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Pauline Cushman (born Harriet Wood; June 10, 1833, December 2, 1893) was an American actress and a spy for the Union Army during the American Civil War. She is considered one of the most successful Civil War spies. 𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 Harriet Wood, who later adopted the stage name of Pauline Cushman, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on June 10, 1833, the daughter of a Spanish merchant and a Frenchwoman (daughter of one of Napoleon Bonaparte's soldiers). Harriet and her brother William were raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Her parents moved there to establish a trading post with indigenous peoples. In 1862, she made her stage debut in Louisville, Kentucky, a Union-occupied city. Later, she would travel to New York where she would take the stage name Pauline Cushman.  Over the course of her life, Cushman was married to Jere Fryer, Charles C. Dickinson, and August Fichtner. She had three children: Charles, Ida, and an adopted daughter, Emma. 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐬𝐩𝐲 After a No

Mata Hari - a very famous “femme fatale”. Mata Hari was the stage name of Magaretha Gertrud Zelle who was born on the 7th of August 1876 at Leeuwarden in Holland.  In 1895, at the age of 18 she married a Dutch Colonial Army Captain, Rudolf MacLeod, some 20 years her senior.  The couple had two children but would divorce in 1906.  MacLeod and Magaretha spent several years in the Dutch East Indies, serving in Java and Malaysia. Here she learned erotic dancing.  She adopted the stage name of Mata Hari which translates to “Eye of the Day” in the Javanese language.   In 1905 she was performing in Paris and her biggest hit was the “Dance of Love” which she performed at music halls all over the city.   In her day she was considered one of the most beautiful and seductive women in Europe.  By 1912 her career was declining.  Her open exhibitionism was no longer in vogue.  However, she still captivated successful and high ranking men all over Europe. During World War I Holland was a neutral cou

The Pendle Witches. Perhaps the most notorious witch trial of the 17th century, the legend of the Pendle witches is one of the many dark tales of imprisonment and execution at Lancaster Castle.  Twelve people were accused of witchcraft; one died while held in custody, eleven went to trial.  One was tried and found guilty at York and the other ten were tried at Lancaster. Only one was found not guilty.  It was an unusual trial in that it was documented in an official publication, The Wonderfull Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster, by the clerk of the court, Thomas Potts. As it was well documented,  Also, just over three centuries saw witch trials held in England but fewer than 500 people where executed for this crime.  This one series of trials in the summer of 1612 therefore accounts for 2% of all witches executed. don't forget to leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

The Horrible Post mortem punishments. The Murder Act of 1751 that came into force on the 1st of July 1752, mandated post mortem punishments in addition to hanging for murderers, but they could also be awarded for other crimes, notably robbing mail coaches.   The court could choose between dissection and gibbeting for murderers and would choose the latter where they wished to make a particular example of a criminal. This desecration of the body and lack of a Christian burial were considered to be serious additional punishments at the time.   It was also widely believed that a person could not enter Heaven without a body. Dissection was the most frequent additional punishment and it was not unusual for the public to be admitted to watch the proceedings for a small fee.   Leeds Royal Infirmary raised £30 from those who came to see the body of Mary Bateman, the “Yorkshire Witch” who was hanged in 1809.   For those hanged at Newgate the dissection was typically carried out at Surgeon’s Hall

A great story about a little bit of 'humanity' during a terrible war.                                                                                      In April 1945, 2nd Lt. Peter During was a South African fighter pilot (N.7 Squadron) running missions over Italy when his Spitfire was shot down by German AA fire. He managed to crash land his plane behind enemy lines where he was immediately captured.   Whilst been escorted to a German Lufwaffe Prisoner of War (POW) camp (he was a pilot and thus his interrogation and imprisonment was the responsibility of the German airforce), he opened a conversation with his captors. He was quickly able to establish that they could already see the writing on the wall, that the war was at an end and Germany would lose it.   The Germans agreed with him that the best way for them to survive the war was to make it over to the Allied lines and surrender.   He then convinced his four German escorts that he was their ticket to survival and to be

