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Jan. 21, 1917: How long does it take your wife to dress?

Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: February 9, 2013 - 3:19 PM

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Christine Frederick was a distinguished home economist of the early 1900s. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Northwestern University, she founded a laboratory that analyzed many of the products and processes used in American homes. Her goal was to identify and promote more efficient ways of keeping house. She was the driving force, for example, behind the standardization of kitchen counter heights. She served as a consulting editor of a number of publications, wrote several books and penned a series of articles on "The New Housekeeping" for the Ladies' Home Journal. This piece, originally written for the American Weekly, a Sunday newspaper supplement, appeared in the Minneapolis Tribune.

Mrs. Christine Frederick, Efficiency Expert, Holds the Stop Watch on Women to Find Out Just How Much Time They Can Save in Lacing Their Corsets, Buttoning Their Shoes and Hooking Up Their Gowns.

Christine Frederick

By Mrs. Christine Frederick

Household Efficiency Expert, Author of “The New Housekeeping,” Etc.

The hoary joke of the cartoonists on the number of hours a woman keeps a man waiting while she dresses to go out with him was flattened by the recent announcement of a prominent woman that she could dress in exactly fifteen minutes. But instantly this claim to feminine speed championship was disputed by other claimants, who respectively announced thirteen, ten and even two minutes as the time limit required to clothe themselves.

In view of all this discussion it is worth while putting the stopwatch on the subject and settling by seconds “how long does it take a woman to dress?”

Are you fat, or are you lean? Are you orderly, or the reverse? What kind of clothes do you wear? All these factors greatly influence the time required to dress.

Here, for instance, is a time study I made of a young girl as she dressed completely for the street:

Dressing Time Study No. 1

(Thin Model) in Afternoon Street Attire.

(Subject ready in bathrobe and slippers – all garments needed arranged conveniently near dresser.)

	Min.	Sec.
Cold cream and powder face ……………..	1	20
Put on union suit ……………………………		15
Put on shoes and stockings (17-hole lace shoes) ………………………..	3
Corset (“sport” type) ………………………..		15
Camisole …………………………………….		35
Silk petticoat …………………………………		5
Arrange hair .………………………………...	2	15
Put on one-piece dress …………………….	1
Hat ……………………………………………		10
Coat …………………………………………..		25
Gloves ………………………………………..		20
Total time …..……………………………….	9	40

Another girl of the same age and type was ready for the street in 13 minutes, 40 seconds, the additional four minutes being the time consumed by her bath.

It will be noticed here that the lacing of the shoes and the arranging of the hair took the longest time. Contrast these figures with this second time study, in which the subject was a more mature woman:

Dressing Time Study No. 2

(Mature Model). Afternoon 3-Piece Costume. (Subject was before in bathrobe and slippers.)

	Min.	Sec.
Get into union suit …………………………..		10
Put on stockings .……………………………		20
Shoes (15-button boot) ...…………………..	1	10
Corset (20-hook front lace model) .……….	1	10
Camisole …………………………………….		25
Bloomers ….…………………………………		20
Hair arranged ..……………………………...	3	50
Skirt …………………….…………………….		30
Waist …………………………………………		50
Hat ……………………………………………		15
Coat …………………………………………..		30
Gloves ………………………………………..		30
Total time ……………………………..…….	10

Comparing these figures, it will be found that the corset of the stouter woman is her bête noir in dressing. In the first case the young woman with the girlish waist, wearing a short six-hook “sport” corset, was able to put it on in fifteen seconds. It took the more mature woman, with the fuller curves and the twenty-hook front lace, one minute and ten seconds to do the same trick.

For some women, squeezing into a corset took more than one pair of hands. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

From three to five minutes is usually required for even a simple day coiffure, and this means that the possessor of the locks has practiced the same style until she almost unconsciously finds her hands taking the right motions – for she who hesitates is indeed lost, and a slight wrong start in hair dressing never seems to come right.

The fact was clearly brought out that in order to dress quickly clothes and accessories must be well arranged, and in definite places so as to prevent all “fumbling.” Hunting uselessly for the right pair of gloves, or finding buttons loose, or that a new collar needed suddenly to be sewn on, are all details unpardonable if quick time is desired. Of course, in this connection, the services of a maid would be a help; but the woman who is her own valet can be just as well dressed and in as rapid time if she has a place for everything and everything in its place.

