“Yep,” grunted Conners.
After lunch Fingy curtly dismissed the Alderman to stroll over to the Iroquois Hotel barbershop for said trim and a manicure. The alderman also intended on following through on his friend’s cue. But first he had business to attend to downstairs at the offices of the Citizen Ice Co. Once that was completed, he looked at his pocketwatch and determined he had time to pay a visit the barber shop in the basement for a trim and a shave. He waited for the elevator. When the door finally opened he stepped in and said to the operator, “Basement, boy.” The operator bristled.
The elevator operator, twenty-one year old Emil Tillman, was unhappy in his job. He had failed at law school and thus had shamed his father socially. Forced to work for the first time in his spoiled life, and qualified to do nothing at all capably, he took on the elevator operator’s job temporarily after the strikers were fired the previous week for demanding a dollar and a half increase in weekly wage. The busy Ellicott Square, the world’s largest office building, was put in a lurch by this unanticipated work stoppage. The principals hired the first applicants who seemed at all suitable. Tillman found the job demeaning and the common people he was now obliged to serve especially insufferable. Even office girls who made no more money than he himself looked down their nose at him, or so he was convinced.
The car descended quickly, throwing the alderman off balance. “Hold on there, boy!” shouted JP. “What do you think you’re doing? Slow down before you injure someone!”
Resentfully, Tillman acquiesced. The car lurched to a halt in the basement, right outside the barber shop. JP glared at him as he exited, expecting an apology. None was forthcoming. The alderman entered the barber’s establishment and although two men sat awaiting their turn, the barber placed JP in the chair immediately and went to work on him, chatting and laughing at all of Sullivan’s jokes.
The elevator boy, still bristling from the alderman’s dressing down, stopped at the ground level to allow passengers Frank Whaley, Bertha Farnham and Grace Hopkins to enter. Miss Hopkins said pleasantly, “Fourth floor please.” The cage was closed and the lift ascended rapidly, so rapidly that the passengers had to quickly grab the rail to keep their footing. Miss Farnham shot Tillman a scolding look but said nothing. The elevator stopped abruptly at the fourth floor, right outside the offices of the Fidelity & Casualty Company where Bertha Farnham was employed as a stenographer. As the car stopped Miss Hopkins stepped off first and Miss Farnham attempted to follow. Just as Miss Farnham placed one foot upon the floor, but with the other foot still in the car, the operator pulled the lever quickly, and made the usual motion to swing the door closed.
With Miss Farnham in that position—one foot on the floor and one in the car—the cage shot rapidly upward, pitching her forward. Her foot trapped by the door, she was swung underneath the rapidly rising car and thrown down the elevator shaft. She fell five stories to the concrete basement, landing on her knees.
Mr. Whaley told the police, “It all happened so quickly that we did not have a chance to move a hand to save the girl. Even as I jumped forward—I was in the back of the car—her body tilted over, and head downward, she plunged into the shaft. Of course the ascending car lifted her foot from the floor and when her head swung down and in, the weight of her body drew her clear of the floor and into the open space.”
The thud outside the barbershop door was sickening, accompanied as it was by a truncated screech sounding not unlike that of a dog being executed. The barbers and customers ran out to the elevator well. The Alderman trailed, his limp holding him back. They picked up the broken woman, unconscious. The Emergency Hospital ambulance was immediately called. Within minutes Miss Farnham was on the operating table, but a surgeon said he didn’t expect her to live through the night.
Mr. Whaley stated further that after Miss Farnham fell, the operator stopped the car very suddenly three quarters of the way up to the fifth floor, then descended abruptly again to the fourth where Whaley exited in haste. On his heels was elevator operator Tillman, who ran out the door, disappearing down Main Street and away from the scene.
Awkwardly, the Fidelity & Casualty Company where Miss Farnham was employed carried the accident insurance on the elevators for the Ellicott Square Company. The office refused all requests for information.
