Geon
Donor
Brooklyn
And here is more on Brooklyn.
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Date: November 13, 1944
Place: New York City (Brooklyn)
Time: 1:00 p.m. [EDT]
In Brooklyn the rioters moved to the other two quarantined tenements. The police there seeing the rioters approach had quickly retreated to get reinforcements. In the three tenements the rioters found people in their apartments lying very sick in bed. The phones to each tenement had been cut to keep any news or rumors from filtering out to the outside world. Worse, the windows in each room of the tenement had been taped shut to ensure that no one inside the apartments could communicate in any way with those outside. The idea had apparently been to simply let the victims of the plague die in their homes then quietly remove them.
The former Health Commissioner of New York City would later testify.
The plan was to prevent a full-scale panic by keeping the outbreaks contained. It was hoped that by keeping the sick in their homes and limiting their contact with the outside world we could limit the spread of the disease. We also hoped by cutting off communication to the outside world and by maintaining a news blackout that false rumors that generate panic could be stopped before they started. It was our intention to prevent the very thing that occurred during what became known as the Brooklyn Plague Riots.
(Testimony of the New York Health Commissioner before the Senate Committee, 1947)
The rioters for the most part didn’t know why the people in the three tenements were being quarantined. They simply knew they were being kept virtual prisoners in their homes and apparently left to die. This only increased the anger of the mobs. The sick were quickly taken out of their apartments and loaded into cars and trucks converted into makeshift ambulances to be driven to the closest hospitals.
David Lewis was one of the lucky ones. His uncle was able to get him and his surviving sister to Brooklyn Hospital. The emergency room doctors there quickly admitted David and his sister who was starting to show early stages of the sickness. Both would survive, albeit with scars from their ordeal both mental and physical.
The majority of the mob surged toward the Brooklyn Bridge with the sick to try to take them to hospitals in Manhattan. The reason Manhattan was targeted was because many among the rioters wanted an explanation for what was going on and why, and the city government was going to answer one way or another.
By this time the police had mobilized and a line of police were waiting at the bridge for the protestors. The police yelled for the protestors to disperse. When they did not but continued forward the police began lobbing tear gas into the approaching groups. Within moments the protestors began to retreat from the choking fumes. Some tried to get back to their cars but were unable to in the blinding gas clouds. The police then moved forward. The crowds quickly dispersed to reform elsewhere later. The sick were driven to private homes to be cared for there rather then risk them being put back in the rat holes that they had been taken from.
Throughout the day and well into the night police would clash with rioters on the streets of Brooklyn. At some point a more lawless element joined the original rioters whose original intentions had simply been to rescue families and friends. As happens in many such cases the original intentions of the protestors were being replaced by troublemakers who saw an opportunity to create mischief and line their pockets. By nightfall several stores in Brooklyn had been looted and set ablaze. Police were hard pressed and dozens of arrests had already been made. And the Brooklyn Plague riots, as they would be called were just getting started.
Ironically, by trying to help the victims of the plague the rioters didn’t realize it but they would actually be helping do that the draconian measures of the city government had been instituted to prevent, namely spread the disease.
And here is more on Brooklyn.
--------------------------------
Date: November 13, 1944
Place: New York City (Brooklyn)
Time: 1:00 p.m. [EDT]
In Brooklyn the rioters moved to the other two quarantined tenements. The police there seeing the rioters approach had quickly retreated to get reinforcements. In the three tenements the rioters found people in their apartments lying very sick in bed. The phones to each tenement had been cut to keep any news or rumors from filtering out to the outside world. Worse, the windows in each room of the tenement had been taped shut to ensure that no one inside the apartments could communicate in any way with those outside. The idea had apparently been to simply let the victims of the plague die in their homes then quietly remove them.
The former Health Commissioner of New York City would later testify.
The plan was to prevent a full-scale panic by keeping the outbreaks contained. It was hoped that by keeping the sick in their homes and limiting their contact with the outside world we could limit the spread of the disease. We also hoped by cutting off communication to the outside world and by maintaining a news blackout that false rumors that generate panic could be stopped before they started. It was our intention to prevent the very thing that occurred during what became known as the Brooklyn Plague Riots.
(Testimony of the New York Health Commissioner before the Senate Committee, 1947)
The rioters for the most part didn’t know why the people in the three tenements were being quarantined. They simply knew they were being kept virtual prisoners in their homes and apparently left to die. This only increased the anger of the mobs. The sick were quickly taken out of their apartments and loaded into cars and trucks converted into makeshift ambulances to be driven to the closest hospitals.
David Lewis was one of the lucky ones. His uncle was able to get him and his surviving sister to Brooklyn Hospital. The emergency room doctors there quickly admitted David and his sister who was starting to show early stages of the sickness. Both would survive, albeit with scars from their ordeal both mental and physical.
The majority of the mob surged toward the Brooklyn Bridge with the sick to try to take them to hospitals in Manhattan. The reason Manhattan was targeted was because many among the rioters wanted an explanation for what was going on and why, and the city government was going to answer one way or another.
By this time the police had mobilized and a line of police were waiting at the bridge for the protestors. The police yelled for the protestors to disperse. When they did not but continued forward the police began lobbing tear gas into the approaching groups. Within moments the protestors began to retreat from the choking fumes. Some tried to get back to their cars but were unable to in the blinding gas clouds. The police then moved forward. The crowds quickly dispersed to reform elsewhere later. The sick were driven to private homes to be cared for there rather then risk them being put back in the rat holes that they had been taken from.
Throughout the day and well into the night police would clash with rioters on the streets of Brooklyn. At some point a more lawless element joined the original rioters whose original intentions had simply been to rescue families and friends. As happens in many such cases the original intentions of the protestors were being replaced by troublemakers who saw an opportunity to create mischief and line their pockets. By nightfall several stores in Brooklyn had been looted and set ablaze. Police were hard pressed and dozens of arrests had already been made. And the Brooklyn Plague riots, as they would be called were just getting started.
Ironically, by trying to help the victims of the plague the rioters didn’t realize it but they would actually be helping do that the draconian measures of the city government had been instituted to prevent, namely spread the disease.
