The Filson Historical Society Blog

Sometimes while cataloging, one will find items that relate directly to current events.  That was the case last week when I discovered a 1962 letter discussing the British health care system.  In 1958, Thomas E. and Quinlan H. Quisenberry, an Illinois couple with Kentucky roots, traveled to Great Britain.  In the “International Airport,” now Heathrow, Quinlan suffered a heart attack and was treated in an English hospital.  Four years later, Thomas Quisenberry wrote to a family friend about Quinlan’s experience with British health care.

She spent almost a month in the hospital which serves the International Airport, in which it may be interesting for you to know all services were provided and there was no way in which an American visitor could make any payment although we were permitted anonymously to make a gift to provide some new equipment for the nurses’ tearoom.  With her interest in people and the fact that she was an ambulatory case, Quin found her stay an enormous study in a cross section of English people, and both of us came away with an enormous respect for what is contemptuously referred to here as socialized medicine.  Equipment and facilities may be regarded as inferior to what we have here but free of hospital plans, Blue Cross and all the rest, the standard of medical care and above all the relationship of doctors and staff to patients, where there were no private rooms and wards were community ones, showed a spirit of interest in each other that made for one of the most extraordinary relationships I have ever seen in a hospital.

Quinlan recovered and was able to return to the United States.  Unfortunately, she died later that summer from heart problems.

Ya got trouble, folks, right here in River City
With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “P”
And that stands for “pool”
-“Trouble,” The Music Man

In the 1962 film version of Meredith Willson’s musical, The Music Man, con man Harold Hill convinces the townspeople of River City that a new pool hall is a scourge on their community and could corrupt their children.  Instead, Hill suggests, the concerned citizens should invest in band instruments, promising that trombones and cornets would protect their children from the ills brought on by pool halls and their denizens.

Excerpt from Claude Matthews's July 1866 letter to Pattie Beatty. Beatty-Quisenberry Family Papers.

The Beatty-Quisenberry Family Papers include a real-life version of Hill’s song, “Trouble,” without the subsequent scam.  In July 1866, approximately 50 years before The Music Man’s 1912 setting, at least one citizen of Maysville, Kentucky, was troubled by the vice perceived to accompany the introduction of billiard tables in the town.  Writing to Pattie Beatty, who lived in Danville, Claude Matthews, a Centre College student at home in Maysville for the summer, described the scene in his hometown:

Our streets now are lighted with gas, but with it have come evils that have undoubtedly spring from its introduction.  It seems to have illumined the way to the smaller vices – such as amusements easily turned into games of chance, hitherto unknown here.

Billiard tables are now crowded into every little room that can be obtained for the purpose.  Crowds of all ages, from the ragged boy to the Merchant; are constantly thronging there, the Merchant neglecting his business, the Clerk passing his time there and abusing the confidence of his employees, and the laboring man spending his hard-earned wages for an useless entertainment.

These Billiard saloons are all connected with drinking houses, before reaching the one you must pass thro the other and what a temptation is there!  We have not had them long here, the novelty has not yet worn off, for those who cannot afford to play are everynight crowding around the doors.  All seem to be overpowered by a feverish passion for the table & a desire to out-do his neighbor.  I am not exaggerating, it is worse than I could tell you of.  ‘Tis horrible to think how many may have already been ruined, their first game their downward step, unnoticed now, but ere long seen too well, too late.  It is thus I have found Maysville, and even now long for the happy, sweet quiet of D [Danville].  I would willingly return tomorrow, should College take up.

Margaretha Beatty's January 30, 1854 letter to her father-in-law, Adam Beatty.

The collections at The Filson are known for their wealth of information on the history of Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley. The Filson’s holdings include a variety of materials from the residents of the Ohio Valley dating from the first settlement of Kentucky in the 1700s through the present day. However, those who settled in the Ohio Valley often had a large web of family and friends stretching across the United States, and in some cases, around the world. As a result, many collections include letters and other items describing locales far from Kentucky. One example is the Beatty-Quisenberry Family Papers. During the antebellum era, the family of Adam Beatty, a Mason County judge and farmer, had members in Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Louisiana, and California. Their friends and acquaintances covered much of the eastern United States. The materials generated by these people living beyond the Ohio Valley demonstrate the patterns of life in other regions and enrich our understanding of life in Kentucky and the surrounding area.

In the 1850s, one of Beatty’s sons and his family moved to Sacramento, California. Mary Beatty, Adam Beatty’s daughter-in-law, frequently wrote to her in-laws, describing life in California in the early years of statehood. In one paragraph from a January 1854 letter from Beatty to her father-in-law, she reveals a variety of insights into life in California:

Sacramento is now the Capital of the state and I suppose it will always be we have a very fine state House and water works, the water from the river is distributed all over the city they are putting up gas works to light the city also. We had a dreadful accident here on last Saturday, the steam Boat Pearl blew up and killed about 60 persons. 53 bodies have been found and buried, or to be buried this afternoon. A solemn procession went out of the city yesterday to the grave yard to bury those that were buried yesterday. It is estimated that there were 7000 in procession beside those who went as spectators. There were 13 chinese bodies carried out, and a procession of 700 Chinese with Chinese Music. The Christians and Pagans were burying their countrymen at the same time. Quite near to each other with their different rites. At every Chinese grave there was a stick of incense and red candles burning and in the midst of the graves they had provisions spread out, with a hog roasted whole.

In that one section, Beatty reveals political developments in the still young California, the dangers of nineteenth century life, the large Chinese presence in California, and the close proximity of the Chinese and white populations.

Although letters like Beatty’s are less common in The Filson’s holdings than materials dealing with Kentucky and the Ohio Valley, they are present throughout the collections. They offer a breadth to The Filson’s holdings which makes them of use to researchers whose interests extend well beyond this region.