Discussions of Higher Literature Lands Disputants In Police Station

The Detroit Times, December 18, 1911 (enlarge)

I pulled this story from obscurity on the sole hope that the Thomas Bradford herewith is the same man with that name who became a noted spiritualist by committing suicide to communicate with the living. Of course he was from Detroit, wanted to start a cult and died nearly penniless but that's the occultist Thomas Lynn Bradford. This T. B. had other pursuits.

This Thomas Bradford, prithee he be thy same, was a literary critic of sorts who got into a tussle with a diseased book after some wine and walnuts on a Friday night with two ladies, Emila Lampson and Kathleen Stardsteet. Bradford contended that "Love's Victory" (presumably the 17th century tragicomedy since it is referred to as a classic and not modern tomes contemporary to 1911 when a play and a film by that same name were released and had been quite active for some years) was rotten to the core and mangled the "diseased-looking volume".

The spat ended with the neighbors calling the cops and the triumvirate going to court where they nearly re-enacted the culprit literary critique. The judge dismissed the case. Somebody should have dismissed the editor of this story as well because a lot of the names seem to have misplaced letters or misspellings. While I've never heard of Purtha M. Blay and no Google searches bring up that name Laura Jean Libbey was a noted dime store novelist.