It is almost startling to note the change that has come about in the kind of fastenings used by well-dressed women to-day, as compared to those of a decade ago. For instance, the newest union suit, or chemise of the moment, boasts not a single button; the clumsy drawstring is now a thing of the past, and is replaced by a neater, more efficient band of elastic which “gives” with every movement of the figure. Even the popular buttonless camisole is fast replacing the starched “corset covers” and brassieres with many hooks.

From the tests I made, it was clearly proved that the kind and number of fastenings has a great deal to do with the rapidity possible in dressing. Just for the whim of it, did you ever know that:


	A 1918 ad in the Minneapolis Tribune showed what women were up against in the shoe department: A pair of these boots -- available for just $4.45 at the Leader, "the Great Economy Store" at Third and Nicollet -- featured more than five dozen eyelets.

Shoes have from 10 to 25 buttons or eyelets.

Corsets have from 6 to 20 fastenings or eyelets.

Gloves from 1 to 20 buttons.

Union suits, underwear, 1 to 12 buttons.

Camisoles or Brassieres, 1 to 20 buttons or hooks.

Bloomers, only elastic.

Skirts (outer), 1 to 12 hooks or snaps.

Waists, generally 6 to 18.

One-piece dresses, 6 to 12.

Evening dresses, 12 to 24 snaps and eyes.

Petticoats, 1 to 4 snaps or a string or elastic.

Naturally, the fewer the fastenings, and the easier they are to adjust, the quicker the time that can be made. In the above tests the most modern and approved garments were used – bloomers, camisoles and underwear all having only elastic fastenings. The one-piece dress takes about half the time of a separate skirt and waist.

Evening dresses, oddly, were not as complicated as most fussy “afternoon” frocks which have underseam fastenings and hidden hooks and eyes generally in more difficult places. The evening dresses, made by good modistes, while with many clasps, were so modeled that they were easy to slip on and fasten securely.

In passing it should be said that the fewer buttons and strings the better dressed the more safely dressed the modern woman will be. Why stick to a stiffly starched corset cover when a silk camisole will answer every purpose and have no buttons to come off in the wash or hooks to be flattened by the iron? Why trust to tapes and knotty strings when elastic is so much better?

The third study, which follows, was made on a mature woman, who dressed in an elaborate jet and satin evening gown in exactly 26 minutes and 30 seconds.

	Min.	Sec.
Laying out clothes …………………………..	2
Bath .…………………………………………	4
Face and neck creamed and powdered ….	2
Put on union suit …………………...……….		10
Stockings and pumps ………………………		40
Corsets ….…………………………………..	3
Silk bloomers ..……………………………...		20
Silk camisole hooking in back .…………….	5
Hair .……………………………………………	5
Evening gown ………………………………	2	40
Jewels and ornaments ……………………..		10
Finishing touches to the arms, etc. ...……..		20
Long gloves ………………………………….		30
Cloak and scarf ……………………………..		40
Total time …………………………………….	26	30

This was a most elaborate toilet, elegant in every accessory – one suitable for the opera and dance. It included every detail, even jewels and bath. The subject did not hurry, but took her own time, except that she concentrated her thoughts on dressing and nothing else. This toilet, if repeated at more frequent intervals, could certainly be done in 20 minutes, and without complete bath could have been finished in 15 minutes.

To the figures given above should also be added the time required to undress in order to get into the costume, and the time required to arrange or lay out the garments and put the other clothing away. We can average the time to lay out a complete set of apparel as 2 minutes; the time to lay the present clothing away about 1½ minutes; average bathing time 5 minutes. And the average dressing time (exclusive of bath) for the street, 10 minutes, for the afternoon function, 15 minutes; for the theatre or dance, 20 minutes. From all these figures there would seem to be no excuse in the world why any woman, at any time, in any costume, should take more than one-half hour to dress from the “skin out.”

If a motion chart were prepared of the movements women make in dressing, it would appear like the path of an equatorial storm, of circles within circles and concentric dotted lines. Very roughly, indeed, we can say that to dress according to Study 2 required the following convolutions, even under the most efficient plan, with everything laid on one chair.

	Motions.
Get into union suit ....…….	4
Each stocking ……………	2
Each shoe ………………..	40
Corset …………………….	24
Camisole …………………	6
Bloomers …………………	8
Hair ……………………….	60
Skirt ……………………….	10
Waist ………………………	30
Hat …………………………	20
Coat ……………………….	10
Gloves …………………….	30
Total ……………………….	244

Here are the seven rules which the woman who wants to be efficient in her dressing should be careful to observe:

1. Select or have your clothes made with the fewest buttons, hooks and fastenings.

2. See that clothes are constantly in readiness, with no loose buttons or need of adjustment.

3. Arrange them in definite places, easily accessible.

4. Before you begin to dress, plan and arrange every detail of the toilet as compactly as possible.

5. When you dress, “dress” with your mind concentrated on this subject.

6. Work out what seems the best, least awkward order for your particular needs.

7. Practice dressing daily.

The sixth of these rules is of the greatest importance.

Which is the quickest and least awkward, to sit down on the floor when putting on shoes, or to stand and place the foot on a chair? Do you put on first one stocking and then one shoe, or first both stockings and then both shoes? Do you put on your corset before the shoes, or vice versa? Whatever you decide, do it that way always, so that deftness results.

Efficiency in dressing is demanded of women, just as efficiency is required in other needs and work. And efficiency does not mean “slammed together” dressing, but that which proceeds from the right clothes, conveniently arranged, and concentration during the dressing process. There is no need for the woman in ordinary life to rival the speed of the actress, but that she should be able to dress well, and yet quickly, will enable her to have more time for outside pursuits and work more valuable to herself, her home and society.

This helpful illustration accompanied "How long does it take your wife to dress?" Nearly a century later, the bath time looks suspect. Have you ever gotten in and out of the tub in four minutes or less?

Dec. 27, 1893: Down in Fish Alley

Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: January 28, 2013 - 1:34 PM

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Known as the “slum of all slums” in the city’s early days, Fish Alley was a crime-ridden warren of decrepit structures and narrow paths on the northeastern edge of downtown Minneapolis. The block was bounded by Washington Avenue, S. Third Street and what are now known as Park and Portland Avenues S. The crumbling “fish building” for which it was named was condemned as unsafe on May 2, 1906, and ground was broken for the J.I. Case warehouse a few weeks later. The Case building, about a block from the Metrodome, is now home to an Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant and other businesses.

Brace yourself, dear reader. The Tribune reporter did not paint a pretty picture of this blot on the city’s escutcheon.

DOWN IN FISH ALLEY

ONE OF THE VERY FEW BLOTS ON THE CITY’S ESCUTCHEON.

Visit to a Place Which Frequently Figures in Police Annals – The Alley Is Not What It Used to be However, and Its Prestige as a Center of Criminality Is Gradually Being Lost – Sights and Scenes in Its Dark Recesses Which the General Public Little Dream of – The Day in Police Circles.

“Fish alley.”

Little that is pleasant can be said about it. Even the light of the universal festival just celebrated cannot penetrate those dingy rookeries to throw even a semblance of cheerfulness upon them. The usual pastime and even occupation of the inmates are cards and whisky, and petty crimes, and Christmas is usually celebrated by having a little more of these.

The place frequently figures in the annals of the police, and hardly ever comes to the surface in any other connection. Time was when crime of a more or less desperate nature was enacted in the place, or elsewhere by its boldest inmates, but whatever of the criminal element now found there is of the cheap, timid sort, and the people are utterly without stamina of any kind. Formerly the place swarmed with negroes, Chinese and low-down white trash, but the alley is now largely deserted. A few families are found there, but most of the population is composed of roomers, devotees of vice in various forms. The latest exploit was the enticing of a farmer into one of the upper rooms by a street siren whose alleged husband at the proper moment came rushing upon the scene. Hush money was of course demanded, and would no doubt have been paid had not Officer Conroy, on whose beat Fish alley is located, appeared to prevent the consummation of the crime. The woman was sent to the work house. Conroy has made it rather unpleasant for the criminal gentry, and more than 20 inmates have moved away since he began his duties there.

NAMED FOR EARLY TIMES.

The place has its name from the fact that in early times a fish market was located there. The original building is still standing, a low, narrow structure, in the middle of the block between Seventh and Eighth avenues south. A narrow space separates it from the next building on the right, an alley just wide enough to permit a person to walk through to the rear. Here a concatenation of half-rotten stairs, galleries and doors lead to the rooms on the right and left and to the first and upper floors. Everything is in a condition of decay, corresponding well with the unwholesome moral and mental attributes of the denizens of the place. Many of the ground floor rooms fronting on Washington avenue are used for various sorts of business, meat markets, saloons, candy stores, second hand dealers, etc., and outward appearances are not so bad. But in the rear corruption and decay have full sway. The houses run into the ground here, and what is the second or third story in the front may be the first from the rear. The place swarms with rats. Dogs bark and growl as one threads his way carefully through the labyrinths, and the wails of children, or the carousal of debauchees fret the midnight air. Formerly it would have been a dangerous undertaking to go through the rookeries alone, but the danger is not great now. The surveillance of the police over the locality is so close that criminals find it but an insecure hiding place.

