From Sybil Bruncheon's "Hysterical Histories"...

November 16th, 1889... Thomas Edison began experimenting with early ideas for a refreshing spa-treatment for patients suffering from depression, nervousness, and kleptomania. After a few months with no positive results, he adjusted his equipment and findings and invented the first electric chair. Ironically, it was a sort of cure for depression, nervousness, and certainly kleptomania.

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Sybil Bruncheon's "True Crime Confidential!"... Cruel & Inedible Punishment...

It has just been revealed through recently discovered files that America's justice system may have been involved in brutal, even barbaric experimentation in its prisons. Death penalty controversies have been a hot topic ever since the first implementation of the electric chair back in 1890. The arguments both for and against hanging, the gas chamber, the electric chair, and the firing squad have gone on and on... and people have argued as to why the method of execution should be humane at all. After all, weren't the victims of murder killed horribly, perhaps after an extended time of fear and torture. Why should a murderer be treated with any respect or consideration at all?

But now, it was revealed that the more blood-thirsty of the legal authorities and death penalty proponents actually proposed another more terrifying method... the use of Spam and Jello. Instead of a "final request meal" of the prisoner's choice being given to the condemned, they would be force-fed a hideous recipe from the Ladies' Luncheon chapter of the Pillsbury Happy Homemakers Cook Book, or a Perky Picnic Party Treat from Betty Crocker. Additional ingredients in various recipes included, carrot shavings, celery bits, mini-marshmallows, assorted seeds and nuts, slivers of cabbage slaw, and bits of cold cuts, olives, pineapple, cantaloupe, peppers, onions, gherkins both sweet or sour, and of various cheeses both imported and domestic. Layering with mayonnaise was an additional option... along with garnishes of ice berg lettuce.

On the day of execution, the convicted man (or woman!) would be escorted to the death chamber. He would be surrounded by witnesses and reporters seated at small café tables, perhaps with little bud-vases or votive candles. But he might be filled with terror at the first sight of the hideous dish even as it was wheeled into the death cell by the prison chef and the wait-staff. Often the prisoners would beg, bargain, or plead, shrieking in terror and praying as they were dragged over to the small enamel table on its squeaky iron wheels. Then the bent prison-issue fork would be wedged into the condemned's trembling hands and the death-napkin tucked under his gibbering chin. It might take four or five burly guards to subdue him and force him to take the first mouthful... oh, horrible! HORRIBLE!... the drooled chewing, the reluctant swallowing, the mumbled gagging, or the gagging mumbles... whatever... only to be followed again and again... and again... until finally... the struggling and the whimpering... stopped. Silence. And the death chamber looking like a sweet little restaurant, perhaps in Greenwich Village or in a charming little back-alley in Poka-Ma-Hola, Idaho.... except with a gurney, a medical examiner, and a body slumped over at table 13... with a heart-shaped and quivering, nearly finished Be-My-Valentine Egg & Spam Surprise.

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Sybil Bruncheon’s “Hysterical Histories”... January 1st, 1920...

...ah, yes!! The famous "Quintzy Qake Quintuplets" from Vaudeville!! Qiki, Qatrina, Qinnie, Quooku, and Qizzy. They always dressed up in dessert costumes for their song and dance revues and were billed as "America's Sweetest Little Qupcakes"...

They headlined for the Orpheum circuit, and toured from the time they were 5 years old... Sadly, their luck began to suddenly change after their New Year’s Eve show! At 22 years of age, Qiki collapsed onstage! She had contracted diabetes from constantly snacking on her own buttons... Qinnie ended up a bulimic, secretly gorging on frosting and then vomiting onstage that night in a stream of bright blue much to the horror of the audience…

… Over the next months, two of the others went from a petite size 2 to size 2X... Qizzy literally started looking like a dancing wedding cake, and Qatrina was later described in the press as "The Hindenburg if it was made out of Butter Cream!"...

