CONEY LOOP SENDS GIRL TO ASYLUM! (1901)
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“Oh, mamma! They tied me in the ‘loop the loop’ and I shall die. My head is on fire!”
So cried Bertha Zwickler who earlier that day had ridden Coney Island’s latest “attraction,” the “Loop The Loop,” a sort of looping roller coaster that was among the first ever built.
The day after her ride on what the New York Evening World referred to as the “idiots’ joy,” Bertha lay babbling incoherently on Ward’s Island in the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane.
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINES
It was a strange story. It was not the reasoning, though, behind this new “rage against the machines.” It seemed that the powers that were in the city had simply had enough of the madly raging carnival atmosphere of Coney Island, which, according to its chieftains, had broken out and gone beyond all moral and ethical boundaries for the period.
The Evening World sensed this wickedness incarnate and the political atmosphere brewing, and so they decided to make hay with this story. They literally foamed at the mouth over the Loop the Loop, describing Zwickler after the event:
“She was the main support of a family of seven, and in her ravings the helplessness of those to whom she devoted her young life is mingled with curses for the dangerous machine set up at Coney Island to catch the pennies of visitors to that conglomeration of catch-penny diversions.”
And the Brooklyn Daily Eagle chimed in, calling for an end to the depravity and unhealthiness, through the immediate closure of the “Loop The Loop.”
“Coney Island,” they started, “ought not to be allowed to pile up an army of cripples to make a New York holiday.”
SHUT IT DOWN!
City officials, becoming alarmed at the new ride, decided, too, that the attraction was a “menace to health” and “dangerous to the patrons.” According to the Department of Health, it “interfered with the proper circulation of the blood.”
Accusations and injunctions flew as everyone seemed to have an opinion on the safety – or lack thereof – of the ride.
Finally, the police swooped in and shut the attraction down, stating that the Loop The Loop was a “danger to life and limb.” (Apparently, though, the Barrel of Love was also closed up for similar reasons.)
The police action would have a set period, though, and when the injunction against the operation of the coaster eventually expired, Coney Island revelers returned to “flip flopping” on the Loop the Loop.
At this point, the Evening World would further fulminate at the relief from the injunction from “the sport that has maimed and injured a score of its patrons.”
In reality, the roll of injuries caused by the Loop the Loop included but one person – a woman who had slipped from the platform while she was boarding one of its cars.
Bertha Zwickler, however, sitting in an insane asylum on Ward’s Island, would not be counted among that score of those “maimed and injured.”
POSTSCRIPT
Although the loop in roller coaster rides would become a steadfast feature in the years to come, Coney’s Loop the Loop attraction lasted only from 1901 to 1910. It was, also, never a serious money-maker due to the small size of the cars.
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