Today -100: November 13, 1925: Of debts, bee strikes, filth, and duels

Italy agrees to pay off its war debt to the US. $2,407,000,000 over 62 years. These are better terms than the US is offering anyone else, reflecting the poor state of the Italian economy.

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These are bees which France insisted on getting from Germany as part of war reparations, no longer producing honey. They sure assimilated fast, didn’t they?

Alice Rhinelander’s lawyer Lee Davis objects to Kip’s lawyer reading out “this filth,” meaning his client’s letters, 26 of which are read to the jury today. He threatens “If this girl is dragged in the slime, I’ll drag him as well (by reading his letters to Alice).”

Sadly, they aren’t filth, even by 1920s standards, so I won’t bother with quotes.

The German Reichstag’s Judiciary Committee adopts a bill to cashier army officers who participate in duels. War Minister Otto Geßler, who personally disapproves of duels, nevertheless objects to officers being fired for something university students get away with all the time and for which other government officials are not fired. Naturally, the right-wing nationalist parties vote against punishing duelists. During a previous Reichstag debate on dueling, one deputy... well, you can guess.

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Today -100: November 12, 1925: Of rhinelanders, blue shirts, and shells

Rhinelander v. Rhinelander continues. Alice’s (semi-literate) letters to Leonard are read to the court to prove that she was the pursuer. He takes the stand and admits to having been a virgin before he spent a week with her at the Hotel Marie Antoinette (well before they married).

Armistice Day is celebrated at the Arc de Triumph by 6,000 members of the new Faisceau des Combattants et des Producteurs, the first French Fascist group (what took them so long?). Blue shirts. Sadly, no nation’s fascist group ever adorned themselves with red shirts. Leader Jacques Arthuys, in his speech, distinguishes French from Italian Fascism, the former being “adapted to our thoughtful and measured temperament”. Perhaps because no one really wants thoughtful and measured fascists, the group will collapse within a couple of years; Arthuys will die in a German concentration camp.

Also on Armistice Day, three girls are killed by a shell they find in a field in Ciry-Salsogne, France.

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Today -100: November 11, 1925: Of negro blood, anti-Semitism, and radios

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Alice Rhinelander’s lawyer points out that after “Kip’s” father placed him at a school for “backward youths” for a year (he stuttered), he never visited him, but when the proud Huguenot name Rhinelander became associated with negroes, he jumped in with both feet to extract his son from the woman he met while at that school (well, he sent his lawyers to do that, anyway; in fact, neither he or any other member of the family will attend the trial). Ouch. Well, I’m sure this trial couldn’t get more invasive and embarrassing.

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So the Rhinelander case makes every single inter-racial marriage newsworthy now?

Dr. Herman Vogelstein, chief rabbi of the Breslau Synagogue, says anti-Semitism is on the decline in Germany. Phew. He blames its rise after the war on Germans looking for a scapegoat and on Jews for being too focused on Palestine. Vogelstein’s optimism will probably be dynamited, along with his synagogue, on Kristallnacht and he’ll escape to the US.

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover says he’ll stop issuing new radio station licenses, as recommended by the National Radio Conference, until new legislation is passed.

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Today -100: November 10, 1925: Of colored blood luminaphones, and clowns

Rhinelander v. Rhinelander, Leonard “Kip” Rhinelander’s annulment suit against his wife Alice (the only grounds for divorce in New York at the time was adultery), on the ground that she deceived him about having negro blood, begins. His lawyer says “The consent of the plaintiff to the marriage was obtained by fraud.” He says the jury will have to decide if Alice Rhinelander is “colored and of colored blood.” And a lot of shit about how she roped in poor weak-willed Kip.

By the way, an earlier post mentioned that Alice was put in the Social Register by virtue of her marriage, the only black person therein. The person who then successfully pushed for her to be removed was Emily Post herself.

There are a couple of books on the trial. Heidi Ardizzone and Earl Lewis, Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White, which looks to be more popular history, and Elizabeth M. Smith-Pryor, Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of Whiteness, is more academic and uses the trial as a lens on race in the US in the 1920s.

