Today -100: April 7, 1926: Of Shylock nations, quacks, shonks, pretenders, werewolves?, and sex magazines

Fascists in Venice, pissed at the US Senate’s delays in passing the war debt settlement and at Sen. William Borah’s comments during the debate about Fascist violence in Italy, attack sailors from US destroyers. In the Piazza San Marco, Fascists call one sailor “a fat swine and the representative of a Shylock nation.” The four destroyers abruptly leave Venice, possibly pursued by Fascist gondoliers.

There’s a movement to “boom” Columbia University Pres. Nicholas Murray Butler for the Republican nomination for governor of New York. They think an opponent of Prohibition like him is the party’s best chance, or to put it another way, that Prohibition may be a decisive issue in 1926.

The New York Legislature passes a bill requiring physicians to be registered every year. There is a problem, or at least a panic, over “quack” doctors.

The New York State Assembly rejects the Shonk Bill for a 48-hour week for women and minors. Women are currently limited to 54 hours.

Herbert Shonk is my new favorite name.

A “congress” of Russian exiles in Paris chooses Grand Duke Nicholas, the first cousin once removed of the late Czar Nicholas, to lead the “glorious task of liberating our country.” He replies that it is the poor oppressed Russian people who “have the right to establish the basis of their existence.” In other words, start without me.

Elsewhere, Prince Jean, Duke of Guise takes over as the new pretender to the French throne from the Orléanist line, following the death of Prince Louis Philippe. He did have the option of renouncing the “title” and thus avoid having to leave France under the 1886 law exiling the heads of the 3 overthrown royal lines, but he boldly steps up, saying “I lay claim to all his [Louis Philippe’s] rights...” Of which there are none. “I assume all the responsibilities...” Of which there are none. “and I accept all the duties...” Of which there are none. “...of that position.” He will call himself King Philip VIII. He is married to his cousin, because of course he is.

In Berlin on Easter Monday, Communists and Werewolves fight over a café, which is probably not as entertaining as it sounds and which leads to one death and one wrecked café. In Munich, police break up Communist conferences.

H.L. Mencken counter-sues Franklin Chase over his arrest for selling an issue of the American Mercury. He informs the judge that the Merc is not a sex magazine, which makes you wonder – or is it just me? – what a sex magazine edited by H.L. Mencken would be like.

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Today -100: April 6, 1926: Malicious prosecutions are the funnest kind of prosecution

Former New Mexico governor Washington Ellsworth Lindsey, which is not a very New-Mexico-governor sort of name, kills  himself, possibly due to illness. His obit very nearly spells his name correctly.

H.L. Mencken is arrested on Boston Common, in a pre-arranged test case/publicity move, for selling an issue of The American Mercury to Franklin Chase of the Watch and Ward Society, who has been trying to get the Merc prosecuted and banned from the mails at least since it published an article, “Keeping the Puritans Pure” by A. L. S. Wood, of which he was the subject, although the court case will be about the article “Hatrack” by Herbert Asbury, which is about the hypocrisy of small towns towards “harlots” and is sadly free of “obscenity,” if you ask me.

Former Kansas governor Jonathan Davis, acquitted on charges of selling pardons, sues three Kansas City newspapers, various editors and reporters, prison guards, a highwayman, and a bank wrecker, for libel and malicious prosecution.

At the 96th annual conference of the Mormons, Mormon Pres. Heber Grant warns against immodest skirts and afternoon teas.

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Today -100: April 5, 1926: Looks like I’ll have to run

Austria’s Supreme Court abolishes stage censorship.

Kansas’s former governor Jonathan Davis, now “cleared” of having sold pardons, says “Looks like I’ll have to run” for governor again.

Mussolini will visit the Italian colony Tripoli. He’s going there on a warship. The Fascist paper Popolo d’Italia, which translates, I believe, as The Poppadom of Italy, says the ship recalls the ships of the Punic Wars: “It is a spectacle of force, not a parade; it is a majestic sign of greatness, not the order of the day in a debating hall.” This excursion is supposed to show the unified nature of the new Italy, putting aside petty regional squabbles in favor of oppressing people in Africa like a big boy nation. Later this month there’ll be a National Colonial Day.

Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot warns state employees not to campaign against his candidacy for US Senate, or else.

A secret meeting last week of royalists from Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Russia agreed to establish a monarchist international.

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Today -100: April 4, 1926: If you’re being bribed by a forger, inspect the bag o’ cash very carefully

Kansas’s former governor Jonathan Davis and his son Russell are acquitted for the second time for taking a $1,250 bribe to pardon a forger. One wonders what the juries were thinking.

