Today -100: December 18, 1922: Why thank you, we won’t let the door hit us in the ass, thank you for what I’m sure is a quaint Irish expression of cordiality!

All the remaining British troops leave southern Ireland. Col. Commandant Tanner views the joyous Dublin crowds waving as his soldiers depart as a sign of great “cordiality toward us,” which seems like a misinterpretation, but a very British one.

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

Today -100: December 17, 1922: Yeah, but is it art?

Polish President Gabriel Narutowicz is assassinated, 5 days after assuming office, by artist Eligiusz Niewiadomski at an art gallery. Niewiadomski is a nationalist with a reputation for looniness since a 1918 car accident which required trepanning. Narutowicz was chatting with the British ambassador, who congratulated him on being elected president. “Condolences, you should say,” Narutowicz responded aaaaaand then he was shot 3 times in the back.

Poland has never had a president, king, prince, anything, assassinated before; they were quite proud/smug about that. But how many assassinations have happened in art galleries? Google tells me the Russian ambassador to Turkey was assassinated in one in 2016. There were photos. There were memes (no link because Jesus, people). I don’t remember this at all.

Speaker of the House of Deputies Maciej Rataj, now acting president until the House elects a new president, asks Gen. Władysław Sikorski to serve as prime minister.

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

Today -100: December 16, 1922: Pembroke is another matter entirely

Headline of the Day -100:  

The NYT admits this story may not be true but puts it on the front page anyway. The Borneo chieftain supposedly tells the missionaries, “Of course no Balliol man could think of eating a fellow Balliol man.”

At the Lausanne Conference, Britain and Turkey are arguing over who gets Mosul and the region’s oil. Turkey thinks the area should be part of Turkey, Britain says Irak is part of their Mesopotamia League of Nations mandate. Turkey also says no to an Armenian homeland and that “Kurds” are not a separate race.

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

Today -100: December 15, 1922: I was defeated by the Ku Klux Klan of Oklahoma

Headline of the Day -100:  

They aim to wipe out all holidays of “decadent religions.” And no angel decorations: “Angels are symbols used to enslave the child’s mind.” But there will still be celebrations: Moscow children will be treated, if that is the word, to satirical plays on such subjects as the Lausanne Conference and the Kerensky regime.

At the Lausanne Conference, Turkey responds to British Foreign Minister Lord Curzon’s imperious threat to break up the conference if Turkey doesn’t provide guarantees to its Christian minorities. Turkey says it will join the League of Nations so that the League (rather than the special commission of Allied nations Curzon is demanding) would oversee the treatment of minorities as it does for Central European countries, to which the Jewish populations of Romania, Austria etc are doubtless saying, “Er, yeah, about that...”

Rep. Alice Robertson (R-OK) blames her re-election defeat on the Klan, accusing the winner, William Hastings of being a klansman.

Two Communist members of the French National Assembly, Marcel Cachin (editor of L’Humanité) and Paul Vaillant-Coururier, are sentenced to 6 months for articles inciting mutiny in French troops, presumably related to the possible occupation of the Ruhr. Not that it matters because they have parliamentary immunity.

Two black accused horse thieves are kidnapped from jail in Pilot Point, Texas and... we don’t know. The same thing happened a few months ago and those black men were never seen again, an incident that didn’t lead to the authorities actually guarding the jail at night. A note left at the local newspaper says, “Both negroes got what they had coming. Let this be a warning to all negro loafers. Negroes get a job or leave town.”

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

Today -100: December 14, 1922: Of duels, state presidents, bodyguards, and rights of correction

Uruguayan President Baltasar Brum challenges political opponent Luis Alberto Herrera to a duel, which is legal if the duel is first approved by a tribunal of honor. They fight in front of hundreds of government officials, firing two shots each. No one is hit.

Bavaria’s reactionary monarchists are trying to create an office of state president of Bavaria, which would sooner or later be occupied by Crown Prince Ruprecht. They’re encouraging Hitler to stir up the Bavarian youth, á la Mussolini, “but the reactionary chiefs do not take him seriously.”

