Temperance Lunatic on the Loose

Photo: The New York Times/Redux

1901

Anti-booze crusader Carrie Nation had already gained national fame for smashing up Kansas saloons with a hatchet when she arrived in New York one August morning and demanded to meet with the police commissioner. “The crime and murder shops in this great city—mind, the time’s a-comin’,” she told him. She’d be arrested ten days later for wrecking a Coney Island cigar store. The next year she confronted the Vanderbilts at Madison Square Garden for their opulent dress. Marching out with a crowd behind her, she stopped near the exit to tell a Champagne importer that he was “eternally damned.”

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Temperance Lunatic on the Loose