Strange Times 98: Palpitating With Desire

Today brings gun play in Union Square and bafflement in Albany. Call a purposeless meeting about…

April 8, 1921

• Roy Harris confesses to killing Joseph Elwell on the orders of a woman, but police admit doubt that the confession is true.

• Sing Sing prisoner Roman Leondowski shows perfect rationality since having a bullet removed from his brain to cure him of insanity.

• Although he admits to compelling indebted farmhands to work for him, accused peonage murderer John S. Williams denies having anything to do with the eleven murders on his farm, claiming he was at home when they occurred.

• The Weather: Unsettled today and Saturday; probably showers, with slowly rising temperature; south winds.

This is a crazy story! My only notes are that I don’t think it counts as a pistol “fight” if only one team has pistols, and I am in love with the usage of the word “stampeding.”

The Union Square neighborhood was startled early this morning by a running pistol fight between four detectives and five young men, all of whom were captured in streets just off the square. Precisely why the detectives emptied their pistols at the fugitives was not clear, though they said all the men had records and charged all of them with being suspicious persons. No pistols were found on the captives, but the detectives said they found a blackjack “near” one of them and that another had some .45 calibre pistol cartridges in a pocket.

The detectives were O’Leary, Riley, Joseph and Diver. They were returning from an uptown dinner party in an automobile and were driving in East Fifteenth Street near Irving Place when they saw a man whom one of them said he recognized as a gunman. The car was halted and one of the detectives said good night to his companions and pretended to enter a house. The suspected man, however, noticed that he lurked in the doorway and started to run, stampeding four companions.

The other three detectives jumped from the car, called to the men to halt, and then started in pursuit. The fugitives reached Union Square Park, and the detectives, taking advantage of the sparsely tenanted park area, began to shoot. They said the men returned their fire.

The whole neighborhood was aroused by the time the men were cornered in West Seventeenth Street. There the five men explained to the detectives that they had run away because they had mistaken the guardians of the law for bandits.

The prisoners were: Edward McGuiness, 21, a chauffeur, of 761 McDonaugh Street, Brooklyn; Martin Kiley, 19, of 441 East 121st Street; John Walpole, 18, a steamfitter’s helper, of 414 East 141st Street; Charles Hady, 18, of 198 Moffat Street, Brooklyn, and William Gernhardt, 20, a laborer, of 542 East Fifteenth Street.

This is why you set an agenda!

ALBANY, April 7.—One mystified Governor of New York State today gazed upon thirty-nine mystified sporting editors of New York State. The scene was the Executive Chamber; the time was 12:11 P.M.; the stage setting showed Governor Miller at a flat-topped desk, with the sporting editors, gathered from Buffalo and points south, sitting in rows or folding chairs before him, while around the walls, goggle-eyed because of the mysterious element in the meeting, was the gallery.

The difficulty was this: Governor Miller didn’t know why the sporting editors were there; neither did they.

The assemblage had been summoned to talk over State regulation of sports. Governor Miller had called it, having been given to understand that the sporting editors were palpitating with desire to talk to him. Both were wrong.

The meeting—which some optimists had believed was to result in the Empire State’s becoming a sporting seventh heaven—got off to a bad start.

“Gentlemen,” said the Governor, “I don’t just exactly know the purpose of this meeting. For the last three months, about once a week, I have been informed that the sporting editors wanted to confer with me on some of the proposals in reference to sports. I haven’t anything to say to you, but should be glad to hear anything you have to say to me.”

There was a silence so dense that the falling of a rose leaf would have sounded like Ruth’s smashing a homer.

Then two or three assorted journalists found breath and feet and explained to the Governor that they had their confrères had nothing to say to him, but understood they had been called to testify as experts, inasmuch as the phalanx present knew sports as Mr. Anderson knows water.

It then being agreed unanimously that no one had the least idea why any one was there, conversation became general for a few minutes. Here is a summary of the views interchanged:

The governor expressed his belief that baseball and racing did not need state-run regulation, but that boxing and wrestling could probably stand more of it. The journalists responded:

FROM JOURNALISTIC MAJORITY.

• Boxing has been lifted out of the gutter by the present commission. If mistakes have been made, they have been honest ones. The sport is being admirably conducted. It is better than it ever has been.

• Wrestling might well have supervision.

• There is little hippodroming in either boxing or wrestling.

• Racing and baseball should not be brought under control of a single commission, as each need supervisory experts utterly familiar with them, which supervision they are now receiving.

FROM JOURNALISTIC MINORITY.

• Boxing is full of hippodroming in some smaller cities. The winners are picked before the bouts start. The public is sick—so sick!

• Wrestling is worse than boxing. It is reminiscent of the chariot races at the circus. Leading wrestlers have met each other fifty times without any genuine result. They always get a fall in about two hours, so as to let husbands get home that they may be permitted to go next time. The peculiar coincidences in wrestling are as safe a guide to wrong as fingerprints.

Governor Miller smiled. The meeting ended.