{"id":11010,"date":"2016-12-06T22:29:43","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T03:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=11010"},"modified":"2018-05-21T13:24:31","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T17:24:31","slug":"philadelphia-and-the-american-infatuation-with-tear-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2016\/12\/philadelphia-and-the-american-infatuation-with-tear-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia and the American Infatuation with Tear Gas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Policeman<\/a>
Policeman Guy Parsons and Other Officer with Gas Masks, [1923] (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\u201cI rob banks,\u201d Willie Sutton famously quipped, \u201cbecause that’s where the money is.\u201d Sutton didn\u2019t realize that\u2019s also where the tear gas was.<\/p>\n

Disguised as postal messengers early one morning in February 1933, Sutton and a partner in crime gained entrance to the Corn Exchange National Bank & Trust at 60th and Ludlow Streets<\/a>. They tied a guard to a chair, but the guard freed himself, managed to release tear gas\u2014and foiled the robbery.<\/p>\n

Tear gas had become an accepted law enforcement tool\u2014one of the more successful technology transfers from the battlefields of World War I to urban America. Months before the Treaty of Versailles, military leaders were gung ho to demonstrate the potential of tear gas in places like Philadelphia.\u00a0 \u201cMore effective than clubs, and less dangerous than bullets,\u201d they boasted.<\/p>\n

Brass in Army Chemical Warfare Service promised that tear gas had positive \u201cpsychological impacts.\u201d It could offer police \u201cthe ability to demoralize and disperse a crowd without firing live ammunition.\u201d Tear gas, according to recent history in The Atlantic<\/a><\/em> \u201ccould evaporate from the scene without leaving traces of blood or bruises, making it appear better for police-public relations than crowd control through physical force.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting taxpayers to pay for the deployment of gas-filled bombs on their hometown streets would be a hard sell. After all, as early as 1899, the Hague Conventions prohibited \u201cprojectiles filled with poison gas.\u201d And then there was the recent horror of poison gas on the battlefields of France. But military chemists claimed they had reconstituted formulas, making them tame enough for use in peacetime America. At least that\u2019s what Major Stephen Delanoy, fresh back from France \u201cwhere he had been for more than a year perfecting various gases for the government\u201d promised.<\/p>\n

\"Gas<\/a>
Gas Squad, June 5, 1923 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To demonstrate \u201chow efficacious gas could be\u201d Delanoy came to Philadelphia where he had a friend in Philadelphia police Superintendent William B. Mills. Together, they choreographed a high-profile experiment where 200 \u201cvolunteers\u201d from the Philadelphia police force would be gassed at the city\u2019s Model Farm<\/a> near Fort Mifflin in South Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

On July 19, 1921, according to The New York Times<\/em>, \u201cPolice Supt. Mills took a battalion of his huskiest men into a roped-off enclosure with instructions to capture six men who were armed with 150 tear gas bombs. Three times they charged but each time we’re driven back weeping violently as they came within range of the charged vapor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore they entered the mimic battle,\u201d Delanoy \u201cassured the men that the substance was \u2018absolutely not dangerous.\u2019 It is merely a tear-producing, choking, nauseating gas,” he said. \u201cBut be careful you don’t swallow too much.” Philadelphia\u2019s guinea pigs apparently swallowed just the right amount. The \u201csham attack\u201d sold them on the stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe effectiveness of teargas as a mop dispeller received the emphatic endorsement of 200 stalwart Philadelphia policemen today,\u201d reported the Times<\/em>. \u201cPolice officials said the test had undoubtedly proved the value of tear gas in police work. Not only is it immediately effective in disbursing a mob, but it might be used to drive a fugitive from a barricaded building.\u201d They imagined how a \u201ccontainer\u2026 placed in a bank vault\u2026would also thwart burglaries\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

“Bullets as mob-quellers now belong to the Dark Ages\u201d declared The Literary Digest<\/em>. Police would get \u201cgutta-percha hand-grenades containing chemical gas\u201d and their victims would choke and copious tears would flow. \u201cOne of these bombs or grenades is equal to a hundred police clubs in a riot,\u201d declared the officer in charge, after the Philadelphia test.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis method of dealing with offenders against the peace has many obvious advantages,\u201d stated The Inquirer.<\/em> \u201cIt is humane, for one thing. Riding down or shooting into a mob may cause needless injuries or deaths, sometimes of innocent bystanders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within a few months, City Council approved a $2,500 appropriation to supply equipment for a new fifty-man, \u201cgas battalion\u201d with the Philadelphia police. Amos Fries, chief of the U.S. Army\u2019s Chemical Warfare Service, who had been working \u201cto redeploy the technology for everyday uses\u201d provided \u201cchemicals, material and equipment free of cost to the city.\u201d Philadelphia taxpayers only needed to purchase \u201cmasks and other paraphernalia for local use.\u201d Within a few years, police departments from New York to San Francisco were stocking up on tear-gas supplies.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia police, anxious to make good on their investment, considered ways to put tear gas to work fighting a spate of unsolved robberies. Officials ordered their \u201cbandit-chasing squad\u201d to carry \u201ctear bombs along with sawed-off shotguns\u2026to end the robbers\u2019 activities.\u201d They didn\u2019t have long to wait for the opportunity.<\/p>\n

The opportunity came on October 7, 1922, when police learned of the “ransacking” at the “dressmaking establishment” of R.A. and J. A. Brown, 1530 Sansom Street. One officer fired two rounds at the suspects, and missed. They had hidden behind packing cases. No problem. Police \u201churled a tear bomb against the wall directly above\u201d their hiding spot. For the first time in an American city, plumes of tear gas filled the air. One suspect crashed through a window and escaped into a side alley.<\/p>\n

Police captured the other suspect. According to The Inquirer:<\/em>\u00a0\u201cWhen the air cleared sufficiently, the policemen entered the room and found George Rex, colored, twenty years old, of 18th and Lombard streets, in a stupefied condition, temporarily blinded.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trench warfare had come home.<\/p>\n

[Sources: Willie Sutton\u2019s Robberies<\/em>. (PDF<\/a>); Tear Gas For Mobs, U. S. Colonel\u2019s Plan, The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, February 26, 1919; \u201cNew gas with K. O. Wallop May Help Police In Battles,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer, <\/em>July 19, 1921; “200 Philadelphia Policeman Weep in Flight From Tear Gas in Sham Attack,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, July 20, 1921; \u201cKnockout Gas for Mobs<\/a>,\u201d The Literary Digest<\/em> (Funk & Wagnalls), Vol. 70, August 20, 1921; \u201cCity Police to use Gas Bombs Shortly,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, October 26, 1921; \u201cGas Bombs Prove Nemesis to Bandits,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, October 8, 1922 and Anna Feigenbaum, \u201c100 Years of Tear Gas: a Chemical Weapon Drifts off the Battlefield and into the Streets<\/a>,\u201d The Atlantic<\/em>, August 16, 2014.]<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cI rob banks,\u201d Willie Sutton famously quipped, \u201cbecause that’s where the money is.\u201d Sutton didn\u2019t realize that\u2019s also where the tear gas was. Disguised as postal messengers early one morning in February 1933, Sutton and a partner in crime gained entrance to the Corn Exchange National Bank & Trust at 60th and Ludlow Streets. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}