BRIDGEPORT—Police have charged a man in the murder of local barber Deon Rodney. Mark Christian, 26, was arrested Monday night in connection with the Oct. 14 murder after a police pursuit that started with a report of domestic violence. “Rodney had been working as a barber at the Just Right Cutz barber shop at 500 Park Avenue when Christian and another man robbed a patron in the parking lot of the shop,” said police detective and spokesman Lt. Christopher Lamaine. “After the robbery, they attempted to attack the man again. When Rodney attempted to stop one of the attackers, who was armed with a handgun, the other one, Christian, shot and killed him.
Jack o’ lanterns, cider, masquerades, witches, and ghosts—many of the holiday staples that we still associate with Halloween were familiar to Connecticut residents in the early 1900s. Likewise, the tricks that sometimes accompany more polite forms of celebration irritated authorities and hapless victims around the state, then as now.
In 1905, Chief Arms of the Bristol police increased patrols on October 31 in order to protect peaceable citizens from “the persons, mostly boys, who have made life miserable for some years past.” The pranksters’ tricks included unhinging front gates, carting them off, and abandoning them some distance from the owners’ properties. They also hurtled rotten cabbages through front windows and created fire hazards by placing lit jack o’ lanterns too near houses. The chief had “no objections to boys and girls celebrating the night in a reasonable manner,” reported the The Hartford Daily Courant, “but when droves of youngsters march through the streets pelting citizens and houses with vegetables he will make somebody answer for it.”
Firefighters, too, found themselves busy each year when Halloween came around. In 1921, engine companies in Hartford extinguished six nonlethal blazes in addition to answering false alarms. On Zion Street, a group of rowdies had piled rubbish into a wagon and set a lit torch to it. Then, they had pushed the wagon with its blazing cargo downhill. By the time firefighters arrived, the runaway wagon had hit a curb and spread the fire to nearby trees.
By 1921, Hartford had retired most of its horse-drawn firefighting equipment in favor of motorized vehicles, but collisions with trolley cars still presented a danger as crews rushed through the city streets. And, the trolleys themselves were subject to Halloween hijinks. In addition to disabling individual trolleys by detaching the pole used to transfer electricity from overhead wires to the car’s motor, troublemakers pulled the “old stunt” of placing dummies on the rails, much to the distress of drivers. In Wethersfield, one line ground to a halt on Halloween when an oil barrel placed on the tracks became wedged under the trolley car’s front bumper.
Other popular pranks of the early 1900s included dashing away after ringing doorbells, tipping over ash cans and rubbish barrels, setting small bonfires, and taking common objects, such as street signs, gates, and wagons, and installing them in new, unexpected places. For instance, tricksters in Windsor managed to suspend a sleigh from a two-story building and perch another awkwardly by the roadside.
DERBY — The driver involved in a life-threatening crash on Route 8 on Saturday has been identified as a 30-year-old Wethersfield man. The man suffered life-threatening injuries after going off the roadway while traveling on Route 8 north around 11:30 a.m., police said in a report released Monday morning. The 2015 Mack truck ran off the roadway over an embankment, landing on the southbound entrance ramp below for Exit 16 on Pershing Drive, police said. The driver, who was wearing his seat belt at the time of the crash, was extricated from the truck and taken via LifeStar helicopter to Yale New Haven Hospital in New Haven for treatment, according to the accident report.
By Nancy Finlay
They called it the “White Plague.” It was one of the leading causes of death in the United States during the early years of the 20th century. Few communities were untouched by it, and fear of contagion was widespread. Although, like cancer, tuberculosis affected different parts of the human body, the most frequent and most familiar form attacked the lungs and became known as “consumption.” This form of the disease produced fever, a racking cough, and increasing fatigue as the infection spread and the body consumed itself from within.
