Stormy Winds in 1905. And a Deadly Building Collapse.

            The Postcard

A National Series postcard that was published by Millar and Lang Ltd., Art Publishers of Glasgow and London. The card was printed in Great Britain.

The card was posted in Glasgow using a ½d. stamp on Tuesday the 8th. August 1905. It was sent to:

Mrs. Penrose,
137, Old Park Road,
Belfast.

The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:

"Dear L,
Will cross on Wednesday
with Ada as well.
Hoping you are all well.
This is Hem and me."

'The Mermaid'

The caption of the illustration is drawn from a traditional ballad entitled 'The Mermaid' which first appeared in the mid-18th. century. Here are the first verse and chorus:

'It was a Friday morn when we set sail
And we were not far from the land
When the captain he spied this little mermaid
With a comb and a glass in her hand

And the ocean waves do roll
And the stormy winds do blow
We jolly sailor boys skippin' up aloft
And the land-lubbers lyin' down below, below, below
And the land-lubbers lyin' below'

The ballad then goes on for another four verses.

A Building Collapse in Albany

So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?

Well, on the 8th. August 1905, fourteen employees of a department store in Albany, New York were killed when the building suddenly collapsed.

The John G. Myers Dry Goods Co. store at 39-41 North Pearl Street collapsed at the time the clerks were arriving to open the store. The roof of the 6-story building crashed down into the cellar, bearing everything with it, and entombing about 80 persons and killing 14 clerks.

The collapse was due to insecure underpinning and shoring in the cellar while extensive improvements were under way.

Just a month later, the American Architect and Building News reported:

“The investigations into the collapse of the Myers department-store at Albany conducted by the coroner and by experts appointed by the city’s mayor resulted in practically identical reports.
The contractor for the repairs, John Dyer, and his superintendent, Clark L. Daggett, have been arrested for manslaughter at the instance of the coroner and held to the grand jury under bail of five thousand dollars each. The men will probably be indicted and have to stand trial. 
The evidence is that excavation was carried too near the three piers that first collapsed, and that about one of these piers no attempt at shoring had been made, while about the others the means and efforts used were palpably insufficient to provide the needed support for the loaded floors above. 
A blunder, in its results proved to be a crime, has been committed and punishment may properly be visited upon those responsible for it.
However the real criminality in the matter is not reached and cannot be, since the public itself is the guilty party, because it has not by legal enactment forbidden the occupancy of buildings while undergoing repairs that may imperil their structural stability.
It was a blunder to cause the collapse of the Albany building, but it was a crime, for which Mayor and coroner, in their degree, were alike responsible, that there should have been three hundred, more or less, employees and customers in the building with their lives at the risk of an always possible blunder."

André Jolivet

The day also marked the birth in Paris of the French composer André Jolivet. 

Known for his devotion to French culture and musical thought, Jolivet drew on his interest in acoustics and atonality, as well as both ancient and modern musical influences, particularly on instruments used in ancient times. 

He composed in a wide variety of forms for many different types of ensembles.

Jolivet died in Paris in 1974 aged 69, leaving unfinished his opera Le Soldat Inconnu. 

He was laid to rest at Montmartre Cemetery next to the composer Henri Sauguet and near to the grave of Hector Berlioz.
   

Taken on: May 27, 2023

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Sets appears in: • Comic Cards - A Peculiarly British Affair • Disasters more » • Ships and Boats « less

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