Thursday, July 17, 2014
Today -100: July 17, 1914: Of unconditional surrenders, mobs, witches, lynchings, and Röntgen rays
Mexico’s Acting Pretend President Carbajal orders all political prisoners released. And orders all gambling houses in Mexico City closed. So how will all the political prisoners play blackjack?
Carranza says he won’t negotiate with Carbajal about anything; the only end to the fighting is unconditional surrender.
More praise for Woodrow Wilson, from the London Times, for his “sincere and unselfish efforts to save the Mexicans from themselves”.
Aaaand, Gen. Félix Díaz plans to start a new revolution, as was the custom.
Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan endorses women’s suffrage.
A London mob attacks the hall in which Emmeline Pankhurst was scheduled to deliver a speech (she had already been arrested after the police hijacked the ambulance that was taking her there from her nursing home). Police refuse to arrest anyone in the mob, on the grounds that the hall is private property.
The printer of the Women’s Social and Political Union’s newspaper The Suffragette – the printer, mind – is sentenced to two months for inciting.
Headline of the Day -100: “Set Fire to Burn Witch.” Four teenagers set fire to a house in Paterson, actually the house next door to the witch’s (a Mrs Amelia Corbett), belonging to some schmuck who had been carted off to the Almshouse, as if the witch thing wasn’t archaic enough, because they figured the fire would spread to the witch’s house, but neighbors put it out.
A man is lynched in Baker County, Oregon, for attacking an 8-year-old girl. I’m assuming he was not black, or the LA Times would have said.
Evidently the medical profession’s romance with radium is over. The Germans, at least, have stopped treating cancer with it. The new big thing is Röntgen ray therapy.
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England has a long history of holding printers criminally responsible for what they print, even IIRC as far as the gallows. I'm not sure but it may still legally be the case.
ReplyDeleteAnd not just printers. Think of all those children selling unstamped papers who were imprisoned in the 1830s.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about criminally, since that doesn't come up too often (some would say often enough), but it still applies in civil cases. When John Major as PM sued over a New Statesman article, he went after their distributors rather than the NS directly, because the NS couldn't afford libel insurance so had to guarantee its printers & distributors against lawsuits. This meant that when they caved rather than fought, it was their decision but the NS was on the hook.
Also, of course, they were right and Major was totally fucking Edwina Currie.