Because the progress of the disease was often slow and it was possible to be infected without showing any overt symptoms, many initially believed that tuberculosis (TB) was not contagious. It was only in 1882 that a German doctor, Robert Koch, succeeded in identifying the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis and proving that it caused the disease. Koch developed a vaccine (which he called “tuberculin”) made from an inactive form of the bacterium.
Dr. J. H. Kent of Putnam spent four months in Koch’s laboratory in Berlin and was one of the first to bring tuberculin to the United States. After using it to treat several cases, however, he realized that it was not effective and abandoned its use. Tuberculin subsequently proved to be an effective test for tuberculosis but not the long-sought cure.
Open Air Schools and Tuberculosis – Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Without a cure, treatment focused on isolating infected people to prevent them from spreading the disease. Wealthy and middle-class sufferers sought relief in warmer or colder climates, such as Florida, the American Southwest, or Switzerland, while the poorer victims relied on a statewide system of sanatoriums. Hartford County Sanatorium in Newington, the New Haven County Sanatorium in Meriden, and the Fairfield County Sanatorium in Shelton were all established in 1910; the New London County Sanatorium in Norwich opened in 1913.
Hartford Hospital operated Wildwood Sanatorium on Cedar Mountain and the New Haven County Anti-Tuberculosis League operated Gaylord Farm Sanatorium in Wallingford. The Seaside Sanatorium in Waterford, a state-run facility for tubercular children, opened in 1934 after years of effort to find a suitable site. In addition, other treatment facilities appeared throughout the state.
Treatment at all of the facilities focused on fresh air and wholesome food. Doctors advised patients to stay outdoors as much as possible. In its 1905 annual report, Gaylord Farms stated that most of its patients slept outdoors all winter.
Other efforts to combat the disease focused on improving living conditions in the slums of Connecticut’s cities and offering “fresh air excursions” to the cities’ children. An outdoor school for children considered at special risk for tuberculosis, such as children of tubercular parents, opened in Hartford in 1909. Officials ordered the slaughter of hundreds of dairy cows that tested positive for tuberculosis in an attempt to prevent the spread of the disease through infected milk. Visiting Nurses Associations appeared in many towns and cities, in part, to help identify cases of tuberculosis and refer them for treatment.
Wildwood Sanatorium, Hartford, Conn. – Hartford Public Library and Connecticut History Illustrated
Beginning in 1907, the sale of Christmas seals supported both the efforts of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis and also local charitable organizations such as the Hartford Tuberculosis Society. But despite all efforts, tuberculosis continued to ravage the state and fear of the disease remained widespread. An article that appeared in the Hartford Courant in 1930 described “victims of tuberculosis . . . wandering the streets of Connecticut towns and cities, spreading the germs of their malady and infecting their loved ones at home.”
Tuberculosis proved immune to the earliest antibiotics, but in the 1940s, streptomycin, a mold that, like penicillin, produced antibacterial by-products, proved effective in halting the disease. Patients improved dramatically within weeks and with continued treatment became free of the bacteria within a year.
With their patients largely cured, most of the sanatoriums closed. Gaylord Farm reinvented itself as a rehabilitation center specializing first in other pulmonary diseases, then in injuries to the brain and spinal cord. Today, it remains one of the finest long-term acute care hospitals in the state.
Tuberculosis also survives. Drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis have continued to emerge despite the development of newer and stronger antibiotics. TB is still a serious threat in developing nations and to patients with compromised immune systems, and it appears to be on the rise in the general population. It remains one of the top ten causes of death worldwide. Doctors reported 52 cases in Connecticut as recently as 2016.
Nancy Finlay grew up in Manchester, Connecticut. She has a BA from Smith College and an MFA and PhD from Princeton University. From 1998 to 2015, she was Curator of Graphics at the Connecticut Historical Society.
by Andy Piascik
It was one of the most shameful episodes in the long history of Connecticut. It was a period when superstition, patriarchy, and religion-fueled repression were bedrock features of colonial life. It lasted several decades and preceded the more famous cases in Salem, Massachusetts, by almost fifty years. This was witchcraft and witch-hunting in 17th-century Connecticut.
