Tragedy in a Postcard

I am working on a historical novel, set in Kansas in 1917. I wanted a contemporary image of the Fort Leavenworth Military Prison. Thanks to Crow’s Nest Postcards via eBay, I found one from 1912. Perfect. It had special appeal because of the message it bore, addressed to Miss Bertha Perdue of Parsons, Kansas.

Burlington Kan  Nov 11 / 1912

Helo Girlie how are you I am well I took Prisoners to this place when I was a soldier and one Was My Pal But he deserted and got 3 years and a Bob* For it I got him at Fort Monroe Va I Will be down Between Now and Next Saturday [illegible] Love and Best Wishes I am your own

Powell

I wondered if I could find out who they were. Between familysearch.com, newspapers.com, and online census records, I did.

Bertha Perdue was 16 when her “own Powell” wrote her the postcard. Powell Clayton Dye was 26 and a private in the Kansas National Guard. They were married less than a year later, on August 1, 1913. On July 7, 1914, their son William Robert (known as “Duddley” or “Dudley”) was born (yes, I did the math – they didn’t “have to” get married). By October, Powell’s name was on a list of former National Guardsmen who had 50 cents left in his payroll account that he had never collected.

In July 1918, Bertha was the subject of a “lunacy commission” in a neighboring county. Six witnesses (including her father), a doctor and a lawyer testified and collected small fees. I do not know what the outcome was.

In 1919, Powell created a stir in the local papers. An article in the Kansas City Post (even then considered a “yellow journalism” tabloid) described him as a former soldier abandoned, impoverished, homeless and “living in a dog kennel” by the railroad tracks after a stint in the Philippines. His relatives in his hometown of Burlington were furious – he had never been in the Philippines, was a violent, abusive drunk, whose sisters were letting him live in a shed on their property. They feared his “violence and profanity.” They tried to send him to the “state sanitorium” but he refused to go, nor would he accept the help of other family members. By November he was dead – alcoholism? Exposure? The Spanish influenza? We don’t know. He is buried in a modest grave in Burlington.

Bertha and her little boy were back with her parents by spring 1920. I hoped things might be better for her. But when I looked for her in the 1930 census, my heart sank. By then, her residence was the Parsons State Hospital. It may have been a well-intentioned facility for “sane and insane epileptics” (mostly men), but a number of women who had been “adjudged insane” were sent there by county “lunacy commissions.” (It was also the site of a research study in 1914 on the effects of rattlesnake poison on epileptics – it did not help them.) Her crochet-trimmed pillow case won first prize at the Tri-State Fair in 1931; a fellow inmate’s took second. Bertha Perdue Dye died there in 1936 at the age of 40. She is buried in the hospital cemetery grounds where most of the graves are unmarked.

Dudley went to live with an uncle in Iowa. He married, had no children, and died in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2001.

Drunkenness, family rupture, abandonment (of whom by whom and when?), lunacy declaration and involuntary commitment, and two doubtless miserable deaths. The flameout and end of “girlie” Bertha Perdue and her own Powell Dye. So much pain from one old postcard.

Writing historical fiction can be dangerous.

*Bob – someone asked me if I knew what that referred to. My best guess come from the Basic Field Manual – Soldiers Handbook, issued to all new recruits in December 1940, which contains a “Glossary of Common MIlitary Expressions.” “Bob-tail” was slang for a dishonorable discharge. In the context of Powell’s buddy, it seems plausible he got three years in prison and a dishonorable discharge for desertion.