Strange Times 106: Saves Baby From Drowning
Strange Times is a newsletter that explores the weirdest news of 1921, one day at a time. If you like it, forward it to a friend or back me on Patreon.
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Today brings a mother defending her child and an actress defending her face. Plunge into the icy water on…
April 16, 1921
Abandoned by his second wife and sued by his first, accused bigamist Herbert Thornton Andrews asserts his innocence and vows “to fight them all.”
The explosion of the United States Fireworks Company, in Randolph, Massachusetts, causes $50,000 in damages and a shockwave felt twenty-five miles away.
The Chicago Baseball League votes to ban any player who takes the field against the Black Sox, a barnstorming team composed largely players involved in the 1919 World Series fix.
The Weather: Probably showers today; Sunday rain and much colder; fresh southeast to northwest winds.
As the parent of a child not much older than curious Charles Gurling, this story feels me with primal panic. All I can say is, parents: baby proof your wells!
WHITE PLAINS, N. Y., April 15.—Mrs. Norman Gurling, 28 years old, of Knollwood and Hartsdale Roads, was the heroine of a dramatic rescue yesterday, saving her baby from the depths of a forty-foot well, half filled with water. Mrs. Gurling had left her 15-months-old son, Charles, on the front porch while she attended her household duties. The child soon went exploring and crept into the yard.
Fifteen feet from the porch is the well, forty feet deep, with twenty feet of water in it. It is lined with stones, moss-covered and slippery. The water is raised in a bucket attached to a rope, but there is no windlass. The inquisitive child pulled aside one of the boards of the covering and then tumbled twenty feet into the well.
Mrs. Gurling, hearing a noise, rushed out of the house. Noticing the board pulled from the well cover, she looked down and saw the child’s coat floating on the water.
Without hesitating Mrs. Gurling descended into the well. On the moss covered and slippery rocks there was barely a footing. Gripping with her fingers, and digging into crevices with her toes, Mrs. Gurling in some way made the steep and perilous twenty-foot descent. Balancing herself in some way she grasped the child as he came to the surface.
She patted the infant on the back to free his lungs of water and saw that he was conscious. Then she started her ascent. It was twenty feet up over the same course with the added burden of the child under her arm, but she made it.
A recommendation will be sent, it is understood, to the Carnegie Hero Fund that her act be recognized.
The most amazing detail of this comes in the final paragraph, which informs us that the offending caricature was purchased by a neighbor in Sorel’s apartment building. That will make for some uncomfortable elevator rides.
PARIS, April 15.—Have people in the public eye the right to resent or try to prevent caricatures? That is the question that is interesting the artistic world of Paris today. The question has been raised by the demand of the well known Comédie Française star, Cécile Sorel, that a caricature of her by an artist named Bib shown in an exhibition of humorous illustrators, be forthwith destroyed, and that the artist pay her 10,000 francs damages into the bargain.
After having seen the picture an unprejudiced observer is inclined to feel that the actress is justified in her complaint; if ever all the least desirable female qualities were depicted in a human countenance, it is on this canvas, which bears Mlle. Sorel’s name in big letters.
On the other hand a court decision in her favor could not fail to be a precedent for further infringement of the rights of criticism, which have already been greatly reduced by a recent judgment in a dispute between a theatre and a dramatic critic.
Meanwhile M. Bib professes himself delighted by the threatened suit, and has announced that he will send the actress a lavish gift of flowers in return for the advertisements she has given him.
The picture has been sold to ex-Minister de Monzie, who lives at 7 Quai Voltaire, the same apartment house as Mlle. Sorel.
