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June 19, 1908

IT'S THE LARGEST

GOOSEBERRY.

John Costello Puts in a Claim for the

Prize of the Season.

The largest gooseberry raised in Kansas City this year, according to gooseberry experts, was picked yesterday from a bush in John Costello's yard at No. 3522 Bell street. Mr. Costello, a Roanoke line conductor, spends his spare time with his garden and caring for his small fruit, so the vine may get more attention than those in other yards. The sample brought to town by Mr. Costello is an inch long, three-quarters of an inch in diameter and a trifle over two inches in circumference. The vines are two years old and loaded with the berries.

Labels: Bell street, food, streetcar

Date Here

FELL 11 STORIES IN

COMMERCE BUILDING.

LANDED ON SKYLIGHT AND RE-

CEIVED BROKEN BONES.

L. E. Trout and Charles Pepperdine

Plunged From High-Swinging

Scaffold -- Injuries May

Be Fatal.

L. F. Trout, 411 Chestnut street, and Charles Pepperdine, 3112 Bell street, were working in the light shaft of the Bank of Commerce building at 2 o'clock yesterday afternoon, when their scaffold broke, precipitating them from the thirteenth to the second floor, a distance of eleven stores. The men landed on the heavy glass skylight just above the second floor.

Trout sustained a fracture of the right thigh and a large muscle in the thigh was severed near the knee. Three bones in his right foot were broken and a gash was cut in his scalp. Both of Trout's hands were burned almost to the bone where he held to a steel cable part of the way down. That fact, however, broke his fall and may be the cause of yet saving his life.

Pepperdine was more seriously injured and the attending physicians said they had little hope for his recovery. He has a compound fracture of the left knee and right ankle. His right elbow was burned to the bone by a small rope to which he attempted to hold. He was also internally injured.

In an attempt to lower the scaffold to another floor, it is said to have swerved and then broken. As the men grabbed for a safety line, which is always on the back of a scaffold, just about the hips, they found that it was not fast. That all took very little time, for they grabbed for the line as they fell, each uttering a cry that was heard all through the big building. Both were taken to the Wesley hospital, Eleventh and Harrison streets.

Pepperdine had a narrow escape from death at the same building just about the same time of day on the afternoon of May 6. He, with Paul Jacoby, was washing the building at the seventh story on the south side. In trying to pass the ladder was pushed out from the building. Both men fell from the ladder, but managed to catch the safety rope at the back of the scaffold. Hanging to that they managed to get their toes on the sill of the window below. Then they pulled their bodies up and climbed into the window. Both had received a ducking from a bucket of water which fell from the ladder with them. They went home, got into dry clothes, and went back to work. A large crowd of people on the street witnessed the narrow escape of Pepperdine and Jacoby, but there were few who saw the fall yesterday. The two men treated the accident lightly on May 6, joking each other while dangling in midair.

Labels: accident, Bell street, Chestnut street, Commerce building, death, Eleventh street, Harrison street, hospitals

May 7, 1908

CLUNG TO ROPE

FOR DEAR LIFE.

TWO WORKMEN FALL FROM

SWINGING SCAFFOLD.

SEVEN STORIES

ABOVE STREET.

SWUNG THEMSELVES TO WIN-

DOW AND ESCAPED DEATH.

Cleaning Exterior of Commerce

Building -- A Careless Move

Caused the Accident --

They Make Light of It.

SEVEN STORIES ABOVE THE STREET THESE TWO MEN CLUNG TO A ROPE FOR DEAR LIFE.

The falling of a large bucket of water and a brush on the sidewalk on the south side of the Commerce building about 2:30 o'clock yesterday afternoon caused many passers to look up. Dangling from a rope beneath a scaffold almost seven stories above the street were two men.

In the crowd which quickly gathered were three women. The spectators all looked on with bated breath while their hands were tightly clenched. Lower and lower the two men dangled. Just as it seemed that one or both would surely lose their hold and drop to certain death, one of the men managed to get the toe of his right foot on the ledge of a window on the sixth story.

"Oh Lord!" cried one of the women. "I can't look any more. They're both going to drop!"

"Hush up," came from a little nervous man. "You make me dizzy. Don't let 'em hear you say that."

This all took place in a very few seconds. While it was going on the man who had reached the window ledge with his toe managed, by a superhuman effort, to draw himself up. Once there, he assisted his companion, whose toe had by that time touched the ledge and both were soon standing side by side in the window.

THEY WERE COOL ABOUT IT.

"Good boy! Good boy! shouted a spectator. "You are all right."

The two men did not appear to hear him. They walked about on the window ledge as if they were on a flat tin roof. One of them tried the window. It opened, the men entered, and the crowd sighed with relief.

