Hell before Lent

Edward McCune and Cecil Rich, undergraduates at College of Emporia (Kans.), had read so much about the fun to be had in New Orleans at Mardi Gras that they stole two cars and held up a filling station to get there in time for last week's frolic. For robbing a second filling station on the outskirts of New Orleans and kidnapping its attendant, Funsters McCune & Rich were clapped into jail. Even so they could congratulate themselves on having taken part in a two-day pre-Lenten spree which, for sheer hell-raising, was unsurpassed since the fabulous days when the Louisville & Nashville Railroad used to send smiling black waiters to greet all incoming trains with great trays of free Sazerac cocktails.

In the vieux carre, Lillian McDowell, whose profession was listed as "cabaret hostess," teetered out of a saloon with a man she had picked up. Soon she staggered back inside clutching her stomach and moaning: "Slim cut me." Hostess McDowell died. Police began looking for "Slim."

Estelle Hughes, another "cabaret hostess," left the Red Dot Cafe with a sailor and a jockey, wound up at dawn on the lawn of the Louisiana & Arkansas Railway station. There was a bullet through her brain and her skirt had been pulled up over her head. Police arrested the jockey. At the dead woman's rooming house, her 9-year-old daughter was dressed in an Indian suit, wailing for her mother to take her out to see the parades.

Meantime, a bartender was stabbed, 75 other of the city's half-million celebrants injured themselves in fights, falls, wrecks. And while householders and servants were racketing around the downtown streets during the pageants of Proteus, Rex & Comus, a platoon of sneak thieves took the opportunity to raid the residential district.

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