Married Life as Opera Bouffe

A couple of weeks ago Michael and Jeff opened one of the kitchen walls and pulled out a section of The Weekly Oregonian, dated Thursday, December 29, 1904. We finally got around to browsing through the fragile pages, which crumble at a touch, and took a few snapshots. The snippets of articles, ads and stock analyses are a wild lens onto the year Justin's great grandmother was born.

Here's a sampling, taken from the above photo:

Married Life as Opera Bouffe
CHICAGO, Dec 5.--Degradation of the marriage tie, as illustrated in the life of Mrs. Grace Snell Layman, who has just been granted her fifth divorce, was denounced by judges today.
"This woman's career has been a rank travesty on marriage and the sacredness of its obligations," said Judge Brentano.
"Mrs. Snell, or Layman, or whatever her last name is at present, has turned the married life into opera bouffe," said Judge Mack.
Mrs. Layman was married first when she was 16 to Frank Coffin, a dancing master. She got a divorce from him and married him a second time. Again she got a divorce from him and again married him.
Mrs. Layman is under 40 and still pretty. She is said to be comtemplating a sixth marriage.

We put together a slide show of dozen or so clippings that feature ads for Chinese Herbs and male dysfunction remedies, and blurbs about criminal youth, the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and an attempted rat-poison-and-beer suicide, all of which you can view by clicking here.