In direct opposition to Mr. Whaley’s eye witness account of the terrible event, an entirely different rendition of the accident was current by that afternoon. According to that new version, the accident was all Miss Farnham’s fault. It was claimed that Miss Farnham was about to leave the building for lunch and stepped through an open elevator door into the gaping shaft at the fourth floor, thinking a car was in front of her. If this were true, the operator might deserve a scolding for leaving the door open but the young woman would be entirely to blame for not looking where she stepped. However, no eyewitnesses came forward to substantiate this alternate account.
At the Iroquois Hotel barbershop Conners admired his nails as the barber undid his cape and shook it out. Before the errant hairs could even reach the floor the nine-year-old Italian sweeper appeared to brush them into his dustpan. Fingy rose from the barber’s chair. As the barber helped him on with his coat Fingy glanced down to see that he was being scrutinized by the manicurist on her foot stool as she dawdled with her instruments. He became annoyed. He lorded over her.
“Hey, sister! Whad’re yous waitin fer down there? A tip? Lissen. I paid full price fer a half-dollar manicure, but yous only had to do nine fingers,” he scolded bombastically as he waved his thumbless left hand at her for emphasis. “So there ye go. There’s yer 10% tip right there. Now don’t be carryin’ on like some street beggar.”
Conners strode out onto the sidewalk cursing those in the rushing river of passersby who didn’t automatically jump aside to accommodate him. He returned directly to his office at the Courier. Once settled in he called for Sam Blythe.
“Sam,” he said, distractedly inspecting his nine newly refined nails, “yer me managin’ editor, aintcha?”
“Uh. Yes sir. I am,” Blythe stammered, sensing doom.
“Well I wantcha t’ walk on out there and manage O’Brien and White.” Conners nodded toward the two.
Blythe gulped. Hard.
“I…I don’t quite understand, Boss. Manage them how?”
“Manage ‘em right into unemployment. I want ‘em gone. Now. Go fire ‘em.”
The two men had long been hard at work at their desks by the time Fingy strolled in from his lunch. No one could ever accuse either of not being an eager and capable officer.
It was to a terrible deed The Boss was sending him, but Sam gathered his courage, straightened his spine and marched out like a good soldier, informing each man that his services were no longer required.
“But why?” exclaimed the shocked Richard White, taken completely by surprise. He had just bought a house on St. John’s Place for his family.
Sam didn’t answer verbally. He only needed to raise his bushy eyebrows and shift his eyes in the general direction of The Boss for White to understand. Blythe sighed deeply. Richard White gathered his things.
“Well,” John O’Brien sniffed with a wry smirk as he cleared his desk after being next dismissed, “at least I lasted longer than I’d ever expected, am I not right Sam?”
“Unfortunately Johnny,” Sam shrugged, “we all know how things work around here.”
Sam Blythe, having just fired the two best men on his staff, immediately began to fret. How was he going to manage without them? Who could take the place of men who had proven themselves so capable and worthy? How much additional work would he himself have to now shoulder on his own with both of his best men fired?
Sam returned to The Boss once he’d carried out his directive, trying hard not to betray his personal feelings on the matter. After all, he’d worked for the mercurial tyrant long enough to know that anything was possible. Even the entirely illogical.
“Well, didja fire ‘em?” asked Conners.
<
br /> “Yes, sir,” Blythe answered. “They’ve both just left.”
“Good. Now go back out there and fire yerself.”
The following day a new managing editor, one less well-compensated, therefore less likely to be encountered by Fingy Conners at any of his treasured haunts, proudly placed a silver-plated framed photo portrait of his wife and daughter confidently on Sam Blythe’s former desk.
It wouldn’t be displayed there for long.
◆◆◆
Detective Jim Sullivan visited the offices of Bertha Farnham’s employers. He questioned elevator operator Tillman about his hours-long disappearance after the accident. He asked him for his version of the story. Tillman acted as if he were too traumatized to speak coherently. The detective believed otherwise.
“I went over to Ellicott Square,” stated Detective Sullivan to a news reporter who arrived at the scene, “to investigate the case and I was treated about the same as you fellows from the newspapers. They didn’t refuse to give me information, but at the same time I found out nothing about the case. If the elevator operator was actually wholly responsible for the death, it will be a case of manslaughter if the woman dies, but I don’t see what can be done while she is yet alive. The most profound secrecy is being maintained at the office where Miss Farnham is employed. The company insures the elevators in the Ellicott Square and it is thus placed in a queer position—an act of possible negligence on the part of one of their patrons resulting in the maiming and probable death of one of their own employees.”