In its palmy days Fish alley was a city refuge for the criminal fleeing from justice. Negroes were then swarming in the block, and the razor artist who had carved a fellow citizen uptown would flee to the rookery and, sheltered by his friends, it was a difficult task to ferret him out.

Detail of C. Wright Davison's 1884 Pocket Map of Minneapolis shows the location of Fish Alley: Block 45, just south of the Chicago Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway's "Car House."

Feb. 16, 1882: Judge’s defense boils down to … boils

Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: January 19, 2013 - 10:51 PM

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Within three years of his appointment as a Hennepin County district judge, E. St. Julien Cox stood accused of “almost uninterrupted drunkenness” while on the bench. During his impeachment trial in the Minnesota Senate, 10 saloonkeepers and 22 lawyers took the stand in his defense. Most testified that Cox was always perfectly sober in court, that he was never seen drunk and that he drank nothing but beer. But two testified that his weary and fatigued demeanor was the result of the damned boils that were known to plague him. This "boil defense" prompted a sarcastic editorial in the Minneapolis Tribune.

CONCERNING JUDICIAL BOILS.


	E. St. Julien Cox in about 1873. (Photo courtesy of mnhs.org)

It was boils. Whiskey had nothing to do with it. St. Julien Cox was never drunk on the bench. He had boils on the bench. And it is boils alone that have hurt both Cox and the bench. Murphy and Lansing have said so, and, what is better, they have sworn to it. Here is the official report of the evidence:

H. Lansing, of St. Peter, testified that Judge Cox was sober during the trial of the Powers case. “I knew of his boils. He was subject to them. He seemed to suffer.” … Samuel Murphy, of Waseca, testified that respondent was sober all through the term; had no doubt of it. “I knew he was suffering from a boil. He seemed to suffer from it all through the term. He appeared weary, but not drunk.”

Here we have it. This fragment of testimony, like a flying chunk of old red sandstone, takes the managers in the abdomen, as it were, and doubles up the prosecution like a Barlow jack-knife. The case is practically ended before it is fairly begun, and the remainder of the impeachment trial will be in fact only a triumphant procession for Cox, the discomfited managers being chained to his victorious chariot wheels.

Juvenal somewhere remarks that the best place to have a boil is on another fellow’s nose. But Juvenal wrote in the days of the effete Roman empire, and probably referred exclusively to a Roman nose. Besides, Juvenal didn’t know Cox. He didn’t even know Lansing and Murphy. Modern civilization with Cox as its interpreter has discovered that a boil is a boon, and a boon which no one, certainly no judge, can afford to enjoy by proxy, as the ribald Juvenal suggested should be done. Cox having had two boils during every term of court, had two boons, in fact his boils were his boon companions. He slept with them –especially when he slept with his boots on. Cox has often been heard to murmur to Lansing and Murphy and [defense attorney J.W.] Arctander, that no district judge can afford to be without an assortment of healthy boils. To judges (like Cox) they are a solace in solitude, a comfort amid obloquy and – a defense under impeachment. If brutally drunk on duty the lucky judicial offender simply leers at the jury and whispers “boils,” when all is forgiven. If caught in open lewdness he winks at Murphy, Lansing and Arctander and remarks, “boils,” when criticism is disarmed and the “purity of the judiciary” is vindicated. If profane, maudlin and helpless, while nominally hearing a case, his advocates sigh “boils,” and then he looks “weary,” and all the donkeys bray their sympathy.

