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By Root 1150 0

’s for Irishmen to the Harvard Club for alumni, the vast metropolis simultaneously cultivated isolation and alienation. For every club that collected those of similar ideas or origins under its roof, there also existed in the city a charitable organization that ministered to the “fallen” and “destitute.” The famous Water Street Mission was said to have been a “profound benefit to thousands of outcasts,” transforming “fallen men and women” into useful members of society. The House of Mercy and the House of the Good Shepherd tended to “fallen women and girls,” while the Invalids’ Home and Home for Incurables gave shelter and comfort to those awaiting death. A dozen homes existed for the aged, “for men and women suffering from friendlessness and penury.” Even so, for every man or woman indeed saved from homelessness or destitution, countless others slipped through the cracks. The dozen nameless victims of today’s heat provided ample evidence of this sad reality of American urban life. During the past week over one hundred bodies of unclaimed dead had been taken to Potter’s Field on Hart Island. The boat responsible for taking the bodies from the city normally made only three trips to the island each week, but several extra trips had been required during the heat wave. Still, so many unclaimed bodies remained at the morgue awaiting burial that extra staff had to be hired.

While New Yorkers could not help but see the bodies of the dead horses that festered in every city block, other animals suffered as well. The oldest American buffalo in the Central Park menagerie, “Uncle Bill,” died in the intense heat. His body was taken to the Museum of Natural History, where his skeleton would one day be on display. The other animals at the zoo survived but showed signs of stress. “The polar bear immersed himself in the tank of water at the bottom of his cage, and did not look happy. The lions and tigers crawled into the shade. The seagulls and penguins gasped for breath, and the hyena laughed dryly.”

Dogs continued to be gunned down in the street by policemen summoned by nervous pedestrians, frightened by the sight of a staggering and salivating cur. Like the horse corpses littering the streets, not every dead dog enjoyed a speedy burial. On Sunday afternoon a police officer of the Thirty-Seventh Street station shot and killed a dog, and then promptly reported the incident in order that the Board of Health might remove the body. On every night afterward, the police officer reported the incident, as the dog’s dead body remained untouched in front of a Broadway apartment house. After three days of lying directly in the sun, the dog’s rotting body created a fearful stench. Someone had covered the corpse with straw, but the smell remained. The owner of the apartment building had made repeated requests to the Health Department for the dog’s removal, but with hundreds of horses still lying uncollected in the streets, the body of one small dog was a low priority.

In the midst of such heat, ice continued to be a precious commodity. Crowds of children clustered around stopped ice wagons begging for the smallest chip of ice. Most deliverymen were generous with their load and disposed of any ice that would be wasted anyway. Yet ice wagon driver Isaac Franklyn wasn’t so generous to laborer Jacob Gorschkovitch. Gorschkovitch stepped on Franklyn’s wagon to obtain a morsel of ice, and Franklyn responded by shoving the man so violently that he fell and broke his arm. Franklyn was charged with assault. In another part of the city, a ten-year-old boy was knocked down and run over by an ice wagon driven by John Vonstettin. Knowing all the city ambulances were busy, a policeman hailed a passing cab and sent the boy to the Hudson Street Hospital, where he was listed in grave condition. The driver was being held by police to await the result of the boy’s injuries.

With the heat affecting New Yorkers’ minds in such ways, Bryan may have been in more danger than he realized. Over the previous weekend, Martin Broderick, a twenty-five-year-old brickmason from