While witchcraft had been practiced around the world for centuries, there was no formal mention of it in the colony of Connecticut until it became a crime punishable by death in 1642. Historical interpretations and general theories as to why people targeted others as witches tend to focus on the difficulty of life in the New World. Settlers from England had, by 1642, experienced a great deal of hardship that fed feelings of hostility toward the natural world, as well as to anyone within the community who did not strictly conform to harsh social and personal mores. Disease epidemics, starvation, and winters colder and longer than those experienced in England were just some of the problems settlers faced. Perhaps more important, though, were the relations with local indigenous peoples which sometimes fueled violent encounters and promoted fear and anxiety within colonial settlements.
Detail from The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, Prior to the Union with New Haven Colony May 1665…, showing the law against being a witch established in December, 1642.
For its part, patriarchal views of women as second-class citizens sometimes manifested itself in accusations of witchcraft. The majority of those executed as witches, both in Connecticut and elsewhere, were poor women, sometimes single mothers, living on the margins of society. Although men committed the overwhelming percentage of crimes (moral and otherwise), legislation pertaining to moral crimes largely directed itself at policing the behavior of women. Legislators and religious figures were, by definition, all men, and it was women who bore the brunt of social and religious intolerance. Female sexuality was especially contested terrain and it was around the expression of any degree of independence and sexual freedom by women that many of the charges of witchcraft arose.
There is some evidence that accusations of witchcraft against women were also, at least in part, founded on greed. In many cases, for example, the women accused were married but did not have male offspring, which meant they were in line to inherit their husband’s estates should they outlive them. In the event a woman died before her husband and without producing a male heir, the man’s property, upon his death, went to the community. Some of these elements factored into the case of Alse Young, purported to be the first person in colonial America executed as a witch.
Detail from Matthew Grant’s diary indicating the date Alse Young was hanged, May 26, 1647 – Connecticut State Library, State Archives, RG 000 Classified Archives, 974.62 W76gra
Very little is known about Alse Young (she is sometimes referred to as Achsah Young or Alice Young). She was born around 1600 and was a resident of Windsor, Connecticut, married a man named John Young, and gave birth to a daughter Alice. She was accused of witchcraft in 1647 and hanged in Hartford in May of that year, with her husband surviving her. Thirty years later, her daughter, Alice, stood accused of being a witch in Springfield, Massachusetts. Although Alice did not hang, the historical records are sketchy as to what punishment she actually received.
In 1646, a Connecticut servant named Mary Johnson was accused of being a witch. Her period of travail dragged on for years, during which time authorities tortured her by whipping and a local minister tormented her until she finally confessed. Under these circumstances, Johnson admitted to being a witch and, perhaps more importantly, of “uncleanness with men.” Authorities hanged her after a delay during which she gave birth to a child by a man to whom she was not married.
Detail from Cotton Mather’s book Magnalia Christi Americana, Vol. 2, describing the conviction of Mary Johnson.
Though the vast majority of those accused of witchcraft were women, two men in Connecticut also hanged as witches: John Carrington and Nathaniel Greensmith, both of whom died along with their wives. The execution of the Greensmiths came amid the Hartford Witch Panic in which authorities killed three people as witches in a span of a month in the early 1660s. Those three killings brought an end to the disgraceful episode in Connecticut history, as shortly thereafter Governor John Winthrop Jr. established more stringent evidentiary requirements for establishing guilt. After that the executions ceased. The Connecticut residents who died as witches, however, set both a legal and moral precedent that led, in part, to the more famous Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93.
Bridgeport native Andy Piascik is an award-winning author who has written for many publications and websites over the last four decades. He is also the author of two books.
