Garbless Dancing Man Gives Police The Slip

1920

'Varsity Set Resent His Nimble Capers on Campus.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota. — A garbless gent, who may be an interpretative dancer, proved also that he was as fleet as a fawn and as nimble as a chamois when the police sought to break up his antics near the University of Minnesota campus. He is still tripping the light fantastic toe somewhere at large.

Complaint that the dress-discarding man was capering about the neighborhood was first received by the police when three calls came in quick succession from residents of the cultured district.

A police squad, prudently provided with a blanket to wrap about the nymph, dashed to the scene in a touring car. They were unable to find him.

But shortly afterward two prudish policemen, left on watch, were shocked to see a human form that apparently hadn't attended any of the recent bargain sales dash across the street and disappear in the night.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 5.

Slain By Naked Maniac

Iowa, 1900

James Fitzsimmons Dead, Three Others Injured

Cedar Rapids dispatch: Charles Mefford, a maniac, at 5 o'clock a.m. killed James Fitzsimmons, fatally injured John Drake, seriously and possibly fatally injured Mrs. James Fitzsimmons and then ended his own life.

Mefford was 20 years old and had been insane for a number of years. Two years ago he was in the Independence asylum for a short time, but escaped and was never returned. He was not generally considered dangerous. Saturday night about ten o'clock, while clad in nothing but a shirt, he darted out of his home, a raving maniac. He was seen two or three times between then and midnight, but the police failed to find him.

Shortly before 5 o'clock Reginald Andrews, the janitor at the Old Ladies' Home was awakened by crashing glass. The next moment Mefford stood before him. stark naked, swinging a neck yoke. He warned Andrews that his time had come and swung the neck yoke in an effort to brain him. The latter dodged and grabbed the weapon, threw Mefford on the bed and choked him until he begged for mercy.

Then Andrews agreed to give him a bath, a suit of clothes and some breakfast, which apparently satisfied him. Rushing through the house, Andrews locked the twelve or fourteen old ladies in their rooms, notified the police by telephone, and then ran across the street, to the home of Joseph Drake for assistance.

Drake dressed, picked up a revolver, and they started out. As they did so Mefford, carrying an ax, was seen to plunge through a window in the home of James Fitzsimmons, about 150 yards away. As he entered the room Mrs. Fitzsimmons uttered a scream. Mefford swung the ax and brought it down toward her head. Her uplifted arm saved her life; the arm was broken in two places and she sustained a serious scalp wound. Mr. Fitzsimmons hurried to the aid of his wife and his skull was crushed with the ax, death resulting immediately.

The maniac then rushed into the room of Miss Katie, who escaped with a few scalp wounds. Starting down stairs he was met by Drake who snapped his revolver four times at the madman, each time upon an empty shell. Mefford grabbed the revolver, ran a few blocks and killed himself with the one load the revolver contained.

—Humeston New Era, Humeston, Iowa, July 4, 1900.

Bill Posters Shock Bridgewater, Pa., Citizens

Council of Borough to Attend to the Matter.

The poster of a young lady thinly draped that is being used by a manufacturing firm to illustrate their product on the billboards of the county evidently met with the hearty disapproval of some of the more moral of the West Bridgewater, Pa., (Beaver Co.) residents and they have defaced the bills.

In different parts of the borough the glaring semi-nude poster was displayed on large billboards and wherever found they have been so defaced that only the head of the young lady remains to tell the nature of the advertisement.

The poster is a remarkable specimen of the printers art and bears all the good points of the craft, but it has evidently shocked the person responsible for its disappearance.

The poster is but one of the many evils that arise when a borough permits large sign boards to be erected within its boundaries and has no ordinance to stipulate the nature of the posters that shall be placed on it. The borough of Rochester recently adopted an ordinance prohibiting the posting of immoral or semi-nude pictures and the passing of handbills, samples of medicine, etc., and it is thought that the same matter will be given consideration at the next meeting of the West Bridgewater council.

--Warren Evening Mirror, Warren, Pennsylvania, May 10, 1909, page 1.