Uh, that story about finding a dead girl was a joke, the editor of the Santa Rosa newspaper sheepishly revealed, a week after his hoax had enraged people all over the state.
The corpus delicti described in the 1882 article was actually the old statue of Lady Justice which was once mounted atop the cupola of the first Sonoma County courthouse - but the story was written as if it described a real murder victim, with only the faintest hints that it was a hoax.
The whole item is transcribed below, but it had Julio Carrillo - then the janitor of the county buildings on Fourth street - discovering "a young lady who has spent her whole life in Santa Rosa, and whom he had known from her birth..."
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott
No one in the world could possibly organize a better snipe hunt than the Santa Rosa Squeedunks, and in 1909 the gang was found one evening out by the Rural Cemetery, making a commotion to herd the tasty little critters towards the burlap sack being patiently held by their newest enlistee. The sucker honored party holding the bag was a Scotsman named Bobbie McIvor; leading the hunt was Charlie Holmes, who was also behind the 1908 revival of "The Ancient and Disreputable Order of Squeedunks" at Santa Rosa's Fourth of July parade.
An unexpected bit of fun was had at the expense of the Squeedunk assigned to watch for the owner of the property, who was known to take potshots at poachers. Once Charlie and the rest of the crew pulled out guns and began firing blanks to flush out the snipe, their intrepid sentry assumed it was the farmer shooting at him, and "made a half mile at a speed that would have put [champion race horse] Lou Dillon to shame."
The other big prank of 1909 happened on April Fool's Day, which always brought reports of exploding cigars or elaborate tricks around Santa Rosa. This year, someone placed a dummy outside of a family home and began hammering on the door before dawn, shouting that there was a corpse on the porch. As the awakened husband rushed downstairs, his wife, likely in groggy condition, began filling a kettle with water to (somehow) help the deceased. The joke was discovered, but the running faucet was forgotten in the confusion. "The tepid flood continued to run without check until a tardy plumber rendered his services some hours later," the Republican newspaper reported. Made you ruin your rugs and floors! Ha, ha, April fool!
Completing our survey of 1909 pranks: Hallowe'en passed that year without incident, probably because Santa Rosa police announced they would be patrolling school buildings to prevent mischief. Nationwide, it seemed like it was a pretty quiet holiday, particularly in contrast to the 1907 Hallowe'en when at least seven people died.
SHOTS AND SHOUTS ARE EXPLAINEDFusillade at Midnight Alarms People in the Vicinity of the Old Rural Cemetery
Those rifle shots and shouts from hillside and hollow back of Rural Cemetery as the midnight hour was waning last Sunday night, that are said to have struck some sort of terror into stout hearts, have been explained and the people are breathing easier. Laughter has succeeded fear and the dread of some mysterious tragedy has faded away.
But that there were shots and shouts on Sunday night there is no question. President Charles H. Holmes of the Ancient Order of Squeedunks, is authority for that and there are half a dozen others. One man whom we will name "Bobbie" McIvor, formerly of the Highlands of Scotland, will take an oath as to it. McIvor accompanied President Holmes and party to the little valley back of the graveyard on Sunday night, the plan being to secure some "snipe" as one dish for a banquet at which the plasterers at work on the new courthouse were to commemorate at the completion of their big contract. Mr. McIvor, Holmes says, very willingly volunteered to hold the open sack and the candle and catch the "snipe" when the others drove them into the attractiveness and allurement of the candle light.
With all the traditions of bravery clustering about his illustrious clansman amid the bonnie braes of Scotland, "Bobbie" took his station. He had been waiting for some time when all of a sudden there was a fusillade of rifle shots and voices from the darkness shrieked at him and bade him "avaunt." He did so.
But the joke was not all on him, either. Another man in the party had not been informed of the presence of the rifle and blank cartridges. But he had been told to lookout as the man on whose ranch they were standing was a terror to poachers and would as soon shoot a man as not. Consequently at the report of the first cartridge he took to his heels and in leaps and bounds made a half mile at a speed that would have put Lou Dillon to shame, President Holmes says.
It was the old snipe joke after all, and all concerned are still smiling, including "Bobbie."
