MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-08-20 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Digital NY History
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August 14, 2005
The Past, in Pixels
By DEBBIE NATHAN
MOST of New York's organ grinders are not Italian but German, according
to Appleton's Dictionary of Greater New York (1892). The city's Irish
hate the color green, reports Family Monographs, a 1905 Barnard College
study of turn-of-the-last-century life in Hell's Kitchen. And a 1916
study of boys who hawk newspapers or work in factories finds that at age
16, they stand an average 5 feet 3 inches and weigh 112 pounds.
For lovers of Old New York, these items and countless others can be
found on an online archive that includes a remarkable trove of books
about the city's past, from a 1903 account of the opening of the
Williamsburg Bridge to a 1918 history of Brooks Brothers. The titles
alone captivate: "Nooks and Corners of Old New York" (1899). "Behind the
Scenes in Candy Factories" (1928). "Memoirs of a Murder Man," by a
police officer in the homicide bureau (1930).
This new digitized archive, called Making of America, is maintained by
the University of Michigan. Available at www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/, it
offers free access to thousands of volumes of Americana, including works
about New York City written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The New York collection, 315 volumes and counting, is being digitized
with donations from Lawrence J. Portnoy, a Manhattan lawyer and a
Michigan alumnus.
The University of Michigan will print and mail entire books for $45 and
up. Or you can download pages at no charge and be your own New York
antiquarian.
The following excerpts are peopled by a wide variety of characters, from
cantors who are shortchanged by synagogues to boys who play ball on the
piers and shop girls who claim that gumdrops and éclairs help them stave
off hunger. As the collection proceeds toward its goal of 500 books,
expected to be reached in a year and a half, the cast will grow still
richer.
The Nether Side of New York;
Or, the Vice, Crime and Poverty
Of the Great Metropolis
By Edward Crapsey. 1872.
When thieving by prostitutes first became a distinct branch of criminal
art, it was done only by mechanism specially prepared for the purpose. A
whole house, or at least a floor of a house was hired, and one room was
prepared with a secret door called a "panel," which could not be seen by
even the closest scrutiny of the walls, and which, opening into another
room, gave easy access to the "badger," as the male confederate of the
prostitute is called. When the woman had lured a stranger to this room
she always created a sense of safety in his mind by an ostentatious
locking of all doors.
She was always troubled with a modest reserve, and would proceed no
further until the lights had been extinguished, and the victim rarely
objected to a proceeding so manifestly proper. When the proper time
arrived, of which he could easily judge, the "badger" stole into the
room through the secret door, which opened without making the slightest
noise, and having rifled the clothes of the stranger, which had been
placed upon a chair, of all they contained, crept back to his
hiding-place and closed the panel behind him, without having betrayed
his presence by the faintest sound. ...
If the victim found his pockets empty before leaving the room, he might
make as much outcry as he chose, as it would avail nothing; he had seen
all the doors locked, he was sure no one but the woman and himself had
been in the room, and she, while indignantly denying that he had been
robbed there, was extremely anxious that her innocence should be
thoroughly established by a strict search of the room, where, as she
well knew, none of the valuables would be found.
Recollections of a New York
Chief of Police
By George W. Walling. 1890.
In order that the reader may understand just what confinement in Ludlow
Street Jail means, let us suppose the case of a man who has been
arrested for attempting to defraud, or something similar, and after
having been brought before the court is remanded without bail to the
jail. As he enters the iron gate at the main entrance the deputy sheriff
who has brought him hands him over to the warden's care, who makes a
record of his coming, and speedily finds out whether the prisoner wants
to become a "boarder," or to remain a common felon.
For there are two distinct castes in Ludlow Street Jail, of which the
public general hears of but one - and that the higher one. These two
castes may be named the "paying" boarders, and the "non-paying
boarders." The former class are the aristocrats of the jail. They pay
the warden fifteen dollars a week for the privilege of sitting at his
table and eating the luxuries of the market. This sum includes also a
respectable room, not cell, and fair attendance. Except for the
restraint of confinement the paying boarders' life in Ludlow Street Jail
is not such an unhappy one as most persons think.
There are sometimes prisoners who are even more aristocratic than the
paying boarder ... they get a nicely furnished room with all the
luxuries, have their meals served in their rooms and live in royal
style. For this privilege, however, they have to pay from $50 to $100 a
week. Of course the warden is glad to see such prisoners, and you may be
sure he tries to keep them as long as possible.
Tweed belonged to the paying class of boarders.
Guarding a Great City
A memoir by William McAdoo, a former New York police commissioner. 1906.
The jostle and struggle between the driver and pedestrian in the streets
had been for many, many years a fixed condition, quietly accepted by the
multitudes. The driver, on his part, believed that the street belonged
exclusively to him, and, whip in hand, he sat on his throne as one
beyond the law. ...
To place men at the more congested crossings was as far as the Police
Department had gone in endeavoring to protect the population. Here, amid
a sea of fearful turmoil, profanity and shouting, the stalwart member of
the Broadway Squad would bravely venture now and again to pilot a party
of fear-stricken citizens of both sexes across the dangerous trail, and
while the time of passing was shorter, the passage itself was much more
perilous than when the long-haired and valorous scouts of the early
sixties led parties of peaceful emigrants across the savage-infested
plains to build up the now prosperous and thickly populated States of
the West.
