Today -100: February 8, 1922: A military power, but not militarist

3 IRA men under sentence of death in Northern Ireland for killing 2 constables are reprieved, although they didn’t qualify for the amnesty.

French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré says France needs an army of 630,000 and will eventually reduce the draft from 18 months to 12. “Events oblige France to be a military power, but not militarist,” he says.

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The India Office warns it will put down the non-cooperation movement with “sternness and severity,” saying “no Government could discuss” Gandhi’s demands. But it does “correct” some of his “misstatements,” such as that non-cooperation is necessary to secure the rights of free association, free speech and free press. You know, the things they JUST FUCKING SAID they’d crack down on with sternness and severity.

Prohibition agent Milton Extein goes to the office of a US commissioner to get a warrant for a bootlegger from whom he bought some corn whiskey, only he says the bottle was lost or stolen on his way to the office. Then he collapses with alcohol poisoning and has to be rushed to the hospital.

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Proving once again that silent so-called “comedies” were actually documentaries.

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Today -100: February 7, 1922: Of popes, seduction, and non-cooperation

Cardinal Achille Ratti, a compromise candidate, is elected pope. He will be called Pope Rat Pius XI. They were on a schedule and didn’t wait for cardinals from the Western Hemisphere to get to Rome before they voted. Pius XI (which is also the nickname of the current president of China) gives the benediction from the balcony, which popes stopped doing in a snit when Italy took over Vatican City in 1870.

So what do we know about him?

Um, okay.

Well, that seems unlikely.

Sure, why not.

And he’s supposedly written 330 books, and he likes hanging out with boy chimney sweeps.

Russia dissolves the Cheka. And creates in its place the GPU (State Political Directorate).

Gov. Lee Russell of Mississippi is sued by former stenographer in his office, Frances G. Birkhead, for $100,000 in damages for “seduction,” half for being persuaded to fuck him (“yielded to his will”), causing her to lose her job and her health, half for his getting her to have an abortion. Russell calls the suit “the most damnable blackmail conspiracy in the history of Mississippi.”

Indian Nationalists storm a police station in Bengal and kill 17 cops. Unfortunately, this coincides with Gandhi’s offer to postpone the start of civil disobedience if political prisoners are released and freedom of association and the press are restored.

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Today -100: February 6, 1922: Of cardinals, glands, forgeries, and missing pink silk nightdresses

The cardinals still haven’t elected a new pope. The NYT thinks (wrongly) that it’ll be Cardinal Giovanni Tacci Porcelli, or Johnny Piggies as he’d be called if he were a character in The Sopranos.

With the Washington Conference almost over, it’s time to tot up the scores, and the NYT thinks the big winner is Japan and the big loser is Russia (which wasn’t invited). China is pretty fucked too. Japan promises, “for the third or fourth time,” to leave Siberia. Any points of friction between the US and Japan that might lead to war have been removed, so that’s good. France’s reputation in the US has been damaged by its stubborn, not to say intransigent, negotiating style.

In Sing Sing last month a Manhattan doctor, tampering in God’s domain as was the custom, removed the glands of a prisoner executed in the electric chair and implanted them in an epileptic convict. Prison officials are being evasive about whether it even happened.

Some forged English banknotes have turned up in Paris, and the cops are pretty sure it’s a scheme by Russia to undermine the French economy.

The police seem to be having a ball investigating the murder of movie director William Desmond Taylor. They’re looking for a “drug peddler” and a missing valet and also searching for a pink silk woman’s nightdress that went mysteriously missing from Taylor’s apartment, as have letters from actor Mabel Normand, possibly stolen after Taylor’s death was announced by studio operatives.

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Today -100: February 5, 1922: Of influenza, Lincolns, non-profit wars, and saddlemakers

As flu cases rise, New York health authorities are considering banning talking on the subway.

Henry Ford buys the bankrupt Lincoln Motor Company for $8 million.

The International Association of Machinists proposes taking the profit out of war by removing the manufacture of war materials from private companies.

German President Friedrich Ebert is expelled from the saddlemakers’ union.

