100 Year Old Weblog ~ News From 100 Years Ago That's New to You from Vintage Kansas City.com

September 13, 1908

TOOK POTASH AND A CIGARETTE.

But Neither Harmed Harry Jacobs,

Cook, With a Poison Record.

An ambulance call was received at the Walnut street police station last night about 10:30, on a report that a man had tried to commit suicide by poisoning himself. When the ambulance arrived the patient, Harry Jacobs, a cook, living at 1508 Olive street, was found on the front porch smoking a cigarette. He did not deny that he had taken potash, but seemed to have completely recovered.

"You ought to remember me," he said to the surgeon, Dr. Warren T.Thornton, "you pumped a dose of carbolic acid out of me a month ago."

He did not give any reason for the attempt.

Labels: doctors, Olive street, poison, Suicide, tobacco, Walnut street police station

August 22, 1908

THEATER PATRONS MAY SMOKE.

Ordinance Permitting 'Smoky House'

Passes Both Houses.

In the lower house of the council last night Alderman Michael O'Hearn introduced an ordinance permitting the smoking of cigars, cigarettes and pipes in theaters or public halls having regularly established smoking rooms and three exits. The ordinance passed both houses.

Labels: cigars, Kansas City council, theater, tobacco

July 8, 1908

POLICE WHO DRINK ON DUTY.

They Must Stop or Chief Ahern Will

Know the Reason Why.

Every sergeant of police in Kansas City will appear at police headquarters today at 1 o'clock in pursuance to an order to that effect issued yesterday by Chief of Police Daniel Ahern. The chief said that complaints had reached him of late relative to patrolmen drinking and smoking on their boats or while on duty.

"The police manual," the chief said "absolutely forbids a patrolman to drink intoxicating liquor or to smoke while in uniform, whether on duty or not. The sergeants have become lax in their discipline and it is a fact that the policemen of Kansas City drink and smoke while on duty and in uniform. The practice must stop and the sergeants will be held responsible."

Chief Ahern will also remind the sergeants that the police manual exacts that the patrolmen are to present a neat appearance and that they are not to use their clubs except in extreme cases.

Labels: alcohol, Police Chief Ahern, police headquarters, tobacco

June 8, 1908

TOBACCO WAS SAWDUST.

Police Make Discovery After Guard-

ing Supply for a Year.

"This tobacco was found at Missouri avenue and Walnut street night of August 9, 1907, by Fred Myers, 816 Bank street. BAILEY, Desk.

The foregoing was written on a tag which has now for nearly a year been tied to a dozen sacks of smoking tobacco in the possession of Captain Frank F. Snow, property clerk at police headquarters. That is, everybody thought the sacks contained smoking tobacco.

A man at the station had no smoking tobacco. He wanted a pipe full so badly that he tried to borrow one from all hands about the place. All were just out.

"There is to be an 'old hoss' sole of uncalled for and confiscated property pretty soon," an officer suggested. "See Captain Snow and he may fix you out with tobacco."

"Sure," said the good-natured captain. "Here is a lot that I have had for nearly a year. It was found on the street and has never been called for. Take a sack."

The citizen was grateful, and filled his pipe Those who were watching him noted the peculiar color of the tobacco. It was almost pure white. But the citizen did not notice it. He was talking as he stuffed the"weed" into the pipe. Then a burning match was applied to the well-filled pipe. As the citizen "tasted" his tongue and looked curiously at his pipe the fumes of burning wood filled the little room where he sat. Then he reopened his gift sack of tobacco.

"Sawdust, by heck," he exclaimed as all laughed at what they thought of the good joke Captain Snow had played on his friend. The man hurried in to tell the captain that he "bit" all right and that it was a "peach of a joke."

Captain Snow became interested. "Sawdust?" he said. "You are leaking language through your Merry Widow. I'll just show you that you are off."

When the captain examined the sack and was convinced that it was pure, unadulterated sawdust he brought out the other eleven sacks. One by one they were found to contain nothing but sawdust.

