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Well Dressed Man On Top Of A Dead Horse

GNC

GNC

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Click on the link for the full story and the picture, of course:

http://www.sheboygan-press.com/apps/pbc ... 50642/1973

Vintage photo of dead horse raises questions

By Janet Ortegon
Sheboygan Press staff

First of all, what's the deal with the top hat?

A vintage Sheboygan photo, taken before the turn of the 20th century, has sparked some conversation in the community since its inclusion in The Sheboygan Press' 2007 calendar.

The photo, which is inside the calendar's front cover, shows a scene at Eighth Street and Indiana Avenue, looking north toward the Eighth Street bridge.

In the photo, a dead horse lies in the street, roped off with string tied to stakes in the dirt road. A man in a top hat, bow tie and jacket sits on top of the horse, and people in the background are standing still, looking toward the camera.

"I always just assumed it was taken as a joke or something like that," said Bill Wangemann, Sheboygan city historian. "I was never able to find out anything about it. What the story behind that (picture) is, I don't have the foggiest notion."

Past attempts by reporters at The Sheboygan Press to find out the circumstances of the photo were unsuccessful, and even local experts at the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center came up empty-handed when they looked for information...
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Come on, let's have your guesses. What's going on there? I have a feeling it wasn't staged, but just an odd moment caught by the camera, but even that vague explanation throws up more questions.
 
How very very odd. Why is the horse cornered off with string and post?
And what is the fancy dandy doing sitting on it?
I am dying of curiousity.......
Was the horse wild?
I just have no clue.....but I love the photo!
 
Some of the reader comments on the webpage are saying it wasn't a horse at all, but a mule or donkey. That doesn't really clear anything up, though.
 
That makes sense. I expect this solution to be printed on Monday in the newspaper that I saw the photo in this morning.

Nice to see that even in the eighteen hundreds there was the equivalent of those people who stand around behind news reporters just to get in the picture. Only these guys aren't waving, pulling faces, holding thumbs aloft, etc.
 
I don't see how this is strange at all. The cordon is clearly to stop other road users getting tangled up in the dead horse, as you can see the cordon is much wider than the carcass so any other traffic knows that if it clears the cordon it clears the horse with a good margin for error.

They guy is just sitting on the horse because he's waiting for someone to take it away. A little macabre but if it's his hard working horse I doubt he'd have any problem with resting on its dead body.

Whats wrong with that?
 
If it had just died, why take a picture of it?

maybe there was some reason for it? May it was a famous horse- had a bad temper maybe, or prehaps it was rabid. Someone might have wanted photographic evidence that they had killed it, especially as photography was so expensive in those days. Only a guy who could afford a top hat could afford to have his photo taken.
 
Daftbugger1 said:
If it had just died, why take a picture of it?

maybe there was some reason for it? May it was a famous horse- had a bad temper maybe, or prehaps it was rabid. Someone might have wanted photographic evidence that they had killed it, especially as photography was so expensive in those days. Only a guy who could afford a top hat could afford to have his photo taken.
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Interesting you say that. I was thinking maybe the horse had rabies, and this guy had taken it down.......hence the photo, as this crazy horse may have been terrorizing the neighborhood, foaming mouth and all........but I thought that sounded too koo koo. But in a way it does make sense given the time. :D
 
If a horse had to be put down, there are far more convenient places to do it than a (curiously empty) city street, unless it injured itself and had to be put down on the spot.
 
Second Mystery

Second mystery:

What is that tall wooden structure in the background?

It looks like as giant gallows.

Yeah, I know, "Hang 'Em High," but this is ridiculous.
 
I think he's had some terrible kind of prolapse and dressed it up in a fur coat to avoid embarrassment.

This picture reminds me of a collection of photographs published a couple of years back which consisted of bizarre, unexplained and uncredited images taken in late 19th and early to mid(ish) 20th century America. They were "found" images with no provenance and some of them were fascinating not to mention downright beautiful - like non-sensical photographic haikus. You can't help feeling sometimes that any kind of explanation might actually detract from the idle fascination the image of, say, a man in a top hat sitting on a dead horse might give us.
 
If you study any old collections of city photography, especially from the late 19th to early 20th century you will always come across pictures of streets seemingly taken for no other reason than the fact that the street is there. Because there was so much equipment to set up and prepare, and of the relitive novelty of photography it isn't unusual to have people in the background who are facing the camera directly in a manner that seems unusual to us today.
 
Spookdaddy said:
I think he's had some terrible kind of prolapse and dressed it up in a fur coat to avoid embarrassment.

This picture reminds me of a collection of photographs published a couple of years back which consisted of bizarre, unexplained and uncredited images taken in late 19th and early to mid(ish) 20th century America. They were "found" images with no provenance and some of them were fascinating not to mention downright beautiful - like non-sensical photographic haikus. You can't help feeling sometimes that any kind of explanation might actually detract from the idle fascination the image of, say, a man in a top hat sitting on a dead horse might give us.
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Swapatorium has a lot of those.
 
It does remind me of those safari photos where someone would pose like this on top of an animal that they've shot (and he is posing in that photo). He doesn't have a gun or anything though.

It looks like he's got dressed specially for the picture - there's a sense that he needs to look good because its going to go on the wall or be seen by people in some way.

