It is unusual that the photographs of Ireland follow those of England, even though the Cook itinery shows the stops in Ireland coming first. There is a possible explanation for this, the clues coming in the photographer’s narrative quite late in the album. Although the ink, browned with age, appears uniform throughout, later entries appear to be written in a smaller and more shaky, angular hand than the earlier comments. She uses the words ‘If my memory serves...’ by one image of Pompeii and on the next page she writes ‘Florentine Palace – the Vectis if I remember rightly, at this writing seventeen years later’. It is unlikely she would have remembered so many details and locations by 1917, probably in old age by that time, and so I have concluded it is likely that the photographs were possibly put into the album shortly after the trip, but that she gave up on writing comments at the time halfway through and finished those years later. The placing of some images out of order may simply be through quickly pasting them down and realising the order in which they should have been put afterwards. Though meticulous in some ways, in others the owner of the album was more slapdash. Nevertheless, almost every location in the album from the 1900 trip is identified.
There is a strong possibility that the photographer had an interest in the darker side of things. When a location has involved death or bloodshed, she has not shied away from commenting on it. In fact, she has made a point of stating the fact. ‘The scene of burning of Christian Martyrs’ in London, ‘Here stood the guillotine during revolution’ in Paris, ‘Crypts frescoed with bones of 4,000 monk ...(?) brother amid the skulls’ and ‘Monks are buried in holy earth from Jerusalem and taken up to make room for fresh corpses’ by a photograph of mummified Capuchin monks at Rome, ‘Lion’s dens, cells of prisoners, Nero’s box’ at the Coliseum and the graphic ‘Plaster cast of body entombed in wet ashes in Pompeii. Plaster was poured into mould left by decay of body. Bones intact. Most victims fell on their faces trying to shield them from the hot ashes’ at Pompeii. Such comments may have been thought a little unsuitable for genteel society at the time.
Mummified remains of Capuchin monks, from the album
Other comments give an intriguing glimpse into the life of the tourist. The best come from the time in Italy:
‘Rag Fair in Rome. Here you might pick up rare antiques or buy a pair of shoe strings. A child here spoke of the ‘ara’ in my teeth and I had to show my fillings to a crowd of poor peasant people. Had my mouth full of Roman heads’
‘Leaning Tower of Pisa. Beautiful alabaster building. Here I lay on my stomach on floor of upper storey and stuck my head over. Horses below looked like mice’
‘A couple of handsome gendarmes in Bordighera on the Riviera. The youngest blushed crimson when I asked him to pose. Beautiful uniforms’.
Mother and child by the sea in Naples, from the album
‘Italian mother feeding her bambino on shore of Mediterranean. When I first saw her she was picking ‘something’ off the head of an older child’
‘Public lavatory, Bordighera. Girl of fourteen in foreground feeding her baby. Italian infants were always feeding on cathedral steps and ‘all over the place’’
However, there was one vivid and extensive entry which would point me in the direction of further research:
‘Vesuvius from moving train. An Italian humorist tried to ask me about the ...(?) etc and afterward picked up some manuscripts (I was writing on the train) and pretended to read it to his party, convulsing them with laughter and exciting my curiosity almost fatally. This party urged me most hospitably to partake of their lunch of black bread and odorous cheese’. Part of the text was to lead me down a different type of alleyway to Dutfield’s Yard.
Finally, after the Naples photographs, there was no indication of the photographer’s return voyage to the US. Further correspondence with Paul Smith at the Thomas Cook Archives was to present this information:
‘I am afraid I cannot tell you the name of the ship on which your photographer returned from Europe to New York. However, I can confirm that it would not necessarily have been the ‘Lucania’.
We should have more luck with the dates, however. The Excursionist states that Tour No 22 lasted 103 days. This gives a return date of 12 September 1900 (or thereabouts).
The itinerary quoted in the ‘Excursionist’ also shows that Naples is the final port of call before New York. According to timetables in the archives, the shipping lines which operated a Naples-New York service were as follows: Anchor Line; Cunard Line (14 days’ journey time); Cyprien Fabre & Co (12 days); Hamburg-American Line (13/14 days); North German Lloyd Steamship Company (13 days); White Star Line (12/13 days). Unfortunately, the ‘Excursionist’ only shows the North Atlantic routes (between North America and Britain/France) rather than the Mediterranean routes and I do not have any separate timetables or shipping lists from 1900 (1906 is the closest).’
The next stage was, with the information already gathered, to attempt to identify the woman who took the Dutfield’s Yard photograph.
Trying to Identify the Photographer
Most of the research since the summer of 2008 has been trying to discover who owned the album and took the European vacation with Thomas Cook in the summer of 1900. As 125,000 Americans took pleasure trips to Europe that year, the words ‘needle’ and ‘haystack’ come to mind.
