100 years ago in The Saratogian
Wednesday, Sept. 4, 1918. Corporal Patrick B. Vokes is the first soldier of Saratoga County’s Company L, 105th U.S. Infantry regiment, to be wounded in action in Europe, The Saratogian reports.
Vokes reported his injury, but “gave no particulars either of his condition or of the manner in which he received the injury” in a letter to his mother, Mary Vokes of 43 Warren Street. The federal government has not yet listed Vokes on its official casualty lists.
Writing from an Australian military hospital somewhere in France, Vokes says that “as soon as his condition permits he expects to be sent to a hospital in England.”
The 105th is the former Second New York National Guard infantry regiment, which was inducted into federal service around the time the U.S. declared war on Germany in April 1917. “It has been known for some time that L Company has been engaged in the battles in Flanders,” a reporter notes, “and letters from members of the company have described some of their experiences under fire.” None reported a man wounded before Vokes’ letter reached Saratoga Springs.
To Lease Books in High School
“Books are more expensive than ever and should be carefully conserved,” Saratoga Springs public school superintendent Charles L. Mosher says today as he announces a new policy requiring students to make a $1 security deposit on textbooks used during the new school year.
“When all books borrowed have been returned in proper condition at the close of the year the $1.00 is to be returned to the pupil,” Mosher elaborates, “It is not the idea to make the use of text books cost any student anything, but it is planned to require careless pupils to pay for loss or damage.”
Mosher is quick to deny that “any large proportion of pupils have been careless,” but states that “many have been, and this insistence upon the proper care of public property will hurt no one.”
What’s Happening
Divorce is “that ogre of modern society which Cardinal [James] Gibbons says ‘threatens the foundations of the nation,’” claims an ad for the Palace Theatre, where “The Blindness of Divorce” plays today. Divorce is “shown in all its hideous horror” in this Fox production, accompanied on the program by a Sidney Drew comedy short.
At the Broadway, Roi Cooper Megrue and Walter Hackett’s comedy, “It Pays to Advertise,” billed as “The Funniest Farce in The World,” makes a one day stop on its transcontinental tour.
At the Lyric, “The Ghost of Rosy Taylor,” starring Mary Miles Minter, is “Laid in a charming and quaint French village and the tenement district of New York.”