Tag: England
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Cobbett the Body-Snatcher, or What Happened to Thomas Paine’s Corpse
Even before Thomas Paine had died, at least one of his “friends” had designs on acquiring his skull. John Wesley Jarvis, an artist who was a close associate of the author of “Common Sense,” asked Paine once, in a rather morbid but friendly mood, if he would permit him to have his skull to study…
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The Poison Pen Duels of William Duane and Peter Porcupine
Some eight thousand times a day, six days a week, pressmen cranked the heavy wooden press of the Weekly Aurora newspaper of Philadelphia. They were printing platens of tiny type on the Aurora’s eight linen paper pages, much of it poison pen invective written by pro-Jeffersonian editor William Duane against mortal enemy Peter…