Today -100: June 9, 1926: Of liberties, bunk, and smoking

Cook County (Chicago) Sheriff Peter Hoffman begins a one-month contempt-of-court sentence for having, in his role in running the county jail, granted special liberties to gangsters Terry “Machine Gun” Druggan and Frankie Lake. I’m not sure what those liberties were besides being allowed to come and go from the jail, but that seems like kind of a big one. Alliterative Warden Wesley Westbrook, who like Hoffman took large bribes from the Valley Gang, will also go to jail, and yes, it’s the same jail. In fact, Hoffman will still be sheriff while incarcerated, presumably with authority over the jail, but he’ll resign in December. 

NY Supreme Court Justice Aaron Levy grants an injunction against the citizens’ play jury order that The Bunk of 1926, a musical revue written by Gene Lockhart (father of June Lockhart and performed as the second Willie Loman in the original run of Death of a Salesman) be closed because it is “incurably objectionable.” The jury has no legal power to close a play, but their ruling resulted in Actors’ Equity banning its actors performing in it. Producer Ramsey Wallace points out that 8 of the 11 jurors “are named in the Social Register and they take it upon themselves to decide arbitrarily what the masses shall see and approve.” The play will close on the 19th, it’s not clear why, or indeed what was so incurably objectionable.

Gen. Erich von Ludendorff’s wife Margarethe recently filed for divorce. He responds, blaming the breakdown of their marriage on her smoking. He thinks women shouldn’t be allowed to smoke.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 8, 1926: Of councils and the integrity of the entire Constitution

Brazil, pissed at not getting a permanent seat on the League of Nations Council, stops participating in the League and is threatening to pull out altogether. Spain may follow.

A gathering of Dry groups (the Prohibition Party, the Anti-Saloon League, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, etc) pick former 1-term Republican member of the NY State Senate Franklin Cristman to run against US Sen. James Wadsworth (R). Cristman telegraphs back his acceptance, saying there should be one candidate who stands for the integrity of the entire Constitution, meaning of course the 18th Amendment.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 7, 1926: It’s not his fault and he is a poor man

Meyer London, three-time Socialist member of Congress, is hit by a car and dies at Bellevue at 54. His last concern is that the driver (who had taken him to the hospital) not be punished: “It’s not his fault and he is a poor man.”

In other car accident news, Hugo Eckener, head of the Zeppelin Company, gets in a crash in Berlin (oh the humanity). Heyward Cutting, who introduced the automobile to Mongolia, dies when his tire bursts on Long Island. And King George V and Queen Mary’s “royal car” knocks down a woman bicyclist. “The King afterward sent a messenger to inquire about her condition.” Didn’t drive her home though.

Cannibalism in Siberia?

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 6, 1926: Those who like that sort of thing

David Lloyd George says in a speech at the Manchester Reform Club, “I have no intention to accept my dismissal from the Liberal Party.”

French scientist Charles Henry claims to have worked out the laws of catalysis and says he’ll soon figure out how to run cars on water.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 5, 1926: Easy To Reach, Hard To Leave

French Prime Minister Aristide Briand tells the International Woman Suffrage Alliance congress he is a “convinced feminist.” Briand is a bachelor, the NYT points out.

Westchester County, NY has a contest for a new slogan. The $100 winner comes up with “Easy To Reach, Hard To Leave.” Some Westchesterhoovians point out that this might bring to mind that one of the delights at their county is Sing Sing.

The US embassy in Buenos Aires was bombed a couple of weeks ago. Now, it’s the turn of the Legation in Montevideo. Both are believed to be means of registering objections to the death sentences on Sacco and Vanzetti, although I haven’t seen strong evidence of that.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 4, 1926: I thought every one would realize that it was only fiction

The Senate Judiciary subcommittee that held all those hearings on prohibition recommends shelving every single bill introduced to modify the Volstead Act or to modify or repeal the 18th Amendment, and it says there’s no legal authority for holding a national referendum on Prohibition.

In 1924 The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion in the Year 1764-5, by Cleone Knox, Edited by Her Kinsman and Descendant, Alexander Blacker Kerr, was published, an account by a young lady of her travels Europe and her scandalous love life in the 18th Century. Widely praised for offering insight into the period, it turns out the book was a hoax, perpetrated by Magdalen King-Hall, the then 19-year-old daughter of Adm. Sir George Fowler King-Hall. “I thought every one would realize that it was only fiction,” she says. No one did. She went on to write many other novels.

The Esperanto Congress in Madrid offers a cash prize for the best translation of Don Quixote into Esperanto.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 3, 1926: Of maimed veterans and casinos

Congress recently passed the sensitively named Maimed Veterans Act, which leads the Pension Bureau to check its records and turn up a 79-year-old Civil War vet who’s been paid under the rates for slightly disabled veterans instead of completely blind ones (he caught some eye disease on sentry duty in 1864). He’ll get the additional benefits going forward and the ones he should have gotten since 1904.

