Today -100: November 24, 1925: You loved to have me do that, didn’t you, old scout?

Bryn Mawr College’s Self-Government Association (i.e., the student body) calls for  students to be allowed to smoke. The president agrees, saying the ban no longer rests on “intelligent public opinion.” A questionnaire shows half the students smoke.

50 members of the Texas Legislature sign a petition calling on the Speaker to call a special session (since Gov. Miriam Ferguson refuses to do so) to investigate the highly corrupt highway spending overseen by her husband. They plan to use the session to impeach members of the Highway Commission and, oh yeah, Gov. Ferguson herself. Attorney General Dan Moody last week forced the American Road Company to return $600,000 of excess profits.

French Pres. Gaston Doumergue asks Aristide Briand to form a government and become prime minister for the 8th time. The composition of his cabinet will likely have to move rightward. This sort of instability in French government could never happen today.

Headline of the Day -100:

There has been a series of violent assaults on women recently in Toledo, and this is the police response.

At the Rhinelander annulment trial, those letters from Kip to Alice are read to the court, after the judge orders women spectators to leave the courtroom (he’d just suggested it to them earlier, with limited compliance – then he read one of the letters). After reading the first letter, whose contents the NYT fails to disclose (but they will be available from street vendors the next day), Kip’s lawyer, retired NY Supreme Court justice Isaac Mills, asks him, “You recognize that letter as smut?” Young Kip agrees that the letter he wrote, which wasn’t exactly intended for public consumption, was indeed smut. Mills describes the second letter as “the vilest smut.” So if you’re wondering, the Kipster’s letter was about him going down on Alice. “You loved to have me do that, didn’t you, old scout?”  (Isn’t that the name of the porn version of The Great Gatsby?) Her lawyer asks him, “You had no suspicion inside of you that to put your head between her legs was an unnatural thing?” He didn’t.

It gets grosser from there. Her lawyer asks the justice to clear the court so the jury can inspect her body to determine whether Kip would have recognized her skin color as negroid. She is told to lower her coat, under which she is wearing only underwear, down to her breasts and raise it to her knees. Crying all the time. He then asks Kip if she’s the same color she was when they spent a week fucking in the Hotel Marie Antoinette. He concedes that she is.

(Because things have gotten sooooo much better in the last hundred years, Brigitte Macron, wife of the French president, recently had to provide scientific evidence of not being a man to the court trying her defamation suit against an “influencer” who said she was.)

The federal Bureau of Education compiles a list of 40 books all children should read by age 16. Little Women, Robinson Crusoe, tons of Twain & Kipling, Alice in Wonderland, and, um, Uncle Remus.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court upholds the death sentence on William Cavalier, at 15 the youngest person ever sentenced to death in the electric chair in Pennsylvania. When he was 14 he killed his grandmother with a rifle to steal money to go to the movies. No article I’ve read about the case says what the movie was, but we are informed that he enjoyed it.

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Today -100: November 23, 1925: Of confidence and spirit photographs

France: the government of Paul Painlevé loses a vote of confidence in Parliament, the right wing and the Communists joining forces to defeat it.

An article in Scientific American debunks a “spirit photograph” of St John the Evangelist and some cupids which Arthur Conan Doyle defended as totally real. The article, by Walter Franklin Prince, who actually believes in some psychical stuff, identifies the original on which the fraud is based: a 17th-century painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, with some added “ectoplasm.” “Do London spiritualists never visit the National Gallery?” he asks.

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Today -100: November 22, 1925: Foreshadowing

The Rhinelander v. Rhinelander case was abruptly adjourned Thursday after Alice’s lawyers blatantly attempted to blackmail young Kip, showing him a letter he wrote to Alice in hornier days but not reading the letter to the court... yet. Evidently it’s explosive enough that his lawyers are now reportedly negotiating for a 6-figure settlement.

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Today -100: November 21, 1925: Of queens mother, prohibition, and burying Snoopy’s arch-nemesis

Queen Mother Alexandra, the Denmark-born widow of Edward VII, dies

at 80.

Coolidge calls for prosecutions of users of alcohol and not just bootleggers.

France has finally given the body of The Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, back to Germany, which holds a ceremony in which the coffin is accompanied by planes. One of which crashes, killing its 21-year-old pilot. It’s what Reddy would have wanted, probably. 

