Strange Times 95: He Hit Her With a Bucket

Today we have a vintage chase through the streets of Manhattan, and a woman trying desperately to get divorced. Hop a running board on…

April 5, 1921

• Sir John Findlay, former minister of justice for New Zealand, declares that the Pacific must be “a white man’s ocean,” warning that in the next fifteen years the population of Japan and its colonies will jump from 26,000,000 to 120,000,000.

• The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals issues a plea for humane slaughter, claiming that killing animals in the presence of others causes undue anguish to the survivors.

• Despite the theft of coconuts by trained monkeys—who defend themselves by hurling coconuts at any who try to stop them—it has been a productive growing season in Panama.

• As the state prepares to try John S. Williams on charges of peonage and the murder of eleven black farmhands, the NAACP’s James Weldon Johnson urges President Harding to pass anti-lynching laws and investigate peonage across the south.

• The Weather: Fair today and Wednesday with continued mild temperature; fresh south and southwest winds.

This is a classic Strange Times story, featuring jewel thievery, guns fired into the air, an escape into the shrubbery, suspicious looking bundles, and my favorite 1920s trope of all: people jumping on running boards.

What do you bet the cops robbed that woman and decided to pin it on these two hapless youths? It’s a nigh-perfect crime!

The alertness of two detectives last night led to the investigation of two youths carrying suspicious looking bundles, the arrest of one of them, an automobile chase after the other up Fifth Avenue, accompanied by the firing of shots, the escape of the fugitive through the shrubbery of Central Park and the discovery of a burglary by the police before it was known to a woman who had been robbed of $5,000 worth of jewelry.

Detectives Richard Goldang and Thomas Foley of the West Sixty-eighth Street Station were leaving the Presbyterian Hospital at 7 o’clock when they noticed two boys, apparently about 15 years old, hurrying down Madison Avenue. Each carried a bundle and cast furtive glances behind. The detectives decided to question them and one grabbed the nearest boy.

The second lad ducked under the outstretched arms of the other detective, ran to Fifth Avenue and jumped to the running board of a passing automobile, bound uptown.

Detectives Commandeer Auto.

The two detectives, dragging the first youth between them, followed. Turning over their prisoner to a uniformed policeman, they hailed another passing automobile and started in pursuit.

The driver of the first automobile, apparently not realizing that the lad on the running board had done anything more serious than to steal a ride, kept on, and the two detectives began to fire their pistols in the air to bring the automobile to a stop and also to notify policemen further up the street.

At Eighty-seventh Street the boy jumped from the running board, vaulted the stone wall bordering Central Park and disappeared in the shrubbery. After searching for some time the detectives went back for their prisoner and took him to the West Sixty-eighth Street station.

There he gave his name as Clement Maureske, 15 years old, of 401 East Seventieth Street, and said at first that he had obtained a blanket, which was in the bundle under his arm, from a garage at West End Avenue and West Sixty-eighth Street. Further search disclosed a bracelet, two pearl necklaces and a diamond bar pin in his possession.

Woman Unaware of Robbery

According to the detectives, he then admitted that he and the other boy had stolen them from the apartment of Mrs. John Rosser, 44 East Seventy-second Street, a short time before. The jewelry was later valued at about $2,500, and Maureske said his companion had four diamond rings of about the same value.

Detective Golding then called Mrs. Rosser by telephone and was told there had been no robbery in her apartment. Still keeping the telephone connected, he again questioned the Maureske boy, who said he and his companion had found the door of the apartment unlocked and had entered and taken the jewelry from a drawer in Mrs. Rosser’s dresser.

Mrs. Rosser then went to the dresser and discovered that all her jewelry was gone, but that the thieves had overlooked $250 in bills in the same drawer.

Maureske was sent to the Children’s Society on a charge of juvenile delinquency. The police were making a further search for his companion.

It is horrifying to think of how close we are to an era when simply saying, “I don’t want to be married to this person anymore” was not enough to get divorced.

Emma J. Helm, pretty and golden-haired and not quite 18, was compelled to take the witness stand for the second time in the Queens County Supreme Court before Justice Norman S. Dike yesterday to give testimony in an action for separation from her husband, Frederick B. Helm. The girl, who was married at 16, when she became an orphan through the death of her mother, gave testimony in the same action three months ago, and Justice Leander B. Faber on January 15 granted her prayer for separation and gave her the custody of her daughter, Dorothy, born June 18, 1920. Recently the husband, through Attorney John P. Lamerdin, petitioned for the setting aside of the decree on the grounds that the attorney who formerly represented him had failed to put in a defense and had let the action go by default. This motion was granted and for that reason a retrial was started yesterday.

For yesterday’s trial many witnesses were summoned on both sides. When the pretty plaintiff was on the stand such feeling was shown by the witnesses that Justice Dike, on the motion of Mr. Lamerdin, directed that all the witnesses be excluded from the court room.

The plaintiff was just concluding her testimony and had undergone a severe cross-examination when there came an unexpected ending to the hearing. She had told of the cruelties which she declared had been practiced upon her by the family of her husband when Mr. Lamerdin indicated that her husband intended to introduce testimony tending to show she had been friendly with other men. Mrs. Helm indignantly denied the charge and declared she did not even know the men whose names had been mentioned.…

“I was married when I was but 16 years old,” testified Mrs. Helm. “We did not have a long engagement. It was only about three weeks. My mother died and I was all alone and Fred persuaded me to get married so I would have a home. Soon after our marriage we went to a room in a house which was owned by his parents. We had but one room. It was damp and cold. It was heated only by an oil heater. There was no way to cook food and I had to take what was given me. Finally my mother-in-law began to put my food on the floor in front of my door. Sometimes the dog got there before I did and scattered the food all over the floor. Toward the end I had only one meal a day.

“When my baby was born they took the cream off the top of the bottle and left me the skimmed milk for the baby. My husband bought me only one dress and one coat while we were married. They gave me his sister’s old stockings and under clothing. Fred had to give all his money to his parents. He beat me more than twenty times while we were married.”

“What was the real cause of trouble between you and your husband’s family?” asked Mr. Merrill.

“The pro-German proclivities of his parents,” replied Mrs. Helm. “I had a brother in the American Army and when he was returning home from France my mother-in-law said she wished all American boys would sink.”

Mrs. Helm testified to an alleged assault by her father-in-law in May, 1920, when she said he struck her with a bucket. She testified that when she was married she weighed 145 pounds, and that when she was taken from her husband’s home she weighed only 98 pounds. She said she now weighs 137 pounds.