Christmas Every Day

1890

Birth of an American Fascist

William Dudley Pelley (1890-1965) was a fascinating mixture of spiritualist loon, aspiring dictator, talented writer, and fantasist. His short-lived Silver Legion was one of a number of fascist organizations that sprang up across the world in the 1930s in imitation of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.

Pelley rose to fame in the 1920s with his short stories, two of which won the coveted O. Henry Prize, and his journalistic skills. He spent time working with the Red Cross in Siberia during the Russian Civil War, where he developed a hatred of Communism and of Jews, who, he said, lay behind global Bolshevism. His way with words took him to Hollywood and a screenwriting career but he left in disillusion and anger with Jewish studio bosses.

In the 1930s he developed a new religion based on visions in which he claimed to have seen God the Father and Jesus and been given the power to levitate and see through walls. Many of his religious followers also became devotees of his new political movement, the Silver Legion, who wore silver shirts with a blue tie, in imitation of Mussolini’s Blackshirts, and Hitler’s Brownshirts. His group, he declared, would take part in the “the ultimate contest for existence between Aryan mankind and Jewry.” The party opposed Communism, Jews, involvement in foreign wars, and the Roosevelt administration. He claimed his Legion numbered 25,000 but when he ran for president in 1936 he received only 1,600 votes.

The government began to harass Pelley; he was placed under investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and his property seized. When World War II broke out Pelley disbanded the Silver Shirts but continued to rail against Roosevelt. He was arrested and convicted of sedition, obstructing military recruiting and fomenting insurrection within the military. He was released from prison in 1950 whereupon his interests turned to UFOs and a new religion called Soulcraft. His writings live on in neo-Nazi websites.

1619 The Witches of Belvoir

On the 11^th of March 1619, two women named Margaret and Philippa Flower, were burnt at Lincoln for the alleged crime of witchcraft. With their mother, Joan Flower, they had been confidential servants of the Earl and Countess of Rutland, at Belvoir Castle. Dissatisfaction with their employers seems to have gradually seduced these three women into the practice of hidden arts in order to obtain revenge. According to their own confession, they had entered into communion with familiar spirits, by which they were assisted in their wicked designs. 

Joan Flower, the mother, had hers in the bodily form of a cat, which she called Rutterkin. They used to get the hair of a member of the family and burn it: they would steal one of his gloves and plunge it in boiling water, or rub it on the back of Rutterkin, in order to effect bodily harm to its owner. They would also use frightful imprecations of wrath and malice towards the objects of their hatred. In these ways they were believed to have accomplished the death of Lord Ross, the Earl of Rutland’s son, besides inflicting frightful sicknesses upon other members of the family.

It was long before the earl and countess, who were an amiable couple, suspected any harm in these servants, although we are told that for some years there was a manifest change in the countenance of the mother, a diabolic expression being assumed. At length, at Christmas, 1618, the noble pair became convinced that they were the victims of a hellish plot, and the three women were apprehended, taken to Lincoln jail, and examined. The mother loudly protested innocence, and, calling for bread and butter, wished it might choke her if she were guilty of the offences laid to her charge. Immediately, taking a piece into her mouth, she fell down dead, probably, as we may allowably conjecture, overpowered by consciousness of the contrariety between these protestations and the guilty design which she had entertained in her mind.

Margaret Flower, on being examined, acknowledged that she had stolen the glove of the young heir of the family, and given it to her mother, who stroked Rutterkin with it, dipped it in hot water, and pricked it: whereupon Lord Ross fell ill and suffered extremely. In order to prevent Lord and Lady Rutland from having any more children, they had taken some feathers from their bed, and a pair of gloves, which they boiled in water, mingled with a little blood. In all these particulars, Philippa corroborated her sister. Both women admitted that they had familiar spirits, which came and sucked them at various parts of their bodies: and they also described visions of devils in various forms which they had had from time to time.

The examinations of these wretched women were taken by magistrates of rank and credit, and when the judges came to Lincoln the two surviving Flowers were duly tried, and on their own confessions condemned to death by the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir Henry Hobbert.

The above account from Chambers’ Book of Days omits several interesting points: the death of another of the earl’s children, the possible escape from the gallows of one of the accused, and the recent suggestion that the boys were poisoned to leave the earl without a male heir, allowing the poisoner to inherit the estate by marrying one of the earl’s daughters.

1925

Pink’s War

“First, plan your retreat.  All expeditions into tribal lands end in retreat.”  The obdurate and indomitable nature of the tribes of the Northwest Frontier of India is legendary. Warlike, fiercely independent, and clannish, they have bedevilled every attempt to curb their raids and blood feuds. For over a century they repelled the British Army, just as today they are a challenge to the Pakistani government.

In 1925, the Mahsud tribe of southern Waziristan was holding out against the British Raj and continuing to attack army outposts. The Royal Air Force, determined to succeed where the Army had failed, conducted its first independent action in strikes on Mahsud villages. Under Wing Commander Richard Pink, flying Bristol fighters and deHavilland DH9A light bombers, the RAF first leafleted the mountain strongholds to warn of impending attacks so that there would be no civilian casualties and then proceeded, day and night, to strafe, bomb (over 250 tons of ordinance) and harass the territory for weeks until the tribesmen finally agreed to a treaty.

An interesting day in history.

1836 Fall of the Alamo

After a 13-day siege Mexican troops under General Santa Ana pour into the Alamo fort and massacre the defenders. The painting above shows the death of Davy Crockett.

1857 The Dred Scott decision

Dred Scott, a black slave, had been taken by his master to a non-slave state and sued for his freedom. The Supreme Court ruled against him, saying that “a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.], and sold as slaves”, whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court. Moreover, the court said the federal government could not regulate slavery in territories acquired after the creation of the U.S.  This ruling inflamed anti-slavery passions and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.

1912 First use of airships in war

Italian forces in two dirigibles drop bombs on Turkish troops in what is now Libya.

1970 A Weather Underground bomb explodes

Left-wing terrorist groups emerged out of the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. One of these was the Weathermen, (later the Weather Underground) whose name derived from the Bob Dylan song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” containing the line “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” The group incited riots, declared war on the USA, and bombed the Pentagon, Capitol Building and State Department. On this date three terrorists, all white graduate students, died when one of their own bombs exploded in their Greenwich Village safe house.

1984 British miners’ strike begins

Until this strike the British miners had been among the best-paid and most militant of the UK’s labour unions. For years, the the National Union of Miners had successfully resisted government plans to make the coal industry more efficient and reduce subsidies; their strike in 1974 had brought down Edward Heath’s Conservative government. In 1984, without calling a national ballot, NUM president Arthur Scargill led the miners out again, but this time Margaret Thatcher’s government was prepared. Coal stockpiles at power plants were enormous, and police strategies were devised to counter the union tactic of flying pickets. After a year of bitter conflict, the union conceded defeat.

1861

Adoption of the official flag of the Confederate States of America

If one were to identify this flag as that of the Confederacy, you would be wrong.

What you see above is a version of the Confederate battle flag, based on that of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The Confederacy itself used this below as its official flag, chosen on this date in 1861:

The flag was known as the “Stars and Bars” and was widely disliked because of its resemblance to the flag of the Union, the “Stars and Stripes”. So, in 1863 the CSA chose the “Stainless Banner” incorporating the battle flag in the canton:

Many liked this design because it was mostly white and the rebels were, after all, fighting for white supremacy, but in battle that was a drawback as it resembled a flag of truce or surrender. Thus, on this date in 1865, the third and last flag of the Confederate States, the “Bloodstained Banner” was chosen: