Strange Times 127: Soiled With Blood

Thrilling news! Westside Saints, the second Gilda Carr mystery, is now available in paperback. Order it today! Or tomorrow! Or whenever!

Today we have illuminated policemen and murderous chandeliers. Flail your arms wildly on…

May 7, 1921

• Southern resistance blocks a House inquiry into Black disenfranchisement in the Southern states, causing the measure to fail 285 to 46, and having absolutely no relevance in 2021.

• Black veterans protest of a revival of “The Birth of a Nation,” describing it as “Ku Klux Klan Propaganda,” and are arrested for their trouble.

• Lady Astor, last seen chasing down a would-be attacker, lambasts the “anti-feminists” among the Labor Party as she leads the passage of a bill to ensure the rights of mothers as guardians of their children.

• A “sneak thief” infiltrates the Hotel Somerset and makes off with a $1,000 diamond belonging to theatrical impresario George H. Atkinson.

• Following up yesterday’s attack on the “amazingly ignorant” college man, Thomas A. Edison extends his complaint to the primary school system in general, which he believes should be replaced with a series of educational movies.

• The Weather: Partly cloudy and warmer today; Sunday, probably fair; moderate, variable wind.

It took around twenty years from the invention of automobiles for New York to decide that they needed a formal way to regulate traffic on the city streets. They came up with a post that used red, yellow, and green lights to tell drivers what to do. Sound familiar? Well, not quite.

The first test of Special Deputy Police Commissioner John A. Harriss’ new scheme to regulate automobile policemen took place yesterday on the roof of the Guaranty Trust Company Building, 522 Fifth Avenue, and was a success, so far as it could be without automobiles.

Ten specially selected traffic policemen, who will appear in public for the first time in today’s police parade, which will extend the Fifth Avenue system of traffic control to the outlying suburbs. A start will be made with ten posts next week, but Dr. Harriss says that eventually a hundred would be established. Dr. Harriss, who gave the city the Fifth Avenue signal towers, will bear all the expense of the experiment.

The new scheme really makes a walking signal tower out of each policeman. As they appeared yesterday, each of the ten men wore a white garment, which appeared to be a cross between a nightshirt and a baseball catcher’s chest protector. Around the neck of each man was hung a three-way electric lantern with three inch bullseyes of red, yellow and green. A reflector above the yellow light directs a beam upon the policeman’s face.

Each of the lights is turned on by the ordinary electric button and the signal system will be the same as on Fifth Avenue, the yellow light giving the right of way to north and southbound traffic and the green to east and west traffic, with the warning red signal in between to indicate the coming change.

Dr. Harriss explained that the white nightshirt arrangement was to give the policemen supervisibility at night, and it seemed probable that the appearance of a policeman equipped with such paraphernalia would be enough to attract the attention of the most careless chauffeur.

If the new device is as successful as expected, Dr. Harriss said he hoped to extend it over the entire country. The Fifth Avenue system had been a great success, Dr. Harriss said, and had saved the accident insurance companies in New York City nearly $3,500,000 in fifteen months.

The first post to be occupied by one of the illuminated traffic regulators will be at Seventy-second Street and Broadway. Similar posts will be established in roads in Central and other parks in the city at places where the traffic is comparatively heavy and the lighting is poor.

This story is so horrifying that I almost didn’t include it, but then I did anyway. Read at your own peril!

William Becker, 40 years old, an electrical engineer, was found dead last night in the apartment of his former wife, Mrs. Catherine Miller, on the third floor of an apartment house at 250 West Eighty-seventh Street, under circumstances which led the police and Dr. Charles Norris, Chief Medical Examiner, to begin an immediate investigation.

According to a statement made by Mrs. Miller to Dr. Norris and Detective Richard Golding of the West Sixty-eighth Street Station, Becker, who frequently had called on Mrs. Miller in the last six months, came to the apartment at 6 o’clock last evening, considerably under the influence of intoxicants. Mrs. Miller, who said she was divorced from Becker seven years ago, was alone in the apartment at the time with her colored maid.

As soon as her former husband entered the dining room of the apartment, she said, he enquired for their son, and when he was told the boy was not at home, he began to quarrel with Mrs. Miller. Eventually he became violent, Mrs. Miller said, and began to tumble chairs and other articles of furniture about.

Suddenly, she said, while he was swinging his arms wildly above his head, his right wrist struck the chandelier in the dining room, inflicting a deep gash. Mrs. Miller said she and the maid ran out of the room, as they feared Becker was about to attack them.

In about fifteen minutes they heard Becker go into one of the bedrooms, and concluded he was going to sleep. They remained away from that part of the apartment for three hours, Mrs. Miller said, when she requested the maid to arouse Becker and say that Mrs. Miller desired him to join her at dinner.

The maid returned and told Mrs. Miller that the covering on the bed was soiled with blood and that the man appeared to be dead. Mrs. Miller then ran into the room, and, after viewing Becker, called Dr. Jesse S. Heiman, of 317 West End Avenue on the telephone. On his arrival, Dr. Heiman pronounced the man dead. Detective Golding then was notified by the physician, and he began an investigation.

He summoned Medical Examiner Norris, who, after questioning Mrs. Miller and the maid, gave it as his opinion that Becker died from loss of blood superinduced by a weak heart because of his excessive drinking in the last few weeks.

Mrs. Miller said she was forced to obtain a divorce from Becker because of his inability to refrain from drinking. She said that when he was under the influence of intoxicants he became violent. When he entered the apartment last night, Mrs. Miller said, he seemed to be suffering from delirium tremens. It was while she was trying to induce him to go to bed, she said, that he struck the chandelier with his wrist.