Great post...the fist think that helped me to get out from the WT was Judge Jo...I was lucky to have all of his books...my God the guy was nuts...how came JW's are having a guy like him as the FDS?
Rutherford Exposed: The Story of Berta and Bonnie (redux)
by Leolaia 119 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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Leolaia
VM44...I'm not sure when Mary Rutherford moved to 159 Stedman Place in Monrovia; at least through the 1930 census she was listed as living at 160 N. Primrose Avenue. It is worth noting however that Stedman Place is adjacent to N. Primrose -- so it was a short distance from the earlier residence. Here is one interesting new piece of information about Malcolm. He registered to vote in California in 1924, 1926, 1928, 1930, 1932, 1934, 1942, and 1946. This is an interesting fact in light of his father's position on "neutrality" and submitting to theocratic rule. So Malcolm at least was probably not a Jehovah's Witness. The voter registrations show that Malcolm (and later Malcolm and Pauline) lived at 124 N Eastlake Avenue in Los Angeles in 1924 and 1926, then Malcolm and Pauline moved to 6246 Drexel Avenue, where they lived in 1928 through to 1942. Then in the 1946 registration, Malcolm was alone again (divorced? widowed?), and he lived at a new address -- 2207 Laverna Avenue.
I checked to see if there were any voter registrations for Mary Rutherford of Monrovia, but found not matches.
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VM44
No, there's no uncertainty about Berta Peale's birthdate
Oh no! I got them mixed up! My mistake.
Which leads me indirectly to ask the question....
Are there any photographs in existence of these two women?
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slimboyfat
A few thoughts:
1. If it is true that Bonnie took all dictation for all the books Rutherford authored and only she saw them before being published, then I wonder what this says for the theory that Frederick Franz ghost wrote a lot of the material in this period.
2. Why did Rutherford need a dietician when he was “healthy enough to travel and speak”? Didn’t Rutherford die of colorectal cancer? That being the case I can well imagine there were likely painful manifestations already in 1938 and probably before. In that condition it does not seem at all surprising that Rutherford should seek dietetic help and insist his dietician accompany him wherever he went.3. But why then would he employ an apparently unqualified dietician? It is well known of course that Witnesses in this period were highly sceptical of the medical profession so why should we assume he would seek someone conventionally qualified? Even today it is commonplace for Witnesses to set themselves up as experts in all sorts of treatments that do not have a high bar for entry such as reflexology and so on. Maybe Berta had a good reputation among Witnesses for “curing” illnesses as often happens.
4. Why did Berta get such a great position as soon as she arrived at Bethel? Why didn’t she start at the bottom like the rest? Likely because Rutherford was desperate for help with his condition and was willing to favour whoever he thought could help him. That she was pretty, might I suggest, was perhaps not such an overriding concern in these circumstances.
5. This brings me to the next thing. Has it not occurred to anyone: just how much sexual activity do you suppose this man was up for during the last three or four years of his life while suffering colorectal cancer? I am sorry folks but I just don’t see it somehow. Maybe he was indeed a rotten philanderer earlier in his life, but the idea he hand-picked Berta in 1938 for a sexual partner seems on the face of it less likely than that he was looking for some relief in a very painful situation.
6. The exhaustive search for documents relating to the lives and movements of the characters involved shows a lot of industry and ingenuity, but don’t shed an awful lot of light on the central allegations.
7. Given the lack of hard evidence it was unwise for Penton to publish as he did. It undermines his work that he relies upon uncorroborated reports to detract from Rutherford’s character and thus bolster his rather weak case for so-called hypocrisy over the events in Nazi Germany in 1933.
Slim
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VM44
Leolaia, the voter registration records you found concerning Malcolm is very important.
They do indeed indicate that he was not a Jehovah's Witness.
That there was a falling out between Malcolm and his father is shown by his being absent from the scene when his father died in 1942. Their relationship probably had gone bad years before then.
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VM44
The exhaustive search for documents relating to the lives and movements of the characters involved shows a lot of industry and ingenuity, but don’t shed an awful lot of light on the central allegations.
Searching the records is necessary even though it only provides little information. Most of the people who knew Judge Rutherford chose not to write or say publicly anything at all about him, that includes his son Malcolm who is said to have refused requests to be interviewed concerning his father.
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Lady Lee
Nice to see some new info being posted
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Nathan Natas
In Farkel's original "Rutherford Exposed" essay, he says of JFR,
He was a man whose prolific writings were so worthless that none of them are now being printed.
And it is, of course, true that none of JFRs books and tracts are published today by the WTB&TS, *but* many of those publications ARE being reprinted in various forms by individuals who recognize that the greatest enemy of the WTB&TS is their own old publications.
Many of these publications have been scanned and compiled into Adobe Acrobat pdf files and distributed for free by the unflagging efforts of Atlantis, Chasson, and others (forgive me if I do not mention your names;the fact is I don't KNOW your names). Also, hard-copy print editions can be purchased from AMAZON.com and LULU.com. It is worth your while to take a few minutes to browse either of these sites, using search terms such as "watchtower," "rutherford," "russell," "jehovah," and "jehovah's witnesses" to see what you can uncover. (Searches are generally case-insensitive, so capitalization is not necessary.)
Also worth mentioning is the FLOOD of personal stories published by former Jehovah's Witnesses documenting life as a victim of a mind-control cult.
So while the WTB&TS might *wish* that all of Rutherford's books and tracts would just vanish from the earth, seekers of truth are making those same damning publications even more widely available than they were when they first rolled off the presses.
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Nathan Natas
Slimboyfat said,
1. If it is true that Bonnie took all dictation for all the books Rutherford authored and only she saw them before being published, then I wonder what this says for the theory that Frederick Franz ghost wrote a lot of the material in this period.
At the time that Rutherford was actively writing, Frederick Franz's ghost was still trapped in his corporeal body, since he didn't die until 50 years after JFR did (1992).
Probably you meant to say Charles Taze Russell's ghost.
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slimboyfat
Nathan, no I mean to refer to the theory that Frederick Franz acted as Rutherford's ghostwriter from the late 1920's on. There has been some speculation that many of the "classes" and prophetical speculations from the period display characteristics Franz would later develop in writings that he clearly authored. I believe Leolaia even did some textual analysis to find a stylistic relationship between the writings attributed to Rutherford and later Watchtower publications.
I found that theory quite interesting, but now I wonder how this fits in with the above claim that Rutherford dictated all hours to Bonnie with no one else involved before proofreading.
