The Problems of the Past

Smoking tobacco in this day and age is banned from the Columbia County courthouse, but in the 19th century, it was a different use of tobacco that caused a public nuisance: chewing it. A reader sent this item from the Hudson Evening Register for October 21, 1887. Who knew that our forebears were such wits? 

"Gentlemen will please refrain from expectorating on the matting" is reduced down to "You spit, you git!" It may have been the Gilded Age, but, in Hudson at least, it certainly wasn't the Age of Eloquence.

The courthouse in 1887, where expectorating on the matting in the hall was cause for consternation, was this one, the first of three to occupy the site of our current Warren & Wetmore courthouse.

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