Police Court - The Hippodrome of Heart Throbs.

In this episode, we continue our journey through W.B. Moorhead’s Police Reporter, diving into the true crime tales tucked inside Chapter Three: Police Court — The Hippodrome of Heart Throbs. Settle in for a few chuckles, a raised eyebrow or two, and the kind of courtroom chaos only Kansas City could produce.

Transcript

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Welcome back to Show Memo, the podcast for burnt-out news and true crime junkies who still crave a fix without today's anxiety-soaked chaos and depression. Come step back in time for a surprise, perhaps a tear or two, and a lot of amusement as we visit Crime Through Time, partly reading W.B. Moorhead's book, Police Reporter. Chapter 3. Hippodrome of Heart Throbs. Over the years, thousands of prisoners have filed, like bored cafeteria patrons, before the many municipal judges in Kansas City. Vast amounts of testimony and excuses were offered. Fines totaling millions were assessed. The goddess of justice occasionally was blind and often cockeyed. Guilty lawbreakers sometimes were discharged. Innocent persons were punished. Errors and judgment brought many persons to police court. Those blunders frequently made stories that livened up the news columns. John Doe was just another average citizen, running his shop, maintaining his home, or following a daily routine that was typical of the American democracy. He wasn't news because the commonplace wasn't of interest to the public. Then something happened that caused this average citizen to do the unusual, and he became news. A typical case was that of Max, the vengeful cobbler. A cobbler being someone who repaired shoes. Snow water ran in cold rivels along the sidewalk. Pedestrians trudged through the slush, mourning the rubbers they had neglected to buy or forgotten to wear. Rubbers being snow shoes or rain boots. In Max's shoe shop, there was rejoicing. Now, said Max, after a day of idleness, some business maybe. A few doors away was the shoe shop of Max's rivals, Meyer and Jacob, brothers. Meyer and Jacob were busy resoling and rehealing shoes that had become incapacitated for further service on sloppy sidewalks. That was the situation. Max idle but optimistic, the brothers, Meyer and Jacob, busy and beaming, when two attractively gowned women walked along carrying shoes in need of repairs. The women hesitated in the doorway of Max's shop. He looks so young, one of them murmured. I doubt he would do a good job. Max was only twenty two, but he had served his apprenticeship. His place is so small, the other said. The women turned away, taking their burden of old shoes with them. Max soured on the world. Max's brief interlude of depression was followed by a strong hankering for revenge. The young shoemaker reconnoitred. Reconnoitred is similar to reconnaissance. Basically, it means gathered information. Back to the story. Carpet slippers are what lower class and middle class women would often wear to say run an errand or when their shoes needed to be repaired. Meyer and Jacob were busy with various pairs of patent leather afternoon shoes, English walking shoes for morning wear, common everyday shoes and evening slippers. Max went to a drugstore and consulted a prescription clerk. A few minutes later, Max entered the brother's shop and saluted Meyer and Jacob, apparently with no trace of bitterness. Business is good? asked Max pleasantly. Very good, said Jacob. Quite good, agreed Meyer. Good, said Max, dropping something on the floor and grinding it in with his heel. The two women looked at each other and sniffed. Then they kicked off their carpet slippers and demanded the best shoes available. Jacob and Meyer untied their aprons and fled to the street. The little shop was unoccupied the next hour. Max was arrested. Specifically, he was accused of carrying a capsule of oxgowl into his rival's shop and releasing the stench bomb by crushing it with his foot. Oxgow in its crudest form smells horrendous because it's made with animal bile. It was prescribed back then for issues of indigestion, jaundice, liver function, those sort of issues. But alas, you cannot get it by prescription today. Now, back to the story. He protested a denial saying he must have stepped on something accidentally. I don't believe you, the judge ruled. You're fine, fifty dollars. Very good, said Jacob. Quite good. Agreed Meyer. When W. E. Crumley was summoned to court, Patrolman testified that he was speeding an unlighted car with muffler wide open. It's true, admitted Crumley. But I had just received word that a baby's son had arrived at my house. I was excited. You're fine, ten dollars, the judge decreed. But you can give the ten dollars to the baby. Closing exercises, white dresses, promotion cards, and the speaking of pieces traditionally make graduation time a day of days for most schoolgirls of the land. None had cherished the approach of the exciting great day more than this little crippled girl, whose tears dampened the white dress her own fingers had made. She gathered the dress to her face and kissed it, but she did not put it on. It was torn, a white linen wreck beyond mending. She bundled it up and started out, not to school and graduation, but to the municipal court. Into the courtroom the child hobbled on her crutches to join neighbors testifying against her mother. Only it was not against her mother she spoke, but against Booze. She's the best mother in the world, except the Wayne, frail witness faltered. The previous day had been one of those days that added the word except. The little girl told how she had come home from school and was slipping into the new dress to see how pretty it looked. Drink must have seen an enemy in the child, for the mother, dropping a bottle of liquor, lurched to her daughter and tore off the dress. She ripped it to pieces and was beating the child when neighbors called the police. Who has the key to the house? asked the judge. I have, the woman answered. Give it to your daughter. The judge fined the mother one hundred dollars and sent her to jail. Then he directed that a welfare organization play foster mother to the crippled child into whose life drink had brought bitter teenage tragedy. When graduation day arrived, the little girl appeared in a new, dreamy white dress and received the prized diploma. Willie May Peters, a woman, was on trial for striking her husband on the head with a pitcher, not stopping to remove the water. We were just married two days ago, she testified. In a crap game. I hit him to break him in rat. Luther Edwards sat awaiting trial in court, hands covering his eyes. Finally his name was called and he faced the judge on a vagrancy charge. He pleaded for another chance. Let's see your eyes, said the judge. Why, they're dry as a bone. You aren't crying. Yes, I eels. I shed hearless tears. You won't get a fineless fine. Twenty-five dollars. Now remember, these stories actually happened. We just don't get entertainment like this nowadays. Night Court Bums Rush. Judge Kennedy's courtroom in the dark and dismal basement of City Hall did duty in off hours as a free municipal lodging house. One morning, about 2 30 o'clock, an uproar started in the courtroom. Cops with drawn clubs galloped downstairs from the police headquarters above. The police found Lee Dugan, a white bearded patriarch hoarding court in the midst of nearly a hundred bums, who were reclining on the hard floor and benches. Judge Dugan sat in Judge Kennedy's official chair, directing six bailiffs who rushed in and out of the crowd.

