Victims of a disease. Toronto drunks need help
Friday, 28 May 2010 05:00
One hundred years ago, clippings from the newspapers of May 28, 1910.
Peterborough Review. Toronto’s drunkards are victims of a disease and need help, the Review argues.
They weren’t always drunks, and when they are sober, in the solitude of the cells, many are the good resolutions made. Prison bars are strong, but the bonds of booze are stronger, and is it any wonder that the lower drunkards of Toronto and Col. Denison, Toronto’s magistrate, are very well acquainted.
What can he do for that shivering wretch in front of him? The prisoner should have medicine, yet there is no medicine but 30 days. He should have a handshake and a word of good cheer, but it’s the rattle of the wheels of the Black Maria instead.
The drunkard is the victim of a disease, and the Toronto News is speaking with good sense when it advocates the establishment of a public home for the cure of the inebriate. Dominion Parole Officer Archibald is in favour of this plan, and the success often attendant upon courses in high-priced sanitariums should, upon investigation by the government, prove an incentive to open a public place of enforced retreat for the poor man who is down and out.”
No church, no baseball
Toronto Globe. Pittsburgh baseball fans won’t be able to go to Sunday afternoon baseball games unless they first go to a Sunday morning church service. Under an agreement between the churches and the city’s leading amateur baseball club, no one will be admitted to the Sunday ball games without “a ticket which is obtained only at certain Pittsburgh churches after the Sunday morning service… No person who does not sit out the service, no matter what the length of the sermon, will be given a ticket.” Church attendance is expected to increase.
Battleship roller skating
Toronto Star. “The craze for roller skating which has seized the officers of the navy is, it is stated, responsible for a good deal of discontent on the battleship Vanguard, which left Plymouth to join the first battle squadron of the Home Fleet,” the Star reports from London.
The Vanguard, Britain’s fifth dreadnaught, has a crew of nearly one thousand men, and an upper deck unobstructed by ventilators and other gear. That makes it ideal for a roller skating rink. In other British warships, half the upper deck is reserved for the exclusive use of officers with the other half available for the crew. The roller skating rink on the Vanguard takes up three quarters of the upper deck and is available only for the exclusive use of officers. In a petition to the Admiralty the lower ranks complain that they have scarcely room to move and take fresh air on their diminished share of the upper deck and that changes in the berthing arrangements further restrict their available spartan space.
Dog and pony legacy
Belleville Intelligencer. An “old gentleman” of Simcoe County has left $1,000 ($25,000 today) for a favourite dog and pony. The money is to be invested with the annual interest used for the care and feeding of the animals. After the pets die, the money is to go to the Muskoka Free Hospital for Consumptives, i.e., tuberculosis patients.