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Today -100: November 20, 1925: Of new world spirits, candidate kings, and jaundice

At the dinner of the NY State Chamber of Commerce, Pres. Coolidge (also broadcast over the radio) calls for the US to join the World Court. While reassuring his audience that it would involve few actual obligations, he says it would have a tremendous sentimental effect. “It would be public notice that the enormous influences of our country were to be cast upon the side of the enlightening processes of civilization. It would be the beginning of a new world spirit.”

Fascist deputies in the Italian Parliament attack and throw out Communist deputies. 

I must have missed the speech where Mussolini threatened to annex the Austrian Tyrol. So far, this campaign consists of the post office refusing to deliver mail in South Tyrol, which was awarded to Italy after the war, unless it’s addressed in Italian.

Archduke Albrecht II, a lesser Habsburg, who “has not previously shown striking qualities of leadership” but is pushing to become King of Hungary, becomes leader of the more or less fascist (mostly more) Society of Awakening Hungarians.

The NYT refers to the questioning of Kip Rhinelander on the stand as “at times unprintable, and a constant dwelling on unpleasant subjects.” Was it jaundice? He says that Alice’s father, whose blackitudinousness is more obvious than hers, told him that he was an Englishman with jaundice, and he believed him. “Mr. Davis tried to get him to admit that he had seen the elderly negro in his nightshirt but without success.”

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Today -100: November 19, 1925: Of odium, the only live force in Italy, defectives, and the arms of women in Havana

The British House of Commons ratifies the Locarno Treaty in what is being called “the spirit of Locarno,” meaning a European desire for enduring peace. Ramsay MacDonald and David Lloyd George criticize the lack of consultation with the British Dominions. Foreign Minister Austen Chamberlain (whose brother will declare “peace for our time” in 1938) says, “I do not say that these treaties when ratified will make war impossible...” Disappointing. “...but I do say they will render war infinitely more difficult.” How will it render war infinitely – infinitely! – more difficult? Because any country that starts a war will be “clearly putting itself in the wrong before the whole civilised world and bearing the odium of such wrong-doing.”

The Italian Parliament is considering a bill to make Mussolini responsible only to the weak-ass king, not, as now, in theory, to parliament and the king. Other “ultra-fascista” bills would give The Duck a veto over the agenda of Parliament and seize the property and revoke the citizenship of Italians living abroad who say bad things about (“damage the prestige of”) the Fascist regime. The Duck praises the idea of Italians all voluntarily subscribing to pay off the war debt to the US. He sez “Today Fascismo is the only live force in Italy. Everything else can be relegated to museums.” Also, “Throughout the world there is a feeling that the parliamentary system was good in the past, but today it is insufficient for the needs and passions of modern society.”

Dr. Clarence Cook Little, president of the University of Michigan, calls for the sterilization of mental “defectives.” He says there won’t be any abuse of this because “a public opinion intelligent enough to understand its need will be intelligent enough to prevent its abuse.” See, and you were worried about abuse.

The Hungarian Court of Appeals reverses the death sentences (and possibly the convictions as well? unclear) of József Márffy and Karl Marosi, two leaders of the Society of Awakening Hungarians who threw bombs into a Jewish dance hall 2 years ago, killing 9, but it does sentence them to 6 years for trying to bomb the French Legation, the homes of 2 Liberal leaders, a court building, etc. Some light googling failed to reveal whatever happened to these dudes.

Rhinelander v. Rhinelander: Leonard “Kip” Rhinelander is questioned by Alice’s lawyer Lee Davis:

“What is the color of your wife’s body?”

“Dark.”

“How dark?”

“Fairly dark.”

“Is it very pronounced?”

“It isn’t any darker than the arms of women I have seen in Havana.”

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Today -100: November 18, 1925: You must admit that there is no longer room for modesty here

Headline of the Day -100:

A French expedition plans to reach the North Pole next year utilizing motorized amphibious sledges, some of them carrying airplanes. Honestly, that explanation is more than a little disappointing after reading “mystery sleds” in the headline.

The British Admiralty decides that the destroyer Vivacious won’t have former Prime Minister Lloyd George’s badge as its insignia but rather... a squirrel.

The Italian Senate discusses giving women the municipal vote, while the Chamber considers abolishing elections in 7,000+ of the 9,000 municipalities. Bit of a roller coaster for the Italian women there.

Rhinelander v. Rhinelander: Leonard “Kip” Rhinelander testifies, or, as the NYT puts it, “A sadly confused young man stuttered his way through the intimate confessions of his courtship”. Alice’s lawyer Lee Davis gets him to admit that he, in the words of Davis, “voluntarily fell in love with” Alice quite soon after meeting her in 1921. This undercuts Kip’s lawyer’s assertions that he was the weak-minded victim of a scheming woman. He admits that it was he who pursued her and it had been his idea to get an apartment with her. Davis: “I didn’t want to bring filth into this case, but you must admit that there is no longer room for modesty here.” The Kippinator also admits that some of the claims in his pre-trial sworn statements, such as that he had frequent conversations about race with Alice in which she lied, were not true and were inserted by his father’s thug/lawyer. It’s possible Kip is trying to sabotage the case his family forced him into.

His testimony is interrupted so they can bring to the stand... famous black-face actor Al Jolson, who just wants to deny ever speaking with Alice, as she had claimed in one of her letters. The newspaper reports have caused him some trouble with his wife.

Back to the main witness. Leonard admits having taken meals with Alice’s relatives, despite having previously said that he doesn’t want to associate with colored people. He does deny having played a game of deuces wild with black men.

Then some of his letters to Alice are read out. He is forced to admit he was trying to get Alice to think about sex.

“What did you mean by ‘If you are real nice to me, once in a while I will let you drive’?”

“If she would let me caress her.”

....

“What is the worse deception, to lead a girl to believe you want to marry her and take that which is most precious to a woman, or for her to say she is white and not colored?”

“The latter.”

Davis asks if he didn’t recognize that a phrase Alice used, “strutting party” (dancing) was “a typically negro expression.” He did not.

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Today -100: November 17, 1925: It is your badge of masculinity

Rhinelander v. Rhinelander: the reading of Alice’s letters to Kip concludes after 4 loooong days. The jury is bored; other people’s love letters are never as interesting as you think they’re going to be. 108 of their letters to each other will be read.

D.C. Stephenson is sentenced to life. Yeah I know I said 20 years, not sure what the discrepancy is. His two co-conspirators who were acquitted are back in court charged with arson for a fire set at Stephenson’s home, to collect the insurance money, two days after Madge Oberholtzer’s funeral.

Bishop Collins Denny advises the North Carolina Methodist Conference to grow mustaches: “That’s all the women have left us. They cut their hair and wear men’s clothes, but they can’t wear a mustache. It is your badge of masculinity.”

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Today -100: November 16, 1925: If submarines are outlawed, only outlaws will have submarines

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho), Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and other senators, support the movement to ban submarines. He also wants to ban war.

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Today -100: November 15, 1925: Of nyes, dragons, and submarines

North Dakota Gov. Arthur Sorlie (D) appoints Gerald (pronounced with a hard G, I’m informed) Nye, editor of the The Fryburg Pioneer, to the unexpired US Senate term of Edwin Ladd, who died in June. Nye’s a Dem., Ladd was an R. Also, it’s unclear whether the governor actually has the authority to make this appointment, so Republicans in the Senate are threatening not to seat Nye.

D. C. Stephenson, former grand dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan, is convicted of 2nd degree murder for the death of Madge Oberholtzer, who took poison after his sexual assault on her and who he then kept from medical care. He is sentenced to 20 years, which is odd because I know he served more than that (and more still after he broke his parole). Surprisingly, his 2 bodyguards are acquitted.

A British submarine is declared lost after a Swedish ship bumps into it, with 69 members lost (stop sniggering). There’s a growing movement in Britain to ban the things altogether.

The NYT Sunday Book Review reviews the translation of Karel Čapek’s 1922 novel Krakatit about an engineer on the run after inventing an explosive that could end all life. I haven’t read it, but the Times reviewer seems confused as hell by a work of science fiction (to use an anachronistic term).

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Today -100: November 14, 1925: Governor Smith may be a big man in New York but he does not cut any ice here

The Rhinelander v. Rhinelander court hears more of Alice Rhinelander’s letters to her future husband, in which she tried to make him jealous by mentioning other men, including Al Jolson, who she said was a guest at the house where she was a maid. Did they really spend an entire day just reading out letters? 

Al Kelly, a sailor, has a side gig as a “human fly.” He climbs the 24-story Candler Building on W. 42nd Street, NYC after accepting a $500 bet that he could perch on its flagpole for four hours. But after an hour a cop who used to be a structural steel worker starts climbing after him, and Kelly gives up. The cop drags him to court, where he’s released after telling his story.

Examination of King Tutankhamun’s mummy shows that he was 15 (and let’s not even get into his mummy penis).

Colorado Gov. Clarence Morley refuses to extradite Philip Klein, who is wanted by New York on firearm charges and jumping bail. One of the NYC cops who trekked to Colorado says Morley told them that “Governor Smith may be a big man in New York but he does not cut any ice here” and “If Klein is a menace to New York, he is a menace here as well, so we will keep him.” Which makes no sense at all since he faces no charges in Colorado. Morley denies that conversation took place, says the papers were improperly filled out. Det. Sullivan thinks Morley is following Ku Klux Klan wishes. 

The producers of Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms” will skip Boston, refusing Mayor James Curley’s demand for extensive edits.

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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.

Headline of the Day -100:

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

Headline of the Day -100:

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.

Headline of the Day -100:

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.

Headline of the Day -100:

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!

Headline of the Day -100:

“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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Today -100: November 1, 1925: Oh, dear, put that gun away

Ku Klux Klan leader D.C. Stephenson’s trial for the kidnapping and assault & battery of Madge Oberholtzer hears her dying statement, after some excisions by Judge Will Sparks. There’s some argument about the meaning of “dear” in the testimony of a railway porter that he heard her say “Oh, dear, put that gun away.” The ominously named Judge Sparks says it might have been used in fear rather than as a term of endearment.

French stage and film comedian Max Linder (born Gabriel-Maximilien Leuvielle in 1893), 41, and his wife Hélène, 26, commit suicide, taking Veronal and morphine before he slits first her wrists, then his own. Er, it may be a murder-suicide rather than a suicide pact. They leave behind an 18-month-old daughter Maud, who dedicated much of her life (she died in 2017 at 93) to discovering, preserving and promoting prints of the films of a father she couldn’t remember. Linder, the first movie star to have his name on a movie poster c.1909, advanced silent comedy in part by basing it on character (“Max”) and developing gags that went beyond slapstick. Some of those were ripped off by Chaplin and many others; his broken-mirror routine in “Seven Years Bad Luck” (1921) is more imaginative than the Marx Brothers’ version in “Duck Soup.” (Also, he looked a lot like John Astin playing Gomez Addams in the ‘60s “Addams Family” tv show. Just sayin’.) His career hadn’t been going brilliantly in recent years. He made a few films in Hollywood, but they weren’t successful. And he had the problem of many film comedians of his generation, that he was good in short films but didn’t scale up well to features.

The Persian National Assembly deposes Ahmad Qajar, who has been shah since he was 11, ending the Qajar dynasty (1789-1925). He’s been in exile in France for a couple of years and has been enjoying casinos and blondes, so he doesn’t seem to much mind being deposed.

Soviet War Minister Mikhail Frunze dies at age 40 after an ulcer operation from chloroform poisoning. There are already rumors that Stalin had him killed, and the use of chloroform and indeed the operation itself were personally ordered by Stalin, who ignored Fruze’s doctors when they said his heart was too weak to survive it. Also, the dosage was super-high. So Stalin might well have purposely had him killed.

Sometime this month, Anita Loos’s book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes will be published.

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Today -100: October 31, 1925: Of frame-ups, aether, and secret bigotry

The ending of the Greco-Bulgar war is considered a triumph and proof of concept of the League of Nations, though Britain’s threat to blockade either country if they failed to comply might have had something to do with it.

The NY Morning Telegraph reported that Fountain Inn in Eustis, Florida, of which Republican NYC mayoral candidate Frank Waterman is a director, is biased against Jewish customers, reproducing a letter from its manager. Waterman calls it a “frame-up” but fires that manager, as one does in response to a frame-up. Then he finds that the recipient of the letter doesn’t seem to exist and he calls the letter a fake, attributing it without evidence to Tammany Hall.

Prof. Dayton Miller of Mt. Wilson Observatory says Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, which is premised on the non-existence of ether, is disproved by Miller’s detection of the mystery substance.

