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Read on to discover how Italian tenor Enrico Caruso was arrested for sexual assault in New York’s Central Park Zoo…<\/strong><\/p> On the afternoon of 16 November 1906, a middle-aged woman was standing in the monkey house of the Central Park Zoo, New York, when suddenly she \u2018felt the knuckles of a hand rub against me\u2019. Turning, she saw a \u2018foreign-looking man\u2019 loitering behind her. <\/p> The woman (\u2018Mrs Hannah Graham\u2019, the newspapers reported) screamed, fearing \u2018there was no mistaking the insult intended\u2019 \u2013 the foreigner was, in the language of the period, a \u2018masher\u2019, a sexual predator who \u2018annoyed\u2019 women by making unwanted advances on them in public places.<\/p> Events quickly escalated in a startling fashion. A plain-clothes policeman, James Caine, stepped forward to intervene in the encounter. Caine was no ordinary bystander, but in fact had 13 years\u2019 experience on the Park Zoo beat, \u2018watching for men who annoy women,\u2019 as the New York Times<\/em> put it. Caine was good at his job, apparently \u2018arresting on an average five men every Sunday in the animal houses\u2019.<\/p> This time, though, he had truly hit the jackpot \u2013 the man whom he arrested that Friday was none other than the famous Italian tenor Enrico Caruso<\/a><\/strong>, in town for his first appearance of the season at the Metropolitan Opera. Escorted to a neighbourhood police station, the 33-year-old Caruso indignantly tried intimidating the desk sergeant with his celebrity status. <\/p> \u2018I am Enrico Caruso, tenor of the Metropolitan Opera House,\u2019 he said. \u2018I don\u2019t care who you are,\u2019 the hard-nosed sergeant retorted, before proceeding to charge the hapless singer, who was dragged weeping to a holding cell.<\/p> When Heinrich Conried, director of the Met, eventually bailed Caruso, he too was quick to play the celebrity card in his star tenor\u2019s defence. \u2018A man like Caruso, of the highest honour and dignity, could not have done such a thing,\u2019 Conried argued, before adding \u2013 rather ill-advisedly \u2013 that Caruso, \u2018if he desired it, could have had the acquaintance of many fine women in this country\u2019.<\/p> Conried\u2019s argument did not impress the New York Police Department. Six days later, Caruso appeared in court to answer what had now become a longer list of charges, including at least two other women allegedly touched in the monkey house. <\/p> Officer Caine also claimed that he had spotted Caruso \u2018several times in the animal houses last winter, trailing women and annoying them as he did on Friday\u2019. Although the tenor\u2019s hands seemed innocuously buried in his pockets, subsequent examination of his overcoat had, it seemed, revealed a secret slit through which he was able to do his groping.<\/p> Caruso affected nonchalance in court, smiling, twirling his moustache and seeming \u2018somewhat blas\u00e9\u2019. Under questioning, he alleged that Mrs Graham had smiled at him \u2018in such a way that I took her for a doubtful character\u2019. <\/p> But his deflection of blame \u2013 victim shaming, we would now call it \u2013 proved unimpressive. The following day he was found guilty of \u2018annoying women in the Central Park Zoo\u2019 and given the maximum fine of $10. Caruso did not attend court for the verdict.<\/p> \u2018Almost unanimous approbation\u2019 nonetheless greeted the tenor when he appeared at the Met five days later in Puccini<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s La boh\u00e8me<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, with just a few hisses signalling disapproval of the tenor\u2019s sex-pest conviction. <\/p>Celebrity Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, arrested for ‘annoying women’<\/h2>
Enrico Caruso appears in court, accused of groping<\/h2>
‘He smiled and twirled his moustache’<\/h2>
Erico Caruso… continued acclaim<\/h2>