The man with the dog looks like he has some connection with it, I don't think he is just a bystander. He's standing neatly & patiently a short distance from the rope like he's been told to get in the photo. The 2 men in the far back ground look more natural in stance and look like genuine bystanders. You can see that they're discussing the man on the horse between them.
 
Re: Second Mystery

OldTimeRadio said:
Second mystery:

What is that tall wooden structure in the background?

It looks like as giant gallows.

Yeah, I know, "Hang 'Em High," but this is ridiculous.
Click to expand...

That definetley does look like gallows....makes things even more mysterious.

I know they used to hang pigs....... :shock:
 
I'm guessing it was a horse he liked and he wanted to record one last memory of it before the trash men picked it up for the dump!
 
Jan Hildebrand column: At the risk of beating a dead horse ...

The Sheboygan County Historical Research Center has been inundated with calls and e-mails about the picture of the silk-hatted gentleman sitting on a dead horse in the middle of the street. The photograph apparently is making its way around the world via the Internet.

Calls from CNN and the BBC have sparked interest in everyone who sees the picture and various stories have been concocted as to what the photo shows.

Working with the center's copy of the original photograph, we have identified the buildings in the picture.

In the center of the picture, which one e-mailer identified as a gallows, is the Eighth Street bridge built in 1865.

On the left is a two-story structure that has been identified as being the Lake View House in 1871. John Messner was the proprietor.

In the 1875 city directory, it is still listed as the Lake View House. The 1884 directory has the building as the Evergreen City Hotel, P. Reuther proprietor. Around the turn of the century it became Jelenc's tavern. The area shown is now part of the roundabout at that location.

The wooden buildings north of the Lake View House are a part of the C. Reiss & Co. yards. Clemens Reiss was in business with Christian Eckhardt and Frederick Karste and they dealt in wood, coal and grains at the south end of the Eighth Street bridge.

To the left of the bridge and across the river is the Michael Winter Lumber Co. Winter established his company with Henry Klue circa 1867, and in 1870 he continued alone. The absence of railroad or streetcar tracks points to an early date of possibly 1871-72.

The horse is definitely dead, although some e-mailers point out it could be a trick horse. It is still wearing a bridle but no saddle is shown.

In 1867 the Common Council passed the first traffic regulations. It stated that "any horses, mules, jackasses or swine running at large within the city may be impounded." It also passed the first regulation for the driving of hackneys, coaches, cabs, drays and omnibuses in the city.

Another regulation states that any "unsound beef, pork, fish, hides or skins of any kind, or any other articles found within the city … must be destroyed or buried … ."

There is a rope strung between two poles in front of the dead horse making it appear that the man is waiting for a wagon or dray to come and fetch the body. The rope alerts other drivers to the obstruction in the road.

There were at least three photographic studios in Sheboygan, two nearby on Pennsylvania Avenue and Eighth Street. One was David Hawkins and the other W. Morgenmeier. A third firm was Harmon and Manville. All are listed in the 1868 city directory.

In 1875 there were also three — Groh, Manville and Mallory and Morgenmeier. Anyone of these men could have taken the picture, which is unfortunately unmarked.

We shall never know the identity of the young man — that name is lost to time — but the incongruity of a man wearing a silk top hat sitting on a dead horse is too good to be kept a secret.

A big thank you to everyone who e-mailed or called about the photo and to the networks for picking up the story and spreading it around the globe. You can't buy publicity like that.

Jan Hildebrand is a member of the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center, 467-

Link
 
Aha, I was right. Just goes to show you that the simplest explaination is often the right one.
 
He hasn't just beaten it in an old style bare knuckles boxing match has he? ;)
 
Here's the photo ...

Man_sitting_on_a_dead_horse_(1876_-_1884).jpg

​
SOURCE:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Man_sitting_on_a_dead_horse_(1876_-_1884).jpg
 
Is the photo even genuine? I'm no expert but there's something about the placing of the man on the horse and the man and dog further behind that looks "off" to me, like they have been super-imposed/composited.
 
That looks like a 'one-horse town'.
Except that the one horse is now dead.
 
It looks more like a pony to me. ie too small for the man to have been riding. And, if you're waiting for the knacker man to come and take the carcass, why not take the bridle (worth good money) off while you're waiting?
 
Interestingly, many large cities had a huge problem towards the end of the horse era, ie, so much dung, some towns never cleared it up, some did a bit, still see many boot scrapers that were built into houses by the front door. In some cities there were dung piles 10's of feet high, the stench in summer plus the flies, well just imagine. Dead horses were often just left where they died, they would get a bit unpleasant after a few days. Then the internal combustion engine was invented and started powering vehicules, it was actually a fantastic thing for many cities. Big switch over, that's why many back street garages (car mechanic type) were originally stables !.
 
Ogdred Weary said:
Is the photo even genuine? I'm no expert but there's something about the placing of the man on the horse and the man and dog further behind that looks "off" to me, like they have been super-imposed/composited.
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Agreed! Look at the left arm and how it seems out of scale with the lower portion of the arm. The whole upper torso seems as if the tear-lines for the upper right hand quarter+ of the picture have been superimposed.
 
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