THE CAT MAN OF GWINNET STREET (1896)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Haasen-pfeffer is a German dish best served hot. A traditional German rabbit stew, it was brought over to the US by immigrants. (Hase is German for “hare,” and pfeffer is German for “black pepper.”) Although rabbits are the chief ingredient in the old-world dish, German immigrants in the early days of the country would often substitute squirrels. But never cats. Until Herman Fritsch appeared on the scene in Williamsburg in 1896. THE CAT MAN OF GWINNET STREET The locals were first alerted to the possible rabbit substitute in their stews when several neighbors heard a terrible racket occurring one night at Fritsch’s home, 168 Gwinnett Street (now Lorimer Street). As the neighbors listened, they began to hear a horrible howling coming from his rooms above a liquor store. They thought the cries sounded like “the screams of a child or woman in distress.” A consultation amongst several of the neighbors quickly took place, after which they decided that “murder was surely being committed in Fritsch’s apartments.” So Officer Lang of the Clymer Street Station was called for. While the neighbors waited, though, there was a last despairing shriek. And then all was still. OFFICER LANG ON THE JOB By the time Officer Lang arrived, “not a sound was heard” within the […]
“THE HATS TEMPTED MARY” (1890)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** A cursory search through old newspaper archives of the 1890s and early 1900s will produce a large number of incidents whereby patrons of dry goods, and other such stores, were summarily and stealthily robbed by clandestine crooks. Solomon Milkman’s Millinery House – at 442 & 444 Fulton Street – was no exception. A wholesale hat store primarily patronized by women, it soon became the target of thieves looking for money packaged in tiny, easily hidden and transportable containers – purses. The first thieves, though, saw the store itself as the easy target. Usually women, they pilfered mostly feathers, buttons, and other accouterments for the embellishment of women’s hats. In 1890, the first of Milkman’s thieves made the morning papers when a wealthy South Brooklyn woman was caught red-handed, so to speak, stealing goods valued at $3. She would not give her name to the police, as her husband was well-known, so they referred to her as Jane Doe. The police kept her – and her husband’s – identities secret and allowed the wealthy businessman husband of hers to escape humiliation. The following year, in 1891, Nora Duffy, 19, of 79 Sackett Street, was the next identified thief. A “tawdrily dressed young woman,” she was noticed by a detective of Wechsler & […]
BROOKLYN WOMEN LIKE FOREIGN HELP (1915)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** American housewives have always been fond of foreign servants. Brooklyn women were – 100 years ago – more than typical of that trend. Very much like today’s dependence on foreign help (primarily labor from those of Mexican extraction), this trend was likely due – back in Victorian and Edwardian Brooklyn – to an eagerness on the behalf of these women, to have the work in a land where they had few options, as well as to an eagerness, on the behalf of the homeowners, to having cheaper, more dependable labor. Such “help” in the house, according to the New York Times, “freed women from many chores and enabled them to use their time to enhance their moral character and educate themselves – to paint, do needlework, write, engage in physical activity and travel.” The demand, though, for “foreign-speaking girls,” in particular, was “strong,” a 1915 report from a Brooklyn labor office noted. And it was so “especially in Brooklyn,” they noted, where many second generation immigrants lived and thus presented an atmosphere where “a very large number of positions are now waiting for girls who are Polish, German or Scandianvian.” A look at the census of a typical Brooklyn block of the period would produce as many as 10-20 live-in servants, […]
B’KLYN GALS SEEK LEAP YEAR COWBOYS (1912)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** “Come on boys; don your riding chaps, brush up your sombrero and dig out your rusty six-shooter and look-like a moving picture hero!” So started the article in the Sacramento Bee in April of 1912 about two Brooklyn sisters who were looking far afield for long-distance leap year affairs. Alma and Lou Bahn of 546 Washington Avenue, a boarding house between Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue known as The Berwick, were taking this leap year business seriously, it seemed, and the men of the borough of Brooklyn, it seemed, could not hold down the sisters’ adventuresome spirits. “They want to correspond with you and perhaps the corresponding may lead to love and to the altar,” continued the Bee story. “The girls apparently realize that California is overrun with cowboys and that some of them are so dare devil and roguish that they buy their chewing gum in cigar stores,” continued the Bee. “Therefore, they ask for the names of several in order that they can each pick out a ‘nice’ cowboy and not a Black Bart the second or a California Jesse James. “The Brooklyn belles do not give their ages, but their pictures indicate that they are, or were, young. That they are not idle flirts seeking to catch some […]
“MORALS OF MINNIE” ON GARFIELD PL. (1912)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** In 1912, a Park Slope cat named Minnie found herself in some hot water. According to a complaint, Minnie’s claws had allegedly performed some serious mutilation to a neighbor’s roof. Here, now, are the details of: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CAT THAT CLAWED Location – Garfield Place (between 6th and 7th avenues). Suspect’s address – No. 182 Garfield Place, the Inasmuch Home for Aged Women. Claimant’s address – No. 178 Garfield Place, home of one William Albert Robbins, attorney. Suspect – one “Minnie,” a white Persian, and allegedly “immoral,” cat. THE WANDERINGS OF THE “INASMUCH” Around 1909, the Inasmuch Home for Aged Women moved from its previous location on Bergen Street to its new home at No. 182 Garfield Place in Park Slope between 6th and 7th Avenues. The Inasmuch (sometimes referred to as the “In-As-Much” by sloppy journalists) was a “charity” home for “aged women who are unable to get into other homes,” run through contributions and donations. It was founded in 1905, a few years before the move to Garfield Place. At that time, it existed in the Gowanus at No. 390 Douglass Street, and later moved to (what would become) the Boerum Hill section at No. 226 Bergen Street. By 1920, when it was finally closed, the […]
HOOCH RAID IN A PARK SLOPE SLUM (1922)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Everybody was “thirsty” in 1922. Not everyone, though, wanted to pay the price of the drink. While the wet laws during the 1920s were none too popular with many Brooklynites, most of these residents, for safety reasons, though, did not want the hooch being made under their own roof. As a result, there was no shortage of citizen reports to the police of active neighborhood mash stills. Even in the slums of Park Slope. A CASE IN PARK SLOPE One of these stills was “uncovered in a flat occupied by Daniel Beshara, at 721 Union street” where it was discovered that the hooch was being made in a makeshift still in the middle of the night. Not only illegal, the operation, powered by open flames, was also dangerous. Beshara and his cousin, James Pamperi, who also lived in the building, were arrested in the act of producing mash. “In the Pamperi home were found fourteen barrels of mash,” claimed the Brooklyn Standard Union newspaper. “That dwellers in the tenements are becoming aroused over the fire peril is shown by the great number of complaining letters which have been sent” to the district attorney, demanding that he stamp out these “moonshine dens.” ASST. D.A. SNYDER TO THE RESCUE In a grand response […]