Hitler now has a “bodyguard” of 10,000 uniformed men, and has been visiting states beyond Bavaria, although Württemberg police did stop a planned meeting in Goeppingen.

A judge in Paris rules that a husband has the legal right to hit his wife, the “right of correction.”

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

Today -100: December 13, 1922: Sigh

Following the riots attending Gabriel Narutowicz’s swearing-in as president of Poland, the interior minister and the Warsaw chief of police resign, and the latter will be prosecuted. There’s a general strike in protest of the right-wing violence and the power is off in Warsaw. The Nationalists are organizing an economic boycott of Jews.

The rector of the University of Vienna bars Jews from professorships.

Labor Secretary James Davis talks about the need to “educate” foreign-born people, both aliens and naturalized citizens, to “eradicat[e] the false doctrines of radicalism”. He proposes requiring every alien to enroll in government-run “training” on the glories of American democracy, with the added benefit that enrolment would bring to government notice those who “actively resist organized government or are disposed to treat lightly the institutions of law and order.” And of course these people, with all their resisting and treating lightly, would all be deported.

“Elections” are held in Italian cities where Blackshirts forced left-wing council members to resign. You can guess who wins.

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

Today -100: December 12, 1922: Of inaugurations, occupations, seductions, scolds, lynchings, and double jeopardies

Gabriel Narutowicz is sworn in as Poland’s new (and indeed the republic’s first) president. The inauguration is marked by right-wing riots (they think Narutowicz is too supportive of the Jews) in which 4 people are killed, as was the custom. Still, I’m sure this won’t mar a long and successful presidency.

British PM Bonar Law tells France that if it occupies the Ruhr, it will do so alone.

A Jewish deputation complains to King Ferdinand of Romania about students (high school? college? I don’t know what “higher schools” means) attacking Jews and Jewish shops in the major cities.

Mississippi Governor Lee M. Russell prevails in the lawsuit brought against him by Frances Birkhead for seduction and impairment of health (he forced her to get an abortion, leaving her sterile). The jury is all male and all married.

A Trenton, New Jersey jury (including 4 women) finds Mrs Marie Sarmosky guilty of being a common scold (that’s the worst kind of scold). She uses bad language and throws water at people, which just sounds like Trenton to me.

George Gay, a black man, is lynched in Streetman, Texas. He’d been arrested for an attack on a white woman, who was unable to identify him as the attacker.

The Supreme Court rules that people can be prosecuted for the same offense under both federal and state Prohibition laws without violating the 5th Amendment ban on double jeopardy.

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

Today -100: December 11, 1922: Of hostages, kkkhurches, stantungs, and retaliations

Adolf Hitler is reported to have said that Jews in Bavaria should be taken hostage in large numbers to... influence... business and international finance in favor of Germany.

In defiance of NYC Mayor John Hylan’s order to the police to get rid of the Klan in the city, a masked kluxer gives an advertised talk at the Washington Ave. Baptist Church in Brooklyn. Cops are there but don’t do anything. He speaks about the history of the Klan, White and Protestant supremacy, etc. The pastor then endorses his remarks, but denies being a member himself. (Update: the pastor will admit that this was a stunt and the guy wasn’t an actual klansman).

Japan gives Shantung back to China which, lacking a proper military to maintain order, will give local bandits $100,000 not to make trouble.

The IRA retaliates for the execution of its 4 leaders, which was in retaliation for etc, by burning the homes of the postmaster general, a prison governor, and another government official.

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

Today -100: December 10, 1922: Of kluxers, shady dancing, and Barrymores

NYC Commissioner of Accounts David Hirshfield says any city employee found to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan will be fired.

The NYT thinks 75 or so members of the next Congress owe their election to the Ku Klux Klan, although it points out that since the Klan keeps its membership lists secret we don’t know how many of them are themselves actual kluxers (a lot of them have question marks to this day).

Other things NYC doesn’t like: “shady” dance steps. The NYPD call together dance hall owners to voluntarily agree to stop them – or else. Everyone agrees that the “Chicago” and “balconading” are bad. Also any slow dances. And “parking,” which is just a couple standing on the dance floor but not dancing.