The 21-year-old operator of the car had been taken into the office of the Fidelity & Casualty Company and there he signed a statement, the burden of which was that the young woman herself was to blame. He stated that Miss Farnham had attempted to leave the elevator after he had started his car upward and that she had not stated that she desired to get off at the fourth floor. Then he was permitted to resume work, placed on No. 7 elevator, said to be his regular run, instead of No. 5, which he was operating when the accident occurred.
Three days following the accident Miss Farnham’s sister Dora remained by her bedside at the hospital, having traveled from their family home in Oil City Pennsylvania. When interviewed by a reporter she shook her head and said “Since my sister has been injured no one has come forward on the part of the Ellicott Square Company or the Fidelity & Casualty Company where she was employed to offer any condolences or assistance whatsoever. They haven’t sent even so much as a bunch of daisies.”
Despite nurses’ statements that she had “brightened” a bit since the accident, Bertha Farnham succumbed from her injuries the following day.
Fire Sale
◆◆◆
From the Buffalo Express:
SULLIVAN ON THE COPS:
“FINEST BODY OF IRISHMEN
I EVER SAW.’
Alderman John Pericles Sullivan was asked yesterday about the police parade on Saturday, which he viewed from a prominent vantage point.
“It was the finest body of Irishmen I ever saw,” quoth Alderman Sullivan.
“There was a sprinkling of Germans, but not enough to affect the splendor of the parade or the magnificence of the array. On their way off the field I was proud to hear the stalwart, sturdy guardians of the peace murmur: ‘Home rule for Ireland is at hand!’ while they dawdled their clubs. I heard a bystander ask: ‘Haven’t the Irish already got their hands full ruling America, without working overtime to rule Ireland?’ Yes, it was a fine parade, and now that they have done their day’s work they will do regular duty proudly for another year.”
Then the alderman, joking aside, praised the police force and eulogized the men who “dawdle the clubs.”
Summer vacation continued to be a source of consternation among those in the Alderman’s household. A spur-of-the-moment day trip to the shore on a streetcar once or twice a season was all the family vacation they’d come to expect. Their father’s determination to never take any extended holiday with his family as a way to illustrate his commitment to the needs of his constituents left the family miserably high and dry. They jealously bid farewell to departing friends off to a rented cottage at Angola or Crystal Beach, or for a lucky few, an extended train excursion to the Rockies or New England.
Thomas, the Alderman’s eldest, didn’t seem to mind so much, but sixteen year old Daniel believed this summer would be his last hurrah before having to buckle down and assume full adult responsibilities. Despite being every bit as dedicated to his father’s business as his older brother he nonetheless eagerly looked forward to closing time on Fridays when he had a standing date with his friends to cut loose. They boarded the Crystal Beach-bound steamer Gazelle for an evening of buffoonery and anarchy across the Canadian border.
After the last of the working men had left the Sullivan Icehouse for the day, acting manager Daniel Sullivan conducted his daily walkabout of the mammoth wood structure to check for electric lights left burning, doors ajar, smoldering cigar butts and such. He sniffed as he made his way along, his nose as valued a detector of potential mayhem as was his keen eye sight.
The late afternoon temperature outside may have risen well into the nineties, but inside the giant shed surrounded by 15,000 tons of ice the climate was delightful. The imposing icehouse, tucked on a narrow strip of land between Lake Erie’s shore and the Blackwell Canal, had been crippled, then destroyed, on two separate occasions within the previous 18 months, both times by ferocious storms. Daniel was resolute: there’d be no going through the severely disruptive rebuilding process yet again.