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Today -100: February 4, 1922: In for a wetting

In the murder investigation of William Desmond Taylor, the LAPD think the butler did it (well, the former butler who Taylor accused of stealing valuables including a car when he was out of town), but they can’t find him. A bunch of actors are subpoenaed to appear at the inquest, including Mary Miles Minter, Mabel Normand, and next-door neighbor Edna Purviance.

New Jersey state enforcement of Prohibition ends after the NJ Supreme Court rules the state’s dry law unconstitutional and releases many prisoners. This leaves enforcement in NJ to 20 federal dry agents, and the feds don’t plan to increase that number. My favorite phrase in the article: “New Jersey is in for a ‘wetting’”.

A meeting between Northern Ireland Prime Minister Sir James Craig and Michael Collins ends in recriminations over possible adjustments to the border between north & south Ireland.

The Massachusetts Legislature defeats a measure to legalize the playing of checkers and chess on Sunday (between the hours of 2 and 6).

New York Sacrilege of the Day -100:

Fatty Arbuckle’s second murder trial ends in a mistrial. Where the first one deadlocked at 10-2 for acquittal, this one deadlocked at 10-2 for conviction. His lawyers’ strategy of declining to make a final argument, which they thought would indicate how weak they found the prosecution case (and preempt a prosecution rebuttal, for which they figured the DA was saving all his best stuff), actually convinced the jury that they were throwing up their hands.

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Today -100: February 3, 1922: Of dead directors, fair play, and federations

Director/actor William Desmond Taylor is shot dead in his home. The films he directed include Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Anne of Green Gables, and How Could You, Jean? with Mary Pickford. Did Mabel Normand, the last person known to have seen him alive, shoot him? Probably not. Was he killed by Mabel’s cocaine suppliers? Possibly. Was it actress Margaret Gibson, who confessed to the murder on her deathbed in 1964? Er, probably not. His murder will never be solved. Taylor leaves behind a wife and daughter... sorry, he actually left them behind in 1908, when he split town and changed his name, as was the custom (the wife, who had long divorced him, spotted him in a movie a couple of years ago).

A black man, Will Thrasher, is lynched in Mississippi, accused in a note tacked to the tree from which he is hanged of attacking a white school teacher in, um, Fairplay, Mississippi.

The Italian government of Ivanoe Bonomi resigns. I don’t think it’s entirely because they were too nice to the Vatican after Pope Benedict died, but it’s definitely partly because of that.

The Federation of Cental America project fails when Honduras pulls out.

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Today -100: February 2, 1922: Of the reign of peace, women dries, Ulysses, evolution, and film nights

The Washington Conference adopts: the Five-Power Naval Treaty limiting capital ships; the Five-Power Treaty against the use of poison gas and against submarines practicing commercial warfare; agreements on post offices and railroads and radio stations in China and to stop foreign powers establishing spheres of influence or monopolies in China and for Japan to return Shantung to Chinese control – when it feels like it. US Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes calls the conference “perhaps the greatest forward step ever taken to establish the reign of peace”. So yay for the reign of peace, I guess.

Journalist Georgia Hopley is appointed the first woman prohibition agent. She ran the Harding campaign’s outreach to women in Ohio. She’ll be working on publicity rather than going on raids (she is in her sixties).

James Joyce’s Ulysses, some of which was previously serialized, is published for the first time in book form. Also, happy 40th birthday, Mr. Joyce!

William Jennings Bryan has been touring Kentucky, pushing a move in the Legislature to ban the teaching of evolution in KY schools, including the University of KY.

Evidently the showing of comedies to the Death Row prisoners in Sing Sing the night before an execution has become a tradition. In this case, it’s “Robinson’s Trousseau,” with Lee Moran, projected on a sheet that the prisoners had to view diagonally, through the bars of their cells. “Warden Lawes and other officials of the prison emphasized that the pictures were not given to humor the condemned prisoners. They were shown, it was explained, to take their minds off the execution Thursday night.”

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Today -100: February 1, 1922: Of lives of shame, ham, and fatties

The Salvation Army is buying Chinese girls from their parents, as one does, 100 of them at 30 shillings a pop, to keep them from “a life of shame.” It plans to put them to work ringing bells or whatever Sally Army conscripts do. If they asked the girls what they want to do, I missed that part.

