Edward Dean Sullivan

In his "Looking at Hollywood" column published on 18 April 1938, entertainment reporter Ed Sullivan noted the passing of his almost namesake. "Edward Dean Sullivan I never met, although the names had been confused for fifteen years, and he got my mail and I got his. We even went to the same barber out here, at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, and left messages for each other, without ever meeting. They tell me that he was a swell person; they never had to tell me that he was a fine newspaperman."

Sullivan had died suddenly of a heart attack in his apartment on 4 April 1938 at the age of 49. He was found several hours later by an employee, slumped in a chair. His wife, Margaret White Callahan Sullivan, had been visiting relatives in Connecticut and was on a plane heading west when the body was found.

Sullivan had been a resident in Hollywood for only a few years, working as an uncredited scenario writer for X Marks the Spot (1931) and as an also uncredited contributor to the screenplay of the Wallace Beery and Clark Gable drama Hell Divers (1931). His screenwriting credits included Hellbound (1931), about the discovery of an old book of magic, starring Leo Carrillo, Lloyd Hughes, Ralph Ince and Lola Lane. With Gordon Kahn (who received a story credit on X Marks the Spot) he adapted  his own story for The People's Enemy (1935, a.k.a. Racketeers) starring Preston Foster as gangster Vince Falcone. A number of films based on screen stories by Sullivan appeared posthumously, including screwball comedy There Goes My Heart (1938), gangster drama  Big Town Czar (1939) and the musical Ma, He's Making Eyes at Me (1940).

Born in Connecticut in 1888, Sullivan was a police reporter, feature writer and sports editor working for the Herald-Examiner in Chicago in the 1910s/20s. He was married to Margaret Sullivan, an Ohio-born writer of Irish parents, in around 1918. In 1930 the two were living on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, and both were writing for magazines.

Sullivan had made his name with the book Rattling the Cup on Chicago Crime, published in May 1929 by Vanguard Press. Although not the first book on the subject – Chicago Gang Land: The True Story of Chicago Crime by Chicago Tribune journalist James O'Donnell Bennett (1928) and It's a Racket! by anti-unionist Gordon L. Hostetter* & Thomas Quinn Beesley (Chicago, Les Quin Books, Mar 1929) both preceded it – Sullivan's book had a wider impact.

"Rattling the cup" was a slang term that meant the same as "squawking" and Sullivan had much to squawk about as he knew personally many of the gangsters. In his introduction he set out that the intention of the book

is to explain what the whizzing bullets of Chicago's Gangland are aimed at—and why. To give insight into the combustion which bombs political candidates out of their homes; to show why a legion of Chicago policemen have been slain, why an Assistant State's Attorney was murdered with two dead gangsters in the automobile beside him, and how it happened that seven men were lined up in a garage gang headquarters and torn to pieces with three hundred machine gun bullets.

Sullivan detailed many of the deaths in connection with booze, beer, gambling and vice and revealed that in only one instance had the alleged slayers been brought to trail. Similarly, Hostetter & Beesley compiled information on no less than 157 bombs that had been set or exploded in Chicago in the fifteen months between 11 October 1927 and 15 January 1929 with none of the perpetrators brought to book. Sullivan's book ended on an optimistic note that then recent events would bring an end to the crime wave.

Sullivan's follow-up, Chicago Surrenders began on an opposite and disheartening note that thuggery "has met no serious rebuff on any front. Its hoodlum marshals obviously have the situation well in hand." Sullivan's optimism has seemingly turned to pessimism as he believed that repealing the Volstead Act would result in hordes of unoccupied former booze racketeers turning to other forms of robbery and criminality in order to continue their monied lifestyles.

In some ways, Sullivan's pessimistic outlook proved to be true and was explored in Sullivan's next book on racketeers: The Snatch Racket, published in the UK as This Kidnapping Business in 1932—publisher John Lane perhaps feeling that the American slang term for kidnapping had not yet penetrated deeply enough into British culture.

Criminal slang was certainly gaining some momentum in Britain. In America, articles on criminal language and glosseries of the latest argot appeared widely in popular magazines Saturday Evening Post, American Mercury and Liberty, and in book form in such titles as A Vocabulary of Criminal Slang (1914?) by Lewis E. Jackson & C. R. Hellyer, Henry Leverage’s Flynn’s Dictionary of the Underworld (1925) and Underworld and Prison Slang (1933) by Noel Ersine. Jack Lait included an “underworld glossary” as an appendix to his three books Gangster Girl, Put on the Spot and The Big House, all published in 1930.

Here in the UK, Eruera Tooné, as Spindrift, privately published Yankee Slang in 1932, which included a glossary of criminal terms and many examples of how various terms were used, misused and misunderstood (e.g. "Discreet girls should avoid requesting any man to knock them up in the morning — awaken is much better.).

In his new book, Edward Dean Sullivan attacked the

Anyone with the slightest insight into the organized crime situation in America knows that bootleg millions gave the American underworld its nation-menacing bankroll. That money has been used in thwarting the law, corrupting elections, bribing the judiciary and buying opposition to crime in all its nuances. Booze funds have provided the sound support for two hundred rackets now in operation in the United States, and among them is kidnapping—the "snatch racket."

The book's publication in the UK was greeted with shock at the scale of a "racket" only brought to  wide attention less than twelve months earlier:

The kidnapping and inhuman murder of Colonel Lindbergh’s infant son deeply shocked a large proportion of the inhabitants of the civilised world. For apart from the international celebrity of the father and the tender age of the victim, it was rightly felt that of all crimes kidnapping is perhaps the meanest and most cruel. It is, therefore, with considerable disgust, and no little sympathy for the unfortunate inhabitants of America, that one learns from Mr. Sullivan that this abominable crime, known among its perpetrators as the “snatch rachet,” is by no means uncommon in the United States, two hundred and eighty-two cases being investigated in the course of one year, while, naturally, many more never come to the notice of the authorities. (The Yorkshire Post, 15 February 1933)

"An impression to be got from this book is that kidnapping has become a definite business in America," began another review (Aberdeen Journal, 7 March 1933). It is likely that, despite the title change, Sullivan popularised the term "snatch racket" in the UK; it was certainly picked up by reviewers who used the book to discuss the growth of the problem in the US. In the three years ending 1932, 2,500 cases were reported in the United States and there were likely many times that number unreported. The crime was seen as particularly vicious as the target was often the children of the wealthy and a high proportion were never returned, whether the ransom was paid or not.

Sullivan believed that there would be no improvement in the enforcement of this kind of crime while crime paid such astonishing dividends:

So long as organized politics has a grip on court machinery, and upon police organisation as well, there will be scant improvement in the crime situation. Especially is this true under Prohibition, where the tremendous financial needs of modern politics furnish an almost irresistible temptation to accept large contributions without prolonged questioning of the sources. To-day American gangsters are equipped, through booze and its associated rackets, with an annual income of more than 5,000,000,000 dollars. They will pay money for political influence quicker than for any other single item in the category of gangster necessities. And that is a perfectly square account of a vicious circle.

Sullivan went on to write a well-received biography of playwright Wilson Mizner and a book on labour racketeering, covering some of the same ground as Hostetter & Beesley and other titles that appeared in the early 1930s (e.g. Muscling In by Fred D. Pasley, Enemies of Industry by Ferank Dalton O'Sullivan and Labor Unions and the Public by Walter Chambers). In 1935 he was a columnist for the New York Post before heading for Hollywood, where he was engaged to write two scenarios for M-G-M at the time of his death.

He was survived by his wife, Margaret, an adopted son, Edward White, and his brother, Frank Sullivan.

PUBLICATIONS

Non-fiction
Rattling the Cup on Chicago Crime. New York, Vanguard Press, 1929; as Look at Chicago, London, Geoffrey Bles, 1930.
Sold Out!. New York, Vanguard Press, 1929.
Chicago Surrenders. New York, Vanguard Press, 1930; London, Geoffrey Bles, 1931.
I'll Tell My Big Brother. New York, Vanguard Press, 1930.
Benedict Arnold, Military Racketeer. New York, Vanguard Press, 1932.
The Snatch Racket. New York, Vanguard Press, 1932; as This Kidnapping Business, London, John Lane The Bodley Head, 1932.
Romeo Reverse (by Alum Hardly), illus. Adolf Dehn. New York, Vanguard Press, 1934.
The Fabulous Wilson Mizner. New York, The Henkle Company, 1935.
This Labor Union Racket. New York, Hillman-Curl Inc., 1936.

