NYC Daily News Time Machine

note the stockings to cover the women's legs - required in public boys, on the other hand, were routinely photographed completely naked, pretty much everywhere: in public fountains, off piers, in fire hydrants  the type of suit pictured above was allowed only in women's only public bath houses so . . .  necessity as the mother of invention,  as bare limbs on women were not allowed in public except for certain endeavors.  So in Milwaukee? For some reason, classic dancing is happening in the water!

Jack Dempsey had become the heavyweight champ the same year the paper was born, in 1919 Only five years earlier, at the age of 19, he had entered his first competition in place of his brother, Bernie, who was much older and had used the name "Jack" in the ring, in Cripple Creek, Colorado where he downed his competitor 8 times in the first two rounds, both of them winded early on.   Jack was on record noting that, "Neither Bernie nor I had taken into consideration the high altitude at Cripple Creek."  The ref made the very unusual move of stopping the fight after the seventh round, calling it for Jack.  According to Dempsey "In those days they didn't stop mining-town fights as long as one guy could move." He won $100.  Five years later, how far he's come!

The first issue, June 24, 1919 featured the middle spread (the home for most of the photos not used on the front page or sports photos marked for the back page would be printed in the center of the newspaper) showing different ways children were now using what we can assume to be some dead soldier's helmet in play, from a dirt pail, to a stroller, to a swing for dolls. In another spread a week later, more photos of children playing at war, less than a year after what was considered the only Great War of its kind had come to an end. v

Over the past year, with a subscription to Newspapers.com, I started looking through the New York Daily News for old photographs, just because I like looking at pictures from old newspapers, mostly.  Now that the first year is coming to a close, I've made it through the first issues in the summer of 1919 all the way up to 1937. It's been quite a ride from the months after the end of WWI through the worst years of the Great Depression, and I decided rather than hoard all the fun, I would share the ones I'd clipped.  Some are historical. Other are just adorable.  My initial plan is to share them chronologically, although at a later point I would like to group them in different ways.  Starting with the summer of 1919 then . . .