The Times they aren't a changing

Dropping the ball bomb in Times Square

Times Square's history is generally full of more bombast than bomb blasts, but Thursday's explosion was not the first. It also was not the first time investigators dismissed a note which appeared to take responsibility for the explosion.

Christine Hauser writes in today's Times: "The attack took just a few minutes. Times Square was aglow in the morning darkness but nearly deserted as a shadowy figure on a bicycle pedaled in and planted a small bomb that shattered the glass facade of the military recruiting station on Broadway just north of 43rd Street.

In 1960, according to the Associated Press, "A bomb planted in shrubbery behind the George M. Cohan statue shook the busy Times Square area today and injured seven persons. The injured were struck by flying debris."

Today authorities denied that the bomb outside the military recruiting center was the work of whomever sent letters and photographs of the building to a slew of Congressmen. It went much the same in the 1960 attack.

October 4, 1960
NOTE THREATENS TIMES SQ. BOMBING
Police Study Warning for Clue to Blast on Sunday, but doubt connection

A crudely handwritten note found in a midtown movie theatre provided the police with their main clue yesterday in the bomb explision that injured six persons near Times Square on Sunday.

Scribbled in pencil on a piece of white paper were the words:

"Mr. Kennedy [presumably Police Commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy}, please forgive me for the bomb but I have to kill 100 people in one week. I am sick like before. The next bomb will be Oct. , 1960, at a Times Square show."

The note was signed, "The Sick."

Detectives said that the note, inside an unmarked white envelope, had been found by a patron of the Victory Theater, at 209 West Forty-Second Street, about four blocks from the scene of Sunday's bombing.

One police official said yesterday that there was "no apparent connection" between the note and the explosion on Sunday. However it was pointed out that the presence of so many world leaders in the city for the United Nations made it necessary to treat the note as "potentially the real thing."

Crowded Schoolhouses

Despite what those who relish the "good old days" say, the public schools have always had problems -- and it turns out they have often had too many students.

In his "On Education" column in today's Times, Samuel Freedman described the 22 red classroom trailers that have been installed in the schoolyard at Richmond Hill High School, which is operating at twice its capacity.

A Queens High School With 3,600 Students, and Room for Just 1,800

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

From its brass entry doors to its rooftop observatory to the intricate oak paneling of the principal’s office, Richmond Hill High School in Queens was built to inspire something like awe for public education. The only discordant response during the structure’s dedication in 1923 was whether, with a capacity for 1,800 students, it was too large.

But it turns out there was similar outrage at what seems to be the very same school -- just two years after it opened. At the time, the administration was struggling to handle its 3,479 students.

March 17, 1925
BACKS SCHOOL PLEA OF RICHMOND HILL

Board of Estimate Asks That building be enlarged or a new one erected.

Parents Call Conditions Disgraceful – Mayor stops yells of students

When a delegation of parents, school children and representatives of civic association of Richmond Hill, L.I. appeared before the Committee of the Whole of the Board of Estimate yesterday and depicted what they termed the “disgraceful and unjust” condition of the overcrowded high school of that community Mayor Hylan and his associates recommended that the Board of Education take immediate steps to relieve the situation, either by enlarging the existing school building or by erecting a new one.

The article goes on to say:

John Munro, President of the Parents’ Associations of Richmond Hill, led the delegation. Some of the parents declared their children were obliged to get up as early as 6:30 A.M. for the first of the divided sessions of the high school, which has only 1,700 seats for 3,479 students. They also declared that some of the children who attend the last session daily do not get home until 7:30 P.M.

Free Parking

Since the earliest days of the automobile -- and maybe even before -- having a place to park was a commodity hot enough to inspire abuse and corruption.

Mayor Bloomberg recently fired the latest salvo in the war on parking abuses. In today's Times, under the headline "Paring Down Parking Permits, and Raising a Fuss," Anthony Ramirez reports:

All around the city, where fevered drivers try in vain to find parking on the street and angry pedestrians try to squeeze past illegally parked cars, New Yorkers on Friday were talking or blogging or posting to message boards about Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to reduce by 20 percent the number of parking permits issued to police officers, firefighters, teachers and employees of an array of city agencies.

