My Little Fat Girl

You can be sure that few 12-year-old girls would appreciate being called 'my little fat girl' as a term of endearment today, but back in 1911 it was probably received with a giggle. Maybe.

The lovely card was sent to Miss Fanny Irene Ely of New Milford, Pennsylvania (current population 868).

The message is very amusing:

Dear Irene.

How is my little fat girl now days, any way. I am sick I talked to much I guess (?)

Jaws hurt.

Yours -

L.M.L.

Irene was born in New Milford in 1899 to parents Charles and Jessie. Sadly, Irene's father, a laborer at the stone quarry,  died only a year after she received this card. Irene's mother remarried almost immediately, probably out of necessity, to a man named Hobert Gunn who was 12 years her junior and also worked at the quarry. Life must have been very tough in New Milford, because he died at the age of 39. Irene's mother outlived the second husband too, but died at the age of 57.

At that point it appears that Irene went to live with her sister's family, the Trowbridges, in the Johnson City/Binghamton, New York area, where she worked as a bookkeeper at the First National Bank. According to city directories, she was still working there in 1953. It doesn't look like Irene ever married though. After she died at the age of 58, she was buried with her parents in the New Milford cemetery.

Source

Bine - University of Vienna Medical School

René Bine is 22 as he writes his accounts of medical school in Vienna in 1904. He's full of observations on professors and fellow students as well as the cultural and political events of the day. 

Since Sigmund Freud was at the University of Vienna at the time, I am surprised that I have yet to come across any reference to him in René's cards. He does mention Alfred Fuchs though, who was also a professor of psychiatry and nervous diseases at the time. He also speaks of Dr. Edmund Neusser, another professor and, like René, an ardent music lover. In fact, Professor Neusser was himself a very accomplished pianist and married Paula Mark, a soprano with the Vienna Court Opera.

This is a picture of Professor Edmund Neusser.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Here's the card that René sent to his family back in San Francisco.
 

And here's what what he had to say:
 

Fuchs, the nerve man is popular as ever. Occasionally he hypnotizes a patient + thus livens up the otherwise quiet but most instructive and interesting demonstrations. Brother Eserich I have forgot to call on but 4 times this week as I preferred to favor Prof. Neusser for a change. Neusser gives lectures + demonstrations, but his voice is poor + hard to catch unless one be accustomed to it. He is to-day said to be the greatest diagnostician in Vienna, if not in the world, being chief over Kovack, ex-chief over Ortner, tho' for us Ortner seems as good. -

Nothing new otherwise. Everything is OK + I hope you can say ditto. Papa's foot I suppose is now a bobo long forgotten. Ma's cough, I know she does not want to lose, for without headaches she'd have no kick coming - Give my best regards to all the folks + receive best kisses from loving brother and son

René

You can read more about Dr. Norbert Ortner here. Of perhaps more interest is René 's reference to Brother Eserich, if as I believe, he is actually referring to Theodor Escherich, who was a professor at the University of Vienna at the time. It was Professor Escherich who discovered the bacterium Escherichia coli (also known as E. coli), which was named after him. He was also a very distinguished looking man.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

This is one of many posts on the correspondence of Dr. René Bine of San Francisco. If you'd like to read more, go to the bottom of the web page and click on the tab for Dr. René Bine.

Here's the back of the card.

Tiny Children of Normandy

Can these children possibly be this small? They seem out of scale with the rest of the picture. In fact they look to be about the size of a potted plant.

Here's a close-up.