Strange Times 52: Boy Shoots Chum By Mistake

Strange Times is a day-by-day rereading of the most peculiar news articles of 1921. All material is excerpted from the day's New York Times, and all past issues are archived here. If you find it compelling, tell your friends to subscribe today.Today, our anniversary issue (!!), brings four stories of narrow escapes from death and a tragic tale of an escape that fell just short. In the introductory issue I promised, "stories that are odd and shocking, a picture of the past that is alien and familiar all at once." I hope this newsletter has delivered. Clear your throat and sing happy birthday for…

February 21, 1921

• A 12.5" snowfall—the heaviest to hit New York in four years—causes five deaths and stops the city in its tracks. 

• Although his fever continues, Caruso's condition has improved to the point that the tenor was able to sit up, eat boiled chicken, and enjoy the view of the blizzard outside his hotel room window. 

• The Weather: Fair today; Increasing cloudiness Tuesday, rising temperature; northwest gales diminishing Monday. 

It took passengers on a Pennsylvania Railroad train six hours to come from New Brunswick to New York last night, in which time they were stalled in a Hudson & Manhattan tube train on the Jersey meadows for three hours, burned newspapers and advertising cards in the cars to keep warm, and were attacking the cane benches for firewood when the train started.

The train left New Brunswick at 5:26 o'clock last night and pulled into the Newark station at 6:30, half an hour late.

The passengers were not informed that trouble had blocked the road ahead, and after a brief halt the train pulled out again for Manhattan Transfer. Ordinarily the train goes on through to the Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, but when it reached the Transfer every one was ordered out. They were told that the Pennsylvania electric line over the meadows was badly out of schedule because of the storm, so to make sure, as they thought, of getting to New York they got aboard the tube train. 

"We pulled out about half a mile and stopped," said one indignant passenger last night. "All the lights were out. It was dark and it got colder. The current being off there was no heat in the electric coils. The car was crowded, and about forty persons were standing up. Fully one-third of those in the train were women. The women got so cold that they drew their feet up and sat like tailors on the seats, huddled in their coats. Men lighted their pipes and cigars and cigarettes, and in a few minutes every one was smoking.

"We had waiting there nearly an hour, and were beginning to think we were going to pass the night there when an engine came along behind us. Somebody saw it and called out, 'Oh, we are going to get pushed in.' Well, we nearly did. That engine hit us about twenty miles an hour. Women tumbled off the benches onto the floor, screaming and scrambling among the feet of the men, most of whom had managed to keep their legs by grabbing at posts and window casings. Finally the engine backed away, leaving the rear windows smashed, so that more cold air came in. 

"There was a fine row then between the engine men and the train crew as to who had been responsible, and the engine crew said it was the fault of the train crew because there was no flagman out. Finally the engine pushed us about a block and then went off.

"We waited and shivered, and finally got desperate. Many of the women were actually suffering from the cold. One man started to burn a newspaper, and the warmth from it was so good that we began to pull down advertising cards from the racks and burn them. We used up all the cards in our car, and when they gave out looked around for something else that would keep us alive. 

"The cane seats looked as if they would burn, so we lifted one of them out. The trainman came back and protested. 'You people will get me fired,' he said. He was near the rear door, which was open, and we were so mad somebody booted him out into the snow and the night, and we didn't see him again. It wasn't his fault, of course, but people were frantic then. We had just got the cane seat on the fire and it was beginning to smoke when another engine came up and hitched on the front of the train. 

"That engine pulled us into the Summit Avenue station, where we were all ordered out again. We waited there on that open, wind-swept platform for another ten or fifteen minutes until a train came through from New York, took us aboard and started back to the city. We got here about 11 o'clock, tired and cold and mad."

A castaway in last night's blizzard, a boy of about six months, who had been abandoned in the dark on the first floor of the house at 3 Catharine Street, Chatham Square, attracted a rescuer by crying, and in all probability saved himself from freezing to death in the cold blasts from the open street door.

Miss Celia Goldman, entering from the street to go to her apartment on an upper floor, heard the cries of the child and searched the hall, but she could not at first locate them. She waited until the cries were repeated, and then saw by the light of a match a shapeless little bundle against the wall in the far corner.

After Miss Goldman had removed a pink and white blanket from the bundle, the baby came to view. He was garbed in warm underwear and a knitted suit. He was a healthy boy, with black eyes and hair, but he was blue with the effects of the cold. Policeman Crilly of the Oak Street station tried vainly to get some one in the neighborhood to identify the baby and carried him to the Oak Street station, from which he was finally removed to a warm crib at Bellevue Hospital.

CHESTER, Pa., Feb. 20.—The cries of a pet cat into the mouthpiece of a telephone at a house in West Third Street today brought out a detachment of police and plainclothes men bent on frustrating a burglary and possibly saving a life.

A telephone operator at the central exchange called the police department and informed the desk sergeant that cries of distress were coming from the telephone at the Third Street house. A patrol wagon full of policemen was hurried to the scene and they surrounded the house. Repeated knocks at the door brought no answer and they forced an entrance. 

They found the cat with one of its feet caught in an ice chest. In its struggles to get free it had knocked the receiver from the telephone, which was lying on the floor, and was crying into the mouthpiece. The family was away.

TOPEKA, Kan., Feb. 20.—George W. Cruse of Wichita, awaiting trial there on a charge of murder in connection with the death of his wife, was brought here today to answer a charge of attempting to bribe Miss Kathleen Foley to leave the State. Miss Foley, who was to have been a witness at his trial, died here Friday night, an hour after telling her mother that a man and woman had forced her to drink poison.

Cruse was questioned for eight hours in connection with the death of Miss Foley, according to police. He admitted giving checks to Miss Foley to leave the State that she might escape the ordeal of appearing as a witness.

Connie Eder, 10 years old, of 234 East 104th Street was accidentally shot in the right side yesterday by Joseph Le Roy, another boy of the same age living in the same address. The shooting took place in the apartment of Le Roy's grandfather, Frank Pagi, at 211 East Ninety-sixth Street, where the Le Roy had been sent on an errand, accompanied by Eder. 

Pagi was absent when the boys arrived and Le Roy discovered a revolver, which he fired accidentally while examining it, the bullet wounding Eder in the right side. The two boys then walked home, where the Eder boy's wound was discovered by his mother. 

Young Le Roy, apparently frightened by the belief that he had seriously injured his chum, ran away when he saw an ambulance from Reception Hospital draw up in front of the house and has not been found. It was said at the hospital that Eder's wound was not serious. The police arrested Pagi on his return to his apartment on a charge of violating the Sullivan law. He said he had kept the revolver for his protection.