* Hostetter, incidentally, probably coined the term racketeer. According to Andrew Cohen, "In 1927, Employers' Association  secretary Gordon L. Hostetter conceived the term to direct growing public concern about bootleggers like Al Capone against the officials who enforced prices and wages in trades like construction, laundry and cosher foods."

Owen Kildare (part 3)

With his death, more stories of Kildare's activities came to light. He reputedly had served in the Brazilian Revolution as Captain of Marines [in 1891-92] and as a Sergeant of the Legion des Etrangeres in Venezuela against President Castro; during the latter [1901] he was captured and sentenced to be hanged, cheating his executioners by escaping. These escapades escaped his memory whilst writing My Mamie Rose and were never mentioned in other early writings or during early interviews.

More believable was a series of remembrances that were published in the New York Times shortly after his burial under the headline "The Bowery Mourns For Owen Kildare". This contained another twist to the Kildare story in its claim that Kildare was not the author's real name, but it does offer some insight into the kind of man he was, quoting friends from his early days in the Bowery.

"He was on de level. He never forgot a friend or turned his back on a stranger wot needed a stake. He could lick three cops at once, but a woman could make him jump t'rough an' play dead. He knowed the Bowery, an' he knowed wot it was to want a drink an' not have de price. But when he pulled hisself up an' outer this place, he didn't forget to come down once in a while to see his old pals an' stake them as needed it."
    Such tributes as this are the Bowery's to Owen Kildare, who died the other day. The real Bowery is not a place where one would seek to find sentiment; least of all would one look for it in No.10, known as "the Doctor's place" to the derelicts who drift up and down. Like his "patients" "the Doctor's place" is not nice to look at. Indeed it is an offense to at least four of the five senses. Its ceiling is low and stained with the smoke of years; its floor is worn until through the begrimed sawdust the knots stand up like stones in a sand pile. Along the right side as one enters runs the bar and here the derelicts anchor, waiting, Micawber-like, for the something which for them never turns up, until the tide sooner or later, but surely, carries them out.

In "the Doctor's place" they remember Owen Kildare kindly," the article continues. But it was not as Owen Kildare but as Tom Carroll they knew him. Some claimed he was related to a famous family of Carrollton, Maryland, and, instead of being born in an east side tenement, he first saw the light on the western shore of Maryland. "But, Kildare or Carroll, it was as Kildare that all but the more ancient of Bowery mariners knew him, and as Kildare he will be remembered there."

"Did I know Owney Kildare? Did I?" "Red" Shaughnessy draped himself over the Doctor's bar and called for a "slug" to burn the cobwebs from his befogged memory. "I knowed Owen Kildare when he was Tom Carroll. He licked me when I was seven years old, right here at Doyers Street corner. After dat we wuz pals an' we stuck togedder on an' off f'r twenty year.
    "At dat time we wuz sellin' poipers down t' Fulton Ferry, an' sometimes t' Catherine Ferry. Dere warn't no Brooklyn Bridges in dem days, an' a kid cu'd make a dollar a day, and have a coupla hours fer a swim in de river. We useter swim from de footer Peck Slip, an' Tom, or Oweny, he was de bes' swimmer of de gang.
    "I remember one Winter day a little goil—Mamie McGloin, she wuz—fell overboard off de ferryboat as she wuz in de slip. Tom heerd a yell, an' he drops his poipers and jumps in de river after her. De slip wus full of ice, but Tom, he dives an' brings her up fin'ly. She wus near dead, an' he wus near froze, but de passengers wot seen it staked him t' fi' dollars f'r de poipers he lost.
    "De gang wus f'r having a good time wid de fiver, but it wus nuthin' doin'. Tom hol's out a quarter f'r poipers, an' toins d' rest of it over t' Mamie's mudder."

Others who told stories about Carroll / Kildare were "Chuck" Conners, who related how Carroll "licked" a pal of Conners' named "Skinny" McCarthy because he insulted a woman in the street.

"Dat," said Mr. Conners, "wus de dame he writ de book about. He give me de book wid his name writ in it.
    "When he begins ritin' f'r de poipers he quits de Bow'ry, but he never f'rgits it. He useter come down here reg'lar an' he'd allus stake any wot wus broke. After dat dame pikes out Owney he wus near daffy. He comes back here f'r a while, but it wus all off. He keeps on writin' f'r de poipers an' den de foist t'ing we knows he gits stuck on anudder dame an' gits spliced up.
    "Youse won't find many saints down here, but I takes me top off t' Kildare. He wus on de level an' a guy wot's on de level d'soives all he gits an' den some."

While there's little evidence for any of this. The 1900 US census includes a watchman named Thomas Carroll, born in June 1864 in New York, and then living in the County of Marbalow, New York, with his wife Maggie and three children, but there is no evidence that this is the Tom Carroll later known as Owen Kildare.

It was under the name Owen Kildare that he was to be found in the 1910 census, an inmate of  Manhattan State Hospital, aged 46. Leita Kildare is to be found in the New York City Directory that year living at Room 500, 939 8th Avenue. Kildare is listed as married when the census was taken on 15 April; Leita Kildare then marries Charles A. Adams the following month.

Charles and Leita Adams were later divorced. The date is uncertain, but I have found a brief reference that might throw some light on it: according to the Oakland Tribune, 31 January 1913, "Leita Russell was awarded a final decree from Charles A. Russell on the grounds of desertion."

Leita Adams reverted to being known as Mrs. Owen Kildare and lived at 570 Webster Avenue, New Rochelle. She appears as Leita (Gildare (sic)) Adams (30) in the 1920 census, married and living with her daughter, Lowen Kaldare (12) and Frances W. Clinton, the 50-year-old president of a hat company, listed as her cousin.

Francis Wright Clinton was born in London on 6 December 1867, the son of Henry Clinton, a hatter who moved to Brooklyn with his wife Flora and family in 1868. Francis followed in his father's footsteps and around the turn of the century was running a hat store in Manhattan. He was married to Edgaretta Olcott in 1898 and had two children, Edgar Olcott Baile Clinton in 1891 and Francis Wright Clinton Jr. in 1899.

He probably met Mrs. Kildare, then a leading light in the Women's Press Club of New York City and a campaigner for suffrage and food conservation, during the teens of the century and may have been living with her in New Rochelle as early as 1917; he was listed as sharing her residence in 1920 and seemingly remained with her until his death on 17 June 1929, aged 62.

Clinton was president of the Danbury Hat Company and had considerable wealth, which he willed the bulk of his estate, valued between $150-200,000, to his wife and Francis Jr—Edgar having died whilst serving in the military in France only days after the end of the Great War. Both Mrs. Leita Adams, described as a "friend", and her daughter, were give $5,000 each, the latter also receiving the testator's library, furniture, paintings and other effects in his apartment at 2,040 Seventh Avenue.

Lowena Kildare had married H. Elliot Christman in 1928 and they remained living with their mother in New Rochelle until after the Second World War. Their son, Peter, was born in 1931.

Mrs. Owen Kildare, as she continued to be known,  continued to be active in a variety of clubs and causes. In 1921, she was said to have been active in 47; forty years later, in 1963, she was a member of 57, over the years holding offices in many of them. She had, for many years, run the Kildare Institute for Personality Development from 205 West 57th Street in Manhattan, which advertised itself widely with such headlines as "Put PUNCH in Your SPEECH" "Be a Personality!"

Speech is the American weapon. CONQUER in business and social affairs through Your Effective Speech. COMMAND in the march of life! WIN personal victories by mastering the method of attraction. 12 easy lessons in your own home, free from embarrassment while learning. These lessons have been prepared for YOU by an author-lecturer, an authority on Personality Development. Write for information.

Mrs Kildare was also a pioneer radio broadcaster and hosted interviews with personalities on her programmes "Personality Period" and "Radio Vues". A lecturer for the National Association of Manufacturers and a delegate at conventions of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, she was an ardent Republican and conservative, delivering 14 quarter-hour radio talks on stations throughout the East on "A Radio-Revue of Herbert Hoover, America's Emergency Man," during 1928. Representative John Q. Tilson called her presentation of Hoover's life "one of the most brilliant I have heard."

As well as her support for women's suffrage and the National Woman's Party, Mrs. Kildare was also the co-founder of the American Dress League, which called for the end to sexy, stylish clothes, replacing them with a drab, universal uniform that would only be abandoned when it wore out. The uniform of a blouse, knickerbockers and slipover achieved a brief vogue in the early 1920s.

Her hobby of collecting fans, of which she had 400, was the source of a number of lecture tours and shows. One prize example was a fan made by Benveuto Cellini for Catherine the Great. This, she said, was given to her by her first husband, Prince Peter Loris Poninski, who had changed his name to Owen Kildare when he came to America at the turn of the century.

