Jim Harmon

It was the day before Halloween, October 30, 1908, and Major Sylvester of the Washington D.C. Police was fed up!

He ordered his officers to “repress hilarious gaiety!” loading...

Enough with “dead cats tied to door knobs, doorbells being rung violently, while the shadowy figures of boys disappear in the gloom to some convenient place of concealment to watch for results.”

Enough with youngsters bombarding “pedestrians and residences with deceased chickens and rats...and gates being unhinged and carried away.”

Those sorts of things had been going on far too long! loading...

One venerable inhabitant of the District told a Washington Evening Star reporter, “In the days before the Civil war, the youngsters would turn themselves loose upon the community and commit all sorts of

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