by Ed O'Donnell
Dear Mayor McClellan: I send herewith the 60 cents I was saving for the Fourth of July. Please give it to the poor children who are suffering on account of the appalling fire on the General Slocum.
Sincerely yours,
W. B. Joyce, Jr.
P.S. My little brother sends 25 cents that he had.
NO STONE LEFT UNTURNED
George B. Cortelyou, Secretary of Commerce and Labor, arrived at midday Friday from Washington, D.C. The dapper forty-twoyear-old had come a long way from his modest origins. Originally a teacher, he taught himself stenography and at the age of twenty-seven started a new career as a private secretary to a series of increasingly influential men. By 1895 he was President Cleveland’s stenographer, a position that subsequently landed him a job as President McKinley’s personal secretary. When Roosevelt assumed the presidency after McKinley’s assassination, he retained the likable and efficient Cortelyou. Two years later Roosevelt tabbed him to serve as the first Secretary of Commerce and Labor, a newly established cabinet position. He brought to his job the spirit of Rooseveltian Progressivism and began at once to revamp several of the departments and agencies under his authority, including the USSIS. One of his first initiatives was to remove the ancient and ineffective James Dumont and replace him with the reform-minded George Uhler.
Cortelyou was a native New Yorker who welcomed every opportunity to return to the great city. But this particular trip was to be all business— and politics, of course. His mission was damage control in the service of a Roosevelt administration desperate to avoid scandal. The Slocum disaster both moved and outraged the president, but it also made him nervous. This was an election year, a chance to be elected president in his own right. The last thing he needed was a scandal in one of his departments—an incident of corruption or incompetence that would undermine his image as a reformer committed to making government work for the people. With the spotlight now focused on the USSIS, he issued a statement calling for a thorough investigation and dispatched the Secretary of Commerce and Labor himself to the scene as an indication of his administration’s seriousness.
Cortelyou’s immediate task was to erase the impression of bureaucratic stonewalling so ineptly conveyed the day before by Supervising Inspector of the Second District Robert S. Rodie. When asked by a reporter whether, in light of the allegations made in the Slocum disaster, he planned to order a reinspection of the city’s steamboats, he haughtily dismissed the idea, saying:
They will not. When we inspected them we found that the requirements of the law had been complied with and granted certificates. There is no necessity for an additional examination, and none will be made. They will all be inspected at the end of the year when their certificates expire, and if everything is found satisfactory another certificate will be granted.
No sooner had these words reached the newsrooms of the city’s daily papers than Inspector General Uhler, speaking to reporters in Washington, let fly with an unusually frank statement about the problem of political influence being brought to bear on the USSIS to reduce fines levied by the service on boats in violation of safety codes. “What’s the use of having the laws?” asked the exasperated reformer. “They no longer act as a deterrent.” Once a fine is levied, the “violator of the law appeals to a Senator or Congressman … [and] the fine is reduced.” Uhler spoke the truth, but his statement caused great embarrassment to the administration. Taken with Rodie’s obstinate remarks, they produced a firestorm of criticism and charges of a cover-up. That morning’s edition of the Times demanded a thorough and independent investigation “to determine whether the Steamboat Inspection Service is as rotten as it is generally believed to be.” Cortelyou arrived in New York for the sole purpose of allaying any concerns of a cover-up.
Over the next few hours Cortelyou met with Rodie at the USSIS office on Whitehall Street near the Battery. Joining them was Inspector General Uhler, who likewise made the trip from Washington. After making clear to them the displeasure their remarks to the press had caused him and the president, Cortelyou informed them that a formal investigation would begin immediately and that they must issue a statement to that effect. “You may be assured,” following the release of the statement, “that no stone will be left unturned in order to ascertain the whole truth in regard to this awful calamity.” It would not be left to subordinates like Dumont and Rodie. “I should hold this inquiry myself,” pledged Cortelyou, “and I shall have the assistance of the most efficient men in the department.”