The two men who came so near death are Charles Pepperdine of 3112 Bell street and Paul Jacoby, who rooms near Fifth and Walnut streets. They work for the Ben P. Shirley Company of Indianapolis, Ind., which has the contract for washing the big building and "pointing" the brick and terra cotta work. One washed while the other "pointed."

They were working on a scaffold made from a ladder. Ropes and pulleys are attached at both ends and securely fastened at the top of the fifteen-story building. Men who do that class of skyscraper work become careless. One of the became so yesterday, for, as the two men attempted to pass on the narrow platform, he placed a hand against the side o the building to steady himself. This caused the scaffold to shoot out from beneath their feet.

CAUGHT THE ROPE.

The two men shot off first, quickly followed by the big bucket of water and brush. At the back of the men, just about even with their hips, was a safety rope to keep them from falling outwards. Just as they fell both managed to grab that rope. It was attached to the two upright ropes, or "falls," as they are called. The weight of the men drew the two long ropes closer and closer together as the men dropped lower and lower. It was while in this position that Pepperdine managed to get his foot on the window ledge, and Jacoby was soon drawn to safety.

The men made their way back to the next floor and were soon on their ladders, ready to go to work. But as both had got a ducking from the big pail of water, they were excused to go home and get dry clothes.

"Nervous? Scared? Who, me? Not much. That wasn't any more than happens every day. Some of us slip or fall a ways, but there is not always a gaping crowd to rubber and make a hero out of the incident."

"GIGGLING ALL THE TIME."

"I was giggling all the time," said Jacoby. "Just like a woman when she is tickled at something and can't laugh out loud. Just like kids in church, you know. I was kidding 'Pep' for the way he was attempting to swim in the air."

"No I did not look upon the incident as at all unusual," said Mr. Shirley, who has charge of the work. "It may have looked odd to the people in the street, but when you take into consideration that most every man I have can climb a rope hand over hand for seven stories at least, you can see that that lessens their danger. They are just like cats, always light feet down, and if their hands touch anything that looks like a rope they are sure to grab it and skin right back to where they fell from . Both men will be at work in the morning. They didn't go home because they were nervous."

There are two other scaffolds on the same side of the building on which there are from two to three men at work. They laughed heartily at the predicament of their fellow workmen, especially because they got a ducking, and thought the whole thing was a joke.

RECALLS A SIMILAR ACCIDENT.

While the Long building as in course of erection a workman was laying terra cotta on the cornice at the very top, fourteen stories from the street. The piece he was laying fell from its place and the man with it. Near at hand was a rope with which the material was hauled to the roof. End over end the man went twice. Then his hands touched the rope and he grasped it, slid a few feet and remained still.

After getting his breath he went back to the top, hand over hand, got another piece of terra cotta to fit in the place of the one which was smashed on the pavement, slapped some mortar on to hold it in place and went to work. His hands were badly burned from "skinning" the rope in his fall of thirty feet. Otherwise he was alright.

Labels: accident, Bell street, Commerce building, Fifth street, R A Long building, Walnut Street

September 10, 1907

ATE HIS CAKE IN COURT.

Sammy Hopkins Visits the Juvenile

Court and Likes It.

Sammy Hopkins, 4 years old, was visiting the juvenile court yesterday. He was accompanied by an aunt, but she couldn't keep track of him.

"May I eat a piece of sweet cake after the judge gets here?" Sammy asked Dr. E. L. Mathias, probation officer, just before the afternoon session took up. "Yes, if the judge doesn't catch you at it," the doctor said.

So, while Judge E. E. Porterfield sat at the table and heard case after case, Sammy slipped up to the judge's bench, hid behind it and ate a piece of ginger bread. Then with the crumbs on his face, he crawled up into the chair and looked at the judge's back. He was a cute little tyke, and he wore a cap on his head that attracted considerable attention.

Judge Porterfield turned around to look at the boy, and he slid off the chair and crawled back under the bench.

There he went exploring and finally found a piece of gum sticking on the underside of the bench. Manipulating this with outh and fingers, he came running to his aunt to show what he had found.

"Take it back," she whispered, "it belongs to the judge."

So Sammy took the gum back and stuck it where he had found it under the bench.

"I'm going to be in court regular some day," Sammy said, after his aunt had prevailed upon him to talk for publication. "I hopped a street car once and had a policeman chase me half a block.

"Mamma calls me Sammy, but my real name is S. R. I live at 2808 Bell. I go to Sunday school on Nineteenth street near the school house."

Sammy stayed until the court was adjourned at 5 o'clock. Before he left he hunted up Dr. Mathias:

"The judge didn't catch me, did he?" were Sammy's parting words.

Labels: Bell street, children, doctors, Judges, juvenile court, Nineteenth street

August 4, 1907

BY AUTO TO DENVER.

"JACK" CUDAHY WILL TRY TO
ESTABLISH RECORD.