Could there be any truth to this claim that appeared in Mrs. Kildare's obituary (New York Times, 23 March 1967)? There is no sign of him in travel records, but census records for Lowen Kildare in 1910, 1920 and 1930 show a curious and consistent record of her father's place of birth being Russia.

A brief biography from around 1913 mentions that she "collaborated with [her husband] in writing five books and three plays. She wrote, individually, two books and one play. Her book "Mamie Rose," which was dramatized and called by its sub-title "Regeneration," is still playing. A recent book, which she is dramatizing for Nance O'Neil to play, is "Such a Woman." Mrs. Kildaire (sic) has been dramatic critic for two New York papers and one Chicago paper. She has also edited a theatrical paper and a financial paper. (American Feminism: Key Source Documents, 1848-1920 by Janet Beer)

That Mrs. Kildare was intimately involved in the writing of the works credited to Owen Kildare is not, I think, in question. Quite how much she contributed would be interesting to know; one question that would have to be asked would be how a Russian émigré to the US could develop such an intimate knowledge of the Bowery in only a year or two.

Mrs. Kildare died  in Pawling, New York, on 22 March 1967, supposedly aged 78 years.

Owen Kildare (part 2)

Owen Kildare had written four books in quick succession, published in 1903-06; it was then five years before the fifth appeared, in which it was stated that "he became ill and was unable to continue the work. The concluding chapters were completed by Mrs. Kildare." Behind those simple words lay a tragic story.

Kildare was a regular writer of tales for newspapers and magazines, contributing to The Saturday Evening Post, Pearson's, Gunter's, The Smart Set, The Grey Goose, The Blue Mule, Cosmopolitan, People's, Red Book and the New York Times. There seemed to be no break between 1904 and 1908, after which he disappeared.

Kildare was married to Leito Kildare and the two had a daughter, Lowen Loris Margherita Kildare, born in New York on 27 November 1906.

On 1 September 1908, Kildare's play "The Regeneration" opened on Broadway. Co-written with Walter Hackett, it retold in fictional form the story of My Mamie Rose in four acts, with Arnold Daly in the role of Owen Conway and Jessie Izett as Marie Deering, the doomed lovers. Kildare had begun work on the play almost a year earlier, working closely at first with Daly. It was enthusiastically reviewed in the New York Times, whose critic opined: "Judging by the many rounds of applause he [Daly] and his company received and the numerous curtain calls he was compelled to answer, he scored a success and his play bids fair to have a long run."

Not all reviews were as generous. J. Chris Westgate, in Staging the Slums, Slumming the Stage, describes how some reviews were hostile to the idea of romance across the classes, quoting a review in Theatre as saying "the introduction of the element of love is fatal to the full effectiveness of the play." One reviewer went even further, saying that "The drama implies what the dramatist dare not say—that their hero will one day marry his benefactress. It at least assumes that his benefactress loved him. This implied conclusion is preposterous ... the whole scheme is false to reasonable probability and incompatible with human nature."

The play ran for only a few weeks and closed in October 1908. The following month, papers carried the news that, on November 21, Kildare had collapsed from nerves, the failure of the play being given as chief reason. According to the New York Times, an angry Mrs. Kildare, "standing in their little flat last night at 60 West 101st Street, with her hand resting on his typewriter, where he had done all his recent work, and with trembling lips and eyes dimmed with tears," she declared "a cruel injustice" had been done to her and her husband by a report that said she had had him arrested for drinking.

"I did not have him arrested," she said. "Mr. Kildare is ill because of the failure of 'The Regeneration,' which was offered early in the present season at Wallack's Theatre. It was not played as Mr. Kildare wrote it. He saw it only once and was so furious with Arnold Daly for the changes in it that he wanted to fight him. It was all we could do to keep him from attacking the actor. He became morose, morbid, and frequently talked of suicide. Finally he was attacked by the nervous collapse from which he is now suffering.
    Mr. Kildare had the present acute attack of aphasia and nervous collapse on Sunday night. He was unable to speak, and soon became unconscious. Brandy was given him, but he stayed in a stupor. On account of his great weight—nearly 250 pounds—it was impossible to carry him upstairs, so he was sent to the J. Hood Wright Hospital in an ambulance.
    "I have no idea why he was sent to the police court," said Mrs. Kildare. "But I had him sent to Bellevue because the doctors said that was the best place for him. He is bitterly opposed to going to Bloomingdale, but the physicians say he will not recover in a private sanitarium, where he can do as he pleases, so I see no help for it but for him to go there. He does not drink, except a little occasionally, and his present trouble is due solely to his worry over the failure of 'The Regeneration,' which is his dramatization of 'My Mamie Rose,' the staging, indeed, of his own sad, strange life.

Further reports revealed that Kildare had been committed to the psychopathic ward in Bellevue Hospital by Magistrate Walsh in the West Side Court. According to Dr. M. S. Gregory, a few months' rest in the sanitarium would restore Kildare's mental faculties, which, he said, were seriously deranged. He was transferred to Bloomingdale on November 30.

Little more was heard of Kildare for the next two years. On 2 January 1911, a report appeared on the front page of the Washington Post:

Many of the friends of Owen Kildare, author and playwright, who rose from bartender in a Bowery dive to be one of the most successful writers of the time, will be surprised to learn that since his incarceration in the State hospital for the insane, on Wards Island, his wife, who was the beautiful Leita Russells Bogardus, has had her marriage to him annulled, and is now the wife of Lieut. Comdr. Charles A. Adams, U.S.N., retired.
    In spite of the severing of the legal ties that bound her to Kildare and her marriage to Comdr. Adams, the young woman still retains so strong an interest in her first husband that she and her young daughter visit him every other day at the institution where he is confined. Mrs. Adams says that Owen Kildare knows of, and approves of, the course she has taken.
    Mrs. Adams declined to say when or where she married Comdr. Adams.

Where indeed? Charles Albert Adams, born in New York on 28 May 1846, had served with the Royal Navy since 1863 and had been a Commander in 1901-03 before retiring on Boxing Day, 26 December 1903.

The pair had, in fact, married in Canada—in Windsor, Ontario—on 2 May 1910, the marriage certificate stating that their reason was to avoid publicity for the marriage; a more likely reason was that the certificate described Leita Kildare as a widow, which she was most certainly not. Adams was 63, whilst Leita gave her age as 23, implying she was born in December 1886.

The New York Times later reported: "Late last year his wife, known before their marriage to magazine readers as Leita Russell, but whose full name was Leita Russell Bogartus, went to the town in Massachusetts where they had been married and obtained an annulment." (New York Times, 7 February 1911)

In 1910, Lowen Kildare was aged only 3. She was registered as a boarder with Edwin H. Bailey and his wife, Mary, in Howell Village, Livingston, Michigan. At least, this is the only Lowen Kildare to be found on the US census records whose details match what is known about Owen and Leita's daughter. One interesting detail given is that, whilst Lowen and her mother were both born in New York, her father is listed as being Russian.

Shortly after the notice about Leita Kildare Adams appeared in the Washington Post, news broke about the death of her former husband. The New York Times carried the news on its front page: "KILDARE, WRITER, DEAD OF PARESIS". "The Kipling of the Bowery" had passed away on the night of Saturday, 4 February 1911, of paresis (partial paralysis). He had been in a good condition for most of the day, which had included a visit from his former wife, with whom he had taken a long walk along the paths about the hospital; he had also walked her as far as the ferry when it came for her to leave. But, shortly before 10:30 pm, a nurse heard a groan from his room. Hurrying in, she found him in convulsions. He died in two of three minutes of the first seizure.

It was following his death that reports arose that Kildare had suffered a fall ahead of his becoming a patient in the Manhattan State Hospital on Ward's Island. Whilst some reported that his sudden collapse was ascribed to the failure of his play 'The Regeneration', others reported that he had become "violently insane three years ago after falling down the stairs at the Times Square Subway station." (Urbana Daily Courier, 7 February 1911).

Kildare had written little whilst in hospital. According to the New York Times:

Kildare took an interest in many of the patients. To some who were without family or friends to visit them, he was the only source of cheer. He often spoke of writing stories while he was on Ward's Island, and would start for his room, as if seized with the desire to put the idea on paper. He did write sometimes in a desultory fashion, the doctor's say, but the work was confused and fragmentary.

Leita Kildare Adams completed the last book Kildare had started, which became his fifth and final title. However, this was not the final surprise in the story of Owen Kildare... as we shall see tomorrow.