Headline of the Day -100:

I... don’t... even...

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Today -100: October 30, 1925: Of evacuations, elections, and courts-martialses

Greek troops evacuate Bulgaria by the time set by the League of Nations, which appoints a commission of inquiry to figure out who, human or canine, started this nonsense and what compensation they should pay. Both countries have agreed in advance to accept its decision.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksandar Tsankov’s brother Danoso is assassinated on the streets of Sofia. Danny T is a member of parliament but supposedly estranged from his brother and it’s unclear what this has to do with the war or anything.

Conservatives gain seats in Canada’s general elections, but without winning a parliamentary majority. Prime Minister Mackenzie King (Lib) loses his seat in York North and will have to find another one next year, but he’ll continue as prime minister anyway.

At Col. Billy Mitchell’s court-martial for violating army discipline by expressing his opinions on air defenses, the prosecution admits he was given no opportunity, as the rules require, to defend himself during the investigation stage, and there is some doubt there was such a stage. In other words, the prosecution is reluctant to admit that this court-martial was simply ordered by Calvin Coolidge who, the defense points out, said in June at Annapolis that naval peeps have wide latitude to express their opinions. The court decides the president can just change the rules whenever he sees fit.

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Today -100: October 29, 1925: Fascist molecules?

Paul Painlevé forms a new cabinet, becoming finance minister in place of Caillaux as well as prime minister.

Greece says its troops are out of Bulgaria, Bulgaria says they’re not. Greece accuses Bulgarian troops of attacking the evacuating Greeks.

Still no mention of the “stray dog” thing.

Anti-Fascists protest a Fascist celebration of the 3rd anniversary of the March on Rome at the Hotel Pennsylvania on 7th Ave. in NYC (you know its phone number).

Mussolini celebrates on horseback, because of course he does. He tells an audience in Milan, “Every one of you must consider himself a soldier, a molecule, feeling and pulsating with the entire organism.”

It’s a tiny story in today’s paper, but the feds are hunting James Durkin, a suspected Chicago car thief who shot and killed Bureau of Investigation (proto-FBI) agent Edwin Shanahan, who was following him. This is the first BOI agent killed in the line of duty. It will take the feds 3 months to catch Durkin. He will then be tried by an Illinois court because killing a federal officer was not yet a federal crime. He’ll be released in 1954 and die in 1981.

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Today -100: October 28, 1925: What sort of monster turns down a free apple pie?

Since the French Cabinet can’t force Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux to resign when he rejects a capital levy, the whole Cabinet resigns in order to form a new government without him, even though there is no way a capital levy would pass the Senate. Caillaux had also become stalemated with Washington on a plan to repay France’s war debt.

The League of Nations plans to create some sort of Balkans security pact.

A Paris court overrules the Duke of Bisaccia’s veto on his son marrying an actress, the father’s permission normally being needed for under-25s. The court says actresses are perfectly respectable now so there’s no cause for objection.

Brig. Gen. Lincoln Andrews, the assistant Treasury secretary in charge of Prohibition enforcement, complains that Congress made his job impossible by allowing sacramental wine to be sold for profit.

Coolidge turns down an offer from Vermont University’s Girls’ Club of an apple pie for the White House Thanksgiving dinner, possibly because it would be seen as an endorsement of the proposal for an Apple Week, which would be a precedent forcing him to endorse all sorts of fruit-based weeks.

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Today -100: October 27, 1925: The League commands it!

The League of Nations orders Greece and Bulgaria 24 hours to order the removal of their troops from each other’s territory and 60 hours to complete it.

Still no mention of the “stray dog” thing.

Right-wing military coup in Nicaragua by Gen. (and former president) Emiliano Chamorro, whose Conservative Party lost last October’s elections.

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Today -100: October 26, 1925: Violence should be timely and chivalrous

Greece and Bulgaria both agree to do whatever the League of Nations tells them to do.

Still no mention of the “stray dog” thing in the NYT.

The right-wing Nationalist (DNVP) ministers of finance, the interior, and commerce quit the German government because they’re not happy with the Locarno Pact. The Nationalists’ constituents especially object to the renunciation of war to re-re-possibly another re-conquer Alsace-Lorraine.