Unemployed farm worker John Hill of Yakima, Washington pleads guilty to stealing some hams to feed his 5 children. The judge suggests he have a vasectomy in exchange for a suspended sentence and he accepts.

At the (second) Fatty Arbuckle trial, the prosecution tries to strike from the record the testimony of one of its own witnesses, Zey Prevost, whose testimony on the stand conflicted with her statements to the police, statements the defense claims were coerced. And one of Fatty’s witnesses, who supposedly worked with Virginia Rappe and saw her have bouts of illness, may not have worked in the store at the same time as Rappe.

A Post Office inspector prosecutes a publisher for sending the works of 16th-century Renaissance writer Rabelais through the mails.

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Today -100: January 31, 1922: And you thought he came from Krypton

Anti-Treaty republicans are elected or re-elected as mayors of Dublin, Cork, Sligo, and Limerick.

Ireland has seen a string of bank robberies, stickups, and the like recently as criminals take advantage of the transition between British and Irish rule. But while the Irish haven’t fully taken over policing yet, a Republican court in Dublin rules that a female bookkeeper fired for smoking in the office where all the male employees were allowed to smoke is entitled to a week’s wages.

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Larry Niven might have a few thoughts about that.

Headline of the Day That Someone Enjoyed Writing Waaaaay Too Much -100:  

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Today -100: January 30, 1922: Sensuality, He Declares

Ernest Shackleton died a few weeks ago on his ship, the Quest, anchored off South Georgia Island. The explorer was 47.

Pres. Harding says the Knickerbocker Theatre disaster “has deeply depressed all of us and left us wondering about the revolving fates.”

A 20-year-old black man is lynched in Pontotoc, Mississippi.

Lenin will go to the Genoa Conference in May to represent Russia. As far as I know, he hasn’t left Russia since the Revolution. 

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Today -100: January 29, 1922: Gunning for boobs

The roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre, a Washington DC movie theatre, collapses under the weight of snow following a record snowfall, killing 96 or possibly 107 people who moments before had been enjoying “Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford,” a (now lost) film about con men (“The tale of a town with more dollars than sense, and a bright young man who was gunning for boobs”).

Last September, a Marine Corps gunner said he crashed his airplane in the Georgia marshes and had to abandon it. Turns out he actually sold it to a couple of guys, one of them an exhibition flyer.

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Today -100: January 28, 1922: Of gas, phoning girls, ghost banjos, and Nelly Bly

In Nevada, Gee Jon and Hughie Sing are sentenced to death for the murder of Tom Kee, an old guy from a rival tong (yes, Gee killed Kee). They are the first people ever sentenced to die by lethal gas. I’d have said sentenced to die in the gas chamber, but Nevada doesn’t have one. The state prison plans to put them in a cell for several days, then randomly choose a day to gas them in their sleep. Spoiler Alert: this will not work.

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I’ll bet he does.

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Journalist Nelly Bly (real name Elly Cochran) dies at 57. She went undercover in a lunatic asylum to expose abuses in 1887, then followed up by beating Jules Verne’s fictitious Around the World in Eighty Days journey, doing it in 72 days. She spent a few years writing novels, then married a much older businessman and ran his steel-container business (into the ground). She returned to journalism as a war reporter during the Great War.

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Today -100: January 27, 1922: Of free advice, anti-lynching, and craps

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover gives France some financial advice – the areas of France damaged by the war can be rebuilt only to the ability of Germany to pay for it, and the French army should be cut in half to balance the budget – and France is livid.

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), at a bit of a loss since Prohibition passed, now plan to bring their anti-booze message to Mexico and Cuba. Good luck with that.

The Austrian government falls after the Pan-Germans ditch the governing coalition to vote against the treaties with Czechoslovakia.

The House passes, 230-119, an anti-lynching bill, and sends it to the Senate to die.

A judge in Beaufort County, North Carolina, makes 5 black men convicted of shooting craps shoot craps to determine their sentences, which therefore range from 3 to 12 months.

Speaking of justice in NC, Canada decides not to send fugitive negro Matthew Bullock back to the state to face charges or, more likely, a lynch mob like the one that murdered his brother. (Update: this decision is just not to deport him for breaking immigration laws entering the country; extradition is still possible.)

