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September 27, 1908

CELEBRATE K. U. VICTORY.

Students at Lawrence Parade After

First Football Game.

LAWRENCE, KAS., Sept. 26. -- (Special.) Headed by the K. U. band, 200 K. U. students participated in their annual shirt-tail parade in a drenching rain through Lawrence streets tonight. The students celebrate their first football victory every year with this sort of a parade.

Labels: Lawrence, sports, universities

September 17, 1908

COLLEGE CROWD IS OFF AGAIN.

Boys and Girls Throng Union Depot

on Their Way to School.

If there is one time of the year which is thoroughly enjoyed by the "redcaps" at the Union depot it is the beginning of fall when students start collegeward. Last night the old station and the trainshed were thronged with young men and women, and there were many amusing sights.

The rah-rah boy took his parting form home ties and home friends with a smile and thoughts of the greetings he was was to get from the "fellows" back at school. All through the station could be heard the call of some fraternity man as he whistled a mysterious bar or so, and the joyful answer might come from two or three places in the trainshed.

Not so the girl. Her eyes were bright, but there was a definite trace of tears therein. She stood long upon the car steps, even until the train had passed from the shed, waving her farewell. Not infrequent were the demonstrations of affection which the youths had hoped would pass off for brother and sister love, but the wise "redcaps" had seen too much of that kind of affection and could not be fooled.

"Talk about your spooning parlors," remarked Lee Mitchell, depot master, "what is the use of starting them in churches? Let the lovelorn ones come down here. It's lots safer and less embarrassing, especially at night."

A few minutes after Mr. Mitchell had voiced his opinion, the lights in the tarnished wen tout and all was dark except the shafts of light made from the engine headlights.

"Now, what did I tell you?" he laughed.

Labels: railroad, romance, Union depot, universities

September 4, 1908

BASKETBALL MAKES GIRLS QUARREL,

SAYS MISS CAPEN.

New Physical Director of Y. W. C. A.

Will Not Allow Dr. Naismith's

Game to Be Played.

"Basketball cannot be played by girls without making them quarrel," said Miss Julia Capen, who yesterday took charge of the physical education work of the Kansas City Y. W. C. A.

That is the reason that there is to be no competitive basketball in the Kansas City association this year. Miss Capen is following the lead of many other physical directors throughout the country in putting the ban on the most strenuous of girls' sports. Dr. Clark Hetherton, director of athletics at the University of Missouri, aroused much criticism last year when he contended that the game was bad for women and that every girl who played basketball on the university teams suffered from a nervous collapse before she left school or immediately afterwards. Now Miss Capen says it is bad for the girls' tempers and will forbid it for the association girls. A little mild practice might be allowed, but no real scrimmaging.

Miss Capen succeeds Miss Tamson Weatherbee, who goes to Milwaukee. She plans to enlarge the enrollment in the gymnasium classes, especially the classes for little girls. Children ranging from 6 to 12 years of age will be given instructions in all manner of games, such as Boston ball captain ball, indoor baseball, volley ball, long base, and others.

The Swedish system of correctional gymnastics will be introduced by Miss Capen and instruction in dancing and fancy drills will be given the older girls' and married women's classes.

"It is alarming the number of women you see every day with one shoulder higher than the other or with some other defect which the girl scarcely notices herself, but which is remarked at once by all who see her," said Miss Capen. "Careless habits of standing and walking and breathing are to blame for these defects, which could be remedied by proper gymnastic exercises."

Miss Capen graduated from the Boston Normal school of Gymnastics and has taken work in the Yale summer school. For the last five years she has been physical director of the Binghampton, N. Y., Y. W. C. A. and taught in the Lady Grey School for Girls.

Labels: sports, universities, women, YWCA

July 6, 1908

DEMENTED BOY TAKEN HOME.

John E. Stroud's Father Says He Had

Studied Too Hard.

John E. Stroud, the Kansas University Student who was taken in charge by the police last Thrusday afternoon and detained at police headquarters, after calling on Mayor Thomas T. Crittenden, Jr., while mentally unsound, was taken home last night by his father, R. J. Stroud of Howard, Kas. Young Stroud, who had grown worse since his incarceration in a cell in the matron's room, was removed to the general hospital early Saturday morning. They physicians at the hospital strapped Stroud to a cot so he could not injure himself. When his father visited him at the hospital the young college student appeared to become quiet, and when they left for their Kansas home the demented man was very meek in his actions. Mr. Stroud said that his son had studied too hard while at the university and was not well when the college closed.

Labels: general hospital, Mayor Crittenden, mental health, police headquarters, universities, visitors

July 3, 1908

MAN UNDER SPELL

VISITS THE MAYOR

WANTS HIS HONOR TO REMOVE

"EVIL INFLUENCE."

TRIP FROM KANSAS

IN VAIN

LAYS ALL HIS TROUBLES TO A

TRAVELING MAN.

J. E. Stroud of Howard, Kas., De-

clares Mr. Crittenden Is the Only

Person, Except a Hypnotist,

Who Can Relieve Him.

"I want to see the mayor and see him at once."

"He's busy now. Won't you have a seat?"

"No I won't. I said I wanted to see the mayor right now, and I meant it. I am under the spell of a hypnotist and may jump in front of a street car at any moment. I want the mayor to break this spell. I have come all the way here to have him do it."

The foregoing dialogue took place yesterday afternoon in the office of Mayor Thomas T. Crittenden, Jr. between a tall, slender man with constantly shifting eyes and the mayor's secretary.

The mayor himself over heard the conversation and took a look at the man who was laboring under hypnotic influence. Something about him made his honor nervous. With visions of bombs, infernal machines and other anarchistic toys, the mayor closed his door and hurried to the telephone.

"Hello, police headquarters?" he asked. "Let me talk to the captain. Is that you, Captain Whitsett? Well, I wish you would send up here to my office and take a man out that is acting queer. This is the mayor."

Captain Whitsett went up himself. When he got there the mayor was leaning over the railing of his office and talking "real nice" to the man. He was taken in charge and locked up in the matron's room.

GRADUATE OF K. U.

To Dr. Paul Lux, who examined him later, the man gave the name of J. E. Stroud of Howard, Kas. He looks to be 30 years old but said that he graduated with a class of about 270 at the Kansas State university on June 10. He said he had taught school at Galva and Jamestown, Kas.

"I came all the way here June 15 to see the mayor about removing a hypnotic influence which has been over me since March 28, last."

Stroud said he did not know the name of the man who had cast the spell on him, but believed it was a New York traveling man with whom he talked at dinner in a Howard, Kas., hotel, March 28.

"Did you know that the man was a hypnotist?" asked Dr. Lux. "When did you first realize that he had hypnotized you?"

"I didn't know it at first, of course," replied Stroud, "or I would have left him. He held my conversation about fifteen minutes longer than I intended and I felt that I could not get away from him. His eyes were funny, but I suspected nothing until a few days later when I found myself acting solely by suggestions that came to me and doing things I had not done before."

Just at this point, Stroud, who was sitting on the edge of a bed, reached out with his right hand and smoothed out the top spread. Jerking his hand away quickly he said: "There, do you see that? Did you notice what I did then?"

STROUD "SEES THINGS."

The doctor had not noticed. Stroud seemed surprised that he had overlooked such an unusual thing as a man smoothing out a bedspread.

"Didn't you see me straighten out that cover? Well, that man caused me to do that. I am not in the habit of smoothing out bedspreads. I wish the mayor had taken this spell off. I believe he is the only one here to do it. In fact I came here just to have him do it."

At another time Stroud scraped a splinter from the floor with the toe of his right shoe. That, too, was caused by the same hypnotic influence. He said that when he arrived here he thought of hunting up another hypnotist and having him try his art at removing a spell cast by another of his profession. The idea always came back to him that Mayor Thomas T. Crittenden, Jr., was the only man in the wide world to remove such influences. "And he actually wouldn't do it," Stroud said sadly; "what do you think of that?"

Stroud said that at times he was able to do exactly the opposite of the hypnotist's suggestions, but that it was a mental strain. Stroud is now being held and relatives at Howard, Kas., will be notified.

Stroud said that if he knew where he could find the hypnotist he would wire him to get busy and look the other way for a while.

Labels: Captain Whitsett, doctors, Mayor Crittenden, mental health, police matron, telephone, universities, visitors

March 4, 1908

MISS O'BRIEN SENDS APOLOGY.

M. S. U. Row Ends, but Did Miss

Craig Take a Bath?

COLUMBIA, MO., March 3. -- (Special.) Miss Agnes O'Brien of Independence, Mo., who was suspended a week from the state university for tearing an official bulletin and required to apologize to her physical instructor, Miss Florence Aldeen, announced to her friends today that she had signed an apology of her own wording and sent it to Miss Alden.

It is generally thought it will be accepted by the discipline committee, and that all the trouble will end immediately without a trial before the board of curators. This will end the university row that arose over the refusal of Miss Mary Craig to take a cold shower bath in the gymnasium.

Labels: Independence, universities

February 15, 1908

STRYCHNINE CAUSED

RUTH MILLER'S DEATH.

ANALYSIS OF CANDY DEVELOPS

THIS FACT.

No Motive for the Attempt on Life

of the Elder Miller Girl

Has Yet Been Dis-

covered.

Strychnine was the bitter-tasting foreign substance noticed by the Miller children who survived sampling the box of bonbons mailed to Ella Miller, 14 years old, of 634 Cheyenne avenue, Armourdale, Wednesday. Four year old Ruth Miller, after eating one of the candies, fell dead in the throes of a paralyzing agony. The lives of the other children were saved because of the unsavory taste of the sweets.

The candy was sent to the chemical laboratory of the Kansas state university at Lawrence. Yesterday the analysis had progressed at the university to such period as to make certain the identity of the poison employed. It was strychnine. How much of the drug each piece of candy contained has not been determined, but one-twelfth grain of strychnine crystals, the form employed, is sufficient to cause death.

But who committed the deed, and why?

This question was asked and left unanswered a great number of times in the office of the Kansas City, Kas., chief of police yesterday. Detectives Quinn, McKnight, Walsh and Wilson reported finding nothing, after a diligent inquiry into the private life of the Miller family for a possible reason why the little girl, to who the package was addressed, should be out of the way. Apparently she has always been a dutiful daughter, living in peace and harmony with her step-father and well loved by he playmates and friends at the packing house where she worked.

The theory at first held by the officers that some jealous small boy, a sweetheart of the girl, perhaps, had prepared the package and mailed it to her, was explored when the only two boys with whom the little girl has gone anywhere were brought in by the drag net and proved to be the neighbor boys selected by Mrs. Miller once or twice to walk with Ella to a nickel show in the vicinity.

According to Mille last night about 500 people have called at the home to express sympathy yesterday. Many of them offered financial help in locating the poisoner. Among the visitors were a half-dozen girls who worked in the canning department of the Schwarzschild & Sulzberger plant. They were unanimous in declaring no one in their department had sent the bonbons.

"Why, we all loved little Ella," said Artilla Hack, Miami and Coy streets, Armourdale, one of the visitors. "She was just as good as she could be to all of us, and I know none of the girls had anything against her. If they had someone would have been sure to mention it, since she left there a month ago." Geanette Brymer, Seventh and Coy streets, said practically the same thing.

The other children of the Miller family affected by eating candy from the box sent the oldest daughter are out of danger. D r. Zachary Nason, who lives two blocks from the Miller home, and who atended Ruth Miller while she was dying, says they all showed strong symptoms of strychnine poisoning.

"It must have been this drug that was inserted into the bon-bons," said Dr. Nason, last night. "The theory that it might have been arsenic is, in my opinion, absurd, as arsenic is an acid while strchnine is a salt, and therefore their symptoms should be diameteically opposite. The little girl, when I saw her, was rigid in the arms and across the chest. Occasionally she completely relaxed. Lockjaw preceded death by at least two minutes. All these symptoms are those of strychnine poisoning, and not posible after a dose of arsenic."

Labels: Armourdale, children, Death of Ruth Miller, doctors, Lawrence, murder, poison, universities

April 12, 1907

NEGRO AS K. U. DEBATER.

Boycott Placed on Baker Debate by

Kansas Students.

As a result of the selection of a negro for the Kansas university debating team, which meets Baker today, only a score of students will accompany the team to Baldwin tomorrow. Woodie Jacobs, a fullblood negro from Rosedale, entered the competitive preliminary debates two months ago, and on account of his experience easily won a place on the team. The other men on the team -- Sanders Vigg, from Alva, O. T., and Clyde Commons, from Fort Scott -- made no protest, and after a few vain attempts to have the preliminaries tried over by some of the members of the debating council who opposed the negro, Jacobs was assured a place on the team. Nothing was heard of the matter until this week, when the debating council tried to arrange an excursion to Baldwin. In former years, 500 or 600 students attended the debates and chartered special trains, but this year only sixteen Kansas University students bought tickets.

The novelty of having a negro on the team is increased all the more by the fact that the question for the debate is the repeal of the fifteenth amendment, involving the taking away of the right of suffrage from the negro. Jacobs, for Kansas university, defends the negro side of the question.

Labels: race, Rosedale, universities

Aprill 12, 1907

FAILED TO SIGN WILL.

And the Grand Avenue Methodist

Church Gets None of His Money.

Through the death of Christian E. Schoellkopf, a wealthy bachelor of Kansas City, the fund of the state university will be enriched $18,954.92. Yesterday John P. Gilday, who was appointed by Public Administrator R. S. Crohn to appraise the property left by Schoellkopf, to determine a just inheritance tax on his estate, reported to the probate court that Schoellkopf's realty holdings amounted to $308,15.11, while his personal property, exclusive of certain United States bonds and other valuable papers, were estimated to be worth $31,035.65.

Mr. Schoellkoopf, at the time of his death, which occurred in a little town in Kansas, where he had gone to look after property interests owned by him, left only two heirs, a brother, Henry Schoellkopf, and a nephew, Henry Schoellkopf, Jr., both residing in Chicago. He had written a will, but according to evidence introduced, he failed to sign it.

The deceased was a warm friend to the Grand Avenue Methodist church during his lifetime, and was one of its liberal financial supporters. It was understood by many of his close bachelor friends that in his will he had planned to bequeath the church something handsome. But it developed that no signed will could be found and the estate was taken in charge by the public administrator, Mr. Crohn, and is to be divided between the two heirs.

Labels: churches, Grand avenue, probate, Public administrator Crohn, universities

April 5, 1907

MYER L. WILSON A SUICIDE.

Ended His Life in the Street at 5

o'Clock Yesterday Morning.

Sitting on the curbing at the northeast corner of Eleventh and Walnut streets yesterday morning at 5 o'clock, Myer L. Wilson, of 2461 Troost avenue, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a revolver. The tragedy occurred at an hour when there were few people on the streets and was witnessed only by Frank Yearout, a dishwasher at a downtown saloon, and by a newsboy.

Wilson left a note which read:

My name is Myer L. Wilson. My home is at 2461 Troost avenue. I have lived long enough. M. L. W.

The suicide was the son of H. I. Wilson, vice president of the Ryley-Wilson Wholesale Grocery Company, and was 25 years of age. He had lived all his life in Kansas City; was educated at the public schools of the city and had been a student at Yale university for one year. He returned from college about three years ago and was given a place as buyer in the Ryley-Wilson concern.

Friends and relatives of the young man are unable to assign any reason for his deed.

"We do not understand it," said an aunt of Myer Wilson at the family home yesterday afternoon. "The boy had no bad habits that we know of or even suspected. We know of no love affairs. Certainly it was not financial troubles, as he was supplied with all the money he needed. He was a very quiet boy, rarely taking any interest in social affairs, and most of his evenings were spent at home. No one ever heard him complain of any trouble that would make him want to take his life. His home life was very pleasant."

"The only illness we know of which might explain the trouble was a chronic stomach affection which gave him trouble from time to time. There is nothing else we can think of which might have caused him to commit suicide."

Labels: Suicide, Troost avenue, universities

March 31, 1907

MAY GET MARK TWAIN.

Great Humorist May Be Here on

Missouri University Founders' Day.

The Kansas City Missouri University Alumni Association is going after big game for speakers at the banquet to be held here April 19 in commemoration of Founders' day. Mark Twain holds a degree from the university and his former residence in this state makes him at least a Missourian by adoption. It is stated that the prospect of getting the famous humorist in connection with a lecture here are very encouraging.

Labels: Mark Twain, universities