Play of the Day -100:

Looks super-intense, huh?

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

Today -100: December 9, 1922: Of contempt for law, reprisals, sopranos, and Cubist plays

Harding gives the State of the Union Address (still not so called), on something like an hour’s notice. Fightin’ Bob La Follette fails to applaud him.

Harding says he will call a governors’ conference to discuss enforcement of the 18th Amendment, which he calls a “nationwide scandal,” “the most demoralizing factor in our public life,” and says that “easy contempt for the Prohibition law... breed[s] a contempt for law which will ultimately destroy the Republic.”

He calls for constitutional amendments to ban child labor and something about tax-exempt securities.

And registration of aliens.

And he wants to prevent forest fires.

Really, it’s a long list of proposals for which there is no time in the remainder of the lame-duck 67th Congress.

One day after the assassination of Dáil deputy Sean Hales and wounding of Deputy Speaker Pádraic Ó Máille, four IRA leaders, including Commandant Rory O’Connor, who led the takeover of the Four Courts in April, are executed in reprisal – the government uses the actual word – after a hasty court-martial held the night of the assassination. A proclamation says anyone found with a bomb, firearm, or ammunition may be summarily executed on the signature of any 2 members of the Army Council.

Assholes are still going after German singers. The American League is protesting a Johanna Gadski concert in L.A.

A Parisian audience riots at Raymond Roussel’s Cubist play (whatever that might mean) “Locus Solus.” The play is about playing music for earthworms. Whatever. After this one performance, the theatre cancels subsequent ones, claiming equipment malfunction.

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

Today -100: December 8, 1922: It has been shown that Greeks and Turks cannot live side by side

Dáil deputy Sean Hales is killed and Deputy Speaker Pádraic Ó Máille (1st day in the job) wounded by presumed IRA assassins (who will never be caught) in Dublin in retaliation for the execution of IRA members.

The Allies (and the US) tell Turkey that the 200,000 Greeks in Constantinople should not be expelled or, you know, massacred. The Turkish delegate at Lausanne says “It has been shown that Greeks and Turks cannot live side by side, and the only solution is for the Greeks to go.”

Grady Rutledge, secretary of the American Unity League, an anti-Klan, mostly Catholic group responsible for Spotlight, which has been publishing the names of Chicago members of the KKK, comes to New York to start the same sort of activity there, with plans to go nation-wide. I believe the naming & shaming method only ever really happened in Chicago, and while very successful there in dissuading people joining, it ended badly after they got sloppy with their intel-gathering and named some people who weren’t actually kluxers, including a member of the Wrigley family...

Not content with passing the referendum to ban parochial schools in Oregon, kluxers start a fight at a Portland School Board meeting because the contract for a new building went to a Catholic architectural firm.

New Zealand voters defeat prohibition.

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

Today -100: December 7, 1922: Mussolini fully approves

The local Fascist organization in Alessandria province in northern Italy issued a threat to criminals that they would be sent to the hospital and, if they continued their evil ways, to the morgue. Mussolini telegrams them, “I fully approve your new methods of punishing criminals.”

Gov. Lee Russell of Mississippi is being sued by Frances Birkhead, a stenographer who used to work for him for seduction and breach of promise of marriage (he said he’d divorce his wife, allegedly). She also seems to be saying he forced her to get an abortion. She’s asking $100,000.

Headline of the Day -100:  

He says she committed fraud when she told him she was capable of managing their household finances. She says she does too know math, he doesn’t, and he (a widower with 6 children, by the way) is using this as an excuse to get rid of her because he fell in love with someone else.

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

Today -100: December 6, 1922: Of school religion and ice

The Youngstown, Ohio Board of Education is considering a request by the local Ku Klux Klan to summon representatives of the Knights of Columbus, the B’nai Brith and, of course, the Klan to work out the introduction of religious instruction into the public schools.

Maine bans ice in drinks.

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

Today -100: December 5, 1922: Of budgets, constitutions, and klans

Harding sends Congress his 1923-4 budget. He’s aiming to eliminate the deficit altogether, but not quite yet.