BBC Radio 4 is currently (you know, in 2022), running a series of 15-minute documentaries entitled 1922: The Birth of Now on subjects including The Criterion, Nosferatu, Louie Armstrong, Einstein, etc. Available worldwide for at least a year.

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Today -100: January 26, 1922: Of Southern customs, sea vamps, and gray hair

6 members of a negro band from Ohio, playing at a tourist hotel in Miami, are beaten up by an unidentified mob who break their instruments and tell them to leave town, which they do. Evidently they “had not conducted themselves in accordance with Southern customs, had sought to mingle with white people in the public parks and at public entertainments”. Funny definition of “public” ya got there, Florida.

Elsewhere in Florida, the St. Petersburg Purity League asks Mayor Frank Pulver to appoint a bathing suit inspector to “protect the married man from the wiles of the sea vamp.”

A Chicago judge decides that 30-year-old Delta Callery, who had a fight with a neighbor who made fun of her gray hair, but who says SHE’S PROUD OF HER GRAY HAIR, should be examined in the psych ward because she’s a 30-year-old woman who is PROUD OF HER GRAY HAIR.

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Today -100: January 25, 1922: Anybody knows good whisky

Egyptian nationalists, following Gandhi’s model in India, call for a boycott of the British. Lord Allenby orders the arrest of the 8 leaders who signed the manifesto and the suspension of the 4 newspapers that published it. 

Some assholes argue before the Supreme Court that the 19th Amendment was wrongly ratified, that it destroys the equal representation of states in the Senate (how?) and is “an attempt to put shackles on our great democracy,” which will obviously lead to revolution. The lawyer, William Marbury, says the power to amend the Constitution does not contain “the power to destroy.” Why, he speculates, if this ratification were accepted, a future amendment could establish a monarchy. Um, no one tell the Trumps.

A federal judge in Brooklyn presiding over a Prohibition case rejects the government’s offer to have a chemist analyze supposed liquor, saying the jury could decide for itself: “Anybody knows good whisky.” So the jury pass a bottle around, then go to lunch, taking the bottle with them. When they return, the evidence is mysteriously missing, and they vote to acquit.

Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon rejects a bonus for WW I veterans as contrary to his plans to pay down the debt and as damaging industrial revival.

At the Washington Conference, Japan repeats that it will only leave Siberia when it damned well feels like it.

Gen. Walther von Lüttwitz, one of the leaders of the Kapp Putsch, currently a fugitive hiding in Hungary, asks if Germany can send along his pension, please and danke. 

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Today -100: January 24, 1922: Oh sure, everyone always blames the turnips

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And beet roots. See, when Charles tried to seize the Hungarian throne last October, the harvest had just come in and took up all the railroad carriages, delaying the putsch.

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Today -100: January 23, 1922: I’m just surprised those two even sat in the same room

Michael Collins and Northern Ireland Prime Minister Sir James Craig come to an agreement ending the mutual boycott in Belfast and beyond, and agreeing to a commission to set borders between Northern and Southern Ireland.

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Today -100: January 22, 1922: Of dead popes and redundant horses

Pope Benedict XV dies.

The New York Fire Dept will lay off the last of its horses in March and in future rely solely on motorized fire trucks.

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Today -100: January 21, 1922: Of elephants, apoplexy, and boxing

Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria hasn’t yet sold off his menagerie, but former kaiser Wilhelm’s lions, tigers, zebras, elephants and hippopotami are coming to Coney Island.

Kansas City Mayor James Cowgill (which is definitely a Kansas-City-mayor name) drops dead of apoplexy while berating police commissioners for insufficient zeal in going after prostitutes.

Cleveland Mayor Fred Kohler bans boxing matches being held before mixed-sex audiences.

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Today -100: January 20, 1922: Courtroom drama

At Fatty Arbuckle’s second trial, the prosecution’s key witness recants her previous statement that Virginia Rappe said “He hurt me,” which she says she was coerced by the police into signing after she refused to sign one attesting that Rappe said “I’m dying, he killed me.”

By the way, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that one of Rappe’s pallbearers was Oliver Hardy.

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