Mayor Ed Koch promised much the same 22 years ago:

July 25, 1986
CITY PLANS TO CURTAIL AND CONTROL PERMITS FOR OFFICIAL PARKING

In a move to cut traffic congestion in the City Hall area, all parking permits for city employees -- estimated to number 15,000 -- will be eliminated next Feb. 1, Mayor Koch announced yesterday.

New permits for the free, on-street spots will be issued solely by the Police Department and a new central review committee, the Mayor said.

And Mayor Abe Beame 11 years before that.

July 24, 1975
MAYOR ENDS POLITICAL PARKING PERMITS

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

The Taxi and Limousine Commission, under orders from Mayor Beame, yesterday rescinded the permits it had issued to political leaders and other non commission personnel giving them parking privileges at hundreds of taxi stands around the city.

Beware of dogs babysitting

Thankfully some news doesn't repeat itself too often. But over the years, every so often a dog kills a baby. From today's Times:

Brooklyn Infant Is Killed by Family’s Dog

By THOMAS J. LUECK

An 8-month-old Brooklyn boy was mauled to death by his family’s Doberman pinscher on Thursday as the boy played on the floor of his apartment, the police said.

A similar tragedy occurred 130 years before.

February 12, 1877
AN INFANT KILLED BY A DOG

A short time after midnight yesterday Mrs. Kate Hartman, wife pf Augustus Hartman, of No. 131 Pitt Street, was delivered of a female child, which, at 6 A.M. was intrusted (sic) to an aunt of the mother to nurse. The aunt fell asleep while holding the newly-born infant in her arms, and on awaking discovered that it was in a dying condition. On the neck of the child was a large scratch, which bore the appearance of having been inflicted by a pet Spitz dog belonging to the family. The aunt hurriedly summoned a midwife to attend Mrs. Hartman, but when she arrived at the house the babe was dead. Deputy Coroner Cushman made an autopsy of the body, and ascertained that death was due to shock.

It's unclear if Spitz was put down.

But this is undoubtedly the most disturbing of the three stories. Joanne Bashold comes to New York from Ohio at the age of 23. She gets raped, and in the process gets pregnant. She decides to keep the baby, and then this happens:

September 7, 1976
DOG KILLS AN INFANT LEFT IN APARTMENT; MOTHER IS ARRESTED

By CHARLES KAISER

A 4-day-old baby girl, left alone on the floor of an East Harlem apartment, was killed yesterday morning by the family's German Shepherd, which had not been fed for days.

The baby's mother, 24-year-old Joanne Bashold, was arrested and charged with negligent homicide.

I tried to track Ms. Bashold down, but she seems to have either changed her name of disappeared without a trace. I'm sure it came as only small consolation to her at the time, but all the charges were dropped.

A Mayor for President?

The possibility of two New York City mayors running for president in 2008 has led many longtime dwellers of the five boroughs wondering if they have gotten off the subway in Bizarro World.

Mayor Bloomberg has not committed to run, but he appears to be inching in that direction. From today's Times:

Bloomberg Moves Closer to Running for President

By SAM ROBERTS

Buoyed by the still unsettled field, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is growing increasingly enchanted with the idea of an independent presidential bid, and his aides are aggressively laying the groundwork for him to run.

While it may seem that the city is the last place on earth to look for someone electable to leader of the free world. the idea has been broached before.

In 1904, political bosses at Tammany Hall were so frightened of the consequences of Teddy Roosevelt being re-elected to the White House that they tried to convince the mayor to join the race.

January 15, 1904
TAMMANY HOPES TO NOMINATE M'CLELLAN
PLAN TO RUN HIM AGAINST ROOSEVELT FOR PRESIDENT

ALBANY, Jan. 14--From an authority high in the confidence of those who control Tammany Hall at present it is learned that if Theodore Roosevelt should be the Republican nominee for President the choice of the New York Democrats at the St. Louis Convention, if Tammany has its way, will be Mayor George B. McClellan of New York City.

