Welcome to an occasional series where we look back at The Denver Post as it existed 100 years ago via the magic of archives. First up: tales of war, cattle, automobiles and rowdy choir singers.
Date: Sept. 26, 1916
President: Woodrow Wilson
Governor of Colorado: Iowa-born Republican George Alfred Carlson, known for turning Colorado into a (temporarily) dry state with a Prohibition bill and signing the first workers’ comp law in the state.
Cost of the paper: 2¢ by newsboys, 5¢ on trains.
Price of a gallon of gas:
Top stories
The Denver Post of 1916 was not afraid of some raw gossip. Inside St. John’s Cathedral (still standing at 14th and Washington in Denver), just after a sermon about “loving one another,” “tender” soprano Helen Ruth Chapin and “soulful” alto Clara I. Brisbane “met, mingled, milled, mixed, clawed, shrieked, pinched, shook, swatted, biffed, screamed, screeched, shrieked and so on” over an off-hand gossipy remark by the alto.
The newsworthy occasion was that the whole sordid affair was being aired in court after Mrs. Brisbane suffered a “sprained spine” and two “twisted ribs” from the thrashing laid upon her by Miss Chapin.
WWI
Being the fall of 1916 — just a few months before the U.S. officially joined the battle — a good portion of the front page is devoted to the looming specter of World War I, including breathless accounts (and some florid language) about British battles alongside the French.
“What either army was trying to do, and how they were trying to do it, positions they held and sought to conquer in the team play of the blue French legions and the khaki-clad brigades of Britain, were comprehensible to the eye in glorious autumn sunlight for a sweep of ten miles,” the report exclaimed. “The scene had the intoxication of war’s grandeur — if war can be said to have any grandeur.”
The Associated Press correspondent who wrote the piece inserted himself into the narrative in the third person, a common style of journalism at the time that sounds hilariously tortured to modern readers.
“On his return the correspondent decided he would not pass thru that wilderness of British guns of all sizes and caliber while he had any hearing left.”
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Looking good, Velvet Joe.
Murderous cattlemen, legislating automobile traffic, taxes on cake and more
We can’t possibly share it all with you today, so take a look at the whole edition below.
