Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Today -100: May 23, 1923: Of primes minister, secret enticements, lynching, easter islands, and chicken scrambles


Stanley Baldwin will be the next British prime minister. The process by which he rather than Curzon was chosen is entirely opaque. It’s unclear whether Curzon will continue as foreign secretary, which sounds like more his choice than Baldwin’s.

North Carolina, facing an exodus of its negro population, decides to treat black people better. No, just kidding, they arrest labor agents for “secretly enticing” negroes to go to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, fining them $500 and $1,000 for soliciting labor without a license.

Pennsylvania has new laws making participation in a lynch mob murder and making a kidnapping resulting in death first-degree murder. It also makes trying to seize a prisoner a crime, and being an officer who loses a prisoner to a lynch mob a crime, and it will fine counties in which a lynching occurs $10,000 for their dependents, or the state if there are none.

Lady Constance Lytton, the British suffragette who, frustrated at the favoritism shown by prison authorities in not forcibly feeding her, disguised herself as a commoner and was force fed, has died at 54, her health permanently damaged by that force-feeding.

Headline of the Day -100:  


The earthquake was last November, but only a fishing boat has been there since.

A Brooklyn dry goods store’s “chicken scramble” promotional event is interrupted by the SPCA just as they were about to throw live chickens off the roof, with their legs tied with a ticket for a special prize, for customers to scramble over. The owner is summonsed for Friday, but I think we know what his defense will be: “As god is my witness...”

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

No comments:

Post a Comment