Owen Kildare (part 1)

Owen Kildare is a bit of a side issue to the research that I've been doing in relation to my Caught In The Act project. However, sometimes it's interesting to explore these alleyways and he fits neatly into the historic reason I wanted to set up Bear Alley in the first place: as somewhere to publish material that I fancied researching but which didn't necessarily have a place in an article or book that I was writing.

Publishing these essays also helps me get my ducks in order when the story of a writer's career proves to be complex or confusing. This is certainly the case with Owen Kildare, an American author who penned an influential autobiography at the beginning of the 20th century that predated the confessional gangster biographies that began appearing a couple of decades later. It was filmed by Raoul Walsh's as Regeneration (1915), a key early movie in what became a cycle of gangster films, which, again, Walsh helped launch with Me, Gangster (1928).

But back to Owen Kildare—or Owen Frawley Kildare to give him his full name. His autobiography, My Mamie Rose. The story of my regeneration appeared in October 1903 from The Baker & Taylor Company, 38-87 East 17th Street, Union Square North, New York. It was an instant hit, telling the story of how Kildare, a child of the Bowery, overcame poverty to become a writer; in many ways it is the predecessor of the "misery memoir" which became popular in the mid-1990s. Kildare's tragic life story was published in the UK as Up From The Slums; or, My Mamie Rose by T. Fisher Unwin in 1904.

From his autobiography we learn that Kildare was born in the Bowery District of Manhattan Island and grew up in a top floor tenement on Catharine Street, raised by Irish foster parents. His biological  parents had died: his mother in birth and his father three months earlier. His foster father, Patrick McShane, was a longshoreman between periods of "idleness" and heavy drinking; his foster mother, Mary (nee McNulty) was a housewife, struggling to keep even their small, cheap home together.

At the age of seven he left home after a scene caused by his failure to repay his foster parents for his first pair of shoes by collecting sufficient waste coal by the river. That night—it was in December—he slept in the open with another boy he had met in similar circumstances. With a borrowed five cent piece, he started as a street news-vendor in a local gang led by Timothy D. "Little Tim" Sullivan.

Being of athletic build and, by his own confession, being something of a brute, he earned a reputation as a fighter, which eventually led him to being offered opportunities in the boxing ring. He became a "floor manager" but after some years of success was caught up in attempts to clean up sporting establishments. Kildare's employer and several other were thrown into prison, and he found himself out of work, spending his idle hours sitting outside a public-house insulting passers-by.

In 1894 he met "The good angel to whose influence I owe my regeneration," a young school teacher named Marie Rose Deering whom he protected from being assaulted by a drunken friend. He gave up working in dives—over the years he progressed to become a bouncer for Fatty Flynn's, bartender at Steve Brodle's resort, manager of sporting ventures, dock labourer and freight handler—and tried to make an honest living as a baggage porter. Every day he would visit the teacher to learn how ot read, write and count. They fell in love and, eventually, they were to be married in 1900. A week before the ceremony, she died of pneumonia.

Recovering from the shock, Kildare tried to continue his "regeneration", but an accident permanently incapacitated him and the cost of operations and enforced idleness soon exhausted his savings.

He was living in an attic and working as a dishwasher for $3 a week when he discovered that the Evening Journal newspaper was offering a prize for a love story of less than 750 words; written on wrapping paper he found on the floor, the tale appeared three days after he submitted it. An autobiographical piece appeared in Sunday Press and further pieces appeared in the Sunday Herald and Sunday News. For the latter he penned a series of "Bowery Girl Sketches" which were signed "The Bowery Kipling".

A further autobiographical piece in Success Magazine led to the publication of My Mamie Rose, which was written with the help of a Leita Bogardus (sometimes given as Bogartus). Born Leita Russell in Tarrytown, on 16 December 1889, she was reputedly a precocious child, selling poems and sketches to the Detroit Free Press when she was only ten. She travelled around the world with her mother, being educated by private tutors, studying law and languages and reading extensively of medicine.

As with Owen Kildare, the known facts about Leita Russell Bogardus raise a number of questions. There is no sign of her in early census records from around the turn of the century, prior to her marriage. According to Janet Beer (American Feminism: Key Source Documents, 1848-1920), Russell—whom she calls Leita Ouida Bogardus—married at 16; however My Mamie Rose was dedicated "To L.B.K." ... and who else could it be but Leita Bogardus Kildare? If that assumption is correct, the two were already married when the book appeared in October 1903 when—if we are to believe that she was born in December 1889—Leita was 13. Perhaps not surprisingly, obituaries and other resources skip over any mention of dates.

Leita described their courtship thus: she had then recently begun writing for newspapers under the name Leita Russell when Kildare sought her aid to write his autobiography. He met her only once more before they were married. "He never even courted me," said Mrs. Kildare. "I was in the Berkshires when I received a telegram saying: 'I am coming for you. I hope you will not be angry. I have never been denied anything.'"

Not knowing what he meant, she met him at the station. He hailed a carriage and they were driven to the home of a minister and, without even asking her consent, were married. Since then, she had aided her husband on all his work.

My best shot is that she is, in fact, the New York-born actress Leita Russell, who was boarding in Buffalo at the time of the 1900 US census, who gave her birth date as December 1883. This is, I'll admit, a guess but in its favour I did find a mention that "before her first marriage Mrs. Kildare  made a considerable name in literary and stage work." [My emphasis] If I am correct, she was 19 when she married rather than 13, which sounds more plausible. Leita Russell was, shortly before the publication of My Mamie Rose, a member of the Columbia Theater stock company in 1902 where she played in such plays as "My Friend From India" and "Shall We Forgive Her"; one review commented on the "pleasing specialties" introduced between the acts, which included "Leita Russell dancing and singing popular songs."

The success of the book led to others: The Good of the Wicked and The Party Sketches (Baker & Taylor Co., Aug 1904), The Wisdom of the Simple (Fleming H. Revell Co., 1905), a novel, and My Old Balliwick (Grosset & Dunlap, 1906). The latter was a collection of essays and stories about New York tenement life from various magazines, including Pearson's, The Outlook, Success, the Saturday Evening Post, The Independent and the Christian Herald. The introduction was signed by Owen Frawley Kildare, Hartford, Conn. Kildare had also set up his own publishing enterprise based at 1451 Broadway, New York, in order to publish Letters of a Politician to His Son by John Gulick Jr., which was due for publication in July 1904 but may not have appeared.

A fifth book, Such a Woman, credited to Owen and Leita Kildare, with illustrations by Joseph C. Chase, appeared from New York publisher G. W. Dillingham Co. in 1911. In her introduction, Leita noted that "Owen Kildare was working on the manuscript of this book, in collaboration with his wife, Leita Kildare, when he became ill and was unable to continue the work. The concluding chapters were completed by Mrs. Kildare."

In fact, by the time the book was published, Owen Kildare was dead.

Which is where we'll pick up the story tomorrow.

Leslie H Fox

One of the most intriguing authors published by Alliance Press and its spin-off Pan Press, was described on the front cover as  "The late Flight-Sergt." Leslie H. Fox.

The author was Leslie Henry Fox, born in Hackney in 1910, the son of Sidney Solomon Fox (1880-1960), a schoolmaster working for the London Country Council, and his wife Sarah (nee Siegenberg), a schoolmistress, who were married in London in 1904.

Leslie grew up in Stoke Newington along with his sister Stella Lilian Fox (1914-1963). He was still living with his parents at 19 Bethune Road, Tower Hamlets N16, moving to 52 Canfield Gardens, Hampstead, around 1932, and 5 Avenue Mansions, Finchley Road, in around 1935.

Fox was married to Anne Sheff (1909-2002) in 1936 and they moved to 30 Cedar Road, Cricklewood, where they were living in the late 1930s.

Fox volunteered for service on 29 November 1940, serving with the 44th Squadron of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, rising to the rank of Flight Sergeant. He was stationed at RAF Waddington.

He was killed during a raid on Hamburg on the night of November 9-10, 1942. The RAF mustered 213 aircraft (74 Wellingtons, 72 Lancasters, 48 Halifaxes, 19 Stirlings), but the bombers encountered thick clouds, heavy rain and ice. As the raid progressed, many of the bombs fell in the Elbe or in open country; 26 fires were started in Hamburg, of which 3 were large, and 3 people were reported killed and 15 injured. The British casualties amounted to 15 aircraft (5 Lancasters, 4 Stirlings, 4 Wellingtons and 2 Halifaxes).

