Man shoots himself five times, takes streetcar to police station
Sometimes the most interesting stories in old newspapers are small, like a 150-word gem out of Victoria on May 23, 1912.
The headline in the Vancouver World was “Shot Himself Five Times and Lives.”
“Firing three shots into his body, one above his heart, one into his mouth, and one into his ear, Alfred Sleep, who came to Nanaimo a few days ago, made an attempt to suicide at Esquimalt shortly after noon yesterday,” the World reported.
“Sleep boarded a street car and went to the city lock-up about two o’clock to notify the police that he had attempted to kill himself.
Constable Cremer looked him over and saw the little streams of blood trickling down from the orifices of the bullets’ entrance, and realizing that the would-be suicide had done as he states, he hurried the man to the Jubilee hospital in the police patrol, and Dr. G.A. Hall went to attend him.
“An X-ray examination will be made be locate the numerous bullets. Meanwhile Sleep rests comparatively easy.”
The Victoria Daily Times noted “the revolver used was not a high power revolver, which apparently explains the reason Sleep is alive today.”
Alas, there are no further mentions of Alfred Sleep in either the Victoria or Vancouver papers, so lord knows what happened to him. There is no mention of an Alfred Sleep in the death records at B.C. Archives, either.
The 1912 newspapers are very entertaining, particularly the sports pages, which can be ludicrously overwritten.
It rained that week, so when the sun came out for a baseball doubleheader on May 24 between the Vancouver Beavers and the Seattle Giants, the World’s baseball writer was beside himself.
“The pent up sunshine which one Jupe restrained with an aqueous veil during the early part of the week cast its effulgent rays with an added brilliance yesterday, making the diamond thoroughly fit for play,” wrote the anonymous scribe.
Jupe is an abbreviation for Jupiter Pluvius, the Roman god who brings rain. Effulgent is one of those words you never hear anymore — it means “shining brightly.”
For some reason the World’s writer called the Giants the Bugs. Perhaps it was an attempt at an insult, because the Giants were the top team in the Northwestern League.
The World noted Virgil (Butch) Belford “pitched a magnificent game in the first inning ” for Vancouver, but “after that he ceased to be an enigma and in the second spasm the buggy ones punctuated the plate with a couple of tallies amassed through clean swatting of the heavyweight type.”
Luckily Vancouver’s Eli Cates performed “herculean deeds” with his bat, walloping one of Seattle pitcher Bill James’ “benders” so that “the sphere describing a beautiful parabola alighted upon the roof of the flour factory far beyond the left field fence.”
“The swat is the longest which has been made on the home grounds this season,” the World said, “and nets for Mr. Cates diverse articles of apparel designated by the vulgar public as ‘glad rags,’ including one pair of socks, a $3 hat, a pair of duck pants and two quarts of beer donated by a local dealer.”
The leadoff hitter for Vancouver, by the way, was a 21-year-old left fielder named Demaggio. It’s not known whether Nick Demaggio was related to baseball great Joe Dimaggio, but he was small, fast and a good hitter, batting over .300 in seven of his 12 seasons in the minor leagues. He played only one season here before bouncing around from the Butte Miners to the Phoenix Senators, Beaumont Exporters, Dallas Steers, St. Joseph Saints, Austin Rangers and Houston Buffaloes. After he retired from baseball, he apparently became a film editor in Hollywood, and worked on several Charlie Chan movies.
Visually the most striking thing about the May 1912 papers are the ads. One is titled “CAPITAL RUSHING TO ALBERNI,” and makes the Port Alberni skyline look like Manhattan. It features an illustration of a limousine that’s filled with top-hat-wearing capitalists, racing toward “the radiating centre and distributing point of Vancouver Island and the Gateway of the Dominion.”