During the labor parade in Cleveland, Ohio, a party of foreign anarchists in the procession refused to salute the stars and stripes with their red flag, and were soundly thrashed by the real laborers. Then five of the anarchists were arrested for riot!
In a political fight at Clarendon, Ark., Sept. 3rd, three men were killed and the sheriff wounded.
At Lodi, Ohio, Sep. 1st, a young girl watching a base ball game was struck behind the ear by a foul ball, and at Republic, Ohio, the same day, the catcher of a local club was struck over the heart by a ball; and both were instantly killed.
Christiana Galligan, the heroine of the Barnum fire at Bridgeport, Conn., last winter, is a disappointed would-be bride. It will be remembered that she encountered a hungry lion while he was eating a calf in her barnyard, and whacked him with a broomstick until he fled. The story of her bravery reached Mexico, and brought an offer of marriage from Don Ciago Espinoza, the owner of a ranch. The wedding was to be on Madison square, given in considerable pomp, with twenty clowns as ushers, but when Espinoza saw Mrs. Galligan he followed the example of the lion, and fled.
While swimming in the Hudson river near Troy, N.Y., on the 6th inst., Arthur Oothout and a number of companions were chased by a young crocodile. It was captured. It is thought that the crocodile escaped from some one in the neighborhood.
A man and woman named Sloan, who lodged in the Pittsburg, Penn., lockup one night last week, had tramped all the way from Richmond, Ky., over 600 miles. They are at Pittsburg on a visit to a relative. The journey occupied four weeks.
The dory Dark Secret, from Boston to Queenstown, has been abandoned at sea by Capt. [William Albert] Andrews, the fool who undertook to cross the ocean in her. He arrived at Stapleton, Long Island, Sept. 11th, in the Norwegian barque Nora.
Workmen were engaged last week on the Clanricarde estsate in Ireland, in destroying houses from which tenants had been evicted. One of the houses demolished was built by the tenant at his own expense, and cost him over $1000. The evicted people can now come to the United States, and vote for free trade in favor of the British oppressors of Ireland.
Portsmouth is to have one more secret society, the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks… .
Workmen engaged in digging a drain at the foot of State street on the 6th inst., when some distance below the surface came upon the remains of what was evidently once a cellar wall, and in an angle found a lot of lumps of charcoal, which on close examination could easily be identified as having once been potatoes. It is supposed that the wall once supported one of the nearly 300 buildings destroyed by the great fire on Dec. 22d and 23rd, 1813, and that the potatoes were part of the winter stock of the family occupying the house, and were roasted by the disastrous conflagration of three-quarters of a century ago.
Several colored citizens of Dodge county, Ga., having requested that some of their names be placed in the jury box, and that petition having been complied with, thirty or forty armed and masked white men visited the clerk of the court about midnight one night, took the boxes and jury lists from him and destroyed them.
A romance of the rebellion has been developed at New York. When Mrs. Sarah Moore was pretty Miss Sarah Miller of Gettysburg, Penn., a young confederate with his arm shot off was brought into her father’s house. He recovered under Miss Sarah’s care, and when he went away carried away with him a lock of his nurse’s hair. Nothing more was heard of him until one day last week, when Mrs. Moore received a letter from New Orleans, stating that she had been made the legatee of Henry C. Willet, who had died a month before. With the letter was a plain gold locket containing the lock of hair given to the young rebel way back in 1863. Mr. Willet’s estate is valued at $15,000.
A citizen of North Adams, Mass., named Arti Gerry, has three times escaped drowning, after sinking the fatal third time on each occasion. He has also been run over by a loaded wagon, swallowed forty grains of laudenum, burned the house over his head and plunged into a bath-tub full of boiling water. He is only five years old.
Maud Ellis, a young lady arrayed in purple and fine linen to beat the lilies of the field all hollow, was fined $3, costs $6.90, for drunkenness; paid.
Annie Mitts, a very decent appearing woman giving her residence as Raymond, acknowledged that she had been drunk, but promised to leave town at once if permitted, and was allowed to do so.
In Dover on Saturday the case of Philip Kirby vs. Mrs. Kirby, which had been postponed several times, was called in the court, but the lady failed to appear, having been released on bail, and left for parts unknown. The police of this city will hope that she won’t come back here again; it was quite a job to get rid of her and her precious husband.
