Green Giraffes, 4-Tailed Elephants, Haunt the Victim of Wood Alcohol

1920

BY DR. BEN L. REITMAN

Wood alcohol is one of the most dangerous poisons known to science. Because it is one of the best known poisons in the world, people are losing their fear of it.

Thousands of persons in the United States probably have drunk it in the last three months. But the main reason that we are having so many cases of wood alcohol poisoning lately is that prohibition has only become a reality in the last thirty days. Previous to that time it was possible to buy a drink almost anywhere for 25, 35 or 50 cents. Today it costs 75 cents or a dollar, a prohibitive price for the poorer workers. They have sought a substitute.

Fatal Dose Is Eight Ounces

They have tried what we call "wood alcohol." The fatal dose of pure wood alcohol is eight ounces. The denatured alcohol which they are purchasing in drug stores, etc., that is, the great part of it, is grain alcohol diluted with 10 per cent of wood alcohol. Thus a man would have to drink a fairly large quantity of this denatured alcohol to obtain a fatal result.

The bum, the hobo, the man who just must have a drink, gets a bottle of denatured alcohol and goes into a saloon. He orders a glass of near beer. When he gets it he pours in an ounce of the alcohol — and gets a kick.

A few doses of this and he begins to get drunk. Then he gradually increases the dose. of alcohol until he is drinking it virtually straight.

Sees Four-tailed Elephants

A man doesn't necessarily have to drink a fatal dose to suffer ill effects. He suffers from strange hallucinations after but a short bout. But the major part of the cases we have heard about recently have been those where drinking the poison has been persisted in for two or three days.

There is a peculiar psychology in the effects of the poison. The victim sees four-tailed elephants and green giraffes and all the other different animals so long associated with delirium tremens. And then there is a peculiar half-blindness. The victim looks at you, but he can see only half of you — the other half, say the upper half, simply dissolves into space.

Regulations for sale? It would be a hard matter. Wood and denatured alcohol now is a commercial commodity widely used in industries the nation over. The people are able to buy it in department stores, in drug stores, in paint stores, and stories have been told of chauffeurs getting it out of the radiators of their automobiles.

A man might be able to drink a small dose of wood alcohol daily for some considerable time — but he shouldn't forget that it will get him in the end — and its after effects don't wear off easily and sometimes are incurable.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 1.


Lightning Plays Queer Prank

1920

MARIETTA, Pa., Jan. 1. — During a heavy electrical storm a bolt of lightning struck the residence of Charles Spanger and knocked out a beam in the middle of his garret without tearing a hole in the roof. The outside was considerably damaged. Fire ensued, but the downpour of rain extinguished it.

One Cure For Vagrancy

1900

Policeman's Simple Scheme to Make Door-Sleepers Move On

The New York police force is credited with being one of the best in the world, but at least one member of it is a genius born for greater things. He has invented a method for ridding his beat of vagrants and doorstep sleepers.

This officer is attached to the Church street station, and patrols in the neighborhood of Washington street and the Battery, where cheap lodging houses, small beer saloons, "labor agencies," and the genuine "Weary Willie" luxuriantly abound, so he has almost daily opportunity to test his invention.

The vagrant is not particular where he sleeps, so that it costs nothing, and doorways are favorite lodging places. It was a sleeper in one of these that received a never-to-be-forgotten shock the other day. He was asleep in the doorway of a saloon, with his head thrown back against the jamb and his legs sprawled over the pavement. "Watch me make him more on," said the inventor. His hand went under his coat-tails, and it looked as if he were going for his gun in deadly earnest.

A spectator stood petrified, waiting to see a bloody tragedy enacted, but the bluecoat pulled out a small vial, and leaning over the sleeper, poured some of the contents on his thick, reddish mustache. The effect was electrical. With a wild snort and a gurgling gasp the hitherto inert figure sprang into the air and clawed at his mouth and throat; the tears streamed out of his eyes, which were distended with terror, and he stood gasping and making horrible faces and still clawing frantically at his mouth and throat, while the policeman smiled grimly and waited for the customary denouement. It came in a moment.

