As the glittering skyline of Manhattan rises majestically above the Hudson River, casting its shimmering reflection upon the waters below, it’s easy to be captivated by the city’s dazzling facade. But behind the gleaming skyscrapers and bustling streets lies a hidden history steeped in mystery, intrigue, and tragedy.
From the sordid tales of gangland violence that once gripped the streets of the Five Points to the haunting echoes of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which claimed the lives of 146 garment workers in a blaze of unfathomable horror, New York City’s past is rife with tales of darkness and despair.
So Join us as we journey through the labyrinthine alleyways of the city’s past, Explore the underbelly of the Big Apple, where notorious figures like Al Capone and John Gotti once held sway, and where the echoes of riots and unrest still resonate. Welcome to the gritty, gripping saga of New York City’s dark history.
Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast where we explore the darkest parts of human history. hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Welcome to season 3 episode 9, New York Citys Dark History, in today's episode, if it not already obvious, we will peel back the layers of time to explore the dark underbelly of one of the world’s most iconic cities: New York. Now when you hear of the dark history of New York city one story jumps right out at you and of course that is 9/11, this is a very dark chapter in New York’s history but it is a path well trodden, so today we look at some of the more obscure tales from the city that never sleep.
So without further ado please turn off those lights sit back and relax next to the fire for more dark history.
The General Slocum Disaster, was a tragic event etched into history on June 15, 1904. Despite its profound impact, the incident often remains overshadowed by the more widely known catastrophes such as the aforementioned Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire or the Titanic Disaster. One might speculate that the proximity of these latter events, both occurring within a relatively short timeframe, diverted public attention from the harrowing tale of the Slocum’s demise.
The PS Slocum, a sidewheel passenger ship constructed in 1891, embarked on that fateful journey with 1,358 souls on board, including crew members. Chartered by the St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church for a modest sum of $350.00, the majority of passengers hailed from the vibrant German-American community nestled in the Lower East Side of New York City. Excitement and anticipation permeated the atmosphere as families eagerly waited for a delightful excursion away from the bustling city streets.
As the vessel gracefully navigated the waters of the East River, laughter and chatter filled the air, creating an aura of joy and camaraderie among the passengers. However, tragedy lurked just beneath the surface of their merriment. In a cruel twist of fate, the day of leisure swiftly transformed into a nightmare of unimaginable proportions.
The precise origins of the fire that engulfed the ship remain shrouded in mystery, with conflicting accounts muddling the narrative. Nevertheless, the reality of the inferno’s ferocity became painfully evident within a mere half hour of the Slocum’s departure from the dock. at approximately 9 a.m. Panic gripped the hearts of the passengers as flames ravaged the vessel, spreading with alarming speed and voracity.
In the ensuing chaos, survival became a desperate struggle against the elements. With most passengers being women and children, the prospect of perishing amidst the raging inferno or succumbing to the unforgiving embrace of the river’s depths loomed ominously before them. The attire of the era, though fashionable, proved to be a hindrance, further complicating their chances of escape. For many, the ability to swim was a luxury they could ill afford, rendering them doubly vulnerable in the face of impending doom.
Thus, as the General Slocum succumbed to the merciless forces of fire and water, it left in its wake a trail of devastation that reverberated throughout the German-American community of the Lower East Side.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the grim reality of the General Slocum Disaster unfolded with devastating clarity. The relentless tide washed a macabre procession of lifeless bodies ashore in haunting repetition. Out of the 1,358 souls aboard the ill-fated vessel, a mere 321 emerged from the chaos, their survival a beacon of hope amidst the prevailing despair.
For the fortunate few who defied the odds and emerged from the ordeal unscathed, theirs became stories of miraculous survival. Conversely, for those who witnessed the agonizing loss of loved ones, grief cast a long and unyielding shadow, leaving hearts shattered and spirits broken in its wake.
In among the felling anguish and despair, questions swirled regarding the actions of Captain William Henry Van Schaick, whose decisions in the chaos would come under intense scrutiny in the days to follow. Reports surfaced alleging that Van Schaick, motivated by concerns over insurance ramifications, opted against bringing the blazing vessel to shore, instead directing its course towards the desolate shores of North Brother Island. In his defense, Van Schaick cited the perilous presence of gas tanks and lumber yards near the intended landing site at 130th Street, highlighting the inherent dangers that would have compounded an already dire situation.