“What is it that makes the rich man richer, and the poor man poorer?” shouted a democratic orator the other evening. The proper answer would have been “monopoly,” and the orator waited for some one to give it. He was therefore very much disgusted when a newly-fledged member who had not been properly posted got up and bellowed, “Beer!”
Seven seamen attached to the training ships Saratoga and Portsmouth, whose crews are now quartered on board the receiving ship Constitution while their vessels are undergoing political repairs at this navy yard, on Thursday evening last borrowed the ship’s gig without mentioning their intentions to the officers, and came to this city. Word was at once sent from the ship to the police station here, and the usual reward offered for the arrest of the departed matelots, one of whom was taken into custody about midnight the same night. The others had not been found up to Friday evening.
The New Hampshire Gazette, September 13, 1888
The other day a citizen of North Vassalboro, Me., died, leaving a sorrowing widow to mourn his loss. Her husband died on a Tuesday, and on Wednesday she filed her notice of intention to marry in the town clerk’s office; on Thursday she followed the remains of her deceased spouse to the grave, on the succeeding Monday was living happily with husband No. 2., and on the following Wednesday started on her wedding tour with him.
George Houran and Frank Chapin, two respected young men of Bennington, Vt., accompanied by ladies, and in company with many other citizens of Bennington, arrived at that town by train from a fair at two o’clock in the morning on the 13th inst. As they alighted from the train they were assaulted by two half-drunken ruffians named William McGuire and McCarthy, McGuire slapping the face of the young lady in Houran’s company, and striking him. Houran drew a pistol and sent the ruffian where he belonged. On the 14th he was held in $600 for the grand jury on a charge of manslaughter, the sheriff going his bond. McCarthy, the rough who unfortunately was not killed, after giving his evidence against Houran in the court was fined for drunkeness on his own testimony.
Big guns come high. The average price is said to be about $1000 a ton, which would make a 57-ton gun cost $57,000. The giant guns, like human giants, are early affected with consumptive tendencies. Some officers estimate the vitality of a giant gun at two hundred discharges, which others say it is setting it too high. Assuming that a 57-ton gun is practically used up after two hundred discharges, the cost of depreciation per discharge is therefore $285, in addition to expensive projectiles and cartridges.
At Malden, Mass., Sept. 15th, while a number of hackmen were fooling, one of them, Andrew Cobb, aged twenty-three years, in dodging a tomato thrown at him jumped directly in front of an engine, and was instantly killed.
There was a ball at Delray, Mich., a few nights ago, and Miss Mary Crawford was one of its belles. While dancing merrily through a quadrille Miss Mary fell over on the floor. She was carried to a sofa, where her fainting fit was found to have terminated fatally. The doctors discovered that Miss Crawford had been laced so tight that the blood vessels beneath her stays had become congested and the exertion of dancing had produced a fatal lesion.
The soldiers of Liu Tsin Tan, governor of a province in chinese Turkestan, having been without pay for six months, and being unable to induce the governor to receive a petition from their committee, chose eight soldiers by lot to blow up the governor’s house. They laid a mine under the palace and charged it with 240 pounds of powder. Half an hour before the time set for the explosion one of the conspirators weakened and confessed. The mine was flooded, thirty soldiers were killed, and 100 more arrested and held for sentence.
The Times was enlarged by a column on each page, Tuesday evening. Our State street brethren are publishing a big paper for a city the size of Portsmouth.
Amos F. Learned, a well known newspaper man of New York, has been sent to an insane asylum.
Miss Nina Van Zandt, the proxy wife of [August] Spies, the Chicago anarchist [and Haymarket martyr], has put off mourning, and is believed to be recovering from her strange infatuation. She has become reconciled to her rich aunt from whom she was estranged, and is now said to be living contentedly at home, engaged in study and literary pursuits. [Note: Our predecessor underestimated Ms. Van Zandt’s devotion. In 1902, after a seven-year marriage and a divorce, Ms. Van Zandt resumed use of the surname Spies.]
The New Hampshire Gazette, September 20, 1888
Our thanks to the Portsmouth Athenaeum, holder of the newspapers from which the items above were excerpted. – The Ed.