Flip back the yellowing pages of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch archives, and you'll find evidence of a scandal so Midwestern, so petty and so focused on moralizing, that you'll have a singular conclusion: only in St. Louis.
The year was 1891, and the subject was "lady teachers." Just like in 2023, people couldn't help sticking their noses where they didn't belong.
The story began with an innocent woman, a lady teacher.
"I had been told to drink beer by my physician," the lady wrote in a statement, "on account of nervousness which sometimes kept me from sleeping."
One night she was drinking that medicinal brew in the bracing night air and realized that she was under surveillance by two "gentlemen," one an unknown. Shortly afterward, she found herself called before the Teachers Committee and questioned about her drinking. She soon identified the mystery man: none other than St. Louis Public School President Miller!
How much sneaking around in the night, peering in at teachers innocently sipping their brews, did he do? The P-D thought: too much.
But if this widespread surveillance scandalized readers, the way that these ladies got out of their charges seemed even more indecorous. Several had, uh, some "petticoat pull" with education board members.
And if you have to ask what that means, well, you're probably not from here.
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