H. Grindell Matthews, who you’ll remember as inventor of the Death Ray™, has now invented the less-dramatic Luminaphone™, which sends lights through perforated plates to produce sounds. Not very interesting sounds, but sounds nonetheless.

Grock the Clown says he is leaving Britain forever because they insist on collecting income tax from him, the fuckers. At one point Grock was the highest-paid performer in Europe. See if this explains why.

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Today -100: November 9, 1925: Vast plots are the worst kind

The Italian police claim that the assassination plot against Mussolini was a “vast plot” to overthrow the Fascist regime and the monarchy, involving an ever-increasing number of suspects in every city. Or at least that’s their story and they’re sticking with it. Although they are releasing a lot of the people they arrested.

The Vanderbilts are going to demolish their mansion on 5th Avenue, 

so they’re opening it up to the public for the first time, with the entry charge going to a children’s charity. This is what sits on the site now:

There was another building there between the ‘20s and the ‘50s, but I ran out of patience trying to find a pic of it.

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Today -100: November 8, 1925: Everything and everybody

The Italian Fascist regime continues to arrest people allegedly involved in the assassination plot against Mussolini. Police are blaming a Masonic offshoot which as far as I know had nothing to do with it.

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Canners say whale meat will soon be available in cans.

The Prince of Wales falls off his horse again.

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Today -100: November 7, 1925: Of unfortunately failed assassinations, klans, and the bootleg class

The Italian government claims the assassination attempt on Mussolini was actually part of a deep conspiracy to overthrow not only the Fascist regime but the monarchy as well, funded from abroad. Bullshit, of course.

After William Jackson copped to being one-fourth black when applying for a marriage license to marry a white woman, Helen Burns, the KKK burns a cross on his lawn in Montclair, New Jersey. Looks like the marriage now won’t happen.

Andrew J. Volstead of Volstead Act fame tells an Anti-Saloon League convention that Prohibition authorities should prosecute and imprison regular users of alcohol “so that the country might know some of the so-called ‘good people’ are simply in the bootleg class.” Some aliens found boozing it up should be deported, he says.

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Today -100: November 6, 1925: The next generation will be both homely and dumb

Tito Zanibóni, a former Socialist (but Fash-curious) deputy is arrested for attempting to assassinate Mussolini. He’d rented a hotel room in Rome overlooking the balcony from which The Duck was scheduled to give a speech, but police arrest him after a tip-off. Mussolini orders the dissolution of the Unitarian Socialist Party to which Zanibóni belonged and the closure of its newspaper, and is going after Masonic lodges, ostensibly to protect them from reprisal by furious Fascists.

It probably doesn’t mean anything, but Mr. M’s speech was to celebrate Armistice Day, which in Italy meant the surrender Austria near the end of the Great War, and Zanibóni’s sniper rifle was the Austrian Steyr-Mannlicher M1895.

Zanibóni’s trial in 1927 (why the delay?) will result in a 25-year sentence, which will be commuted by the king in 1943. He’ll by appointed High Commissioner for the National Purification of Fascism in 1944, but will soon resign because the government failed to give him powers to, you know, nationally purify Fascism.

Biologist and influential racist eugenicist and Albert Wiggam says American women are losing their beauty, which will be followed by their intelligence (the two evidently go together) because stupid, unattractive women are out-breeding them. “If it keeps up, the next generation will be both homely and dumb.” 

25-year-old Soprano Mary Lewis joins the Metropolitan Opera, unusually coming from a career in vaudeville, including the Ziegfeld Follies, and silent movies.

Campbell McCarthy, who we are irrelevantly informed is a negro, gets a last-minute reprieve (a postponement) of his hanging in Illinois, but insists on being allowed to eat the last meal anyway (chicken; it doesn’t sound like prisoners have a choice of last meal).

Lucy Dales becomes the first woman mayor of Dunstable in England, elected almost unanimously by the council, on which she has sat since 1908. I say almost unanimously because her father voted against her. “She already has had as much responsibility as a woman should carry.” Dunstable has only just gotten electricity, explaining the light bulb theme you can sort of see – if you squint – at this wooden sculpture of Dales unveiled this very year.