What may be even more surprising is that four years later Roosevelt was floated as a possible candidate for mayor.

December 22, 1908
ROOSEVELT AND MAYORALTY

Dr. Lyman Abbott was told yesterday that a minister in Brooklyn intended to preach a sermon suggesting that a movement be started in this city to have President Roosevelt run for Mayor next year, and asked whether he thought Mr. Roosevelt would accept.

"Mr. Roosevelt, in my opinion, would not accept such a nomination," said Dr. Abbott. "It is unreasonable to assume that he would even think of it, in view of his announced plans. He is to sail for Africa soon after March 4, and will be gone fifteen months. Therefore he will not be here at the all during the Mayoralty campaign."

Deli Cat, Deli Cat, it's not your fault

The health department has long fought to upset the ecosystem of NYC restaurants, which depend on unpaid feline employees to handle the invading rodent population.

From today's Times:

To Dismay of Inspectors, Prowling Cats Keep Rodents on the Run at City Delis
By KATE HAMMER

Across the city, delis and bodegas are a familiar and vital part of the streetscape, modest places where customers can pick up necessities, a container of milk, a can of soup, a loaf of bread.

Amid the goods found in the stores, there is one thing that many owners and employees say they cannot do without: their cats. And it goes beyond cuddly companionship. These cats are workers, tireless and enthusiastic hunters of unwanted vermin, and they typically do a far better job than exterminators and poisons.

Cats have long had to straddle this balance between food industry savior and pariah.

September 11, 1946
44 RESTAURANT OWNERS FINED $4,955 HERE; ONE HAD 20 CATS ROAMING ABOUT IN KITCHEN

Magistrate Edgar Bromberger and Edward Thompson imposed fines totaling $4,955 yesterday on forty-four restaurant proprietors summoned to Municipal Term Court in the Health Department’s campaign to improve sanitation in New York’s food industry.

The number of fines imposed since the restaurant drive began on June 12 now stands at 863. Adding the day’s penalties to the previous levies brought the total to $83,105 to date. Health Department inspectors have made 5,321 examinations among the city’s 22,000 eating places in the last three months, serving 938 court summonses. Only six defendants have won suspended sentences, and none have been acquitted.

Fines yesterday ranged from $25 to $50. One of the best known restaurants penalized was Poliacoff’s Kosher Restaurant at 121 West Forty-fifth Street, which had 21 allegations against it.

The most unusual of these was that the kitchen was overrun with twenty cats. Hanan Poliacoff, the proprietor, pleaded he kept the cats to prevent rats, but Magistrate Bromberger ruled one cat was enough.

Even some of the city's most famous eateries have sworn by the contribution cats play.

May 28, 1974
ELAINE’S AND 19 OTHER FOOD OUTLETS FLUNK 2D SANITARY INSPECTION

By ROBERT McG. THOMAS Jr.

Elaine's, the popular East Side Restaurant that serves as a club for many of the city’s best-known writers and a showcase for many of its most famous celebrities has been cited by the Department of Health for uncorrected vilations and given until Friday to comply with the department regulations or be closed...

As for the cat citations:

Cat Odor  Explained

As for charges of “cats in the cellar” and “odor of cats throughout cellar,” Mr. Spagnolo, citing the recommendation of the restaurant’s exterminator, insisted it was the cats, particularly the odor of cats, that kept away the rats that had descended on Second Avenue when the old Rupper Brewery was torn down.

Out elderly for good behavior

It seems there is no prison for old men. Apparently if you can survive into your 80s or 90s in the pen, your chances of getting freed dramatically increase.

From today's Times:

New York Frees Oldest Inmate

By SAM ROBERTS

Charles E. Friedgood, who at 89 had been the oldest inmate in a New York State prison, was released on Tuesday and granted permission to live with a sister in Florida, where a daughter also lives, the State Parole Board said on Wednesday.

Granted, Friedgood -- who has the perfect name for this story -- is terminally ill. But there seems to be a long tradition of kicking the aged out on the street.

