Mrs. David Beach’s Long Walk: From New York to Chicago Through Lorain – May 1912 – Part 3

New York Globe photo of Mrs. Beach dressed for rain

After its extensive coverage of Mrs. David Beach in its May 14, 1912 edition, the Lorain Times-Herald included one small update of her progress after leaving Lorain.

The front page of the May 15, 1912 newspaper noted that she had left Sandusky that morning on her way to Oak Harbor, and that “her route includes crossing a mile and a half over Baybridge.”

Mrs. Beach finished her long walk, arriving in Chicago on May 28, 1912. Her achievement appeared to be well-covered in newspapers across the country.

From the May 31, 1912 Fort Collins, Colorado Weekly Courier

From the May 28, 1912 Kingston, New York Daily Freeman

The Chicago Daily News Almanac and Yearbook for 1913 included a detailed listing of her journey (below).

It’s still quite an achievement more than a hundred years later, especially in view of the primitive road conditions at that time and her defiance of some generally accepted health principles (such as drinking no water at all on her journey).

Mrs. Beach later published a book about her walk, entitled My Walk From New York to Chicago.

I close out my look back at the remarkable Mrs. David Beach with the outspoken interview that she gave the Lorain Times-Herald reporters in her hotel room during her visit to Lorain. It appeared in that paper on May 14, 1912.

****

Yes, Ladies, You May Wear High Heels and Stays, But Don’t Eat Meat, Says Fair Walker

In her room at the Hotel Lorain last evening, Mrs. David Beach, of New York, author, musician, and now-famous woman walker, talked of her ideas concerning diet and health. Her maid busied herself about the room, preparing for the usual routine of massage and bathing that follows each day’s stint on the road. Mrs. Beach’s heavy walking shoes were unlaced and taken off.

She talked rapidly, but distinctly with just a trace of “Eastern” accent.

“This trip of mine,” she began, “is a bigger thing, a broader undertaking than a mere attempt to make a name for myself or to make money. I am doing this to educate the people to the right way of taking care of their bodes.

"Degeneration Threatens American”
“America needs a health awakening. The stomachs of Americans threaten to curse the degeneration of the nation, and all the doctors in the world won’t help America very much in making the radical change in the physical being of her citizens that is necessary to the nation’s welfare.

“Food of the wrong kind is the cause of all disease. You look skeptical, but that is true, nevertheless. I have studied the effects of food for nine years.

“The doctors do as well as they can. I wish to say nothing against them. As a whole, the medical profession is an honorable one. Every doctor I have ever known has been a conscientious worker in his profession. But while you are pinning your hope for health salvation upon the doctors, do not forget that America’s greatest cancer specialist died of cancer.

No Cancer in China
“In vegetarian countries cancer is unknown, as are nearly all the rest of the diseases common to meat-eating people. In China and Japan, where rice is the principal food of all the people, a case of cancer is never seen.

Here the reporter thought he saw a loop-hole. “How about leprosy in China and yellow fever and malaria in other vegetarian countries?” he asked.

“The climatic conditions are responsible,” was the answer. “China almost the home of leprosy, is an unsanitary country, poorly drained. Water undermines the ground throughout nearly the whole Chinese empire. The people know practically nothing of sanitation.

The Body Its Own Judge.
“If you doubt my word as to the strength-giving powers of a strictly vegetarian diet, write to the government food experts. They will tell you that grains, vegetables and fruits have more nourishment, weight for weight, than meats.

“People often ask me, ‘How shall I start? What shall I eat? I can only say that eating is a matter of temperament. Foods suited to the needs of one person are not suited to the needs of others – and I am talking strictly of the foods included in what is generally called the vegetarian diet. A family of three members may require three different kinds of vegetable foods. The individual himself is the best judge of what he needs. His own body will tell him if he is treating it right.

“Don’t overload the stomach with indigestible matter. That is the most important thing. A meal of roast beef, potatoes, pastry and coffee, contains almost no nourishment aside from that in the potato, and it takes a good stomach to assimilate that. The meat juices simply act as a stimulant, just as the coffee does.”

“The Hobble An Abomination.”
The reporter was getting anxious about a question he had in mind.

“What do you think of the women’s styles and mode of dressing?” he interposed.

Mrs. Beach’s answer came like a flash.

“The tight skirts–I mean the hobble kind–are an abomination. It is preposterous that the American women will tolerate them. They are absurd, both from the standpoint of beauty and utility.

“But I do believe that most women are better off with stays, if they are properly designed–sufficiently loose, and rather long in front. I wear them myself on the road.

“The American woman’s shoes are not as bad as her hobble skirts. I am not crank enough to say that a woman should wear low heels at all times. When one attends a society function, for instance, one must be properly booted to be well dressed. The ‘French’ heels, of course, are unthinkable at any times. For a dress shoe a woman may well wear a heel high enough to make her foot look shapely and trim, if it is broad enough at the base to support her ankle properly.

“Even on my tramp, I found that I could not do without heels on my shoes. The ones on my walking shoes are an inch high, and the full width of my foot."

Mrs. David Beach’s Long Walk: From New York to Chicago Through Lorain – May 1912 – Part 2

Mrs. David Beach
(Print currently on Ebay)

Here’s how Mrs. David Beach’s arrival in Lorain was covered in the Lorain Times-Herald on Tuesday, May 14, 1912. She seems to have really captured the imagination of the city.

The amusing report includes some nice quotes from Mrs. Beach and a detailed explanation of her vegetarian diet. For you local history buffs, the piece also provides a great snapshot of what the area roads were like back then.

****

WOMAN PEDESTRIAN GIVEN GREAT OVATION AT END OF MUDDY HIKE

Mrs. David Beach, Walking from New York to Chicago, Reaches City After Hardest Day’s Journey of Her Trip – Despite Rain and Heavy Roads, Graceful Walker Jumps Ditches and Sets Fast Pace

BULLETIN
Mrs. Beach is expected to arrive in Huron, completing the second leg of her trip to Sandusky at about 3 o’clock. At 2:30 she was nearing Huron, her pace made difficult by slippery roads. Walking at her regular 3-mile-an-hour rate, the pedestrienne left Vermilion at 11 a.m.

Trudging for half the 29-mile jaunt from Cleveland to Lorain over country brick pavements washed with rain and sleet, and for the other half over slimy clay roads, Mrs. David Beach, of New York, musician, author and just now pedestrienne enroute on a 1000-mile walk from New York to Chicago, arrived in this city at 6:50 last night. Yesterday’s “hike” was over pavements and clay roads. Today’s 31-mile stroll to Sandusky, which Mrs. Beach began at 6 o’clock this morning after having spent the night at the Hotel Lorain, will be over a sandy route. She expects to make better time.

From the city limits to the Hotel Lorain her route was lined with thousands of cheering Lorainites. East Erie avenue looked as if a circus parade were passing. Near the city limits, Mrs. Beach was met by a police escort, without whose aid she probably would have been unable to reach her hotel.

At 6 o’clock this morning she was off on her journey again, taking the shore road with Sandusky 31.5 miles away, as the day’s destination. Tomorrow her stunt is a trifle of 26.6 miles to Fremont. On Thursday she will cover the 33 1-3 miles to Toledo,

In Lorain last night Mrs. Beach had covered 711 miles. It was her 30th walking day since she left New York city on April 10th.

Despite the fact that yesterday had been one of her hardest days since Mrs. Beach left New York city on April 10th, the woman walker, who says she is trying to educate America to a vegetarian diet, was striding sturdily along when two Times-Herald reporters met her at what used to be Lake Breeze about four miles east of the city. One of the reporters made the “hike” because it was a part of his day’s work. The other went along, he said, to help carry the first one in.

“I’m feeling fine, thank you,” was Mrs. Beach’s answer to the reporter’s first question. “The weather and the roads have been bad – about the worst I have encountered, but I feel no ill effects. I could ‘do’ thirty-five miles today if we had not had to stop in Lorain.”

“I suspected you were reporters,” Mrs. Beach remarked, as the two intrepid journalists swung into her stride without halting her. “I am getting so I can spot you.”

Pinned to the front of her sweater was a bouquet someone had handed her on the road, and in her hand she carried a couple of tulips. “The people treat me finely,” she said, as someone in a farmyard shouted, “Hello, Mrs. Beach.” Everyone seemed to know her.

She talked almost incessantly. Apparently devining the reporter’s thoughts, she said: “For the first few days, I tried to avoid the newspapermen, because talking so much took my breath from my walking. But now, I have become accustomed to it, and I can walk and talk all day.”

She spoke to every man, woman, child and dog on the way, keeping up a running fire of comment meanwhile about her methods of dieting and the care of herself.

“I wish you to understand first of all,” she said, “that this enterprise is not directed to money-making or advertising. I am paying nearly all of my expenses. The automobile that accompanies me and carries Mr. J. G. Beatty of the New York Globe, my chauffeur and my maid, is my own machine. I am simply trying to prove that a strictly vegetarian, uncooked diet will sustain the human body through such a strain as that which I am giving mine.

“People eat too much of the wrong kind of food. You meat-eaters sit down to a heavy meal of potatoes, roast beef, perhaps, indigestible pastry, and a cup of coffee. There is almost no nourishment in any of it, except perhaps in the potatoes, and it takes a good stomach to handle the starch in them. The body is stimulated by the meat juices and by the coffee. The stomach, overloaded as it is, can draw no strength from what has been eaten, and the body is almost no better off than it was before the meal was taken.”

Lectures like these the reporter assimilated mentally while his unaccustomed feet floundered frantically in the slippery mud to keep the pace.

“Three miles an hour is my regular gait,” Mrs. Beach said. “But, on days like this, when I have been delayed, I generally increase the rate to four.”

Topographical obstacles like tree roots, ditches and boulders, seemed to have no effect whatever on the persistency of her two-and-a-half foot stride. The ditches she jumped, generally, picking her ground carefully, however, with a sort of “road” instinct. Anyone who wished to talk with her had to drop in at her side. There was no pause whatever in that four-mile-an-hour progress.

At the city limits at the Root road interested spectators began to appear in groups ahead. The escorting party began to grow, until the sidewalks at Century park were reached, it looked like a young parade. A short distance east of Kansas avenue, Mrs. Beach was met by her police escort, Capt. Hugh Reilly and Patrolman Willis Routson. A half-dozen automobiles waited at the end of the East Erie avenue pavement at Kansas avenue.

Then the real crowds began to appear. Followed by a procession a half-block long, with small boys darting about and yelling as if a circus parade were in progress, Mrs. Beach made her way through lanes of people who lined the sidewalks and cheered or clapped their hands as she passed. Her talk, however, never seemed to stop. She discussed vegetarian diet with the reporters, police officers and the purely amateur members of her escorting party.

At the Loop, the policemen held up the following automobiles and made a lane for the walker to reach the opposite side of the street. All the way to the Hotel Lorain, Broadway was lined almost solidly with people.

Mrs. Beach went straight to her room. Preparations had been made for her in advance by the members of the automobile party. Her maid, who is an expert in Swedish massage, began the usual routine of bathing and rubbing that follows each day’s jaunt.

Supper came after the rib-down had been finished. The meal consisted of a salad, made from fresh, green vegetables, dandelions, cabbage and the like – all uncooked – with a little onion added, and set off with a French dressing of olive oil. Salt, used for seasoning, is first dissolved in lemon juice. Then came a “banana soufflé,” a dish made of sliced, ripe bananas, beaten and flavored with salt lemon juice and raw, ground rice. The meal closed with a drink of fruit juice.

Breakfast she does not eat until after nine or ten miles have been covered. Then she stops beside the road and partakes of her day’s first meal from the supplies in the machine. Breakfast begins with a glass of pineapple or other fruit juice; three patties, made of ground wheat, chopped figs, raisins and prunes. Occasionally there are ground oats in the patties, but oats, Mrs. Beach says, are for very heavy work only. Then comes a bowl of grated apples, mixed with orange juice. A glass of fresh juice takes the place of coffee.

The second meal comes at 3 p.m., a tablespoon or two of olive oil with lemon and perhaps two of the grain patties.

On her walk, Mrs. Beach drinks no water. Her machine carries fruit juices, which are used as a thirst quencher. “Because I dissolve the salt I eat in lemon juice, I do not become thirsty often,” Mrs Beach explained. “Even at my home, I do not take a drink of water oftener than every two or three weeks.”

Mrs. Beach has lived on a vegetable diet for nine years. Until she began her 1000-mile walk, however, she had not confined herself to uncooked foods. “But I like the uncooked diet so well, that I will probably stick to it all summer,” she said.

The machine, which accompanies her, carries an amazing amount of luggage, changes of clothing, 16 pairs of shoes, foodstuffs in the way of grains, such as oats, barley, wheat and millet, and machines for grinding the grains and cutting up the fruits.

On the road she wears the sweater jacket always, occasionally putting on a rain coat when it rains unusually hard. Her shoes are two sizes too wide for her, with high, laced tops, and inch-high heels. She tried lower heels but found them not so well adapted to walking. The short, grey skirt is a permanent walking fixture. For rainy days he has a “sou’-wester,” and for sunny days a broad straw hat. Some times she carries a stick, picked up along the road, but uses it very little in aiding her progress.

Leaving the Cleveland public square at 6:30 yesterday morning, Mrs. Beach’s route lay westward along Superior and Detroit avenues to Rocky River. Rain was falling when the start was made, and the rain soon turned to sleet. The walker’s clothing was drenched. At Rocky River Mrs. Beach waited nearly two hours drying her clothes and changing her shoes, of which the machine which accompanies her carries 16 pairs.

From Rocky River the course lay to the southwest over the paved North Ridge road to West Dover, and thence northward to the lake shore road. At 3:30 she stopped at a farm house a couple of miles east of Beach Park for a rest and a drink of fruit juice, which the well-stocked automobile carries.

From Lakewood several people accompanied Mrs. Beach to Lorain, and at Avon the party was augmented by the addition of several others, the amateur short-distance pedestrians acting as an escort.

When the two Times-Herald reporters met the party, Mrs. Beach was walking in the lead. She wore her well-known walking clothes of a white sweater jacket, a soft felt hat that ties on her head, and a grey skirt that reaches just below the tops of her broad-toed, low-heeled walking shoes.

Mrs. David Beach’s Long Walk: From New York to Chicago Through Lorain – May 1912 – Part 1

Courtesy Marshall, North Carolina News-Record

One of the things I like about living right on U.S. Route 6 is having a ringside seat to witness a variety of people walking across the country to raise awareness for a particular cause. I’ve seen a few of these walkers (not counting the one on a horse) in the last 15 years as they went right by my house in Sheffield Lake during early morning.

This isn't a new phenomenon. If I’d been living in my house back in May 1912 – 104 years ago, I would have seen Mrs. David Beach go by.

Mrs. David Beach (ah, I guess we’ll never know her real name) was ahead of her time. She was a vegetarian who walked from New York to Chicago back in April - May 1912, getting by on a diet of consisting of only raw vegetables, grains, fruit and nuts. She drank no water; instead, she quenched her thirst with pineapple juice.

Her 1000-mile trip took her forty-two and a half days. (She didn’t walk on Sundays.)

On May 13, she left Cleveland and was due in Lorain that night. Her imminent arrival was covered in the local papers. Here’s how it was covered in the Lorain Daily News (below) on May 13, 1912 – one-hundred and four years ago tomorrow.

****

MRS BEACH, WOMAN PED DUE
ARRIVE IN LORAIN 7 O’CLOCK

LEFT CLEVELAND AT 6 A.M. TODAY;
ROADS ARE HEAVY

Woman Walking From New York to Chicago Has Escort on the 30 Mile Hike From Cleveland to Lorain

REACHED DOVER 11:30

Plans to Reach Toledo in Her Walk of 1,100 Miles in Four Days – Eats Only Vegetables

Mrs. David Beach, vegetarian who is walking from New York to Chicago, is enroute to Lorain today, and is scheduled to arrive here at about seven o’clock tonight. The woman pedestrian left Cleveland at six o’clock this morning and was reported to be at Dover sixteen miles from Cleveland at noon.

Mrs. Beach will spend the night at one of the local hotels and will be off tomorrow for Sandusky. Accompanying her on her thirty-mile hike today are George A. Schneider, secretary of the Cleveland Athletic club and Will McKay, former Cleveland director of sports.

Chief of Police Williams said today he had received no notice of Mrs. Beach’s coming. Members of the athletic committees of the Y. M. C. A. have made no preparations to greet Mrs. Beach, but the telephones in the Daily News office have been kept busy all day answering inquiries concerning the hiker’s arrival. Most of the phone calls were from women.

Mrs. Beach spent Sunday in Cleveland, having arrived there from Willoughby at about two o’clock Saturday afternoon.

The woman walker was not affected by the heavy rain of yesterday and started on her journey this morning with a broad smile on her face and with much confidence. She plans to take four days to reach Toledo.

****

The Lorain Times-Herald gave her similar coverage but with more detail. Here’s that newspaper’s front page report (below).

****

MRS. BEACH, WOMAN WALKER, NEARS CITY

Famous Vegetarian Pedestrian on Way From New York to Chicago Reported at Point 3 Miles East of Beach Park at 2:55 p.m. – Muddy Roads Delay Progress  – To Spend Night In Lorain

BULLETIN

At 3:30 Mrs. Beach had stopped several miles east of Beach park and was resting. Members of the party which is accompanying her reached a point farther on. This includes: Mrs. E. S. Davis of Lakewood, who will walk to Phelps, New York; Mrs. N. J. Willer of Lakewood, C.C. Zeller, who will accompany Mrs. Beach to Toledo and W. F. Bierman of Lakewood who will come to Lorain. Mrs. Beach did not leave Rocky River until 10:45 o’clock. She spent the time from 8:45 until the time when she left drying her clothes.

Mrs. David Beach, of New York, author and musician, enroute on a 1,000-mile walk from New York to Chicago will arrive in Lorain from Cleveland at between 4:30 and 5 o’clock this afternoon. At 2:55 o’clock she was three miles east of Beach park on the shore road, or a total distance of about ten miles from this city. Rain of the last few days have made walking exceedingly difficult.

Mrs. Beach left Cleveland at 6:30 this morning, arriving at Rocky River two hours later. She was delayed until nearly 10 o’clock, before resuming her westward journey over the paved North Ridge road.

East of Avon, Mrs. Beach left the Ridge road, turning northward and taking the shore road, where walking was more difficult but the route shorter.

Mrs. Beach is making her long walk to demonstrate the efficiency of a strict vegetarian diet. Her meals enroute, most of which are taken from an automobile which is accompanying her, consist of simple foodstuffs, fruit for the most part.

She will spend the night in Lorain, resuming her “hike” tomorrow morning. By tomorrow night she expects to reach Sandusky. Her route then lies through Fremont to Toledo.

Yesterday she spent in Cleveland as the guest of the Cleveland Athletic Club, to members of which she delivered a lecture on vegetarian diet. Members of the club accompanied her this morning as far as Rocky River.

Mrs. Beach has partially completed a book on the benefits to be had from a vegetable diet. “I had thought my readers would think I was writing from theory,” Mrs. Beach said, “so I decided to prove the truth of my contentions.”

The woman walker is making no attempt to establish a cross-country walking record. Her daily trips. since leaving New York, have averaged between 25 and 30 miles.

Next: Welcome to Lorain