Quooku was the only sister who seemed to have left her show business career and the family tragedies and found happiness… she moved with a perfectly nice man to Quebec, Canada. It wasn’t until she turned 50 that local police realized she was the famous “pastry poisoner” who had been murdering traveling salesmen in her charming little Quooku’s Qu-afé!!!! She was the last Canadian woman to be sentenced to death… But she died consuming her last meal the night before. She choked on a stale “prison-issue” éclair…

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Sybil Bruncheon's MORE THAN THEY SEEM STORIES... “The Gifting Season!… 1954”…

Harriet Garamonde had always loved Christmas! All of Christmas! Its traditions, decorations, music, food! The sights and sounds and smells… everything! The stories of the Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the stable, the villagers and the Angel, the Three Wise Men. She adored the Christmas tree. Lit in the night with glorious ornaments covering it, and the possibility of a heavy snow falling on Christmas Eve itself. And she was consumed by the mystery and wonder of a character like Santa Claus coming into chldren’s homes in the middle of the night as well… the excitement and almost-danger. Had she been a good girl… or bad?

So, as a grown woman, now highly successful and glamorous in New York City with her thrilling fashion career, she tried to keep all that Christmas magic alive. She had never gotten around to having children herself nor even married. But that didn’t stop her in the middle of the night from breaking into apartments in her building and sneaking as many toys and presents as she could out through the windows and down the fire escapes! She DID finally decide that her Balenciaga vicuña coat with the sable collar was totally impractical and that she should just wear an all black leotard and sweatshirt… like she did in the French underground… as an assassin.

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Sybil Bruncheon's "A Whole Month Of Thanksgiving!"...

True Crime Stories For the Holidays!… In 1919, it came to the attention of local school authorities in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, that little Stephanie Strothers had been exhibiting unusually cheerful, almost frenetic, behavior as the Holidays approached. Frequently sullen and even depressed throughout the Spring and Summer when most children are delighted, Stephanie would not eat for days on end, nor leave her room to see her playmates. But as the weather chilled, Stephanie began to... well... "animate". It started with decorating the house for Halloween, carving the pumpkins, designing and making costumes, first for her own siblings and then for several of the neighborhood children. As Thanksgiving neared and Christmas too, she took over all the preparations that her large family would plan. Sending out handwritten invitations in beautiful calligraphy to a dozen relatives, and coordinating the recipes and doing all the shopping, Stephanie at 12 years of age stunned the adults as she got everything "just right"!

It had been this way for years, but this particular Holiday season in 1919, several neighbors happened to compare notes, and it was discovered that Stephanie had been especially attentive to getting everyone their turkeys, pheasants, or geese, and in just the right sizes too. It happened that kindly old Mrs. Straycosh from East 36th Street walked in on Stephanie "hugging" a turkey in an alleyway behind the Lefkowitz Candies & Fruitarium. The little girl hadn't heard Mrs. Straycosh round the corner, nor did the elderly lady notice that the hugging had a slightly combative energy to it... at first. But when they both caught sight of each other, the strange glint in Stephanie's glaring eyes, and the growing horror in Straycosh's eyes as she tried to believe what they were seeing was too much. With a deranged yowl, Stephanie released the bird and swooped towards poor Mrs. Straycosh whose shriek of terror attracted the attention of Jamie O'Hanrahan and the Biggy Shamrocker Gang. They rushed the alley and managed to scare off Stephanie, now snarling and drooling heavily. Armed with their home-made truncheons, the boys chased her down Third Avenue and into the arms of two policemen from the 17th precinct who thought at first that the Shamrockers were trying to mug her. But NO! A crowd had formed led by the gasping Mrs. Straycosh who could barely get her tale of horror out without wailing and weeping. Someone carried the lifeless bird forward, and it was Stephanie's own continued writhing and gnashing of teeth that indicted her and convinced everyone of her guilt. The reporters gathering with their pads, pencils, and flash camera boxes immediately tagged her as "Stephie The Strangler" before her parents could even get to the precinct where the deranged mob had already gathered. Needless to say, that was the last Holiday season with any peace or comfort for the Strother family.

Shortly after Stephanie was confined in the Bayonne Institute for the Emotionally Inconvenienced, they skipped town late one night, never to be seen again. Stephanie lived to be at least in her late 80s and was kept subdued and serene through most of her life. Her doctors prescribed a steady regimen of experimental drugs made from Madagascar orchids and provided Stephanie with a lifetime supply of second-hand Raggedy Annes and sock-puppets that she could strangle to her heart's content.

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Crime Time Tales for Children"... HOWDY-DO!

