After the Great Easter 1913 tornadoes and flood, big money was made by selling photographic souvenir booklets portraying death and destruction
[Note:
Apologies for being a few days late with this post. I was unable to complete
and upload it by the first of the month because of intense work on a major—and
grim—investigative special report on the California drought for an engineering
magazine, to be published near the end of December. (Strange to write on the drought
after having been so imbued with flood literature!)]
During the
centennial of the 1913 flood in 2013, I closely examined more than half a dozen
“instant books” that were churned out by dodgy authors, usually
 |
| Photographic flood souvenir booklets, such as this one from Paducah, KY, were issued by the thousands just a few weeks after the devastating Great Easter tornadoes and flood. This particular one I have not seen and would be very grateful to assistance from readers in locating a copy. see description below under Kentucky. Image credit: Worthpoint. |
writing under
pseudonyms, who played fast and loose with copyright laws (see “Profiting from Pain”). A year later, I showed how marketing wizards took advantage of the national
calamity to push products ranging from movie cameras to tornado insurance with
an astounding tin ear for human suffering (see “Advertising Disaster”).
Another type
of post-disaster publication for sale were souvenir photographic pamphlets or
booklets produced within a few weeks of the disaster(s). Ranging from 16 to 64
pages, many were small, about the size of a postcard (3.5 x 5.5 inches),
saddle-stitched with the staples on the short side so that each page is
horizontal. Usually one photo was shown per page, although some of the booklets
also had text. Others were larger with significant text, all the way up to a
full letter-sized sheet of paper (uncommon). The photos were usually
lithographed halftones not of great quality.
Some of
these photographic souvenirs were produced and sold by newspapers with images and
information compiled from their local coverage
 |
| The Omaha tornado was as much a subject for booklets published in Nebraska as the flood was in different cities in other states. See description below for the Gideon booklet from Omaha. |
of the tornadoes or flood. If
sales claimed are to be believed, sometimes a single newspaper could sell out
printings of 10,000 in just a matter of weeks. Most ranged in price from 10 to
50 cents, the equivalent today of a few bucks to about $25.
Like
calendars or playbills, the pamphlets were printed in great numbers and so were
once common, but many were also discarded. Thus, it’s an irony of history that
throwaway items once so commonplace are now so rare (just try now to find a
direct-mail calendar of the year you were born!).
Below are nearly
a dozen that I’ve found referenced, listed alphabetically by state and city,
with links to digital copies online where available. Where I have not seen a
copy of a work myself, I would love to hear from libraries or individuals with copies.
I strongly suspect this listing is not complete—so if readers know of other
1913 tornado or flood souvenir booklets not listed, please make me smarter—please
email me!
INDIANA
At least two
souvenir booklets were published in the Hoosier state. One is
Terre Haute’s Tornado and Flood Disaster:
March twenty-three to thirtieth, nineteen hundred and thirteen, published
by the Terre Haute Publishing Co. Digital scans are available from both Indiana State and the Vigo County Public Library.
The other
booklet I have not yet seen in any form: Twelve
Views of the Indianapolis Flood of March 1913, taken by a daring photographer
during the
worst of the horrible catastrophe. Worldcat says it was
published by C.A. Tutewiler. The closest I’ve come to it is this tiny image of
the cover from an ebay seller.
KENTUCKY
Flood Souvenir, Paducah, Kentucky, is another elusive booklet (see opening image at the top of this post). I’ve seen
two slightly differing covers, one from ebay and one from Worthpoint, but there
is no information for the document in Worldcat. The Worthpoint seller indicated
it was 6.25 x 8.25 inches, but did not give a page count. I’m especially
curious as to whether the booklet portrays the flooding of Paducah as the
calamity it was, or downplays it as merely a “water carnival” (see “Spurning Disaster Aid”).
NEBRASKA
One 32-page
pamphlet with a dramatic photographic cover, published by the
Omaha Bee, was The Track of the Tornado that struck Omaha at 6 P.M. Easter Sunday
March 23, 1913. This one I consulted in a library.
A competing
booklet was published by The Omaha Daily News, which made up for its
plain red cover and stark word Tornado by
having 64 pages and being slightly larger than most of these souvenirs. Printed
by the Mogy
Publishing Co., it is also one of the few that claims an author, in
this case, Charles B. Driscoll. The title page differs slightly from the cover,
reading Complete Story of Omaha’s
Disastrous Tornado. This one I consulted in a library, which itself had
only a photocopy.
