Evening Star
- HALL’S LOVE DIARY IS ADMITTED OVER DEFENSE PROTEST
- NAVY FLYERS MEET AIR ACES OF ITALY FOR SCHNEIDER CUP
- Woman Reporter Stowaway Aboard Byrd Polar Plane
The Evening Star's front page of November 13, 1926 carried three stories from a crowded autumn of news. From the Hall-Mills murder trial in New Jersey, the Associated Press reported that the court admitted a so-called love diary to show the feeling between the slain minister and the choir singer, overruling defense protests that the defendants had never seen it. Frederick R. Neely previewed that afternoon's Schneider Trophy seaplane race at Hampton Roads, where six planes, three of them Italian, would start after weeks of American preparation that had cost two lives. A short AP item told how reporter Marjorie Cope stowed away on Byrd's polar plane Josephine Ford during a 30-mile hop from Fort Worth to Dallas.
Translation
HALL’S LOVE DIARY IS ADMITTED OVER DEFENSE PROTEST
Over objection of the defense that the defendants had no knowledge of the so-called diary, had never seen it and were in no sense concerned with it, it was admitted to show the feeling between the minister and choir singer.
NAVY FLYERS MEET AIR ACES OF ITALY FOR SCHNEIDER CUP
UNITED STATES AIR STATION, Hampton Roads, Va., November 13. - Weeks of preparation for the Schneider international seaplane trophy race, which involved the loss of two lives and the expenditure of countless hours of worry and labor for the United States team, will come to an end at 2:30 o'clock this afternoon, when the starter's gun sends six planes, three of them flying the flag of Italy, off on the first lap of the 1926 aircraft classic of the world.
Woman Reporter Stowaway Aboard Byrd Polar Plane
FORT WORTH [?] Tex., November 13. - The Byrd North Pole airplane, Josephine Ford, carried Mrs. Marjorie Cope, a reporter, as a stowaway on the 30-mile hop from Fort Worth to Dallas yesterday. Mrs. Cope entered the cabin as the engines were being tuned at the air mail field here.
Context
Why a diary mattered in the Hall-Mills trial
The diary admitted in court belonged to the Hall-Mills case, which centered on Edward Wheeler Hall, an Episcopal priest in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Eleanor Mills, a member of his choir with whom he was having an affair. Both were found shot dead in September 1922, and newspapers soon revealed that the papers scattered over the bodies were love letters. The defendants on trial were Hall's widow, Frances Stevens Hall, and her brothers Henry and William (Willie) Stevens, and the trial at Somerville ran from November 3 to December 3, 1926, so the Star's report came about ten days after it opened. In the prosecution's scenario Mrs. Hall instigated the murder of her cheating husband. That theory explains why the state wanted evidence of the feeling between the minister and the choir singer: the affair supplied the motive. The defense objection reported by the Star pointed to the weak link in that reasoning, arguing that a document the defendants had never seen said nothing about what they knew. The court admitted the diary anyway, but the jury acquitted all three defendants on December 3, 1926.
How a much-handled calling card became contested fingerprint evidence
The physical evidence in the case was compromised from the first day: while the authorities sorted out which county had jurisdiction, curiosity-seekers trampled the scene, took souvenirs and passed Hall's calling card among the crowd. The case was reopened in 1926 after the New York Daily Mirror, a new Hearst paper fighting a circulation war with the Daily News, led the press in demanding it. At trial a prosecution fingerprint expert testified that the card bore Willie Stevens' fingerprint, even though it had been handled by police, reporters and onlookers, had developed "flyspecks," and had ended up, three years on, languishing in the possession of the Mirror's editor. The defense made that history of custody its target. Three fingerprint experts found no resemblance between the smudge on the card and Stevens' prints, and the detective who received the card in 1922 said he had initialed it, yet the card in evidence bore no initials. The courtroom itself was packed with some 300 reporters sending copy over 60 leased wires, and after the acquittal Mrs. Hall sued the Mirror for defamation and settled out of court.