The Yorkshire witch: A story of murder and witchcraft.  In 1809 Mary Bateman, aged 40 years, was hanged in front of thousands of people. Her body was put on public display with over 2500 people going to see it. Strips of her skin were made into leather and sold as magic charms to ward off evil spirits. Some people believe that the spirit of Mary Bateman still haunts the halls of Thackray Medical Museum, where her skeleton was on display for many years. But why was her skeleton on display there? What did she do to gain the name ‘the Yorkshire witch’? And why was she executed? Mary Bateman started her criminal life early. She was born in 1768 on a farm in North Yorkshire and became a servant girl but was sacked because she was caught stealing. In the 1780s she became a minor thief and con artist. She convinced lots of people that she had supernatural powers. She became a fortune teller in Leeds and sold potions that she said would ward off evil spirits. In the late 1700s Mary was respons

York Castle prison. At the end of the seventeenth century it was decided to build a prison inside the bailey of York Castle and work commenced on a new County Gaol which opened in 1705, having taken four years to build.   This building became known as the Debtor's prison which was described by Daniel Defoe as "the most stately and complete prison of any in the Kingdom, if not in Europe, kept as neat within side as it is noble without".   It is doubtful whether the inmates shared Defoe's enthusiasm however. A courthouse was added next door to it on one side in 1737 and the Female Prison on the other side in 1783.  All these fine buildings remain, indeed the court still functions as York Crown Court.   The two prisons closed at the end of the nineteenth century and were converted into the Castle Museum which opened in 1938 and which is nowadays a really excellent visitor attraction.  The complete Victorian condemned cell can be viewed.  Executions at York. From 1379 to

The interesting story of the Witchcraft executions. England and Wales. Writing in 20189, some 400 years later, it is hard to take some of the accusations made against, usually defenceless, poor, elderly women, seriously.  I do not therefore propose to offer any judgement about the validity or fairness of the trials or as to why certain areas of the country, particularly Essex and East Anglia had so many more of them than other areas.   People in the 16th and 17th centuries did believe in witchcraft and this belief certainly continued into the 19th century.  Many thought that Mary Bateman, the “Yorkshire Witch” would be able to save herself from the gallows at York in 1809.   The people of Leeds had not wished to report her criminal activities to the authorities in case she put a spell on them.  I visited Mary in 2007, her skeleton is still on show at the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds, but do not seem to have suffered any ill affects from her.  Witchcraft was certainly a convenient s

Georgette Thomas and her husband - the parricides guillotined. Georgette Thomas (aged 25) and her husband, Sylvain Henri Thomas, (aged 30) were guillotined in public at 7.30 a.m. on the 24th of January 1887, at the Place d’Armes in Romorantin near Blois, 100 miles south of Paris, before some 2,000 people. The couple had burned to death Georgette’s mother, Marie Lebon, on the 29th of July, 1886 on the family farm in Selles-Saint-Denis in front of their three children.   The old lady was doused in oil and then forced into the fireplace and set on fire.   They thought the mother was a witch and blamed her for poor harvests that they had been experiencing. At their trial on the 22nd of November 1886, the star witness was their eight year old daughter, Eugenie, who told the court everything that she had seen her parents do to her grandmother. Alexander and Alexis Lebon, Georgette’s brothers and accomplices received life sentences for their parts in the crime. A large number of reporters tra

remembering of the bravery of Allied troops during Operation Market Garden (the battle for Arnhem) in #ww2, fought against overwhelming odds in the German-occupied Netherlands from 17 to 27 September 1944, with the aim of creating an Allied invasion route into northern Germany. Although Operation Market Garden succeeded in capturing the Dutch cities of Eindhoven and Nijmegen along with many towns, and a few V-2 rocket launching sites, it failed in its primary objective: securing the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem. The First Airborne Division was unable to secure the bridge and was withdrawn from the north side of the Rhine after suffering 8,000 dead, missing, and captured out of a complement of 12,000 men. Five Victoria Crosses for valour were awarded during the action. The first photo shows men of HQ Troop of 1st Airlanding Brigade Reconnaissance Squadron at Wolfheze on the outskirts of Arnhem, on 18 September 1944. The man on the left is manning a PIAT. The second photo shows men o