THIS DAY IN 1918 IN THERECORD
Saturday, March 16, 1918. Elizabeth Alliry is recovering in Samaritan Hospital tonight after a Troy man breaks her jaw with a club in her apartment, the Sunday Budget reports.
Alliry’s assailant, George Taylor, tells investigators that he acted in self- defense. After his arrest, he explains that he’d gone to Alliry’s house around 9:30 p.m. to bring his wife home, since he objected to her visiting Alliry.
“Angry words followed,” according to Taylor, and “Mrs. Alliry seized a flat iron and advanced upon him. He then struck her with a club, inflicting the injuries mentioned.”
Police at the Alliry home are unable to locate Taylor’s club. At the same time, “why Taylor was in possession of it when he went to Mrs. Alliry’s apartments is not explained.”
Republican Club As a Refrigerator
“On such a night as this,” a Record reporter writes, “Republican headquarters would be agog with excitement and the [clubhouse] comfortably filled by members in good standing assembling to hear the details of the news.”
Despite all the gossip provoked by this week’s forced resignation of deputy excise commissioner Albert E. Brooker, “such a gathering is not anticipated to-night, although the organization is stirred to its depths by the rumors….No crowd is expected in the brownstone building on Fourth street to- night for the very evident reason that the crowd no longer feels welcome.”
Brooker’s ouster is widely seen as a power play by resurgent Republican boss Cornelius V. Collins, who allegedly tricked his fellow GOP state committeeman, James J. Child, into demanding Brooker’s resignation. Brooker, who lives in Child’s assembly district, will be replaced by a man from Collins’s district. That patronage move is expected to increase turnout for Collins in September’s Republican primary while hurting Child’s chances for reelection.
“Time was when we had a real club on Fourth street; a real live organization,” an anonymous but “prominent” Republican tells our paper, “To-night it will be slammed in the faces of some of the staunchest Republicans in the county if they have not already been offended by this action and made their minds to stay away.”
Critics of Collins claim that his small personal clique controls the party from a soundproof conference room. “The rank and file of the party or even the regulars at the club could no more meet in it than the American expeditionary force could be crushed into the Salvation Army table,” our reporter notes, “But the room is big enough for those who have usurped its use.”
“In their hearts they are more Democrats than Republicans,” the anonymous critic claims, “Their interests are peculiarly their own; business interests, if you please.”
- Kevin Gilbert