Today -100: January 5, 1921: Of censorship, effeminate fools, martial law, and stowaways

Chicago Police Chief Charles Fitzmorris orders censors to ban any film showing a crime being committed, even if the criminal winds up behind bars.

The Public Morals Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church announces a campaign to stop the “contemptuous treatment of Protestant ministers by some cartoonists, writers and actors.” In movies and plays, they say, “the Protestant minister is seldom represented except as an effeminate fool.” The effeminate fools would like this to stop.

Martial law in Ireland is extended to four more counties: Clare, Waterford, Wexford, and Kilkenny.

Sinn Féin issues a list of Irish people assassinated by the British in 1920. 175 young men, 6 women, 12 children, 10 men over 60. Of these, 9 were killed during armed conflicts, 36 while prisoners, 69 in their homes, and 98 by indiscriminate firing (such as today, after a bomb explodes under some police on Parnell Bridge in Cork, and the cops randomly machine-gun nearby houses).

Cork Lord Mayor Donal O’Callaghan and Peter MacSwiney, brother of the late lord mayor, arrive in the US to testify to the unofficial Villard Committee investigating Irish stuff. They arrived as stowaways, as was the custom. Actually MacSwiney didn’t have to, but the British wouldn’t have allowed the lord mayor to come and MacSwiney chose to keep O’Callaghan company. The lord mayor will be tied up in red tape for a while since he arrived without a passport.

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