Old Print Article: “Hyman Wolf’s Whiskers–He Says Moe Karp Pulled Them Out By The Roots,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1898)

August 26, 2010 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

It hurt like a bastard. (Image by Frank Schulenburg.)

In a Brooklyn tailor shop in the 19th-century, two nudniks started talking trash about one another and then one of the a-holes pulled off part of his rival’s beard. It was a brutal and shocking crime. At least nobody got kicked in the vagina. An excerpt from the completely unnecessary story that ran in the March 11, 1898 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“A little bunch of whiskers which at one time adorned the chin of Hyman Wolf, a Brownsville tailor, appeared as part of the evidence in an assault case in which Wolf was the complainant in the Gates avenue court this morning. Wolf works in a tailor shop kept by a man named Diamond on Stone avenue, near Belmont avenue, and at the bench next to his own sits Moe Karp, another tailor. A few days ago Karp and Wolf held a conversation which terminated in a quarrel and before Wolf could prevent it, he says, Karp had hold of his whiskers.

Karp pulled hard and Wolf howled with pain. Several other tailors rushed in to separate the two and when they were finally parted Wolf’s theretofore even beard had a rugged appearance, and the indentations in its edges could have been filled out nicely with the portions of his hirsute growth which were discovered in Karp’s clutches. In some unexplained manner. Wolf obtained the missing parts of his facial adornment and carefully preserved them in a piece of paper. The case was adjourned this morning.”

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