Testimony that would follow in the days ahead established that there were few safeguards; life vests were rotten, life boats were in the same state, fire drills were non-existent, and the crew was untrained to handle the panic that followed on board the Slocum. Eyewitnesses from the shore could see the boat burning and wondered why the captain did not come to shore. Quickly, Van Schaick and the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company came under the crosshairs of an investigation. Frank A. Barnaby, the President of the company, defended the actions of the captain and the crew.
On January 27, 1906, justice was meted out to Captain Van Schaick by a jury of the United States Circuit Court. He was found guilty of criminal negligence that he had failed to maintain the fire drills required by law. Judge Thomas, the presiding judge, sentenced Van Schaick to 10 years of hard labor. And what happened to the company that owned the ship and the director? Of course, The Knickerbocker Steamboat Company and Frank Barnaby escaped justice and get away Scot free,
Even Van Schaick would serve only part of his sentence at Sing Sing prison. He received a pardon through the efforts of his wife from President William Howard Taft in 1911.
Moving on from the general slocum disaster to another of New Yorks tragic events we travel back to civil war era America. The New York Draft Riots unfolded in July 1863 amidst the fervent backdrop of the Civil War. The eruption of violence stemmed from the deep-seated resentment harbored by working-class New Yorkers towards a newly enacted federal draft law, igniting a conflagration of rage that engulfed the city for five days. This period witnessed some of the bloodiest and most destructive rioting ever witnessed on American soil, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.
As the economic hub of the nation, New York City faced the onset of the Civil War with trepidation, fearing the loss of the South as a crucial trading partner. Cotton held immense value for the city’s merchants, comprising 40 percent of all goods shipped from its bustling port before the conflict. Despite the abolition of the slave trade in 1808, an underground market for enslaved individuals persisted in the city. The ties between New York’s business interests and the Confederate States were so strong that secession from the Union was considered when war erupted in 1861.
Throughout the conflict, New York’s anti-war politicians and newspapers cautioned its predominantly white working-class citizens, many of whom were Irish or German immigrants, about the potential ramifications of emancipation. They feared being displaced in the labor force by newly freed individuals from the South. President Abraham Lincoln’s announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, set to take effect the following year, confirmed these fears for many workers. The decision sparked protests among city workers and even within New York regiments, whose members had enlisted to preserve the Union rather than to abolish slavery.
In early 1863, faced with a pressing need for manpower, the government under President Lincoln implemented a stringent conscription law. This law mandated that all male citizens aged between 20 and 35, as well as unmarried men between 35 and 45, were liable for military duty. Despite the implementation of a lottery system to select eligible men, individuals could evade service by either hiring a substitute or paying a hefty fee of $300 to the government, a sum equivalent to the annual earnings of the average American worker at the time, rendering draft avoidance a luxury afforded only to the wealthiest.
Complicating matters further, the exemption of Black men from the draft due to their non-citizen status exacerbated simmering tensions. This discriminatory policy underscored the systemic inequities inherent in the draft process. While protests erupted in other cities such as Detroit and Boston over the draft, none matched the intensity of the turmoil witnessed in New York City.
In the lead-up to the city’s inaugural draft lottery on July 11, 1863, anti-war newspapers stoked the flames of dissent, lambasting the new conscription law and exacerbating the growing frustration among white working-class citizens. This volatile atmosphere set the stage for the cataclysmic events that would unfold during the New York Draft.
For the first 24 hours after the lottery, the city remained suspiciously quiet, but rioting began early on the morning of Monday, July 13.
Thousands of white workers—mainly Irish and Irish-Americans—started by attacking military and government buildings and became violent toward people who tried to stop them, including the insufficient numbers of policemen and soldiers the city’s leaders initially mustered to oppose them.
By that afternoon, however, they had moved on to target Black citizens, homes and businesses.
In one notorious example, a mob of several thousand people, some armed with clubs and bats, stormed the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue near 42nd Street, a four-story building housing more than 200 children.
They took bedding, food, clothing and other goods and set fire to the orphanage, but stopped short of assaulting the children, who were forced to go to one of the city’s almshouses.
In addition to Black people themselves, rioters turned their rage against white abolitionists and women who were married to Black men.
White dockworkers, long opposed to the Black men working on the docks alongside them took the opportunity to destroy many of the businesses near the docks that catered to Black workers, and attack their owners, as part of their effort to erase the Black working class from the city.
