Firecracker flashback

We were out of town today, where scenes similar to this July 5, 1902 cartoon from the Brooklyn Eagle were still being played out in a Long Island suburb. We're a lot more easygoing about such transgressions these days. Just listen to this unbylined geezer in the same day's edition; when did this kind of pompous fulmination go out of style?

No Quiet, Even in the Park.

The Fourth of July, 1902, was neither more nor less noisy than the Fourth of July, 1901. Our rising generation burnt up the average amount of powder and scorched and blackened the average amount of cuticle. Our nerves underwent the same strain and our property sustained the same damage. Those who had to remain in town yesterday and who have outgrown the torpedo and the toy pistol age stood the racket and avoided the stench of consuming explosive as best they could; they realized that there was no escape.

Some few thousands sought refuge in Prospect Park, perhaps laboring under the mistaken impression that pistols and firecrackers were forbidden within that inclosure. In this assumption they were woefully mistaken. It would seem that there is room enough in Brooklyn for those who really must make the Fourth hideous without an invasion by them of the borough's chief pleasure ground...Those who disturbed the park yesterday could not, at least in most cases, plead the excuse of extreme youth. By actual observation much, if not all, of the noise there was the product of young hoodlums who had outgrown their childhood. Some of these hopefuls occupied choice positions along the paths skirting the lake and waged sham battles with those barking apologies for revolvers, the sale of which should be, but is not, prohibited by law. Nobody would be hurt, and many would be benefited, if pistols and crackers were forbidden on the fourth, as they are on other days, within the limits of the Park Commissioner's jurisdiction. If you must be a savage, surely there is room enough in the streets.

Oh, shut up! Although, to give Sam the Eagle here his due, the paper also reported an impressive list of casualties from Fourth-related festivities, none serious "with the exception of the explosion of a Coston signal, which had been given to some boys by a seafaring man." Regina Peterson, age 9, was shot in the abdomen by a .32 caliber revolver discharged by someone in the street; John Gustavson, 11, of Henry Street, was burned in the face by crackers; Otto Kebler, 21, of Monitor Street had his skull fractured "by the explosion of a cannon in the store at 100 Richardson Street"; Rhinehardt Anderson, 10, injured his left hand with a toy pistol; and Kate McGuire, 12, and Mary Dunn, 7, were hospitalized for firecracker burns. Here's hoping you had a safer and more mellow Fourth of July!

Image: Brooklyn Public Libray, Brooklyn Collection