THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507210238
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 113 lines
THE IDEA OF GAMBLING casino boats apparently occurred to local residents 81 years ago.
In a front page Portsmouth Star story that ran this week in 1914, a ``floating gambling house'' was raided and seized in the river near the Naval Hospital.
The same front page told Portsmouth residents about the damages from a summer storm, including that done to a man in a boarding house who was taking a bath when the lights went out.
According to the story, covered only by a ``coat of lather, he was groping for his clothes'' in the parlor - which he thought was his bedroom - when the lights came back on.
Unfortunately several other people were there too.
Besides the damage to that man's dignity, the storm caused some more at the Seaboard Air Line shops, where four smokestacks ``were blown down, falling across the wires and filling the street with squirming, flashing lengths of electrified metal.''
And in those days before air conditioning, when trees offered respite from the sun, people seemed to know to mourn the loss of a good tree.
According to the writer, ``perhaps the largest loss was in the old tree that stood in front of the entrance'' to the Seaboard shops.
``This had been a landmark for many years, and its branches had been a favorite shelter for the employees during the noontide rests of the summer.''
One thing hasn't changed since 1914. Residents still have differing views of what spells progress for Portsmouth.
Dr. Joseph A. Guthrie wrote a letter to the editor expressing his displeasure with a few objectors who were holding up the street car tracks that would serve ``50 families in West Park View.''
Guthrie wrote that he could ``secure hundreds of signatures, endorsing car service'' to the neighborhood, because it would ``ultimately mean the opening up of a quicker and more logical service to Pinners Point and Port Norfolk.''
He gave other examples of the ``foolish thwarting of progress and holding back Portsmouth's growth by a few.''
``The $2,000,000 terminals near Portsmouth's gas plant were held up and killed by three of her `enterprising citizens.'
``The bill introduced and acted upon by Congress for the dredging of Scott's Creek was killed by one man.''
The biggest story of the week, though, may have been the wreck involving a midnight express trolley from Ocean View that crashed into a coal train in Norfolk.
The passengers were on their way back from Ocean View after spending the evening at that resort, according to the story.
Six people were killed, and several Portsmouth people were among the injured.
One of the injured was A.B. Cooke of 203 Court St., who suffered a sprained shoulder.
Today's local entrepreneur, Maury Cooke, believes A.B. Cooke may have been a ``distant, distant cousin.''
But since the numbers on Court Street have changed over the years, Maury Cooke doesn't know if A.B. Cooke's address was the same as a house in which he lived as a child.
Other local injured passengers of the trolley as listed included:
H. Gunn, 311 1/2 Chestnut St.; scalp wound.
S.E. Cuthriell, 218 Mount Vernon Ave., Port Norfolk; both legs fractured.
A.W. Ainsworth Jr., 303 Court St., right leg fractured.
O.H. Lay, 438 Western Branch Road, right ankle sprained.
E.F. Cotten, 222 North St., wounded in legs.
George Larkin, 409 Dinwiddie St., contusion left ankle.
Larkin told a reporter he first heard the ``smashing of glass; the next instant before I could tell what had happened the seats buckled and the lights went out. . . The next thing I knew I was hanging by my right foot which was pinned between the coal car and the top part of the smashed trolley car.''
It took friends more than an hour to free Larkin, the story reported.
In addition to the listed injured from Portsmouth, the story reported that O.V. Niemeyer had walked away with a bruise or two, even though he was sitting behind the motorman and close to two men who were killed.
Other news stories that week reported:
Dr. and Mrs. Hugh Parrish had just returned from their wedding trip to Nova Scotia.
The Navy Yard was hiring more men for it's work ``boom,'' which included the construction of three large metal barges and the refitting out of the old frigate, Constellation.
The city's health department boasted in a report that ``the number of births during the month far exceeded the number of deaths.''
The story also told readers that 22 contagious diseases had been reported and 41 rooms had been fumigated.
Four ice cream factories and 14 dairies were inspected and four bacteria tests were done on the city's water.
The monthly report showed one case of typhoid fever, 14 cases of measles, one case of diphtheria and four cases of scarlet fever.
The members of the Portsmouth Library Association decided a meeting of the advisory board was necessary ``for the purpose of making the library a permanent organization and obtaining a charter for the same.''
The Portsmouth Students Club, the story reported, had been working hard to promote the public library, and the use of four rooms in the city building on Court Street, formerly used for the law office of Judge Crocker, would provide the space.
Elsewhere in the nation, President Woodrow Wilson was reported to be suffering an ``attack of indigestion,'' and a front page plea from the family of a young girl who had eloped with her father's chauffeur told the girl that ``her father was dying from brain fever caused by worry, and to return and the family would forgive her.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
This 1911 photo from the library's Emmerson collection shows what
Scott's Creek and its oyster houses looked like to Portsmouth
residents eight decades ago.
A photo of J.A. Murdaugh and a woman identified as H. Paulette, from
the library's collection, give us a look at 1914 fashions.
by CNB