“Followers of Dowie, the faith cure leader, adopted the tactics of Mrs. Carrie Nation yesterday and wrecked a number of drug stores.”
Two fanatics who gained fame (and infamy) in the late 1800s, the ax-wielding Prohibitionist Carrie Nation and the batshit crazy Illinois faith healer John Alexander Dowie, were bitter rivals and had a heated confrontation during the latter’s combustible revival meetings at Madison Square Garden in 1903. But that didn’t stop a few of Dowie’s tens of thousands of loyalists from copying the any-means-necessary methods of Nation, who was known for walking into saloons and smashing their contents into shards with her trusty blade. But what the Dowieites hated far more than liquor was medicine and their efforts against science can be seen in an article in the February 7, 1901 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. An excerpt:
“Chicago–Crying out that drugs were the agents of the devil, a half-dozen women, followers of Dowie, the faith cure leader, adopted the tactics of Mrs. Carrie Nation yesterday and wrecked a number of drug stores on the West Side. In some instances there were hand to hand fights with druggists.
Armed as they were with pitchforks, umbrellas and canes, the women came out the victors in nearly every encounter and succeeded in destroying property wherever they went.
The women went in a well organized band, were of middle age and well dressed. Most of them wore automobile coats, under which they concealed their implements of destruction while on the street. After leaving a drug store they invariably sang ‘Praise Be the Lord,’ or ‘Zion Forever.’ Policemen saw them, but attached no significance to their actions and no arrests were made.
The first place visited was Charles G. Foucek’s drug store, at Eighteenth Street and Centre Avenue. Calling the proprietor to the front of the store the crusaders upbraided him for dealing in traffics of the devil. Then one of the women, who seemed to be a leader, asked: ‘Don’t you know that all the ills of human kind can be cured by prayer?’
‘I an not aware of the fact, if such is the case,’ said the druggist.
‘Hurrah for Dowie,’ shouted the woman. At that her companions drew canes and umbrellas from beneath their long cloaks and began to strike at the druggist’s head. He dodged the blows and took refuge behind the prescription case. Then the women turned their attention to the shelves and show cases and began to strike right and left. The besiegers were finally driven off with buckets of water.
Other drug stores in the same neighborhood, belonging to B. Lillienthal, Leo L. Maranzek, Herman Limerman and O. Shapiro, were also wrecked by the crusaders, the same tactics being used. The women finally separated, after being driven from one of the stores at the point of a revolver.”