Evening Star
- PIG WOMAN IN LANE ON MURDER NIGHT, WITNESS SWEARS
- DEATHS PUT AT 300 IN LUZON TYPHOON; DAMAGE MILLIONS
- Italian Cabinet Bans "Ridiculous" Names for Babies
The Evening Star's front page of November 8, 1926 carried three Associated Press dispatches. From the Hall-Mills murder trial in Somerville, N.J., it reported that witness Robert Ehrling placed Jane Gibson, the "pig woman," on her mule in De Russey's Lane on the murder night, along with two cars, one of them apparently a Ford sedan carrying a lone "man with a mustache." From Manila came an estimate of 300 dead in southern Luzon after Saturday's typhoon, tidal wave and floods, with Batangas hardest hit and telegraph lines still down. From Rome, the AP wryly reported a Fascist cabinet decree barring "ridiculous, shameful or subversive" baby names and forbidding "nobodies" from giving their children the names of famous people.
Translation
PIG WOMAN IN LANE ON MURDER NIGHT, WITNESS SWEARS
COURTHOUSE, SOMERVILLE, N. J., November 8. - Robert Ehrling [?] who said he saw Mrs. Jane Gibson, two automobiles and a "man with a mustache" in the De Russey's Lane the night of the Hall-Mills slaying, although the second witness of the trial of Mrs. Hall and her brothers today, held the star position throughout the morning session. Ehrling was in the far-famed lane for more than two hours on the night of the slaying, he said, and Mrs. Gibson passed his automobile riding her "jenny" mule. Two automobiles passed some 30 minutes before he left, going "down the lane." The question of the makes of these cars drew from Ehrling a suggestion that one was a Ford sedan, with its solitary occupant, "a man with a mustache."
DEATHS PUT AT 300 IN LUZON TYPHOON; DAMAGE MILLIONS
MANILA [?] November 8. - The estimated number of dead in southern Luzon as the result of Saturday's typhoon, tidal wave and floods reached 300 today. Incomplete reports indicate the property damage will run into millions of dollars. Telegraph wires still are down and the full extent of destruction and death are not yet known. Latest reports show that the disaster was felt in the provinces of Batangas, Cavite, Laguna and Tayabas. Batangas was hardest hit, with approximately 200 dead.
Italian Cabinet Bans "Ridiculous" Names for Babies
ROME, November 8. - "Tom [?] Dick and Harry" won a great victory this afternoon, when the cabinet adopted a decree forbidding the bestowal of "ridiculous, shameful or subversive names" on babies. The decree orders registration authorities not to register names "offending Italian institutions, public order or healthy customs." The authorities also were directed not to permit "nobodies" to tag their progeny with the surnames or Christian names of famous or illustrious persons.
Context
Why a 1922 double murder reached a jury only in 1926
The slaying Ehrling described had happened four years earlier: Edward Wheeler Hall, an Episcopal priest, and Eleanor Mills, a member of his choir, were murdered on September 14, 1922, in Franklin Township, New Jersey. A grand jury in 1922 heard 67 witnesses, Jane Gibson among them, and took no action. The case revived in 1926 when a piano tuner, Arthur S. Riehl, petitioned to annul his ten-month marriage, saying his wife had withheld from him knowledge of the Hall-Mills case. The New York Daily Mirror, a new Hearst paper eager to win a circulation war with the Daily News, then led the press in demanding a reopening, and Governor A. Harry Moore ordered a second investigation and a trial. The trial ran from November 3 to December 3, 1926, so the session in this dispatch came five days after it opened. Some 300 reporters filed from Somerville over 60 leased wires, and historians of journalism regard the case as an early media circus. That national attention explains why the morning testimony of only the second witness made the front page.
