In conjunction with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, the TimesLedger newspaper presents noteworthy events in the borough’s history:
Women’s rights were in the news with the April 9 Star-Journal report on a talk given by a prominent suffrage campaigner in Queens County. Mrs. Alfred P. Eno spoke to the mothers’ club of Winfield (now part of Maspeth) on equal rights for women. It was 67 years since Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had organized the Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY, the event that in 1848 gave birth to the equal suffrage campaign, and still American women did not have the right to vote.
Mrs. Eno, unperturbed by occasional squalls from babies in the audience, told the Winfield mothers about the current campaign for a suffrage amendment to the New York State constitution. The Woman Suffrage Party of Greater New York believed that by reaching into every election district to influence its voters, they would bring suffrage close to the people and eventually influence parties and legislators through public opinion.
Hundreds of women in all the boroughs canvassed voters in shops, factories, tenements and private homes.
Emma Rodman, president of the Elmhurst Suffrage Club, then gave the meeting a vivid picture of the campaign in her neighborhood. The Star-Journal quoted her praise of Queens residents: “The men are fair-minded: they are splendid when you approach them about suffrage. In Elmhurst we meet the men at the railroad station and the trolley cars at night and give them literature telling them why women should vote. They would tip their hats and thank us for the pamphlets, and many would stop at the first lamp-post and read them through before proceeding further.” In August 1920 the 19th Amendment would finally give American women the right to vote.
Another pair of daring women were featured in the news that month, taking on one of New York’s most prominent millionaires. On April 10, the Star-Journal reported that Nathan Straus, head of R.H. Macy and Company and the dry goods firm of Abraham and Straus, was the defendant in lawsuits brought by Mrs. Harriett Stewart of Astoria and her daughter. The suits were for injuries allegedly sustained when Mr. Straus’s luxurious Benz limousine, driven by his chauffeur John P. Worms, ran into the Stewarts’ much less grand Ford automobile. The collision was so severe that Mrs. and Miss Stewart, out for a day’s shopping in Manhattan, were thrown out of the car onto Fifth Avenue.
Nathan Straus was being sued for the sum of $1,000. However, the jury sitting in the Long Island City Municipal Court was unable to agree on a verdict and the cases were sent back for retrial. The following month the Star-Journal reported that in a fresh trial, both plaintiffs had been awarded $150 apiece in damages.
Another interesting legal case reported in April 1915 struck a homier note. Fourteen Dutch Kills residents appeared in Municipal Court on charges that their roosters were too noisy. The evidence, according to the Star-Journal, had been gathered by Officer O’Connell of the Health Squad who patrolled the streets between 3 and 6 a.m. “with an ear alert for the clarion calls of the exuberant chanticleers.” Magistrate Leach pronounced the death sentence on the unhappy birds. “This rooster has made a goat out of me,” the Star-Journal quoted householder John Sherlock, a former policeman, as saying, adding that “the latest news from Dutch Kills is to the effect that axes and knives are being sharpened and that the doomed roosters will soon sing their final choruses.”
For further information, call the Greater Astoria Historical Society at 718-278-0700 or visit our website at www.astor
