100 years ago in the Saratogian

Saturday, Aug. 10, 1918. A visitor in Saratoga Springs is hospitalized in serious condition after getting his face slashed in a hotel bar fight this afternoon, The Saratogian reports.

Following contemporary custom, the reporter doesn’t name the hotel where the fight takes place. It is reported that neither man involved was registered at the hotel.

William Miller, the apparent assailant, is being held on an assault charge, but his arraignment will wait until doctors at Saratoga Hospital determine whether the victim, Frank Heimus, will survive the encounter.

Heimus is brought to the hospital around 3 p.m., “bleeding from razor slashes across his face, from ear to ear. A reporter describe his face as “a mass of gashes, into any of which two fingers might be laid.” Presuming that he survives, doctors believe that Heimus will be disfigured for life.

Officer Carroll Injured

Saratoga Springs motorcycle officer Edward Carroll pulls over to assist a driver on the dry bridge between the Spa City and Ballston Spa this morning, but ends up needing assistance himself.

“Asking if he could give assistance, and being answered in the negative, he remounted the motorcycle and, driving on the right side of the bridge, was just about to make the sharp turn into the road when he saw coming toward him and immediately in front of him” a Ford driven by Truman K. Derby of Schenectady.

Derby had just taken the “short turn” from the road onto the bridge. The bridge’s “tight board siding” screens Derby and Carroll from each other until it’s too late to prevent a collision.

“Carroll was thrown into the air, and landed on his head on the bridge,” The Saratogian reports, “The Ford car was stopped speedily and the owner picked up Carroll and brought him to the city, and then, after reporting at police headquarters, proceeded on his way to Ticonderoga.”

Dr. Arthur J. Leonard treats Carroll at police headquarters for a wrenched back, arm and leg. “Had either car been going at a rapid rate of speed,” the reporter notes, “serious results would have followed.” Carroll is sent home and is “able to be out after the accident, even though his injuries were painful.”

Local Work Goes Into Power Plant.

“Saratogians will be proud to know that Saratoga Springs machinery is being used in the fight against the Hun,” the local paper reports.

A Dupont Engineering plant is using pumps, screens and valves from Baker Manufacturing Corporation in the manufacture of smokeless gunpowder. Dupont chief engineer H. M. Pierce urges Baker to “kindly engage working every hour possible on all orders not yet completed.”

— Kevin Gilbert