Strange Times 182: Eating "Doctored" Marshmallows
Today we have fights and frolics, plus weddings and marshmallows that will both make you nauseous. Bet Dempsey on...
July 1, 1921
Nine years after the suspicious death of French Zouave soldier Louis-Auguste-Arsène Letermelier, the French judiciary expresses bafflement as to the nature of his death, which is said to have been caused by the Mayor and two Councillors of Reuilly-Sauvigny.
The Weather: Partly cloudy today; fair tomorrow; not much change in temperature.
This issue of the Times overflows with excitement at the coming boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier, which will take place the coming night at Jersey City arena Boyle’s Thirty Acres. Rather than burden you with complete excerpts from the more than two pages of coverage devoted to the bout, I thought I’d bullet out some highlights:
Heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey shows no nerves on the eve of the fight, spending a rainy day on the veranda of the house he has occupied during training, playfully wrestling and enjoying ragtime jazz.
With his weight up to an unprecedented 172 pounds, challenger Georges Carpentier announces confidence that he will win the bout. On his final day of training, he abandons plans for a boat trip in favor of an hour of sparring, “spirited and fast.”
In a front page bulletin, the Times asks its readers “not to ask it by telephone on Saturday for information about the progress of the Dempsey-Carpentier contest.” Being flooded by calls about the fight will interrupt normal newspaper business, the notice warns.
Readers are asked instead to get their up-to-the-minute fight news from the wire services, which have installed the greatest collection of telegraph services ever assembled in one place in Jersey City as they prepare to beam up to 1,000,000 words about the fight around the globe. It is said to be “the biggest job in telegraph history.”
Those unable to travel to Jersey City for the fight can enjoy blow-by-blow radio coverage broadcast from three loudspeakers attached to the Times building in Times Square, where “the bulletins will be as full as possible, and the whole story of the fight will be told by voice.” Sportswise, this radio broadcast is probably the biggest news of the entire year—with the possible exception of the Black Sox trial—here’s a Sports Illustrated cover story about why this fight was a landmark in the history of radio, and why the assignment left the play-by-play broadcaster temporarily blind.
And now back to our regularly schedule nonsense…
There’s so much I want to know about this—mainly, for how long was Mrs. Hanthorne eating these marshmallows? Did she finish the whole bag?
CHICAGO, June 30.—Mrs. Elizabeth Hanthorne of 6308 Union Avenue testified that she lost forty pounds after eating “doctored” marshmallows and her story won a verdict of $10,000 damages against Charles H. Forbes, a drug store owner, in the Superior Court today.
Forbes said he had rolled tartar emetic with the candy to punish small boys who had been stealing sweets from his counter. He sold the marshmallows to Mrs. Hanthorne by mistake.
The Times editorial page rejoices at the return of this “institution,” saying that “Fathers and brothers have been known to endure heroically an evening of grand opera, buoyed up by the promise that afterward they would be taken aloft to throw cotton-batting snowballs at the chorus girls and explode toy balloons with the tips of cigars. Every one is pleased and at both ends Broadway prospers. Decidedly, if there were no follies and whirls it would be necessary to invent them.”
The Midnight Frolic, closed by Florenz Ziegfeld six weeks ago with the announcement that it never would reopen, will be resumed on the New Amsterdam roof between July 15 and 20. Mr. Ziegfeld, in making this announcement yesterday, referred only passingly to the question of prohibition, which was blamed at the time for the closing of the roof. At that time Mr. Ziegfeld declared that the police custom of searching roof patrons for flasks was intolerable, and that he preferred not to continue to operate in these circumstances.
The recent relaxing of prohibition regulations, and in particular the order forbidding detectives to search for liquor without search warrants, is mentioned in Mr. Ziegfeld’s announcement as being instrumental in causing him to change his mind. He declared also that he had received many requests from patrons to re-establish the roof as a place of midnight entertainment.
Decorators were set to work on the roof yesterday. One of the innovations, when the roof is reopened two or three weeks hence, will be a soda fountain.
Ew.
Miss Isabella Gordon and Alexander Taylor, her stepfather, were married yesterday afternoon by the Rev. Dr. Rolla E. Hunt at their home, 8504 102nd Street, Richmond Hill. Miss Gordon is 21 and her husband is 35.
The wedding was the result of a vow made by Taylor at his wife’s deathbed, a year and a half ago, that he would always take care of her daughter Isabelle.
Ten years ago, when Taylor married Mrs. Grace Gordon, a widow, Isabelle, her only child, was 11. The little girl never learned to call Taylor her father and always addressed him by his first name. The girl’s grandmother, Mrs. Elizabeth Wheeler, was consulted and gave her consent to the marriage of her son-in-law and granddaughter.
Wonderful articles. THANK YOU.