Founded in 2017, Strange Times is a twice-monthly newsletter that explores the weirdest news of 1921, one day at a time. To get free games and the original PDFs of every article that runs in Strange Times—plus stories that didn’t make the cut—back me on Patreon.

Things I Like

1. The Crusades! Not the actual crusades—they were horrible—but Thomas Asbridge’s thrilling history of those dismal wars. Sweeping, brisk, and occasionally revolting, Asbridge gives us a history of long ago wars that doesn’t strain to relate them to the present day, while balancing the perspectives of east and west. The narratives of sieges are thrilling but the highlight is unquestionably the ruler who died from eating “coarse meats” and the other who died after consuming “too much fish.”

2. Crusader Kings 3! No matter how clearly a book makes clear that the crusades were a disgusting waste of life, it still makes me want to roleplay as one of the fish-gobbling nitwits who prosecuted them. Crusader Kings 3 is one of my favorite video games of all time and recent updates have bulked up the Mongol side of the game, adding dozens of new ways to live and die.

3. Little Notepads! Once known as “jotters,” a little notepad on your desk is a much more satisfying place to keep your to-do list than some boring old app. I like starting each week with a meticulously tidy list of things to accomplish and watching it be reduced to an ink-blotted mess by Friday, at which point I rip it up and start again. These are the ones I’m using now—I appreciate that they can stand up to fountain pen ink without too much feathering.

Today’s issue brings more on the subject of trans masc legend Jack Brown, plus a repellent bride-auction in Italy. Look askance at heterosexual matrimony on…

August 11, 1921

August 11, 1921

• Impersonating prohibition enforcement agents, three men compel a restaurant owner to open his safe and then rob him of $4,000.

• The Memphis crime wave continues as four bandits attempt to rob the Ford company payroll, failing to escape with the loot but killing three as they flee into the countryside.

• A week after murdering his cousin, Arica Picone is found shot dead in the same room where he killed her—the victim, police presume, of a satisfied vendetta.

• After his ninth citation for speeding—this time going 34 MPH on Fifth Avenue at 4:30 in the morning—24-year-old woolen broker Daniel Lieberman is sentenced to 15 days in jail. When arrested, he told the officer, “I know Commissioner Enright and I am a friend of Commissioner Cray. I’ll bust you for this.”

• Alice M. Robertson, the sole woman in Congress, assails a proposed maternal health bill, declaring that “its salient feature is not tangible help of the kind the general public infers would be given, but the establishment of an autocratic, undefined, practically uncontrolled, yet federally authorized, centre of propaganda.”

• Manhattan ear nose and throat doctor Russell Means is charged with slapping a 13-year-old girl patient who refused to open her mouth to show her the site of her recent tonsillectomy.

• The Weather: Partly cloudy today; Friday, unsettled and cooler.

Happy pride to Jack Brown, first encountered last week, who hopefully was able to recover after being outed by his mother in a national newspaper. If we don’t hear from him again, let’s hope that he found some joy.

KINGSTON, N.Y., Aug. 10.—Mrs. Edward Schimeck, mother of Caroline, or Lena, Schimeck, who used the name of “Jack Brown” and, masquerading as a man, proposed marriage to Miss Mary Hodowanetz, a New York waitress, said today that her daughter was working at the Kutcher boarding house in Monticello, Sullivan County, still dressed as a man and still going under the name of “Jack Brown.” She received a letter on Tuesday from Caroline, she said, and during the Summer had been regularly writing her there in care of the Kutcher brothers, but always directing the letters to “J. Brown,” in order to preserve the secret of her daughter’s sex.

Photographs of “Jack Brown” and the waitress published in morning newspapers pleased the family until they read of the waitress’s application for a warrant for “Jack’s” arrest. However, they produced a photograph given them by “Jack,” together with other photographs showing her both in male and female attire, and also produced a gypsy costume “Jack” had worn when posing before the camera with Miss Hodowanetz.

Last September the Schimeck family moved to Sawkill, five miles from Kingston, from 91 George Street, Brooklyn. In January, Caroline, wearing male attire, appeared there and sought work among neighbors. The Rev. George Vaeth, pastor of St. Ann’s Catholic Church, which the family attended, insisted on her donning woman’s apparel and gave her odd jobs around the rectory as assistant to his housekeeper. After ten days she returned to her parent’s home.

An automobile brought Mary, the waitress, to Sawkill one day in March. She was looking for her lover, “Jack Brown,” and said that she had spent $400, saved for their home when married, in searching for him. She went from house to house until she found “Jack” in female attire and was told that “Jack” really was a girl. Seemingly unable to comprehend the situation, she insisted on marriage to “Jack” and argued earnestly with her parents, said Mrs. Schimeck. Mary remained over night, and next day returned to New York.

While her family slept, Caroline discarded woman’s clothing early in the morning of April 2, donned her male attire, wrote a note saying that she was too unhappy to remain home as a woman, but was going into the world again as a man, and disappeared. Later she wrote from Monticello, where she has been employed under the name of “Jack Brown” for three successive seasons.

Three years ago Caroline Schimeck began masquerading as a man after working as guard for the New York City Railway Company, it was said. She held many jobs and left home because of disagreements with her parents over her insistence on wearing male attire, which she had put on whenever possible, since early childhood. She is tall and slender, but possesses great strength. Hard manual labor has made her hands rough, not soft like a lady’s, as one of her little sisters explained today, while the mother told the story of her daughter.

Mrs. Schimeck said that Caroline and Mary Hodowanetz both were “crazy over each other,” but Mary could not understand why they should not marry.

Seven brothers and sisters, the oldest 16 and the youngest two years, are living with their mother.

It is natural to wonder why Italy was able to auction off beauty queens—”presumably” with their full consent—yet poor Mary Hodowanetz couldn’t marry Jack Brown.

PARIS, Aug. 10.—The world-old adage that marriage is a lottery is being given a practical test by the Italians today. They have organized what is termed matrimonial lotteries with such success that the French people are becoming very interested and are suggesting that the experiment might well be copied by France and other countries in Europe where there is a huge surplus of marriageable women owing to the terrible depletion of the population by the war.

The method adopted is exceedingly simple. First a beauty contest is organized. The winners thereof are then put up for lottery, each ticket costing the small sum of 10 lire. The proceeds are used to constitute a prize for the lucky young women. The male winners of the pretty prizes get the choice of marrying the girl they have won or of dividing the money with her. Presumably the latter also has a voice in the matter.

A lottery of this kind recently organized produced 1,000,000 lire for the winner, the second and third prizes being only slightly less.