Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

All I’ll say is, 1913 was a lousy year for Halloween festivities.  On November 1 of that year, the “Arkansas Democrat” gave a roundup of the body count:

Chicago, Nov. 1.-Two boys are dead because of Halloween pranks played here last night. While trying to pull down an arc light, Morgan Campbell, fifteen years old, came in contact with a charged wire and was instantly electrocuted. Tomaso La Quinto died in a hospital from injuries received when he was knocked down by a fire department wagon which was answering a false alarm some joker had turned in.

Oklahoma City, Nov. 1-A Halloween prank was responsible for the near. death of M.L. Turner, president of the Western National Bank, Judge R. F. Loofburrow of the Supreme Court; C. A. Galbraith of the Supreme Court Commission, Attorney E. E. Blake and a chauffeur last night. The five men were riding north in a speeding automobile on Classen boulevard when the machine crashed into a telephone pole which Halloween merrymakers had laid across the boulevard. M.L. Turner was picked up unconscious 100 feet from where the machine struck the pole. The other occupants of the car were badly shaken. Turner will recover.  The machine was wrecked. 

Chicago, Nov. 1.-Mrs. Hulda Ewart, fifty-two years of age, and her daughter, Mrs. Alma Stenerson, aged thirty-two, both widows, died of heart disease last night. The daughter died at a Halloween party within half an hour after being taken ill.  The mother, notified of her illness, started to join her and dropped dead on the street corner.

Knoxville, Tenn., Nov. 1-Walter Lane, seventeen years old, was shot and killed last night as the result of a Halloween prank. A number of boys had placed a wagon upon a street car track on Third avenue. When the car approached the trolley was removed from the wire and the motorman and conductor with passengers pulled the wagon from the track. Subsequently someone fired a pistol and Lane fell mortally wounded. The motorman and conductor of the cars were arrested and placed in jail.  They deny having fired the shot. A pistol was found in a sandbox inside the car.

Kansas City, Nov. 1.- A boy's Halloween prank last night caused trouble for the police and the fire department. He spied a telephone cable spool in the street. A little block of wood held it from rolling downhill. The boy waited until he was sure there were no policemen watching then removed the block. The cable spool started slowly, but as the great cylinder, six feet in diameter and weighing a thousand pounds, rolled on its momentum increased.

Just before it reached Twelfth street, which was crowded with motor cars and pedestrians, it was traveling thirty miles an hour. Then it crashed against a water plug. The hydrant was snapped off at the base and the rushing water shot into the door of a saloon. The water flowed down the street, which was crowded with motor cars.  It took the fire and water departments two hours to stop the flood and restore order.

This Friday, it might be wisest to just stay at home and eat all the candy yourself.