Strange Times 125: "I Grabbed the Gun"

Today we have a clerk destroyed by gambling and a husband destroyed by a pistol. Reconsider that divorce on…

May 5, 1921

• The War Department confirms that, after German objections to the imagined Black Horror on the Rhine, only white troops will be sent to occupy the Ruhr Valley.

• A group of Black women receive $400 damages after suing a Greenwich Village coffee shop owner for refusing to serve them.

• Madame Curie sails for New York, where she will be given a gram of radium collected by American admirers—a gift that will nearly double the supply of radium in France.

• Theater actor Harry A. Newton is arrested at Grand Central on charges of trigamy after his three wives discover he is married to all of them simultaneously.

• The Weather: rain today and probably Friday; strong northeast winds and gales.

My favorite part of this little morality tale is that the man who caused the clerk’s downfall was an anonymous stranger. It’s not a stretch to imagine the guy’s name was something like Satan D. Evil, and he had a little pointy tail sticking out from under his trench coat.

David H. Pool, a 22-year-old transfer clerk in the employ of Clark, Dodge & Co., 51 Wall Street, was arrested at the offices of that firm yesterday by detectives of the Old Slip station and later locked up at Police Headquarters, charged with having stolen bonds and negotiable securities amounting to $11,700. According to Louis C. Clark Jr., a member of the firm, the thefts cover the period between June 20 last year and April 20, 1921. Pool, who had been with the firm two years at an annual salary of $2,500, was married and lived at 341 East Tremont Avenue, the Bronx.

His trouble began about a year ago, he is said to have told the police, when he met a stranger in a restaurant and was persuaded to place a $5 bet on a horse race. He said he won, and then started on a career of speculation. Losses followed and he tried in vain to get even and finally he began to take negotiable securities by erasing orders given to the stock clerk for the delivery of customers’ securities. Pool has a reputation as a boxer and amateur ball player.

No fault divorce is not something we should take for granted, folks. Divorce saves lives!

CHICAGO, May 4.—Mrs. Lillian Rowland was freed by a Coroner’s jury today of the charge of killing her husband, Dr. Thomas J. Rowland.

Mrs. Rowland made an appeal to the jury that was remarkable for its violence of emotion. She charged continued brutality on the part of her husband every time she refused to grant him a divorce, and declared that he had an affair with Irene Malloy, 19 years old.

“The night of the shooting,” Mrs. Rowland testified, “I had been out with Miss Evelyn Smith. When I returned home about 11 o’clock my husband’s bedroom door was open. I had to pass it to go to my bedroom. He was lying in bed, reading, and called to me. I asked him what he wanted, and he replied that he wanted me to tell him definitely if I would consent to a divorce.”

She broke down, wept for several minutes, and then continued her testimony.

“I want to know about the divorce,’ he said. Then he slapped me, beat me. All this time he was edging me over into a corner until he got me hedged in by the side of my bed, near my pillow.

“My head was backed up against the wall, he was leaning over me in a fury. I reached my hand under my pillow, where I had kept my gun for over a year, because I was always alone. I grabbed the gun.

“With an oath he again lunged forward, screaming, ‘I’ll kill you; there’ll be a tragedy in this house tonight.’

“I held the gun in my hand like this. He grabbed the gun. That’s all I remember. Who fired the shot I don’t know.”

The jury took only a few minutes to declare the case accidental homicide.