Why the 1926 Schneider race came to Virginia, and how it ended
The Schneider Trophy was hosted each year by the country whose team had won the previous race, and Lieutenant James H. Doolittle of the U.S. Army Air Service had won the 1925 contest at Baltimore, which brought the 1926 race to Hampton Roads. The British team's aircraft were not ready, so the field consisted of three Italian and three American airplanes, matching Neely's count of six planes with three flying the Italian flag. The race had already been held back two days by bad weather and began at 2:35 p.m. on Saturday, a few minutes after the 2:30 start the Star announced. Major Mario de Bernardi of Italy won, finishing the seven laps at an average of 246.496 miles per hour, while Christian Frank Schilt took second at 231.364 miles per hour. The Star's reference to two lives lost concerns the American effort, but the Italian side had paid a price as well: on September 16, 1926, its team captain was killed when his M.39 trainer stalled over Lake Varese.
A monoplane against Curtiss biplanes
The 1926 race set two design approaches side by side. All three Italian pilots flew Macchi M.39 seaplanes, while the American team used three different Curtiss biplanes, each with a different Curtiss V-12 engine. The M.39 was the first low-wing monoplane that Mario Castoldi designed for Macchi, and its wooden wing used two-thirds of its upper surfaces as low-drag surface radiators instead of a separate radiator that would add drag. Its Fiat AS.2 engine had an American lineage: Tranquillo Zerbi designed it on the basis of the Curtiss D-12. At Hampton Roads the monoplane beat the American biplanes, and four days later, on November 17, 1926, de Bernardi flew M.39 MM.76 to a new world speed record of 416.618 kilometers per hour. The Navy flyers in Neely's headline were thus defending a Curtiss biplane tradition against a new Italian monoplane built specifically for this contest.
Why Byrd's polar plane was flying over Texas
The Josephine Ford was Richard Byrd's North Pole expedition airplane, and in the autumn of 1926 Byrd loaned it for a national tour organized and sponsored by the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics with the cooperation of the Department of Commerce. The plane left Washington on October 7 for a two-month tour, and when it landed at Tucson on November 9 it was at the midpoint of an 8,604-mile circuit of the country, with Floyd Bennett as pilot and Bernt Balchen as copilot and navigator. Donald Keyhoe managed the tour and traveled as the crew's resident writer, so publicity was built into the flight from the start. The Star's AP item places the plane at Fort Worth and Dallas on November 12, three days after Tucson, and turns the reporter Marjorie Cope's boarding into a story of its own. The airfield historian who documents the tour notes that whether Byrd actually reached the North Pole in this airplane is in doubt, a question the Star's casual label of the North Pole airplane does not raise.
Original
HALL’S LOVE DIARY IS ADMITTED OVER DEFENSE PROTEST
Over objection of the defense that the defendants had no knowledge of the so-called diary, had never seen it and were in no sense concerned with it, it was admitted to show the feeling between the minister and choir singer.
NAVY FLYERS MEET AIR ACES OF ITALY FOR SCHNEIDER CUP
UNITED STATES AIR STATION, Hampton Roads, Va., November 13. - Weeks of preparation for the Schneider international seaplane trophy race, which involved the loss of two lives and the expenditure of countless hours of worry and labor for the United States team, will come to an end at 2: 30 o'clock this afternoon, when the starter's gun sends six planes, three of them flying the flag of Italy, off on the first lap of the 1926 aircraft classic of the world.
Woman Reporter Stowaway Aboard Byrd Polar Plane
FORT WORTH [?] Tex., November 13. - The Bryd North Pole airplane, Josephine Ford, carried Mrs. Marjorie Cope, a reporter, as a stowaway on the 30-mile hop from Fort Worth to Dallas yesterday. Mrs. Cope entered the cabin as the engines were being tuned at the air mail field here.
Source: Holding institution