welshmen on the other side.

Margaret of Anjou, her son, his new bride and all the Lancastrians they could summon, made it as far as Tewkesbury before England herself decided to end the pointless war. The River Severn was flooded; no one could get across. The army was trapped between drowning and the Yorkists. The Lancastrians were choice-less; they had to do battle in their starving and fatigued state. The Yorkists weren’t any better off; they had had to march at a run, recruiting soldiers as they passed through villages. May 4 1471 saw two exhausted armies make one more stand for the crown. Henry VI’s son, Prince Edward, was no stranger to battlefields despite being only 18, but he was no leader; he could not rally his troops nor control them. The Yorkists, being led by the Plantagenet brothers, had better command. Richard, also aged 18, had led the army at the Battle of Barnet. He was well respected, well trained and very clever. And under him the Yorkists walked away from Tewkesbury victorious. Prince Edward died in battle and his mother was taken as prisoner. Prince Edward’s new widow should have been taken hostage with Margaret but she was taken to the house of the Duke of Clarence, where she was kept as prisoner in everything but name by her sister and brother-in-law. That is, until Prince Richard snuck her away and married her.

The battle of Tewkesbury saw the end of the Lancastrian claim to the crown. Henry VI “mysteriously” died some weeks later in the tower. Was he murdered? And if so, by whom? History’s lips are sealed.

And so the Yorkists returned to a somewhat peaceful reign knowing that the Lancastrians had no heir to fight for ... Except for that distant relative called Henry Tudor who lived in France. But the Plantagenets didn’t seem too bothered about him.

Edward once again returned to his throne which he would pass on to his baby son once he was old enough. If only Edward had lived long enough for that to happen.

By M.L King, a history enthusiast and part-time blogger. You can connect with her on Facebook here.

The next article in The Wars of the Roses series is about a love story during the war - available here.

Do you want to try your hand at some history writing? If so, click here for more information and then get in touch!

References 

• www.thewarsoftheroses.com
• British History by Miles Kelly
• www.britannica.com
• www.battlefieldstrust.com

The man who lived to 126? Our image of the week is from Japan

We’re off to see an Ancient Japanese Emperor for this week’s image of the week… 

The image is of Emperor Jimmu. He was the First Emperor of Japan, and apparently reigned from 660 BC, until he died at the age of 126 in 585BC. The truth is though, that it is not clear whether Jimmu really existed as there’s a lack of real proof. Indeed, he is shrouded in legend!

This picture from Tsukioka Yoshitoshi from around 1880 is fascinating. It shows the sun beaming down on a powerful looking Jimmu, with a bird atop his stick and a man kneeling beside him.

Is there a history image that you love? Or a history image from your local area that you would like to share with us? If so, let us know! Click here to find out how to get in touch.

George Levrier-Jones

A Redcoat in the American Revolution - Benjamin Reynard, 37th Regiment of Foot

In this article, as our part of our American Revolution season, we look at the life of a British soldier during the American Revolutionary War. 

British army redcoats through the ages.

Source: Regimental Nicknames and Traditions of the British Army, London: Gale & Polden, 1916.

Army muster rolls in general provide an overview of each soldier's career, allowing each man to be traced from the time that he joined his regiment to the time he left it. Occasionally, however, a soldier enigmatically appears on the rolls without any indication of where he came from, and sometimes men disappear from the rolls with no explanation of where they went. Benjamin Reynard, a grenadier in the 37th Regiment of Foot, provides an example of both of these nuances.

Reynard served in America, but it is not clear when he joined the army or arrived on the west side of the Atlantic Ocean. He first appears on the roll of the grenadier company covering the period 25 December 1777 through 24 June 1778. Most men who joined grenadier or light infantry companies had served for at least a year in other companies of the regiment (there were occasional exceptions, particularly for men who had prior military experience). There is no annotation on this roll that he joined the company during that muster period, and no trace of him on the rolls of other companies during preceding periods. Admittedly, more detailed analysis might resolve this mystery; sometimes there are significant changes in the ways that names are spelled from one roll to another, and sometimes even the man's first name changes (for example, there's a chance that Benjamin Reynard is the 'Thomas Raynor' who appears on the prior roll of the same company), but determining this requires careful tracing of all of the names on the rolls, a long and tedious process.

Reynard continues on the rolls of the grenadier company of the 37th Regiment through August of 1783. At that time, the regiment was reorganized due to force reductions at the end of the war; the strength was reduced from ten companies to eight, and many men were discharged. Reynard appears on a set of rolls covering the period 24 June through 24 August (an unusual muster period), but is absent from the subsequent roll covering 25 August through 24 December. Again, it is possible that his name is not obvious because of spelling permutations, but the spelling is very consistent on all of the interim rolls.
Although we lack career details on Reynard that we have for most soldiers, there survives a record of a personal vignette during Reynard's American service, something we lack for most soldiers. At the beginning of June 1779 the grenadier battalion that included his company was part of an expedition that fortified posts on the Hudson River north of New York city including Stony Point on the west shore and Verplanck's Point on the east shore. They camped in wigwams made of brush, a typical practice for the British army in America. On 4 June they fired a salute in honor of the King's birthday.

At about 10 AM on 5 June, Reynard asked his sergeant for leave to go outside of the camp to gather greens, which was granted. He took a haversack with him, and after about an hour returned to camp with the haversack full of dock greens and other wild greens. At noon he fell in for a formation.

Later that day or the next day, a local inhabitant named Mary Baker claimed that some soldiers had come to her house about two miles from the camp at around 11 in the morning of 5 June. She had an inventory of things that they had plundered which included "shirts, and a quantity of wearing Apparel." She identified Reynard as one of the perpetrators, and claimed that he had also killed a pig of hers and made off with it.

