The "Speed Girls" and other notable Middletown Women

PART ONE of three articles highlighting the contributions of women to the history of Middletown.

The Middlesex County Historical Society treated 50 women, children and men to a walking tour Sunday afternoon in honor of Women's History Month, and celebrated the significant contributions women have made to the towns rich history.

The 90 minute tour was researched and led by Dione Longley, the former director of the Society who regaled the group with a half a dozen historical chronicles of local women acting as leaders, athletes, and humanitarians.

She began the tour by recounting labor unrest in 1912 at one of the Russell Manufacturing textile factories, led for the most part by Italian immigrant working women protesting unbearable working conditions. Women, men, and children as

Dione Longley

young as eight faced twelve plus hour workdays, six days a week, enduring extremes of burdensome midsummer heat and frigid cold in winter months, plus the loud noise of the factory that was dusty and filled with floating fibers, and always the threat of fire. The women laborers had one more complaint--they were paid $3.00 a week; less then half of what men earned in weekly wages for comparable work. So on June 5, 1912; after a month of labor unrest, there was a strike at the South Farms facility. On June 6, a New York Times Headline read MIDDLETOWN STRIKERS RIOT and reported that the "first show of violence was when a crowd of infuriated women attacked a policeman from Hartford," the article also noted that two thirds of the 300 hundred strikers where Italian Women. The following day, June 7, a Times headline read: WOMEN LEAD STRIKE; CAVALRY CALLED OUT! Along with the story of the strike the article points out that "the chief reason for the presence of the Calvary was not because the soldiers where actually needed to quell the disturbance, but for the moral effect on their uniform upon the female strikers who seemed to willing today to be placed in the front of the rank in any attack upon the police. The presence of the soldiers it was believed would do much toward subduing the fighting spirit of the women." Ms Longley assured the crowd that the women in question were in fact leading the strike--not the men--even though the Times article advised readers that it was a ruse the union was using, in putting the women in the lead. Neither of the two articles acknowledged the wage discrepancy. Unfortunately this strike did not pan out in the workers favor in 1912, but it helped in setting an important precedent for workers rights and union organizing in future years.

The sports vignette highlighted the Middletown "Speed Girls", a semi pro basketball team, who played during the depression era between 1933-1940, claiming more fans,

"Skeets" Gaveski

and success than their counterparts the Speed Boys. Both teams where started and supported by a former Main St establishment, Jack's Lunch of Middletown famous also for the original Steam Cheeseburger. The women's team consisted of  residents from nearby towns, all with full time jobs outside of the sport arena. They played at night and on the weekends, sometimes in front of thousands of fans. The home court was the Middletown Armory--now the Inn at Middletown. The team was sometimes described as nattily clad in the regular news coverage provide by the Middletown Press and Hartford Courant. Stacia "Skeets" Gaveski a guard for the team was a graduate of Middletown High

"Babe" Carlson

School in the class of 1933. She was inducted into the Middletown Sports Hall of Fame class of 2005. Helen "Babe" Carlson was another member of the Speed Girls team, a graduate of the Woodrow Wilson High School in 1938. She was also a member of a men's hardball baseball team as a pitcher and infielder, and had the ability to bat with both hands. Her other athletic pursuits included swimming, softball, shot put, discus, and javelin. Babe preceded Skeets in her induction to the Middletown Sports Hall of Fame entering with the class of 2003. Both women are part of an elite group of 20 such honored women among the 209 men who have been inducted to the Hall of Fame since 1994. The Hall has honored 10 men's teams, and one woman's team--the 1992 Middletown High School Softball team--the Class M State Champions. Maybe next year they will honor another women's team--Middletown's one and only "Speed Girls". (Author's note: Ms Longley stated that the team played until 1937, but Middletown's Sports Hall of Fame Bio on Miss Carlson suggests the team played in 1940. I hope to report in the next article why the discrepancy exists.)

This event was sponsored in part by the Middlesex Community Foundation/Fund for Women and Girls through a grant awarded in honor of Arianna Huffington.

You are encouraged to visit the Society located on Main St. There are two exhibits. One titled "Hard and Stirring Times" Middletown and the Civil War, and the second an old postcard retrospective of various places and neighborhoods across town. Mark your calendar now for an upcoming event sponsored by Middlesex Historical Society, Friday April 1; 7:00--An Evening with Lincoln Scholar; Michael Burlingame author of Abraham Lincoln:A life, and The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln. There will be a desert reception, lecture, cash bar and book signing.

PART TWO will cover the woman responsible for creating the first Orphanage in town and Middletown women;s work and lives during the Civil War. PART THREE will cover Dr. Kate Cambell Hurd Mead, one of the first women doctors in town beginning in the 1890's as well as women's work in the abolitionist movement in Middletown.