Want an example of how different our ancestors were a century ago? Try this: Imagine dentistry as a spectator sport. On a summer evening in 1913 Santa Rosa, an audience gathered on the corner of Courthouse Square to watch fifty people have a tooth pulled – or maybe it was just two people having all […]
Fool our readers once, shame on us, but try it again and it’s perfectly okay if you’re a paid advertiser. In 1912, both Santa Rosa newspapers ran ads for a medicine show quack who called himself “Brother Benjamin.” Nothing unusual about that; every issue of every paper offered ads for nostrums promising to soothe what-ails-you. […]
He showered Fourth street in silver coins and 3,000 attended his debut, equivalent to every third person in town in 1909. He was a showman famous throughout the West: The Great Fer-Don, lecturer, traveler and philanthropist. He was also a monster, and if there’s such a thing as a criminal genius, he was probably that, […]