"Well, I'll be dinged; say, what do you think of that? Here I have been guarding that alleged tobacco for nearly a year waiting for an owner to put in appearance."

Some eagle-eyed individual then discovered that not a sack had a government stamp on it. Further inspection and this was found plainly printed on the back of each sack: "This package contains sawdust. To be used in window display."

Labels: Missouri avenue, police, police headquarters, tobacco, Walnut Street

May 27, 1908

WHEN WALLACE IS GOVERNOR.

The "Blue Law" Candidate Will Lift

the Lid on Sunday Smokes.

ST. LOUIS, MO., May 26. -- (Special.) Judge William H. Wallace of Kansas City, a Democrat aspirant for governor, said here today:

"I am neither Sabbatarian nor a political prohibitionist. I am a temperance Democrat. I neither smoke nor partake of intoxicants or coffee. While I am a Presbyterian elder, I do not believe it is a sin to use tobacco, and if I am made governor, I will recommend that the Sunday laws be amended so that there may be no inhibition on tobacco.

"At Kansas City I have enforced the law as I found it, and have put the Sunday closing lid on cigar stores, as well as saloons."

Labels: cigars, Judge Wallace, politics, St Louis, tobacco

April 19, 1908

HE BEGAN SMOKING AT 5.

But This Boy Didn't Take a Chew

Until He Was 6.

When Harry Kersey, a runaway boy from Quincy, Ill., was brought to the detention home yesterday afternoon and admitted to being 16 years old, Superintendent J. K. Ellwood looked him over and said:

"You look like 12 to me. Why didn't you take off a few days and spend it in growing?"

"Too busy," replied Harry.

Ellwood then chanced to glance at the boy's fingers and, seeing cigarette stains, remarked:

"No wonder you didn't grow. You have been smoking."

"That hadn't nothin' to do with it," retorted the midget. "I never smoked a cigarette until I was 5 years old and never chewed until I was 6."

Labels: children, detention home, tobacco, visitors

April 14, 1908

JEWELED BOX

HELD CIGARETTES.

DINERS IN HOTEL BALTIMORE

CAFE GIVEN A SHOCK.

WOMAN BREAKS

HOUSE RULES.

SMOKE WREATHS THAT CHECK

BUZZ OF CONVERSATION.

Waiters, in Panic, Appeal to House

Detective, and He Tells Inof-

fensive Citizen That Wife

Mustn't Smoke There.

A faultlessly dressed couple occupied seats at a table in the main dining room of the Hotel Baltimore cafe last night. It was plain to be seen that they were English.

The dining room was well filled with men and women. The orchestra was playing a piece in waltz time. Jewels gleamed beneath the many lights.

Suddenly the buzz of conversation died away. All eyes in the dining room became centered upon the table where sat the English man and English woman.

With graceful ease the woman had extracted a cork-tipped cigarette from an exquisitely jeweled case and lifted it to her lips with dainty fingers. A moment more and a thin wreath of smoke curled above her head and -- Kansas City received its first touch of the Continent and the Orient.

What to do?

The whites of the eyes of the waiters grew larger, whispered words passed over the adjoining tables and the orchestra played on.

The waiter at the table where sat the English hurried to the side of the head waiter. Everybody except the man and the woman watched the conference of waiters. The cause of the commotion apparently saw nothing of what was transpiring about them. The head waiter hurried to the lobby. He conferred with the house detective.

"Sure," said the detective. "I'll fix that."

The head waiter returned to the dining room. He looked as though he had just received a liberal tip. The diners eagerly awaited the outcome.

They were not kept long in suspense. Soon the form of the house detective loomed large in the doorway. He really looked the imposing majesty of the law as he crossed the threshold. The head waiter moved his head to one side. The detective veered his course in that direction. Then he did the most detective like thing imaginable. He walked up to a well-known private citizen of American extraction who, with his wife, had just finished a light meal and said:

"I wish you wouldn't let your wife smoke in here. It's against the house rules."

