Mick Hartley

January 1928. "CANINE CHAPERONE. Senator Thomas D. Schall, blind solon from Minnesota, is now able to get around the Capitol without an attendant since his specially trained German police dog has arrived to lead him around. The dog, 2 years old, has been specially trained for the purpose."

[Photo: Shorpy/Harris & Ewing Collection]

Schall ran away to join the circus as a young lad, was blinded in his twenties by an electrical shock from a cigar lighter, and on December 19, 1935 – seven years after this picture – was struck by a hit and run driver while walking across the Baltimore–Washington Parkway in Cottage City, Maryland. He died in Washington three days later, becoming one of the few United States Senators or Congressmen to die in a road accident while in office. History does not relate whether the dog was guiding him at the time.

Solon was an Athenian statesman: hence the term "solon" for a wise law-maker – the kind of pomposity, much in vogue at the time, that would delight in the phrase "canine chaperone".