Sawdust

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augusta
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Sawdust

Post by augusta »

I ran across this in Judith Boss's "FR, A Pictorial History" (Donning Company/Publishers Norfolk/Virginia Beach - 1982):

On page 110, there's an interior photo of Whitehead's Market, which was on the corner of Market and South Main (site of the present Union Savings Bank). It was one of the largest meat and produce markets in the city.

The caption reads: "Whitehead's Market was a modern, well-stocked market. Freshly killed fowl and meat were available at the meat counter, along with bologna and sausages. Cheese, fruits, and vegetables were attractively displayed in front of the opposite counter; tin can goods were neatly arranged on the shelves along the walls. THE FLOOR WAS COVERED WITH SAWDUST FOR SANITARY REASONS ...."

What does that mean? To help get the dirt off of customers' shoes so it wouldn't drift up to the unwrapped foods? To soak up any dripping blood from the fresh meats? I've never heard of this before. It sounds interesting.

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Harry
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Post by Harry »

Good info Augusta. If you can, please scan both the Leduc and Whitehead photos. Even if old Pierre is small. I have searched in vain for a postcard or photo showing his barber shop. I know the address but was looking for a barber pole. I think he may have been out of the barber business when most, if not all the postcards of Fall River were made.

I've been looking at my photo/postcard collection and I have two things on Whitehead's. The first is a trade card (year unknown) which shows it at 18-20 South Main. The second is a postcard looking north on North Main which shows Whiteheads at the extreme right just on the other side of City Hall. I believe the area between City Hall and where Whiteheads is in the postcard was known as Market Square. I thought that's where North Main started. Directly across the street, just beyond the Granite Block building, at 6 North Main would have been Clegg's old store in 1892.

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Harry
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Post by Harry »

That's a great question about the sawdust. I did find this:

"Who can forget the taste and smell of old time butcher shop meat? Just entering an old fashioned butcher shop was like walking into a venerable temple of meat with the loins and chops set out on butcher paper and even your footsteps hushed by the layer of sawdust that covered the floor. And what a temple it was - there was nothing quite like an old fashioned butcher shop pot roast.
Food Tiger offers you that old time butcher shop flavor with our Sawdust Pot Roast with that "fresh from the butcher shop floor" flavor that modern meat lacks. Not every store offers you this goodness, and some stores even use synthetics, like those plastic "peanuts", instead of natural wood flakes for coating their roasts. So, accept no substitutes."

That was at: http://www.kaleberg.com/tiger/sawdust.html

Several other sites say it was used to trap blood and cover the aroma from slaughtered animals.
diana
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Post by diana »

And this from: http://www.nps.gov/stea/tobyotrt.htm

"Sawdust kept floors of meat markets and public houses, among other places, from being slippery. A good sweep of the dust cleaned the floor and any spills along with it."
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FairhavenGuy
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Post by FairhavenGuy »

When I was in grammar school, if somebody threw up in the classroom, the janitor would come in a sprinkle the floor with very highly scented sawdust material, which was left for a few minutes then swept up. This was a commercial product, which came in a can or box.
Doug
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Post by Doug »

I remember the same or a similar product being used in my grammar school. And, the last time I was in a "real" butcher shop, in Boston a few years ago, they had sawdust or a sawdust like material covering the floor.
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william
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Post by william »

Sawdust was also used on the floors of saloons.
I blush to admit my grandfather had such an establishment during Prohibition and I recall that the sawdust was replaced daily.

I believe that the major use for sawdust in saloons was to compensate for the poor marksmanship of the inebriated tobacoo chewers who failed to make contact with the spitoons.
Robert Harry
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Post by Robert Harry »

Though I am a (mere) 51 years old, I remember butcher shops with sawdust on the floor. In the late 50's early 60's, there were a few "last of the Mohican" type old time butcher and grocery stores still around. I grew up in Ventnor, NJ, just next to Atlantic City. My Dad was a Nabisco salesman and as a kid I used to accompany him on his rounds. I used to see guys in bloody aprons making sausage (putting intestine casings around the ground meat in a special machine), and also visiting several grocery stores where customers had to ask the clerk for the products they wanted. The clerk used a long pole with a "grabber" on the end to reach up into the high shelves. Ye gods, I never thought I was that old!! Also, we had fly paper in our kitchen in the summer time, and had to hang the screens specially numbered for each window every summer. The screens were enclosed in wooden frames with special hooks and numbers on them to fit into the proper window. So I go back before storm windows!! OK, enough nostalgia already!!
augusta
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Post by augusta »

Here is the photo of Whitehead's that is in the Judith Boss book. I was glad to see with my "Pierre LeDuc" photo that you can click on the posted photo and enlarge it. The sawdust is clearly visible on the floor of the store. ... Can you imagine all those chickens hanging there all day with no refrigeration?

According to this book, Whitehead's was at the corner of Market and South Main Streets, the site of the present Union Savings Bank. (This was written in 1982.)

Also in the caption, it says that Whiteheads "illuminated with the new electric lights".

Harry, I'll swap you something for that trade card. How about a card sent to Lizzie by Adelaide Churchill postmarked 1893 saying, "I Know What You Did Last Summer"? If you act now, I'll throw in the card she sent two months after that: "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer".

Sorry, Bill. I'll have to turn you in for that Prohibition business. I should have known. You're always so happy!
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Kat
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Post by Kat »

Thanks for all the pictures Augusta!
Great!

