PHILADELPHIA, June 7, 1882. - At a meeting tonight of the committee appointed by the Board of Directors of the Keely Motor Company to try to adjust the differences between Mr. Keely and certain stockholders, an agreement signed by President Randall, of the Keely Motor Company, and Mr. Keely was furnished for publication. By it all differences have been adjusted, and William Boekel, of Philadelphia, is agreed upon as the person to be instructed by Mr. Keely in the construction and operation of his inventions.
8/5/1885 - "No object seems to be too high or remote for human endeavor. It is not strange that some of these attempts should stagger the faith of all but the boldest imaginations. A notable example of this class is the famous etheric motor invented by Keely, of Philadelphia, and the subject of a communication which we [received] from a well-known American lady in Italy. The inventor claims to have found a new force, one that entirely transcends those that have been hitherto appropriated for human use. Heat, steam, electricity, magnetism are but crude antetypes of this new discovery. It is essentially the creator of these forces. It is scarcely less than the 'primum mobile.' Indeed in reading the exposition of its potentialities one can hardly help doubting whether the concrete matter of our earth is not too weak and volatile to contain, restrain, and direct this vast cosmic energy except in infinitesimal proportions. How shall iron and steel stand before the power which builds up and clasps the very atoms of their mass? Where shall the inventor look for safety discs' to stay his newfound force, when every substance within his reach is but a residuum of the activity of his identical principle? How shall strength of materials avail against the power that gives, and indeed is, strength of materials? This, however, is but a metaphysical doubt, and as the invention has already demonstrated its practical efficiency on a small scale, there is a presumption that it may be extended to the higher degrees. At all events, whether the force can or cannot be harnessed to do the daily work of the world, the discovery is one that will mark an epoch in the progress of science and give the inventor and his patrons a meed of immortality. Granted they are but poets building a lofty cosmical rhyme, their work shall have not the less an enduring honor."
HIS GREATEST BENEFACTOR WASHES HER HANDS OF THE "INVENTOR."
PHILADELPHIA, DEC. 17, 1890. - Mrs. Bloomfield Moore of 510 South Broad Street today sent a letter to the Board of Directors of the Keely Motor Company. After expressing pleasure in the announcement that Mr. Keely's present position was such that the company has no further need of his assistance, she says: "It relieves me of the responsibilities which I have so long carried at the cost of placing a barrier between myself and all the members of my family, who did not approve my course in assuming obligations which belonged to the company to fulfill under its contract with Mr. Keely. By referring to "Keely's discoveries" you will find that my engagement with Mr. Keely, made April 12, 1890, to furnish him to the end of his work with funds for his household and shop expenses and for instruments of research, expired when he had gained sufficient control of the unknown force to enable him to resume his work under the direction of the management of the company upon a provisional engine. As this time has arrived, I feel myself to be at liberty to hand over to you all bills that have been presented since the expiration of Mr. Keely's contract with me. "My legal and material rights were taken from me in 1888 on account of my efforts in 1887 to assist the stockholders of the Keely Motor Company, not because I had rescued Mr. Keely from the deplorable condition in which I found him in the winter of 1881-2 under the management of that company. My family (knowing that this enterprise was built upon possibilities, with no other foundation) felt no sympathy with those who were managing a company the shares of which possessed no commercial value, and they quite naturally feared that my ignorance of business transactions might lead me into becoming one of the victims of this speculative management. "I am gratified not only that I am relieved of the load that I have carried alone, but to know that I have been able, by the timely aid that I offered last March, to save for the third time the often-jeopardized interests of the long-suffering stockholders, who have unwisely invested in the Keely Motor stock before there was any quid pro quo to make the investment a safe one."
