Barbers' Bible

If by strange chance a young lady of quality should happen upon a copy of the current Police Gazette ("the leading illustrated sporting journal in the world") she might glance casually at the photos of showgirls and boxers, wrinkle her nose over some of the advertisements, then in boredom toss the pink sheet aside.

But today's is a far cry from the National Police Gazette which, some 80 years ago, announced: "We offer this week a most interesting record of horrid murders, outrageous robberies, bold forgeries, astounding burglaries, hideous rapes, vulgar seductions . . . in various parts of the country." The story of that lusty childhood, and the glorious heyday that was to follow during the "gaslitera" is told by Edward Van Every in his book Sins of New York--As "Exposed" by The Police Gazette (Frederick A. Stokes Co.) which appeared last fortnight. Few--even of those who remember the Gazette in every barber shop as the indispensable reference work on sports--were aware that the lurid sheet began in the role of vice-crusader. George Wilkes and Enoch Camp established it in Manhattan in 1845 "to assist the operations of the police department . . . by publishing a minute description of [felons'] names, aliases and persons. . . ." The exposures started with policy gambling (now a thriving operation in most large Negro centres) and stopped at nothing. Violence and threats of libel alike failed to stop the editors. The Gazette dealt in harsh detail with one John B. Gough, temperance lecturer, whom it claimed to have found intoxicated in a Manhattan brothel. It pilloried a Mrs. Ann Lohman--"Mme. Restell, the female abortionist." It had scant sympathy for Albert Deane Richardson, shot to death in the Tribune office by the husband of the woman he loved.

After 1876, when it was purchased by the late Richard Kyle Fox, the Gazette acquired a certain complaisance; the Richardson case became in retrospect "the most beautiful of illicit love tragedies.'' But under Publisher Fox's energetic direction the Gazette became not only a famed arbiter and promoter of sporting events, but a sensational forerunner of today's tabloids. The No. 1 writer was Samuel A. Mackeever who, as "Paul Prowler" and "The Old Rounder," showed the way for modern broadway colyumists. In its new pink dress, with full page drawings of dashing males cavorting with broad-hipped, big-bosomed females, the Gazette reached close to 400,000 circulation, brought its owner nearly $3,000,000. (At his death, November 1922, Publisher Fox's estate was valued at more than $1,500,000.) But the Gazette's fortunes have dwindled, as has its circulation--now said to be about 50,000. The Police Gazette today has nothing even faintly suggestive of such headlines as "SNARED BY A SCOUNDREL. AN INNOCENT COUNTRY BEAUTY . . ." "HUMAN HASH" (topping the story of a railroad wreck); "ROAST MAN" (above a hotel fire story). Indeed, it now resorts to its own back files for material. But the advertisements have retained their old aroma: marked cards, "trick" dice, "vigor" tablets for men. Typical classified advertisement of last week: "For a lovely chummy pal. write Nan Bell, National Park, N. J. (Stamp, please)."

Girl Reporter

The staff of the New York Evening Journal last week discovered a story in their midst: pretty young Nan O'Reilly, reporter for the sporting department, had been coming to work for a year and a half in a swanky limousine with liveried chauffeur. She would get out of the car around the corner from the office and walk in like the workaday rest of the crowd. For a year and a half she had kept secret the fact that she was married, that her husband is a millionaire--President Silas Newton of Indiana Southwestern Gas & Utilities Corp. He is an able golfer (six times champion of Virginia). They met at a tournament she was covering. Often after their marriage they met again at tournaments--formally, without sign of their relation. "When we get back home we have many a laugh." She was afraid she would lose her job if her Journal chiefs knew she was married, rich. Newspaper work has an abiding fascination for those who have followed it. You get about so much, meet so many "interesting people." Nan O'Reilly would have hated to give it up. Even as her husband had let her, a Lucy Stone Leaguer, keep her own name, so her bosses let her, an able reporter, keep her job.*

Hearst in Milwaukee

When William Randolph Hearst comes to town with a newspaper, as a rule he comes to stay. Last week when Hearst's Wisconsin News was combined with Paul Block's Milwaukee Sentinel, to be directed by Publisher Block, observers marked it "the first time Hearst has really pulled in his horns in a great city." His name has not prospered well in Milwaukee, said the gossipers, and he has enlisted the aid of his great & good friend Paul Block to buck the dominant Journal. Others thought the invasion of the field by the Chicago Tribune's Milwaukee edition was causing worry. But "inside" Hearstmen were little impressed. The combine was for the purpose of economy, they insisted, and leaves the true situation unchanged. Toward the end of the War, Hearst went to Milwaukee at the behest of a group of wealthy German-Americans and acquired the Evening Wisconsin, the Daily News (evening), and the now-defunct Free Press. Later he bought the morning Sentinel from the late Charles F. Pfister, traction tycoon, hotel owner and political boss. While the evening papers, merged as the Wisconsin News, whooped up the late Robert Marion La Follette for President in 1924, the Sentinel boomed Calvin Coolidge. About a year ago Hearst tired of the staunchly Republican Sentinel and sold it to Paul Block. Six months ago the Wisconsin News missed a chance for immense local prestige by failing to leap aboard the political bandwagon of Philip La Follette, who was swept into the Republican candidacy for Governor by a landslide victory (TIME, Sept. 29). Soon afterward the Wisconsin News had a new managing editor--Albert E. Dale who. as managing editor of the Detroit Times, had picked the winner in the heated mayoralty recall fight there.

*Other newspaperwomen who lately married rich and noted men who thereupon ceased being newspaperwomen: Anne Seddon Kinsolving of the Baltimore News (married John Nicholas Brown, "richest U. S. bachelor"): and Mary Emma Landenberger (married Richard B. Scandrett, Jr., lawyer nephew of Dwight Whitney Morrow).

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