I began by contacting museum services in the US. My only possible starting point at this stage (before the Arizona information was known) lay in the Heinn label at the back of the album and its direct link to Milwaukee. I began my enquiries with Al Muchka of the Milwaukee Public Museum. He suggested I contact Steve Daly of the Milwaukee County Historical Society who, in turn, pointed me to Joe de Rose of the Wisconsin Historical Society, an organisation that was to prove very helpful in subsequent research. Various people working for this group undertook unpaid work to assist in uncovering some of the mysteries that still surrounded the album.
I made further enquiries with Larry Lingle, the original seller of the photographs, as to where he obtained the collection. That was, unfortunately, a dead end as he had himself obtained it by auction on eBay in 2005 and had not done anything with it since then.
Little could be assured about the photographer herself from the photographs. Even her age is indeterminate; she could be aged anything between 25 and 50. She appears to be blonde and is certainly slim. The photographs give her the impression of having been quite tall. She has an elongated face with a very wide mouth, square forehead, high cheekbones and a large but upturned nose. Her head shape is almost masculine.
Only one thing is likely regarding the home address of the photographer – she probably did not come from New York or New Jersey for the simple reason that she took a photograph of the Dewey Arch before embarkation. A local resident would not have photographed something so close to home as the first image in an album documenting a three-month break in another continent.
The photographer at the colonnades at St Peter’s, Rome, from the album
Detail of the photographer’s face
The information that came back from Ellen Engseth about the proliferation of Heinn products throughout the US by 1900 did make a link to Wisconsin appear to be a red herring. However, the staff at the Wisconsin Historical Society were only too happy to continue searching records from the few clues in the album to try and locate the photographer.
Those clues, nevertheless, could be quite telling. Firstly, the photographer herself appears in four of the images. She is only close enough to the camera in two of them to identify her features. What becomes clear very quickly is the fact that she was travelling alone. There are no family members in any of the images. No husband, no children. Being a woman of such considerable means, this would suggest she was either unmarried and from a moneyed family, or was a rich widow. Such independence was to prove helpful in removing a great deal of possible names.
The historian Chris Scott ran a check on an archive of passenger lists on my behalf, using various criteria. It
had to give returns within the confines of unmarried women between the ages of 35 to 45 in 1900 whom had travelled on the Lucania from New York to the UK. 11 names came back, none of them in June and only two of them being listed as landing at Queenstown (one being an Irish woman landing on 11 May and the other a Miss Rayden, aged 40, a New Yorker almost certainly on the same date – this being the Lucania’s disembarkation point directly before it travelled on to Liverpool and then back to New York to collect the Thomas Cook passengers about to take Tour 22). Although these parameters need to be widened, this clearly shows the inefficiency of some online resources, or perhaps the lack of rigour shown in 1900. Of course, it may be that the traveller was married yet making the trip alone and that her age falls outside that range. Nevertheless, a total of 11 names in a year is most definitely a small fraction of what it should be.
Miss Van Neiukirk and Miss Blake at the colonnades at St Peter’s, Rome, from the album
Only two individuals are named in the album, both sadly by surname alone. Both are single women; a Miss Van Neiukirk (apparently quite young), and a Miss Blake. The pair are seen standing at the colonnades at St Peter’s in Rome, attired to ‘pay homage to the Pope’. This photograph appears on the page next to the clearest image of the photographer herself, marked ‘Myself, ditto’. This is a contradiction of the earlier statement in the album about ‘Christian Martyrs’ at Smithfield and would infer the photographer was a Catholic, unless she viewed the opportunity to see the Pope as one not to be missed, regardless of denomination. This is a distinct possibility as Miss Blake holds a rosary and Miss Van Neiukirk and the photographer do not. Miss Van Neiukirk is mentioned again as sharing a gondola in Venice with the photographer. It is unclear whether Miss Van Neiukirk and Miss Blake were travelling on the same Cook tour as the photographer, or if they simply met her in Italy. As the distance between Venice and Rome is about 250 miles, it is more likely that all three ladies were making the same extended Grand Tour. Sadly, neither of the women produce any results on the Ellis Island website for arrival into the US in September 1900.
Miss Van Neiukirk was to prove an enigma. Dee Anna Grimsrud at the Wisconsin Historical Society undertook some research and found that this was the original Dutch spelling of the name. A few early immigrants from the Netherlands had this spelling but this was usually changed to Van Niewkirk and eventually Anglicised to Van Newkirk. The early immigrants only show up in New York and New Jersey. It must also be considered, of course, that written records of that time – whether they are from the Census, passport applications or shipping lists – frequently record names inaccurately based on their phonetic sound. Of the possible Miss Van Newkirks found on Census returns, two were in New Jersey and six were in Baltimore, born between 1864 and 1878 and most likely sisters. Only one Miss Van Newkirk is listed on the Ellis Island manifests from 1900, that being a Blanch Van Newkirk born in Baltimore on 27 July 1873, giving an age of 27 at the time of the photograph in Rome. She may possibly be the Miss Van Neiukirk who took the trip, yet her arrival back into the US does not tally closely with the end of the European trip. US Census returns do not give the original Dutch spelling of the name for anyone who fits her description. However, there are no Miss Blakes on the Ellis Island manifests for 1900 that fit at all. Attempts to contact Van Newkirks in Baltimore today who have posted their details online in the course of their genealogical research elicited no replies.