While Cortelyou, Rodie, and Uhler promised an investigation into the Slocum disaster, Coroner Berry pressed on with his. Accompanied by Terence J. McManus, counsel for the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company, several members of the Slocum’s crew filed into Berry’s office in the Bronx to make preliminary statements in anticipation of Monday’s formal inquest before a jury.
The first man questioned was deckhand John J. Coakley. Berry began by asking what he knew of the fire’s origin. When asked this same question by journalists on the day of the fire, Coakley had spun a tale about seeing porter Walter Payne run from the lamp room just before the fire was detected. Since Payne was black, Coakley doubtless thought his lie might find a receptive audience.
Now under the scrutiny of formal legal proceedings and no doubt fearing for his future, Coakley told the truth. He explained how he discovered the fire in the hay on the floor of the lamp room after a small boy had told him of the smoke. After several futile attempts to put out the flames, he said, he went and found Flanagan.
Up until this point his testimony, while informative as to the details of the fire’s origin, was not especially noteworthy. It was when he detailed the effort to fight the flames that he made statements very damaging to his employer, the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company. The battle against the fire lasted only a few minutes, he explained, and ended when the hose burst. “When the hose burst, I guess I lost my head.” Coakley followed with a spirited defense of Van Schaick’s decision to head for North Brother Island, but the damage was done. The company line as asserted by Barnaby the day of the fire that the crew’s “discipline was perfect” had been shredded by one of the key participants. Subsequent statements made by Second Mate Corcoran and First Mate Edward Flanagan only added to the emerging image of a steamboat staffed by incompetent cowards and outfitted with defective safety equipment. Corcoran topped everyone when he asserted that he had seen a woman give birth in the midst of the fire and jump overboard with her baby. Hearst’s Evening Journal summed up the proceedings in its banner headline “Slocum Employees Make Startling CONFESSIONS.” Public outrage was on the rise and had begun to focus on two primary figures: Inspector Lundberg and Frank A. Barnaby. Both could only hope that Monday’s formal inquest before a jury would bring no further troubling revelations.
BLACK SATURDAY
As the first light of dawn shone over the low hills to the east of the Lutheran cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, small groups of men could be seen walking through its grand entranceway. Slung over their shoulders were the tools of their trade—pickaxes and shovels. They were grave diggers, arriving to continue their thankless task in preparation for what people were already calling Black Saturday—the day when the largest number of Slocum victims would be laid to rest.
In the distance, toward the southern end of the sprawling cemetery, they could see the flickering flames of torches and hear the sounds of digging. An all-night crew of some one hundred men was nearing completion of a huge trench intended for the burial of the thirty unidentified victims. These newly arrived diggers, many of them temporary workers eager to earn a few extra dollars, were slated to continue this work as well as the excavation of dozens of individual graves needed over the next few days.
Several miles away in Lower Manhattan, a team of reporters gathered in the offices of the New York Times. Each held a list with scores of names and addresses on it—one segment of the city’s master list of dead and missing compiled at the St. Mark’s information bureau. They listened as an editor
explained their assignment. The Times, the editor told them, was convinced that the list was seriously flawed, with some people appearing on it two and three times with different spellings and others long since found alive and well listed as missing. These errors, noted the editor, had led to a grossly inflated death toll of nine hundred or more. To correct this error and arrive at an accurate count, they were being sent out into Little Germany to verify the accuracy of the list and make appropriate changes. If they were diligent in their duty, he said, the city would have an accurate list and the Times Sunday edition would outsell its rivals.
A few minutes later the reporters stepped out into the early-morning sun now filling Park Row and took a short walk to the elevated station to catch nearly as short a ride to Little Germany. Once there they spread out and began their canvass of what their paper now routinely referred to as “the stricken district.”
The scene in Little Germany was markedly more animated compared to the previous two days. Most shops remained closed, but the streets and sidewalks were full with what a Times reporter called “the mournful pomp of death.” The first funerals, all simple affairs in homes, began at 8:00 A.M. and ran all day long at a peak rate of one every four minutes. By 6:00 P.M. the remains of some two hundred victims had been sent to the Lutheran cemetery.