By far the worst violence was reserved for Black men, a number of whom were lynched or beaten to death with shocking brutality. In all, the published death toll of the New York City draft riots was 119 people, though estimates of the actual number of people killed reached as high as 1,200.
New York leaders struggled with the task of containing the draft riots: Governor Horatio Seymour was a Peace Democrat, who had openly opposed the draft law and appeared sympathetic to the riot.
New York City’s Republican mayor, George Opdyke, wired the War Department to send federal troops but hesitated on declaring martial law in response to the rioting.
On July 15, the third day of the protests, rioting spread to Brooklyn and Staten Island. The following day, the first of more than 4,000 federal troops arrived, from New York regiments who had been fighting in the Battle of Gettysburg.
After clashing with rioters in what is now the Murray Hill neighborhood, the troops were finally able to restore order, and by midnight of July 16 the New York City draft riots had come to an end. In addition to the death toll, the riots had caused millions of dollars in property damage and made some 3,000 of the city’s Black residents homeless.
What would a dark history episode be with out a good murder story and this one is baffling.
On March 9, 1929, New York City was shaken by a perplexing crime that has confounded law enforcement and intrigued crime enthusiasts for generations. At the center of this enigmatic tragedy was Isidore Fink, a 30-year-old man known for his reserved demeanor and ownership of a modest laundry business located at 4 East 132nd Street. Situated in a gritty neighborhood plagued by frequent robberies, Fink was notoriously cautious, often securing his windows and doors with utmost diligence, particularly during late-night work hours. Only customers whom he personally recognized were granted entry into his establishment.
The events of that fateful night unfolded when Fink’s neighbor, Mrs. Locklin Smith, residing at the rear of the tenement building, was startled by the sounds of a disturbance emanating from Fink’s laundry. Alarmed, she hastily sought assistance, which arrived in the form of patrolman Albert Kattenborn. Upon reaching Fink’s door and receiving no response to his knocks, Kattenborn encountered a locked entrance. However, his keen observation revealed a slender transom window slightly ajar above the door. Realizing the window was too narrow for his own entry, Kattenborn enlisted the help of a nimble young lad who managed to squeeze through the transom. With the door unlocked from within, Kattenborn proceeded to investigate the mysterious scene unfolding inside.
At the rear of the laundry, patrolman Kattenborn made a grim discovery: Isidore Fink lay lifeless, the victim of a brutal attack. His body bore evidence of two gunshot wounds to the chest and one to the left hand. The scene suggested that Fink had been working, as evidenced by the hot iron resting on the illuminated gas stove at the time of the assault. Despite a thorough search for a weapon, neither Kattenborn nor the subsequent arrival of homicide detectives yielded any findings.
The absence of a discernible murder weapon perplexed the investigators, leading them to entertain the possibility of a staged suicide. However, their search for any contraption that could have propelled the gun aside proved futile. Frustration mounted as they meticulously combed through every inch of the room, tearing apart floorboards and scrutinizing walls, yet no clues surfaced.
With suicide ruled out, the detectives came the chilling realization that they were confronted with a real-life manifestation of the classic “locked room mystery.” This narrative trope, a mainstay of detective fiction, revolves around a murder victim discovered within a sealed room, devoid of any apparent means of entry or escape for the assailant. The enduring allure of this genre lies in the writer’s ingenuity in crafting a solution that defies expectations, a tradition exemplified by Edgar Allan Poe’s seminal work, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” often heralded as the first modern detective story.
In the investigation surrounding Isidore Fink’s murder, the New York Police Department initially posited a theory suggesting the assailant fled through the open transom window, supported by the discovery of a broken hinge. However, this scenario raised perplexing questions: for one, it implied the perpetrator was diminutive, no larger than a young boy. Moreover, it seemed implausible that someone would opt for such a cumbersome escape route when simply unbolting the door would offer a swifter exit.
An alternative hypothesis proposed that the killer, thwarted by the locked apartment door, resorted to firing shots through the open transom window from outside. Yet, this explanation faltered upon closer scrutiny. Examination of Fink’s hand revealed telltale scorch marks consistent with a close-range gunshot, suggesting a struggle ensued over the weapon. The medical examiner concluded that Fink sustained the hand injury during this altercation, prior to being fatally shot twice in the chest as he attempted to retreat.