The Irish Constitution passes both houses of the Westminster Parliament. Tim Healy, a longtime on & off Irish nationalist MP and occasional lawyer for Sinn Féiners, will be governor-general, a title replacing lord lieutenant.

I think this is a first: the Irish Free State bombs and machine-guns IRA irregulars by aeroplane. Near Cork.

The special session of Congress ends without confirming Pierce Butler to the Supreme Court. He’ll need to be re-nominated. Some of the La Follette wing think he has a temperament problem and dislike his background as a corporate lawyer.

Congress passes a bill allowing Supreme Court Justice Mahlon Pitney, who is in bad health, to retire and collect a pension before reaching retirement age.

Attorney General Harry Daugherty says any illegal acts by the Ku Klux Klan do not come under the jurisdiction of the federal government. 

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

Today -100: December 4, 1922: Public authority, before demanding obedience, must itself obey

Threats from the Ku Klux Klan against Harvard sophomore Hubert Clay cause him to flee the university. He’s an apostate former member they consider too “indiscreet.”

Rep. George Tinkham (R-Mass.) writes to Pres. Harding, who is expected to chastise disrespect for the law, specifically for prohibition law, pointing out that nothing is being done about enforcing the provision of the 14th Amendment calling for states that restrict the black vote to lose some of their representation: “Public authority, before demanding obedience, must itself obey.” How quaint.

Liam Lynch, the Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army, threatens, in public letters to the speaker of the Dáil and others, “drastic measures” in response to the government executions of 8 (so far) IRA members after courts-martial. In private he issues “orders of frightfulness” authorizing assassination of government officials involved in the executions and Dáil members who voted for the courts-martial.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Australian PM Billy Hughes is stabbed! Um, with a hat pin during an election meeting in Melbourne.

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

Today -100: December 3, 1922: Of filibusters, banishments, and capitulations

The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill has been filibustered to death in the Senate. Sen. Lee Overman (D-NC) used up most of the last day of the filibuster, making these charges against the bill: 1) It was written by a (gasp, horror) negro, 2) It was purely intended to support the negro Republican vote in the North, 3) Ignorant Southern negroes would take it as permission from the federal government to rape white women, 4) Good Southern negroes don’t need the law (because lynch mobs only murder guilty black people).

Greece: Prince Andrew is sentenced to perpetual banishment by a court-martial for his role in the war with Turkey, in which he was a major-general. He admits having disobeyed orders to bring his troops to support another general, who then lost a major battle; Andrew says things would have gone worse if he’d obeyed. He might well have been executed like those former prime ministers if other countries (and the pope) hadn’t put major pressure on Greece (he’s related to the royal families of Britain and Spain and is also a prince of Denmark). The banishment will be rescinded in the ‘30s, but in a couple of days he will leave Greece with, among other family members, his 1½-year-old son Philip, the future consort of Queen Elizabeth II, who will have a son also named Prince Andrew who has not been sentenced to perpetual banishment as of the time of writing.

After attacks in the Bavarian towns of Passau and Ingolstadt on French and British officers of the Allied Commission of Control, the Allies demand an apology from Bavaria and the removal of the towns’ mayors and police chiefs, and impose a fine of 500,000 gold marks, which is the equivalent of some money, on each town. The Bavarian people, to say nothing of “Bavaria’s Mussolini, Hitler,” are very upset with this Allied high-handedness.

At the Lausanne Conference, Turkey is adamant that capitulations – old treaty clauses whereby foreigners are basically exempt from Turkish laws and taxes – are abolished, while everyone else says nah nah.

House Immigration Committee chair Albert Johnson (R-Wash.) rejects the idea of raising the immigration cap for Greece to take some of the refugees fleeing/banished from Turkey.

The Prince of Wales falls off a horse, as was the custom.

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

Today -100: December 2, 1922: Of giants, banishments, progressives, and pyramid garage sale

Obit of the Day -100:  Captain George Auger, the Cardiff Giant, something like 7½ feet, although the circuses he worked for claimed he was 8 foot 4. A former cop in Cardiff and London, he supposedly got the “captain” nickname from Queen Victoria, who he sometimes escorted. He worked for both Barnum and Bailey and Ringling Brothers, and starred in a production of Jack the Giant Killer which he wrote.