Police Commissioner McAdoo assigned six hundred policemen to the area to maintain order and prevent traffic tie-ups. To minimize the latter, many of Little Germany’s streets were closed to all vehicles except hearses and carriages bearing relatives to the cemetery. The bluecoats wore white gloves and full dress uniforms out of respect for the occasion. On special orders from headquarters they also carried no clubs, lest they be tempted to use them if a disturbance broke out. “No rough business today,” ordered Inspector Max Schmittberger. “I want you to remember that this little community is heartsick with grief. Your business today is to lend a helping hand and to say a kind word to these people.” The plan was to have at least ten policemen at every funeral to prevent the crowds of onlookers from get ting out of hand. Someone at St. Mark’s furnished the police department with a tentative schedule of funerals so as to allow detachments of policemen to be moved from funeral to funeral.
Throughout the district, hearses lined the curbs, sometimes as many as three abreast. They were a unique and relatively recent addition to the growing number of rituals and trappings of funerals at the turn of the century. They bore elaborate ornamentation, including brass lanterns, carved designs in the exterior woodwork, and plush interiors. Nearly all had glass windows on both sides to allow bystanders to view the coffin (increasingly known by the more refined term casket). Hearses came in two colors, black for adults and white for children. Even the horses were “dressed” for the occasion, draped from head to tail in a fancy netting of either white or black.
Inside the tenements flanked by hearses, several dozen ministers performed brief funeral rites. In some buildings, funerals occurred simultaneously on several floors. For those who could afford it, German bands set up outside to “play the soul away,” as the German custom termed it. Policemen held back crowds of sympathetic mourners and kept a watchful eye out for that ubiquitous nuisance found at all public events, the pickpocket. One such miscreant apprehended in front of a tenement on Avenue A had to be spirited away from an enraged crowd that threatened to lynch him. But for the most part, the day was free of disturbing incidents.
Yet there were problems, especially for those families intending to bury their dead. In several homes, families gathered for a scheduled funeral only to be kept waiting hours for a hearse to show up. Despite bringing in countless hearses from all over New York and even New Jersey, undertakers struggled to meet the demand brought about by more than one hundred funerals in a single day. Compounding this problem, many undertakers misjudged how long it would take for hearses to make the round-trip to the cemetery in Queens and failed to account for traffic and delays at the cemetery. More than one family was told, after hours of waiting, that their loved one’s funeral would have to be postponed until Sunday.
Part of the hearse shortage could also be attributed to the tradition of using only one hearse for each body. Indeed, more than tradition, it was a firmly established rule adhered to by the city’s undertakers to prevent discount funerals. Faced with such extraordinary circumstances, however, many undertakers ignored the rule and put as many as four coffins in a single hearse. “What can we do?” asked one exasperated undertaker. “The union says there must be a hearse for each body, but rules cut no figure on this awful day!”
Rules might not have, but greed surely did. “To all the harrowing features with which the catastrophe is replete,” wrote one reporter, there was added “the rapacity of some undertakers in the death district.” Funerals that only a week before had cost $50 now ran for $100. The cost of renting carriages to convey mourners to the cemetery jumped from $5 to $15 or even $25. One factor that contributed to this price gouging, in addition to the fact that nearly all the undertakers charging extortionate prices came from outside the St. Mark’s neighborhood, was the widespread but erroneous belief that all funerals were being paid for by the mayor’s relief fund. Hermann Ridder, chairman of the Relief Committee, vowed to expose the price gougers and subject them to a boycott. “We are quite willing to pay and pay liberally for their services,” he explained, “but we will not stand for extortion.” He appealed to the daily papers to print the names of the offending undertakers and threatened the latter with boycotts. “For the present we are at the mercy of the undertakers. … but when this emergency has passed, we will go over every bill carefully… and give notice that the name of every undertaker who has made an exorbitant charge will be punished. No earthly law can reach him, but I am sure no man who presumes to charge extra now could continue to live and work in this district.”