When the touring party returned to the US they would have passed through Ellis Island on their way back home very briefly, even as US Citizens. As a result, the names should appear on the shipping manifests held at ellisisland.org. This is a fact that has been confirmed by several official sources. However, the fact that the exact date of return to the US and the ship on which the final trip from Naples was taken is unknown makes identification of the names on those manifests very difficult. There is also the small possibility that when the final journey was undertaken – given that the original trip was postponed by several days at short notice – the ship that was used took a different route and may have even involved a transfer of passengers at a port during the journey. Consequently, every ship landing at Ellis Island with a large amount of passengers over the space of several days has to remain a viable candidate.
The Lucania herself shows as docking at Ellis Island on 13 September 1900, within the timescale permitted by the excursion. Nevertheless, she would not have sailed from Naples at any time, serving only the Atlantic route. A list of the Saloon passengers on this service (leaving from Liverpool on 8 September 1900) was issued to the travellers and a copy of this is available online. The list of 365 names contains 25 women titled as ‘Miss’ with no one apparently travelling with them. There are a further 13 women titled as ‘Mrs’ making the voyage alone.
This list is held by the Gjenvick-Gjønvick Archives. The organisation holds approximately 1,000 passenger lists near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Curator Paul Gjenvick notes that the ‘Lucania’ list was only a souvenir given to Saloon passengers and really records nothing more than the names of individuals.
From the names mentioned on the Ellis Island shipping manifest for the ‘Lucania’, five are possible candidates for our photographer. Margaret McMurray (46), a widowed housekeeper of Pittsburgh having travelled from Newry (so thus unlikely), Margaret Simpson (48), a married woman travelling alone from Wisconsin (a possibility), Harriet Mildblood (49), a Philadelphian housewife, Emilie Noren (36), a housewife from Denver and Amanda Samuelson (41), another housewife living in Chicago who had spent 20 years in the US. None of these names actually appear on the souvenir list issued to prominent Lucania passengers, however. Indeed, right down the line it appears that no one named in an external source and consequently investigated appears on the Ellis Island manifests. Although US Citizens and most First Class passengers did not have to take the ferry to Ellis Island itself, they were nevertheless all recorded on the shipping lists and thus should appear when searched for.
Of all the ships docking at Ellis Island around that time, by far the most likely candidate for the return voyage (if the ship did indeed travel non-stop from Naples) was the Kaiser Wilhelm II, which had indeed just made a trip straight from Naples on 7 September 1900 and docked at Ellis Island on 20 September. This is a week later than the expected return date but the trip had also begun a week late.
The ship was built in 1889, was 450’ long, 9,000 tons in weight and could accommodate 1,200 passengers. Though smaller than the Lucania, she was nevertheless almost a match in the opulence afforded to its higher-ranking passengers. It was also owned by the North German Lloyd Company, a shipping line used frequently by Thomas Cook. The ship was renamed the SS Hohenzollern in 1901, was wrecked in Sardinia on 10 May 1908, refloated and scrapped in Italy.
The major issue with the Kaiser Wilhelm II Ellis Island manifest (if the assurances that ALL passengers – visitors, immigrants and Citizens alike – were recorded are correct) is that virtually every name on the list is a foreign immigrant and only one person could possibly be the photographer – a 49-year-old Miss Morgan. Even here, there is a problem as she is recorded as having sailed from Genoa on 6 September, the stop before Naples and the long trip back to the US.
There are four other ships listed at ellisisland.org as having arrived back into New York direct from Naples within the time period, and none of them are likely candidates. The Spartan Prince was an immigrant ship owned by the British Prince Line and it docked on 9 September. The Archimede manifest consists solely of Italians and docked on September 16, the same day as the Bolivia, with a manifest of a single Italian. The Werra arrived at Ellis Island three days before, having stopped at Genoa and Gibraltar en route but only containing four Italian passengers.
Ultimately, the only ship recorded on the Ellis Island manifests at the time of the return voyage holding numerous US Citizens is the Lucania. This can only mean one of three things; either the manifests are not complete and do not show all the names of returning passengers, the passenge
rs transferred vessels mid-voyage, or the ship from Naples did not dock in New York at all. Until the answer to this question is known, no further progress can be made with this line of enquiry.
This leaves two further options; photographic identification and coverage of the known outbound journey on the Lucania on 2 June 1900. This would be a far less fruitful endeavour as, of course, those leaving the US would not be officially recorded. Nevertheless, options were becoming limited.
One major issue concerning the US Census returns for 1900 is that they began on 1 June and ended on 30 June. Although the touring party left the US a week late, they were still only in the country at the start of the Census and thus it is unlikely that any of them will appear on the 1900 return. Initially, this could present a problem but in the long-term may have a benefit; any individual showing on the 1890 and 1910 returns, but not the 1900 one, would be more likely to be the relevant individual.
The Jack the Ripper Location Photographs: Dutfield's Yard and the Whitby Collection Page 5