At the time of his death of “indigestion” at 39, he was in talks to act in “Why Worry?” with Harold Lloyd (that’s them, with Princess Wee Wee and Francesco Lentini the Three-Legged Man)(who really did have 3 legs)(and 4 feet).

At the Lausanne Conference, Turkey announces an order that the 1 million Greeks who haven’t already fled Eastern Thrace and elsewhere in Turkey are banished. They have until December 15 to skedaddle. 

33 members of the House and Senate form a “progressive” bloc under Robert La Follette. They vehemently deny that it’s a third party, but rather a bunch of like-minded Republican, Democrats and one Farm-Laborite aiming to “drive special privilege out of control of Government.” Hiram Johnson is their likely 1924 candidate for president. They will suggest a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College.

The Third Internationale resolves that the Communist campaign to free all the negroes of the world should focus first on the US.

Someone has already put a value on the contents of King Tut’s tomb: £3 million.

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

Today -100: December 1, 1922: Helllp meee!

Science! of the Day -100:  

Mexico City has been without water (completely? unclear) for 8 days after a water plant fails. Police shoot up a protest against the situation with machine guns, killing maybe 50 people.

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

Today -100: November 30, 1922: If the nation is to live, many individuals must die

Supposedly George, the new king of Greece, tried to prevent the executions of former cabinet members and is now kept a prisoner in his own palace, prevented from fleeing the country.

There is, supposedly, a Sinn Féin plot to kidnap the members of the Dáil Éireann who support the Free State government – all 80 of them.

In the Dáil, Minister of Home Affairs Kevin O’Higgins defends the execution of Erskine Childers, saying Ireland “is not a stage or platform  whereon certain neurotic women and a certain megalomaniac kind of men may cut their capers. ... if the nation is to live, many individuals must die, and... it does not matter that they die coldly at 7 o’clock in the morning.”

In Smackover, Arkansas, a boom town after the discovery of oil earlier this year, a Vigilance Committee (i.e., a mob wearing sheets but evidently not the KKK) attacks various “undesirable” establishments and people, with shootings, tar-and-featherings, and the like.

The Senate filibuster of the Anti-Lynching Bill continues, with Southern Democratic senators insisting on the previous day’s record being read out in full, then noticing that the chaplain’s prayer hadn’t been included and having a two-hour debate on including it, because irony is not big among pro-lynching Southern Democrats.

Members of Prussia’s Diet calling for a ban on the immigration of Jews from Poland and Galicia claim it’s because of the (very real) food and housing shortage and not because of (very real) racial animosity. Also, most of them are speculators and profiteers (“exchange hyenas,” which is new to me as a synonym for Jew).

Dr. Andrew Roman sets up “voluntary” medical inspections for applicants for marriage licenses, intended to collect data to use in pushing for compulsory eugenic inspections.

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

Today -100: November 29, 1922: Of filibusters, doles, treason, emperors, and busts

In the Senate, Southern Democrats filibuster the Dyer anti-lynching bill, as was the custom.

The British Parliament yesterday discussed giving £100 a week to the ousted sultan of Turkey. Jack Jones (Labour) suggested he get the same rate as the dole for British unemployed, 18 bob a week and a shilling for each of his wives.

After a court martial, Greece executes 3 former PMs, Dimitrios Gounaris, Petros Protopapadakis, and Nikolaos Stratos, plus a couple of other former cabinet officials and a general, by firing squad for treason for their role in the military fiasco against Turkey. Britain breaks off relations. Interim Prime Minister Sotirios Krokidas, who supported the trial, resigns because of a conflict in the cabinet over it, and Col. Stylianos Gonatas takes over.

The Ku Klux Klan elevates founder and former imperial wizard, the drunkard William Simmons, to a new and entirely meaningless title, emperor, for life. E.Y. Clarke is also sidelined and named Imperial Giant, also for life. The Klan’s new imperial wizard is Dr. Hiram Wesley Evans.

Mussolini orders each Italian embassy to have a bust of Dante.

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