MADE THE START LAST NIGHT

HOPES TO TRAVEL 813 MILES IN
ESTABLISHED RECORD.
Crossed the Kansas State Line at 10:30
p. m. in Fifty-Horse Power Welch
Touring Car, Accompanied by
C. E. Ettwain and Two

Chauffers.

"Jack" Cudahy, manager of the Cudahy interests in Kansas City, and a motor car enthusiast, started at 10:30 o'clock last night on a trial run to Denver, a distance of 813 miles. He was accompnaied by C. E. Ettwein of the Ettwein Motor Car Company and two chauffers.

The effort o J. P. Cudahy to set a new record for the distance, following closely after the proposed speed trial to be made by J. A. Whitman, who was scheduled to start yesterday morning, will create some surprise in local automobile circles, as Mr. Cudahy's run was arranged for and the start made without the knowledge of many of his closest personal friends.

At exactly 10:30 o'clock the big fifty-horse-power Welch touring car quietly left the state line at Southwest boulevard near Bell street. The only witnesses to the start were W. W. Cowen, president of the Kansas City Automobile Club, and L. R. Moore. Mr. Cowan drove his car to the state line and started the party officially.

The car carries extra tires, fifty gallons of gasoline and provisions. Three acetylene lamps were placed in front to insure safe travel at night. Mr. Cudahy and Mr. Ettwein will eat on the car and the only stops made will be for gasoline and perhaps for repairs. Mr. Ettwein was at the wheel on the start and expected to reach Lawrence, Kas., at 12:15 this morning.

When Mr. Cudahy heard that Whitman had declared he could make the run in twenty-seven hours, he made that statement that if Whitman could do it so could he.

"I expected to go to Denver by rail tomorrow night," said Mr. Cudahy, "but after thinking over the matter I decided to try out my car on a long run. Denver looked as good to me as anywhere else and having great confidence in the speed and durability of my machine I saw no reason why I could not make the run in as good time as anyone else."

With good weather, which means fairly good roads, and no bad luck the party expects to reach Denver some time early tomorrow morning.

There is no speed record between Kansas City and Denver and if the Cudahy party succeeds in showing even creditable time it will be up to someother Western enthusiast to come forth and show something better. The best time is expected to be made in Western Kansas where the roads are level and there is little travel.

Friends of Mr. Cudahy will be informed at every opportunity as to the progress being made by the party while enroute. Mr. Cowen yesterday wired to many of the principal points along the route in search of information about the condition of the roads and the weather outlook. With the exception of probable rain storms in Western Kansas the outlook for fair weather and passable roads is especially good.

Labels: automobiles, Bell street, Denver, Lawrence, Southwest boulevard

June 27, 1907

DRANK IT LIKE A TOAST.

Woman Who Forsook Husband for

Another Man Takes Poison.

After warning Frank Palmer, of 920 Bell street, Kansas City, that he would never again receive a dinner from her hands, Mrs. Inez Others, of St. Joseph, Mo., at noon yesterday raised a two-ounce vial of carbolic acid to her lips and drank it like a toast.

The tragedy happened directly underneath the front entrance of the Fowler packing house, and just as the laborers were filing out to receive their lunches from the hands of children and wives who were bringing them. A dozen men where standing about Mrs. Others when she took the poison, but none of them noticed anything extraordinary in her action. They said they thought she was only joking.

When Mrs. Others reached the center of the Fifth street car tracks, however, she was een to fall. A policeman who happened to be riding on a westbound car had it stopped and an ambulance was called to take her to No. 2 police station, where she died a few minutes later. Her body was then removed to Porter & Gibson's undertaking rooms.

Mrs. Others four weeks ago left a husband, Walter Others, in St. Joseph, Mo.

Palmer is now being held at No. 2 police station pending investigation. He said yesterday that he, like the other men who were standing about when Mrs. Others committed suicide, thought the act was only to deceive him, and that the contents of the bottle was water. He said they had quarreled in the morning, and that she had then declared her intention of killing herself, but that he had not paid much attention to the threat as she had once before drank what she claimed to be poison, but which had no effect on her.

Labels: Bell street, Fifth street, No 2 police station, poison, St.Joseph, streetcar, Suicide, undertakers

January 29, 1907

BEAT HER MOTHER.

INSANE DAUGHTER VICOUSLY

ATTACKS MRS. MURLEY

INJURIES MAY CAUSE DEATH.

FOR YEARS AGED WOMAN LIVED
ALONE WITH DAUGHTER
Always Protested Against Sending
Her to Asylum -- Miss Murley's Hallucination
of Marriage ith Man Whose Name She Conceals

The muffled scrams of a woman attracted some attention in the vicinity of Forty-sixth and Bell streets late Sunday night, but, as they finally died down, little attention was paid to the incident. Early yesterday Mrs. Nancy Murley, 72 years old, both eyes blackened, her head cut and her body beaten black and blue, left her home at 4604 Bell street and made her way to a neighbor's house. Having been a cripple for many years, Mrs. Murley walked with a cane.