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Red Ragan the judge was shouting. I certainly to ten days at the hotel mule block. You on the low damn boom. You thief, you spend ten days at City Hall and the whole living brookly? You're a disgrace. You worked yesterday. I sentenced you to thirty days at the hotel Baltimore.

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I hope you eat yourself to death. A patrolman leaped over a railing and seized the judge. You're incontentible, Dugan protested. I fired you a chart of tobacco. The police then collected those who were conspicuous in the proceedings and led them off to jail. When regular police court was called next day, Judge Kennedy expressed indignation at the mockery of the night. The judge fined the man who borrowed his chair fifteen dollars and put smaller fines against six of Dugan's followers. Jimmy Wrench committed a technical error when he danced his way to trouble. Many bartenders and saloon habituates knew Jimmy Wrench. He was one of the last of the old barroom dancers who hold it down amid shouts and hand clapping. He had entertained crowds for years, but displayed a loss of agility one Saturday night in a tavern. The spectators shouted that he was not putting enough pep into his work. Jimmy explained it was because of a big dinner which had left him slow on his feet. The crowd ridiculed him as a loafer. Jimmy talked back, and the crowd threw him out. From the street, Jimmy bellowed his resentment and curses. He was chased to his home nearby and dared to come out. Jimmy shuffled into a bedroom, obtained a revolver, and polkade back to the front porch, where, with an intricate buck and wing, he waved the weapon. The pursuers ran toward him, but at the sight of the firearm, they immediately changed the pace to a hesitation. It was just a one step to a telephone and somebody called the police. Jimmy's next engagement was a month at the prison farm for flourishing a deadly weapon. Fun fact, this prison farm, or as it's referred to as the municipal farm in some of the other stories, was a 445-acre correctional facility that was created back in 1908 by the Kansas City Board of Pardons and Parolees, and it closed as a correctional institute in 2009. And it was located just east of the Truman Sports Complex. The Truman Sports Complex currently is the home of the Kansas City, Missouri Royals baseball team and the Kansas City, Missouri Chiefs football team. Truman Sports Complex being named after President Harry S. Truman. Expert at his homework. Glormont's youthful, slender J. Stanley Lawrence, motorcycle patrolman, wore a teeny weeny mustachio, his pride and joy. There were those among his public who made rude, merry, or sarcastic quips, such as growing vegetation, or baseball team, nine on a side. That saying, baseball team, nine on a side, actually comes from the Gilded Age, around 1870 to 1880s. Basically, they're saying that he had nine whiskers on his face. That's how few he had that they could count them all, and baseball teams had these standard nine-person players. So that's where that saying comes from. Back to the story. When such remarks reached the sensitive ears of Patrolman Lawrence, his face would color, and frequent fist fights ensued. Once Patrolman Lawrence finished second in defending his sprouting mustache, he was ganged in a nightclub and slugged unconscious. The news was enough for Otto P. Higgins, Director of Police. Shave it off, he ordered. I don't want to lose a good officer. Patrolman Lawrence saluted, then hustled to a photographer. Mug me, he said, tenderly touching his upper lip.

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That is, if this will sure show up.