- Press Democrat, October 7, 1909
APRIL FOOL DAY OBSERVEDRumor of Early April Death is Refuted
An April fool joke that materialized in a highly successful way was perpetrated this morning in one of the suburban households of this city. A gentleman and his wife were rudely awakened from sleep at the unearthly hour of 5 o'clock by a tremendous beating at the door, and the voice of another inmate of the place announcing that a man had fallen dead on the back porch. They hurriedly donned their respective raiment and the man sallied out to hold a preliminary post mortem, while his wife rushed upstairs to inform the sleepers above of the casualty and to get some hot water to aid in resuscitating the passed away. By this time the particular day upon the calendar suggested itself to some one, and it was found that the man who had fallen dead upon the back porch not only had not died, but had never lived at all. The entire population of the building had been rousted out with the exception of two or three young men who were either too much under the soporific influence of the April day to desist from slumber, or else they felt that they had no arts about them that could restore to animation the supposed deceased one. The only damage resulting from the misunderstanding was that when the lady went to secure the hot water for the purpose stated somewhere above, she left the facet open and the tepid flood continued to run without check until a tardy plumber rendered his services some hours later. As has been remarked here before there was no grievance ensuing from playing of the joke except perhaps a slight sentiment of disappointment might have been observed displayed on the faces of the fooled that the joke was only a joke after all.
- Santa Rosa Republican, April 1, 1909
OFFICERS TO STOP ALL HALLOWE'EN PRANKS
Chief of Police Fred J. Rushmore has arranged details of officers for tonight and will have an officer stationed at each of the school buildings to arrest any one interfering in any manner with the public property during the night.
Heretofore on Hallowe'en it has been the custom for boys to ring the school bells and play pranks in and around the school buildings. None of this will be allowed this year.
- Press Democrat, October 30, 1909
There's no better time than April Fool's Day to remember Santa Rosans loved practical jokes around the turn of the last century, and nothing offered more bang for your buck than tricking some poor dupe into lighting up a 5¢ exploding cigar.
Until states began outlawing the explosive gag in the 1910s, "loaded" cigars and cigarettes could be purchased in probably every town in America. The trick, which had been around for decades, involved wrapping a tiny amount of gunpowder in tissue cutting the fuse off a small "lady fingers" firecracker and packing it about an inch from the lighted end, which would presumably give the perpetrator a few minutes to anticipate the hilarity that would soon come (or seek a safe distance). After the laughs, however, lawsuits sometimes followed; fingers were blown off, victims were scarred, and a pregnant woman sitting on her husband's lap suffered a miscarriage from the fright. (Curiously, though, I found no accounts of cigar-related fatalities, except for a poor soul who puffed on a stogie packed with black pepper.)
According to an 1886 article from the New York Tribune, the suits forced the novelty cigar industry to switch to a (very slightly) less dangerous product. Gunpowder was substituted with "red fire" - a simple pyrotechnic mixture used today in road flares and sparklers - inside a little shaped cartridge. Now the joke was that the cigar became something like a roman candle. "There is no sudden explosion which shatters the wrappers and sends fragments of burning tobacco in all directions, but from the end of the cigar a stream of fire shoots out to a distance of about three feet in a direct line." Well, that's certainly a safety improvement.
Alas, the jokester's need for explosive humor brought back the old techniques (or similar), as seen here in a couple of panels excerpted from a 1913 "Bunker Blinks" Sunday color comic. Worse, some pranksters were rolling their own hoax Havanas; in 1910 the Oakland police were searching for someone who was handing out cigars laced with dynamite caps.
The injurious era of joke-smokes mostly ended when dribble-glass and joy-buzzer mogul S. S. Adams began mass-producing a cigar containing a spring kept coiled by a bit of twine, which burned and caused the spring to "explode," comically ripping up the end of the cigar as we've seen in so many old cartoons. But in reality, it was far less a heart-stopping BANG than a feeble pop. Oh, if they only had today's NRA to advocate for the right of Americans to bear explosive tobacco products.
BOSWELL HAS AN EXPERIENCEPuffs an "El Stinko" Until It Explodes
Constable James Henry Boswell was the victim of a practical joke Friday afternoon that caused consternation to the officer of the law and merriment tot hose who witnessed the denouement. The constable was entertaining a large crowd of listeners with a good story, and just prior to starting in the narrative, he had been presented with a cigar by Sheriff Jack Smith.
Between sentences the conservator of the peace would puff on the El Stinko, and permit his mind to wander back over the scenes of the particular story he was engaged in telling. After having smoked for about ten minutes, and when his fears had all been allayed as to any suspicion he may have regarding the cigar being loaded, the "thing" went off with a bang.
Boswell turned many shades of color within the successive minutes and wound up with an ashy color foreign to his usual mobile countenance. For several minutes he was speechless and motionless, and then joined in the laughter that his predicament with the El Stinko had created.
It transpired that Sheriff Smith, who had presented the cigar to Boswell, had been the victim of a similar experience the night previous in Ukiah, and he was but playing even on the local constable.
Boswell reflected on the experience of one McNulty, alias Harriman, who had been presented with one of a similar variety and whose hair stood on end when the explosion came.
