100 years ago in The Record
Saturday, Nov. 30, 1918. A man arrested for threatening a woman with a pistol at a Troy hotel is believed to be both a deserter and a bigamist – or as one reporter puts it, a “double deserter.”
John L. Johnson is arrested at the unnamed hotel after he “flourished a pistol” at Mrs. A. D. Hogle, a recent widow who married Johnson while he was on furlough from the USS Indiana in Claremont NH. Hogle tells Detective Joseph H. Brophy that she left three children behind, two months after her first husband’s death, to take an “ante-nuptial trip” to the Collar City with Johnson and $400 of her savings.
“They came to Troy, she entrusting her money to him, and he using it freely on himself,” the Sunday Budget reports, “They visited cabarets and theaters and, finally believing that he meant to desert her, she searched his pockets while he slept, recovered $110 of her $400, and also found evidence that he may have married another woman.”
The evidence is a marriage certificate recording the union of Anna Niteuck and one John La Claire in New York City. Brophy believes that La Claire and Johnson are one and the same. While Hogle read the document, Johnson awoke and threatened her.
Hogle declines to press charges against Johnson and “appeared glad to get back her $110, with which she left Troy for her New Hampshire home … a sadder but wiser woman than when she arrived.” Brophy delivers Johnson to the Watervliet Arsenal for processing.
Knitting Mills and War Work
Now that the world war is over, businesses throughout the Record reading area are concerned about their contracts with the U.S. government. Among the most concerned are the knit goods manufacturers of Cohoes.
James H. Shine is the president of the Hope Knitting Company and an executive of the Knit Goods Manufacturers’ Association of America. Before leaving today for a National Chamber of Commerce meeting in Atlantic City, Shine denies a report that the federal government has canceled all its orders with Spindle City mills.
“There has been no official notice of cancellations received by the mills working on army or navy orders,” Shine says, “The telegrams received by the government were misunderstood.”
The government will pay for fulfillment of current orders, but will not place further orders with the Cohoes mills after January 1.
Shine estimates that civilian orders are “enough to keep the mills going for several months” after the government work runs out. However, “it is possible the mill employees may be put on shorter day hours, possibly working five days a week.”