How Jane Gibson's story fared, and why the jury acquitted
Ehrling's testimony mattered because it put Jane Gibson on her mule in the lane that night. Gibson, whom the press called the "pig woman" because she raised hogs, lived in a converted barn just off De Russey's Lane and was the prosecution's key witness; she testified that she had heard a woman shout the name "Henry." Her account differed depending on whether she told it to the police, to newspapers or at the trial. Severely ill, she was brought to the courthouse by ambulance and testified lying in a bed before the judges and jury, while defense attorney Clarence Case worked to destroy her credibility. The rest of the state's case also weakened: the defense produced witnesses who placed Henry Stevens bluefishing on the Jersey shore that night, and three fingerprint experts found no resemblance between the smudge on Hall's calling card and Willie Stevens' prints. After hearing 87 witnesses for the state and 70 for the defense, the jury deliberated five hours, and all three defendants were acquitted on December 3, 1926. The Somerset County prosecutor still carries the case as unsolved. Ehrling's "man with a mustache," as reported here, became one of many strands of testimony that never produced a conviction.
What the Philippine Legislature did after the November 6 typhoon
The AP's figure of 300 dead was an early estimate, sent while telegraph lines in southern Luzon were still down. The dispatch's "Saturday's typhoon" corresponds to the storm the Philippine Legislature dated to November 6, 1926. On November 19, 1926, the Legislature approved Act No. 3277, appropriating 200,000 pesos from the Insular Treasury as aid to Batangas, Tayabas, Laguna and Cavite, the same four provinces the dispatch names, for the repair or reconstruction of public works damaged by the typhoon. The money was to be distributed by the Secretary of Commerce and Communications with the approval of the Governor-General. The act dealt with rebuilding public works; it set no figures for casualties and made no provision for direct relief to survivors, so it does not confirm the AP's death toll.
The names decree in Fascist Italy's 1926 crackdown
The Italian cabinet's names decree came at the end of a year in which Mussolini's government tightened control after repeated attacks on him. On April 7, 1926, Violet Gibson shot at Mussolini with a pistol, grazing his nose; on September 11, anarchist marble worker Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at his limousine at Porta Pia in Rome; and on October 31, a shot fired at Mussolini as he rode through Bologna led to the lynching of a 15-year-old boy. That last attempt, eight days before this dispatch, resulted in laws creating Mussolini's secret police. The same year the regime set up the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State to judge crimes against the regime, implemented through Mussolini's Leggi fascistissime. The AP framed the decree as a joke about "Tom, Dick and Harry," and the decree's wording is known here from that dispatch alone. Its stated aim of protecting "Italian institutions, public order or healthy customs" nonetheless matches the language of order and state defense that ran through the regime's other measures that year.
Original
PIG WOMAN IN LANE ON MURDER NIGHT, WITNESS SWEARS
COURTHOUSE, SOMERVILLE, N. J., November 8. - Robert Ehrling [?] who said he saw Mrs. Jane Gibson, two automobiles and a " man with a mustache " in the De Russey's Lane the night of the Hall-Mills slaying, although the second witness of the trial of Mrs. Hall and her brothers today, held the star position throughout the morning session. Ehrling was in the far-famed lane for more than two hours on the night of the slaying, he said, and Mrs. Gibson passed his automobile riding her " jenny " mule. Two automobiles passed some 30 minutes before he left, going " down the lane. " The question of the makes of these cars drew from Ehrling a suggestion that one was a Ford sedan, with its solitary occupant, " a man with a mustache. "
DEATHS PUT AT 300 IN LUZON TYPHOON; DAMAGE MILLIONS
MANILA [?] November 8. - The estimated number of dead in southern Luzon as the result of Saturday's typhoon, tidal wave and floods reached 300 today. Incomplete reports indicate the property damage will run into millions of dollars. Telegraph wires still are down and the full extent of destruction and death are not yet known. Latest reports show that the disaster was felt in the provinces of Batangas, Cavite, Laguna and Tayabas. Batangas was hardest hit, with approximtely 200 dead.
Italian Cabinet Bans "Ridiculous" Names for Babies
ROME, November 8. - " Tom [?] Dick and Harry " won a great victory this afternoon, when the cabinet adopted a decree forbidding the bestowal of " ridiculous, shameful or subversive names " on babies. The decree orders registration authorities not to register names " offending Italian institutions, public order or healthy customs. " The authorities also were directed not to permit " nobodies " to tag their progeny with the surnames or Christian names of famous or illustrious persons.
Source: Holding institution