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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Today -100: March 26, 1926: Of fake Spanish women, real miracles, former royals, and castor-oil and rubber-club adolescences

Luis Fernando / Luigi Ferdinando d'Orléans, a French AND Spanish prince who was expelled from France for “bad conduct” in 1924 and then stripped of his Spanish princely privileges, is arrested by customs officials on the Spanish/Portuguese border (the article doesn’t specify which country’s officials) on suspicion of smuggling (nor does it specify what he was smuggling), disguised as a Spanish woman.

Headline of the Day -100:

(The article does not explain what the hell he’s talking about).

12.5 million signatures have been collected in Germany for a plebiscite on confiscating without compensation the properties of all the former royal families. That’s enough signatures to force the holding of the plebiscite.

The NYT says that Mussolini isn’t getting blowback from the Matteotti trial because he’s successfully ascribed the 1924 murder to an earlier phase of Fascism. “The movement has outgrown its castor-oil and rubber-club adolescence.”

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Today -100: March 25, 1926: Guilty guilty guilty

The trial for the murder of Giacomo Matteotti ends with 2 of the defendants acquitted and 3 found guilty of unintentional murder. Amerigo Dumini, Albino Volpi and Ameleto Poveromo (whose name in his Italian Wikipedia article is translated by my web browser as Hamlet the Poor Man) are sentenced to nearly 6 years, but will get the benefit of time served and an amnesty law for political murders and be out in a couple of months. Dumini and Hamlet the Poor Man will be re-tried after World War II and get longer sentences. Dumini will electrocute himself while changing a lightbulb in 1967.

The New Jersey Hotel Men’s Association is fighting a bill in the NJ Lege which would allow black people denied service in hotels, theatres, restaurants, etc to sue for $500.

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Today -100: March 24, 1926: I never heard a more self-complacent speech in my life

The Reichstag defeats a motion of no confidence in Chancellor Hans Luther 259 to 141 after Luther tells them that the Locarno treaties form the basis of his policies. The debate features the debut speech of Grand Adm. Alfred von Tirpitz, the unrestricted-submarine-warfare guy from the last war, who says Locarno and the League of Nations would bring Germany “into complete dependency on France,” adding, “but not in some kinky sexual way.” He may not have said the last bit.

In the British Parliament, Foreign Sec. Austen Chamberlain survives a resolution brought by former PM David Lloyd George to reduce his salary (by how much is not specified here) after a vote of 325 to 136. Chamberlain’s speech was marked by “ill-temper” and “a feeling of self-satisfaction,” was “conspicuous for length rather than clearness, for acidity of tone rather than power of argument.” Former PM Ramsay MacDonald says “I never heard a more self-complacent speech in my life.” Everyone’s a critic.

At the Matteotti trial, the lawyers for 3 of the accused say that Matty totally brought it on himself by not surrendering after the Fascists “conquered” but continued to “torment” the poor Fascists until they could take it no more. Part of this blame-the-victim approach is to assert that they killed him because he was a nasty person and not because he was an MP; there’s a special penalty for people who murder MPs.

is a claim I’m pretty sure we’ve seen a few times before.

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Today -100: March 23, 1926: When Irish elves are smiling

The NY State Senate kills bills to restore state enforcement of Prohibition.

Vera, Countess Cathcart’s play Ashes of Love opens on Broadway, with the countess playing the lead role. The audience found it “dull” and laughed in all the wrong places, according to the NYT. She evidently sucks as both a playwright and an actor.

Mysterious “elfin” music is heard near Milltown, Ireland.  Hundreds have traveled thence to catch a glimpse of the elves.

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