Fox, then aged 32, was aboard Avro Lancaster W4180 KM-D which reputedly dove into the ground near Buchholz, a few miles south-south west of Hamburg; he was buried at Ohlsdorfer Friedhof, Ohlsdorf, Hamburg-Nord. He was reported "presumed killed in action" in Casualty Communique No.292 in October 1943, having previously been reported "missing believed killed in action".

The above is based on information gathered from the War Graves Commission, online information from RAF Bomber Command Database and on probate records. There are, however, reports that disagree with the above facts, notably the Jewish Virtual Library, whose entry reads thus:

1253600 Flight Sergeant Leslie Henry Fox, son of Sydney and Sarah Fox, husband of Mrs A. Fox, of 144 Walm Lane, London NW2, volunteered 29 November 1940. Killed in action 27 November 1942, reported 12 February 1943, buried Hamburg. This information from WWRT 196 and AJEX card. But Chorley (see entry date for casualty) says he was in Lancaster III JB128 SR-U2, shot down over Berlin on 2-3 December 1943, take-off Ludford 1648, and was POW No. 269770 at Stalag 4B. 

I have yet to resolve this conflict of information, although it is very likely that there was more than one Flt. Sgt. L. H. Fox.

His widow, Annie, married Philip Shindler in 1943.

PUBLICATIONS

Perchance to Dream and The Elusive Plot: Stories. London, Alliance Press, Nov 1944.
It’s Haywire! Five fast and furious farces. London, Alliance Press, Jan 1945.
The Vampire, and sixteen other stories. London, Alliance Press, Apr 1945.
Design for Murder, and five other stories. London, Alliance Press, Jun 1945.
Twisted Tales. London, Alliance Press, Jan 1946.
The Heel of Achilles. London, Pan Press, Apr 1946.
Rex on the Trail. London, Alliance Press, advertised.

Caught in the Act: Pan Press

The dynasty that begat Pan Press began with Norman Feder, born in Riga, Latvia, in 1889. Norman, the son of Moishe Kremer and Chaie Kremer (nee Tzal) had a large family of brothers and sisters, a number of whom came to the UK in the years shortly before the First World War. Norman was in England by 2Q 1912, when he was married in Hackney, London, to Doris Esther Kamm.

The marriage resulted in two children, but did not last and the Kremers separated and divorced. Doris went on to marry Marks Plotkin in Hendon in 3Q 1924; they lived in Golders Green where Marks died in 1936. Doris died in 1954, aged 61.

Norman had married again, to Ida Sara Evelyn Cohen (or Kremer or Jacobs) in Thanet, Kent, in 2Q 1923. Norman carried on a business as a merchant in the 1920s, not always successfully (he was listed as "receiving orders" in 1927. He also ran a business importing plywood, a similar situation to his brother Nachman Kremer (1876-1944), who was a timber merchant.

Perhaps it was the impossibility of importing materials that led Norman Kremer and his family to set up a small publishing business during the war. The Alliance Press was incorporated in 1940 and its board consisted of Norman Kremer, his wife Ida, and the two of the children from his first marriage, Rita Zena Paneth and Major David Nathaniel Kremer.

The driving force behind the publishing company was Dr. Philip Paneth, who had married Norman Feder's eldest daughter, Rita, in 1943. Rita, born in London on 21 August 1913,  was listed in the marriage records under three names: Rita Z. Davidoff, Rita Z. Davis and Rita Z. Kramer. Davidoff was from her previous marriage in 1934 to Harris Davidoff and Davis was possibly a nom-de-plume.

Philip De Paney Paneth was a Czecholslovakian immigrant, born in Sobrancz on 8 July 1903. His earliest books appeared in Germany in the 1930s and was a foreign press correspondent in Prague between 1935 and 1939 before escaping to England. His earliest British publications appeared in 1939, Is Poland Lost? and Czechs Against Germans, both published by Nicholson & Watson. The latter was described in one review as offering "a full account of the condition of Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, and Carpatho-Ukraine under German rule. Dr. Paneth [is] in touch with all the leading figures of the country and his book, in spite of rather confused presentment, contains a great deal of useful information based on first-hand knowledge." (Western Morning News, 1 Jan 1940)

Paneth was caught up in the imprisonment of foreigners during the early months of the war and found himself detained in Walton Prison, Liverpool, under Article 12 (5A) of the Aliens Order. His considerable standing may be seen in the fact that Sir Richard Acland (MP for North-West Devon) asked in the House of Commons whether the Home Secretary would make a statement about Paneth and his situation and whether there was any prospect of his being released.

Alliance Press began publishing titles in 1943; amongst the earliest were books by Philip Paneth, mostly on foreign aspects of the Second World War (Alaskan Backdoor to Japan, Epic of the Soviet Cities, Meet Our Russian Allies, The Prime Minister: Winston S. Chuchill as seen by his enemies and friends, Reshaping Germany's Future, Sunset Over Japan, Turkey at the Crossroads). But he also penned books of humour (Have You Heard This?) and folk tales (Tales from East and West).

Rita Zena Paneth was also responsible for an early book of verse (Private Peregrinations), and other early authors included Mavis Axtell, Simon Fine, Harry C. Schnur, Alexander Howard & Ernest Newman, Magnus Irvine, James Russell, Max Mack, and Philippe d'Alba-Julienne.

Alliance published a broad range of titles, from political tracts to fairy stories. Humour played a strong part in their output, ranging from collections of stories from Italian papers to cartoons about Hitler reprinted from Russia.

The company also published The Bookshelf, edited by Philip Paneth, which ran for 17 monthly issues between January 1946 and May 1947 priced 2d. A spin-off company, Pan Press, published a range of other magazines (often edited by Philip and Rita Paneth) and booklets throughout 1945 and 1946.

Alliance maintained a busy schedule until early 1947 when their output was severely curtailed, possibly by the extremely poor weather. Their last titles appeared in May of that year. The company was still listed at their London address until 1950, but had disappeared from the telephone book by 1950.

Alliance are all but forgotten these days, with only a handful of collectors interested in their output, and then those titles by minor but popular authors of the day such as Mike Hervey and Leslie Fox.

Ida Kremer was injured in a car accident in Paris, France, in 1948; she returned to England where she died on 16 August 1948 at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington. The Kremers were living at that time at The Croft, Constable Road, Birchington, Kent.

Norman Kremer's third wife was Liselotte H. De Chabennes, whom he married in Chelsea in 2Q 1956. He eventually died in Brighton, Sussex, in 1967, aged 78.

Philip Paneth separated from his wife and went to America in the 1950s. There he continued to write, penning a number of books during the 1960s. He lived in New York, where he died on 16 May 1981. He was survived by two children, including Nigel Sefton Paneth (b. 19 Sep. 1946).

Rita Paneth was, by 1951, running a business of a kindergarten service, nursery school and children's hotel at 5 Sussex Place, Hyde Park, London W1. This was described "an hotel where rice pudding is on the menu every day, where clothes are provided for guests, and where a doctor's certificate must be produced before registering."

The 'hotel' included rooms for mothers or nannies with children, dormitories for children on their own, with a staff of college-trained nannies and teachers to take care of them. Children from all over the world were met at stations and airports with a brake decorated with nursery pictures and they leave with decorated labels on their luggage. The older children were offered ballet, riding, boxing and skating lessons, although many of the children were younger, brought to London by mothers around Christmas time  to visit the pantomimes.

Rita Paneth was quoted as saying "We have had children from every country in the world except Iceland. They settle down quite happily, and start to speak English, or understand each other's baby talk in a few days. Our most difficult problem is to persuade Eastern children to eat English vegetables." (Sunderland Daily Echo, 10 October 1951)

The hotel lasted a few years but the business, which traded under a variety of names, including Panda Kindergarten Service, Panda Children's Hotel, Kindergarten Service, Argincourt School and Panda Children's School, was sued for debts in 1953.

Rita Zena Paneth lived in Hove where she married Sol Feder in 1985. She died in Hove on 22 May 1999.

David Nathaniel Kremer, born 21 June 1915 and married Esther Z Van Praagh in 1945, died in Tavistock, Devon, in 1987, survived by two children, Ivan M. H. and Charles R. F..

John N. Makris

A back-cover biography reveals the following about Makris

John N. Makris has been a crime reporter for the Boston Traveller, feature writer for the Boston Sunday Globe, Chicago Sunday Tribune, and New York News, and book reviewer for the Boston Sunday Herald. He has also handled a number of murder investigations for a prominent Boston criminal lawyer who is now a judge. Mr. Makris is currently a free-lance writer and has contributed to many magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, Argosy and Pageant. He lives in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Makris contributed stories and true-crime non-fiction to numerous magazines from the 1930s on, including Dare-Devil Aces, Smash Stories, National Detective Cases, Headquarters Detective, Greatest Detective Cases, 20th Century Crime Cases, Argosy and Mechanix Illustrated.