As soon as the terrorized doorstep lodger had recovered enough of his breath to permit his moving he started hurriedly up Washington street, sans coat, sans hat, sans everything but a consuming desire to put as much distance between himself and that door as possible.

The policeman laughed heartily as he watched the rapidly retreating figure. "I'll bet he don't come back here again," he said. That dose'll last him for a month. Ammonia's a great thing. It's better than insect powder, and it saves making arrests. That fellow is not only obeying the move-on ordinance, but the dose sobered him up, to boot." — New York Mail and Express.

A Snap For Bums

Chicago, 1908

A city newspaper has started a movement to provide meals and lodgings for unemployed single men, without pay or price. Without questioning the free advertising the paper may get from it, the course is very ill advised and should be stopped, as it will mean the assembling of every hungry "bum" and "hobo" in the country who will hasten to Chicago where they may be provided with a good living without work.

Anyone can guess the answer to this; it will mean robberies, holdups and all kinds of crime perpetrated by these lazy and irresponsible tramps, who will avail themselves of the kind invitation of the paper.

The city relief committee proposes giving unemployed men work on the streets, each day's work to be paid for a ticket entitling those who work to three days' board and lodging, the two days may be used in hunting for work, and the committee will see to it that vagrants who will not seek employment will be arrested, and compelled to move on. This may seem hard hearted, but it is the only way the people of the city can be protected against the horde of bums who will flock to the city to avail themselves of the soft snap this paper is offering them.


1900

On A Clear Day Pigeons Can See Forever

It doesn't always pay the supercilious doctor to cut his patients.

Words are the blossoms and deeds are the fruits.

The clothing of a growing boy refuses to grow with him.

On a clear day a pigeon can see 200 miles.

Wicked Humor — A Great Satire On The Ways of Tramps

1878

A Sarcastic Mendicant

"I'm very hungry," said a haggard tramp, with very red eyes, as he stood obsequiously at the side entrance of a Court street house. "Won't you please, ma'am, be so good as to give me a little something to eat? Anything will do — odds and ends — cold or warm — it don't matter, for I'm not one of them high-toned fellers."

"My husband has forbidden me to encourage idleness by giving away any more provisions," replied the lady of the house. " He says you fellows have a sort of Free Masonry way of letting others know every house at which you have been fed, and it is sure to bring a troop of lazy vagabonds upon us who would starve before they'd lift a hand to work. So you will have to move on and get your breakfast some place else."

"But I'm not a vagabond, ma'am; I'm a hard-working, industrious man. I came up on a boat from Memphis to see my sick mother who lives out near Camden, and isn't expected to live. I was robbed on the boat of every cent I had and all my clothes, while I was in bed. The captain gave me these old things. I don't like to beg, but Camden is a good stretch from here, and I can't walk it on an empty stomach. Think of the outstretched arms of a poor sick mother toward her absent child, and put wings on my feet with a few cold potatoes. I'm just at that point where I can eat 'em without salt."

"I can't do it. They all have a story about like that. The last man I fed had to go to Columbus inside of twenty-four hours to save an innocent man from hanging, but two days afterward I saw him down town so drunk he couldn't hold his mouth shut."

"Well, I never drink. If I hadn't been robbed I could show you my Murphy ribbon that I've worn till it's raveled into strings. Long years ago I swore at my mother's bended knee — the same one who moans on her couch of pain because I'm not with her — that I would never touch the blighting cup, and I hain't, from that time up to this minute. Can't you help me to get there in time to comfort her declining hours with the joyful tidings that I have been steadfast through all temptation, by giving me the cold grub you had intended to dump into the garbage box? I'm awful hungry."

"I can't help it. I must obey my husband — his orders were positive," said the woman, snappishly.

"Well, you're the most extraordinary woman I ever saw if you do. But say, can't you give me the paper the beefsteak was brought home in, to chew as I go along. It may fool my stomach for awhile and make it brace up by thinking something better will be along presently. You'll do that much toward easing a fond parent's anxious heart, won't you?"