Communal fighting in Calcutta, which was set off by Hindu Samajists invading a mosque, kills at least a dozen. So far.

Italian organ grinders, some of them with monkeys, have left the streets of London in droves, following the order of Mussolini, who thinks they harm Italian prestige. Their, um, jobs have been filled by crippled & blind war veterans.

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Today -100: April 3, 1926: Of prohibition, slander, and studying communism

Against a rising feeling that Prohibition enforcement is already going too far, an amendment to the Volstead Act is introduced in the US Senate at the behest of Gen. Lincoln Andrews, the head of the federal Prohibition agents, increasing penalties and seizures for various booze crimes, and more controversially allowing dry cops to break into people’s houses that have stills...

(https://theonion.com/dhs-ice-can-enter-homes-without-pants/)

Chicago radio announcer Philip Friedlander is fined $25 in the very first radio slander case for falsely broadcasting that State’s Attorney Robert Crowe was seen entering the Moulin Rouge cabaret.

California Attorney Gen. Ulysses Sigel Webb rules that schoolchildren can’t be asked to write essays about Communism, because that would force them to research the subject.

I wonder how many parents naming their kid after Gen. Grant (Webb was born in 1864) had to decide for themselves what the S. should stand for, since in Grant’s case it didn’t stand for anything (and his real first name was Hiram), and how many of those parents chose “Sigel.”

One of my resentments about Grant and Harry S. Truman is that they insisted on putting a period after the S., signifying an abbreviation when there was no actual abbreviation.

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Today -100: April 2, 1926: Of bankruptcy rings and bathtubs

George W. English, a Wilson appointee to the District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois, is impeached by the House of Representatives for high misdemeanors (that’s the worst kind of misdemeanor), abuse of power (“tyranny and oppression”). Something about a “bankruptcy ring.” It’s kind of obscure to me. And to the congresscritters. At one point their vote on one of the charges is walked back because they didn’t understand what they were voting on. At one point John Rankin (D-Miss.) and Ogden Mills (R-NY) get into a slanging match and a near-fistfight. Rankin later denies having used what is described only as a “highly insulting term,” saying “I would not call any white man what I had in mind.”

Theatre producer Earl Carroll is arrested for perjury for denying that at a party he threw for Harry Thaw, the killer of Stanford White, a naked woman swam on the stage of his theatre in a bathtub full of “alleged wine,” as was the custom.

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Today -100: April 1, 1926: 21 nuns, no waiting

The House Foreign Affairs Committee hears “evidence” that 21 Carmelite nuns who were illegally teaching religion in Mexico were arrested and threatened with being sold to bordellos.

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Today -100: March 31, 1926: Follow the dotted line

Democrats in the Senate plan to block ratification of the war debt repayment deal with Italy until after the mid-terms, considering it overly generous. Reed Smoot (R-Utah), opposing the rejection of the deal, says “I do not want to see Italy exhausted.”

Vera, Countess Cathcart sails for England. Her play having failed, she plans to try to make money writing about her immigration problems in the US.

France resumes sending prisoners to Devil’s Island, 340 of them. Captain Louis Grenet of the prison ship La Martinière (which the NYT amusingly misnames La Mariniere, which is the name of those French blue & white stripey shirts) charmingly declares that there’s no risk of mutiny: “Hot steam from ten pumps into the cages soon melts any revolt.” One of the prisoners, whose sentence of death by the guillotine had been commuted by the president, has a tattoo around his neck: “Executioner, when cutting, follow the dotted line.”

Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey have a second son, Sydney, less than 11 months after Charles Jr. was born. Lita has yet to reach her 18th birthday.

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Today -100: March 30, 1926: Of censors and fasters

The League of Nations Advisory Commission on Child Welfare wants to establish movie censorship boards, one in each country.

Berlin hunger artist “Jolly” ends his public fast after 44 days. Quitter. 44 days is a record for “professionals,” as opposed to starving people.

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Today -100: March 29, 1926: Of pretenders, bread, loop the loops, and glaciers

Obit of the Day -100: Prince Louis Philippe, who had been the pretender to the French throne since 1894 for the Orléanist royal line, dies of pneumonia at 57 in Sicily. His great-grandfather was deposed by the 1848 revolution. Exiled from France more than once, LP was imprisoned when he tried to return to offer to do his military service. He filled his time never being king by serving in the British army; trying to join the French, Russian, Belgian and Italian armies; hunting; climbing mountains in Tibet; being an anti-Dreyfusard; getting named in multiple divorce cases (the dude, sorry, Duke, liked to fuck). It was a busy life but a useless one.

