Today -100: May 7, 1916: Of poets, prosecutors, popes, postponements, and police dogs

The NYT Sunday Magazine section has an article about the Irish poets who led the Easter Rising.

Hugh Dorsey, the Fulton County, Georgia solicitor-general who prosecuted Leo Franks so enthusiastically, announces his candidacy to be governor of Georgia.

Pope Benedict sends a message to Woodrow Wilson asking that the US and Germany not come to blows over submarine warfare.

In Haiti, US troops forcibly disperse a meeting of Haitian senators.

New York Mayor John Purroy Mitchel asks the organizers of a commemoration at Carnegie Hall of the sinking of the Lusitania (one year ago today) to postpone it, given the current state of German-US relations and for fear that Germans will cause disruptions and fights as they have at previous pro-Allies meetings. They agree to postpone.

What should have been postponed was a demonstration of police dogs at a NYC police parade in which a robber, actually Officer Christopher Reilly, steals a handbag and is chased. Unfortunately, as he runs in the direction of the mayor and police commissioner, a detective, not in on the whole “it’s not real” thing, shoots him in the mouth.

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