Hanged elephant
November 30th, 2004
I’d heard that the citizens of Hartlepool once hung a monkey, but the story of Erwin and the hanged elephant was new to me:
It was 1916, and things were changing fast. World War I raged in Europe. Dadaism, ripe with comic derision and irrationality, took hold in artistic circles. Freeform jazz took hold of the American music scene. Margaret Sanger opened the first birth-control clinic. It was a good year for scapegoats. It was a good year to hang an elephant. [...]
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