And then there was the problem of motive. Clearly, it had not been a robbery, as investigators found money in Fink's pocket and the laundry cash register. So who could have wanted to violently murder an inoffensive laundryman who minded his own business?
There were reports that two well-dressed women had been seen in the hallway outside the laundry just before the shooting, but when officers visited Fink's home address at 52 East 133rd Street, his landlord, Max Schwartz, he described his tenant Fink as someone who never consorted with women and had no known enemies.
Two years later, on August 3, 1931, NYPD Commissioner Edward P. Mulrooney admitted his bafflement on a WOR radio show called "Man in the Front Row." During the course of this talk, Mulrooney discussed three crimes. One of these was the Fink murder, which he declared to be an "insoluble mystery." was he right?
Early on, investigators had worked on the assumption that Fink was shot in the hallway and then took refuge in his laundry, bolting the door against his assailant. This had been quashed by the medical examiner, who said that the chest wounds Fink sustained would have killed him almost instantaneously, giving him no time to carry out the tasks necessary. So was the murder unsolvable?
thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to this dark episode.
Yeah so that was some of the many stories of the dark history of New York.
Just adding to today's stories, Prior to the Slocum disaster, the German-American community was a vibrant and active neighborhood of the working-class and highly educated. The shock of losing so many loved ones devastated families. Suicides and depression resulted from such a loss and many residents moved away. Other communities were impacted as well. There was a loss of life among the Jewish and Italian communities also.
Standing in Tompkins Square Park is a Tennessee marble obelisk dedicated to the victims of the General Slocum disaster. The fountain was erected in 1906 by the Sympathy Society of German Ladies. Etched into the marble are these words: "They are Earth's purest children, young and fair."
The New York Draft Riots remain the deadliest riots in U.S. history, even worse than the 1992 Los Angeles Riots and the 1967 Detroit Riots.
When the Colored Orphan Asylum attempted to rebuild on the same site after the riots, neighboring property owners protested, and the orphanage would eventually be relocated to the sparsely settled area north of the city that would later become Harlem.
Stunned by the riots, the abolitionist movement in New York City revived itself slowly, and in March 1864, less than a year after the draft riots, New York City saw its first all-Black volunteer regiment in the Union Army march with pomp and circumstance through the streets before boarding their ship in the Hudson River.
But despite this meaningful victory, the draft riots would have a devastating impact on the city’s Black community. While the 1860 census recorded 12,414 Black New Yorkers, by 1865 the city’s Black population had declined to 9,945 by 1865, the lowest number since 1820.
Going back to the Isador Frink murder Something strange emerged a decade later, in a story from across the Atlantic that demonstrated just how extraordinarily resilient the human body can be when struck down by a terrible injury.
A a Scottish businessman left his Edinburgh hotel one winter's evening. When he didn't return later that night, the hotel staff was unconcerned, for the businessman was notoriously erratic in his habits. Sure enough, at 7:30 a.m. the following morning, he rang the doorbell. When the maid opened it, the man was dressed normally and carrying an umbrella. She noticed that his face was bloodstained. He brushed aside her concerns, telling her not to worry, and that he would "go upstairs and have a wash." He then placed his umbrella on the rack, hung up his coat, and went upstairs to the bathroom. He then collapse and died 3 hours later. What was startling about this was the man had attempted suicide but shooting himself in the head and in doing so taken out a Hugh chunk of his brain. The police track a trail of blood from the hotel to a park across the road in the park lay a revolver that belonged to the man and a massive pool of blood, brain matter and bone fragments. At some point, he got up and walked around the gardens, forming the 165-yard circle of blood spots in the snow, before returning to the shelter, where he rested again. Then he made his final journey back to the hotel. Letters found in the man's effects made it clear that this was a planned suicide. So where the police initially right, could Fink have been shot in the hallway, survived the unsurvivable injuries for just enough time to bolt the door and seek refuge only to die minutes later? Only the murder and Isidore Fink can answer that.
There are more then enough stories to to make a part 2 if it is wanted, one teaser is the story of The first death attributable to an automobile in the United States. This took place in New York city on September 13th, 1899 when on Central Park West and West 74th Street a man named Henry Hale Bliss, a 69-year-old real estate broker, was returning to his home at 235 West 75th Street. After descending from a trolley, he was reportedly assisting a female companion do the same when a passing taxi knocked him to the ground and ran him over, crushing his skull and chest. Bliss succumbed to his injuries the following morning.
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