The Berlin Montag Morgen sues former crown prince Wilhelm, who issued an open letter saying... something, the NYT won’t spill the tea... about their report that he’s been lavishing presents on one of his secretaries. Her father says that Willy had him locked up in an asylum for a year after he objected to the attentions Wills was paying his daughter.

In an article looking back over Fascism’s many achievements, Mussolini writes “I have always maintained that violence should be timely and chivalrous. But when the revolutionary party holds the reins of government, then violence should be exclusively in behalf of the State. Private, individual and sporadic violence is harmful to Fascism.” He says “We must impose absolute discipline” on trade unions so that the majority of the people don’t think they can, you know, lead. “Discipline must not be purely formal, but substantial and absolute, almost religious. The workers must be taught that their duties are more important than their rights.”

The Marx Brothers play “The Cocoanuts” (dialogue by George S. Kaufman, music by Irving Berlin) opens in Boston. It will be refined over subsequent runs; by the time the film version is made in 1929, for example, Chico will no longer be called “Willie the Wop.” Margaret Dumont came aboard for the Broadway run. I shall refrain from making any Groucho-esque (Grouchovian?) jokes about Kay Francis coming aboard.

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Today -100: October 25, 1925: Of sheep, radios, incredible ignorance, and elections with eggs

Pres. Coolidge tells the international convention of the YMCA that parents in this country suck and should exercise more control over their brats, or words to that effect.

Speaking of parental influence, Kermit and Theodore Roosevelt Jr. have completed their expedition to Central Asia after achieving their goal of shooting some rare Marco Polo sheep.

Greece and Bulgaria accept the off-ramp from war offered them by the League of Nations. Bulgaria claims it only lost 3 dead soldiers and 7 MIA or KIA. The Greeks admit to 4 dead.

Still no mention of the “stray dog” thing in the NYT.

Venezuela bans radio sets because workers have been listening to the radio in the afternoons instead of going back to work after lunch. Venezuela already banned afternoon programs but there are pirate stations on ships and in parts of the country the government doesn’t control. We are not informed what sort of programs have proven so enthralling.

Most of the Sorbonne students going for their BA fail their written test so, being Sorbonne students, they respond by rioting, demanding new, less difficult tests. The police have to be called. The dean says the test wasn’t that hard, it’s the “incredible ignorance” of the students that’s the problem. One described Chateaubriand as the author of Emile and The Social Contract rather than the correct answer, a grilled tenderloin steak.

Students at Glasgow University elect Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain as Lord Rector, beating out G.K. Chesterton. To vote, students have to pass through a barrage of 20,000 eggs “of ancient vintage and uncertain pedigree,” as well as soot, “overripe herrings,” etc.

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Today -100: October 24, 1925: The League enters!

French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, as president of the League of Nations Council, politely suggests to Greece and Bulgaria that they are obligated as League members “not to take recourse to war”. Greek soldiers have penetrated 10 km into Bulgaria and are bombarding Petritch (Greece will deny this). Bulgarian troops have orders not to fight back, and aren’t, unless you believe the Greeks.

Still no mention of the “stray dog” thing in the NYT.

Slavery will be ended in Nepal any... day... now, according to the Maharajah (who may have a name as well as a title, but the NYT does not appear to know it and I don’t feel like looking it up), who’s been buying manumissions.

Germany bans children acting in movies.

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Today -100: October 23, 1925: Of invasions, discredited propaganda, and hooligans in diplomacy

War of the Stray Dog News: Greece invades Bulgaria, occupying posts and shelling villages (well, at least one village). Greece, claiming Bulgaria attacked a Greek border post, demands an indemnity of 6,000,000 drachmas, which is the equivalent of some money. The Treaty of Neuilly (1919) allows Bulgaria only a tiny army, which is consequently ordered to withdraw and offer no resistance. Bulgaria  calls on the League of Nations to tell Greece to knock it off.

No mention of the “stray dog” thing in the NYT yet.

Gen. John Charteris’s admission that he made up the thing about Germans rendering their dead soldiers is “received in official circles with great surprise.” Performative naïveté. The Evening Standard worries that it will “discredit all the official British propaganda, present past and future.”

Mussolini is cheesed off that Belgian Foreign Minister Emile Vandervelde snubbed him at Locarno. The Duck’s newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia says while the Russian Bolsheviks maintain “absolutely correct diplomatic demeanor,” Social Democrats are “hooligan[s] in diplomacy.”

