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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35547 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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I've heard of all of these events apart from the Hall-Mills murder. However, all it takes to convince me that something called "Hall-Mills murder" was, indeed, a huge issue in 1922 consuming the newspapers at the same intensity as the OJ case did in 1995 is, indeed, some stranger on an Internet forum noting so, in this very post I'm replying to. I don't need to Google, I don't need to check the Wikipedia, I don't need to know who Hall or Mills were, assuming they are people - I'm ready to believe this any which way. I will do this after sending this post, but even before sending, I'm good to go.

There's an awful lot of Big Names and Sensational Cases from the past which we have forgotten, or never heard about. Just randomly reading old books will turn up references where it's assumed everyone knows what is meant, because it was the Current Affairs Hot Story of the time, but if you aren't familiar with the names then it's frustrating - who were these people? what was this event?

Just pulling from Chesterton, he mentions "Colonel Ingersoll's atheistical lectures". Who was Ingersoll? Pretty much the Richard Dawkins of his day:

Robert Green Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899), nicknamed "the Great Agnostic", was an American lawyer, writer, and orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought, who campaigned in defense of agnosticism.

Or, during his tour of America, there was a huge murder trial in Oklahoma in 1920, the Hamon murder trial which involved a very prominent politician:

Jacob Louis Hamon Sr. (June 5, 1873 – November 26, 1920) was an American attorney, oil millionaire, railway owner, and political figure. He was Chairman of the Oklahoma Republican National Committee, and after statehood, state chairman of the Republican National Committee. By 1920, he had become quite wealthy and an influential player in Republican Party politics. He allegedly swung enough Republican votes to assure Warren G. Harding would be the Republican candidate for President, and subsequently become the President-elect. It was rumored that Harding would name Hamon to an important post in the new administration. His murder, and the subsequent trial of his mistress, was national news in 1920.

So, how many people heard of this before? And yet this was a national sensation reaching up to involve even the president.

Let me quote some Chesterton to give a flavour of the publicity:

The posters in the paper-shop were placarded with the verdict in the Hamon trial; a cause célèbre which reached its crisis in Oklahoma while I was there. Senator Hamon had been shot by a girl whom he had wronged, and his widow demanded justice, or what might fairly be called vengeance. There was very great excitement culminating in the girl’s acquittal. Nor did the Hamon case appear to be entirely exceptional in that breezy borderland. The moment the town had received the news that Clara Smith was free, newsboys rushed down the street shouting, ‘Double stabbing outrage near Oklahoma,’ or ‘Banker’s throat cut on Main Street,’ or otherwise resuming their regular mode of life. It seemed as much as to say, ‘Do not imagine that our local energies are exhausted in shooting a Senator,’ or ‘Come, now, the world is young, even if Clara Smith is acquitted, and the enthusiasm of Oklahoma is not yet cold.’

Mr. Hamon was presumably a member of the Upper Ten, if there is such a thing. He was a member of the Senate or Upper House in the American Parliament; he was a millionaire and a pillar of the Republican party, which might be called the respectable party; he is said to have been mentioned as a possible President. And the speeches of Clara Smith’s counsel, who was known by the delightfully Oklahomite title of Wild Bill McLean, were wild enough in all conscience; but they left very little of my friend’s illusion that members of the Upper Ten could not be accused of crimes. Nero and Borgia were quite presentable people compared with Senator Hamon when Wild Bill McLean had done with him.

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