Strange Times 124: Horsewhip Mr. Buckley

Today we have a man with two wives, a man with zero wives, and a woman with a whip. Pay your debts, or else, on…

May 4, 1921

• Accused by a witness of murdering her husband with an ax, Jennie Werner interrupts her trial to scream, “You are a dirty liar!” at her alleged accomplice.

• In Boston, convicted get-rich-schemer Charles Ponzi is arraigned on multiple new accusations of financial fraud.

• The Weather: Rain today; Thursday fair; no change in temperature; increasing east to north winds.

Some ruthless judging here. Afraid the kids are going to become delinquints? Why not send their dad to the workhouse for a year?

AKRON, Ohio, May 3.—Giuseppe Sarniola, whose wife arrived from Italy Friday and found him living with a second wife, and who tried to keep both wives, was sentenced to the Canton Workhouse for one year by Judge P.C. Spicer of the Domestic Relations Court today.

Sarniola was found by probation officers living with three children—one by his first wife, one the son of his second wife’s first husband, and one by his second wife—in a little one room shack. A second son by his second wife was born this morning.

Judge Spicer ruled that Sarniola was living in a manner which would tend to contribute to the delinquency of the children.

Sarniola’s case had attracted wide publicity, and it was to make an example of him that he received so severe a sentence, Judge Spicer stated, adding that the practice of taking a second wife while the first wife was in Europe was becoming too common in this country.

Ruzica Romoivic has standards, and you have to respect that.

Protesting that she wouldn’t marry a coal miner and that she didn’t like his looks anyway, Ruzica Romoivic, a “picture bride” who came to this country from Croatia to marry, refused to go through with the ceremony when she saw her prospective husband for the first time in the marriage license bureau in the Municipal Building yesterday. Rade Vuletich, a coal miner of Masontown, Pa., was the jilted bridegroom.

The young woman told the agent of the Travelers’ Aid Society, in whose custody she was, that she was educated and was used to living in genteel and refined surroundings.

When told she would be deported unless she married Vuletich she consented to the wedding. Then she thought again and withdrew her consent.

The girl was taken back to Ellis Island. She will be deported unless she can get some friends or relatives to help her get in.

This story is so clogged with superfluous names that I had to read it twice before it made any sense. Nevertheless, it’s worth including because, well, haven’t we all fantasized about horsewhipping a football star inside the Harvard Club?

The filing in the Supreme Court yesterday of a judgment for $10,227 against Charles E. Brickley, former football star of Harvard, and member of the Stock Exchange firm of Charles E. Brickley & Co. until it was dissolved a few weeks ago, revealed a threat by Mrs. Miriam Reinhardt, wife of a New York physician and sister of Joseph S. Jackson of 112 West 110th Street, to horsewhip Mr. Brickley in the Harvard Club because of failure to pay a note given by him to Mr. Jackson for a loan.

The horsewhipping threat was disclosed in the affidavit of Charles S. Sinsheimer, an attorney who was engaged by Mr. Jackson and his family to collect the $10,000 from Mr. Brickley. The affidavit said that after Mr. Brickley had promised to pay $2,500 on the loan and failed that Mr. Jackson collapsed, and his physician advised that the suit against Mr. Brickley be sacrificed because it might kill Mr. Jackson.

Attorney Sinsheimer said that Mrs. Reinhardt and her mother came to his office on April 12 and Mrs. Reinhardt said that she would see Mrs. Brickley and appeal to he “sense of right and justice.” She added that if Mrs. Brickley would not adjust the debt she would go to the Harvard Club and “publicly horsewhip Brickley.” Mr. Sinsheimer said that he told Mrs. Reinhardt such action would be “undignified, unladylike, intemperate and a violation of the law.”

Mr. Brickley, who was an Ensign in the navy during the war, was married to Miss Kathryn E. Taylor of this city, niece of the late Mgr. Matthew Taylor, and daughter of the late John C. Taylor. His marriage followed the breaking of his engagement to the daughter of Daniel H. Coakley, a Boston attorney.