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Loading... The Johnstown Horror!!! or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruinby James Herbert Walker
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Sensationalized history can be credited with inspiring generations of truth-seeking experts and enthusiasts. The tragedy of the Johnstown Flood was an oft-exploited event as writers and publishers hawked hastily written articles in original form or pirated collections. Where many of the articles lacked fact, they were rife with exaggeration and imagination. James Herbert Walker published one of the very first of these books, The Johnstown Horror, a pamphlet of some 40 pages. Experts cite the book as being sold in New York within a week of the disaster. Though the structure suggests the stories were gathered at rail stations in an apparent journey to the site, there has been debate whether Walker ever traveled to Johnstown. Yet the collection features accounts that do not appear in other publications following the flood. Later, expanded editions swelled to over four hundred pages and included well-crafted woodcuts. As the flood occurred near the end of the nineteenth century, the engraved drawings are often generously labeled as remnants of Victorian art. It is not clear whether the inclusion of the cuts was an aesthetic or monetary decision, considering the period's developments in photography. The final, massive collection of individual stories makes the book memorable, ranging from the accusations levied against wealthy Pittsburgh industrialists to the emergence of the Red Cross. So many unique details and personal chronicles capture the frantic mentality of a town, state, and nation trying to make sense of natural and yet not-so-natural disaster. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)974.802History and Geography North America Northeastern U.S. PennsylvaniaLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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(I read the ebook version but the pages for the ebook in Goodreads seem error-ish, so I'm leaving this filed under paper.)
In May of 1889 the the South Fork Dam situated on the Little Conemaugh River failed and burst. The result was The Johnstown Flood or Great Flood of 1889 (wikipedia link there, also see Johnstown Flood Museum pages.). It's actually a good idea to read that wikipedia page before reading The Johnstown Horror, because this book, published around 1889, reads like something out of the newspapers of the time (because it probably was). And by saying that, I'm not meaning it as a compliment, because those news articles were a lot less information and a lot more purple prose than we're used to now. Also a lot more repetition. The sensationalism is on par with many tabloids currently in print (though the UK has the daily tabloid market cornered).
SHORT VERSION for those not wanting to read all my drivel: LOTS of repetition here. Same passages are used over and over, only slightly rewritten - author really padding the length. Also questionable stories used (Paul Revere figure, etc.). Read this only with skepticism and look for other sources to back up the accounts. One star for the repetition annoyance, but I don't consider it horrible or a waste of time - just an example of flawed journalism often seen in that era.
I never was able to find more information about the author James Herbert Walker. From the context he seems to be a news writer/reporter (though never mentions a paper he works for), and the book appears to be a combination of reporting from the event. You are able to get a very good idea of how few ways there were to gather information in an area where all roads in are destroyed and a huge area was isolated by the flood damage. But you also get the feeling that the author just crammed all his articles together for publication here, without any editing for content.
[If you're wanting a straightforward history of this event rather than a sensational, period tabloid version: 1987's The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough is probably a better bet. It's still on my wish list, as this story deserves a better telling.]
The word I keep coming back to to sum up the book: repetitious. Yes, I'm repeating myself by noting that again, but wow, LOTS of the same stories over and over. Can not stress this enough as it's very annoying. It's hard to tell whether some of them are the exact same "drowned body of mother with dead baby in her arms" story or whether this sight was seen more than once, with different victims. There's detail given in some of the stories, but not enough to make any accuracy calls. Also because of the repetition this is pretty boring reading - which you'd not think I could say of a story that involves such huge losses of life, struggles to find survivors, looting and lynching, and attempts to try and clean up and rebuild a normal life. But yes, if you repeat the same lines over and over (with a few new dead body stories here and there) you can indeed make this into boring reading.
Random Quotes:
To give you a better idea about the sensation level of this - here's the full title page blurb: You'd think, after that bit about being well known, I'd be able to find out more about the author.
...Example of text that I'd consider decent, nothing over the top or sensational. (8% in, around pg 44ish) What you note here, and elsewhere, is the lack of any information about where this info is coming from. Was the author there? Was this information passed on via someone who was, or on a train (conductors, engineers, etc. were still having to travel the area) or other reporters or in other newspapers? (The last sentence was via New Florence wire service, but that's a rare bit of citation.)
...Here's an example of both sensationalism (in the gore, death, etc.) and purple prose. It was really easy to find examples of this, and this seems typical so far. (9% in, near the start of Chapter 2, around pg 51):
...When the author is passing on a story of heroism, it is the sort of story that you can't help but be interested in, over the top prose or no.(Ch 10, p. 191) I only left in the one story of a wireless operator (because I'm a junky for history of tech stories) - there were several that worked to pass along the news, even though a lot of people seemed to ignore the warning.
The rider rushing to warn the town is a great story. Except that Daniel Periton is a myth, according to that linked source (which is the Johnstown Flood Museum). From that page: And frankly, no one reading Johnstown Horror will be surprised, because so much of it screams "this needs fact checking!"
...The Walt Whitman poem at the beginning Chapter 16 is called A Voice From Death (The Johnstown, Penn., cataclysm, May 31, 1889.).
...Clara Barton doesn't appear until Ch. 16, for those of you looking for her. And not much of her there, either. There's a few more paragraphs besides this quote, but you get the idea.
...90ish% in (Ch 18), just when I think the author has drawn this out as long as he could and retold the story for the hundredth time, he decides to retell it again as if you were a visitor being led by a tour guide of the scene. Who then tells you about the flood again. Using all the same stories. Some narrative from this imagined tour: And since this is an imaginary tour guide we can't tell how real those sentiments were or if the author just heard it from one person - or perhaps made the whole thing up. But then much of this entire book has the same issue. ( )