Reynard was put on trial for this crime on 7 June. Mary Baker was the only witness supporting the charge. Reynard claimed that he was away from the camp with leave but had not gone far and had only gathered greens. His sergeant and another grenadier both testified in his support, corroborating his story. Both testified that they were in the same mess as Reynard, that is, they prepared their food and dined together; this explained their explicit interest in having seen the greens that Reynard gathered, and both said that Reynard had nothing else with him when he returned to camp. As an aside, typically a mess consisted of 5 men; military authors of the era recommended that sergeants and soldiers mess separately, so the testimony in this trial indicates either that this company of the 37th did not heed these recommendations or that the size and composition of messes varied while the army was on campaign.

In a striking verdict, which is perhaps yet another mystery about Reynard, the military court found him guilty of the crime. Apparently they gave greater significance to the testimony of the injured party than to Reynard and his two comrades. There is no mention in the trial proceedings of how Mary Barker singled out Reynard, but there are other accounts of soldiers being paraded so that wronged inhabitants could recognize an offender in the ranks. It is possible that the officers who sat on the court were privy to information that was not explicitly presented at the trial. It also may be that the court wanted to set an example to stave off plundering by other soldiers.

Benjamin Reynard was sentenced to receive 1000 lashes. We have no information on the extent to which this punishment was inflicted. Sometimes soldiers who were severely punished, particularly on dubious evidence, deserted, but not this one. As described above, Reynard continued to serve through to the end of the war. 

By Don N Hagist

Don is the owner of redcoat76.blogspot.com, a place for information about British soldiers who served during the American Revolution, 1775-1783. Take a look!

And our American Revolution podcast page is available by clicking here.

Women on the Frontline – The essential role of females in World War I

We hear a lot about the male heroes of the frontline in World War I, but less has been written about the women who also served during that war. Women were involved in a wide number of organizations that were essential to the war effort. And in this article, we tell the story of organizations and people from Britain who played essential roles both on and near the frontline. 

World War I heroine Edith Cavell

It emerged within the first few weeks of the outbreak of war that there was a great shortage of qualified nurses and others who could support with medical assistance in places such as field hospitals. Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurses were then sent from Britain to France but had to be over the age of 23. Many lied about their age so they could set out on an ‘adventure’ which proved to be a naïve mistake. Often, many women who ventured across the English Channel returned home as injured and broken as the men who were fighting at the Front.

When the nurses arrived in France life was far from enjoyable. After a long and grueling journey, they found old dwellings, a shortage of food, and uncomfortable surroundings.

Meanwhile, back in Britain many hospitals were set up in country estates; the most famous of these was probably the estate of the Duchess of Rutland and her daughter, socialite Lady Diana Cooper. Lady Cooper was a VAD nurse - when it suited her - if you believe reports from the time. However, this was not a unique case as many privileged and wealthy girls would volunteer for these services and many accounts have been told about how they would spend the day serving tea to the wounded and recuperating soldiers only to return home and have their own tea poured out by the parlor maid!

This was an experience that gave these privileged women a new outlook on life; it brought a whole new meaning to life as they realized that there was a freedom beyond the restrictions of an aristocratic existence. For many this sparked a turnaround in their lives and gave them a new found ambition to do something with their lives – one of the many turning points for the aristocracy during this period in time.

The same would be applied to the less privileged as they realized that they could play roles other than working in factories.

Alongside the VADs, there was another important organization called the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). Members of the FANY would go to the Front and set up soup kitchens, drive ambulances, and work in field hospitals. Like the VADs, members of the FANY had to be at least 23. There were no formal regulations that they had to follow but they would salute an officer of rank just out of respect, although this was an optional formality.

Meanwhile, VADs were only human and made mistakes like the rest of us. Many unused to household chores didn’t know how to mop a floor properly, let alone make tea; however, they did more than act as nurses. Some went beyond the call of duty by composing letters home for the injured men. Many soldiers could not read or write so this provided a valuable service on what could always be their final contact with home.

Somebody who went even further beyond the call of duty was Edith Cavell. An experienced British nurse, she travelled to Belgium and whilst tending to the wounded, she also helped Allied servicemen escape to freedom from German-occupied Belgium. She was eventually caught doing this and was court martialed for her actions. Fondly remembered as a patriotic, brave woman, she famously said ‘I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved.’ Edith Cavell never received any formal decoration for her efforts before she was executed by a firing squad.

She was just one of the many brave heroines who strived to change lives in whatever small way they could.

By Ruth Roberts

You can read another article on World War I by clicking here. It’s about the secret underground battle of tunnel warfare.

The First Transcontinental Railroad – An image you wouldn’t expect?

Our image of the week…

The final section of the First Transcontinental Railroad was built between 1863 and 1869, and allowed the whole of the continental USA to be crossed by rail. It connected San Francisco with the rest of the US rail network via the town of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Today we look at a few images of this amazing feat of construction. Firstly is a blurry image of Chinese workers constructing the railroad in the snow in the Sierra Nevada, California. In fact, Chinese workers played a major role in building many tunnels for the railroad.

After years of hard work, and with the Civil War over, the railroad was finally complete by 1869. In this bright painting, we can see Leland Stanford, one of the owners of the Central Pacific Railroad, hammering the ‘Golden Spike’ in to the ground at Promontory Summit, Utah in May 1869. This painting is from the late 19th century.

Is there a history image that you love? Or a history image from your local area that you would like to share with us? If so, let us know! Click here.

George Levrier-Jones