Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, September 1921 · page 31 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #27 — page 31: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains no cartoon or illustration—it's prose text from a satirical magazine article about early New Orleans history. The piece contrasts the colonial/antebellum past with the "modern" (early 20th century) present, using ironic nostalgia. The satire mocks both eras: the old Plaza is described with darkly humorous catalog of brutal punishments (fleur-de-lis brandings, hangings, breaking on wheels), while "modern" entertainments (horse racing, polite gambling, jazz bands) are presented as tame substitutes. A sharp jab appears in the women section: the author sarcastically notes that colonial-era "select society" women were literally "selected" from hospitals and correctional facilities—a crude reference to the historical Filles à la Cassette (French women of questionable backgrounds sent to Louisiana colonies). The tone is satirical mockery of both past brutality and present pretension.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 29 were whipping posts and hot irons with which the fleur de lis was burned on culprit's breaking some of the laws; a gambling-hell where money was staked up and pulled down shoulders. The only hangings I saw were of idlers hanging around the corners. Then the old Plaza was the center of social and commercial life, military fete and the fate of criminals who were shot, nailed alive in their coffins, or slowly sawed in half. The attractions were sometimes varied by hanging women on the gallows and breaking men on the wheel. In those days there were no Sunday jazz bands or vaudeville circuits, but in Congo Square in the open air there were dancing carnivals with half-naked girls, and real Voodoo dancers at Ponchartrain, of the old tom-tom fiddle and gourd drum variety, who danced themselves crazy and fell into a frothy fit. What modern social balls can compare with the Indian balls where saffron sirens with sweet look and voice led the dance through love's labyrinth of jealousy! Now there is horse racing and private and polite gambling —then there was wide open faro and roulette, and later the Louisiana lottery. Women did not possess the face and figure characteristic of modern New Orleans belles, but there society was very select, in fact, they were "selected" from hospitals and correction homes. Later there came a shipment of "casket