I did not expect this one to show up in four newspapers.

It started with a small item in the Evening Star on July 9th, 1926 — three paragraphs, buried on an inside page, under the headline "One-Arm Driver Pays $10 for Her Affection for Dog."

By the next day it had traveled to Iowa. The Sioux City Journal ran it as a special dispatch under the headline "Pets Dog in an Auto; Judge Fines Her $10." The Morning News had it too. So did a paper in Delaware. A story about a woman, a poodle, and a powder puff had become, briefly, national news.

The facts, as reported, are these. Marguerite Atchison was driving her automobile on Sherman Avenue in Washington D.C. when Policeman F.J. Scoville observed her operating the vehicle with one arm wrapped around a small white fluffy poodle. He arrested her. She appeared before Judge Gus A. Schuldt in Police Court the following day. He fined her ten dollars.

The charge was one-arm driving, which the Evening Star explained "specifically stated that the defendant 'did fail to pay strict attention to the traffic on said highway, and did fail at all times to be in position for emergency control of said vehicle.'"

In court, Marguerite Atchison offered an explanation. She had not, she told the judge, been driving with her arm around the dog for very long. Just as Policeman Scoville approached, her girl companion — who had been holding the poodle — passed it over to her. The reason the companion needed both hands free was that she wanted to powder her nose.

The Sioux City Journal, which had apparently been waiting its whole life for a story like this, opened with the following sentence: "A poodle dog, a powder puff and two pretty girls figured in a rather unusual case called up in police court here."

The Morning News took a slightly different angle on the defense, noting that "a woman's vanity, rather than love for dumb animals, was the cause, she told the judge."

Judge Schuldt fined her ten dollars regardless.

The detail that sent this story beyond Washington and into wire dispatches across the country was a single line at the end of the Evening Star item: "The conviction today is the first on court records against a member of the fair sex charged with this offense."

The first woman ever convicted of one-arm driving in Washington D.C. The arm had been around a poodle. The poodle had been passed to her by a companion who needed to powder her nose. The Sioux City Journal felt this warranted a special dispatch. Readers in Iowa apparently agreed.

See you tomorrow. – Chris

Sources
Evening Star, Washington D.C., July 9, 1926
The Morning News, July 9, 1926
The Sioux City Journal, July 10, 1926
Boston Evening Globe, October 15, 1938