Americans are eating less bread, partly because home baking is declining. Also, sliced bread hasnt been invented yet (it will in a couple of years).

Aviatrix Sophie Elliot-Lynn (whose name was seemingly never spelled the same way twice) loops the loop, the first woman to do so in Britain. She also does a spinning nosedive and other stunts. She scoffs at the thought that all this shit is dangerous: “Airplanes have been brought to such perfection that there is little danger.” She will have a minor crash in 1929 but it will be a fall down the stairs of a London tram that will kill her in 1939.

A group of US and Canadian scientists apply to the Danish government to go to Greenland with some thermite to blow up glaciers to clear the sea routes and because it would be cool.

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Today -100: March 28, 1926: Of cursed tombs, downing pens, furniture, highest destinies, and horsies and buggies

Georges Bénédite, Egyptologist and curator of the Louvre, dies in Luxor, the 6th victim of the Vengeance of Tutankhamen™.

A playwrights’ strike is averted. Their beef with producers had something to do with musical numbers being performed by bands.

Grace Coolidge, redecorating the White House in early Colonial style, appeals to the nation for free furniture. See, that sort of furniture “cannot be purchased” because it is handed down generation to generation, so people should stop doing that and instead donate it, free, to the White House.  (The White House will deny asking for free furniture, but I notice it took several days for them to do so).

The textile strikers in Passaic, NJ (yes, the strike is still going on) call for the arrest of  Chief of Police Richard Zober and 12 other cops for assault. Of course an arrest warrant was already issued 3 weeks ago, but no one could be prevailed upon to serve it. The ACLU is threatening civil suits. 

Wyoming Gov. Nellie Tayloe Ross tells some Girl Scouts that freedom for women is great and everything, but “I am old-fashioned enough, however, to believe that no career is as glorious or satisfying as that which wifehood and motherhood offers, and it is there she fulfills her highest destiny.”

Chicago mayoral election news: the Post Office is unable to find 50,000 addresses of registered voters, presumably fake ones. And Mayor Big Bill Thompson and his competitor, State’s Attorney Robert Crowe, both file libel actions against The Chicago Evening Post for reporting that they’d gotten into a fist fight. They say they didn’t (a likely story).

In 1881, Sheriff S. Foster Black arrested “Edwin Turner” for stealing a horse and buggy in Binghamton. Turner then escaped from the Broome County, New Jersey jail, going out the window on a rope tied from sheets, as was the custom, was re-captured and then, while being transported, escaped from a train via, what else, the bathroom window. Now, 45 years later, Black, who is now a 91-year-old deputy sheriff (and was the one who allowed him to use that bathroom), spots a newspaper picture of one Edwin Turner Osbaldeston, who claims to be the oldest survivor of the Crimean War, so Black arrests him yet again. Osbaldeston, 93, is a retired doctor in Ashbury Park. He claims this is a case of mistaken identity and that he has never been in Binghamton in his life (a likely story).

George Hir, Hungarian deputy from the fascist Awakening Hungarians party, dies from poisoning. His wife denies that it was a suicide, insisting he was murdered by the Doublecross League of Blood, something related to the fascist plot to counterfeit French francs to finance a coup.

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Today -100: March 27, 1926: Beloved or feared and respected by all

Sen. Walter Edge (R-NJ) introduces a resolution for a referendum in every state on modifying prohibition to permit less boozy booze. For some reason, this would be on the 1928 rather than the 1926 ballot.

Mussolini celebrates the 7th anniversary of the Fascist movement with “the severe discipline of the strong.” “At home the government has solved formidable problems with the consent of the people, while opposition of all sorts was dispersed.” Because nothing says consent like dispersing opposition of all sorts. The Moose continues, Trumpily: “Abroad Fascist Italy is beloved or feared and respected by all, in spite of the impotent maneuvers of the old and outcast political parties we have definitely wiped out.”

Ruth Bryan Owen, William Jennings Bryan’s daughter, announces that she is considering running for the Florida Legislature. She won’t; she’ll run for the US Congress instead. She’ll lose, but she’ll win in 1928.

The Holy Synod in Moscow, which rules the Red faction of the Russian Orthodox Church, will abolish monasticism. Monks will be required to take up some useful profession.

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