Today -100: November 29, 1923: Of pies, Rhenish republics, whippings, and hunger-strikers

Coolidge wasn’t willing to accept a free Thanksgiving turkey, but he’s evidently okay accepting a free 2½-foot pumpkin pie.

For the record, so am I.

Josef Matthes dissolves the separatist Rhineland Republic of which he was the head. It had broken into competing factions and a coup was in the works, led by someone Matthes claims is a Prussian spy. Also, he says, the provisional government was led partly by incompetent people and partly by dishonest ones.

The Putnam Lumber Company pays $20,000 to the family of Martin Tabert, who was whipped to death in a convict labor camp in Florida with which the company contracted for slave labor.

The Bishop of Cork, Daniel Cohalan, refuses Christian burial for Denny Barry, an IRAer who died during a hunger strike at the Newbridge internment camp. The bishop claims he based his decision on the Church position on suicide, but adds that the Republicans are “a wicked and insidious attack on the Church.” Over the years the Catholic Church’s position on hunger-striking has tended to depend on national politics. During the hunger strikes of Bobby Sands et al in 1980-1, the British Catholic Church said hunger striking was suicide, the Irish Church that it wasn’t.

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