Cases of Queer Revenge

1901

In England, where men have more time for everything, including revenge, some queer methods of playing even have come into the courts.

Albert Bewdley of Leeds had a dog that howled at night. A naturalist next door did not like it, but had no legal recourse.

One day ants of the minute red variety began to overrun Bewdley's house. Nothing that could be done headed them off. They grew worse and worse. He had made up his mind to break his lease and move when one night he heard a noise in his dining room. Slipping down, he found the naturalist emptying a bag of ants on the floor. In court the naturalist paid damages, but he did it smilingly.

Rowley, the late English violinist, was hard to beat on his perseverance against one who had incurred his ill will.

Rowley had a quarrel with a horse dealer named Brant. It was a trivial matter, but Rowley took the next house to Brant, set up a piano, bought a cornet and proceeded to make insomnia for Brant.

After one or two assault cases in court Brant moved. Rowley bought out the next door neighbor and followed with piano and cornet. Brant went to law, but found he could do nothing. Failing, he took a detached house. Then Rowley hired brass bands and organs and assailed him. This was actionable, and Rowley paid £1,000 for his revenge. — Chicago Tribune.

Jazz Music Not a Nuisance

Feb. 1920

Los Angeles County Judge Refuses to Give Relief to Disturbed Nerves

Los Angeles, Cal. — Jazz music is not a nuisance, according to a decision by Judge Lewis R. Works, in the Los Angeles county superior court. The city of Pasadena had brought suit against a social club, whose neighbors complained its jazz music "jarred on their nerves."

"Once jazz music might have been construed as a nuisance," Judge Works said. "It is no longer so construed. If the music disturbed the residents of the neighborhood, I am sorry, but this court cannot give them relief."


Wealthy Pauper

In a cheap lodging house in William street, New York, an aged man died, leaving a will showing that he was wealthy enough to live in a brownstone mansion in Fifth avenue. He was Edward Campion, aged sixty-five. Why he chose the habitat of the "down-and-outer" may remain a mystery. The house is one of those where the unfortunate can get "bath and bed" for 15 or 25 cents.

In his will, Campion disposes of several valuable parcels of Manhattan property, as well as real estate in other sections, in addition to considerable cash, to two daughters and three sons.

"Fainting Bertha" is On Her Way

1914

Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 19. — "Fainting Bertha" seems to have difficulty in keeping from the paths of the police. In spite of her professed conversion to Christianity two months ago and her declarations that she is living a totally reformed life, she Saturday was taken to police headquarters by Officer Wilson Skinner and a few minutes later was told to leave town by Capt. C. C. Jackson.

"Why don't you kill me and be done with it?" she moaned when told by Jackson that she couldn't stay in Des Moines any longer. "I'd rather be dead than alive. I try to live right and no one will let me."

But she promised to take an evening interurban car for Ames.

Bertha came to Des Moines from Omaha the first of the week. She was accompanied by the Rev. Mr. Mason, assistant pastor of the People's church of the Nebraska city. Mason told friends here that Bertha had been converted two months ago and was now visiting different cities trying to obtain a livelihood for herself and her aged mother by self-written stories of her life, contained in a small book entitled "Clothed in Scarlet."

For several days "Fainting Bertha" has been working here, encountering little difficulty in selling her books. But each day complaints of her actions have been increasing in number at the station.

Friday it was reported that while riding inside an outbound Fourth street car she "suffered" one of the fainting spells which gave her so much notoriety and the appellation she has carried for years. She swooned and slid to the floor of the car, the story went, but, while the conductor was trying to revive her by rubbing her forehead, she glanced up and saw Detective Pettit watching her. She revived in a hurry and got off the car at the next stop.

A complaint received from the Kirkwood hotel Saturday afternoon that she was bothering everyone about the hotel lobby led to her final undoing. The police were called and she was taken to headquarters.

In the course of her conversation with Captain Jackson, Bertha got on her knees on the floor in front of him and started to implore him to be merciful. Jackson thought she was about to undergo another fainting spell and quickly got her out of his office.

—Waterloo Evening Courier, Waterloo, IA, Jan. 19, 1914, p. 7.

1,222,570 Different Bacteria on One House Fly

1910

U.S. Government Asks All to Swat the Fly

NEW YORK. — The whole United States government, with its vast treasury of wealth, its brainy statesmen and insurgents, its army and navy, its immense horde of highbrows, against the poor little house fly! That's the line-up in a bitter war of extermination scheduled to set the nation by the cars and enlist the courageous support of every man, woman and child in this broad land. The final knell of the house fly has been sounded and the battle has just begun. "Catch 'em and kill 'em; show no quarter" — that is the war cry of the army of extermination that is to put forth every effort to rid the land of the Musca Domestica, the polite name by which the house fly should be addressed by strangers.