- Santa Rosa Republican, February 8, 1908
As the first anniversary of the Great Earthquake approached, Santa Rosans rediscovered their passion for elaborate practical jokes. The disaster interrupted the plotting and scheming of local pranksters, whose "jinks" the papers regularly used as page fillers. The stunt might be throwing straw dummies on railroad tracks or otherwise frightening people with phony corpses, slipping exploding cigars to their buddies, or, as told in the previous item, violently shaking the temporary police station so the officers feared another earthquake. Huh-yuk.
In the first item below, Daniel "Doc" Cozad and State Senator Walter Price were pranked on April Fools' Day, although they really should have expected something; Cozad himself had quite the reputation as a practical joker, with a specialty in prank phone calls. Once a number of men showed up at the Press Democrat dressed in their Sunday best because they'd been told that the newspaper was rushing to put together a photo feature of prominent citizens.
BAPTISM OF WATER
April Fool Deluge for Two Well-Known Santa Rosa "Heroes"
There is a good April fool joke story going the rounds at the expense of Senator Price and "Doc" Cozad, and it is vouched for as an actual fact. These two citizens on April 1 were walking along a street in the northern part of town when the shrieks of a woman from within a nearby house attracted their attention. With "Doc" in the lead, both hearts beating gallantly and breasts afire with enthusiasm to perform a hero's duty, they dashed up the steps leading to the house and two pairs of hands grasped the doorknob simultaneously. The door opened and before they could demand what bloodcurdling tragedy was being or was about to be enacted they were deluged with a baptism of water, and amid merry peals of laughter were reminded that they were "April fools." Fire Chief Frank Muther got onto the joke and he has not been doing a thing to his friends, Price and Cozad since.- Press Democrat, April 4, 1907
SMOKED LOADED CIGARMike McNulty, the genial baggage-master at the Northwestern Pacific depot, who is known far and wide as "Mr. Harriman," celebrated with the younger patriots in the City of Roses on the Fourth of July. McNulty's celebration was not a voluntary celebrant and he was greatly chagrined at the appearance of Police Officer John M. Boyes on the scene just at the critical moment. McNulty had been presented with a cigar by Conductor Walter Holloway, the Havana being lightly "loaded" with powder. With a flash that caused McNulty to shout imprecations on the head of Holloway and to leap about seven feet in the air, the cigar exploded. Smoking is touchy subject with the railroad man since the Glorious Fourth.- Santa Rosa Republican, July 5, 1907
Thank goodness Santa Rosa's cops were good sports in 1907 when pranksters faked an earthquake at the police station, scaring the willies out of everyone inside. It's hard to believe that someone even thought up this stunt; "Frightening Pranks to Play on Policemen" must surely be the thinnest chapter in the practical joker's handbook.
Santa Rosa's funnymen may have been inspired by Jack London, who loved to pull a similar joke on visitors skittish about California earthquakes, rocking the guest house on his ranch while screaming outside their window. Police at the time were still in their temporary post-quake HQ, which likewise was a small building that could be easily shaken. (There's a photograph of this shack on page 66 of Lee Torliatt's "Historic Photos of Sonoma County.")
The other incident happened a few days later, when someone called the police to report that an "insane man was terrifying the neighborhood," prancing around a vacant lot while talking loudly and waving his arms. A crowd gathered a safe distance away to watch as officers crept up on him with guns drawn. Whoops! It was just Eugene Gear, amateur actor, preparing to audition for a play, the police told the paper. Then the next day, whoops again - the police had misidentified the man, who was really Orrin Shear.
The Santa Rosa police were lucky Mr. Gear didn't make a stink about being labeled a lunatic, and Mr. Shear is lucky that cops didn't have Tasers back then. Very, very lucky.
POLICE VICTIMS OF BAD SCARE
Sheriff Smith Works "Earthquake"--Amusing Results
The practical jokers could not let the day pass Wednesday without a victim of earthquake scare and the police department was made the butt of the joke.
Having made his arrangements before hand with Mr. Simpson, of Simpson & Roberts, who is erecting the new temporary court house, Sheriff Jack Smith entered the police station shortly after 8 o'clock Thursday morning and entered into conversation regarding the recurrence of a disaster similar to last year. Chief of Police Fred Rushmore, Officer John M. Boyes, Constable S. J. Gilliam, Special Officer Samuels and City Recorder Bagley were the unsuspecting victims.
Simpson's men placed a lever under one corner of the small building and began to rock it, lightly at first, and then heavier until the boards creaked and strained. Those inside felt the first slight jar, and their uneasiness was plain to be seen, but not until the lockers began to rock and a few boards were dropped on the outside by the conspirators, and the rocking of the building began to assume alarming proportions, was there a panic.
