2020-08-05: On Englishmen, Doors, and News From 1884 rak
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I was doing a bit of research into William H. Haigh, a wealthy
Englishman who (according to the oral history of the region)
built a the Englishman's Monument on Charleston Lake (Ontario)
in 1877.
The only potential reference to this enigmatic character that I
could find was the following snippet from the March 8, 1884
edition of the Douglas Independent (Roseburg, OR) [0]:
William H. Haigh, of Port Hope, Ontario, a passenger on the
Circassian from England, was robbed on the passage of $3,800
worth of jewelry and other valuables.
(3,800 USD in 1884 is worth $99,962 USD today)
I skimmed other parts of the paper at random and found a few
amusing snippets. First, a poem on doors on p. 1 [1]:
A baptism in hades' depth
As hot as boiling tar
Awaits the man who quits a room
And leaves the door ajar.
And he who softly shuts the door
Shall dwell among the blest,
Where the wicked cease from troubly
And the weary are at rest.
-[New York Sun.
Other exciting news (p. 4):
In London last week, 1,219 bales of Sydney wool were sold.
The wheat and bean grops in Upper Egypt are in splendid
condition, and the sugar crop is probably the largest on
record.
A Greenock, Scotland, justice of the peace sent a man named
James Dakin the other day to jail for thirty days, for
kissing another man's wife in a railway carriage.
Boston is to have an elevated road.
[0]
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn93051662/1884-03-08/ed-1/seq-4/
[1]
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn93051662/1884-03-08/ed-1/seq-1/