"No, I won't."

"Well, then give me a newspaper and let me sit by the fire and read the advertisement of a meat market, and show me the place where it tells all about provisions. Even that would give me a feast — for the imagination — which has been about the extent of my living lately. You won't believe it, maybe, but it's a fact, that all the nourishment I've had for two days is the bill of fare painted on the outside of the Fifth-street restaurant. Can you think of that and keep your stale bread on the inside of your cupboard?"

"Yes, I can; and I want you to make yourself scarce without any more palaver, or I shall send my boy to call a policeman," exclaimed the indignant woman.

"Even the photograph of a chicken would be some comfort," said the man, by way of banter, as he moved off, "and if you don't use soap in your dishwater a few potatoes sliced up in it would be regular barbecue for me." — Cincinnati Breakfast Table.

Box Car Tourist (Tramp, Hobo) Selling Stolen Plunder

Reno, 1905

TRAMP SELLS STOLEN PLUNDER IN RENO

A gentleman of the road, or rather a box car tourist, giving his name as Frank Kilzer, arrived in Reno yesterday and began selling shirts and other clothing at different residences in the city. He offered his goods at a very low price and consequently suspicion was aroused. The matter was reported to the police and the man was arrested just after completing a sale of some shirts.

He was taken to the police station and put through the "third degree" and in a short time confessed to stealing all the goods from a box car on the Southern Pacific road. He claimed, however, that he had been assisted in the work by two other hoboes and that they had taken most of the plunder. He is now in jail pending a further investigation into his crime.

—Daily Nevada State Journal, Reno, NV, Feb. 1, 1905, p. 4.

Hoboes Start "Wild West"; Capture Train

1920

Hoboes Start "Wild West"

Deputies Have Exciting Chase After Seven Tramps Who Refuse to Pay Fare

LOS ANGELES, Neb. 25.—After a day of "Wild West" activity, started by the report that a gang of hobos had held up and "captured" a Southern Pacific freight train outside of Mojave, and a series of gun plays and thrilling automobile chases by officers, seven men were lodged in the county jail on the charge of evading railroad fare.

The seven were nabbed by deputy sheriffs after they left the freight train at Saugus. Three of the seven jumped from the train before it arrived at the station, and made a temporary escape by boarding a passing truck. They were chased by the officers to San Fernando, and there taken into custody at the point of sawed-off shotguns.

At least twenty men were in the gang when the brakeman of the train, W. S. Brown of Los Angeles, discovered them, he told Deputy Sheriffs Bell and Couts. Just before the train arrived in Saugus the majority of the gang, which included armed men, became suspicious of the reception that awaited them there, and boarded a freight train bound in the opposite direction.

The men refused to leave, and, when he threatened to put them off, offered resistance.

"You just try to put us off," one of the bunch called out, pulling a revolver from his pocket. Another gun was flashed, and then the brakeman was told that the train was "captured," and informed that he'd better go on to Los Angeles, the officers say.

An account of the situation was telegraphed to Los Angeles, and the Sheriff's office was notified, Deputies Couts and Bell were called from their homes and with Driver Arthur Cabbage were sent ahead to Saugus to meet the train.

The deputies nearly lost their prisoners when the county car, speeding toward Saugus, broke down a few miles from its destination. A passing automobile had to be commandeered, and the officers arrived in Saugus just in time to organize a posse.

With Constable Collins and the volunteers the officers "covered" the train when it pulled into the station, and told the men on it "to stick 'em up." Only four hobos came out of their hiding places, hands high up in the air. The officers realized that several had escaped, and soon learned that some of the gang boarded a truck a few miles outside of Saugus.

It was then that a second chase was started. The truck was overtaken near San Fernando and the three men on it taken into custody. The seven prisoners will be held for further investigation.

—The Evening State Journal and Lincoln Daily News, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 25, 1920, page 3.