Sunday
April 29, 1906
The sun (New York [N.Y.]) — New York City, New York
“1906: The husband who had his wife committed (and the 84-year-old new father making wine)”
Art Deco mural for April 29, 1906
Original newspaper scan from April 29, 1906
Original front page — The sun (New York [N.Y.]) — Click to enlarge
Full-size newspaper scan
What's on the Front Page

The front page explodes with a sensational custody battle that reads like a Victorian melodrama. Henry W. A. Page has had his wife Jessie committed to St. Saviours sanitarium, claiming she's an 'habitual drunkard' and morphine fiend who threatened to kill herself and their three children. But now ex-Judge Olcott is fighting back with a writ of habeas corpus, armed with affidavits from friends who paint a dramatically different picture: a devoted mother betrayed by a vengeful husband. Mrs. William Leonard swears that Page told her he 'intended to get rid of' his wife, while Mrs. Page returned penniless from England only to be thrown out of the Buckingham Hotel by her own husband. The case returns to court Monday morning, with doctors now claiming they never treated Mrs. Page for the addictions her husband alleged. Elsewhere, 84-year-old School Commissioner John Thiry of Long Island City is celebrating the birth of his third child since turning 80, declaring 'no raw suicide for me!' The spry octogenarian, who came to America fifty years ago dying of consumption, now makes wine from his own grapevines and shows no signs of slowing down.

Why It Matters

This front page captures America in 1906 grappling with changing social dynamics around women's rights and mental health commitments. The Page case reflects how easily women could be institutionalized by husbands with little legal recourse - a practice that wouldn't be reformed for decades. Meanwhile, the paper also hints at labor unrest spreading from France, part of the global wave of strikes and social upheaval that would reshape the early 20th century. The juxtaposition of personal dramas with international tensions shows a nation still finding its footing in the Progressive Era, where traditional family structures were being questioned even as America was becoming a world power.

Hidden Gems
  • Commissioner Thiry owns a house 'covered with grapevines' and takes 'especial delight to manufacture their product into wine' - apparently Prohibition wasn't even a glimmer in lawmakers' eyes yet
  • Mrs. Page was thrown out of the Buckingham Hotel 'with her children, one of them in arms' after her husband 'raised such a scene that the hotel authorities told him he must leave'
  • The paper costs five cents for forty pages - that's about $1.80 in today's money for what would be a substantial weekend edition
  • A chimney fire at the Hotel Manhattan caused 'considerable excitement' in the street but hotel employees prevented panic among guests at an Elmira College Club luncheon upstairs
  • Stanford University is set to receive $10,000,000 from an anonymous 'multi-millionaire' to rebuild after earthquake damage - equivalent to about $350 million today
Fun Facts
  • That $10 million anonymous gift to Stanford mentioned on the front page was actually from Jane Stanford herself (through her estate) - she had died mysteriously in Hawaii the year before, possibly poisoned
  • William Randolph Hearst, mentioned as likely losing his Congressional renomination, was indeed plotting his independent gubernatorial run that would split the Democratic vote and help elect Republican Charles Evans Hughes
  • The 'Transportation Club' mentioned in the hotel fire story was likely for railroad executives - 1906 was the golden age of rail travel, before Henry Ford's Model T would revolutionize transportation
  • Commissioner Thiry's wine-making hobby was perfectly legal - the 18th Amendment wouldn't be ratified for another 13 years, and personal wine production remained common
  • Those labor troubles brewing in France that the paper mentions would eventually contribute to the 1906 French wine riots and help radicalize the European labor movement that would explode after World War I
April 28, 1906 April 30, 1906

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