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Maybe to forget, maybe not. Patrolman Lawrence took up revolver practice in a big way. He worked countless hours at the police target range. He finally won a medal, inscribed Expert Marksman for being the best shot of the traffic department. A month later, the patrolman, coatless and off duty, stood in the parlor of his home. His right arm was extended, fingers clutching a revolver. Squinting along the barrel, the patrolman heard the voice of his sister, Miss Wilma Lawrence. What are you doing, Stanley? Draw shooting. What do you mean?

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Draw shooting is what we sharpshooters call keeping in practice for pistol tolerance. You see, we practice in our spare moments with unloaded guns like mine.

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He nodded toward a nearby table on which lay six lead-nosed cartridges. Then he resumed, we aim at some object and pull the trigger again and again.

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That's dry shooting.

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It keeps your finger muscles in good condition. You'd better stop that dry shooting business and go to work. You're late now. Lawrence sighed as he placed his weapon on the table and entered a bedroom, where he drew on uniform blouse and cap. Miss Lawrence was in the kitchen when her brother returned to the parlor and picked up his revolver. He patted it affectionately, then muttered, I'll squeeze it just one more. He did. Miss Lawrence, desiring to speed up her brother's departure, had reloaded the revolver when he went after his coat and cap. And the bullet fired by the startled patrolman? Where did it go? Well, hadn't he been aiming at a small round frame hanging on a wall ten feet away? Wasn't he the crackshot of the motorcycle and traffic squads? He glanced ruefully at the jagged hole torn in the plaster. He lifted from the floor the smashed picture frame. Lawrence had scored a bullseye. He had shot off the photographed mustachio of himself in a police uniform. And now, time for a quick break for our non-sponsored advertisements from the land for marketing. That was interesting. Apparently, back in the 1900s, a hospital on the east side of the state would try to solicit patrons from the west side of the state. Somewhere in their brains they got the idea that if somebody was having a heart attack or they needed their gallbladder taken out, that they would say, no, no, don't take me to a hospital right here in Kansas City. I want to be driven four, five, six hours clear across the state, and go to St. Louis. That was an advertisement from the Word and Way newspaper published in Kansas City, Missouri on May 3rd, 1900. A very special thank you for the access to the Word and Way newspaper goes out to the State Historical Society in Missouri. Or should I say, Mazara Bread Line. The sight of a 200-pound thief, six feet tall, helping himself to food from her refrigerator didn't faze Mrs. Charles McHatton. She had gone to the kitchen when she noticed the man filling a suitcase with a turkey and other edibles. Did you want something? Mrs. McCatton asked. Yes, he answered. Something to eat. I'll fix you up nice, said the woman.

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Wait here until I get the butter.

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The thief waited and misses McCatton returned with the butter. She also brought a revolver, but concealed it in a pocket of her apron. She began to cut bread and spread butter. Come on, he admonished. I don't eat bread and butter alone. I've got some turkey on it. Don't be stingy. The remark vexed Mrs. McCadden, and she produced the revolver.

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Now, she said, You're going to eat bread and butter or I'll shoot. Let's see if you're really hungry.

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The man began to eat slowly, then looked appealingly at misses McHaddon. Don't I get any turkey? Not all right, she answered, wiggling the weapon. Keep right on eating. The thief looked at the tall stack of bread and decided on flight. He ran through the kitchen door. In reporting the incident to the police, the woman said, I couldn't have fired that revolver, but you see, it wasn't loaded. A very juvenile delinquent. The crime wave that swept over seven-year-old Ernie Hardwick started one Saturday afternoon. He entered his mother's room, opened a bureau drawer, and pulled out a white satin dress. Rolling it into a bundle, he put it under his arm and left the house. Outside he unfolded the dress and threw it over his shoulder. He stopped several men along the street. Want to buy? he asked, holding out the garment. Fifty cents. Sergeant Robert Coffey met the small salesman and carried him to a police station. Ernie's mother appeared later, taking her boy home. He was trying to sell my wedding gown, the woman said. The next day, Ernie went to the home of J.W. Alexander. There being no one at home, he cut the screen from a rear window and crawled through. When he crawled out, a strap was fastened about his waist, holding a loaded revolver and a razor. Ernie walked along the street, flourishing the weapons. Those he met promptly gave him the right of way. Ernie seated himself on a kerbing, closed the razor, and remarked to a large, Ferocious appearing bug asleep in the gutter. Up hands, quick! He pointed the revolver. No response being made by the bug. Ernie indignantly grasped the revolver trigger with several fingers and pulled. The bug disappeared, and Ernie shouted in glee. Patrolman arrived, and again Ernie was taken to the station. This time Ernie was made a ward of the juvenile court. When he grew up, he became a real bandit. I do hope that you'll join us again for chapter four. Shall we join the ladies? See you then.