OLD NEWS: New item takes look at scoops of the past

May 30, 1916 Arkansas Gazette
May 30, 1916 Arkansas Gazette

In this new feature, born today, Style revisits stories published in the distant past by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and its progenitor newspapers.

Archives of the Arkansas Gazette date to 1820, when this state was a very different place. Language used and attitudes expressed by long-dead reporters appear foreign, even appalling, today. (Appalling to me, for instance.) But there’s also charm and humor in this evidence of days left behind. But know that I plan to paraphrase a bit here and there, to keep the worst of the past from blocking out the better.

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From the May 30, 1916 edition of the Arkansas Gazette

Edition: The May 30, 1916, Arkansas Gazette cost 5 cents and contained 14 pages. Page One was stacked with 22 national and international reports, three items of state news, a weather forecast and five advertisements in tiny, agate type.

Local news: Under the headline “Masked Men Hold Up a Street Car,” readers learned about a crime in Little Rock: “Two white men wearing red handkerchief masks and carrying revolvers stopped a Fifteenth street car at Eighteenth street and Park avenue at 10:35 o’clock last night.”

These “highwaymen” were “bold bandits” who “stepped from the shadows” and ordered the conductor to hold the car. They took an estimated $30 from the conductor, the motorman (driver) and a passenger, who also lost a small diamond ring. They were medium in height and build and wore felt hats.

One of them called the conductor a “——— ————.” (I have no idea.)

The motorman, O.V. Grimmet, told the Gazette he didn’t know the men were on the car until the passengers started running and trying to crawl under the seats. “One of the men pointed a revolver at me and walked up the car toward me,” Grimmet said. “He took my gold watch and chain. There was a $2.50 gold piece on my chain that I used as a charm.”

As they absconded, they told the motorman to “drive on.”

National news: That story appeared on the top left-hand corner of Page 1. On the top right-hand corner, the Gazette reported on the 13th biennial convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs underway in New York with 10,000 delegates in attendance. Before anyone gets the idea this was a “brite” story, let’s pause to remember that women did not yet have the right to vote, and women’s suffrage was a heavy-duty controversy of the day.

So what was the main headline?

“Play Politics Just Like the Mere Men.”

The Gazette reported that the delegates had splintered into regional factions defined in part by racial attitudes and that campaigning by candidates for the federation’s next president was “heated.” After a brief summary of shifts of allegiance caused by rumors about one candidate’s desire to broaden federation membership to include black women’s clubs, the Gazette gave readers this juicy tidbit:

“Mrs. Emma Kipp Edwards, chairman of the Supply Committee, announced tonight that to date delegates had requisitioned 100,000 hairpins, 1,000 drinking cups, 600 hatpins and 300 packages of face powder, all of which were especially provided for the use of the delegates.”

Besides the ’tude toward women, it’s impossible to read a 1916 edition without noting an apparent fascination with digestive ailments.

At the bottom of Page 2, an ad styled like a news story declared: “Ugh! Calomel is Horrible! It Shocks Your Liver, if Bilious! Calomel Sickens! Don’t Lose a Day’s Work! Clean Your Liver and Bowels With Dodson’s Liver Tone.”

Calomel, it said, “is mercury of quicksilver, which causes necrosis of the bones.” And it went on, but we can’t.

Coming next week: More old news.

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