June 24, 1916
SING SING’S OLDEST INMATE FREE

OSSINING, N.Y., June 23.—Joel C. Rundle, who is 75 years old and the oldest inmate of Sing Sing Prison, was pardoned today by Governor Whitman. Rundle had served eighteen years for killing a neighbor in Orange County and his pardon was sought by ex-Alderman A.H. Tompkins of Yonkers, who was a G.A.R. comrade of the old man. Governor Whitman also pardoned John E. Anhut, once lawyer for Harry Thaw, who was convicted of having tried to bribe officials to let Thaw escape from Matteawan. Anhut was paroled some time ago.

This next story reminded me of the film "The Shawshank redemption," when the character Brooks is released in old age but finds he has no place in the outside world.

May 30, 1924
PAROLED AT 80 IN VAIN

Warrant served on Sing Sing’s oldest Inmate—40 years behind bars

OSSINING, May 29.—Just after a a parole was ordered this afternoon for William De Witt, 80-year-old negro, Sing Sing’s oldest prisoner, a warrant for his arrest was lodged with the prison authorities by the Westchester County Court.

During the last sixty years De Witt has served twenty terms in various penal institutions in New York State for larceny. Since he was first sentenced in 1863 to the House of Refuge, New York City, he has spent more than forty years behind bars.

He now faces a charge of grand larceny in connection with a poor-box robbery in White Plains.

The endless jam

The war on traffic has been raging for the better part of a century to no avail. But rather than resign ourselves to perpetual gridlock, city officials press on.

Congestion pricing, whereby drivers are charged a premium to enter Manhattan, is the panacea of the moment. But according to today's Times there are a slew of wacky ideas brewing to supplement the charge, ranging from prohibiting taxis from picking up street hails to jacking up the cost of parking, which is said to be too cheap.

Ways to Cut City Traffic? Well, Maybe

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

You wouldn’t be able to hail a cab in Manhattan below 86th Street, where cabs would be allowed to pick up passengers only at taxi stands scattered throughout the area.

You wouldn’t be able to drive in Manhattan on the 5th, the 15th or the 25th of every month if your license plate ends in a 5. And parking on the street would cost you as much as parking in a garage.

These are some of the proposals under consideration by the state commission evaluating how best to combat traffic in Manhattan. The ideas may seem fanciful, futuristic or simply far-fetched.

But as long as automobiles have been trolling the streets there has been traffic -- and no shortage of ideas for ending it. In 1929, there were too many, too costly ideas.

January 10,1929
ASKS TRAFFIC BOARD TO BAR COSTLY IDEAS

Banham says 200 proposals already received would involve $2,000,000,000

Warns city lacks funds

Using streets more at night and removing obstructions would help, he tells trade board

The work of the citizens’ traffic committee should be limited to an improvement of present traffic facilities and should not be concerned with solutions requiring additional facilities, declared W.J.L. Banham, president of the New York Board of Trade, Inc., yesterday at the monthly meeting of the organization at 15 Park Row. He outlined some of the suggestions he will lay before the committee on plan and scope today.

Mr. Banham, who is head of the citizens’ traffic committee, said that the committee had 200 plans for street traffic solution which would cost at least $2,000,000,000 to put into effect. Since the city has no money available to carry out the proposals, he urged that those things be done which involve no expenditure of large sums. In this connection, he mentioned garbage and ash removal at night, of obstructions from sidewalks, and reducing the number of street openings.

A couple of years later, the doom and gloom traffic experts made an argument that could be used verbatim today.

January 20, 1931
M’ANENY ASKS SPEED ON SOUND CITY PLAN

“Creeping Paralysis” can be avoided only if city acts at once, he declares.

Cost of traffic jams and other present conditions put at $1,000,000 a day.

Unless New York City adopts quickly a fundamental, scientific plan providing for a growth which will give the metropolitan area a population of 21,000,000 within thirty-five years, “creeping paralysis” will overtake it, George McAneny, president of the Regional Plan Association, told a meeting of the New York Credit Men’s Association at the Commodore last night.

Parking and its relationship to traffic was and still is of utmost concern. After the jump, read about two attempts to improve congestion by making it harder to park which are not unlike those currently on the table...

