In the Gilded Age of the 1890s city parks often hewed to the same starchy formality as was expected of a polite society. Lafayette Park was a strolling park, with pedestrians expected to keep to the graveled pathways. Those who chose to stray onto lawns and flower beds could find themselves confined to the police substation (today’s park house) for an hour, to ponder their errant ways.
This stuffy policy informs a poem which appeared in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat 130 years ago, in February of 1894. Reprinted for your enjoyment here:
A Heinous Crime
He appeared to be a villain of the
Very deepest dye;
There was treachery in his features
There was trickery in his eye:
And as six big coppers bore him
Struggling through the crowd,
Of the capture of the scoundrel
Each man of them felt proud.
They beat him with their billies and
They dragged him through the mire;
They yanked him to the Courthouse
And up before the Squire,
Who fined him twenty dollars and
Sassed him full of sass,
And all because the man had
Failed to
I met Gus Buder in the 1980s who grew up in a now demolished multi-family home in the 20xx block of Park who told me that when he was a youngster in the early 1900s that if any of the neighborhood boys were caught climbing over the park fence the park policeman would collar them and drag them home to their mothers for appropriate punishment!
I do not recall ever seeing how the grass was cut in the 1890s . Sheep ? There were rotary mowers of some kind ? Possibly pulled by mules ? If so, where was all this equipage kept ?
Great question, Tom. It sent me down the rabbit hole to investigate. I found that Leonard Hunt, Lafayette Park superintendent in 1879 recommended the Philadelphia mower as the only one used to trim the park lawns. The design is what you would recognize as a standard 20″ reel type push mower. I’ll write more on this in a separate essay as it’s interesting history.
Mike,
Love this! “Sassed him with sass”
Dan
Same line Patricia took a liking to. Thanks, Dan!