Mrs. Meyer went to court and won
Today we learn how justice dealt with the notorious Mrs. G.H. Walker, a suspiciously stylish, bronze-headed young woman from Memphis who led astray the Army captain in charge of teaching cooks and bakers at Camp Pike, or so he said.
You can read Part One of this hot little story at arkansasonline. com/415old, but here’s a refresher. April 6, 1919, Arkansas Gazette:
Mrs. J.A. Meyer, wife of Captain Meyer of Camp Pike, was given judgment for $650 against her husband and Mrs. G.H. Walker, alias Mrs. James C. Smith, alias Miss W.A. Meyer, in Chancery Court yesterday afternoon.
Last summer Captain Meyer helped Mrs. Walker to pay for a blue Paige car, in which he and Mrs. Walker often were seen driving about Little Rock. Yesterday, Mrs. Meyer was given a deed to the car with foreclosure on it in order to cover her judgment. She also heard her husband refer to her onetime rival as “that woman” and openly renounce his friendship
for Mrs. Walker, if that were any satisfaction.
Chancellor John E. Martineau’s decision in favor of the “little woman” Annie Meyer resolved only one case against Mrs. Walker. Judge Jacob Trieber’s district courtroom was packed April 23, 1919, for her trial on what the Arkansas Democrat delicately called “booze charges.”
She stood accused with Ike Hanf of delivering whiskey to officers and enlisted men, of having whiskey in her possession and of selling whiskey to an officer. A grand jury also had indicted her on charges of being a retail liquor dealer without having paid the special tax, of immorality at 1222 Scott St. with Hanf and of “immorality in procuring others for immorality” at the Hotel Marion.
Capt. Joseph A. Meyer was the first witness for the prosecution. He testified that he had drunk (illegal) whiskey only during July and August and that he had bought it from Mrs. Walker. Going into the trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney W.H. Rector had let it be known that evidence was slim for the liquor charges against Hanf, and after Meyer blamed all his drinking on Mrs. Walker, Rector asked the court to drop them.
As sometimes happens, though,
her performance on the stand gave the Gazette a better impression of her:
Mrs. Walker is a stately young woman with a rather remarkable poise. She has a well modulated voice and at the beginning of her testimony she talked in a tone so low that she was requested by her attorneys to raise her voice so all the jurors might hear. Many spectators in the courtroom put their hands behind their ears throughout her testimony in order not to miss a word. She may be said to have made a good witness in her own behalf. Her husband, Sgt. Walker, newly returned from overseas, and her father, H.D. Amlin, and her aunt, Mrs. C. Rogers, sat with her.
She had received no money for any whiskey, ever.
“I don’t drink whiskey. I never have. The odor is repulsive to me.”
“Do you mean to say you have never taken a drink?” asked W.H. Rector, assistant United States district attorney, who prosecuted the case.
“I mean it,” answered Mrs. Walker.
But she was fond of grape juice and often packed some in the grip she took with her to Camp Pike, along with fruit and a book.
As Mrs. Walker sat in
the witness chair yesterday afternoon, dressed quietly in a midnight blue suit, a navy blue waist with a line of white beading around the collar, and a small black hat, she looked like a young woman who might be fond of nothing stronger than grape juice.
Meyer and his pal Sgt. Tyree often carried shoe boxes and other bundles that might contain whiskey, she testified. The captain always carried a half-pint in his hip pocket.
“Every time I was out at Camp Pike they all seemed to be drinking. Captain Meyer always had plenty
of liquor. Not only he, but it seemed to me every one else I met out there had plenty.”
She admitted that she had posed as Miss Meyer, the captain’s sister, at the Officers Club. She was in the insurance business in Memphis, she said. Capt. Meyer introduced her as his sister to help her sell insurance to his friends.
Noting that she had been living in Little Rock almost a year, Rector asked whether she had sold any insurance here. “I never have,” she replied. Rector asked who had been paying her bills, but her attorney objected and that objection was sustained.
“He said Mrs. Meyer was not his wife and that her little girls were not his children. He tried to get me to divorce my husband,” said Mrs. Walker.
Several witnesses testified that she had been known as Miss or Mrs. Meyer or Mrs. Hanf. One testified that she lived with Hanf as Mr. and Mrs. at 1222 Scott St. in January and February.
She said that she wrote “a very bad hand” and her signature as “Miss Meyer” may have been interpreted as Mrs. Meyer on a hotel register. She denied that she had ever been known as Mrs. Ike Hanf. But she had applied for her automobile license under the name Meyer.
She had character witnesses, her aunt and a friend who sold corn products and lived as she did at the Marion Hotel.
Five witnesses for the prosecution, including Meyer, Tyree and a Sgt. James R. Young, swore they had seen her drink whiskey and give it to soldiers. Her attorneys attacked them as “epauletted” witnesses.
In his charge to the jury, Judge Trieber told them not to consider testimony by another officer that he had seen Mrs. Walker give whiskey to a civilian: She was on trial for catering to soldiers, not civilians.
The jury took less than two hours to acquit her on the three whiskey counts.
The immorality and tax charges remained. But Rector made no statement about them, and the Gazette reported it was expected they would be dismissed, eventually.
EVENTUALLY
Mrs. Walker appealed to the state Supreme Court to regain ownership of the blue Paige car, but it ruled that it belonged to Mrs. Meyer and she was entitled to foreclose.
Two years later, on Feb. 1, 1921, the Democrat reported that Capt. Meyer had been court-martialed in August 1920 and dismissed from the Army. An item in the United States Army and Navy Journal and Gazette of the Regular and Volunteer Armed Forces says he was charged with converting to his own use $225 to $300 a month collected for the sale of meals to civilians between June 1919 and April 1920. He also was found guilty of gross neglect of duty.
If you have an Ancestry account or use the one at the public library, and are patient, you can see his service abstract at ancstry.me/2VrJydp.
Divorce was not impossible in 1920. Did Annie Meyer, the little woman who wore glasses, rid herself of her spouse after she foreclosed on that blue car? It’s possible — but the 1940 U.S. Census found one Joseph A. Meyer, wife Annie, at 1215 W. Third St. in North Little Rock. The 1920 and 1930 censuses found this same couple in a house they owned on Gillam Street in North Little Rock. In 1920, this couple had a boarder, one Geraldine Tyree.
In 1940, Joseph Meyer was employed full time as a store helper in the railroad industry. He was born about 1884, in New York, and had completed the eighth grade.
If this is the same couple, census records say more: Annie Meyer was a German immigrant who came to this country as a child in 1900 and became a naturalized citizen at 10. She could read and write but had not attended high school.
At the height of the Great War, when being German was no social asset, Annie Meyer was the 27-year-old wife of an Army officer who betrayed her trust with a flashy young woman from Memphis.
She took them to court. She won.
And she stayed with him. Email: cstorey@arkansasonline.com