New Britain herald., 1922-03-28
Edict Issued Last Night By Police Was Result of Clerical Error, h. vestigation Shows
Even in Chicago Flappers Sigh Happily When In- formed That Metropolis Has RecOnsidered.

New York, March 2S.-Police Com missioner Enright today lifted the ban on smoking by women. in public as suddenly as he clamped it down last night when he learned Alderman McGuiness' anti smoking ordinance had never been passed by the board of aldermen or signed by Mayor Hylan.
 Daniel w. F. Mccoy an employe in the city clerks office, was led forth, caparisoned in sack cloth and ashes as official goat for an error that had set pro- and even anti-smo ok ing women on the warpath from the Battery to the far reaches of Harlem.
 Mccoy, it was explained, was charged with clipping the official city record for resolutions and ordinances that have been adopted and approved by the mayor, and sending them along to the proper officials for en- forcement
 Mccoy still was too much overcome by the wrath that has descended up- on his head to explain just how he happened to include the anti-smoking bill in his list of ordinances adopted and approved.
 City Clerk Cruise rallied to Mccoy S defense however and intimated broad ly that the clerks office by no means had corner on ivory"
 Not Properly Approved
 Had Police Commissioner Enright or his aides, read the purported ordi- nance carefully, he declared, they would have discovered it was not a proper document, as it did not bear the stamp of the clerks office certify ing that 1t had been approved by the mayor.
 News that it was all a mistake came like reprieve from the gallows to proprietors of scores of chic places where qualification of milady's passion for the soothing weed was the chief source of bread and butter revenues. Fashionable smoke shops for women had sprung up in F1tth avenue, Broadway and other advanced centers while Greenwich village had come to depend almost exclusively on smoke rings to produce an atmosphere of Bohemanism--sinc the passing of the cup that cheers.
 But the ordinance making it a crime for proprietors of public places to let women smoke-loosed upon a thunderstruck town last night by squads of Commissioner Enright's fin est-did not stop with spreading gloom in advanced places.
 Much Gloom
 It even had it's effect on downtown cafeterias where stenographers and women clerks gather for luncheon. For the smoking "evil' the ordinance was designed to check has spread to New York women in many walks Of life.
 Taxicab drivers were beginning to worry too, for fear their conveyances might be ruled public places and forbidden as smokeries for fair fares en route home from the theater-thus causing a switch to the subway route.
 Alderman McGuiness, father of the ordinance that had tectic life from sundoWn to sunrise was almost the only New Yorker discoverabe today who seemed to regret it's passing. It was his pet. He had introduced it twice, scarcely hoping it would see even 12 hours of life.
 Expanding his chest McGuiness plans to introduce a sister ordinance in the next two weeks closing all restaurants and cabarets at midnight. Most of them run now until the sin ful hour of one while some dancing clubs" in the broadway zone are al legged to keep open all night. a
 A.;J however, Commissioner Enright's blue-coated enforcers of the anti smoking found scarcely a friend.
 Hard on Police
 Flappers and eX-fappers who were caught in the act last night by en- forcement squads and ordered to throw away their flags, told the un- comfortab ble policemen everything they thought they could say and still keep out of durance vile.
 Restaurateurs and cabaret keep CTS, when served with notices against the new "crime" spluttered and swore and talked about going to the courts to knock the outrageous ordinance in the head.
 HyIan Pleased
 Chicago, March 2S-Mayor John F, Hylan of New York, on being inform . ed that Police Commissioner Enright had rescinded his order of yesterday prohibiting women from smoking in public, expressed satisfaction.
 ''I make it a policy in my admin istration," the mayor commented, never to interfere with the ladies' for they will do as they please any way"
 The mayor said that until report CTS informed him last night of the smoking ban, he never had heard of such a thing.