As Jim Stephenson noted a few days ago, I haven't contributed
to RARA-AVIS
in some time due to many, many projects and very little time.
There have
been at least twenty messages recently to which I've wanted
to reply (and
may yet, if time permits). I couldn't, however, let the query
about the
term "Baumes Rush" go by.
At the time TMF was written, New York State and a few others
had a law
enforcement tool called the Baumes Law, which allowed for
automatic life
imprisonment of any criminal convicted over three times, no
matter how
petty the offenses or how old the person was. When Spade
inquires, "Baumes
rush?" of Wilmer, he is guessing that the boy left New York
for California
(a non-BL state) because he is a three-time loser and is
afraid of being
caught again. Wilmer's silence answers the question. Those of
you who
have read or seen Sidney Kingsley's play/movie _Detective
Story_ know how
career criminals responded to police who tried to arrest them
on a fourth
offense. This nothing-to-lose attitude is one reason the
Baumes Law was
eventually repealed.
Best,
Kathy
Katherine Harper
Department of English
Bowling Green State University
kharper@bgnet.bgsu.edu
Visit the W.R. Burnett Page at http://ernie.bgsu.edu/~kharper/
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