One monkey, two feet high, color brown, name unknown, disposition terrible

More vintage monkey news from the Times archive! I am going to omit the bits about Big Ackbar the lion and the waterfront rat, but I encourage you to click the link and download the PDF.

Again with the euphemisms: I am fascinated by the idea of Freeberg having "put [Finnegan] scientifically to sleep" and the aptness of the pillowcase, given the euphemism, as a final resting place. Poor little spunky monkey.

LION BITES, MONKEY FIGHTS, RAT RUNS; Hot Weather Diet Angers Big Ackbar in Central Park and Keeper Suffers. MONKEY TERRIFIES CHELSEA; Killed Birds and Stole Corn--Waterfront Rodent Gives Policeman a Chase

August 17, 1922
(c) The New York Times

A lion, a monkey and a rat got into the limelight yesterday and furnished three lively items in the news of the day. The lion clawed a keeper in the Zoo in Central Park, the monkey raised what might be expressed by a short and ugly word in the Chelsea section of the city and the rat led a police chase down West Sixty-fifth Street.

[. . .]

Monkey on Thirty Hours' Raid

Policeman Ernest Freeberg of the West Thirtieth Street Station is the hero of the monkey story, for alone, in a room in the Chelsea Hotel in West Twenty-third Street, he captured the simian, who for thirty hours had been frolicking about in the block bounded by Seventh and Eighth Avenues and Twenty-second and Twenty-third Streets. The monkey was carried in a pillow slip to the West Thirtieth Street Station where it was duly entered, "One monkey, two feet high, color brown, name unknown, disposition terrible." Later the little animal, christened Finnegan by the policeman, was claimed by its owner, J. W. Simmons, who has an animal and bird store at 256 West Twenty-third Street.

Finnegan escaped from its cage in the store on Monday. Simmons was searching for it, when he noticed a crowd in front of the Chelsea Hotel. He got there in time to see the fugitive scale a drain pipe and disappear into a window of the hotel. The search was being carried on in the hotel when the monkey lit out again, climbed to the roof and was next seen straddling the ridge pole of the church at the corner of Eighth Avenue.

Darkness came with Finnegan still roving about the housetops. His further escapades are said to include the killing of two birds belonging to a manager of the Chelsea Hotel, the frightening of several women in the neighborhood and the stealing of two ears of corn from a table in front of a surprised housewife. He invaded an underwear factory and terrified the girl operators.

Freeberg Trails Quarry

Policeman Freeberg was returning from court when he was hailed by the traffic policeman at Twenty-third Street and Seventh Avenue. The latter was perspiring and looked excited. "Try to catch that monkey," he shouted as he leaned against a citizen for support. Freeberg looked in the direction the traffic man pointed and made out the monkey perched on the roof of the building at 216 Seventh Avenue. Then began the pursuit that ended in a room in the Chelsea Hotel. The policeman trailed the monkey to a room on one of the upper floors of the hotel. Followed by the manager, he raced up the stairs and opened the door just as the little animal was getting ready to depart by the window.

Freeberg jumped for the animal just as the monkey jumped for him. They met in the center of the room. The monkey got the better of the first encounter. It caught the policeman's finger in its mouth and for a few minutes the room was full of monkey and policeman. After the first break both sides sparred for an opening and in about the third round Freeberg, with a right uppercut to Finnegan's jaw, put the monkey scientifically to sleep. Then he stripped a pillowcase off the bed and dumped the monkey in it.