When he’d determined all was well, he stepped reluctantly out into the heat. He cringed as if entering a furnace. He padlocked the door behind him and hopped across the rails at the rear of the icehouse thirty seconds before a Lehigh Valley train chugged past, laboring against the uphill grade. As it strained, the engine furiously belched coal smoke and glowing sparks into the strengthening hot wind that only compounded the misery of the summer heat. Dan headed over the Turnpike Bridge traversing the canal and boarded a streetcar headed straight for the Gazelle’s ticket booth on the dock at the foot of Main Street for his gang’s weekly summer ritual. The get-together on the Canadian side always began with a tasty meal of fish and chips on Derby Rd. before taking in the amusements along Crystal Beach’s midway. Dan made it just in the nick of time for the Gazelle’s 6:15 departure to the excited hurry-ups shouted by his beckoning comrades. As one Crystal Beach steamer sailed out loaded with excited fun-seekers, her sister ship sailed in conveying their exhausted sunburnt counterparts. As Dan’s steamer pulled further out into Lake Erie, the brilliant sinking sun still hot on the skin, the orchestra delighted the few passengers willing to brave the heat to exert themselves on the ship’s dance floor. Dan and his friends, Rose, Tim, Mike and Katie stood at the rail relishing the gusty winds and holding tight against the rocking of the boat. They made a contest of identifying city landmarks as they grew smaller in the distance.
Ominously on the far shore, at approximately the location of the Sullivan icehouse, Dan saw great wafts of black billowing smoke rising into the sky.
◆◆◆
Flames were already engulfing the southerly side when they’d been finally noticed by a passerby. The closest firehouse was Engine 8 on Chicago St., more than two miles distant. Nevertheless, despite being hampered by the poor conditions of the roads, Engine 8 made it there in seven minutes, a record. Seeing the degree of conflagration, and gauging the fifty mile an hour wind gusts, a second alarm was immediately turned in. Upon arrival the firemen witnessed the gale efficiently scattering a shower of sparks and huge firebrands high into the air to the east. These had already ignited the Lehigh dock jutting into the lake. Ultimately ten companies were called to battle the furious blaze. A shower of sparks had set the Turnpike bridge afire. The lumber yards of Hurd Bros. adjacent to the canal were in constant danger and several hoses on the fire tug George H. Potter streamed water over the piles of lumber, thus preventing a conflagration. Due to the
close proximity of the icehouse to the lake’s shoreline, the firemen were unable to access the fire from the lake side, so intense was the blaze. No one believed the icehouse structure salvageable anyway. It was fully involved. Their intention instead was to keep surrounding structures from igniting and burning out of control. The calamity of the Great Chicago Fire was always on the minds of Buffalo firefighters.
Flying embers ignited the roof of the flagman’s shanty at the Lehigh Valley railroad yard. One-armed Ed Moylan, Lehigh Yard Detective and Democratic leader in the 11th ward, was making his customary rounds at Tifft Farm in the Lehigh Yards. He had been scrutinizing the cars for tramps and break-ins when he heard the flagman yelling. He ran to the shanty and despite his handicap furiously filled buckets from the horse trough to hand to the flagman to pitch up onto the roof. Most of the water missed its mark.
“Goddamn it, you fool! I can do better than yous and I only got just one fuckin’ arm! Climb on top there and I’ll hand you the buckets!”
The flagman hopped up on the fence and boosted himself to the roof just as they were joined by two other Lehigh Valley yardmen. Together the four worked furiously to save the flagman’s structure. They failed.
“Idiot!” sneered the short-tempered Moylan as the structure became fully engulfed. His eyes met the flagman’s. “Maybe it’s high time you retired, old man!” suggested the detective, himself well long of tooth.
Over in Canada, Danny had mostly put his worries to rest by the time he and his friends reached Derby Rd. There the gang proceeded to enthusiastically gorge themselves. Greasy cones fashioned from the pages of the Toronto Star overflowed with big golden chunks of battered cod and glistening French-fried potatoes sparkling with oil and salt. The sides of the cold green Coca Cola bottles dripped with icy sweat in the heat. Rose warned them about stuffing themselves too full before riding the scenic railway. “I don’t want to have to walk around all night wearing any of your dinners on my new jumper! And I’m referring to you, Tim!”
Murderers, Scoundrels and Ragamuffins Page 17