The Night Tragedy Struck

It was cold that night in February 1934, when eleven Dartmouth students, members of Theta Chi, settled down to play bridge on the lower floor of their house on North Main Street. Earlier that night, they had watched Dartmouth defeat its rival Princeton at hockey. At 12:30 am two students left their brothers to return to their dormitories. Sometime after 2:30 am the others retired to their rooms upstairs. At 6:30 am janitor Merton D. Little entered the house to fix the furnace fire, noticing a slight odor of coal gas. Presuming everyone still asleep he left and returned at 1:30 pm to clean up the lower rooms. At that time, according to the official report, he thought “the quietness of the house” was due to the students being at dinner. It was not until 4:30 pm when he returned, once again, to make the beds that he found all nine students and one dog dead in their beds.

The official cause of this mass tragedy, the greatest in Dartmouth’s history, was carbon-monoxide poisoning. According to medical examiner Dr. Ralph Miller:

The smoke pipe of the furnace had been blown off in an explosion, after which some one had apparently re-shut the furnace door without noticing the displaced pipe, and that the carbon monoxide gas accumulating from an improperly banked fire had escaped through the break instead of going up the chimney.

In the aftermath fingers were pointed, accusations of incompetence emerged and facts were doubted. An uncredited newspaper article entitled “The Dartmouth Mystery” proclaimed that coal gas could not have been the cause as “the annual casualties within the United States from this cause would run into the thousands.” Rumors included suicide pact or poisonous liquor as the cause.

In the end it was confirmed that William Simpson Fullerton, Edward Morris Wentworth Jr. , Harold Barnard Watson, Americo Secondo DeMasi, John Joseph Griffin, William Mandeville Smith, Jr., Wilmot Horton Schooley and the brothers Edward Frederick and Alfred Henry Moldenke indeed died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

To read more about the tragedy, the investigation and the aftermath ask for our Vertical File on the subject. To get a closer look at the administration’s response and actions ask to see Box 6942 of DP-11, President Hopkins’ presidential papers.

Victoria's Lent

Lent starts this week, which reminded us of an ironic little indulgence in the collections. We have a copy of John Jackson's The Sinfulness of Little Sins: A Course of Sermons Preached in Lent from 1849 that contains a sermon on "Pride and Vanity." All well and good, nothing odd there. But, our copy happened to have been owned by none other than Queen Victoria. So it is bound in full morocco leather, with the crown gold stamped on the cover. The gold continued onto the edges, expertly gilded, of course. Open it up, and the inside flyleaf and paste down are beautifully patterned silk. Little sins? It is all in the context--this was surely one of the more modest books in her library.

To prepare for the season of denial, ask for Bindings 113.

Something Wilde

Wow, what a cool discovery we made this week. For a nineteenth-century British literature class we had out a slew of materials related to Oscar Wilde. Among them was the 1882 printing of Rennell Rodd's Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf with an introduction by Wilde. It is a great example of the aesthetic movement--bound in vellum, printed on a thin vellum paper and interleaved with green paper to give the whole book the air of leaves. That alone was pretty amazing, but then we noticed a faint inscription on the front cover.

"For my mother, the poems [of] my friend"


Turns out the inscription, mostly worn away, is in Wilde's hand. We got tingles when we realized this was the copy he had given his mother. He would have been 28 years old, and his own first book of poems was selling well. His mother, Jane, had some notoriety at the time as an poet, participant in the Irish nationalist movement, and having just been convicted of libel against a woman her husband had seduced.

It doesn't appear anyone in the library had noticed the inscription because it is not in the catalog. The book came to us from Richard Mandel '26, former chair of the Friends of the Dartmouth College Library, and member of the Grolier Club. Presumably, as a bibliophile, he was aware of Wilde's hand on the book.

To see it ask, for Rare PR5220.R34 R6 1882.

Way up in the north: the land of the Sami

Little had I known that my search for an item to post on Instagram would lead to the discovery of one of my favorite books at Rauner! Contrary to the imposing vibe that the huge size of this book exudes, the pencil-drawn illustrations inside appear much more approachable, similar to something you would see doodled in the notebook of an elementary school student -- though with much greater precision and detail. After some research, I learned that these were illustrations by Johan Turi, the first Sami author to publish secular works in the Sami language. Turi drew these illustrations to include in his 1931 book titled Muittalus Samid Bira, also known as Turi's Book of Lappland to an English-speaking audience.

