Attack of the killer clowns
QUESTION Has anyone been killed by a clown?
During the 19th century, the clown grimaldi was one of the most famous entertainers in Britain. it was claimed that an eighth of London’s population had seen him on stage.
However, under the face paint was an extreme melancholic who would often say: ‘i make you laugh at night, but am grim all day.’
Similarly, the major clown figure on the Continent was Jean-gaspard Deburau, a difficult man whose alter- ego was Pierrot, a clown with white face paint punctuated by red lips and black eyebrows whose silent gesticulations delighted French audiences.
in 1836, Deburau killed a boy with a blow from his walking stick after the youth, who had recognised the unpainted clown in the street, had taunted him. He was acquitted of the murder.
remy, Deburau’s chief biographer, wrote of him: ‘When he powdered his face, his nature, in fact, took the upper hand. He stood then at the measure of his life — bitter, vindictive and unhappy.’
Ian Forrest, Belfast. One of America’s most notorious serial killers was a clown. John Wayne gacy Jr tortured and murdered at least 33 boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 in Cook County, illinois.
Born on March 17, 1942, in Chicago, gacy suffered childhood abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father.
gacy’s first marriage, to Marlynn Myers, saw him father a son and daughter, but she divorced him after he was convicted of sexually abusing a 16-year-old in 1968.
After gacy’s release on parole in 1970, he started a successful house maintenance business and married divorcee Carole Hoff in 1972.
An avid Democrat, gacy became a member of the ‘Jolly Joker’ clown club. He became Pogo the Clown, performing at Democratic fundraising events and entertaining sick children in hospital.
According to gacy, acting as a clown allowed him to regress into childhood.
gacy used his clownish talents to capture his victims. He would trick the youths into donning handcuffs, enabling him to subdue them. He is recorded as having told investigating officers before his arrest: ‘You know . . . clowns can get away with murder.’
gacy was captured on December 22, 1978, sentenced to death in 1980 and died by lethal injection in 1994.
Stuart Bingham, Mansfield, Notts.
QUESTION Why is the football team Sheffield Wednesday so called?
THe Wednesday Cricket Club was founded in 1820, according to a Bell’s Life journal article in 1842.
The name ‘Wednesday’ was introduced because this was the day of the week the founding members had a day off work to enable them to play cricket.
in 1867, the cricketers decided that it would be an excellent idea to keep up the summer comradeship in the winter months and formed a football club.
in 1871, The Wednesday were settled at Bramall Lane (now home of Sheffield united) after the Wednesday Cricket Club was one of six clubs who helped build this ground in 1855.
The football section kept its name until 1929, then became Sheffield Wednesday.
Simon Myers, Offerton, Stockport.
QUESTION What is the story behind the Lost Dutchman’s Goldmine in Arizona?
THe Lost Dutchman’s goldmine is a legendary mine that still tempts treasure hunters with the promise of untold riches. its location is most commonly thought to be somewhere in the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. The Dutchman in question was actually a Deutschman [i.e. a german]. Jacob Waltz was born in 1810 and went to America in 1839, finding work in the goldfields of north Carolina and georgia.
After becoming a naturalised u.S. citizen in 1861, he turned up in Arizona in 1863, and between 1868 and 1886 is thought to have made regular scouting missions into the Superstition Mountains to the east of Apache Junction.
He died in 1891, nursed in his last days by Julia Thomas, who led a party into the mountains in search of the mine. She didn’t find it, but established a business selling treasure maps.
By 1895, the story of the lost mine took on a life of its own, in the main because of the florid writings of newspaperman P. C. Bicknell, who had interviewed Thomas. The story was embellished, with the mine said to be cursed.
Were it not for the death of amateur explorer and treasure hunter Adolph ruth, the story might have gone the way of other so-called lost goldmines.
ruth disappeared while searching for the mine in the summer of 1931. His skull — with two bullet holes in it — was recovered six months later, and the story sparked widespread interest in the Lost Dutchman’s mine.
geology suggests there is little gold in the Superstition Mountains and it’s unlikely a mine will ever be found.
Florence Turner, Cannock, Staffs.
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