The aftermath of Sunday’s torrential rains and strong winds has closed some roads on Monday morning. With winds gusting up to 65 mph - recorded in Stamford - trees, branches and lots of leaves are covering roads. With major roads like I-95 and the Merritt/Wilbur Cross parkways have no major problems, many local roads are covered with slippery wet leaves. At 6 a.m, the following roads were closed, according to the state Department of Trasportation. RIDGEFIELD - Route 33 CLOSED near Homestead Road because of a tree down in wires. WASHINGTON - Route 199 CLOSED near Davenport Road because of tree/wire in road. SHARON - Route 7 CLOSED, just south of Salisbury town line, because of tree's down in wires.
Deirdre M. Daly announced her resignation — effective as of midnight Friday — after more than four years as the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut. “It has been a great honor and privilege to serve as Connecticut’s United States Attorney,” Daly said in a prepared statement. “I am extremely proud of the tremendous accomplishments of the women and men of this office. I applaud their tireless work holding our most violent offenders accountable and standing up to those who abuse their power and influence, whether in government or on Wall Street.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions signed an order that appointed John H. Durham as the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut.
BRIDGEPORT - A former Sacred Heart University student, accused of making up rape allegations against two football players to gain sympathy from a perspective boyfriend, was denied a pretrial probation program Friday. “This kind of false report is lethal to all true victims,” Superior Court Judge Maureen Dennis stated in denying accelerated rehabilitation for 19-year-old Nikki Yovino. “Her actions altered two lives in a significant way, if not for the extraordinary efforts involved in this investigation the lives of these two young men could have been altered much more severely.” As Yovino stood beside her lawyer, Mark Sherman, grimacing, Sherman told the judge, “She is sorry it happened, she is sorry it is here.
Wo to Drunkards – Increase Mather
On October 27, 1841, the steamboat Greenfield traveled a short ways down the Connecticut River with the purpose of transporting people to the Temperance Convention in Middletown. The steamboat left Hartford’s Talcott Street dock at 7:30 in the morning and the fare was twenty-five cents.
Temperance convention broadside, 1841 – Connecticut Historical Society and Connecticut History Illustrated
The two-day convention consisted of speeches and activities, and included a procession that passed through William, Broad, Washington, and Main streets in Middletown. The procession incorporated music and marchers who ranged from children to “visiting strangers” to Wesleyan faculty and students. In addition, a local bookseller sold hymnbooks so that attendees could sing “Hurrah for Bright Water” and other temperance songs.
The temperance movement in the United States became a national crusade in the early nineteenth century with supporters of the movement objecting to alcohol’s destructive effects on individuals and communities. Supporters believed that the consumption of alcohol was responsible for personal and societal problems, including physical violence and unemployment. With influential crusaders like the Reverend Lyman Beecher, the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher, the movement took off and by 1834 some five thousand state and local temperance societies were affiliated with the American Temperance Society.
The state’s 30 neediest school districts will get this year what they got last year from the state while all other school district aid will be trimmed by 5 percent. But no school district gets zeroed out as it would have under the budget advanced by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. “We are grateful that the legislators were finally able to pass a budget that, for the most part, does not attempt to solve the state’s fiscal problems on the backs of our students and local taxpayers.” said Jim Richetelli, a former Milford mayor and chief operating officer for Milford Public Schools. The $1.986 billion Education Cost Sharing grant package approved by the Senate and the House Thursday is cut by some $31.4 million statewide in this fiscal year.
BRIDGEPORT - A 16-year-old city gangster is facing up to 40 years in prison after he pleaded guilty Thursday to killing a young mother who had been parked outside an East Main Street restaurant. “Yeah,” Sebastian “Bash” Serrano answered when asked by Superior Court Judge Robert Devlin if he was admitting to killing 26-year-old Elianna Cruz of Stamford. Several rows behind Serrano sat Cruz’s mother, Elaine Legato-Mar, tears running down her face. “Justice has not been done yet and I’m not sure it will ever be,” she said later. “They need to get rid of the gangs and guns in Bridgeport.” The 5-foot-tall Serrano stood staring down at the defense table as he pleaded guilty to murder and carrying a pistol without a permit.