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Today -100: October 22, 1925: Follyology?

Greece demands Bulgaria pay an indemnity of 2 million French francs gold, which is the equivalent of some money, for what they describe as an unprovoked attack on Greek soldiers posted on the border. The Bulgarian commander explains that it was all a misunderstanding and the government calls for a League of Nations investigation. Depending on who you listen to, the attack was by Bulgarian irregulars or bandits, or it was Bulgarian soldiers crossing the border, or... A Greek soldier chased his dog over the border into Bulgaria, where border sentries shot him dead (the soldier, not the dog, whose ultimate fate and indeed name seem to be a mystery). The NYT doesn’t mention the latter story, which will give this affair the name The War of the Stray Dog, which is right up there with the War of Jenkins’ Ear or the Great Emu War of 1932.

German republicans want to prosecute Hermine, wife of former kaiser Wilhelm, for referring to herself as kaiserin and queen when registering at a hotel in Baden,  titles she never had since she married Willy after he abdicated as kaiser of Germany and king of Prussia.

Thomas Lister, aka Lord Ribblesdale, dies. Since he leaves no male heirs, his barony and amusing title die with him. Here’s a painting of him by John Singer Sargent, looking very Lord Ribblesdaley.

Four Italian Fascists are acquitted by Fascist judges of the murder of Socialist parliamentary candidate Antonio Piccinini in February of last year (despite being quite dead, Piccinini was elected 2 months later). They’ll be tried again in 1950; 3 will be acquitted again and one found guilty, the justice of which is slightly lessened by his having been dead for 6 years.

Headline of the Day -100:

Victor Emmanuel, the fucking king of Italy, starts a fucking campaign against motherfucking swearing.

A newspaper distributing agent and two newsdealers are indicted in Jersey City for selling supposedly indecent magazines. They’re given suspending sentences after signing an agreement not to sell magazines, including “Hot Dog,” “Whizz-Bang,” “Artists and Models,” “Art and Beauty,” “Art Lovers,” “Flapper Experiences,” and “Follyology.”

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Today -100: October 21, 1925: Of solemn pledges, a return to Shakespeare’s time, and his and her impeachments

Hungary starts censoring crossword puzzles after one in a royalist newspaper has the solution “Long Live Otto” (the 12-year-old Habsburg pretender to the throne).

Headline of the Day -100:

Their restraint in not snickering shows great self-control.

The Japanese government is worried that the disorder in China may lead to another Russo-Japanese war, since it’s endangering the territorial gains Japan made in China in the first war.

That Catholic Church in Linz, Austria decrees that plays produced by Catholic societies must be male-only.

There is talk in Texas of impeaching Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson because her husband, former impeached governor James Ferguson, has been doing more and more of her job, especially handing out highway contracts.

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Today -100: October 20, 1925: Wherein is revealed whose head Alfred E. Smith would bite off and what no man in possession of his proper senses would ever do

Treasury Sec. Andrew Mellon proposes lowering the maximum income tax, reducing taxes at every income level, eliminating federal inheritance tax, and passing a constitutional amendment eliminating tax-free securities. He wants to kill federal taxes on trucks but not on passenger cars.

New York Gov. Al Smith says he’s definitely, final answer, not running for re-election. “I’ll bite the head off the first leader who tries to tell me I’ve got to run for governor.” As for president in 1928, well, he’s willing to be drafted – “No man in possession of his proper senses would ever turn down the nomination for president” – but he certainly won’t be campaigning for it or indeed even announcing his candidacy.

British Brig. Gen. John Charteris, a Tory MP who was Army Chief of Intelligence during the Great War, admits, at a National Arts Club dinner of all places, that he’s the one who started the story that Germany was boiling down the bodies of its soldiers for glycerine. He planted it in a Shanghai newspaper to influence the Chinese, then the story spread to British newspapers.

The US Supreme Court overturns Arizona’s minimum wage for women.

Although Italy has in theory held Somaliland as a (cough) protectorate since 1889, it didn’t dare try to occupy the north, possibly put off by the ass-kicking Ethiopia gave it in the ‘90s, but now Mussolini sends in troops.