International Year Book, 1898 - John Ernst Worrell Keely, inventor of the famous Keely motor, died in Philadelphia, November 18, 1898. He was born in that city September 3, 1837. His early education was meager. When engaged in the carpenter's trade in 1872 he announced the discovery of a new force, by which he asserted motive power would be revolutionized. He asserted that by musical vibrations air and water could be disintegrated and a powerful "etheric force" be released; he made the most extravagant assertions, saying in 1875: "I propose in about six months to run a train of cars from here (Philadelphia) to New York at the rate of a mile a minute, with one small engine, and I will draw the power all out of as much water as you can hold in the palm of your hand." Experiments were performed with his motors and scientists were unable to find any fraud; all classes became interested and finally $5,170,000 had been invested in the enterprise. It cannot be said that Mr. Keely diverted to personal use the large sums invested, for he worked steadily, constructing and discarding between 1874 and 1891, 129 different models. His secret has never been satisfactorily disclosed and the report that after his death hidden apparatus of a suspicious appearance was found in his laboratory tended to confirm the opinion that Keely was the most daring and successful charlatan of his time.
NYT - 1/20/1899 - Years and years ago mechanical experts and others whom one motive or another had impelled to make such little investigation of JOHN W. KEELY'S "motor" as that very shrewd, if not very ingenious, person would permit, declared that all his results might have been, and, so far as anything they saw indicated, were, produced by compressed air conducted to his machines by hidden tubes from a hidden reservoir. This explanation always met indignant denial by Keely and his more intimate - and interested - associates, but they never consented to allow outsiders to make, as might easily have been done, such an examination of the machines as would have proved at once and conclusively, either that their owner was a great genius or an arrant humbug. Keely is dead now, and his contrivances have been removed to Boston for - well, call it "further development." The dismantled workshop in Philadelphia, the abode for a quarter of a century of mysteries deep, if not important, then for the first time became accessible in all its corners and walls, and scientists employed by The Philadelphia Press have been exploring it with care. The result of their labors was the discovery of adroitly hidden pipes leading downward through the floor, and in the room below was, also hidden, a hollow steel sphere weighing three tons! The tubes were of a kind that could have been used for no other purposes than the conveyance of air or gases under great pressure, and the sphere had never played any part in Keely's exhibitions. These things do not, of course, demonstrate that Keely did not turn his wheels with a new force, but they do show, what was long ago merely asserted, that his motive power might have been one with which better, though less pretensions, mechanics are much more familiar than he ever was.
PHILADELPHIA WOMAN, INTERESTED IN THE KEELY MOTOR, DIES IN LONDON AN EVENTFUL LIFE.
LONDON, Jan. 5, 1899. - Mrs. Bloomfield Moore of Philadelphia, who was largely interested in the Keely Motor Company, died at her house in Great Stanhope Street, here, early this morning. Although the doctors name heart disease as the cause of her death, her friends agree that Mrs. Moore really died of a broken heart, due to her grief over the death of Mr. Keely. Mr. Henry Dam, a well-known scientific writer and her literary executor, says: "I knew that when Mr. Keely died she would not live long. Her whole life was centered in his work, to the exclusion of all other interests and hopes. She had the most profound and touching faith that neither Mr. Keely nor herself could die until the invention had succeeded. After receiving the cabled announcement of Mr. Keely's death she began to sink rapidly. Her ailment seemed more mental than physical." When Mrs. Bloomfield Moore came to London, she was presented at Court and figured in fashionable society. In later years her whole time was devoted to endeavoring to interest influential people, especially scientists, in Mr. Keely and his motor. While she made few converts her faith and enthusiasm won many friends. She was considered to have a remarkable amount of scientific information, for a woman, as evidenced by her book on Mr. Keely's projects, written five years ago. She corresponded with hundreds of scientists in all parts of the world and gained a reputation with the public for eccentricity. Occasionally she would give shares of stock to some one who had done her a service, saying: "This has no marked value at present, but some time it will be worth thousands." Of late years she had been worried by money matters. Her income decreased, and she became very bitter against the trustees of the estate from which it was derived, accusing them of trying to defraud her. She recently asked Mr. Dam to go to the United States and to write from Mr. Keely's lips the story of his life work, and she offered to pay Mr. Hiran Maxim's expenses if he would go to America, consult Mr. Keely, and become the custodian of the latter's secret. She leaves immense files of writing concerning the motor, including a hundred letters to herself from Mr. Keely.
