Cincinnati has never developed a taste for satire or parody. From Lafcadio Hearn’s and Henry Farny’s 1874 “Ye Giglampz” to Frank Diekmann’s 1983 “Cincinnati Inquirer,” our town has proven to be pathetically satire resistant. That was surely the situation one hundred years ago in 1923 when a Cincinnati Post stalwart attempted to use satire in a campaign against cheap pistol sales.
In 1923, the United States was far more violent than it is today, with around 8 murders per every 100,000 people, compared to 6.5 murders per 100,000 people today. Over the years, the primary weapon of choice was a firearm of some sort.
Al Segal of the Cincinnati Post was fed up. In addition to reporting on all sorts of incidents, Segal wrote two columns for the Post, one under the byline “Cincinnatus” and one as “The Village Gossip,” and he brought all his journalistic weight to bear on the city’s carefree attitude towards pistol sales. On 24 September 1923, Segal’s “Village Gossip” column published a letter purportedly written by a Chicago burglar, signed “X-23,” who had relocated to Cincinnati to ply his trade. At the time, every hardware store, sporting goods store, and department store in the city carried a selection of firearms and our burglar found no difficulty at all in procuring a pistol. He effused over the courtesy extended by Cincinnati’s arms merchants, but admitted he had run into a bit of a problem:
“I found a woeful lack here of the other tools of my trade. I need a jimmy, a crowbar, some nitroglycerin and a noiseless sledgehammer. I am not writing this in a spirit of criticism, but merely to give a business tip to the people of your city. I suggest that a line of jimmies, noiseless hammers, crowbars and nitroglycerine would go well with a line of pistols.”
The Village Gossip responded to X-23 by announcing his plans to open just such an emporium:
“Taking X-23’s tip, I beg to announce that I have opened a store for the sale of pistols and other tools of burglary and banditry. I feel as X-23 does about it. We offer pistols for the asking to men of his profession and yet we prevent them from obtaining the other necessary tools of their profession. My card reads:
Village Gossip,
Gun Dealer,
Also, Full Line of Jimmies,
Nitroglycerine, Crowbars
And Noiseless Hammers.”
As expected, Segal got a lot of pushback from the Post’s readers, accusing him and his newspaper of promoting crime and lawlessness by selling criminal tools to criminals. He attempted a reasoned response [25 September 1923], but discovered, as so many others have, that Cincinnati is immune to satire.
“It seems to me absurdly unfair that we should permit the sale of pistols to burglars and yet deny them the right to buy other tools, less deadly, such as jimmies, crowbars, noiseless hammers and nitroglycerine. In justice to burglars, I have opened my burglar tool store and intend to keep it open until Council passes an ordinance prohibiting the sale of pistols as well as other burglar tools.”
The impetus for Segal’s crusade were two murders committed with cheap, locally purchased, pistols. The first was Cincinnati Policeman Lawrence Klump, killed while breaking up a boisterous crowd in the West End on 11 August 1923. Klump’s assailant shot him at point-blank range with a pistol he had purchased for $3. As the Post pointed out, that $3 pistol cost the City of Cincinnati $7,500 after the murderer’s trial rang up $3,000 in expenses and the city paid out $4,500 to Officer Klump’s widow.
It was the murder of 14-year-old Minnie McFerrin of Covington that truly fired up Segal’s righteous anger. Minnie and her 12-year-old sister Mattie were the daughters of a drunken ne’er-do-well named William McFerrin. Their mother had deserted the family because of McFerrin’s cruel treatment. The girls were taken in by a neighbor, Sallie Padlon. McFerrin resented the bond his daughters formed with Mrs. Padlon and was jealous of the affection the girls showed to her. One night, McFerrin got roaring drunk and wandered over to Cincinnati, where he purchased a pistol, then took a streetcar back to Covington. He decided to confront the woman his daughters called “Aunt Sallie” and barged into the kitchen where Mrs. Padlon and Minnie were cleaning. He fired one shot at Mrs. Padlon, who fled the room and fired a second round after her, which fatally wounded his daughter.
Image extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand
The Post spread coverage of Minnie McFerrin’s funeral across the front page on 25 September 1923. Minnie’s white coffin was carried to her grave in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Fort Mitchell. The pallbearers were Minnie’s classmates from Saint Walburg’s Academy in Covington. The Post’s front-page news story included an indictment of Cincinnati’s reluctance to enact regulations on pistol sales:
“Since Minnie McFerrin was killed with a pistol bought by her father in Cincinnati the day before her death, her funeral was a proper occasion on which to ask Mayor George Carrell a certain question, namely: ‘Mr. Mayor, what are you going to do with the ordinance to regulate the sale of pistols in Cincinnati, as proposed by the Post?’”
The answer, despite continual nudging by Segal and the Post, was nothing. Cincinnati in 1923 remained in the clutches of the Boss Cox machine. Although George Barnsdale Cox himself had been dead for several years, his minions kept the sputtering political machine alive. When the city solicitor, finally bowing to public pressure, sent a draft ordinance regulating pistol sales to council, it was met with a legislative yawn. The Post [29 October 1925] was livid:
“The city solicitor sent it to Council to be presented there. But ‘party responsibility’ that governs all acts of Council would have nothing to do with it. ‘Party responsibility’ that approves a bootlegger and a bribe-giver in Council would not give its approval to this ordinance to keep guns out of irresponsible hands.”
Within two weeks of that complaint, Cincinnati had a new City Council, dominated by the new Charter Party and mostly free of Cox Machine interference. When presented with a new version of a city ordinance to regulate handgun sales, the new, progressive council punted. The state, they said, should oversee firearm laws.
Al Segal may have sighed in frustration, but his days as a satirist were over.
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