The Alleged News®

“Senator Payne represents the Standard Oil Co.”

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The Ohio house of representatives has appointed a committee of five members to investigate the charges made against four members of the present house, that they accepted bribes to vote for Henry B. Payne for United States senator while members of the last general assembly. Senator Payne represents the Standard Oil Co., and incidentally the democracy. [Subsequent investigations made it clear that Washington Freemen, our editor in 1886, was justified in his suspicions. Nevertheless, Payne’s colleagues in the Senate—perhaps not feeling qualified to cast the first stone—declined to expel him. – The Ed.] A man named Lapour killed the sheriff of Colfax county, Neb., Jan. …

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We’ve All Done It

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[Who among us has never written a check, early in January, and written upon it the previous year’s date? The same pitfall awaits publishers. In 1886, our predecessor, Washington Freeman, fell victim to it. We did the same one year, we can’t recall exactly when. — The Ed.] The police of Detroit, Mich., formed themselves into a mob on the night of Dec. 29th, and destroyed the office of the Sunday Sun, a sensational newspaper which had criticized their conduct. The streets of Lawrence, Mass., are now lighted with the Edison incandescent electric light. Judge Yates, of Peoria, Ill., has gone to Canada after stealing …

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Fake News in a Bottle

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SANDWICH, MASS., Dec. 14 – A bottle containing the following note was picked up on the beach to-day, three miles below Sandwich harbor: “Bark J.R. Humphrey, Bath, Me. We were out in the storm of November 25, and we wrote this to our friends, for when it is found we will be at the bottom of the wild ocean, hoping that you will pray for us and tell your friends.” Signed, John Wilson, captain, Pat Hoey, Tim Lewis, John O’Neil, Billy Cartell. On the reverse side was: “We are all lost.” [There is no such vessel as the “Bark J.R. Humphrey of Bath, Me.,” or …

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Where the Money Is

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Perhaps the most lucrative office in the national government, next to the presidency itself, is the clerkship of the supreme court at Washington. It yields an annual income in fees of from $25,000 to $40,000. – New York Evening World [That would be $852,568 to $1,364,109 in today’s debased currency. – The Ed.] The New Hampshire Gazette, November 1, 1888 At Pittsburg, Pa., about the middle of October, Miss Virginia Knox, a young American woman of considerable wealth, was married to Count Di Montcalleri. The couple were expelled from a hotel in Paris on Oct. 29th., the “nobleman” having scandalized the other inmates of the …

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Lucky He Was Drunk

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Isaac Bennett of South Berwick visited Dover, N.H. on Saturday, got gloriously drunk and drove his horse recklessly about the streets until the animal ran away and “fired out” the drunken driver, landing him on his head on a reservoir cover. He was badly cut and bruised; had he been sober his brains would have been scattered all over the street. The Rochester correspondent of the Portsmouth Times asks: “Will some one throw a brick at the Portsmouth correspondent of Foster’s?” He evidently thinks Portsmouth is south of the Mason & Dixon’s line. Morris Hennessy, sixty years old, was killed by the fall of a …

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Nineteenth Century Humanity

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Charles Parker, wife, and two children aged two and four years, fled from Decatur, Ala., when the yellow fever broke out there, to the home of relatives at Oak Mountain. When within fifteen miles of Oak Mountain they were confronted by the shot-gun quarantine, and driven back. On the 7th inst. a brave physician went in search of them, and found them all dead, the parents having died in the woods of yellow fever, and the children of starvation. The Biddeford Journal remarks: “The democratic newspapers are still strugling [sic] to hold down the remaining republican plurality in Maine. It reminds one of the late …

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