Until the scientists got busy with their investigations the house fly was considered merely as a pestiferous insect, designed by the Creator of all things merely to take its bath in the sweet cream and maple syrup, annoy the late morning sleeper, skate about with abandon on the polished surface of shiny baldheads and practice the Morse telegraph code on the cleanest of windows.

Long suffering housewives since time began were the only really active enemies of the seemingly insignificant little fly, and they alone and unaided applied the imprecations and dish cloths vigorously against the nuisance. But after the scientists got onto the job the fight against the insect began to assume proportions of magnitude.

That little insect which the average citizen was wont to regard merely as a domestic pest is now branded as the most dangerous creature on earth. The house fly has been publicly indicted as a murderer of the human race, the greatest disease propagator and the carrier of more menacing and malignant germs than all other creatures put together.

This little, but potent, messenger of death wanders from the sick room, from the filth of the garbage pail, from the heaps of refuse of all kinds into the peaceful, happy homes of our land, walks upon the butter, the meat, the fruit, the sugar, takes a bath in the milk, leaving everywhere the germs of disease that have gathered upon its furry feet and body.

In experiments conducted by the New York health authorities the scientists found on the body of a single little fly 1,222,570 different bacteria, enough to kill a few thousand human beings. In another experiment a fly was caught in a sterilized net and dropped into a bottle of sterilized water. The bottle was shaken and the germs washed off the insect's body, as would be the case if the fly dropped into a glass of milk for the baby. The previously pure water was then examined and it was discovered that the fly's bath contained no less than 5,000,000 disease germs.

About half the deaths from typhoid in New York, according to the health authorities, are attributed directly to the distribution of germs by house flies. And worse than that, the figures show that of 7,000 deaths of cooing babies in that city from infantile diseases, more than 5,000 were traced to infection carried by house flies.

According to a noted scientist the extermination of the pest is comparatively easy. All that is necessary, he says, is a systematic effort on the part of the public. If all the people will practice the utmost cleanliness, it is declared, the house fly will be extinct in this country within a few years, for the house fly cannot exist without filth.

"Cleanliness," then, is the watchword for the American public to put an end to an insect that is not only a terrible nuisance, but a terrible instrument of death to thousands of our population every year.

The Pestiferous Corner Loafer

Chicago, 1910

A week's attendance at any police court will convince anyone that the curse of the town is the loafer, the professional "out of work" cuss who pretends to be hunting a job, and hunts well that the job may not overtake him.

He manages to live off of some one. If foolish relatives do not supply him with a living, he makes it by his wits, with the help of a brace and bit and a "jimmy" and friends (?) who through fear, or by influence will take the stand to testify to his character, hence he escapes and the community suffers. He can always find a way around the vagrancy laws, and like the poor, he is always with us.

Lost to all sense of shame or decency, he lives off a mother, brother or sister's work, or even a woman's shame, anything but work by his own hands. The health department is great on prescribing remedies for all sorts of evils, and we sincerely wish they would tackle this job of getting rid of the pestiferous loafer.

—Suburbanite Economist, Chicago, Aug. 19, 1910, p. 1.

Note: The typesetting on this editorial had some of the words and portions of lines switched around, and apparently some words left out. I patched it up to make it make sense. The question mark (?) after "friends" is as in the original, which may have been someone in the typesetting department with a bad manuscript wondering what was going on with the context. I think it's questioning whether the loafer's friends are really friends. But with the botched up text, the "com-" from community is hooked on to "friends" and someone might be saying, "What???"

Using The Telephone – Some of the Travails of "Hello Girls" (Operators)

1878

They All Carry Hard Questions to 'Hello' Girl

Do you know how to use a telephone?

It would seem that everyone knows how to manage a small instrument so much in service as the telephone, but the central girls are of the opinion that there are several who have but a small conception of what a telephone is for.

Information, the young lady who tells you what others want, is probably the most unfortunate of these "hello girls" so far as being subject to the inexperienced patrons is concerned. One girl who had sat in information's chair declared she was tired of having the lady at No. — ask her what her washwoman's phone number was. The gentleman at some other number is forever demanding to know what was the matter with his phone, declaring that he could hardly hear.

About the time she gets through answering his question, a lady from another part of the city wants to know when her train leaves and just how many steps it is to the depot. Hundreds of others will ask other people's phone numbers instead of looking in the phone book, or ask for street addresses. Some inquire of people who never exist — "hello" girls say.

Then at the close of a hard day's work, information has all her troubles topped by a growled request that should have been submitted to an attorney or a doctor.

Telephone girls would endorse the opening of a school to teach people the use of a phone, what to ask information for, how to get the best service, and how to make life itself half enjoyable for the operators.

—The Ada Weekly News, Ada, OK, Oct. 27, 1921, p. 11.