Halloween Tale Published by Anti-Saloon League, 1921
Halloween, the October 31 holiday which celebrates all things scary, is a relatively recent creation. With roots in ancient Celtic tradition, All Hallows Eve has a long pedigree. But Halloween as we know it today is largely an American creation. It started with the Scotts-Irish immigrants, who found the American pumpkin a more easily carved vegetable for making jack o’lanterns. Fortune telling and cider-and-donut parties merged with juvenile hooliganism and outhouse-tipping. Fearing the alleged rise of delinquency, the holiday was channeled into more manageable trick or treating at the turn of the century. By the 1920s, Halloween was more respectable, more child-friendly, and more controlled.[i]
That’s when the Anti-Saloon League in Westerville hopped on the Halloween bandwagon.
In 1921, the Lincoln-Lee Legion published a four page story pamphlet titled, “Mr. Owl and Mrs. Pussycat: A Tale of Halloween.” The pamphlet had a cover graced by the memes so familiar to us today; an owl, a black cat, and an autumnal forest. The Lincoln-Lee Legion, an arm of the Anti-Saloon League targeting children, urging them to take “the pledge” early in life. The Anti- Saloon League spewed prohibitionist literature day and night.
One of their efforts was a series of children’s story pamphlets penned by a Westerville bookkeeper and would-be author named Mary Waddell, of which the Halloween story was one.. Ms. Waddell, a native of Gallipolis, Ohio, had come to Westerville with her parents. She contributed several children’s stories to the Legion, such as “Poor Bennie,” “Esther’s First Party,” and “Belated Guests,” as well as material for adults, with titles like the sterner sounding “Scientific Temperance Simplified” and “Shall Wine and Beer Come back?” Active as an author from at least 1920 to 1925, Waddell wrote books, pamphlets (10 cents each), and at least one “pageant,’ using live actors to symbolize stories of interest. For all her efforts, Waddell remains a shadowy figure, living with her sister, both spinsters, and dying in 1942 in her Knox Street home.[ii]
But getting back to Mr. Owl and Mrs. Pussycat. The story is not complicated. Mrs. Pussycat is an unseen guest at a Halloween party, or “frolic.” She remembers hearing that alcohol made you stronger and steadied your nerves. The cat sampled the leftovers from a partygoer’s glass, and went out to hunt rabbits. In the fields, she discovered that it was a lie; she was clumsy, had poor aim, and when she finally caught a small rabbit, she was too tired to drag it home. Meeting Mr. Owl, an old friend and the voice of wisdom, the bird set the cat to rights. Alcohol didn’t make you stronger, it made you weak, sloppy, and foolish. Mrs. Owl saw the error of her ways, and the story ends with her pledge: “I am a total abstainer from this day.”[iii]
No real surprises here. The story would not convert any tipplers, but would be welcome in Temperance-leaning homes. It might also have reinforced the symbols of what was a new–ish holiday. Among the images of soused cats and sanctimonious owls, there were “grinning yellow pumpkin faces,” bats, witches, corn stalks; enough Halloween symbols to place the holiday in a familiar setting.
Beyond the story itself and a few tidbits about the author, we cannot say much more. Did the pamphlet sell well? Was it enjoyed by its juvenile audience? Was Halloween “mainstream” enough by 1921 to be an easily recognized story, or were the holiday icons too new? “Mr. Owl and Mrs. Pussycat” received no reviews or critiques that I can find. But owls and cats and other Halloween paraphernalia still resonate with me, and I suspect, more than a few others. Certainly it was a Westerville contribution to the holiday’s growth
[i] Nicholas Rogers, Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Oxford University Press, 2002..
[ii] Public Opinion, March 12, 1942; Pennsylvania School Journal, September 1923, p.176.
[iii] Mary Waddell, “Mr. Owl and Mrs. Pussycat: A Tale of Hallowe’en,” (Westerville: Lincoln-Lee Legion, 1921).