The kidnapping had been planned for months. It wasn't going to be one of those failed attempts that ended in cross-country chases, false leads, haggling over ransoms, easily spotted look-outs, needless injuries or deaths, and of course apprehension, arrests, and executions, because back in that time, kidnapping was still a "capital offense". Oh yes, you could be executed for kidnapping, and if it was a child or a famous celebrity, or the "ultimate", a famous (and much beloved!) child-celebrity, you would be lucky, if caught, to even be handed over to the authorities. Because in those early years of the new fangled "television", its stars rose to international fame overnight, and the public was fierce in its loyalty and defense of their new friends that visited them in their actual home every night in the little box. Television brought everything glamorous, magical, and exciting right into your own home.... no need to go to the decaying movie theatres anymore with their enormous chandeliers, their gigantic pillars, their miles of dusty velvet draperies, and their strange murals of other times and exotic lands.... India, China, Zanzibar, Katmandu... no more sticky floors, sticky armrests, and seat cushions that leaned this way and that with the sharp little spring that poked you in the behind! Now, you could stay home and see everything and eat dinner off a little tray right there!...a dinner your Mom had made in 7 minutes......

That was why, when the news came on at 6 that terrible Tuesday night in February, that homes all across the nation erupted in fury.. Howdy Doody!... yes, HOWDY DOODY had been kidnapped from his dressing room, right in front of stage hands, technical persons, staff writers, interns, producers, co-stars, and even the studio audience. When questioned by frantic police and representatives from the Mayor's office, the only clue was that what appeared to be a nice married couple with their own little girl who had come to see the broadcast, had left before it began carrying (inexplicably!) a 1955 American Tourister suitcase; the new "Jet-Streamer Line" with the woven wicker grass-cloth sides that resisted rain and scuffing and retailed for the extravagant price of $29.95 for just the overnight size! It was a warm, honey-amber color with brown leather edging, stitching and a handle...and the two horizontal stripes woven into the fabric were a rich teal blue that matched the luxurious satin and "stain-resistant" interior with its zippered pockets.

The couple had looked ordinary enough, like any other from Levittown or Mamaroneck...or Sayville...or Ronkonkoma. But a few more observant stage hands had noticed that their little girl was odd.... they overheard her asking questions about Howdy, and Buffalo Bob...and of course, Clarabell. She even managed to engage them in a short chat.... Buffalo Bob was carrying a bottle and busy looking for a glass as he passed. He smiled at the child, patted her head which, for some reason, spun completely around. Clarabell was next but pushed by her and the adults muttering something unpleasant about an axe and kindling.... and then it was Howdy! He was accompanied only by his agent, a nice Mrs. Trefeeley, who showed him some changes in the show's script, and the fact that a giraffe and a lemur would be doing a political sketch. Howdy was pleasant, even jolly, and when he was introduced to the little girl (her name was thought to be Irene or Ilene...or was it Lulu?....whatever..) his eyes twinkled.

After all, he was only 11 and he had started to get crushes on his prettier fans.... and she was pretty indeed.... in a ....well... somewhat "society debutante" way. Her eyes had that cool, appraising look to them... the kind that go up and down you "like a searchlight"! That's what they said in the movies! Howdy had heard a lady say that about his Aunt Joan (Crawford!). But he still liked the little girl and her nice parents. They asked if they could meet him after the show for ice cream..or maybe some martinis.... Mrs. Trefeeley saw they were all getting along so nicely, that she excused herself, and went over to scold some stagehands who had pinched her bottom with their rough hands right before lunch...and she wanted to make sure they understood that meant they had to all take her out for dinner that night...to Schrafft's... not someplace cheap! When she turned back around, the married couple was gone...so was Irene/Ilene/Lulu...and Howdy!.. HOWDY!! GONE! Not in his dressing room! Not at the shoe-shine stand with Mr. Clem. Not at the snack table, or in the prop room, or in Wardrobe, or...anywhere.

