Back in January I posted this picture:


It's from the grave of Col. James Fisk, Jr., 1835 - 1872. Who was he? A big jerk! He and his business partner caused a national economic collapse by trying to corner the gold market. Then:

...Fisk, now a fat, jovial, brassy voluptuary, was leading a life of half-barbaric prodigality. Buying Pike's Opera House at Twenty-third St. and Eighth Avenue [in New York] he fitted up costly offices there, at the same time producing dramas and French opera bouffe;... swaggered as "admiral" of the Fall River and the Bristol lines of steamboats, which he controlled; placed on the Hudson its largest ferryboat, the "James Fisk";... and diverted the East by his antics as colonel of the 9th Regiment of the New York militia, a post to which he bought his way in May 1870. His visit with this regiment to Boston on Bunker Hill Day in 1871, when he asked permission to celebrate "divine service" on Boston Common, was one of the best-advertised episodes of his career. His end befitted his flashy life. After keeping numerous mistresses he singled out the actress Josie Mansfield as his favourite, quarreled over her and over business transactions with the dissolute Edward Stokes, was fatally shot by the latter in the Grand Central Hotel on Jan. 6, 1872, and died the next day. A spectacular funeral, with every honor from the Tammany administration and a cortège including the 9th Regiment and a band of two hundred pieces, was accompanied by innumerable denunciatory sermons and editorials.