Makris was born in Massachusetts, in 1917, the son of Nicholas and Diamond Makris (nee Diamando Demakis), who were both Greek immigrants. Nicholas was a pedler for a fruit company living in Watertown, Massachusetts, where his children John, Betty (d. 2014, who later married Constantine Smerlas), Olga (d. 2011, later married Charles J. Paras), James N. (d. 2008), Catherine (later married Arthur DerBoghaosian) and Irene (later married Aristides Cagos) were all born.

Aside from his work as a crime reporter, Makris wrote a single novel, published as half of an Ace Double in 1953. In 1955, Matt Cvetic (Wikipedia), who had been involved in an FBI sting, posing as a Communist, was writing a book about his experiences with the aid of "a rewrite man" by the name of John N. Makris (►). The book was dropped by a Boston publisher and it was eventually self-published as The Big Decision in 1959.

He was a patron of the Watertown Public Library. Makris, I believe, was married to Katherine C. George and had two children, Barbara and Nicholas. Makris died in 1975, survived by his wife who, when she died in 2008, was survived by three grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.

PUBLICATIONS

Novel
Nightshade (with High Stakes by Lester Dent). New York, Ace Books D-21, 1953.

Non-fiction
The Silent Investigators. The great untold story of the United States Postal Inspection Service, intro. by D. H. Stephens. New York, Dutton, 1959.
The Big Decision. The story of Matt Cvetic, Counterspy by Matt Cvetic (ghosted). Hollywood, CA. Mat Cvetic, 1959.

Others
Boston Murders, ed. John K. Makris. New York, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1948.

Pan Press Inside Detective and Front Page Detective

Pan Press was a small outfit founded shortly after the war to take advantage of the paper shortage. Their first books began appearing about five months after VE Day, drawing most of its authors from Alliance Press, which was run by the same people. Alliance published many of the same authors, including a trio of prolific pamphlet providers – most of the books being only 64-pagers – Leslie H. Fox, Michael Hervey and A. O. Pulford.

One little development of Pan Press was the publication of books in two series: Front Page Detective and Inside Detective Thriller. Both were slim (again, 64-pages) booklets with typographical covers usually promoting two of the true-crime stories inside. The collections often contained four stories reprinted from the American pulps Front Page Detective and Inside Detective, published by Dell Magazines. Inside Detective began life in March 1935, with Front Page Detective joining the ranks of true-crime magazines in August 1936.

The magazines haven't, as far as I'm aware, been indexed, so I've no way of confirming the sources of each of the stories. That said, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the lead story of "The Jig-Saw Corpse" by William F. X. Geoghagen came from Inside Detective March 1945, which advertises a story "Jigsaw Corpse in Brooklyn" on the cover. "The Oakes Case" story by Raymond C. Schindler is likely to be from the same magazine's October 1944 issue.

If anyone can fill in the gaps in the contents, please drop me a line.

Front Page Detective

Fishman, Joseph F. • Bullets for Two • (Nov 1945), 64pp, 1/6, [anon].
     • Fishman, Joseph F. * Bullets for Two * tc
     • Adams, James Taylor * The Mountain Murder * tc
     • others

Thorp, John S. • The Phantom Bandit of the Pullman • (Nov) 1945, 64pp, 1/6.
     • Thorp, John S. * The Phantom Bandit of the Pullman * tc
     • Blake, Alison * Last Date With Margaret * tc
     • others

Makris, John N. • The Mystery of Brompton Road • (Dec 1945), 64pp, 1/6, [A. O. Pulford].
     • Makris, John N. * The Mystery of Brompton Road * tc
     • Durand, Anthony * Murder of the Paris Playboy * tc
     • Fiske, Martin * Clue of the Pretty Girl's Snapshot * tc
     • Lane, Carlos * Meet Inspector King * tc
     • Stevens, Mark * Box-Car Extradition * tc

Schindler, Raymond C. • The Oakes Case • nd (Jun 1946), 62pp, 1/6.
     • Schindler, Raymond C. * The Oakes Case * tc
     • Harrell, Jack * Printed in Blood * tc
     • three others

Geoghagen, William F. X. • The Jig-Saw Corpse • (Jul 1946), 64pp, 1/6.
     • Geoghagen, William F. X. * The Jig-Saw Corpse * tc
     • Blake, Alison * Thread for a Hangman's Rope * tc
     • others

Inside Detective Thriller

Harrell, Jack • Death Comes to the Hermit [and] But Ghosts Can’t Kill by Dudley Hiller • (Mar 1946), 64pp, 1/6, [typo/Kay Furnival].
     5 • Harrell, Jack * Death Comes to the Hermit * tc
     21 • Hiller, Dudley * But Ghosts Can't Kill * tc
     31 • Murray, Bert * Mrs. Doom * tc
     47 • Tobeas, Walter S. * Cafe Society's Great Jewel Swindle * tc

Henderson, Jesse G. • She Had to Kill • nd (May 1946), 63pp, 1/6, [B.W.Farr].
     • Henderson, Jesse G. * She Had to Kill * tc
     • Makris, John N. * In Love with a Convict * tc
     • Frame, Barnabby * Death putts at the 19th Hole * tc
     • Haddock, Hugh V. Solving Missouri's Roadside Riddle * tc

Parkhill, Andy • The Queen of Spades and Robin Hood of the West by C.V. Tench • nd (Mar 1946), 64pp, 1/6, [typo/Kay Furnival].     • Parkhill, Andy * The Queen of Spades Screamed Murder! * tc
     • Tench, C. V. * Robin Hood of the West * tc
     • Durand, Anthony * Poison Plot of the Paris War Baby * tc
     • Thorp, John S. * Hide and Go Seek * tc

(* Cover images for almost the complete run of Inside Detective can be found here.)

Caught in the Act: libels in American papers (1)

In Britain, it was widely thought that American magazines and newspapers relied too much on scandals for sales and were not as rigorous in applying standards as their British counterparts—although Hollywood's depiction of news rooms was in part responsible for this. Yellow press dramas were popular in the 1930s: Exclusive, for instance, involved a newspaper proprietor making sure a lift will crash and cause injuries; Back in Circulation saw reporters Pat O'Brien (who had starred in The Front Page) and Joan Blondell digging up the dirt on an innocent woman they think is guilty of murder; meanwhile Myrna Loy played the titular Libeled Lady as newspaper owner Spencer Tracy sets out to "honey trap" her with a married man.

Perhaps one of the reasons was that defamation laws in America differed from state to state, although it was possible to bring libel actions against the same defendant in any number of different jurisdictions (known as the "multiple publication rule"), a legal device since abandoned in the USA. [see, for instance, Libel Lessons From Across the Pond: What British Courts Can Learn from the United States' Chilling Experience with the 'Multiple Publication Rule" in Traditional Media and the Internet by Itai Maytal (http://www.swlaw.edu/pdfs/jimel/3_1_maytal.pdf)]  The same system was (and still is) applicable in the UK: what became known as the Duke of Brunswick rule derived from an 1849 case which meant that the purchase of a newspaper, magazine or book constituted a separate "publication". In practical terms, it meant that a case against a single American newspaper or magazine could result in action against anyone stocking or distributing the title.

Thus, one of the unexpected issues that came to light with the import of American magazines to Britain was that of libel.

The earliest example I have been able to find in respect of what might be called a popular magazine dates from 22 June 1927 when Benjamin William Batten, joint secretary of the London branch of the Musicians' Union, claimed damaged for an alleged libel published in the 25 August 1926 issue of Variety. The defendent was the Pall Mall Deposit and Forwarding Company Ltd., who distributed copies of the paper in the UK.

In opening the case before the Lord Chief Justice at the King's Bench Division, Sir Patrick Hasatings, K.C., speaking for the plaintiff, said that the distributor of a newspaper was not liable as the publisher of a libel in the newspaper if he could prove that he had not known that the newspaper contained the libel, that his ignorance was not due to any negligence on his part, and that he had no ground for supposing that the newspaper was likely to contain libellous matter. [The law here is laid down in Emmens v. Pottle (16 QBD 354) and Vizetelly v. Mudie's Select LIbrary, Ltd. ([1900] 2 QB 170)]

The defendants, he continued, relied on that defence and it was his role to prove that the defendents ought to have satisfied themselves of the contents of the newspaper before they distributed it.

