"The Mystery of the Frozen Man"

"The Forged Suicide."

By Henry T. Gardner (?-?).

First (and only) appearance: Ainslee's Magazine, May 1901.

Artist uncredited.

Short story (8 pages; 6 illos).

Online at Archive.org (HERE; go to text page 369).

   "But I was thinking that if it was traced, they would be making some nasty inquiries——"

Quasimodo had his Esmerelda, Heathcliff had his Cathy, Tristan had his Isolde, and Romeo had his Juliet, but will Jacob have his Eleanor without the same results?

Main characters:

~ Alexander Mowatt ("They have a way of doing that"), Parkinson ("The likes of him ought to know their place and be made keep to it"), Officer Peter Clancey ("Them furriners is great for makun way wid umselves"), Izzy Weinstein ("Pretty good stuff, for poetry"), H. Mendelson ("Yes, he said, when he was brought to the morgue, that was the man"), Purvis ("He will never know till he reads this how near he came to making a great reputation for himself on Park Row"), Eleanor Mowatt ("Yes, she was angelic, but——"), Jacob Vinsky ("Then you say 'No' to me?"), and Miss Theobold ("Isn't it nice to be rich!").

Comment: Here we have an early example of crime fiction serving as a delivery vehicle for social commentary—which, in contrast, seems to be the norm these days.

References and resources:

- "casualties among the tenement house population":

  "In the United States, the term tenement initially meant a large building with multiple small spaces to rent. As cities grew in the nineteenth century, there was increasing separation between rich and poor. With rapid urban growth and immigration, overcrowded houses with poor sanitation gave tenements a reputation as shanty towns. The expression 'tenement house' was used to designate a building subdivided to provide cheap rental accommodation, which was initially a subdivision of a large house. Beginning in the 1850s, purpose-built tenements of up to six stories held several households on each floor. Various names were introduced for better dwellings, and eventually modern apartments predominated in American urban living." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the park policemen in the squad-room of the Arsenal":

  "The Arsenal is a symmetrical brick building with modestly Gothic Revival details, located in Central Park in New York City adjacent to the Central Park Zoo. It is centered on 64th Street west of Fifth Avenue. Built between 1847 and 1851 as a storehouse for arms and ammunition for the New York State Militia, the building is the second-oldest extant structure that was constructed within Central Park, predating the park's construction. . . . it has also served as a zoo, a police precinct and a weather bureau . . ." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the discovery of an unknown suicide in the upper park":

  "Central Park is bordered by Central Park North at 110th Street; Central Park South at 59th Street; Central Park West at Eighth Avenue; and Fifth Avenue on the east. The park is adjacent to the neighborhoods of Harlem to the north, Midtown Manhattan to the south, the Upper West Side to the west, and the Upper East Side to the east. It measures 2.5 miles (4.0 km) from north to south and 0.5 miles (0.80 km) from west to east." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "on Park Row":

  "During the late 19th century, Park Row was nicknamed Newspaper Row, as most of New York City's newspapers located on the street to be close to City Hall. Among the earlier newspapers in the area were 'The New York Times', which in 1857 became the first New York City newspaper to be housed in a structure built specially for its use. Part of the southern section of the street, centered on the intersection with Spruce Street, was known as Printing House Square. The newspapers housed on Newspaper Row, combined, printed more than 250,000 copies per day at their peak, leading the area to be considered 'America's preeminent press center.' Other papers, such as the 'New York Herald' and 'The Sun', were near Newspaper Row but not actually housed on Park Row itself." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the cleverest Central Office detectives":

  "The Detective Bureau is one of 14 bureaus within the New York City Police Department and is headed by the three-star Chief of Detectives. The Detective Squad was formed in 1857 with the Detective Bureau later formed in 1882." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the Theosophical Society":

  "The Theosophical Society is the organizational body of Theosophy, an esoteric new religious movement. It was founded in New York City, U.S. in 1875. Among its founders were Helena Blavatsky, a Russian mystic and the principal thinker of the Theosophy movement, and Henry Steel Olcott, the society's first president. It draws upon a wide array of influences among them older European philosophies and movements such as Neoplatonism and occultism, as well as parts of Asian religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the A. P.":

  "The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are distributed to its members, major U.S. daily newspapers and radio and television broadcasters." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the University Settlement":

  "The University Settlement Society of New York is an American organization which provides educational and social services to immigrants and low-income families, located at 184 Eldridge Street (corner of Eldridge and Rivington Streets) on the Lower East Side of the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York. It provides numerous services for the mostly immigrant population of the neighborhood and has since 1886, when it was established as the first settlement house in the United States." (Wikipedia HERE; also see HERE.)

- "flaming Sinai":

  "Mount Sinai (Hebrew: הַר סִינַי‬‎, Har Sīnay) is the mountain at which the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God, according to the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible. In the Book of Deuteronomy, these events are described as having transpired at Mount Horeb. 'Sinai' and 'Horeb' are generally considered by scholars to refer to the same place. The location of the Mount Sinai described in the Bible remains disputed. The high point of the dispute was in the mid-nineteenth century. Hebrew Bible texts describe the theophany at Mount Sinai in terms which a minority of scholars, following Charles Beke (1873), have suggested may literally describe the mountain as a volcano. Mount Sinai is one of the most sacred locations in Judaism, Christianity and Islam." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "his plan for utilizing the intense cold of liquid air":

  "Electricity made the development of effective units possible. In 1901, American inventor Willis H. Carrier built what is considered the first modern electrical air conditioning unit. In 1902, he installed his first air-conditioning system, in the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing & Publishing Company in Brooklyn, New York. His invention controlled both the temperature and humidity, which helped maintain consistent paper dimensions and ink alignment at the printing plant. . . . Domestic air conditioning soon took off." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "The sweltering sweat-shop":

  "Between 1832 and 1850, sweatshops attracted individuals with lower incomes to growing cities, and attracted immigrants to locations such as London and New York City's garment district, located near the tenements of New York's Lower East Side. These sweatshops incurred criticism: labor leaders cited them as crowded, poorly ventilated, and prone to fires and rodent infestations: in many cases, there were many workers crowded into small tenement rooms." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "they tell me it's very cold between the stars":

  "Outer space (or simply space) is the expanse that exists beyond Earth's atmosphere and between celestial bodies. It contains ultra-low levels of particle densities, constituting a near-perfect vacuum of predominantly hydrogen and helium plasma, permeated by electromag-netic radiation, cosmic rays, neutrinos, magnetic fields and dust. The baseline temperature of outer space, as set by the background radiation from the Big Bang, is 2.7 kelvins (−270 °C; −455 °F)." (Wikipedia HERE).

- Is this Englishman the author of our story, a victim of World War I (HERE)? Otherwise we know nothing about Henry T. Gardner.

- FictionMags has only two entries for Gardner:

  (1) "John Philip Sousa," (illustrated article) Ainslee’s Magazine, July 1900

  (2) "The Forged Suicide," (short story) Ainslee’s Magazine, May 1901 (above).

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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