T H E S I N S O F N E W Y O R K As "Exposed" by the Police Gazette By: Edward Van Emery INTRODUCTION BY FRANKLIN P. ADAMS (F.P.A.)
"Whither are we drifting?" ask the hodiernal tabloids. "We are on the crest of the crime wave!" said the journals of the mid-Nineties, whose noisy yellowness of that day is now only the inaudible yellowness of age. "The city is rampant with crime," said the Rome Tribune. "SIN SWEEPS SODOM, SAYS LOT," was probably the headline of the Gomorrah Mirror. Which is by way of saying that the history of a people is shown in the record of its vices and crimes and sins. Shown as accurately and to the most of us more interestingly__as in its political history. And when these vice-and-crime records are at once more and less than the facts that is, when they are the records of a prejudiced reporter rather than the log of a police blotter, they become more fascinating. For the years have corroded the prejudice away, and the scream of yesterday that froze the blood is the absurd squeak of today that arouses if it can be heard at all____laughter. To most of us the Police Gazette was something that we saw in barber-shops of the Eighties and Nineties. One of the first jokes I ever heard (at Sam T. Jack's Madison Street Opera House, Chicago) was "Seen the Police Gazette?" "No, I shave myself." Of course, the names of Puck and Judge sometimes were substituted, but that wasn't funny to me, because we used to have Puck and Judge every week at home. But I never saw a copy of the Police Gazette outside of Frank's barber-shop, which was on the south side of 35th Street, between Indiana and Michigan Avenues. It was, as World's Fair Chicagoans will recall, across the street from Hoteling's Bicycle Repair Shop, and half a block from the drugstore of Thos. H. McInerney and the residence of the growing boy who is now S.W. Straus, but who was then Art's big brother, Simon. The Police Gazette was fascinating to us boys whose faces never needed Frank's razor oftener than once a week. But I remember little of what I read or saw in the Gazette, though the little is vivid and accurate. I remember a feeling of disappointment when the picture of a pugilist appeared on the front page; for the pugilistic world was not my interest, even as it bores me now. But Women and Crime, that magic front-page partnership, dear to the heart of every circulation manager past, present, and future__interested and thrilled me. That is, pictorially, for I never read anything but the description of the picture and I would gaze at the picture a long time. Usually it was the picture of a woman, or of many women. Sometimes they were pursuers, sometimes pursued. Occasionally somebody had a revolver, later known to headline writers as a gun or gat. But it was ankles and legs that really got me. Those were the days when a woman's shoe-top was considered, as you might say, uptown. And these pictures showed some women's skirts, thousands of skirts, in abandoned disarray. Women were running, and were ostentatiously careless whether they displayed their legs almost to the knee. Yes, I used to stare at those pictures, and so did all the boys that I knew. Some of those boys have attained distinction in one field or another; but none has yet served a jail sentence or a term in the poorhouse. And while this proves nothing, I submit, to the censors who talk of Harm to Youth, that all these things , the amorous movies, the pornographic tabloids, the so-called obscene books, do no harm whatever. I am not controversial enough to try to prove that they do good. For either Wisdom or Age, or the mixture, tells me that nothing does youth much harm. Or good. I do remember some of the advertisements that the Old Police Gazette carried, and I think that they were harmful and insidious. it seems to me that the Gazette, with the various crusades against umbrageous advertising, must have had litigious difficulties in its day, for it published dozens of "cures" for all manner of venereal diseases, remedies for impotence in appeals to "weak men and women, "Pleasure Promoter," tells how 'twas done to Helen," "How a Married Woman Goes to Bed," 10 full-page illustrations, with comic reading, 10c," and hundreds of that sort. Of the influences of the Police Gazette__The National Police Gazette, the Leading Illustrated Sporting Journal in the World__on the sporting life, especially on boxing, Mr. Van Every has written exhaustively in this book. His book shows, uniquely and fascinatingly, a great part of the history of the American people, their tastes, their violence's, their recreations. I would rather read a file of the Police Gazette than a file of the Century Magazine, or even of Harper's Weekly. And I'd rather read Van Every's report and interpretation of those files than read the files. He tells me that in its heyday, long before the tabloids beat the P.G. at its own game, its circulation was about 400,000, and on big fistic occasions like the Sullivan-Kilrain fight it went as big as half a million. Today the circulation, I am told, is below 50,000; and what with the daily newspapers printing pictures that make even the old Gazette seem conservative, and tabloids out-sensationing the P.G. at its pinkest period, the once popular weekly is in what the boys call a Tough Spot. Its zippiest picture (June 7, 1930) is its front page one of Clara Bow, a further cry from the nude than you can see in the movies. Its "hottest" advertisements in that issue were such as "If you want a 'rich' and pretty sweetheart, write Grace Dotson, South Euclid, Ohio," and "The 'Stuff' You Want for Men Only. 20 French style pictures. 9 original, all different, daring and spicy French stories. Momart Importing Co., Brooklyn." I feel old, writing about the Police Gazette. I feel almost like answering one of those advertisements to assure me that I could regain my Vanished Virility for a dime, ten cents, the tenth of a dollar. But what makes me feel old is the certainty that before long my two-year-old son, getting his 10,000,000 circulation newspaper over the television radio, will be writing an introduction to Van Every's grandson's history of the 1931 tabloids, and how we Old Gentlemen used to get a kick out of those outworn one-hoss shays of journalism. But He'll need this book for reference, the little upstart! F.P.A. This completes the Introduction to the book "Sins of New York". Sins of New York As "Exposed" by the Police Gazette By Edward Van Every Publisher: Frederick A. Stokes Company--New York Copyright: 1930 3 Printings October 15, October 23 and October 30. Prepared and Transcribed by Miriam Medina RETURN to POLICE MAIN RETURN to MANHATTAN MAIN Back To BROOKLYN Main