The Sami are the northernmost indigenous group of people in Europe, residing in parts of Norway, Finland, Sweden and Russia. Turi's depiction of the lives of the Sami people in this book provides insights into the cultural and traditional conventions of Sami society.

Reindeer are the dominant feature in all of Turi's drawings as they play a significant role in the livelihoods of the Sami people.
You will notice that, in this drawing, there are two distinct groups traveling in opposite directions, illustrating the migration patterns for two different seasons. The group above are migrating towards the north, a spring migration pattern, whereas the group below are migrating towards the south, which occurs in autumn. Evidence indicating the coexistence of different time frames in this drawing are the horns of the reindeer. The horns of the reindeer in the bottom group are full-grown, which would have been true in autumn, whereas the horns of the reindeer in spring would not have fully matured yet.


In autumn, when the reindeer are migrating southward, herds get mixed together frequently. To identify their animals, the owners install a stockade where they gather all the reindeer and begin to separate them. Each stockade has the same number of enclosures as there are owners. Then, the owners would use lassos to catch the reindeer to check to whom it belongs and put that animal in the appropriate pen.

Aside from the reindeer herding, Turi introduces other aspects of Sami life such as courting, tent-building, and an annual trip to a church in Jukkäsjarvi, Sweden.

The book we have at Rauner only has illustrations and is without text descriptions. However, Baker-Berry Library has an English-language version of Turi's Book of Lappland, which includes explanations of each drawing.

If you'd like to see our book with only the illustrations, ask at Rauner for Stefansson DL 917.L2 T82. To better understand the illustrations, check out Turi's Book of Lappland from Baker-Berry and bring it over with you.

A Dreadful Penny Dreadful

When Sir John Franklin and his crew disappeared into Arctic waters in search of a northwest passage, it set off a massive hunt that lasted years. Expeditions from the United States and Great Britain failed time after time to find any trace. In 1854, nine years after Franklin set sail, John Rae discovered evidence of the demise of Franklin and his crew and sent the news back to England. It caused a sensation.

The search had captured the popular imagination, and the public still held out hope that the ships were in safe harbor, so Rae's bad news did not sit well. But there was one industry that was fully prepared to spread the news: the publishers of "penny dreadfuls." These inexpensive little publications reveled in the sensational and rushed to print the details they could glean from more respectable sources--sources that cost more and appealed to a different social stratum.  The Dreadful Fate of Sir J. Franklin (London: Saunders, Bros, 185_) describes the "melancholy termination" of Franklin's expedition. Included was this quote from Rae's official report:

From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource--cannibalism--as a means of prolonging existence."

Just what the medium begged for. To read the sad tidings, ask for Stef G660.D72.

Dartmouth Chocolates

For Valentine's Day we offer you some Dartmouth Chocolates from Smith and Sons of White River Junction. From the cover of this 1912 promotional pocket calendar included with the chocolates, they seem to have an almost magical power. This Dartmouth Man's one-pound box has attracted a Gibson Girl for each arm. Is it him, or the chocolates they are after? To be safe, better get the chocolate!

The text inside the pocket calendar promises that you can exchange six them for a full size poster of the image, "one of the most beautiful things Mr. Clarence Underwood ever painted." We only have two...

Inside our chocolate box is a little mystery. A piece of hard candy with "Dartmouth College" and the Dartmouth D worked into it. We're not sure why it is there, but it still looks edible.

To take a look ask for Realia 140.

Basilisk in Rauner

This year's Winter Carnival theme is "Dartmouth College of Icecraft and Blizzardry." Rauner is hosting an open house this evening (Friday, February 10) from 6:00-7:00 with plenty of old books and manuscripts, and even a very Dartmouth sorting hat. It will get you in the mood for a magical weekend.

What you may not know is that there is a Basilisk in Rauner. It is not down in the cavernous depths below the building, but on the second floor in the Rare collection. It is not very threatening to staff--none of us have been eaten, yet. Generally it stays politely within the covers of Conrad Gesners's Icones animalivm qvadrvpedvm viviparorvm et oviparorvm (Tigvri: excvdebat C. Froschovervs, 1560). There are some other cool beasts lurking in the pages--all very real to Gesner.

Come in this evening to see Rauner's Basilisk, or you can ask for Rare QL41.G372 anytime.