But seriously, there is something in this conical, protuberant and inflammatory ground of defense on which Cox relies for acquittal. It has philosophy and sense behind it. For example: (1.) All know that there is something exhilarating in the idea of having a regular out-and-out boil. Now if the boils are sufficiently big, sufficiently numerous and sufficiently ill-placed, that exhilaration may imperceptibly reach the stage of mild intoxication, and this gives us the analogy between boils and drunkenness. (2.) If the curious reader – Arctander, for instance, as he is every way curious – will turn to the article, “Boils as Intoxicants,” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, he will find the following pertinent passage:

In connection with the doctrine of the correlation of forces and the now well-established principle of the interconvertibility of energy, it has been discovered that in certain conditions of the human system, and certain states of the atmosphere, precisely identical physical and mental symptoms and phenomena may be may be produced by two agencies, apparently so dissimilar and unsympathetic as boils and alcohol. Sir Thomas Merchison has shown by an elaborate series of experiments that all the phenomena of inebriety, including the usual accompaniments of “weariness,” combativeness and profanity, can be produced by from one to three fully developed boils (carbunculosus infernalus.) And on the other hand a protuberance of portentous magnitude and volcanic aspect technically known as carbunculosus nasalus, can be produced upon the gable end of a human nose by regular and persistent imbibition of alcoholic stimulants. It is found, in fact, that a climate where ozone dominates the atmosphere, as, for example, in Southern Minnesota, in North America, is best adapted to the development of robust symptoms of inebriety (kats jammer) through the sole agency of boils.

In the face of such high authority, sustained by Lansing and Murphy, Col. Hicks and his Herodian band of persecutors may as well release Cox from the rack and prepare to accept the odium they deserve. Their case is rendered all the more desperate, and Cox’s all the more secure, by a fresh outbreak of boils in the judge’s favor on Saturday and Sunday last. This new eruption of boons, just at the critical moment in the trial, proving again, as it does beyond question, that boils can make a judge appear drunk, even to Arctander, will be equivalent to an acquittal, and if next Sunday can only furnish a similar episode a triumphant vindication will be assured. The august senate will ask to be relieved from listening to closing speeches, and each senator, as his name is called on the final vote, will rise with solemn mien and make answer:

“Boils, but don’t have ’em any more.”

On March 22, 1882, Cox was found guilty of conduct unbecoming a judge. He was removed from the bench and disqualified “for all judicial offices of honor, trust or profit” for three years. He eventually left Minnesota and died in Los Angeles in 1898.

The Minnesota Senate chamber in about 1885. (Photo courtesy of mnhs.org)

Dec. 26, 1903: Ear transplant is a hoax

Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: January 18, 2013 - 3:41 PM

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In response to Deadspin’s piece on Manti Te’o and his imaginary love life, I scoured the Tribune archives for any story containing the words “hoax” and “girlfriend.” Alas, no matches. But I did find this. Check the dateline, Notre Dame fans.

FAKE NEWSPAPER REPORTERS OPERATING IN NEW YORK

SOUTH BEND, Ind., Dec. 26. – The story sent out from New York recently of a Western millionaire paying $5,000 for a human ear and having it transplanted to his own head to replace a missing organ, is declared to be a hoax.

The story is said to have been invented by a group of physicians, a newspaper space writer, a traveling salesman, and one or two others, who meet occasionally in New York, and who find amusement in concoting and circulating stories which, on account of their unusual features, will attract wide attention. This same group is said to have started the story that Elbert Hubbard was refused a room at the Waldorf-Astoria, and also the story of an elopement of Elbert Hubbard’s son.

The operation alleged to have taken place in Philadelphia, by which an ear was transplanted from the head of one man to that of another, is declared by a Chicago physician, to whom credit is given for uncovering the “fake,” to be impossible.

July 21, 1907: The Tribune Girl and the fire chief

Posted by: Ben Welter Updated: January 11, 2013 - 3:30 PM

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Nan Russell Dunnigan in 1914.

Nan Russell Dunnigan, whose work appeared under the byline “The Tribune Girl,” wrote hundreds of first-person feature stories for the Tribune between 1907 and 1914. She interviewed Sarah Bernhardt, Ethel Barrymore, John Philip Sousa, Booker T. Washington and Sir Robert Baden-Powell. She had a frosty encounter with Isadora Duncan. She attempted to interview Maude Adams, but found the popular “Peter Pan” actress to be “interview proof.”

Dunnigan took on a variety of other assignments. She made police and fire checks. She interviewed politicians and businessmen. She worked as a “Salvation Army lassie” for a day. She led Minneapolis orphans on an outing to Lake Minnetonka. In her final months with the Tribune, she traveled to Europe and filed reports from London (where she got lost), the Vatican (where she enjoyed an audience with Pope Pius X) and Belgium (which she didn’t enjoy one bit).