In this instance, the alleged libel hinged on regulations brought in to aid British musicians find work. In 1921, limits were placed on the number of foreign musicians and the Musicians' Union and the authorities at the Home Office assisted each other in making decisions as to whether individual foreign musicians should or should not be allowed to enter the country.

Mr Batten's son was involved in the Savoy Havana Band that played at the Savoy Hotel, which included a number of American musicians. In August 1926, Mr. de Mornys, the musical director of the Savoy Hotel, was in the United States to choose one or two American musicians to play in the UK. The regulations restricting Americans from playing had proven controversial and the 18 August issue of Variety published an article in which the writer, discussing the recent controversy of American bands having been refused permission to enter England, commented on the fact that an Englishman had come to America to engage Americans for London.

The concluding paragraph read:

One deduction has it that Reggie Batten, who is band leader at the Savoy Hotel, London, is the son of the secretary of the British Musicians' Union, and can accordingly arrange for the necessary permits to suit convenience if desiring to import American music men.

Mr. de Mornys telegraphed Mr. Batten asking him to take steps to prevent the sale of that issue of Variety in England. Mr. Batten went to the offices of Pall Mall Deposit and Forwarding Company, who had been distributing Variety in the UK for 25 years, and showed them Mr. de Mornys's telegram, and a representative of the defendent said that he would take steps to see that when the newspaper arrived in this country it would not be distributed.

In the next issue of Variety, an article appeared that stated that Mr. de Mornys had telegraphed the British Musicians' Union in order to attempt to restrain the distribution of the August 18 issue. It then gave the effect of the previous article and repeated the concluding paragraph.

Mr. Edward John Doble, managing director of Pall Mall Deposit and Forwarding, admitted when cross-examined by Sir Patrick Hastings that it was possible from the passage to believe it suggested that Mr. Batten could be actuated, because of his son, in favour of the Savoy Band in preference to others. Further cross-examination elicited the information that his company distributed on average 60 copies of Variety every week.

Defending Mr. Doble's company, Mr. Ernest Charles, said that the defendants' experience after 25 years of distribution was that Variety was not a newspaper in which libels were published. The company had refused to handle the issue of August 18 following the warning received from De Mornys. How could his client be expected to know that the issue for August 25 would repeat the offence, argued Mr. Charles, who also described as "rubbish" Mr. Batten's suggestion that, because of the words complained of, he had been held up to public scandal and hatred.

In his summing-up the following day, the Lord Chief Justice explained the law and said that the jury might think that the defendants had been altogether too casual in dealing with the issue of Variety of August 25 after being warned of libellous matter which had appeared in the issue of August 18.

Mr. Batten had brought the action to show that what had been stated was absolutely untrue and to vindicate his position and character. The jury returned a verdict for Batten, assessing the damages at £100, with costs.

The case had a sequel in a second case against another distributor of Variety, Daws Shipping Agency. When approached by Mr Batten, following his receipt of a telegram from Mr. de Mornys, Mr. Robert Daws assured him that the matter would be dealt with. When Mr. Batten called again, Mr. Daws told him that the offending paragraph had been cut out of copies.

When Mr. Batten went back a week later and picked up a copy of the August 25 issue, Daws had jokingly said "You are not going to sue us for libel, are you?" Unfortunately, Batten found that the libel of August 18 had been repeated in this issue and did indeed sue.

The defendents argued that, following Batten's second visit, Batten had thanked Daws for the courteous and proper manner in which he had dealt with the libel in the issue of August 18 (excising the offending paragraph) and told him that, if there were any further trouble, he would let him know.

Since Daws had heard nothing more, he reasonably concluded that there was no further trouble. As he had distributed Variety for 26 years without complaint, Daws said, he had no reason to suppose that there would be any repetition of the libel in the issue of August 25.

However, a new jury convened to hear this second case also returned for the plaintiff and Daws Shipping Agency was fined £25 damages, with costs.

Appeals against the judgements were heard at the Court of Appeal on 18 November 1927 before the Master of the Rolls, who, in giving judgement, said that the defence offered by both companies was based on Emmens v. Pottle. This defence was, in part, that the defendants "had no ground for supposing that the newspaper was likely to contain libellous matter". However, in both cases being considered, the defendants had taken no particular care to examine the issue of August 25 before distributing it, despite having the issue of August 18 "as a danger signal before them". Lord Justice Atkin and Lord Justice Lawrence delivered judgement to the same effect and the appeals were dismissed with costs.

Sources: Portsmouth Evening News (24 June 1927), The Times (23 June 1927, 24 June 1927, 19 November 1927), Yorkshire Post (24 June 1927), Variety (18 August 1926, 25 August 1926), Wells Journal (23 March 1937).

Caught in the Act: Gorringe's

(More research for Caught in the Act... this is part of my research into how American magazines were distributed in the UK.)

Gorringe's Travel and News Agency boasted in 1919 that they carried the largest selection of American periodicals in London.

Frank Joshua Gorringe was born on September 5 1880 and baptized a year later, on 11 September 1871, in Chelsea, London. He was the son of Joshua Frank Gorringe, a licensed victualler, and Emma Eliza Gorringe (nee Hollot), of 617 King's Road, Fulham. Because his father was known as Frank, his son was called Joshua, and it was as Joshua F. Gorringe he is to found in the 1891 census, as a boarder at school in Little Ilford, Essex, run by Cecile Barbier and Florence Benington.

By 1911, Frank was a shipping agent, living with his brother in Chiswick, although he shortly after moved to 24 Nightingale Road, Carshalton, where he was listed in the 1913-15 telephone directories.

At the age of 38, Gorringe was married on 29 September 1918 to 23-year-old Dora Green. At that time his residence was given as Rusford Road, Streatham. In later electoral roll records the two could be found at 27 Charing Cross Mansions [fl. 1921/25], and then at 4 Acanthus Road, Battersea [fl.1927/33]. [Dora Gorringe was living in Kingston-upon-Thames in the 1960s and is believed to have died there in 1976, aged 83.]

During this period—and at least as early as 1910—Gorringe was associated with Robert Whitfield Beaumont Daw (1869-1942), running the business of Daw's Steamship Agency—general freight insurance, railway, shipping, forwarding and general bullion and money changers—of 17 Green Street, Charing Cross Road. The partnership was dissolved by mutual consent in May 1918, with Gorringe taking on the business which, from November 1918, became known as Gorringe's Shipping and American News Agency. [Daw's Shipping Agency was struck off the company register in 1934.]

Gorringe's was like a number of firms and brought in American periodicals as part of their general business, which boasted of being the principal agency for makubg travel arrangements for theatrical artistes journeying between America and Europe; Gorringe's adverts appeared prominently in Variety.

On 27 August 1925, an Extraordinary Resolution was passed during a meeting of the company that Gorringe's should be voluntarily wound up and that a liquidator should be appointed.

What happened to Frank Gorringe in later life is a bit of a mystery. I have found one family tree which claims that he died on 12 December 1962, aged 83. However, a little investigation proves that this date relates to Frank Gorringe of 135 Sevenoaks Way, St. Paul's Cray, Kent, who left his estate to his spinster sister, Ivy. Earlier records reveal that he was born in St. Mary Cray, Orpington, in 1880, and was a gardener in St. Paul's Cray at the time of the 1911 census.

His company, however, seems to have survived the liquidation and I believe it continued in business but under different hands. At some point, the company was taken over by an American comedian by the name of Fred Duprez (photo above) who found a great deal of success touring the British music halls with his act and with his comedy play My Wife's Family, which went on to be filmed many times. (Below you'll find a couple of recordings by Duprez... something to listen to while you read the rest of this post!)

Duprez was born in Detroit on 6 September 1884 and had first appeared on the stage in 1899. After spending five years in stock and repertory companies, he began appearing on the variety stage. He first appeared in England in 1909 at the Bedford Music Hall, Camden Town.

He toured extensively in Mr Manhattan in 1920, 1921 and 1924 and in a number of reviews over the years. He also acted in a number of films in the 1930s.

Duprez was certainly a director of the company, although how active he was in the day-to-day running I have no idea, as he had a busy career on the stage. I have only been able to discover two other names associated with the company around that period: C. J. Vidler and B. A. Sheppard. The former, I believe, was also a comic actor associated with Duprez. The latter has eluded me completely. Vidler was chairman of a company by name of Milton Gorringe, which was almost certainly related and which went into liquidation in 1936. [I believe he might be Cyril John Vidler, 1903?-1965, who is described as a "director" on passenger lists as Vidler travelled between the UK and America in the 1930s. Whether this is a company director or a stage director isn't revealed.]