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Today -100: October 19, 1925: Of locarnoes, panamas, and income tax

The Soviet Union, at least as expressed in Izvestiya and Pravda, considers Locarno to have been a victory primarily for Britain, which now has Germany in its grasp, loosening the links Russia tried to forge with Germany as fellow European outcasts with the Treaty of Rapallo. Russia is feeling left out and lonely.

Passengers on a ship arriving from Panama inform the NYT of a revolt – in fact, a rent strike – in Panama a week ago that you’d think the paper would have heard about before now, especially considering US troops are helping suppress it, a fact that won’t appear in the paper for another 6 days as the occupation winds up.

Treasury Sec. Andrew Mellon tells the House Ways & Means Committee that he opposes exempting incomes under $5,000 from income tax because then it would be only fair, he says, to exempt the first $5,000 of incomes over $5,000, and that would double the revenue loss. He wants to reduce federal taxes in ways I can’t help notice would especially benefit the rich, and to eliminate federal inheritance tax altogether. He says taxing lower-income people would give them “a stake in the country.” He also wants to eliminate the publicity clause making the amount of income tax people pay being public.

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Today -100: October 18, 1925: Allied powers by any other name would smell as sweet

French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand says the phrase “allied powers” must no longer be used, thanks to Locarno reuniting Europe in peace and friendship forever.

NY Gov. Al Smith says he won’t run for re-election, which I assume means he wants his time free to run for president, although the NYT has no clue about that and is befuddled by Smith’s decision. The article also says the D’s are expected to run Franklin Roosevelt for US Senate. Which they won’t.

To wear a turban in Turkey now requires a permit, which will only be issued to Muslim clerics.

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Today -100: October 17, 1925: When two ride one horse one rides behind

French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand says the Locarno Conference lays the foundations for the United States of Europe. Hurrah!

In Locarno, Mussolini holds a press conference, but most of the British and French, and some of the German, reporters boycott it to protest censorship in Italy.

Responding to the US Episcopal Church’s decision to drop “obey” from women’s marriage vows, William Inge, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, says “When two ride one horse one rides behind.”

The Texas Textbook Board orders the deletion of any reference to evolution in textbooks.

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Today -100: October 16, 1925: Never fight again

Mussolini unexpectedly turns up at the Locarno Conference. Wants to be at the signing ceremony, I guess. He’s being asked by the Swiss authorities not to go out in public, since the region of Switzerland in which Locarno is located has many refugees expelled from Fascist Italy.

First sentence of the article on Locarno: “Today France and Germany promised never to fight again.” Phew. The demilitarized Rhine zone will exist in perpetuity, guaranteed by Britain and Italy. There’ll be arbitration treaties between Germany and France, Germany and Belgium, Germany and Czechoslovakia, and Germany and Poland (the latter two guaranteed by France). Most importantly, perhaps, Germany is now on equal footing with other nation-states.

Sen. Samuel Ralston (D) of Indiana drops dead. Gov. Ed Jackson (R) will name a Republican/Klansman, Arthur Robinson, to replace him.

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Today -100: October 15, 1925: Of leagues, entokillers, and pagans

At the Locarno Conference, Germany agrees to apply for League of Nations membership without reservations about military commitments, but with a wink and a nod from the allies (rather than a written guarantee) that they’ll take into account Germany’s lack of a military to commit.

Obit of the Day -100: Harold Maxwell-Lefroy, entomologist and insect-slaughterer extraordinaire. He was playing with lewisite in his lab, probably (they might have been able to keep him from dying when they found him unconscious if they’d known what gas he was using but he was the secretive type). Lewisite was invented during the war as a chemical weapon by a dude named Lewis. It’s assumed Maxwell-L. was trying to use it to kill flies. Don’t fuck with flies. In fact, his young son died in India of typhoid or another of those tropical fly-borne diseases, so he wasn’t fond of flies. This is not even the first time this year he became unconscious in his lab mucking about with insecticides. M-L is credited with saving Westminster Hall from being eaten by beetles and with killing some of the lice infesting soldiers in the trenches during the war (the origin of the word “lousy,” if I haven’t mentioned that before).

Scotland Yard raids Communist Party headquarters. There’s been a lot of talk lately about seditious literature.

NY Secretary of State Florence Knapp added religious questions to the state census for Indians (and only Indians), enabling her to reveal that half of them are good Christians while half are “pagans.” 

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