As a writer of fiction and poetry Mrs. Clara Jessup Moore established a creditable reputation more than a quarter of a century ago. As an intelligent, shrewd, and liberal collector of art objects, she in recent years was widely known on two continents. Socially she constituted a picturesque figure, partly because of her eccentricities of manner, partly because of her strong-willed disposition to manage her own affairs, and partly because of her activities in certain fields of charitable work. Her many years' devotion to the cause of the Keely motor, in which she was financially interested almost from its inception, was one of the episodes of her life which brought her most prominently before the public. Although a resident of London for several years before her death, Mrs. Moore was from Philadelphia, and as Miss Clara Jessup she was a belle in society there half a century ago. She was born in Philadelphia Feb. 16, 1824. Her father, Augustus E. Jessup, was the scientist of Major Stephen H. Long's Yellowstone expedition of 1816. Her mother was a Moseley of Moseley Hall, in England. She was educated in New Haven, Conn., and on Oct. 27, 1842, married Bloomfield H. Moore of Philadelphia. The Moore family is connected with the Ridgways and other well-known Philadelphia families. Mrs. Moore was an aunt by marriage of Ridgway Moore. Soon after their marriage Bloomfield Moore associated himself with his wife's father, an extensive manufacturer of paper, under the firm name of Jessup & Moore. This concern is still in existence. Mrs. Moore's son Clarence B. being President of the company. During the early part of her married life Mrs. Moore occupied herself industriously with literary and philanthropic labors. Her first book, "The Diamond Cross," was published in 1857. Soon after the civil war began she established the Woman's Pennsylvania Branch of the United States Sanitary Commission, and the special relief committee for hospital work. She, furthermore, projected and aided in founding the Union Temporary Home for Children in Philadelphia. She developed a literary tendency while in school, and some of her early stories were successful in competition for prizes. She wrote a first under the pen name of Mrs. Clara Moreton. Mr. Moore died in 1878, leaving a fortune to his wife and their children, one son and two daughters. Mrs. Moore also inherited a large fortune from her parents. About 1880 Mrs. Moore, in memory of her husband, established the Bloomfield Moore art collection in the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, and in later years she contributed liberally toward the enlargement and maintenance of that fine collection. Mrs. Moore became acquainted with Mr. Keely about 1881 through her interest in scientific matters, and deriving from him an enthusiastic confidence in the ultimate success of the "motor," she remained Mr. Keely's friend and patron up to the time of his death. She gave the inventor from $250 to $300 a month for his personal use throughout their long acquaintance in order that he might devote his entire time and energies to the perfection of his motor. For more than ten years Mrs. Moore had been a resident of London, England. Her house at 12 Great Stanhope Street, Mayfair, contained an uncommonly large and valuable collection of oil paintings and other art objects. She was on very friendly terms with Disraeli, and acting on his advice she began several years ago to invest money in the works of the best living artists. Most of the picture in her collection are now worth many times the amount she paid for them. A warm friendship existed between Mrs. Moore and the Brownings, both Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Mrs. Moore's London house was a favorite rendezvous for well-known literary persons. Mr. Bloomfield H. Moore left an estate valued at upward of $5,000,000, and permitted Mrs. Moore to use her own discretion in making a distribution of the estate to the three children. The son, Clarence B. Moore, was dissatisfied with the portion allotted him, and brought the matter into court, in which he averred that the eccentricity of his mother had deprived him of his full share of his father's estate. The litigation was carried through the courts for quite a while, and an amicable settlement was finally reached. Both daughters of Mrs. Moore married noblemen. Miss Ella Carlton Moore married the Count Carl Gustave von Rosen, now First Chamberlain and Master of Ceremonies at the Court of Stockholm, Sweden. This couple have four children. Miss Mary Moore married the Baron Carl von Bildt of Stockholm, formerly Secretary of the Swedish Legation in Washington, in 1890 Baron von Bildt was Premier of Sweden. Besides the "Diamond Cross," Mrs. Moore's published works include "Mabel's Mission," "Master Jacky's Holiday," "Poems and Stories," "On Dangerous Ground," "Sensible Etiquette," "Gondaline's Lesson," "Slander and Gossip," and "The Warden's Tale and Other Poems, New and Old."