Did the private citizen laugh? Indeed he did not. He didn't even smile over the detective's blunder. What he said was direct and to the point, and when he had finished saying it the house sleuth apologized and cast his eagle eye over the dining room for the real offender. Then he made the same request of the Englishman that he made of the professional man. There was a hearty:

"All right -- very sorry -- we didn't know it was against the rules."

And that ended it. The lights still shone brightly, diamonds glistened, the orchestra passed from adante doloroso to allegro furioso.

The Englishman was Mr. C. Murray, secretary of the colonial office, London, and the lady was his wife.

"It was embarrassing," said Mr. Murray afterwards. "We didn't intend to break any of the house rules and when the man came to me and asked my wife to desist she did so at once. I asked the man if it was against the law of your country for a lady to smoke in a dining room. He said it was not, but that it was against the house rules."

Secretary Murray said it was the custom for ladies to smoke in public dining rooms in London and nothing was thought of it. This is his first visit to America.

Secretary Murray said his wife is prominently connected in England, but declined to divulge her name before her marriage. Mr. and Mrs. Murray have been traveling through Mexico.

"We have been over your city," said the secretary, "and I consider it a well laid out city, capable of great extension and a very progressive metropolis, but," he added, "you have not progressed to the point where ladies are allowed the freedom that they are in the old country."

Mr. and Mrs. Murray will depart for Chicago this evening.

Labels: Chicago, detectives, Hotel Baltimore, restaurants, tobacco, visitors, women

July 19, 1907

CIGARETTES HIS CURSE.

MOTHER'S REASON FOR SON'S

SECOND SUICIDE ATTEMPT.

Young Man Who Falls on Street

From Strychnine Poisoning Talks

of a Love Affair --

Will Recover.

A young man was seen walking unsteadily along in the vicinity of Twenty-second street and Dunham avenue shortly after 1 o'clock yesterday afternoon. Presently he stopped, drew rigid and fell in a convulsion. People who called the ambulance from the Walnut Street station thought possibly it was heat prostration, but Dr. George Dagg, ambulance surgeon, diagnosed the case as one of strychnine poisoning. The man was taken at once to the general hospital, where followed several other convulsions indicitive of strychnine poisoning.

It was learned there that the young man's name was Benjamin Rowland, formerly a bill clerk in the employ of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railway. He lives with his widowed mother at 2045 North Valley street, Kansas City, Kas. It was stated at the hospital late last night that Rowland would recover.

During a conscious period at the hospital yesterday, Rowland intimated that a love affair had caused him to attempt his life.

While calling at the home of Miss Hettie Fredericks, 18 years old, Sixteenth street and the Paseo, last spring, young Rowland attempted suicide by drinking laudanum. He had gone there in the afternoon to make a call. No one was home but Miss Connie Fredericks, an older sister. Rowland said he was going to the bathroom for a drink. After being there some time he called Miss Connie to the door of the parlor and, holding a glass of dark liquid high in the air, said, "Good-bye to all. Here goes." It was later discovered that he had taken laudanum.

She called in the janitress and the latter telephoned for a doctor. After working with Rowland for an hour or more, he was left in good condition, and was later taken home.

A stranger called at his home of the widowed mother, 2045 North Valley street, Kansas City, Kas., soon after the occurrence yesterday and told Mrs. Rowland of the son's second attempt. She went at once to the emergency hospital in the city hall, as she heard he had been taken there. When his employer was called up at the C. M. & St. P. freight office, Fourteenth and Liberty streets, Mrs. Rowland learned for the first time that her son had quit his job there a week ago. What he had been doing meantime she did not know.

"If he lives through this," she said, "I intend to take steps to have him restrained. He has smoked cigarettes until he is a complete nervous wreck. He smokes them all day and then smokes them during the night. I have begged and pleaded with him about it, but it does no good. I think cigarettes are a greater curse to the younger generation of boys than whiskey and should be placed under restrictions just as stringent. I shall place him in some sanitarium if he lives through this attempt."

Labels: doctors, Kansas City Kas, Paseo, railroad, romance, Sixteenth street, Suicide, tobacco, Twenty-second street, Walnut Street