Former kaiser Wilhelm objects to his palace on Corfu, which was confiscated by Greece during the Great War but which he says he still owns, being turned into a casino. It will actually not become a casino except in a James Bond film.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 2, 1926: Of intellectual freedoms and animal dogmas

Former Prime Minister David Lloyd George is more or less expelled from the Liberal Party by H.H. Asquith (aka the Earl of Oxford and Asquith) for having written a letter during the General Strike™ that was a little more sympathetic to the strikers than the Liberal leaders, who backed the Baldwin government’s hard-line position. Asquith is claiming that LG’s failure to attend a meeting of the Shadow Cabinet amounted to a resignation.

Ignacy Mościcki is elected president of Poland following Józef Piłsudski’s refusal of the post yesterday. He’ll be a sock-puppet president for the military until 1939.

The Tennessee Supreme Court hears the appeal of the Scopes Monkey Trial conviction. Clarence Darrow calls for the “intellectual freedom of man,” while K.T. McConnico, for the state, calls on the Court to resist “sinister and unclean” efforts to teach “this animal dogma.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 1, 1926: Antifa New York City 1926

The Polish National Assembly elects coup leader Gen. Józef Piłsudski president, but he declines, for now. The idea seems to be that he wants the office to be granted dictatorial powers before he graciously consents to take it.

A Memorial Day parade in NYC is immediately followed by a parade, in black shirts, no less, of the Fascio Benito Mussolini (that’s an organization), which has a permit and everything. The Fascists are booed and jeered by onlookers, some of them are of Italian extraction. Police attack the anti-fascists.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 31, 1926: Of coups, rich people, maledict courses, bands & bobs

The coup in Portugal succeeds in ousting the government, which resigns. There is supposedly no bloodshed. The coupsters say they want to form a democratic government (Spoiler Alert: they won’t) and save the country from politicians.

In front-page rich people with rich-people names dying while doing rich-people things news, NY banker Royall Victor drops dead while yacht-racing and NY insurance dude Elbridge Gerry Snow III is in a coma (from which he won’t recover) after a polo accident.

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho), who hopes to ride a Prohibitionist wave into the White House in ‘28, addressing the Presbyterian General Assembly in Baltimore, attacks the states like New York which have no state law for Prohibition enforcement. “Whether sold in the open saloon or the brothel, its natural haunt, or secretly purveyed in defiance of law, the wicked stuff works its demoralization and ruin to individuals, communities and states. ... From the time it issues from the coiled and copper-colored worm in the distillery until it empties in the hell of crime, dishonor and death, misery and poverty and remorse mark its maledict course.” And people ignoring the dry law, whoa: “To disregard our Constitution, to evade it, to nullify it, while still refusing to change it, is to plant the seeds of destruction in the heart of the nation, is to confess before the world that we have neither the moral courage nor the intellectual sturdiness for self-government.” 

Germany says the Treaty of Versailles’s ban on foreign troops at the Rhine means it has to revoke permission for a Swedish military band to perform at Düsseldorf.

The big story in Kentucky this week is that a woman, Martha Bates, was sentenced to 40 days for slapping a Rev. Arlie Brown who criticized women who bob their hair. Gov. W.J. Fields defends her actions and orders her released. Bates says she told Brown that it’s not hair that makes the woman.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 30, 1926: If you do not heed what I say, you will learn to feel my switch

Marshal Józef Piłsudski tells a meeting of top Polish politicians, demanding he be given dictatorial powers, “If you do not heed what I say, you will learn to feel my switch.” He does say that they’re free to pick another candidate for president. Well, free-ish: “You can elect whom you want, but I will decide if your choice is right. If not, the street will be heard from.” As president, he would want the Diet to grant him extraordinary powers, and then suspend itself for a year.

Texas’s former governor James Ferguson calls his wife’s competitor for governor, Attorney Gen. Dan Moody, “a blowed-up sucker and a gone fawnskin.” I think he’s just making up insults now. This was at a campaign event in Sulphur Springs, at which the actual candidate, “Ma” Ferguson, read off a short speech, which was followed by her husband’s lengthy “harangue.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 29, 1926: Of coups, tests of eugenics, and bombs

A military revolt begins in Portugal.

9,000 Slovak fascists meet and swear to fight for Slovak autonomy and the Catholic church. They want only the Slovak language to be used in elementary schools.

The International Woman Suffrage Alliance refuses to allow the National Woman’s Party to join.

The city of Berlin will open a bureau to give couples advice on whether they’re healthy enough to get married and breed. “This is the first real test of the eugenics theory to be tried out in Germany.” But not the last.

Asa Bartlett, head of the Blue Lake Township, Michigan Ku Klux Klan and town constable, is arrested for sending a package bomb to the home of town Supervisor August Krubaech. The bomb killed Krubaech, his 19-year-old daughter, and her fiancé. Bartlett will serve 36 years in prison before his sentence is commuted. He will die in 1982 at 85 years old.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.