London Evening Advertiser
- Snowfall Measures 9 Inches
- Twisting Storm in Sudden Swoop Spares but Few
- Woman Named Sheriff First Time in Britain
The London, Ontario Evening Advertiser of 10 November 1926 opened this reading with local weather: nine inches of snow had fallen on the city by 3 p.m., brought by two weakened storms that met over Ontario, and the paper warned that much colder weather and heavier snow were likely within hours. From Maryland, an Associated Press dispatch described La Plata, a town of 500, picking up its life after a tornado cut a path up to 500 yards wide, killing 15 and injuring two-score, mostly schoolchildren, with four more badly hurt at nearby Cedarvale. A short cable from Southampton reported that Mrs. Lucia Welch had become the first woman appointed sheriff in England, an office the paper said would oblige her to attend any execution held during her term.
This reading covers three excerpts from a partially read page. Because the OCR text is heavily corrupted, the excerpts were transcribed from the page images. Small type at the tile edges is cut off or blurred, including the right edge of the tornado story; the Chipps photo caption, the Soviet training item and the motor-thefts story are not included. The commentary does not cover how the Western Ontario snowstorm affected transport or the harvest, because no supporting source was available.
Translation
Snowfall Measures 9 Inches
The nine inches of snow which had fallen in London up to 3 o'clock this afternoon came with two storms which converged in Ontario after they had lost much of their intensity and bitter cold. Indications are, however, that only the vanguard of the storms has reached Western Ontario and before many hours much colder weather and a much heavier snowfall may be expected.
TWISTING STORM IN SUDDEN SWOOP SPARES BUT FEW
La Plata, Md., Nov. 10. - This little town of 500 souls, stooped in sorrow to take up again the usually placid threads of its existence, which were sheared suddenly yesterday afternoon by the wrath of a tornado that wreaked havoc and destruction along a path at times 500 yards wide through a portion of southern Maryland, killing 15 and injuring two-score, mostly school children, here and severely injuring four more at Cedarvale, 14 miles northeast of here.
WOMAN NAMED SHERIFF FIRST TIME IN BRITAIN
Southampton, Eng., Nov. 10-The first woman ever to be appointed sheriff in England was chosen here yesterday. She is Mrs. Lucia Welch. The new appointee will be forced to attend any execution which occurs during her tenure of office.
Context
How many died at La Plata, and why the counts differ
The Advertiser's Associated Press dispatch put the La Plata toll at 15 dead and about 40 injured, mostly schoolchildren. The fuller text of the same AP report, printed that day in the Evening Times of Salisbury, Maryland, explains why children bore the brunt: the storm concentrated its fury on the La Plata schoolhouse, where 61 pupils, teachers and attendants were gathered, and eleven children were killed when the wooden walls were flung flat. A Cumberland, Maryland, paper reported the next day that more than twenty other pupils had been injured and that a Black couple living nearby had also died. Later tallies do not agree. A modern compilation of deadly U.S. events lists 17 deaths for the tornado across Charles and Prince George's counties, while Wikipedia's article on La Plata High School says the storm killed 13 students. The Advertiser's figure of 15 was the early wire count issued the day after the storm.
What replaced the destroyed La Plata school
The building the tornado wrecked was the La Plata Elementary School, a two-room structure. According to Wikipedia's article on La Plata High School, it was replaced by a new school that housed both an elementary and a high school for La Plata. The new school opened in 1927, the year after the disaster, and took over from the McDonough Institute, which had been Charles County's first high school. The same article notes that the school was segregated by race; around 50 students from the all-black Bel Alton High School integrated La Plata High School only in 1964, under the protection of FBI agents.
Lucia Welch, from suffrage campaigner to Southampton's first woman mayor
The Mrs. Lucia Welch of the Southampton cable matches Lucia Marion Foster Welch, born Lucia Marion Brown in Liverpool in 1864. She was active in the suffrage movement as a member of both the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the Women's Social and Political Union. In 1918, with elections suspended during the war, she was co-opted to Southampton's town council as its first woman councillor, and in 1927 she was elected the town's first woman mayor; as mayor she greeted Amelia Earhart after her transatlantic flight. The sheriffship reported here fell between her council seat and her mayoralty. Her Wikipedia biography does not mention the 1926 appointment, so the claim that she was the first woman sheriff in England rests on the paper's report.
Why Southampton had a sheriff, and what the office involved
Southampton had a sheriff of its own because Henry VI made the town a county by royal charter in 1447, a status that gave its people the authority and right to choose a sheriff. According to the Sheriffs of England and Wales page on Southampton, the borough sheriff's duties included attending the town and county assizes and the quarter sessions, summoning the juries for each, holding a county court when necessary and executing writs from the superior court. The Advertiser's statement that Mrs. Welch would have to attend any execution during her term is the paper's own; the sheriffs' page does not list executions among the office's duties. The same page describes the Sheriff of Southampton's role today as largely ceremonial.
Original
Snowfall Measures 9 Inches
The nine inches of snow which had fallen in London up to 3 o'clock this afternoon came with two storms which converged in Ontario after they had lost much of their intensity and bitter cold. Indications are, however, that only the vanguard of the storms has reached Western Ontario and before many hours much colder weather and a much heavier snowfall may be expected.
TWISTING STORM IN SUDDEN SWOOP SPARES BUT FEW
La Plata, Md., Nov. 10. - This little town of 500 souls, stooped in sorrow to take up again the usually placid threads of its existence, which were sheared suddenly yesterday afternoon by the wrath of a tornado that wreaked havoc and destruction along a path at times 500 yards wide through a portion of southern Maryland, killing 15 and injuring two-score, mostly school children, here and severely injuring four more at Cedarvale, 14 miles northeast of here.
WOMAN NAMED SHERIFF FIRST TIME IN BRITAIN
Southampton, Eng., Nov. 10-The first woman ever to be appointed sheriff in England was chosen here yesterday. She is Mrs. Lucia Welch. The new appointee will be forced to attend any execution which occurs during her tenure of office.
Source: Holding institution