Recorder Bagley had his feet up on the stove reading when he felt the rocking [and] made a quick move for the door, but -- "there were others," and with a unanimous decision without remark, all decided the safest place was on the outside. But the door was small, and all could not get out first. A couple of dogs in the room set up a howl and added to the confusion.
When all had reached the outside and began to look around to see what damage had been done, the hearty laugh of Sheriff Smith and his assistants let the victims into the secret and then all joined heartily in the laugh which was on them. Several agreed they had no fear until the lockers began to rock and the sound of falling boards were heard, and then they believed the Union Trust-Savings Bank was giving way and thought it time to make their "get away."
All that one needs to say to any of the victims today is to ask if they felt the earthquake this morning.- Santa Rosa Republican, April 18, 1907
INSANE MAN ON HENLEY STREET
Chief of Police Rushmore and Officer Yeager Rudely Interrupt an Actor's Dress Rehearsal
Chief of Police Fred Rushmore and Police Officer Nick Yeager put a Lou Dillon clip to shame yesterday afternoon when they road their bicycles wildly to Henley street in response to a hurry up telephone call from a well known resident of that section of the city to the effect that an insane man was terrifying the neighborhood.
For an hour the man at the other end of the phone breathlessly explained the supposed lunatic had been acting strangely in a large vacant lot, waving his hands, changing his pose, striding up and down, and all the time talking to himself, pitching his voice to suit the attitude he assumed.
The officers arrived on the scene almost as breathless as the frightened people in the vicinity. They jumped from their bikes and drawing their clubs and cocking their revolvers they sailed forth to take the "insane man" or be taken. The thoroughly frightened spectators went to points of vantage to wait and watch. To make a long story short, the supposed "crazy" man was none other than Eugene Gear, one time property man at a local theatre and amateur actor. He had selected the expanse of occupied ground for a dress rehearsal of a role he hopes to assume. The officers rode back to the police station slowly, but thoughtfully. But the joke leaked out.- Press Democrat, April 24, 1907
It's Hallowe'en, that magical night when precious little children dress-up and... say, why are those kids carrying toolboxes and ropes?
As it turns out, trick or treaters today are pikers, compared to the hooligan that was your great-grandpa. A favorite prank in 1905 Santa Rosa was removing the gate from a house and hoisting it into a tree, but according to papers in other cities, bicycles and wagon wheels were also common. In Winnipeg, overachievers not only unloaded a wagon filled with grain and disassembled the vehicle, but put the wagon back together on top of a barn -- and refilled it with the grain.
Wisconsin paper urged readers to tie down their gates and bring in their cabbage. Um, hide the cabbage? An item in the Nov. 1, 1901 Racine Daily Journal explained the local custom: "Crowds of boys and girls will supply themselves with cabbage stalks and start down any of the residence streets, and then the fun commences. The homes most conspicuous prove to be the targets, after the leader gives the signal to throw every person in the crowd hurls a cabbage stalk at the door. If cabbage stalks are not to be obtained it is a very easy matter to find a substitute. Dirt, old shoes, stones, or 'any old thing' will answer the purpose..."
Some newspapers in the early Twentieth Century even printed Hallowe'en death tolls, usually of pranksters shot to death after being mistaken for prowlers. Six were killed in 1904, including a "man mistaken for Hallowe'en dummy run down and killed by street car at Columbus, Ohio," according to one casualty list.
A HALLOWEEN PARTY
Youths Taught a Lesson to be Less Reckless in Their Amusement
Almost a score of boys, some of them members of prominent families of this city, ended a Hallowe'en frolic by spending a few hours in jail at the city police station during Tuesday night. They were not content with the time honored frolic of removing gates but when they found one that did not come off its hinges readily it is charged that they just sawed it off and took a portion of the fence, too. They were very penitent when released from custody after confinement for a few hours and it is doubtful if they will ever do downright mischief on Hallow e'en [sic] and run too far away with the lenient view often taken that "boys will be boys."
- Press Democrat, November 2, 1905
MUST GO HOME WHEN LAW SAYS
Chief of Police Gives Instruction to Enforce the Curfew Ordinance
Chief of Police Severson has given orders for the police to strictly enforce the curfew ordinance.
For some time the police have been a little lenient in this regard and boys have taken advantage of this and some damage to property has resulted. Now all minors who are caught out after the bell rings will be taken to the police station regardless of who they are or where they are going. Tuesday night about twenty offenders were locked up for several hours at the police station and before the matter is settled there will be a bill of damages to pay as the crowd destroyed a fence.
- Press Democrat, November 2, 1905