Unauthorized Dwellings
Jackson Barnett, “The World’s Richest Indian”
From Wikipedia:
With the discovery of oil on Barnett's lands in 1912, a series of court actions by interested parties litigated the control of Barnett's trust. Barnett was declared incompetent and denied access to his affairs simply because he only spoke the Muscogee Creek language and not English. Barnett was permitted a modest income and was installed in a house near Henryetta. In 1919 the courts allowed the diversion of money from Barnett's trust to the construction of the "Jackson Barnett Hospital" in Henryetta. In 1920 Barnett, then in his seventies, married Anna Laura Lowe (1881-1952), a fortune hunter whom he had met only once before. The couple had to marry in Kansas after a marriage license was denied in Oklahoma. Barnett's guardians were unable to annul the marriage and the hospital plans were never pursued. Instead, the trust was divided between Anna Barnett and Bacone Indian College.[3]
The Barnetts moved to Los Angeles and bought a mansion on Wilshire Boulevard, where Jackson passed his time directing traffic at a nearby intersection. Legal actions continued from 1923 to 1929, which provoked congressional hearings on the role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in establishing and administering the Barnett trust and others like it. The hearings led to criticism of BIA administrator Charles H. Burke's actions, and during the 1930s, to the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. In 1927 Barnett v. Equitable again proclaimed Jackson Barnett incompetent in federal court. In March 1934 another federal ruling annulled the Barnetts' marriage and Anna Barnett's rights to Jackson's trust on the grounds that Jackson had been "kidnapped" by a woman of suspect moral character, but allowed Anna to act as Jackson's caretaker. Jackson Barnett died on 29 May 1934 of natural causes: allegations that Anna had poisoned him were found to be false.[3][4]
Anna was finally evicted from the Wilshire Boulevard residence after four years, even though she had gained significant support from Los Angeles society,[5] including Los Angeles District Attorney Burton Fitts and California Governor Frank Merriam. Anna had to be tear-gassed after she threw a hatchet during the eviction,[5] and lived the remainder of her life with a daughter while unsuccessfully attempting to regain a share of the Barnett estate, which amounted to $3.5 million in 1934 ($55.4 million estimated value in 2012 dollars).
Source.
Lots more info here.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Nov 10, 2019 -
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Category: Crime, Unauthorized Dwellings, Forgotten Figures and Where Are They Now?, Frauds, Cons and Scams, Government, Hospitals, Twentieth Century, Native Americans, Weddings
Unauthorized Dwellings 10
Squatting AND pirate radio! A winning combo!
Source (where the text is bigger).
Posted By: Paul - Mon Jul 29, 2019 -
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Category: Radio, Unauthorized Dwellings, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers, 1970s, United Kingdom
Unauthorized Dwellings 9
Source.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Apr 26, 2019 -
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Category: Unauthorized Dwellings, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers, 1960s, United Kingdom
Prince Leonard Casley, RIP
Full article here.
Wikipedia page.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Feb 14, 2019 -
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Category: Eccentrics, Curmudgeons and Contrarianism, Government, Unauthorized Dwellings, Outsider Art, Performance Art, Foreign Customs, Obituaries, 1970s
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The famous author Robert Louis Stevenson spent a large part of his honeymoon squatting in an abandoned cabin.After their marriage in San Francisco on 19 May 1880, Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson set off on an adventurous honeymoon to the Napa Valley. Stopping briefly for a night in Vallejo, the Stevenson’s then boarded a train to carry them (and their dog Chuchu) to Calistoga at the northern end of the Valley. They spent the remainder of May in Calistoga, at one of the Hot Springs Hotel cottages. Then, once joined by Fanny’s son Lloyd Osbourne, the family made their way up the grade of Mount St. Helena to the Toll House, from which they found their way to the abandoned Silverado Mine bunkhouse where they would squat until the end of July.
You can read his account of that time, THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS, here.
Or, you can visit the state park named after the writer.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Dec 18, 2018 -
Comments (2)
Category: Buildings and Other Structures, Nature, Unauthorized Dwellings, Marriage, Nineteenth Century
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Source of article.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Oct 05, 2018 -
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Category: Unauthorized Dwellings, 1990s
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Keeping one's lover in the attic, hidden from the resident husband, has to require some chutzpah.
Full story here.
Dolly Oesterreich, 33 at the time, first became friendly with 17-year-old Otto Sanhuber (Jul 16, 1888 - ?)around 1913 and described him as her "vagabond half-brother." The two quickly became lovers and met clandestinely at Sanhuber's boarding room or at a nearby hotel. They also arranged trysts at Dolly's home but, when neighbors began noting Otto's increasingly frequent comings and goings and alerted her husband, Dolly suggested to Otto that he quit his job and secretly move into the Oesterreichs' upstairs attic to allay any further suspicions. He readily agreed to the arrangement. Not only would this put him in closer proximity to his lover but it would also give him time to pursue his dream of writing pulp fiction stories. Sanhuber would later describe himself as Dolly's "sex slave".
Posted By: Paul - Wed May 30, 2018 -
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Category: Crime, Unauthorized Dwellings, Death, Sexuality, Twentieth Century
Unauthorized dwelling at Yale
Here's one for Paul's unauthorized dwellings theme:Able to afford tuition at Yale, but not housing, 22-year-old Allan Kornfeld lived surreptitiously in a ventilation shaft for seven months, from 1963 to 1964.
Appleton Post-Crescent - Jun 18, 1964
Posted By: Alex - Tue Feb 20, 2018 -
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Category: Unauthorized Dwellings, 1960s
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Houseboats have always been a prime source of contention as authorities try to police dwellings. The Amsterdam article is from 2016. The other news report hails from 1924.
Source.
UPDATE: now behind CHICAGO TRIBUNE paywall.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Jan 08, 2018 -
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Category: Buildings and Other Structures, Oceans and Maritime Pursuits, Unauthorized Dwellings, 1920s, Twenty-first Century
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Posted By: Paul - Wed Oct 04, 2017 -
Comments (1)
Category: Antisocial Activities, Crowds, Groups, Mobs and Other Mass Movements, Police and Other Law Enforcement, Unauthorized Dwellings, 1980s
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |