October 9, 2025
MADE BISCUITS OF ASBESTOS.
Peddler That Sold Mineral Flour to
Woman is Fined.
Mrs. Mary Ricks, an extremely corpulent woman who lives near the Missouri Pacific tracks in the East Bottoms, will buy no more flour from peddlers, no matter how good a bargain she may get. Her experience with asbestos as a substitute for flour is what taught her a lesson.
All summer long near her home cars of asbestos, white and flour-like, have been unloaded, but she paid no particular attention to it. So, two days ago, when J. L. Fletcher appeared at her door with a fifty-pound sack of "good flour," for which he asked only 50 cents, big Mary bit. Fletcher, who was fined $10 in municipal court yesterday, had previously filled the flour sack with white asbestos.
To Patrolman Frank Michaels, who arrested Fletcher, Mrs. Ricks told this story: "I didn't need no flour, no I didn't, but 'twuz so cheap that I bought it. Pretty soon some company come up and I was fixin' to make biscuits for dinner. I rolled out mah flour, put in mah soda, shortening and so forth.
"I didn't see much wrong 'till I mixed in th' buttermilk and started to knead mah dough. Well, that dough kept a-gettin' stickier and stickier, and heavier than lead. I couldn't get it off mah hands and it was caked under mah nails. I coulda knocked a horse down a block away with a ball of that stuff."
Mrs. Ricks said that she had great difficulty in removing the asbestos flour from her hands. She didn't notice her nails and the stuff dried under them. She said she had to "chizzle" the asbestos dough out.
Labels: con artist, East bottoms, food, police, railroad