It sounds like they actually coated the meat with sawdust - did they cook it like that?
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Kat
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Post by Kat »

From the Quarterly Report, FRHS, Summer, 1999.
Please clickonpic
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Haulover
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Post by Haulover »

***Harry, I'll swap you something for that trade card. How about a card sent to Lizzie by Adelaide Churchill postmarked 1893 saying, "I Know What You Did Last Summer"? If you act now, I'll throw in the card she sent two months after that: "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer". ***


i realize that wasn't meant for me, but that's hilarious! thanks! that's the funniest thing i've heard in weeks! especially since lately i've been speculating about mrs. churchill peering through her window. this is so much funnier coming from mrs. churchill than from alice russell. it presumes mrs. churchill did not even need to spend any intimate time with lizzie. rather, she was simply the neighbor who knew.
haha...that's so funny.

i wonder how much mail lizzie got??? at maplecroft, i mean. she had a post office box? i would think she did receive such cards and letters. i bet she even got "fan" letters.
augusta
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Post by augusta »

It seems like Mrs. Churchill was one of Lizzie's friends who dumped her after the trial. She was an active member of the Congregational church and was involved in civic events all her life. It could be said that she was always in the thick of things. If she wanted to wag her tongue, she could have done a lot of it in those social circles.

In the Witness Statements, isn't it Mrs. Churchill who had told someone she knew something but she would rather have her "tongue cut out" before telling? I'll bet. That's a pretty dramatic statement, and it's really saying, "Oh, ask me. Ask me!" It's no way to keep a secret.

I love finding out about the cast of characters associated with this case. It makes it so much more interesting, and who knows when we'll stumble upon a clew from one?

Mrs. Churchill (Adelaide/"Addie") was a Buffinton (no "g" - not BuffinGton). Her father was a "hugely popular mayor" according to Hoffman's entry on her. Her house, which was at 90 Second Street, next door to Lizzie's on the north, was called "The Buffinton House".

Her husband worked for the water department. He died in in 1879, when she was 29, leaving Addie and a son, Charles (probably jr.).

Hoffman says she "was remembered as looking younger than her 48 years, plump and with a gentle, kindly face." (He must be talking about her in 1892.)

I remember reading the other day - don't know where, darn it - that the news dealer (John Cunningham) overheard it when she went to the nearby livery stable to tell her handyman (Tom Boulds) to phone for help. I think I read that the talk was pretty animated.

She helped fan and tend to Lizzie with Alice Russell in the kitchen. 'Twas her that went upstairs with Bridget and I don't think she was really expecting to find Abby. Maybe she was trying to see what she could see. Still, it would take guts to go up there. I would think she was somewhat of a strong character. She testified that Lizzie didn't cry that morning. She described Lizzie's dress as being very much like the description of the dress Lizzie burned. What a pal, what a pal.
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Kat
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Post by Kat »

Witness Statements
page 45
Written by non other than "our" McHenry- we should take a poll as to how believable he is.

BTW: He notes this as hearsay:
That a "scandal story" came from Mrs. Case.
And that rumors allegedly coming from Mrs. Churchill really came from Mrs. Potter and her sister Miss Damon.
And that one "George Wiley" (who, you ask?) is the one who passed around the story about Mrs. Churchill and her tongue being torn out.
Actually, I believe that some Church members may have practiced the stricture on gossip.

This is actually the last entry in the Witness Statements and the date is there, but not the month:

"EDWIN D. McHENRY.

Fall River, 28, 1892. The following is the result of my interview last Saturday night with Mrs. Whitehead. I could not reach her mother Mrs. Oliver Gray, (the stepmother of the late Mrs. Abbie Borden) until today. I found her at the home of Mr. Benj. Covell, at the top of Second street. I questioned her at length as to whether there was anything new that had come to her mind since she was last seen. She stated that Officer Harrington had been to see her, but since that time she had heard a great deal. She also stated that Mr. and Mrs. Case had gone to Tiverton R. I. or Little Compton, to remain away until after this Borden case had been disposed of; and that Mrs. Case was the woman above all others that was needed to let light in on Lizzie’s actions. Mrs. Gray had heard of the scandal story as coming from Mrs. Case direct. She also stated that for years, whenever she, or any of Mrs. Borden’s relatives, visited the house on Second street, they were totally ignored by the girls, Lizzie and Emma. I then read your anonymous letter to her. She said that was true, every word of it, although she could not imagine who the writer was; and that her sister, Mrs. Bordens, Mrs. Fish in Hartford, was the one, and her daughter in law, that was referred to. I then pressed the old lady very hard as to what was said as coming from Mrs. Churchill. She demurred, and

46


finally admitted she got her information from Mrs. Potter and her sister Miss Dimon, the milliners on Fourth street. I then looked up the above mentioned ladies and found them very hard people to handle. I was with them both two hours, and elicited the following; Lizzie Borden has been practicing in a gymnasium for a long time, and she has boasted of the strength she possessed, not to these people, but to others. The place where she practiced was supposed top be in the Troy Block. I also elicited the fact that one George Wiley, a clerk in the Troy Mill is the one who is authority for the statement that Mrs. Churchill made that she (Mrs. Churchill) said, that there was one thing she saw in the house the day of the murder, that she would never repeat, even if they tore her tongue out."
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Fargo
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Re: Sawdust

Post by Fargo »

When I worked in the Garage, one of the types of floor dry for cleaning up spills was made from sawdust. It was supposed to be some environmentally friendly stuff compared to the other kitty litter type stuff of floor dry.
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Re: Sawdust

Post by patsy »

When I was a kid all the butcher shops in my area had sawdust on the floor. We'd shuffle around in it while waiting for the butcher to fill all the orders. It was so much fun to kick that stuff around.
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