Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories #046

For about 30 years in the middle of the 20th century, medical wisdom had declared that destroying organically healthy brain tissue was a legitimate treatment for varying psychiatric disorders. The concept of psychosurgery dates back to the Neolithic period but became more prominent in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The champion for destroying healthy brain tissue was a Philadelphia born-and trained neurologist Walter Freeman, who performed the procedure several thousand times.

Robert A. Groff, MD, also trained at Penn, as well as under the legendary Harvey Cushing in Boston. Toward the end of his legendary career, he was convinced to perform a lobotomy on a patient who had already failed the procedure once. Groff did it twice, and when the patient and his mother were disappointed by the results they sued. But Dr. Groff died after giving his deposition, but before his case came to trial.

This podcast gives a history of psychosurgery, starting with trepanning, and covers it through the horror days of blind lobotomies with a butter knife to present-day stereotactic deep stimulation techniques.

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076, part 5

Philadelphian Henry Naglee was a West Point graduate who fought in Mexico, the West, and the Civil War. He took a liking to the West Coast and built the first permanent commercial structure in San Francisco, installed vineyards that produced the finest brandy in the country, and is namesake for the Naglee Park section of San Jose. But he was a scoundrel with women, one of whom repaid him by publishing his love letters and his self-portrait of doing naked pushups on his bathtub. General Naglee is interred in the South segment of Laurel Hill East.

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076, part 4

Rat Catcher Lou Bossle was proud of his profession - it is even carved onto his Laurel Hill West tombstone. Twice in the 1890s, Philadelphia newspapers sent a reporter to keep him company in rat-infested basements while he was on the job.

I'll tell you about the long relationship between humans and rats, and share some of the methods used by ratcatchers of yore.

If you're a little squeamish, this one might make you squeam.

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #76, part 3

Mabel Tinley was a Philadelphia-born con woman with a hypnotizing gaze who worked her way into New York Society with boldness and beauty. Fellow cemetery historian Tom Keels tells her remarkable story and suggests an inscription for her stone - should she ever get one.

Here Lies

MABEL TINLEY

AKA

Mrs. Richard W. Roelofs, Fickle Wife and Inattentive Mother,

Lasca Vega, Vaudeville Vamp,

Louise Vermeule, Serial Shopper,

Mrs. John (Catherine Stuyvesant) Van Ness Roberts, Buddy of Big Apple Bluebloods,

And a host of other aliases, too numerous and transitory to mention.

R.I.P.

From All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076

This segment of the podcast talks about the evolution of the diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from nostalgia and soldier's heart to shell shock and battle fatigue and the thousand yard stare.

W. Griffin Gribbel was a wealthy Chestnut Hill businessman and Great War veteran whose wealth, career, and family could not save him from his post-war nightmares. His behavior often got so out of control that he had to be confined in an asylum. After a minor plane accident in 1929, he threatened everyone in his house with his collection of firearms. When a police officer came to the house to help take him away, Gribbel shot and killed the man, but was acquitted at his trial. Several years later, he stabbed a waiter in the throat at a local hotel. He is interred at Laurel Hill West.

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076, part 1

Morton McMichael Hoyt was named for his great-grandfather the mayor. His sister, Elinor Wylie, was a famed poet and author. Before he had turned 21, he married Jeanine Bankhead, older sister of up-and-coming actress Tallulah. When the marriage failed, they tried again. And then a third time. Then there's the time he jumped off a steamship on a bet ... or was it a dare ... to impress a 17-year-old. And he was captured by the Nazis in 1942 and spent the war in a German concentration camp. His ashes were consigned to earth at Laurel Hill West.

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076

The July 2025 episode tells of five people who really didn’t fit anywhere else.

• Morton McMichael Hoyt married the same woman three times and once jumped off a steamship to impress a 17-year-old girl.
• Major Wakeman Griffin Gribbel was gassed and wounded during the Great War; during one of several psychotic breaks, he mortally wounded a police officer, but a jury found him “not guilty.”
• Fellow guide and amateur cemetery historian Tom Keels tells the rollicking story of Mabel Tinsley, one of the great con artists of the Gilded Age.
• Louis Bossle was the city’s best-known ratcatcher; when he died, his nickname “Ratcatcher Lou” was carved on his obelisk.
• Tom Keels returns for a segment on one of our Civil War generals Richard Naglee, whose California vineyards made the finest brandy in the land, but whose amorous ventures got him in deep trouble more than once.

These five people come together under one podcast on July 1st, then each individual gets their own podcast on the 2nd through the 6th.

Biographical Bytes from Bala #045 for mid-June 2025

The card games whist and bridge arrived in Victorian Philadelphia and captivated its upper-class population. Bridge clubs formed all over town, but people soon realized the man in the know was Milton C. Work, a Philadelphia lawyer. A scoring system that Work popularized for contract bridge remains the one that most players use today.

Learn about the history of playing cards, the development of bid games, and a lot more on this month's episode.