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  • Body snatchers' incompetence actually saved them from more serious charges (Part 2 of 2)

    Body snatchers' incompetence actually saved them from more serious charges (Part 2 of 2)
    2025/12/26
    Police figured out who the body snatchers were before they even had time to think about writing a ransom note — so their sentences were much lighter than they would have been if they'd had time to add extortion to the rap. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/23-03.body-snatchers-resurrected-william-ladd-619.html)
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    12 分
  • Body snatchers plotted to steal dead mayor’s corpse (Part 1 of 2)

    Body snatchers plotted to steal dead mayor’s corpse (Part 1 of 2)
    2025/12/25
    THE NINETEENTH CENTURY was a kind of golden age of body snatching. Digging up the freshly dead to cash the corpse in at the back door of a nearby medical school was — well, not common exactly, but far from unheard-of. So when, around the middle of May 1897, Daniel Magone and Charles Montgomery asked a 20-year-old wood hauler named William Rector to help them steal a corpse out of River View Cemetery, Rector didn’t react the way you or I would. A job was a job, and Rector needed the work, and although it was technically illegal, one couldn’t really get into too much trouble for it … provided, of course, that the corpse being snatched belonged to a poor person. Body snatching as it was practiced back then was an ancillary industry to the medical profession. Medical colleges needed a constant supply of cadavers to dissect in their labs, and there were never enough available through legitimate sources to slake the demand. Well, nature abhors a vacuum, and so does a market; so, an underground industry of body-snatchers, also called “resurrection men,” developed to meet the demand for fresh corpses, by stealing them out of cemeteries in the middle of the night.... (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/23-03.body-snatchers-resurrected-william-ladd-619.html)
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    11 分
  • ‘Blue Ruin’ drove Oregon to drink—and prohibition

    ‘Blue Ruin’ drove Oregon to drink—and prohibition
    2025/12/24
    Before Oregon was even a state, its territorial government outlawed all booze. Why? It all has to do with a fellow who could probably be called the true founder of the city of Portland — and his ever-bubbling moonshine still. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1311d-blue-ruin-whiskey-sparks-oregons-first-prohibition.html)
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    12 分
  • Larry Sullivan's 'second act' career dwarfed his first (Part 2 of 2)

    Larry Sullivan's 'second act' career dwarfed his first (Part 2 of 2)
    2025/12/23
    BY THE TIME George Graham Rice met Larry Sullivan at Sullivan and Grant’s “palace” in Goldfield, he was doing a booming business in Nevada as the owner and copywriter of an advertising agency, working with the local mine owners. He provided a full-service kind of operation — not only placing ads for investors, but also sending out hundreds of fake “human interest” stories about life in the mining camps for East Coast and West Coast newspapers to run. These articles were basically dime-novel narratives of feuds and gunfights and gold strikes and virtuous-maiden-rescuings and all the other wild-West story tropes; and, of course, they prominently featured Rice’s clients in heroic roles. They were eagerly run by newspapers all over the country, and were very popular with readers. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-09.larry-sullivan-goldfield-swindles.html)
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    12 分
  • Boss shanghaier Sullivan’s mining-stock fraud career (Part 1 of 2)

    Boss shanghaier Sullivan’s mining-stock fraud career (Part 1 of 2)
    2025/12/22
    For anyone interested in the shanghaiing of sailors on the old Portland waterfront, the name “Larry Sullivan” needs no introduction. Smooth, polished, well-connected and ruthless, Larry Sullivan was essentially the Boss Tweed of the Portland waterfront from the early 1890s right up to the moment the music stopped. But in 1904, as the upcoming Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition drew near, a reforming spirit was in the Portland air. Thousands of visitors were about to come to Portland and see it for the first time, and the city’s underworld was far too much on public display for that to go well if changes were not made. Larry Sullivan *was* the Portland underworld, and he had good enough political instincts to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. Selling his stake in the Portland Club, his gambling house, to fellow underworld tycoon Nate Solomon and closing the doors on his sailors’ boardinghouse, Larry packed up and headed east, looking for fresh fields of endeavor. And, in a rip-roaring Nevada mining boomtown called Goldfield, he found what he was looking for. And it was at The Palace that Larry met one of the most colorful and rascally characters in the history of American con-artistry: George Graham Rice. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/20-09.larry-sullivan-goldfield-swindles.html)
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    11 分
  • Brides were stripped of U.S. citizenship at the altar

    Brides were stripped of U.S. citizenship at the altar
    2025/12/19
    Women who'd married German men suddenly learned they'd been legally (and very unconstitutionally) made stateless, and were forced to register as 'enemy aliens'; those who'd married Chinese men fared even worse. (Statewide; 1910s, 1920s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1312e-germans-in-oregon-enemy-aliens.html)
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    9 分
  • Oregonians had the jump on California Gold Rush

    Oregonians had the jump on California Gold Rush
    2025/12/18
    If you’d been lucky enough to live in Portland in July of 1848, you would have been able to say, literally, that your ship had come in. The ship in question was the sailing ship Honolulu. And, funny thing: she arrived in port in ballast, with her cargo holds empty. That raised some eyebrows. At the time, Oregon was not even part of the U.S.A. yet — just a vast extranational territory jointly claimed by the U.S. and Britain. There was no national government authority to issue money, nor was there any gold or silver around to make money with. Wheat was officially legal tender there; but, there wasn’t much wheat being harvested in July. All of Oregon was on a barter economy. Down in Oregon City, Provisional Governor George Abernethy was actually using specially marked pebbles, known as “Abernethy Rocks,” as fungible I.O.U.s in the Methodist mission merchantile store that he was in charge of. Presumably the captain of the Honolulu would not be interested in investing in Abernethy Rocks. So, what was he going to do in Portland with nothing to trade with? The answer wasn’t long in coming. The skipper headed straight into town almost the moment the Honolulu was at the dock. He raced from one store to another, snapping up every pick, shovel, and washpan he could get his hands on. And paying for them with gold dust. (Statewide; 1840s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/23-02.gold-rush-beaver-money.html)
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    10 分
  • Palatial riverboat caught in hurricane on open sea

    Palatial riverboat caught in hurricane on open sea
    2025/12/17
    Designed for calm inland waterways, the sidewheel steamboat Alaskan was no match for the massive late-spring gale that pounced on it off Cape Blanco one fateful night in 1889. (Cape Blanco, Curry County; 1889) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1311c-riverboat-alaskan-caught-in-offshore-hurricane.html)
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    9 分