Fred Duprez died suddenly. He had been in America for a week with his wife, Florence, and was travelling home on board a liner on 27 October 1938 when he had a heart attack. The news was sent by cable to Gorringe's, who noted him as a former director. Duprez was survived by his wife and daughter, June Duprez, who was an actress.

Gorringe's Shipping and American News Agency was eventually struck from the company register in March 1957.

Caught in the Act: Henry Chalmers Roberts

Although there was a constant crossover of content between British and American magazines, it was only the introduction of the International Copyright Treaty in 1891 that ended the wholesale pirating of stories and features. Some American publishers had established London offices for the distribution of their titles, or struck deals with already established British publishers. Thus Harper's Magazine began a European edition in 1850 published by Sampson Low, Lippincott's Magazine was published by Ward Lock from 1890 and many other American titles were published by Frederick Warne, Macmillan, Hodder & Stoughton and T. Fisher Unwin.

Chalmers Roberts came to the UK in 1900 as a representative of Doubleday, Page & Co. to set up a deal to publish a British edition of Doubleday's The World's Work magazine, launched in American in  November 1900. The British publisher was William Heinemann, who had already forged links with Frank Doubleday in the 1890s.

The World's Work: An illustrated magazine of national efficiency and social progress (there was a brief period when the title became The World's Work and Play; the subtitle was later shortened to A Magazine of Today) debuted in December 1902. Initially edited by globe-travelling journalist and Liberal MP Henry Norman, MP, it would eventually run to 252 monthly issues until 1923 when it was retitled World Today.

Henry Chalmers Roberts was born in Austin, Texas, on 31 July 1870 [possibly 1869], the eldest son of Major General Albert Samuel Roberts and his wife Fanny Gordon (nee Chalmers). He was educated in private schools in Texas and Virginia before attending the University of Texas.

Roberts was sent to the American Legation, Constantinople, in 1893, as a junior diplomat. Here he became a war correspondent for the Daily News during the Turko-Grecian War of 1897; he later covered the Spanish-American War for the Daily Mail in 1898. As a journalist, Roberts contributed to Atlantic, Harper's, Everybody's and The World's Work.

Established in the UK, Chalmers Roberts became managing director of  World's Work Ltd., which was wound-up in November 1913 and relaunched as World's Work (1913) Ltd., based in Kingswood, Surrey, where William Heinemann had their print works.

The growth of cheaper, popular fiction magazines in the USA was reflected in the UK, with the British edition of Short Stories published by World's Work from March 1920. This proved so popular that it was published twice a month from 1922 until the outbreak of the Second World War. Further popular imports followed, including The Frontier in April 1925 and West in August 1926—all three titles relying heavily on westerns, which were proving hugely popular in Britain in the 1920s.

In the 1930s, World's Work continued to produce British editions, launching All-Star in 1931, based on the Doubleday title which folded soon after, leading All-Star to merge with Frontier; the merged papers folded in 1933, briefly making way for All-Star Detective Magazine.

World's Work began publishing their own titles alongside short-lived reprints of Modern Stories and All Western Magazine, most notably the Master Thriller series, which reprinted stories from Short Stories, Frontier and elsewhere mixed in with the occasional original. Spin-offs from this series included a number of highly collectable horror magazines and the science fiction magazine Tales of Wonder. The editor of the latter, Walter Gillings, would later recall meeting with Chalmers Roberts, describing him as "a large, bewhiskered man more than twice my age with a vast experience of the publishing world." ['The Impatient Dreamers 6 Year of the Blast-Off', Vision of Tomorrow, p.21]

This would have been in 1937. Chalmers Roberts had for many years lived at 25 Jermyn Street, London SW1 and was single. In 1944, Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge was published by Heinemann in the UK and Doubleday in the USA, which its author characterised as a thinly veiled true story. Roberts was reputedly the inspiration for the character Elliott Templeton, and was described by Maugham's biographer Selina Hastings as "a retired American diplomat [and] pederast." [Quoted in Gay Novels of Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, 1881-1981: A Reader's Guide by Drewey Wayne Gunn, p.38]

Roberts returned to America, where he died in New York on 2 April 1949, aged 79. A brief obituary in The Times (5 April 1949, p.6) noted that he "played an active part in the promotion of Anglo-American relations, on the committee of the English-Speaking Union and as a member of the Pilgrim Club, throughout the 40 years he spent in London."

Update: There is some question as to whether Chalmers Roberts came to the UK in 1900 in order to set up the World's Work magazine or whether he arrived later, as some sources state that he came to the UK in 1906. My source for 1900 is Who's Who Among North American Authors. Both the 1929 and 1939 editions state that he "Went to London in 1900 as representative of Doubleday, Page and Co., residing there since."

The 1906 date relates to when he took over the editorship of the magazine from Henry Norman, who was the founding editor and ran the magazine for five years. Chalmers Roberts took over as editor with issue 49, the fifth anniversary issue, dated December 1906. Roberts subsequently travelled between the UK and the USA fairly regularly, obtaining a passport in 1915 at which time he was said to have been working in Washington DC (having returned to the USA shortly after the outbreak of the First World War). He was listed as living at 25 Jermyn Street, London, as early as 1908, but I have been unable to trace his whereabouts earlier than that.

(* The Mystery Stories pic is from the FictionMags Index where a number of issues of the magazine still need to be indexed – so if you have copies of issue #12, 16, 17, 22 please get in touch.)

Caught in the Act: Gomer and others (1942) part 2

Prosecuting the case for the County Solicitor, Mr. P. Prideaux stated by Ronald Gomer was the ringleader of the three men charged. He held the post of organist and choirmaster at a church and had been in the habit of befriending other members of that church and bringing them to his house in Wimborne.

The earliest acquaintance was Harold Miller, who he befriended as far back as 1929. Gomer used to stay at Miller's parents' house in Winton when he went over to perform church duties at the weekend. Gomer also struck up acquaintance with three choir boys, befriended them, and asked them to come to his house.

Having no desire to see others get into trouble, Gomer made a statement in which he explained very fully his mode of life—how he came to commit the acts and the circumstances in which photographs were taken and letters written. Det.-Sgt. Fudge, of Wimborne, gave evidence that a search of Gomer's house had resulted in the discovery of 17 negatives, which were subsequently developed.

Gomer, later described as a man of artistic temperament, had been the organist and choirmaster at a Bournemouth church for 26 years. An only child, he had developed an early interest in music and he later earned a living teaching music and as an organist at local churches. He attributed his behaviour chiefly to "a sense of loneliness"—following the death of his parents in 1932 he had "more or less" lived alone and devoted himself to his interests in music, poetry and art. He had produced a masque at Wimborne in 1934 and published some small books of poetry.

He had known Francis (Frank) Hart for some years and they had taken their holidays together. Hart was born in Wimborne and had been employed as an assistant teacher to a local school where he remained for 15 years. Early in 1941, he became headmaster of a school in Dorchester and had given every satisfaction in his employment and spent many hours in work of national importance. Since boyhood he had been a member of the church choir and had been very active in matters connected with the church. For 15 years he held the position of a Scoutmaster.

Hart and Gomer visited each other's homes, playing cards. During the trial, Gomer was described as having done excellent work in connection with church matters, having been vestry clerk at a Wimborne church, chairman of a Scout troop at the Bournemouth church, and honorary secretary of the Wimburnians Association. Everyone spoke very highly of his energies in these directions.

However, at his trial, Mr. Justice Lawrence said that "I have no doubt that you, Gomer, were principally responsible," when passing sentence. Gomer, for his part, had said that when taking the photographs, that it was all treated as a joke. At the time of the acts, he said, their seriousness did not register in his mind and, of the 81 letters he had written to Harold Miller, he admitted that quite a number were indecent, but they were intended to be read only by Miller.

Miller, a native of Oldham, had worked as a clerk before joining the R.A.F. in 1940. He was an energetic worker connected with a Bournemouth church, being sacristan and Scoutmaster for the church troop. He had first met Gomer at the age of 17 but nothing had happened between them until 1938. Gomer had shown a keen interest in his welfare and, whilst unemployed for short periods, had received financial assistance from his friend. Commenting on the letters, Miller said he believed they were a "mere fabrication of a lonely mind."

Mr. J. B. Carson, for Gomer, described how the latter believed he suffered a "medical kink" and that he had expressed a desire to try and undergo some treatment to stop these tendencies. Carson asked for leniency in view of the fact that this was so much a medical case.

Mr. Justice Lawrence clearly disagreed and on 19 January 1942 sentenced Gomer to three years penal serviture. Hart and Miller each received six months imprisonment in the second division. At trial, all three had pleaded guilty.