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Today -100: November 5, 1925: Of fruitcakes, aces of spies, and big parades

The Ku Klux Klan did not do well in elections Tuesday, failing to defeat the Catholic John Purcell (D) for Virginia treasurer and failing to elect mayors in Detroit (where it did elect 4 to the city council), Buffalo or Louisville. The latter’s klannishness was discovered quite late and he was forced to pull out of the race. The Klan candidate for mayor of Indianapolis did win.

The revolution in Southern China is seriously imperiling British Christmas, dependent as it is on imports of ginger for puddings and fruitcakes. Oh noes!

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“Although”? Surely not being alive is a highly desirable quality in a politician.

Sidney Reilly, the Russian-born so-called “Ace of Spies,” is executed in secret by the Soviet Union’s secret police. The veteran of many plots, most of which fell apart, he was paid by god knows how many countries’ secret services, most notably the British. He is tricked by a OBPU front organization into sneaking back into Russia despite having been sentenced to death in absentia in 1918.

King Vidor’s “The Big Parade” parades into movie theatres.

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Today -100: November 4, 1925: I’m Walkering here

Tammany’s candidate J.J. (“Jimmy”) Walker, 44, is elected mayor of New York, part of a Democratic sweep. The NYT looks to Walker for “a sharp break with the most offensive methods” of Hylan. “It will be a grateful surcease if the City Hall leaves off asserting every day that wicked conspirators are in a ‘plot’ to ‘rob’ the city.” Walker will indeed not assert that, since he’ll be taking large bribes from those conspirators plotting to rob the city.

“Old-timers” complain about how quiet the election is in NYC, with no fights or nuthin’.

One notable Republican loss: former governor Charles Whitman is defeated for district attorney of New York County by incumbent Joab Banton.

Ruth Baker Pratt (R) is elected as the first woman member of the NYC Board of Aldermen, from the “Silk Stocking District.” In 1928 she’ll be the first woman elected to Congress from NY State.

New Jersey elects A. Harry Moore (D) of Jersey City as governor. He ran on a platform of dismantling state enforcement of Prohibition. Hey, NJ has 3-year terms for governors. (Update: changed to 4 years in 1947. And before then they couldn’t succeed themselves, so Moore was governor for three non-consecutive terms).

Greece claims the forensic evidence shows that Bulgarian troops killed that Greek soldier in Greece and dragged his body into Bulgaria.

German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann, in a speech in Dresden, says that at Locarno, British Foreign Minister Austen Chamberlain told him that “England’s entire naval and land forces would be at Germany’s disposal if France crossed the German frontier.” While this does express the multi-lateral nature of Locarno’s security guarantees, the phrasing is a little startling for Brits.

The Prince of Wales falls off his horse, as was the custom, while fox-hunting.

The NYPD will soon patrol the business districts to run down hold-up men using 9 new cars carrying detectives “known as skillful marksmen and equipped with rifles, sawed-off shotguns, tear gas bombs and pistols of unusually large calibre,” as well as machine guns capable of firing 100 rounds in 7 seconds. The drivers will be “expert in driving.” They’re hoping to develop radios to put in the cars; until then, the patrols will have to check in every 30 minutes to see if there have been any robberies. So stupid in so many ways.

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Today -100: November 3, 1925: Of skyscrapers, kluxers, and pleasure gardens

The German Ministry of Health bans skyscrapers (buildings taller than 5 stories) in Berlin, because they are unhealthy, obstructing light and air.

The Ku Klux Klan is making a push to elect a municipal government in Detroit.

“The Pleasure Garden,” the first film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, is released. It’s... nothing special.

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Today -100: November 2, 1925: Everyone’s a critic

José Santos Chocano, the poet-laureate of Peru, shoots to death a journalist for writing articles about him.

A pamphlet called “Fascist Catechism,” which is “stated to be approved by Mussolini,” says Italy must acquire “all the areas of Italy,” including Corsica and Nice (French territories), Malta (British), Dalmatia (Yugoslavia), and parts of Switzerland.

A fake pamphlet supposedly from the Knights of Columbus supporting the candidacy of (Catholic) John Purcell for Virginia treasurer is believed to have been put out by the Ku Klux Klan trying to gin up anti-Catholic sentiment. 

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