The popular marketing slogan “greatest thing since sliced bread” traces its origins back to 1930, when a part-time inventor in Missouri patented a newfangled machine that cut mass-produced loaves of bread into perfect half-inch slices. Earlier efforts to mechanize the process had failed when slicing machines squashed the soft, freshly baked loaves. Turns out the solution was to slice from the top and bottom simultaneously.
In the fall of 1930, the big Nolde’s Brothers bakery in Richmond paid for splashy newspaper ads celebrating the introduction of its sliced bread loaves at local grocery stores. “Ready to serve! Even slices! No crumbs! Minutes saved!” the ads proclaimed. One Nolde’s ad boldly claimed its pre-sliced loaves of bread would prevent knife injuries among housewives and children. Grocery ads around the same time indicate a loaf of bread cost about seven cents
back in 1930.
Most Richmonders of a certain age can still recall the pleasant smell of freshly baked bread which wafted at sunrise each morning from the huge Nolde’s factory on Church Hill. Founded in Richmond in the late 1890s, the family-owned Nolde’s company eventually grew to become one of the largest bakeries in the southeast United States before it ultimately closed in 1977.
The four Nolde brothers -- Henry, George, Carl and August – were prominent business leaders in the Richmond region for much of the 20th century. From time to time, each was called upon by city leaders to lend their considerable influence and credibility to help resolve urgent civic matters.
So it was not all that unusual in the summer of 1939 when August Nolde and a handful of other prominent businessmen were recruited to serve on a special grand jury investigating alleged police collusion with Richmond’s underworld gambling fraternity.
Three years earlier, federal agents had rounded-up and successfully prosecuted several gambling kingpins operating in the city. In 1939, Richmond’s scrappy afternoon paper, The News Leader, decided to assign 24-year-old cub reporter Deverton Carpenter to investigate whether that 1936 crackdown had succeeded in quashing the illegal numbers game. The clear answer was no.
Carpenter and a News Leader photographer spent several weeks during the spring and early summer of 1939 observing, gathering information and photographing the activities of known numbers writers and pickup men. At a busy gas station at 8th and Broad Streets, the photographer snapped a damning photo of a uniformed Richmond policeman blithely walking his beat as several wise guys in sharp suits and fedoras gathered in the parking lot to collect play slips and cash from a virtual parade of street-level numbers runners.
At a busy gas station at 8th and Broad Streets, a Richmond News Leader photographer snapped this damning photo of a uniformed policeman blithely walking his beat as several wise guys in sharp suits and fedoras, with their faces obscured by photo editors, brazenly gathered to collect play slips and sacks of cash from a parade of low-level numbers runners. [Source: June 14, 1939 Richmond News Leader]
The editors at the News Leader apparently were appalled at the policeman’s lack of attention to the brazenly illegal activity occurring on his beat. Feeling a sense of civic responsibility, the editors privately shared their information with the police chief. Days later, the chief’s carefully planned raid at the Broad Street gas station was foiled when the wise guys, apparently tipped-off by someone inside the police department, mysteriously failed to appear.
The whiff of police collusion with gamblers rattled the politicians in Richmond City Hall. The prosecutor created a special grand jury to investigate, which is when August Nolde joined the conversation. For nearly a week, Nolde and his colleagues on the blue-ribbon panel heard testimony from dozens of police officers. Reporter Deverton Carpenter and his photographer were summoned to testify, too. Five well-known Richmond gambling chiefs, including our old friend Harry Donovan, also were subpoenaed, but the kingpins reportedly pleaded Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination and refused to testify.
Within days, Nolde and his colleagues on the grand jury issued a final report concluding that the illegal numbers game was “as popular as bootlegging was” and that the numbers racket had been “allowed to flourish” in Richmond: “Whether this is from indifference, the inadequacy of the police or other causes, we are unable to determine,” the report ultimately concluded. “This is unfortunate, especially at this time when criminal rings in larger cities are being broken up and naturally they are looking around for cities where the authorities are lenient for their new location. This may result in our having much more serious criminal conditions than we now have.”
The patrolman who was captured on film by the News Leader photographer consistently maintained he was unaware of the gambling activities occurring on his beat. “You don't know all the bootleggers and racketeers in town, do you? There are lots of them I don’t know,” the officer protested during one heated confrontation with reporters. “Just because I’m a police officer is no reason why I should know every racketeer in Richmond on sight,” he said. An internal affairs investigation concluded the patrolman “failed to observe and arrest” numbers racketeers on his beat, but found no evidence of criminal collusion with the gambling rings. The officer was reinstated after a one-week suspension.
The 1939 scandal ultimately did prompt several significant police reforms. The chief assembled the entire department, with more than 250 officers standing at attention, for a stern lecture. The chief announced he would shift radio patrolmen to new beats and would arrange different partner combinations each week “to separate the men from temptation,” according to news reports. The chief also announced the formation of a handpicked group of eight men who would form the city’s first vice squad.
“It is to be hoped that the decks are being cleared here for action,” the Times-Dispatch editorialized approvingly the next morning. “The Times-Dispatch would like to see these exhortations accomplish results, and it trusts that corruptionists and boodlers will be brought promptly to book. There is no excuse for the situation which exists today. Richmond is getting into the big-city class, and those who have its welfare at heart do not desire to see big-time racketeering and graft develop here in emulation of certain larger centers of population which might be named."
There is one other interesting footnote linked to this 1939 scandal: the young News Leader reporter whose efforts triggered the grand jury investigation and police reforms later enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in Europe during World War II. Deverton Carpenter was killed in action as General George Patton’s Third Army crossed the Rhine River in the spring of 1945 in what would become the final days of Hitler’s reign in Germany. Lt. Carpenter, who was 29 years old, was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Legion of Merit for his bravery.
Deverton Carpenter
1937 Washington & Lee University yearbook
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