A third
competitor, published by the Omaha
Tribune, was a 40-page German booklet with the English title Omaha Tornado – Album. This one I consulted
in a library, but all the German pages plus an English translation appear
at the Mardos Memorial Library of Online Books and Maps
(from where I also obtained this cover image, which is better than my copy).
A fourth pamphlet
was The Omaha Tornado, Easter Sunday,
Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.A. March 23, 1913, published by John L. Gideon (see second image near the top of this post). You
can read a not-great Google scan
online, but not download a PDF with the illustrations.
OHIO
No surprise,
entrepreneurs in hard-hit Ohio produced numerous souvenir photographic pamphlets
and booklets, some of them very informative.
The 24-page
postcard-sized pamphlet Flood Views of
Chillicothe, Ohio, March 26, 1913 was published for the Chillicothe News
Co. by the Emmel Publishing
Co. It consists of 22 images and minimal introductory
text. I consulted a library copy.
The 64-page 6
x 9-inch A Pictorial History of the Great
Dayton Flood March 25, 26, 27, 1913 by Nellis R. Funk—another of the few
that claimed an actual
author—was printed by the Otterbein Press. I consulted a library copy. A
high-quality scan is online at archive.org.
Dayton: Being a story of the great
flood as seen from the Delco Factory is a 32-page booklet from the viewpoint of the factory
employees trapped inside
for several days, but also seeking to rescue others in neighboring buildings.
The text only is online at Dayton History
and a centennial edition including all the images was published by Frank Miller
in 2013 (details in my January 2015 roundup of books). I consulted a library copy of the original plus have the Miller reissue (which has a significantly different format).
The 52-page Great 1913 Flood, Dayton, Ohio by K. M.
Kammerer and published by the Specialty Photograph Co. is horizontal like most
of the
photographic souvenirs, but about double postcard size, about 5 x 8
inches. It can be found online at archive.org. With the exception of the first two pages, it is all images.
Historical Souvenir of the Fremont
Flood March 25–28, 1913 is a 48-page booklet published by the Finch Studio that also says it was “Approved
by the Relief Committee.” Online at archive.org
the images look okay online but are
disappointingly low-res in the PDF. Fremont
was one of the areas hard-hit in northern Ohio, and half the booklet is text. I’ve
not examined a copy in person, but it appears to be perfect-bound and even
hardbound, which makes it unusual among these photographic souvenirs.
The city of Hamilton,
downriver of Dayton, had only a quarter of Dayton’s population but suffered at
least as many deaths—very likely many more, considering the violence of the
flood. The Flood Disaster 1913
(Illustrated),
available online through HathiTrust, has a title page that reads Flood
Souvenir: View of Hamilton, Ohio During and after the Disastrous Flood of March
1913. It was printed by the Republican Publishing Co. Although it was only
postcard sized, it has close to 100 images.
Photographic reproductions of the
terrible flood of 1913: showing scenes in many Ohio and Indiana cities is a 32-page booklet with minimal
text and with coarse halftones, but they include flood scenes from Buckeye
Lake, Columbus, Dayton, Delaware, Hamilton, and Zanesville; despite the title,
all the locations seem to be from Ohio (unless some were misidentified). The
booklet was published by the Pfeifer Show Print Co. I wonder whether it might have
been printed more than once, as the Delaware County Historical Society shows it
having a green cover whereas the cover I photographed (shown here) was buff.
Zanesville in the Flood of 1913 by Thomas W. Lewis is a 96-page
booklet. The
digital scan on archive.org
is of a photocopy, not or an original.
PENNSYLVANIA
The only
souvenir pamphlet I’ve found for Pennsylvania is the Official Souvenir History of the Shenango Valley Flood March 25, 26,
27, 28 1913, by C.B. Lartz and Z.O. Hazen, available online as a
high-quality scan at archive.org (from which this image comes). This is one of the few that was printed in large
format (8.5 x 11 inches) and
had 40 pages of text of substantial length as well as photos. Interestingly, it
is formatted like a yearbook, with ads sold against the text—obviously a
money-making proposition, given the notation on the front cover than “only”
10,000 were printed.
One wonders
what happened with the proceeds. Did they all go to the publisher (and perhaps
authors)? Or did any portion of their sales get devoted to relief efforts? Some
photographic souvenirs claim the money went to relief funds, but others are
utterly silent on the question.
I hope this
appeal to readers inspires some digging through grandparents’ attics—please do let me know what you find!
©2015 Trudy
E. Bell
Next time:
Crisis Communications in a Communications Crisis