One couple, either out of poverty or disgust, decided to do without the services of an undertaker. They were seen at midday walking toward First Avenue dressed in mourning, with the husband carrying a tiny white coffin under his arm. Bystanders stared at the extraordinary scene and watched with curiosity when a teamster stopped at the corner and spoke to them. “I’m going to the cemetery,” said the grizzled man, “and I’ll take that for you.” The husband and wife exchanged glances and looked for a moment like they were about to decline the offer when the husband nodded in assent. The driver quickly cleared a space for the coffin amid his cargo of potted flowers and motioned for the couple to join him on the seat. A moment later they drove off, leaving behind a crowd of onlookers moved to tears by the incident.
Most families, however, brought their loved ones to their final rest in a hired hearse. They could be seen on almost every street, some parked in front of homes, others heading in the direction of the new Williamsburg Bridge followed by one or more carriages filled with mourners. Thousands, including a great many New Yorkers not directly affected by the disaster, joined the crowds lining the sidewalks leading to the bridge. They turned out as a gesture of sympathy and support to those devastated by their losses, standing for hours in the hot sun and dabbing their eyes each time a funeral cortege passed. Even though they’d all read the accounts of hundreds of children killed, most still found it shocking to see the seemingly endless processions of white hearses pass, their tiny contents visible through the side panel windows. The sight frequently caused bystanders to faint.
Black Saturday and the days of countless funerals to come were especially hard to endure for those who still waited for the bodies of their spouses, siblings, parents, and children to be found. Mrs. Stockerman, for example, lay in her apartment, prostrated with grief over the loss of her four children, none of whom had been found. All day she lay in her bed waiting for her husband to return with news, tortured to the verge of insanity by the sounds of passing funeral corteges and bands.
Amid such a vast display of sorrow and despair, two funerals drew special attention: that of Pastor Haas’s wife and the unidentified
dead. The former was held in the parlor of Haas’s home. A single black hearse waited outside 74 East Seventh Street as the police held back an enormous crowd that pressed in from all directions.
More than two dozen fellow ministers attended the ceremony, including Haas’s brother, the Reverend John Haas. Although his doctor pleaded with him to remain in bed, Reverend Haas insisted on attending the funeral. Grimacing with pain, he hobbled down the stairs and took his place beside his sister Emma, who was carried downstairs on a stretcher, her head still covered in bandages.
The service began at 1:00 P.M. with Rev. J. W. Loch of Brooklyn read ing the funeral prayer, followed by a reading of the Ninth Psalm by Rev. Hugo Hoffman. Reverend Alexander Richter of Hoboken then offered a brief sermon that urged the living to accept the will of God, no matter how trying the experience.
We should all be good Christians, recognizing in this tragedy, no matter how appalling, the inscrutable hand of Providence. Everything that has happened to us has happened with God’s will. We as Christians should bear with composure whatever the good Lord sees fit to inflict upon us. In times like this we should show the world that our faith stands conquering and supreme on the ruins of our shattered homes. All we need to know is that God did not prohibit this accident. Whether it was due to the negligence of the owners or anybody on board cannot be said at the present time, but God has His hand in it and we must recognize that.
Just before the service ended, a messenger arrived with a dramatic announcement: the body of Mrs. Haas’s sister, Mrs. Sophia Tetamore, had been identified at the morgue. Remembering a birthmark he’d seen on Mrs. Tetamore during an operation he performed the year before, the Haases’ family doctor went to the morgue and examined the thirty bodies believed to be burned beyond recognition. He found her and immediately sent word to the Haas household. Arrangements were hastily made, and in less than an hour the body arrived at the Haas residence. After a second service, the coffins were removed to the hearses, followed by family members who stepped into the black carriages at the curb. Again Haas’s physician and several ministers pleaded with him to return to bed, but he remained adamant in his determination to see his wife brought to her final resting place. “She was a devoted wife,” he explained, “and though it kills me, I shall pay her this last tribute.” Even in his frail condition, he felt compelled to be true to his calling as husband and shepherd.