Her last piece appeared in September 1914. Three months later, on Christmas Day, she married George F. Authier, private secretary to Minnesota’s governor, Joseph Burnquist. Authier had just secured a new job as the Tribune’s Washington correspondent, and the newlyweds soon headed east. The Tribune Girl apparently hung up her notebook and pen. No further stories by Nan Russell Dunnigan or Nan Authier turn up in a Google search.

Tribune Girl Talks With Fire Chief
on Freak Calls of the Unsung Heroes

Canterbury and His Merry Men Relate Tales, Amusing and Pathetic, of Occasions When Alarms Meant Unusual Work for Fire Laddies When They Arrived on Scene – Settle Family Difficulties and Answer Call of Small Frightened Lass.

By The Tribune Girl.

It was a sizzling morning.

The Tribune Girl emerged from the last of the offices that she is obliged to visit daily at the court house, and in the argot of newspaperdom “had covered her run, found nothing doing, and was all in.”

Feeling thus limp and wilted (literally as well as figuratively) she sauntered into fire headquarters to cool off.

Now if there is one place in the court house that the feminine scribe feels perfectly at ease in it is the office over which Chief [James] Canterbury presides.

Everybody is so good natured and easy going around fire department headquarters, and the ladies have so many little stories that they reserve for the reporter girl that it is little wonder that she enjoys visiting this haunt of “unsung heroes.”

In the sanctum sanctorum of Chief Canterbury this scorching morning the girl found the genial chief and his first assistant, Michael Hanley. It was plain that the business that the two were transacting was not of the most minute importance, for they were lolling back in their chairs, wearing expressions of as great contentment as did Nero at the burning of Rome.

“Am I intruding?” asked the girl, knowing full well that she would receive the welcome that was accorded the prodigal of old.

She sniffed surreptitiously for the savory smell of cooking veal.

“Indeed not. Here is the easiest chair awaiting you,” spoke up the chief, who was playing host to this impromptu little gathering. “This is the only office in the place,” he continued, “where there is a breath of air and we are enjoying it by spinning yarns.”

“Here is copy, rip snortingly good copy,” thought the reporter, “if they will only talk shop,” so to prod gently she remarked: “”Do tell me about some of your unusual fire calls. I have always heard that you are called out for everything from fishing cats out of wells to assisting kites to part company with friendly telegraph poles.”

The Tribune Girl chatted with the chief, left, and his first assistant, Michael Hanley.

Fire Laddies Settle a Family Row.

“And right you are,” said the chief, “but these freak calls that give you people stories are not the ones that give us any pleasure. Get Hanley here to tell you about the family row that he was called out to settle not long ago.”

“Say that was a funny thing,” spoke up the good-natured first assistant, the man who is said to be the most popular in the service. “But it did not seem so funny then.”

As he shifted to a more comfortable position, The Tribune Girl summarily forgot whether she was in Minneapolis or Alaska, for this meant that the ball was rolling and there was no end of good material in sight.

“Well, it was about 5 o’clock one nasty rainy morning that the alarm came in,” commenced the dean of the department. “It was from a box down south not a great distance from the falls, and through the mud we tore to it. When we arrived we found it was a small chimney fire that we had little trouble extinguishing. Well, all the way back the boys cussed in all the languages they knew, for the afternoon before they had cleaned up their apparatuses and this made another job for them. Well, sir, we had been back in our respective houses about an hour and the boys had the engines just about clean again when in came an alarm from the same box. This time, I can tell you, we did not lose a minute, for all the way down we pictured the house enveloped in flames because of our negligence in not properly attending to the first blaze. When we arrived at the house we did not see as much as a whiff of smoke, and there did not seem to be trouble anywhere, but in this we were mistaken. Before we got through we found more trouble than we were looking for.

“Well, to make the long story short, after we left the first time the master and mistress of the house got into an argument over the cause of the chimney fire. He said that it was her fault and she said that “he was a ‘mean old thing, now, there,’ and, woman-like, would not be downed, so up she goes to the corner and turns in an alarm. (She would let the firemen decide.) Well, the firemen did decide, but their decision was that this was the limit of anything that they had thus far encountered. One of the fellows suggested that we form a 12-foot ring and let them settle it according to Queensbury rules, as we deserved something for playing the part of a miniature Hague tribunal, while another voiced the opinion that Chief Corriston would not be a bad one to act as referee, but the majority of the boys were too mad to speak.”

Little Lass to Blame.

