A colorful—but incidental—Fortean.
William Wilfred Whalen was born 7 May 1882 in Mt. Carmel, Pennsylvania. (Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches, 1930-[1952], Volume 1 incorrectly has it as 1886.) He was the eldest of (what I believe to be) nine children: in 1910, he was 28 and his youngest sibling was three. His father, Michael, a native of Pennsylvania, worked in a coal mine. His mother, Alice, was from Canada (and her father from France). She was giving birth well into her forties.
It is a little difficult to sort out Whalen’s life as a long man—at least it cannot be done without more intensive research. He was publishing in the early 1900s—about the same time Fort was making his start. And like Fort he did time as a journalist—in Whalen’s case, in Harrisburg. At least some of his early writing was about coal miners, echoing Fort’s tenement writing, both focused on the working class. He seems to have started college late, or went back to school, because the 1910 census has him in school, and this after he’d been writing for a few years. At some point during the 1910s, he was ordained as a Catholic priest. That’s the profession he lists on his World War I draft card. At some point he formed a friendship with the fantasy writer and newspaper editor Abraham Merritt.
William Wilfred Whalen was born 7 May 1882 in Mt. Carmel, Pennsylvania. (Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches, 1930-[1952], Volume 1 incorrectly has it as 1886.) He was the eldest of (what I believe to be) nine children: in 1910, he was 28 and his youngest sibling was three. His father, Michael, a native of Pennsylvania, worked in a coal mine. His mother, Alice, was from Canada (and her father from France). She was giving birth well into her forties.
It is a little difficult to sort out Whalen’s life as a long man—at least it cannot be done without more intensive research. He was publishing in the early 1900s—about the same time Fort was making his start. And like Fort he did time as a journalist—in Whalen’s case, in Harrisburg. At least some of his early writing was about coal miners, echoing Fort’s tenement writing, both focused on the working class. He seems to have started college late, or went back to school, because the 1910 census has him in school, and this after he’d been writing for a few years. At some point during the 1910s, he was ordained as a Catholic priest. That’s the profession he lists on his World War I draft card. At some point he formed a friendship with the fantasy writer and newspaper editor Abraham Merritt.