07-27 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Mary Peck Butterworth
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTE by
Isadora Duncan.
Mary Peck Butterworth, Colonial Counterfeiter
In 1722 Mary Peck Butterworth's husband bought
her a huge, fancy house that aroused the suspicion of authorities. (She
couldn't buy the house herself because the law forbade married women owning
anything on their own. It all belonged to the husband.)
Even though the couple was investigated by the authorities
- and two of their "gang" turned state's evidence - there were
no convictions. Seems that Mrs. Butterworth, born this day in 1686, developed
a currency-counterfeiting process that used cloth that was immediately
burned instead using the usual counterfeiting tell-tale copper plates.
The cloth "plate" evidence went up in flames after each use so
the prosecution's evidence disappeared in smoke. According to the evidence
given against her by her relatives who assisted her, she used a hot iron
to press a piece of starched cotton over a bill to transfer the pattern.
Using the same method she transferred the pattern to paper from the cloth.
Then with a series of quills, she inked the note by
hand into an almost perfect note. She organized a true kitchen-cottage
industry, using her family including her brother and his wife who turned
state's evidence. She was said to be a tough task boss. She got so good
at the business that she expanded her operation into wholesaling bogus
bills at half price.
Members of the organization were arrested, but all
were acquitted. It is said she gave up counterfeiting after that.
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07-27 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 07-27-1768, Charlotte Corday - French anarchist.
She assassinated French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat for political purposes
while he was in his bath. The scene was illustrated many times. He regularly
received visitors while bathing, a common thing in those days. She was
guillotined.
Event 07-27-1777: The beautiful Jane McCrea
was murdered and scalped for her long blond hair supposedly by Indians
allied with the British General Burgoyne.
Subsequent investigation indicated she might have
been killed by a stray shot and not by Indians. The scalping horrified
everyone and helped unite the colonies against British rule.
B. 07-27-1841, Linda Richards - U.S. nurse
and educator. She received the first diploma from the first school
of nursing opened in the U.S. LR went on to establish training schools
for nurses as well as directing several hospitals.
She had worked in a mill to finance her nurses training
and her lungs were damaged from the mill work.
B. 07-27-1849, Vera Ivanovna Zasulich - Russian
revolutionary who shot the governor of St.Petersburg yet was acquitted
in a sensational trial. She was a founding member of the first Marxist
organization in Russia but broke with the revolutionaries, favoring legal
political activities over violence. [Material submitted by
WOA reader Heather Rose Jones who is related to VIZ on her father's side
and is gathering material for a biography.]
B. 07-27-1853, Lucy Maynard Salmon - Vassar
College's first history teacher. As a full professor, she was instrumental
in expanding the Vassar library. She taught history as a record of daily
life rather than reciting official governmental acts and wars.
In 1926 a Vassar College fund for research was established
in her name.
B. 07-27-1878(?), Genevieve Rose Cline - first
woman appointed a U.S. federal judge. GRC got her law degree at 44.
President Harding appointed her as an appraiser of merchandise shipped
through customs in Cleveland, Ohio.
In spite of strong objections because she was a woman,
she won confirmation in the U.S. Senate as Judge in the Customs Court and
served in that capacity 1928-1953.
B. 07-27-1930, Shirley Williams - British member
of Parliament and government official. Her mother was writer Vera Brittain
(Catlin) whose books were specifically burned by Adolph Hitler.
Hitler held mass burnings of books he didn't like
or that disagreed with his philosophy and VB's books were specifically
included.
B. 07-27-1948, Peggy Fleming - U.S. figure
skater. PF won the national icre skating championships five straight
years and won the 1968 Olympic singles title in the most spectacular performance
of a woman on ice to that date. She included leaps and maneuvers that no
woman had ever done before in competition.
She'd spent nearly 20,000 hours in years before age
10 to age 20 to realize her dream, but the victory-memory will always be
terribly bruised because her father died of a heart attack only minutes
after her victory.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
DUNCAN, ISADORA:
"No
woman has ever told the truth of her life. The autobiographies of most
famous women are a series of accounts of the outward existence, of petty
details and anecdotes which give no realization of their real life. On
the great moments of joy or agony they remain strangely silent."
-- Isadora Duncan in her biography My Life (1927).
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