Murder at the Million Dollar Pier
Page 24
Shop walls were lined with bottles of chemicals for bleaching and coloring hair, hair sprays and gels, nail enamels, and polish removers. The makeup counter included everything from bow-shaped stencils for perfectly shaped lips to fat-removing soaps. Yes, the flapper clothing was designed for thin boyish figures, so the beauty industry responded with soaps promising to wash the fat away like dirt.
Shop equipment included shiny chrome dryers shaped like cannons, mounted on tall metal posts and attached to wheels. These were rolled from station to station. For customers with thick long hair, as many as three dryers could be arranged to blow from all sides. The permanent wave was accomplished by the use of strange metal machines with long black electrical wires. These electric tentacles were fastened to women’s hair with metal clips. Last, and perhaps the strangest of devices, was the nose shaper. This was a device designed on the battlefield for use in plastic surgery. Post-war, they found their way into the beauty parlor for reshaping women’s noses to resemble those of their favorite Hollywood stars.
Roser Park is one of the more unusual developments in St. Petersburg. Charles Roser, the developer, was a baker before he entered the Florida real estate business. He perfected a method of creating a very popular fig-filled bar that was the signature product of his bakery business. He is believed to be the inventor of the Fig Newton, though the National Biscuit Company refuses to comment on the recipes gained from the many mergers and acquisitions they were engaged in at the time. The sale of his company to Nabisco provided Roser with a considerable fortune.
Roser’s first entry into Florida land development was the purchase of a hotel and the construction of a second one. He sold both in 1914 because his wife was unhappy with their new lifestyle. She enjoyed the sunshine of their new hometown, but missed the suburban neighborhood they left behind in Ohio.
Roser Park is the result of his attempt to create that kind of neighborhood. It is a small residential community built on an orange grove he purchased in the south end of St. Petersburg. The result of his efforts to please his wife is a streetcar suburb of eclectic houses and lush landscape. Unlike most of the city, the neighborhood is built on hilly land around Booker Creek. A major landscape feature of the Park is a narrow green space along the steep creek banks. Roser walled the ravine banks along the creek in 1914. In some places, the walls reach a height of five to six feet to prevent the banks below the residences from becoming unstable.
His neighborhood included expensive brick streets, rough carved granite curbs, a public school, and land he donated to the city for public parks. Unlike the developers who dredged new land from the floor of Tampa Bay, he preserved the natural contours of the area and built the kind of houses suited to small business owners and local professionals. Streetcar lines were extended to allow easy commutes into the downtown area. He added a nurse’s residence to the nearby Mound Park Hospital and contributed to improvements to the hospital. Roser also donated funds for the construction of the only colored hospital in the county.
St. Petersburg Newspapers: the St. Petersburg Times and the Evening Independent mentioned in the book were not the only two newspapers in St. Petersburg, but they were the most widely read. The Evening Independent was the first daily newspaper in St. Petersburg. It opened as a weekly in 1906 and became a daily by November of 1907. It was best known for its “Sunshine Offer.” The paper was free for the day after the sun did not shine in St. Petersburg. They made good on that offer 296 times between 1910 and 1986. If you’re wondering, that means that the sun shone 96% of the time in St. Petersburg.
The rival St. Petersburg Times, now known as the Tampa Bay Times, started as the West Hillsboro Times in 1884 Dunedin as a weekly. By the end of that year, it moved to Clearwater. In 1892 the paper moved to St. Petersburg and was renamed the St. Petersburg Times by the end of the century. It became a daily in 1912.
At the time of this book, there was a big rivalry between the two papers and reporters went to great lengths to scoop the competing daily paper. One of the key reasons for this ongoing fight for readers was the number of real estate ads at stake. More than 80 developments vied for ad space in the papers and provided a steady source of income to both presses.
The rivalry continued until November of 1986, when the Evening Independent was merged with the St. Petersburg Times and in 2012 the paper was renamed the Tampa Bay Times.
Nicotine is best known as an addictive ingredient in tobacco products, but it is also poisonous in larger amounts. Nicotine poisoning can happen when a child ingests cigarette butts, but it is best known as the cause of ‘green tobacco sickness’ in farm workers. The symptoms are nausea, vomiting, headaches, and dizziness. It can be fatal if the victim isn’t removed from the source of poisoning and doesn’t receive medical aid. Handling tobacco, especially when the clothes become wet, can lead to nicotine being absorbed through the skin. Gloves help prevent this, as does water-resistant clothing.
It also has a long-term history as a pesticide. Nicotine’s earliest known use as an insecticide dates from 1690, and accidents do happen. Poisoning can happen through inhalation, ingestion, direct contact on the skin, and even indirect exposure through fabric. An article in the May 27, 1933 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association recounted several cases of nicotine poisoning via clothing, including ones where the patient became (re)contaminated after putting exposed clothing back on without washing it first.
At the time of this book, Black Leaf 40 was one of the most popular pesticides, consisting of 40% nicotine sulphate. It was so potent that, in the 1960s, Black Leaf 40 was rumored to have been in the “poison pen” the CIA agent tried to use on Fidel Castro. It was banned by the EPA in the 1990s.
About the Authors
Hair and Photo by Jay Martello
Gwen Mayo is passionate about blending her loves of history and mystery fiction. She currently lives and writes in Safety Harbor, Florida, but grew up in a large Irish family in the hills of Eastern Kentucky. She is the author of the Nessa Donnelly Mysteries and co-author of the Three Snowbirds stories with Sarah Glenn. Her stories appear in A Whodunit Halloween, Decades of Dirt, Halloween Frights (Volume I), and several flash fiction collections. She belongs to Sisters in Crime, SinC Guppies, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and the Independent Book Publishers Association. Gwen has a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Kentucky. Her most interesting job, though, was as a brakeman and railroad engineer from 1983-1987. She was one of the last engineers to be certified on steam locomotives.
Sarah E. Glenn is a Jane-of-all-trades. She has a B.S. in Journalism, mostly because she’d rather write about stuff than do it. She also spent time as a grad student in classical languages, boning up on her crossword skills. Past occupations include: interning at a billboard company, helping doctors navigate a continuing education website, and updating listings in telephone books. Her most interesting job was working the reports desk for the police, where she learned that criminals really are dumb. Sarah loves mystery and horror stories, usually with a sidecar of humor. Her baby is the Strangely Funny series, an annual anthology of comedy horror tales by talented authors. Sarah’s great-great aunt served as a nurse in WWI, and she was injured by poison gas during the fighting. After being mustered out, she traveled widely. A hundred years later, 'Aunt Dess' would inspire Sarah to write stories she would likely disapprove of.
OTHER BOOKS
Books by Gwen Mayo and Sarah E. Glenn
Murder at the Million Dollar Pier
Murder on the Mullet Express
Books by Gwen Mayo
Concealed in Ash
Circle of Dishonor
Books by Sarah E. Glenn
All This and Family Too
The Strangely Funny Anthologies
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