Strange Times 200: Rich Man’s Weakness
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Today we have silent spouses and a wealthy man who just loves stoves, okay? Ignore your loved ones on…
July 19, 1921
After sending a pair of shoes to the cobbler, a woman remembers she was using them as a hiding spot for $5,000 worth of jewels. When she recovers the shoes, the jewels are gone.
The National Commission for Famine Prevention reports that the Chinese are still starving.
After a spate of burglaries in Riverdale, a wealthy Bronx neighborhood, police establish a firm curfew, checking the papers of everyone who passes through after 10 at night.
A man rendered mute by thunder, believed to be a veteran recovering from shellshocked, lies insensible in the hospital as officials try to learn his identity.
At Pittsburgh’s Western Penitentiary, 1,000 prisoners riot, burning 12 buildings and brawling with guards.
The Weather: Partly cloudy today; Wednesday, showers; no change in temperature; fresh south and west winds.
When they say "live apart from," I suppose they mean emotionally, since as the headline makes clear, they're literally living together. A clip of the original confrontation is available here.
One of the most unusual agreements between husband and wife was signed yesterday by Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Baumann of 422 Seventeeth Street, West New York. By it Mr. Baumann agrees to live apart from his wife in the same apartment and never speak to her unless it is absolutely necessary.
Mr. Baumann, who is a braid worker, is 75 years old, while his wife is 45. Nine years ago they agreed to disagree and drew up an agreement to live apart for nine years. This agreement expired yesterday and was renewed by both parties.
“Under the agreement,” Mr. Baumann admitted last night, “I disavow all control over my children. They are accountable only to my wife.
“My wife is relieved of all responsibilities toward me and I toward her. Under the agreement she must support herself and the children and I take care of myself. Three of my boys who are working live with her and contribute to her support.
“Nine years ago we found that we could not get along together, owing to the great difference in our ages. We did not think alike on any subject, so we agreed to disagree.
“I rarely ever see my wife. She comes and goes as she pleases. We have got along very well that way for the last nine years, which is why we are going to continue living in the same manner.”
Mr. Baumann has been twicde married, his first wife dying in 1890. He is the father of seven boys and five girls, several of them the offpsring of his second marriage. Four daughters and two sons are now married.
PARIS, July 18.—A Jekyll and Hyde mystery of the kind that would have delighted Robert Louis Stevenson has just been discovered by the police of Orleans. Today they arrested on a charge of burglary Ernest Boitier, owner of one of the finest residences in the district and controller of a big wholesale wine business. The burglary in which he is alleged to have been concerned took place last week and was in itself of a somewhat peculiar character. The burglar, or burglars, climbed in through a window of an iron-monger’s shop and removed by means that have not yet been discovered a large copper stove. How they got it out, whether through the window or through the door, the police cannot discover, but by accident they have succeeded in tracking the stove to the cellars of Mr. Boitier.
Not only have they found this one, but when they searched the house they found in the cellars nearly a score more stoves of similar pattern to that which had been stolen from the ironmonger. How they came there and from where they came remains a mystery, as Boitier absolutely refuses to tell. All that he would confess to the police was that he robbed the ironmonger’s store and dislodged the stove.
“It was in a moment of weakness,” he declared, and the police are left to puzzle out how a successful business man and owner of one of the finest properties in the district came to have such curious weakness for copper stove.
The arrest has caused consternation in Orleans where Boitier is well known and respected as a merchant and owner of the Château Desporbeauz.
According to the police the copper stoves in the cellars of the château have been stolen from houses and shops at different times in the last ten years. Complaints were made to them, but as no one suspected the merchant they could never be traced. But whether Boitier was a burglar for the sake of adventure or because he had a mania for the collecting of copper stoves is yet to be discovered.