Photo: Springvale Public Library
By Lawrence Furbish
How much do you love your newspaper? If one day you found that it was unavailable, what would you do and how would you feel? On Friday, April 2, 1909, the weekly Sanford Tribune ran an article about just such an event and its impact on the town. The headlines were “LID WAS ON TIGHT – All Stores Except Lunchrooms and Restaurants were Closed – COULDN’T GET SUNDAY PAPERS – Puritanical Sunday Under the Enforcement of Blue Laws —-Druggists all Went out of Town.”
Restrictions on non-religious activities on certain days date back to AD 321, when Roman Emperor Constantine prohibited labor on Sundays. In 1619, the first such regulations in America were adopted in Virginia’s Jamestown Colony. The term “Blue Laws” apparently came from Connecticut’s history, but it is unclear why or how.
In any event, for some reason in 1909, Sanford’s selectmen and the Civic League decided to enforce a Sunday closing on all businesses except restaurants. The unnamed author of the Tribune article described the results as follows:
“While Sunday was probably the first day in the history of the town that all the stores, with the exception of the restaurants and lunchrooms, have been closed, it was not the quietest Sunday that can be remembered. From early morning there were many people on the streets …some were riled, some were furious, and some went to church in peace.”
One woman told the reporter she had never heard so much swearing as she did on the streets that Sunday. Interestingly, the main reason for the upset was that people could not get their Sunday papers because all the drugstores were closed. On the Saturday before the closing, the druggists held a meeting and determined they would close on Saturday night and not re-open until Monday morning. They collected the keys from their clerks so that no one could get into the stores, put up placards saying things like “gone fishing,” and, in one case, draped a window in mourning.
Sunday newspapers were still shipped into town but then loaded into a wagon and brought to a local barn, where they were under guard all day. One of the druggists who usually sold a large number of papers was told by the publishers that unless the papers were sold the following Sunday, they would send representatives into town to sell them.
It is not clear why or how the Sanford Civic League was involved. The national Civic League was formed in 1894 in Philadelphia by Theodore Roosevelt, Louis Brandeis, Frederick Law Olmsted and others. Its goal was to advance civic engagement and improve city government, but there was no mention of Blue Laws. The Tribune reporter did note that the Sanford Civic League was willing to have Sunday papers sold, but wanted cigars, ice cream, soda, etc. to be under the ban.
A final interesting historical side note: In 1851, Maine became the first state to prohibit the sale of alcohol with the exception that “medicinal whiskey” could be sold in drugstores to treat everything from toothaches to the flu. With a physician’s prescription, patients could legally buy a pint of hard liquor every 10 days. One doctor ordered “take three ounces every hour for stimulant until stimulated.” There is no mention of this in the Tribune article, but one may wonder if some of the distressed citizens in 1909 were unhappy about something other than missing their Sunday newspaper.
Editor’s note: This is the first in an occasional series on stories of interest from Sanford-Springvale history.
The post A Look Back at When Sanford Lost its Sunday Papers appeared first on Sanford Springvale News.