People began murmuring...then calling out...and finally yelling, and even screaming while out in the studio, the waiting audience began to panic and even cry and scream themselves. ..especially the adults. Buffalo Bob was grabbed by a couple of big policemen and dragged to his dressing room. His bottle and the full glass got spilled and broken, and someone said he cried and threw up. Clarabell was found in the alleyway smoking a $2.00 cigar and talking to himself. The police didn't bother to bring him inside... they just slapped him around out there, and when he sassed them, they slapped him some more, and one of them kicked him in the ass and honked his nose. That shut him up, and he apologized to them. They made him curtsy...like a little girl!..and make donkey-sounds to make sure he got the message! But no matter what everyone was doing inside and out, no trace of Howdy was found. Finally, everyone began to put the couple with the suitcase and the strange little girl together with his disappearance....maybe they weren't from Ronkonkoma after all...

That night's broadcast was canceled while the "Special Reports" went out across the country. Two hours later a note scrawled on double-spaced lined notebook paper and in Crayola's "Eggplant Whimsy" arrived at the studio..... "We want $36,048 in ones and twos in a Donald Duck lunch box by midnight. We'll tell you where to drop it. If you don't, we'll send you Howdy's left arm ..and the hinge! Here's some proof we have him!" ... and there, tacked to the note was...oh God, no! NO!! Mrs. Treffeeley screamed and fainted. So did Buffalo Bob...and a stagehand! The detectives covered their mouths in horror... tacked to the note was a wad of...string...wadded up STRING!!!... oh God!! NO!... and that's when Clarabell, for the first time sounding concerned about his little co-star, that bright and sunny, freckle-faced kid with the big smile for everyone!..that was when Clarabell snarled to anyone listening, "This is why they still send kidnappers to the gas chamber! TO THE GAS CHAMBER!!... C'mon Sergeant! Let's go find my little buddy!" .....And out they all went...but then ...well... you remember how it all ended...

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Sybil Bruncheon's HIT-OR-MISS HISTORIES!... The HUG-ME-NOT!

            During Victorian times, as advanced as the Victorians (and indeed Queen Victoria herself!) considered themselves to be, there were still aspects of their lives that we in the 21st century would consider to be fairly primitive, and even, dare we say, “barbaric”. A case in point was the treatment of children. Above and beyond the fact that they “were to be seen and not heard”, they continued to be accidents, often unhappy ones since birth control was basically unknown, not understood, and certainly not acceptable, at least among “polite society”. Pregnancy (a word itself considered obscene and never spoken of, again, in “polite society”), was a stroke of very bad luck (but never admitted as such). Most women were expected by their families, society at large, and certainly their husbands (if they could afford it!) to be “fecund” (oh, that word!) and married couples with ten or more children were common even allowing for attrition caused by appalling infant mortality. 21st century people marvel that women at that time could even hold up under the crushing physical and emotional strains of pregnancy, child-rearing, and perpetual housekeeping. As to the lives and expectations of children at the time, they were the disposable tools and appliances of the growing Industrial Revolution and its hazards, and the playthings of a society that frequently neither valued nor protected them from dangers, often grotesque dangers. On those very rare occasions when a miscreant was finally pursued, tried, and convicted of crimes against minors, punishments might be whimsically applied or not at all.

           However, the now widely accepted concept of “Good Touches! Bad Touches!” began at that time, specifically on the night of Friday, June 17th, 1887 at approximately 8:19pm. The victim was 6 year old Moncrief Gantt and he was attending the newly opened Little Lord Fauntleroy Petting Zoo for Exotic Animal Friends. One of the janitorial-persons, a Mr. Jeremy Soamesberry, had surreptitiously lured the child away with promises of a banana-pineapple ice and some “Mrs. Marquay’s Marzipan Bisc-ettes”, a promise he did NOT make good on. While alone with the trusting and remarkably pretty little boy behind the Marsupial Maison, he suggested that Moncrief himself was one of the “animal friends” and should allow himself to be “petted”. The child was willing, very willing, according to the authorities and the court later at trial. He played the role with great aplomb, admitting that he had decided to be not only exotic, but perhaps fairly wild…. It wasn’t clear whether he was some sort of Uruguayan capybara or a huge blue-winged shoebill, or perhaps the unlikely offspring of both. At some point, Mr. Soamesberry’s “petting” had become a little too focused, and Moncrief’s fantastical creature decided that a small bite on the hand was in order… followed by a hearty yelp from his petter but more petting, followed then by a terrifying lunge and much gnashing of baby teeth and fingernail scratches from pudgy little 6 year-old hands. Indeed, once the hysterical shrieks and pleadings for rescue and forgiveness by the mangled janitor had been answered, many of little Moncrief’s baby-teeth were found embedded in Jeremy’s wrist, ankles, and forehead. Onlookers were torn between pointing and screaming…and pointing and laughing. Constables asked if they could have posed photographs with both victim and “beast” taken by the press and later autographed by all participants. Interestingly, Master Gantt was quite adept printing out his name in block letters with a fuchsia crayon, his favorite color. As the ambulance carried away the writhing Soamesberry (actually a Shetland pony cart drafted into service for the emergency) he yowled that he intended to sue Mr. and Mrs. Gantt, and Master Moncrief personally for damages, the possible amputation of his left thumb, and his missing eyebrows. The crowd at that point became enraged, and threatened to turn into a seething mob reminiscent of political catastrophes like the French Revolution or the misunderstandings surrounding the colonies about tea. He was hurried away to hospital in the pony cart with much obscenity and neighing. Sadly, the most convenient hospital was the Quadruped Infirmary where he was stitched back together by a bird veterinarian with little or no anesthetics that worked on humans.

