"Mrs. Ocey Snead, in bed, baby in arms," December 1907 or January 1908. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size. Ocey, who was found dead in an East Orange, New Jersey, bathtub in November 1909, drugged and emaciated, was at the center of scandalous murder case involving her mentally unbalanced mother and a spinster aunt who starved herself to death while awaiting trial. Along with a third sister they were thought to have conspired to drug and starve Ocey to collect $32,000 in insurance money. Ocey had two children, one of whom died in infancy. (Coverage in the New York Times noted the discovery of small bones in the furnace at a building where Ocey lived -- a Brooklyn tenement dubbed "house of mystery" and "baby farm" by the neighbors.) One part of the mystery is how two photographs of Ocey, very much alive, ended up in Bain News Service collection of glass negatives at the Library of Congress. (The other photo is dated 12-21-07). Are they are family photos obtained in the course of covering the trial of the sisters? Or is there some reason GGB would have photographed Ocey well before she died? (Cue organ music.)

New York, 1898. "Adoration," posed by May Holly and Hortense. 8x10 dry-plate glass negative by Gertrude Käsebier. View full size. Happy Mother's Day!

May 1911. Fries, Virginia. "T.J. Fields and family. Work at Washington Cotton Mills. The father cards, two girls spin, boy on right end picks up bobbins. Been working a year or two. Mother and smallest children not in photo." Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.

Newport, Rhode Island, 1901. "The Manger. Experimental portrait showing values of white against white, featuring a young woman holding a baby." 8x10 dry-plate glass negative by Gertrude Käsebier. View full size.

December 1941. "Palm trees along the road, vicinity of Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands." View full size. Medium format Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration.

February 1942. "Synthetic rubber (Ameripol). Worker standing on blowdown tank, ready to tap polymerizer tank at the Akron, Ohio, synthetic rubber plant of the B.F. Goodrich Co." View full size. 4x5 nitrate negative by Alfred Palmer.

Washington, D.C., 1925. "Princess Bibesco of Rumania." Priscilla Bibesco (1920-2004) led an interesting and peripatetic life. Marcel Proust and Queen Alexandra were her godparents; her father was the Romanian ambassador to Washington. When World War 2 began, she hitchhiked to Beirut to become a spy; after the Communists took over in Eastern Europe, she made her home in Paris. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size.

Another found 35mm Kodachrome transparency from our New Jersey family of slide-takers in their atomic living room circa 1956. View full size.

Washington, D.C. April 2, 1924. The motion picture actress Fritzi Ridgeway strikes a pose. View full size. National Photo Co. Collection glass negative.

September 13, 1913. Yale football coaches and captain: Jesse Spalding, Douglas Bomeisler, Dr. William T. Bull, Carl Gallauer, Henry H. Ketcham (Capt.), Howard Jones." View full size. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. [Thanks to Anonymous Tipster for the first names and correct spelling. - Dave]

November 1908. Wylie Mill at Chester, S.C. Willie Crocker (barefoot), 13 yrs. old -- "worked since I was 6." Lost part of finger in gear of machinery. Fred Crocker, 11. One year in mill." View full size. Photo and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.

Nurse Aiko Hamaguchi at the Manzanar Relocation Center, California, in 1943. Medium format safety negative by Ansel Adams. View full size.

Washington, D.C., circa 1918. Naval medical hospital on Observatory Hill (near current site of the Kennedy Center). View full size. National Photo Company.

September 18, 1925. W.S. Abbott of Agricultural Extension Station in Vienna, Virginia, with "Sultana." View full size. National Photo Company Collection.

Washington, D.C., circa 1931. "Child seated in toy automobile." View full size. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. The radio: Atwater-Kent 84Q.