Dig News Editor Chris Faraone respectfully contemplates marijuana prohibition while burying the “scofflaw” issue once and for all at the final resting place of Delcevare King in Quincy, Mass
BY CHRIS FARAONE + CADY VISHNIAC
We promise to get back to our regular Media Farm programming soon, but first there’s a small score to settle. As noted in last week’s column, we took issue with an entry of “The Word” in the August 10 edition of the Boston Globe. Specifically, we alleged that the etymology of “scofflaw” in their Sunday Ideas section was a bit off, if not downright incorrect.
Since we didn’t care enough at the time to ride the Silver Line to Copley and spelunk through microfilm for hours, we left the possibility open that Globe writers may have actually been first to cover the coining of “scofflaw.” As we knew, the word was born out of a contest held by noted Quincy resident Delcevare King, who asked the public for a term defining somebody who boozed during prohibition. Only problem was we’d heard that the Boston Herald played a key role, and so we accused the Globe of pettily striking their eternal rival from the record.
Our main intent in calling out the Globe on this ridiculous matter was to mock their utter reluctance to give credit where it’s due. Even when the source is 90 years old. In the least, we argued, the writer could have noted that the Herald is often tied to “scofflaw,” including in the Emmy Award-winning Ken Burns documentary Prohibition.
All things considered, we weren’t surprised when a Globe editor politely tried to correct us on Twitter: “Traced thru Globe bc we love using archive.” “We have verified this. It was in the morning edition of both papers’ Jan 16, 1924 edition.” An email to Dig editors further claimed the “Herald did not break the news or have any special role in the contest.” That reassurance, they hoped, “[clarified] the original 1924 situation.”
It didn’t. And so off to the archives we went, now determined to find hard evidence that showed otherwise. As it turns out, Delcevare King was a curmudgeonly prude, and even came close to coining the word “scofflaw” himself in letters to his Harvard Alumni Bulletin, which he regularly wrote with complaints regarding everything from glee club members singing inappropriate songs to how the student newspaper should stop publishing horse racing picks. In one of those rants dating back to September 1922, King accused “social leaders” who “disobey and scoff” at the 18th Amendment of “promoting mob violence.”
The Globe got one thing right. A whole bunch of newspapers did cover King’s announcement of the contest winners in January 1924. But that’s where their accuracy ends. As his long quotation in the December 8, 1923 Cambridge Tribune indicates, the eccentric Quincy aristocrat was at least partially inspired to cast labels upon drinkers due to an op-ed he read in the Herald.
PRIZE OF $100 OFFERED FOR JUST ONE WORD
Cambridge residents now have a chance to win $100 in gold for just one word. Delcevare King of Quincy, has the following to say: “The Boston Herald in an editorial headed “Alcoholic Fashions” states that before prohibition ‘it had become unfashionable and rather reprehensible even in smart society to show the effects of liquor or to exhale an alcoholic breath,’ and then after pointing out that this is not so today, concludes, ‘prohibition will work when public opinion resumes the attitude towards indulgence that it held before prohibition came.’
“Now I believe the whole atmosphere about this thing can be changed—that lawless drinking can be made ‘bad form’—Just by getting into universal use a word describing the present-day drinker that ‘will bite as does (like word ‘scab.’ in a strike, men are often held in line simply by fear of that word and during the war men were driven into doing things by fear of being called ‘slacker.’
“To drink today liquor made or ‘obtained illegally is to aid ill violating the Constitution of the United States—it is being a ‘bad citizen.’ As the late President Harding said. ‘Lawless drinking is a menace to the republic itself.’ “Now what is that word or coined word which expresses the idea of ‘bad’ citizen.’ or ‘lawless drinker.” or ‘menace,’ or ‘poor sport.’ or ‘scoffer,’ or whatnot, with the biting power of ‘scab’ or ‘slacker?’
“I offer $100 in gold for the best suggestion. Arthur J. Davis. Regional Superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League of America, and Rev. I.. Tallmadge Root, Secretary of the Massachusetts Federation of Churches, will act with me as judges.” The $100 gold contest closes January 1, 1024. You may send any number of suggestions—just address D. King. Granite Trust Company, Quincy, Mass. Send your suggestions right away.”
We respect that Globe writers and editors would peruse their own archives before looking elsewhere. We also understand why they would think we are too lazy to check out their claims; after all, while we smoke pot right here in the newsroom, they’re one of the last devoutly prohibitionist big papers in America. On that note, they can call us scofflaws, or potlaws, or whatever they want, so long as they acknowledge what we found deep in those BPL archives, which is that the contest was announced in the Herald on December 1, 1923.
Contest announcement in the Boston Herald, December 1, 1923
FURTHER READING
THE GLOBE RE-WRITES HISTORY TO AVOID GIVING THE HERALD PROPS
