Today -100: March 29, 1912: Of rumps, incitement, women’s suffrage in Michigan and Britain, and late Scotts

The Taft people have discovered that the Roosevelt people have taken an option to rent a theater in Chicago during the week of the Republican convention in June, in other words that they’re making plans to bolt the party convention and hold a rump convention. TR’s people deny they have anything to do with the person who made the arrangements.

British trade unionist leader Tom Mann is out on bail pending trial for incitement to mutiny for publishing in his newspaper The Syndicalist an open letter to troops asking them to please not shoot strikers in the coal strike.

Mayor Harry Shriver of Rock Island, Illinois, set off a riot in which one person died, shot by police, by assaulting the editor of The Rock Island News, John Looney, who wrote something about him that the NYT annoyingly refrains from repeating. The mayor is now barricaded in his office, surrounded by soldiers, issuing threats to kill the editor like a dog (when he gets out of the hospital).

The Michigan Legislature passes a bill for a women’s suffrage referendum in November.

The British Parliament votes against a women’s suffrage bill 222-208. This is a decline in support since last year, when a similar bill passed its second reading but went no further. Some of the opposition this time around came from Irish Nationalists afraid that it would take time away from the Home Rule Bill and disrupt the Liberal cabinet (in the debate, Prime Minister Asquith spoke against the bill, Foreign Minister Grey for). Also, the coal strike meant that Labour MPs representing mining unions were busy elsewhere. Also, Anti sentiment has been strengthened by the increase in militant suffrage activities (Spoiler Alert: they ain’t seen nothing yet).

Today is believed to be the day Commander Scott died on his Antarctic expedition (Turner Classic Movies is playing “Scott of the Antarctic” tonight as part of a South Pole marathon, along with Ice Station Zebra, With Byrd at the South Pole, Frank Capra’s Dirigible and The Thing From Another World).