           A week later, he and the Gantts were brought to a high court, where little Moncreif was not only exonerated, but made the London Times weekly choice for Our Gracious Queen’s Hero of Tomorrow. He received a small bronze medal of Her Majesty in profile, a certificate of congratulations and thanks “from the Empire”, and one year’s supply of Mrs. Marquay’s Marzipan Bisc-ettes… in all seven flavors… including ginger and celery!

           Mr. Soamesberry, on the other hand was publicly mocked and excoriated, especially because some of the baby-teeth were still in his forehead for the entire courtroom to see. (Physicians had decided that it was too unsafe to remove them without a proper surgeon on hand…or a carpenter.) He was found guilty by a mixed jury of gentlemen, croquet club members, a furrier, a porcelain scholar, a pastry chef, a circus person (possibly a knife thrower), and someone from Ireland… or Cincinnati. The janitor was found guilty on all charges within 47 seconds of the men entering and suddenly exiting the jury room, and sentenced to a new but supposedly humane punishment suggested by the Queen’s own Privy Council On Weights, Measures, and Corporal Penalties. He was to be confined for six months to the newly designed “Hug-Me-Not”; a full-body suit of tolerable flexibility covered with spikes that would discourage uninvited caressing by sexual deviants, “physicality-felons”, and overly-affectionate holiday visitors, specifically “bosomy aunts on Boxing Day”, and politicians’ wives during ribbon cuttings and pie contests. The unfortunate and now publicly humiliated Mr. Soamesberry was forcefully wedged into the suit in front of a throng of hundreds in Trafalgar Square while ices, candies, and small-scale but frighteningly accurate toy facsimiles of the Hug-Me-Not suit were sold to spoiled little girls of society to inflict on their porcelain dolls…often to the sounds of breakage and subsequent weeping and slaps from angered parents…or passers-by.

            Mr. Soamesberry, a fairly robust man from his labors, had apparently gained a few pounds from his brief stay in Gentleman’s Gaol from the cuisine of the Warden’s wife Edna-Marie, particularly her delicious rendition of kidney, quince and quinine pie. The gaolers had to thoroughly lubricate poor but plump Jeremy with duck fat and shoe-polish to get him finally into the Hug-Me-Not, and he was then paraded through the streets and thence to a specially constructed platform in Piccadilly to be the target of eggs (soft-boiled only, please!), spoiled items from greengrocers stalls or pretzel carts, and suggestive limericks yelled in foreign accents. His sentence of six months was interrupted when a local troop of the Battersea Boy Explorers gave chase and hurled him off a bridge into the Thames. He became an instant celebrity and a millionaire when it was discovered that the Hug-Me-Not could double as a perfectly water-proof diving suit! Of course, there was the unpleasantness of lying in thirty-five feet of filthy brown water and mud and not being found for two days…but he made a fortune from the new national craze of exotic seashell, coral, and sponge collecting… and off his Soamesberry’s Soap & Sponge Salons at “all fine ladies’ emporiums”…. The royal family became avid customers and his products were sold “by Appointment to Her Majesty”…

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