Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Bodie's Dead: Rosa May

The final grave of my survey of some of the sites is that of another red light district worker. Her name was Rosa May. Here she was about 24:
The gravemarker that is not too far from the morgue shows this:
Now, in the video I have of this, I point out that they think that she is really buried about 150 ft. away. Then I show the site has been really beaten down. I remembered that I had just taken pictures of this about two years back so I was positive I had seen her name there recently. This is what I had:
And, this:
These are not there anymore as you can see from the video. They really think this was the location and not one you see in the second photo above based on some of the pictures going back to the 1920's that have the original wooden fence.

I was not going to add this because of the reflection in the glass, but these items are what the Bodie museum has as being owned by Rosa May. Her red light container, a few letters, and some other items.
I am not going to say too much about Rosa May because there is not THAT much known about her. She does have a Wikipedia article that lists a few of the common stories about her. It is said that she cared for the sick and ended up dying of pneumonia in the winter of 1912.

The George Williams book listed in the article is helpful. It is more about his personal search in finding the story about Rosa May. While he does give you everything he found out, including transcripts of letters to Rosa, it is not a complete biography for the simple reason that there is just too much unknown about her life. Which is not too surprising.

Rosa May Wikipedia Article

As I close up this short series on the cemetery at Bodie I wanted to mention one thing. I mentioned the morgue next to the cemetery and there was a morgue in the town proper. The one near the cemetery actually kept the remains during the winter months when it was too difficult to bury the dead due to the snow.

Bodie's Dead (Vimeo Version)