the mayor who believed in sparring 🥊

people say a lot of things about atlantic city. often, it's rooted in ignorance. and here at casa diving horse, we don't let that slide.

from 1912-1916, we had a mayor. his name was william "billy" riddle. he was a rich dude who genuinely believed in justice (rare!), enjoyed a nice cocktail, was obsessed with a single land tax, and LOVED atlantic city. his father died before he was born. his mother mary founded chelsea — yes, chelsea. as a single mother. with an all female real estate team. those big beautiful streets and incredible trees and gorgeous architecture? her idea. she built it, made herself a fortune doing it, and when she died left money in her will for the trolley workers. not the owners. the workers. her husband worked to help the poor in philadelphia - i'm still researching the both mary and will sr - if you can help me by doing some philadelphia library research i would take you to the knife and fork and teach you about the riddles)

the aerican monte carlo thing is a story for a different day - or its somewhere on my substack

riddle grew up watching his mother run things and then went and did both. he came to office through organized labor and fusion politics, stood up for locals against the bosses, and spent his whole term arguing that atlantic city should work for everyone who actually lived and visited here.

he also really, really believed in sunday. specifically your right to enjoy one without some religious fanatic loser telling you how to enjoy it/

so here's the thing about sundays in 1916: labor laws as we know them basically didn't exist. people worked six days a week. long days. hard days. sunday was it — the one window to be somewhere that wasn't work, to breathe some salt air, to drink if you wanted, to feel like the week hadn't completely swallowed you whole. and atlantic city understood that assignment very, very well. the trains were packed every weekend with working people coming down from philly (shoobies) and new york (bennies) with a few dollars and nowhere else to be. the whole city ran on it. the hotels, the saloons, the restaurants, the boardwalk vendors, the fortune tellers. a good sunday in july was rent in november, your kids birthday present in march.

1914, press of atlantic city

and then on the other side of that were the reformers and religious evangelists who had decided that fun, specifically loud communal public fun, was where the devil gets in. no drinking on sundays. no music on sundays. no dancing on sundays. they literally tried to ban the turkey trot in atlantic city. go look up the turkey trot right now and come back to me. i'll wait. actualy no i'll do it for you bc hahahaha you gotta see this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIszn7Dya3o

the governor of new jersey (fort) threatened to send actual state troops to atlantic city over sunday drinking. actual troops. taxpayer money, for a resort town being a resort town. and while the politicians were busy performing morality, the working class people whose entire financial reality depended on those sunday crowds were the ones paying for it. when liquor was restricted on sundays in atlantic city, the papers noted it immediately — tourism took a serious hit. all the biz went to cape may, which was far more relaxed about the whole morality law thing. people didn't stop wanting a drink on sunday. they just went somewhere else to have it. the reformers weren't cleaning up vice, they were just relocating it and tanking the local economy in the process. and atlantic city, specifically, was being targeted. riddle knew it. the locals knew it. everybody knew it except the people writing the laws from trenton. sound familiar? HMMMMMMMMM.

the man quite literally fighting for your right to have that sunday was billy riddle. and here's the thing about riddle that genuinely blows my mind the more i research him — he was saying things in 1912 that we're still arguing about now. and he had a mother fucking sense of humor about it! like this is a man you'd for sure want in your rotation. (speaking of, if you want the tldr on weed in atlantic city, click here. rip billy riddle u woulda loved legal pot)

he believed that whether you were rich or poor, you deserved nice things. beautiful things. he believed all labor was valuable and that the city should reflect that. he wanted year-round industry so working people had jobs in january, not just july. he wanted women on the school board. he supported women's suffrage before it was politically safe to do so. he wanted the poor man to be able to enjoy a highball in a beautiful intentional space just as much as the rich man. or pray on the beach. he wanted people to do as they wished.

and so bc of that obviously the rich boardwalk men absolutely did not fuck with him. which is a big part of why you've probably never heard of him.

the man who owned both major atlantic city newspapers — walter edge, state senator, eventual governor of new jersey — was not a riddle fan. edge didn't just cover the news, he was the news, he was the machine, he was the guy deciding what atlantic city's story looked like to the outside world. so riddle never really had a fair shot at the historical record. the paper that was supposed to cover him was run by the guy working against him. and that version of events is mostly what got passed down.

but here's what didn't get erased: the copper nails in the knife and fork inn walls. the chelsea streets his mother built. the trolley workers who got money in her will. the suffrage letter he wrote in 1915, published on page one of the one independent paper in town. the boxing match he arranged with an evangelist's trainer and lost gracefully, blowing like a grampus by round two, completely unbothered.

oh, and the fact that he called out his fellow commissioners for drinking while publicly opposing alcohol. under oath. while simultaneously admitting he'd been drinking at the exact saloon whose license he'd just voted against revoking. didn't even flinch. "i don't think the police ought to discriminate between people," he said.

that's billy riddle for ya. and atlantic city owes him more than it knows.

in 1916, a traveling evangelist named henry stough rolled into town to "save "it. stough was the kind of fella who walked around in furs and jewels while telling everyone else how to live. he filled a tabernacle on massachusetts ave, passed the collection plate, declared atlantic city "the toughest, meanest city in the united states," and generally had a great time being offended by everything.

what happened next is one of the best things i have ever found in an old newspaper:

stough had a trainer. jack cardiff — welterweight, ex-prizefighter, currently on the payroll of jesus h. christ, or at least stough's version of him. cardiff challenged riddle to a boxing match. riddle said yes. january 12, 1916, chelsea basement home gym, eight-ounce gloves, a movie camera rolling (yes, i have reached out to the heston archive and am going next week to see if they have this footage! so you should really subscribe to my substack, because if i find it, they're gonna see that raw, marvelous footage first) .

before they went downstairs cardiff let himself into riddle's library while the mayor finished breakfast. he found five bibles and a complete collection of robert ingersoll's freethought writings on the same shelf. also a life of jesus. he was still standing there reading when riddle came in and opened with a rattling volley of scripture, ending on his creed i shit you fucking not:

"let him without sin cast the first stone."

"let not your heart be troubled," cardiff countered.

then they went downstairs and went at it.

riddle had the longer reach. he landed good wallops. he also gassed out after the first round and was, per every paper that covered it, blowing like a grampus by the end. (again, their words, i swear to god)

cardiff said after: "make no mistake about this man riddle. he's a live member, and if ever he hits the trail there will be a muscular christian on the job."

he didn't hit the trail. he lost the election that may. stough claimed it as a victory for christian people. big L for the rest of us.

the night stough's campaign opened, a woman showed up at mayor riddle's back door in the cold with nothing under her coat but a chemise. they took her in. his wife, florence, went upstairs and came back down with one of her own dresses. the woman had been evicted because she couldn't pay the rent. the people who put her out on the street in january with nothing on her back were henry stough's own backers. a reporter asked him about how he felt about the scrap and stough's campaign.

riddle looked at the reporter and said: "give that story a name."

then he quoted mr. dooley: "one can't eat a bible." he was scowling when he started. smiling by the end.

it's been 110 years and you still can't. but you can read the full story and support my atlantic city deep dives and mayor riddle research here→ https://substack.com/home/post/p-193078201

WILLIAM RIDDLE Press of Atlantic City, September 15, 1928

Colorful is a word not in the common use that it is today when William Riddle was most native in Atlantic City affairs. But perhaps no other single word, unless it be picturesque, so aptly describes his public career. Either as a public officer, or as a private citizen commenting upon public affairs, he was never dull. Many disagreed with him, some even hated him, but none could forget him; for he never bored. In politics he was a born showman — born to lead, never follow; born for the offensive, never the defensive; born to retire, utterly and completely, when the time came, as it does for all public men, for him to take to the sidelines.

And underneath it all "Bill" Riddle was so thoroughly human that no one secretly enjoyed the hubbub he caused or the political havoc he created more than its author. He looked mad and he seemed mad, but in realty he was never mad; for back of every sarcastic attack was a chuckle; accompanying every political discord, a gleam of harmonious appreciation in the flashing Celtic eye.

In fact, in many ways the man was an amazing contradiction. He could debate the intricate problem of taxation, especially single tax, in a fashion to challenge the deepest thought in the country, and spend his leisure hours reading Rex Beach, Marie Corelli and even lighter fictionists. No one who has ever occupied the executive chair at city hall was a more complete and thorough master of municipal business, from technical financial problems to broad civic undertakings, and yet "after hours" he could parade about, confer with and apparently enjoy the company of ward heelers and political hangers-on whose brains would not strain a pea-pod. But in public life he was invariably an able man, with sound fundamental ideas and the capacity to carry them out. How much Atlantic City owes to his public career, both as an office-holder and as a candidate who pressed lively campaigns, may not be estimated perhaps in understandable terms, but it is considerable — and this despite the fact that personal and political enemies might hesitate to make such admission. If utterances as a public man were frequently intemperate, as they were, it is proper to conclude in retrospect that they were made either to supply fodder for newspapermen, of whom Mr. Riddle was inordinately fond, or merely to bedevil some political enemy; and in either case they never lacked humor, and were certainly excusable on this ground alone. Perhaps his biggest adventure in fun was to start a daily newspaper himself, when he believed other publishers had failed to give him a square deal, and although he lost lots of money he took the failure philosophically, in becoming good grace, treated all employes and others associated with him in the venture with the utmost consideration, and spent many years thereafter poking fun at himself for "a spree more literary than businesslike." No other one man in Atlantic City had received so much harsh criticism in the columns of other journals.

In business life Mr. Riddle ranked with those who helped to develop Atlantic City through shrewd handling of valuable property and the successful operation of several businesses, from insurance to banking. Both before and after his mother's death he showed marked aptitude in this direction. His business judgment seldom failed. If he was erratic, as often claimed, this usually applied to politics. He was devoted to his family, always fondly interested in his boys, loyal to his friends, generous to the needy. If any one thing intrigued him more than another it was the mutual affection of mother and son, and the lengths to which he would go to express sympathy where death had intruded upon this sacred relationship well illustrates one of the fine traits of his character.

All in all, "Bill" Riddle was one of Atlantic City's most picturesque citizens, always interesting and usually helpful. His curtain ends an act covering close to a half century of civic activity.

that's the full thing.

on his gravestone in atlantic city cemetery, where he rests with his best gals, his devoted wife, florence, and mother, mary, it reads:

let the dervish flout,

of my base metal may be filed a key, 

that shall unlock the door he howls without.

slainte, billy.

preview of issue 6 of the diving horse

also obviously he had drip.. this clipping is from 1926, 10 years after he was mayor and 2 years before he passed.