"I have done my best to protect my daughter for the last nineteen years," the aged woman told the neighbor, "but now she has beaten me nearly to death and threatens to kill me. She is locked in the house there and I had a hard time getting out without being seen."

Police station No. 5 in Westport was at once notified and Mrs. Murley was cared for. Sergeant Dillingham, accompanied by H. D. Greenman, a son of Humane agent Greenman, went to the house, which they found closed, all doors being tightly bolted or locked. Miss Fannie Murley, the woman hwo had so cruelly beaten her mother, was finally prevailed upon to admit them. She was sent to police headquarters and later in the day transferred to the general hospital, where she will remain until the county court passes on her case. She probably will be sent ot an asylum.

Beaten With a Board.

Miss Murley never missed going to both Sunday school and church. When she returned home Sunday night and her mother admitted her she said:

"I am going to put a stop to you and Bessie (a cousin) talking about me. I am going to beat you to death, or burn your limbs off so you can't go out and then I shall go and kill her."

Mrs. Murley had seen her daughter in a tantrum often before and thought by letting her alone she would become quited. Instead, however, the woman, who is 32 years old, fiercely attacked her aged mother with her fists, beating her severly about the face and head. Then she got a piece of board or bed slat and beat her mother over the back and shoulders. Mrs. Murley is now in a dangerous condition, on account of her age, and may die from the injuries. Dr. T. H. Smith, Forty-third and Bell streets, is attending Mrs. Murley.

J. W. Davis, 405 Freeman avenue, Rosedale, a motorman, is a cousin by marriage of the woman. It was his wife, Bessie, whom Miss Murley had also threatened to kill. From him it was learned that Miss Murley had had typhoid fever when 13 years old and from that time had been slightly demented.

Devotion of the Mother.

"Only two weeks ago," said Davis, "the girl beat her mother so that she was compelled to leave home and come to my house for a few days. The girl has always been dangerous, but her mother, hoping against hope, lived there alone with her. We probably never willknow what the aged woman has endured in all these nineteen years. Now, however, she sees the utter futility of trying to keep her at home adn will endeavor to send her to an asylum. She was not able to leave her bed today, though, and may never be again."

Davis said that Miss Murley has often disappeared from the home. She would put on a hat and leave when her mother was not watching her and, in a week or ten days, return in the same mysterious manner. She was never able, however, to tell where she had been or what she did. On one occasion when she had been gone for two weeks, and the police had searched for her all over town, she returned late one evening. She was wet and cold., for it was in the fall of the year, and her shoes were worn through to her blistered feet. When asked where she had been all she would say was, "I rode on a hand carl>"

Another time Miss Murley was found wandering in the woods near here. Believeing that she would like a trip to the country she was sent to relatives on a farm, but all to no avail. The police at the Westport station have record of many times where Miss Murley disappeared, but she always returned home, when she became more reational, without their ever having had a single trace of her.

Doctor Calls Her Dangerous

Dr. St. Elmo Sanders, city physician, examined Miss Murley in a cell at police headquarters yesterday afternoon. She told him that she never struck her mother in her life, but suspected that neighbors were "annoying her." She said that she got up early to make a fire and her mother began to scream, "a habit she has had for a long time," she added. The woman is believed to have attacked her mother with an iron stove poker just before Mrs. Murley succeeded in making her escape from the house.

Miss Murley also said that she was married two months ago to a gospel singer. "He was here two weeks ago," she said, "but had to go away again. We were married in an East side Christian Church." Further than that she refused to state. Davis, her cousin, said Miss Murley had never been married, but had often written love letters to men with whom she had been acquainted or had only seen. She took her pencil to jail with her.

Thomas Bell, a farmer of Shelby county, Mo., brother of Mrs. Murley, was notified by Davis of her condition. He will probably arrive here today. Mrs. Murley wil be removed to a hospital where she can be more properly cared for. The neighbors have been caring for her since she was attacked so brutally. Since the death of Daniel Murley, an old soldier and husband of Mrs. Murley, she and her daughter have lived at 4604 Bell street. She bought a little home there five months ago.

"Miss Murley, though a small woman," said Dr. Sanders, after the examination, "is one of the most dangerous patients I have seen in years. She is suffering from chronic melancholia, and would kill another perosn or herself just as soon as the notion struck her. She must be closely guarded. I am not surprised at what she had done, or that she denies it. She should have been incarcerated years ago."

Labels: abuse, Bell street, Col. J. C. Greenman, general hospital, mental health, police headquarters, Rosedale, Seniors, Westport