At this juncture the chief lighted a fat black cigar and the girl thanked her lucky stars accordingly, not that she is overly fond of smoke, but, like most girls who are endowed with numerous brothers, real and acquired, she realized that it promised to add much to the reminiscent mood of the occasion. She was not disappointed for the chief commenced:

“That was another rather amusing call we had from the open box in front of St. Barnabas hospital one afternoon this spring. We hurried to respond and found that it was a false alarm. Now I investigate false alarms, particularly from those keyless boxes, because it is a thing that is apt to give us no end of trouble. Well, this time I thought that it was some schoolboys who were to blame, and I was not far wrong in my guess. It turned out to be about the prettiest little lass of 7 that I ever saw. It appears that the children were trooping home from school and the littlest girl in the party was ‘dared’ to turn in an alarm.

“The poor little thing was taunted until she could not stand it any longer, and in desperation turned the key. Not until the wee maid saw us coming did she realize what she had done, but when she did the poor little thing scampered home and was on the verge of convulsions when I arrived. I suppose I should have been very severe with the child, for turning in a false alarm is a serious matter with us, but when I saw her and how frightened she was all I did was to assist her mother in quieting her.”

“Isn’t he getting soft-hearted in his old days?” asked Mr. Hanley in a bantering tone, and while the girl agreed she privately voted this gallant fire fighter a perfect dear.

Many “Freak” Calls Mean Tragedy.

“While we are fortunate in having many little things happen that serve to amuse us,” continued the chief, “in the main it is the darkest side of life that we see. Most of our freak alarms as you call them mean a tragedy to some heart. We have more than once been called to remove a man who has been electrocuted at the top of a telegraph pole and whose lifeless body hung suspended from the wires. We have also taken a man off a roof who met a similar fate, as well as rescued men from sewers, cesspools and ditches. A rather pathetic thing happened last fall. We were called to extinguish a fire down on the finest part of Park avenue. On our arrival we found that the fire was out, for it was a load of hay belonging to a poor old farmer out near Osseo that had been burned. When we arrived at the scene of the recent conflagration we found the unfortunate man sitting at the door of the barn, where he came to deliver the load, completely discouraged. It appears that this was the last load of hay that he had to sell, and the wolf was knocking with vigor at the door of the home where his wife was lying ill. It was altogether as sad a case as I ever run across, and the worst part of it was that the fire was started by the mischievous ten-year-old boy of the house where the man was delivering the hay. I have often wondered if the poor old fellow was ever paid.”

A Heartrending Affair.

Seeing that a hush fell on the little group. “I remember that,” spoke up Mr. Hanley, “but speaking of sad experiences, I think that fire that occurred out on Seventeenth street southeast and Sixth street about seven years ago was the most heartrending affair that I ever witnessed. It was in the fall of the year and a woman was cleaning up the dead leaves in her yard and burning them. Somehow her clothing caught fire and it was but a moment until she was a mass of flames. Her little 10-year-old daughter ran out to her assistance and with rare presence of mind threw a rug that was on the clothes line over the woman, hoping to smother the fire. If it had been large enough it might have served its purpose but the rug was too small to be of any benefit and before the child knew it in her excitement her own garments were in flames. There, side by side, the mother and her brave little child were fatally burned and they both died on the way to the hospital.”

Just then the immaculate young fellow who attends to the business office of the department, came in to confer with the chief. At the same time Michael Hanley was wanted at the telephone, and The Tribune Girl, feeling strangely depressed, wearily left the office, wondering how the city editor would vent his wrath when she announced that “There was nothing doing at the court house today.”

Fire Chief Canterbury in his courthouse office in about 1900. (Image courtesy of mnhs.org)

A Minneapolis fire engine and crew paused for a photo at 3rd Street and 6th Avenue S. in about 1905. (Image courtesy of mnhs.org)

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Posts about Minnesota History

Mrs. Christine Frederick, Efficiency Expert, Holds the Stop Watch on Women to Find Out Just How Much Time They Can Save in Lacing Their Corsets, Buttoning Their Shoes and Hooking Up Their Gowns.

DOWN IN FISH ALLEY

CONCERNING JUDICIAL BOILS.

FAKE NEWSPAPER REPORTERS OPERATING IN NEW YORK

Tribune Girl Talks With Fire Chief on Freak Calls of the Unsung Heroes

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Tribune Girl Talks With Fire Chief
on Freak Calls of the Unsung Heroes