SNOWBALLS TO BULLETS IN BROOKLYN (1888)
As the snow piled up during the Blizzard of 1888, Brooklynites began to experience countless fights. Snowball fights, that is. Most were lighthearted and fun, romps in the snow bringing joy and relief from the endless shoveling and the stress of everyday life with the white stuff. But sometimes these snowball fights turned ugly, exposing the more unsavory side of Brooklynites. They showed how quickly a snowball fight could evolve from a joyful game into mayhem-filled terror. Two cases, in particular, made the pages of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle during the week of the historic blizzard.Yesterday’s story involved a razor. Today’s involves a gun. THE GUN Seventeen-year-old James Fallon of Flatbush, Brooklyn, a “very quiet lad” who was working two jobs at the Hunter’s Point docks (as a plumbers’ apprentice and as a telegraph operator), fell in with a youth “of his own age,” one Joseph Woods, on the way to work two days after the Blizzard of ’88 struck. At the dock, the two boys noticed a “great pile of snow” – likely carted there by city contractors who were attempting to clear the streets. The two “for some time pelted each other with snowballs,” having great fun together. At one point, though, James managed to strike Joseph in the mouth with a snowball. This particular snowball “made him angry, whereupon he drew a revolver” and firing it at James, “struck him over the left eye.” James fell in the snow. Joseph ran away. THE TREK Most 17-year-old’s shot […]
