Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Today -100: September 14, 1921: Of primaries, fatties, good horse sense, and foreign legions


Henry Curran wins the Republican primary for New York City mayor, beating out Fiorello La Guardia, who will get the job in ‘33 after another couple of tries.

Elsewhere in NY elections, anti-Tammany Democratic candidate for Assembly in Queens Patrick Dowd is shot in the head after polls close during a fracas between his supporters and those of his opponent Peter Leininger when the Dowdies refuse to pay off on a bet about the election outcome. And Joseph Shalleck, campaign manager for another anti-Tammany D. Assembly candidate, James Hines, is beaten and shot at the polling place near the home of “Boss” Murphy after detecting unsbutle signs of ballot-tampering. The turnout of women, voting in local NY elections for the first time, is high.

Fatty Arbuckle is indicted for manslaughter. Virginia Rappe died of peritonitis but the implication everyone’s tittering over, I imagine, is that he caused her organs to rupture by being, you know, on the chunky side (which probably isn’t what killed her). One witness has disappeared, one has reversed her earlier statement, which leaves star witness Mrs. Delmont, who admits at the inquest having had ten (10) drinks of whiskey before the incident and later she and the detective “drank all the gin and orange juice.” And she says Rappe tore at her own clothes (being in pain from, you know, peritonitis), although I could swear I read that at trial her torn clothes were presented as evidence of rape.

In other Fatty stories today, we are informed that he was a mischievous lad back in Kansas, but not a violent one, and that his birth weight was 16 pounds. The Theatre Owners’ Chamber of Commerce in NYC orders the withdrawal of his films from 600 theaters. And the Los Angeles Athletic Club revokes his membership. 

Adolf Hitler is arrested for starting a fight at a meeting of the Bavarian League in Munich. He will serve one month in jail for assault, and in 1934 will have Otto Ballerstedt, the Bavarian League leader he fought with, murdered during the Night of the Long Knives.

Mrs Julia Sidman is the first woman to serve on a New Jersey grand jury. She dislikes the publicity (she says to reporters), but thinks “this whole matter is merely one of using good horse sense and in no way calls for all the excitement which has been created.” (You never hear about bad horse sense). The prosecutor earlier said that he has an old-fashioned regard for womanhood and doesn’t want them sitting on the grand jury.

Spain recruits 300 men from the US, Canada, Cuba and Mexico for the Spanish Foreign Legion, to fight in Spanish Morocco. Not exactly the Lincoln Brigade, is it?

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