Strange Times 143: Death From Cake

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Today we have tragedy in Elizabeth, tragedy in Wichita, and just desserts on the Siegesallee. Label your groceries on…

May 23, 1921

• After a pro-union arsonist sets fire to the coal company mine house, the Matewan fire department refuses to fight the blaze.

• In the Bronx, 5,000 confiscated bottles of home-brewed wine and champagne explode, showering the police station with glass and alcohol.

• The Weather: Partly cloudy, possibly showers today; fair tomorrow; not much change in temperature.

Operatic drama in Elizabeth, New Jersey!

ELIZABETH, N.J., May 22.—Gonofrio Guastella and his cousin, Mrs. Rosario Digrato, were milking cows in the Digrato barn at 544 Fourth Avenue this morning when Andrew Danna of 500 Elizabeth Avenue entered, cried “traitor!” at Guastella and sent three pistol bullets into his back and shoulder. Mrs. Digrato flung herself in front of the weapon and fell dead with a bullet in the heart. Digrato found her body when he returned from delivering milk.

Guastella dragged himself to his own home and later was removed to the General Hospital where his statement threw no light on the shooter’s motive. He will recover. Danna surrendered to a policeman some distance from the scene, who took the pistol from him. He, too, was vague as to the cause of the attack.

Two thoughts. First of all, this is a very clear example of why government regulation is important—if it weren’t for the government, there wouldn’t be warning labels on insecticides. Secondly, how did anyone take more than a single bite of this cake without noticing that it didn’t have any sugar? There is such a thing as being too polite.

WICHITA, Kan., May 22.—Eight persons of Dexter, Kan., are fighting against death by slow poisoning, caused by eating a cake, physicians announced tonight. The cake was made with arsenate of lead instead of sugar and was eaten at a family reunion yesterday. The victims are Mr. and Mrs. Fred Jackson and two children, Winifred and James; Mr. and Mrs. Ross Sheets, Lester Jackson and Dean Thompson.

Fred Jackson purchased groceries in Burden Thursday for the picnic, his wife telling him to get also a quantity of arsenate of lead and sugar. He forgot the sugar and placed the arsenate, done up in a paper sack, with the basket of groceries. Mrs. Jackson, mistaking the package of poison for sugar, made a cake of the contents.

I’d never heard of the “Nail Men” of World War I, but I appreciate how incredibly dismissive the Times is of the art form. You can see pictures of the not-quite-Iron Hindenburg. An eyesore, indeed.

BERLIN, May 22.—The “Iron Hindenburg,” the great wooden statue of the Field Marshall erected during the war at the end of Berlin’s Avenue of Victory, is offered for sale as firewood. When it was erected the idea was to cover it with a coating of nails, and for the privilege of driving in a nail a small charge was made for war charities. But the people got tired of the business. The statue was never entirely covered with its coating of iron.

While two artists conducted a long struggle in the courts regarding the honor of having first thought of the statue, the grim, ungainly effigy rusted and rotted. When all Germany’s Wilhelmian war idols fell, this one, the most tragic of all, stood. Even the revolutionaries of 1918 had not the heart to pull it down, but it was always an eyesore and one night a year ago it was quietly removed.

No one knew what became of it, no one asked. There was no question in Parliament and the thing remained secret until today when an advertisement appeared in a Berlin paper offering the statue for sale, in whole or in parts, for firewood.