Still uninsured after all these years

Universal health coverage may be one of the big issues of the 2008 election, but people have been whining and wheezing about their lack of insurance for more than 90 years.

First, from today’s Times:

Albany: Proposal for Universal Health Insurance

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A state lawmaker proposed yesterday that New York create a $59 billion health insurance program that would cover everyone in the state and would probably be paid for through a tax increase. The plan, from Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, would generally replace the private health plans that now provide coverage to many people through their jobs. Assemblyman Gottfried, a Manhattan Democrat who is chairman of the Health Committee, said the program would have to be paid for by new taxes, but he said that state residents would pay less than they now pay in premiums and deductibles. Critics said there was little evidence that the state could afford the program, or that it could do better than the current system.

In 1916, state legislators proposed a similar idea.

January 30, 1916
HEALTH INSURANCE FOR NEW YORK’S WORKERS

New York State is facing one of the most radical proposals in the interests of the wage earner ever made in this country—a compulsory health insurance bill. The measure was introduced in the Legislature on Jan. 24 by Senator Ogden L. Mills.

Although its promoters, members of the Social Insurance Committee of the American Association for Labor Legislation, have been working on the project for more than three years and have distributed over 13,000 copies of the tentative bill, the plan comes as a surprise to many people, and a wave of inquiry is sweeping through associations of employers…

“Paternalism,” “socialism,” are slogans of the foes of this measure, which is bound to arouse discussion in every direction. It means in general terms an effort to introduce into the United States the compulsory health insurance of Great Britain or the sickness insurance of Germany, so that every manual worker and every wage earner whose income does not exceed $100 a month will, when he becomes ill, have the services of a physician, attendance, and even medicine and surgical appliances, and that for at least half a year, if his disability continues, he will receive a weekly allowance for the support of himself and his family. Death and funeral benefits are included.

Naturally this was deemed “un-American,” and the bill was scorned and later vastly watered down by doctors, employers, and insurers:

Gone and forgotten

Anonymity is sacred in New York. Millions wander the streets each day happily oblivious to the lives around them. But every once in a while, we are reminded of the dark side to this blindness.

Today's Times tells the story of Christina Copeman, who was discovered in her Brooklyn home -- two years after she died.   

Neighbors Reflect on a Death No One Noticed
By ANDY NEWMAN

For the last years of her life, Christina Copeman kept to herself.

She stopped answering the door shortly after her estranged husband died in 1990. She turned away from her friends and neighbors in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, ignoring their hellos.

So when Ms. Copeman dropped out of sight altogether, people were not immediately suspicious. Perhaps she had gone back to Trinidad for a vacation, they said. Maybe she had gotten sick there, or decided to stay.

That was nearly two years ago.

There have been countless incidents like this, though few in which the deceased managed to elude discovery for quite so long. In 1871, Margaret Mannisan had a fate similar to Coperman's:

August 8, 1871

A SHOCKING DEATH -- TERRIBLE FATE OF A FEMALE RECLUSE

Yesterday morning the occupants of a lower room at no. 5 King street noticed blood upon the ceiling, and called in Patrolman McAuley, of the Twenty-eighth precinct. The policeman went to the room overhead and knocked at the door. It was fastened on the inside, and the policeman, after waiting a sufficient time for it to be opened, forced it open. The occupant of the room was MARGARET MANNISAN, a native of Ireland, sixty-five years of age, unmarried. Upon a pile of rags upon the floor lay her dead body, swollen and decomposed almost beyond recognition.

Coroner Young, upon making an investigation later in the day, found that the woman had lived alone in this attic room for the last five years, and had not been seen alive since Friday night. Upon an examination of the body Dr. marsh was of the opinion that the woman had died in convulsions, in which she had ruptured a blood vessel.

The deceased was spoken of by those who knew her as a sober, industrious woman of eccentric habits, who, however, hated the male sex with almost unnatural malignity, and would never speak to any of the gender.

Yes, it was all because she hated men.

A few years later, a man died leaning on the window sill of his apartment, which overlooked the elevated train tracks. Note one of the great all time subheads..