The tragic stories of otherwise obscure St. Louisans filled the pages of the Post-Dispatch in the late 19th century, a sideshow of freaks and curiosities that showed how brutish and uncertain life could be during the first Gilded Age.
Here are three women whose tales of woe were highlighted 125 years ago:
What drove 17-year-old, “remarkably attractive” Bridget Elliff insane, the Post-Dispatch asked in a story published on Aug. 9, 1898? Was it poverty and sickness? Unrequited love, as her mother speculated? Who knows? The press forgot about the girl with the “wavy brown hair” and “sparkling eyes” after she was sent to the Missouri State Hospital on Arsenal. She died at age 79 in 1961 and is buried at Calvary, the Roman Catholic cemetery in north St. Louis.
Emma Schaller, dubbed “a living skeleton” because of her extreme weight loss, was wooed by man named Cole, a fact she even found hard to explain. “It does seem strange, does it not, that a big, strong man like Mr. Cole should fancy a helpless, freakish wife such as I am. I often tell him that. He only laughs and says it does seem strange,” Emma told the Post-Dispatch in a story published on June 26, 1898. “I believe he loves me and that he will care well for me. If he doesn’t he can pack his pie-box and get. That’s all there is to it.” Emma died two months later, on Aug. 20, 1898, alone at a boarding house on 7th Street.
Corinne Hall Sexton’s many attempts to kill herself got her multiple headlines and the unfortunate nickname “Suicide Queen.” Poor, uneducated and widowed at an early age, Corinne tried to make a living as a laundress at the Baptist Sanatorium, but lost a hand. “That left me in a poor way to make a living,” she told the Post-Dispatch in a story published on Aug. 28, 1898. “A one-handed woman is not worth much to herself or to anyone else, so you see how I’m situated.” By the end of the year, and after a dozen suicide attempts, the Post-Dispatch reported Corinne was “rapidly improving” and “the suicide mania is practically eliminated.” It’s unclear how long Corinne lived; a record in 1900 shows she married a young German housepainter, but the trail grows cold after that.
Roland Klose 