Across this dangerous passage the blue-coated convoy occasionally had
his attention arrested by the cries of the citizen who had ventured to
follow in his wake, and whose rescue could not be made until the larger
party had passed to the other side of the street.
West Side Studies:
Boyhood and Lawlessness
A study by Pauline Goldmark for the Russell Sage Foundation. 1914.
Down on the waterfront the broad, smooth quays offer a tempting place
for base- ball. ... But it has one serious drawback, that a foul ball on
one side invariably goes into the river, and the players must have
either several balls or a willing swimmer if the game is to continue
long. One game, for instance, between 14-year-old teams, played near the
water, cost five balls, varying in price from 50 cents to $1.00 each.
...
In the first inning a new dollar ball was fouled over the fence into the
scrap-iron yard and the watchman refused to let the boys hunt for it.
The game was stopped while a deputation of boys from both sides walked
to a nearby street to buy a new fifty-cent ball. The first boy up when
the game was resumed batted this ball into the Hudson River, where a
youthful swimmer got it, and climbing ashore down the river, made away
with it. A third ball was secured, and before the game was half over
this ball was batted into the river, where it lodged underneath a barge
full of paving stones which was made fast to the dock, and could not be
recovered.
Then a fourth ball was produced ... it was once batted deep into center
field, where it bounced into the slip and stopped the game while it was
being fished out. Finally it followed the first ball into the scrap-iron
yard, and neither taunts nor pleas could move the obdurate watchman to
let the boys in to find it. The game was finished with a fifth ball.
West Side Studies: The Neglected Girl
A study by Ruth S. True for the Russell Sage Foundation. 1914.
We occupied two floors of the house. ... Though our equipment was
meager, we had a cook stove and a piano. These two pieces of furniture
we came to regard as the necessary minimum of equipment for a girls'
club under all circumstances.
The occupations of the clubs - cooking, sewing, basket-weaving, brass
work - were carried on as pastime rather than work ... for the shifting
attention of the girls refused to consider any occupation as pleasurable
for long at a time. The one thing of which they never seemed to tire was
dancing, and in spite of the ugly forms which this recreation took, it
had always the beauty of spontaneity. Their fondness for popular songs
was almost as spontaneous. "The Garden of Love," "The Hypnotizing Man,"
"When Broadway Was a Pasture," "The Girl That Married Dad," and others
of the same lurid and sentimental strain were sung over and over to an
unvarying appreciation. ...
The source from which most of our difficulties proceeded was the spirit
of disorder abroad in the neighborhood. ... The "Gopher Gang" (this name
is commonly applied to all the loafers and thugs from 30th to 60th
Street) figured largely in the neighborhood gossip. ...
An adventure which befell us on the second evening after our "opening"
might have had very serious results. ... Early in the evening a gang of
small boys gathered at the window outside to upbraid their sisters for
not letting them come into the club. ... An hour later when the girls
were engaged in their club occupations, there came crashing through the
window a weapon seven feet in length, which proved to be a gun with a
bayonet attachment. It struck the chair in which the teacher was sitting
with such force as to chip the oaken back. ...
Echoes of the Gophers occurred in the talk of the girls. At one of the
first club meetings, a tall, attractive girl arose and proposed as a
name for the club, the "Gopherettes." As a motto, she suggested, "Hit
one, hit all." This was Fanny Mayhew, who turned out on nearer
acquaintance to be a wonderfully cheerful girl. ... She told a club
leader that she had once belonged to a club of girls called the
"Gopherettes." They had paid dues and even rented a basement room for a
short time. Later the club had moved to the dock, and she had not been
allowed by her mother to go to its meetings.
The Jewish Communal Register
Of New York City, 1917-1918
By the Jewish Community of New York City.
It must be borne in mind that the cantor combines both the artist and
the religious functionary and that the ill-treatment to which he is
often subjected not only debases his art, but also degrades his communal
dignity.
The trial performance, in its last analysis, is nothing else but a kind
of petty graft indulged in by many of the congregations at the expense
of the cantor. A congregation has a vacancy to fill. Naturally, it will
not engage a cantor without hearing him first. The cantor does not
receive any remuneration for the trial service. The congregation has
lost nothing and consequently is in no hurry to consummate the bargain.
The following Saturday another cantor is heard, on trial, and the
process is repeated for many weeks. Taken in its entirety, the
profession is thus losing thousands of dollars annually.
Four Years in the Underbrush:
Adventures of a Working Woman
In New York
By anonymous (an upper-class woman who set out to investigate the life
of laboring women). 1921.
For years I had heard persons, men and women, declaim against the
incomprehensible devotion of "shop-girls" to chocolate éclairs and
gumdrops ... instead of a bowl of oatmeal and milk, or of "good,
nourishing soup."
The first time I tried lunching on a bowl of oatmeal and milk I began to
experience a most uncomfortable sensation under my apron before three
o'clock. By five that sensation had become a sharp griping pain. The day
following I tried soup. In the middle of the afternoon when Nora learned
how I was suffering, she went scurrying around among the girls in
various departments and returned with three gumdrops, which she made me
eat.
After that when I had 10 cents or less to spend for lunch I invested in
a chocolate éclair and gumdrops. Without a doubt such a diet does
produce pale faces and a predisposition to tuberculosis. Experience
taught me that it staves off the griping agony produced by hunger and
standing on one's feet longer than any other food to be had in New York
City for the same money. When a girl's wage is seven dollars a week, or
less, 10 cents a day is all she can spend for lunch.
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