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.

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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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Today -100: January 19, 1922: They must be ruled

American writer Grace Thompson Seton speaks with former Austrian emperor Charles, who says that Hungary is not ready for a republic, and indeed no European country is except Switzerland. “Democracy? My people do not understand what it means. They think democracy means riding about in motor cars and doing no work and being fed without trouble and having plenty of money. The people do not understand that they need a strong hand to govern them. They must be ruled.”

Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria can’t afford to feed the two elephants and some buffalo in the royal menagerie and wants to sell them. The Cincinnati and Bronx zoos have expressed interest.

The New York movie censors demand changes, and yet more changes, in Erich von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives, and demand to see advertising copy in advance.

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Today -100: January 18, 1922: Of conferences, lynchings, and impecunious royals

Invitations to the Genoa Conference in May, which will discuss economic and financial issues and deal (again) with German reparations, have been sent to every nation in Europe, including pariahs Germany and Russia, but not to Turkey, which basically has two governments at this point. The US, Japan, and South American countries have also been invited.

A mob in Mayo, Florida lynch a black alleged murderer.

Members of the former ruling family of Austria-Hungary are all poor now. Relatively speaking, anyway. The reproduction of this article is rather poor, so for a minute I thought the former emperor and empress had been reduced to selling the family towels. Some of the Habsburgs have even been forced to... work, with “indifferent success” according to the headline, but details seem to have been edited out of the final article.

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Today -100: January 17, 1922: Of surrenders, embargoes, censorship, and extraditions

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Or, as Collins puts it, “The members of the Provisional Government received the surrender of Dublin Castle at 1:45 o’clock this afternoon, and it is now in the hands of the Irish nation.” The British burn a bunch of documents before departing, as is the custom.

China may be heading towards civil war, so the House of Representatives votes to give Harding and Secretary of State Hughes the power to stop arms shipments from the US to China.

In the last 5 months of 1921, the NY Motion Picture Commission licensed 1,330 movies, banned 5 and required cuts in 160. The commission wants new powers to ban “unpatriotic” films. It deplores that films “incorporate... in such a marked degree the vices of the human race, and also... depict violations of law in the commission of various crimes.” It wants the Legislature to give it power to ban films with actors whose fame derives from scandal or crime.

North Carolina wants the extradition from Canada of Matthew Bullock, a black man who allegedly led an attack on whites at a railroad station in which two white men were shot in a conflict over the quality of 10¢ of apples his brother had purchased. Since two men have already been lynched over this thing, including the brother, there is some controversy in Canada over whether extraditing Bullock would be a good idea.

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Today -100: January 16, 1922: Of last laughs

Sing Sing will show a movie as a special treat for two men before their executions in the electric chair. The movie: The Last Laugh. I think this is a Mutt & Jeff animated short.

The Knights of Columbus plans a $1 million fund, at the Pope’s request, to combat US Protestant missionary work in Italy. Evidently only the Methodists are currently trying to convert people in Rome.

Raymond Poincaré, speaking with Lloyd George before he’s technically even prime minister yet, asks for a more concrete military alliance to enforce the Versailles Treaty. LG says no.

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Today -100: January 15, 1922: Of American Puritanism, boat people, and provisional heads of provisional governments

Postmaster General Will Hays will resign to head the national association of motion picture producers and distributors.

German Rear Admiral Karl Hollweg denounces the Washington Conference’s submarine agreement as “a piece of English sentimentalism, cant and American Puritanism”.

The Armenian Catholic Patriarchate of Constantinople says all the Armenians want to leave Turkey, and could someone please send ships to transport 120,000 of them.

The Southern Irish Parliament chooses Michael Collins as head of the provisional government of the Irish Free State. The Republican members, including de Valera, stay away.

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Today -100: January 14, 1922: Long live the holy Gandhi

The arrival of the Prince of Wales in Madras is greeted by rioting, as was the custom. The rioters seem a little unclear on the concept of satyagraha, attacking a movie theater, for example, while shouting “Long live the holy Gandhi!” Muslims, presumably not followers of the holy Gandhi, also riot against the princely visit.

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Okay, this is about the Pacific naval treaty banning the building of new bases on the Philippines, Guam, Hong Kong, etc, and not, as I originally assumed, about preserving a building in which military personnel could get a drink. I was wondering why that required a treaty.

Remember how the War Office decided to issue lists of World War I draft dodgers, many of whom turned out not actually to be draft dodgers? Well, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court rules that newspapers that published those lists can be sued for libel, although the War Office cannot.

Indictments are issued for union officials in the Mingo, West Virginia strike, for treason, no less, for opposing the declaration of martial law and raising an army against the state of West VA.

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Today -100: January 13, 1922: Of complete vindications and exonerations, prime ministers, amnesties, and banning war

The Senate votes 46-41 to allow Truman Handy Newberry (R-Michigan) to keep his seat, despite his conviction for election irregularities, which was reversed by the Supreme Court only because primaries aren’t “real” elections. The Senate does deplore the excessive spending of $195,000 on the primary. Newberry calls this “complete vindication and exoneration” after 3 years and 4 months of persecution.

French Prime Minister Aristide Briand resigns. Raymond Poincaré agrees to form a cabinet. Briand had returned to Paris and defended his policies, such as the alliance with Britain, in the National Assembly, successfully it seems, so the reason for his resignation is rather unclear, something about having a majority but not a strong enough majority behind him.

King George proclaims an amnesty for Irish political prisoners. British “police auxiliaries” and Black and Tans will be leaving Ireland tomorrow.

The New York State League of Women Voters convention calls for war to be outlawed. Among those elected to the board of directors is Eleanor Roosevelt.

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Today -100: January 12, 1922: Of model communities, grand juries, reparations, and bachelor taxes

Henry Ford wants to develop a model community, or something, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in the form of a 75-mile long “city” composed of a bunch of towns (Ford believes small communities are better than cities). He’d lease the nitrate plant from the federal government and take over a dam started during the Great War but then pretty much abandoned.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals frees a convicted murderer because the grand jury that indicted him had two (gasp) women on it, so legal cooties or something.

Germany says it can only afford to pay 520 million gold francs in reparations this year.

Outgoing Virginia Gov. Westmoreland Davis, in his final message to the General Assembly, proposes an amendment to the state Constitution to require politicians to take an oath that they haven’t had a drink since Prohibition and won’t do so in the future. Presumably they can break any other law.

The Montana Supreme Court throws out the state’s tax on unmarried men aged 21+ and the poll tax on all men 21 to 60.

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