Episode 29 “Hebrew Free Burial Society”: with Amy Koplow, Executive Director.
While many of the young women and men who perished in the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire could be identified, many could not. As unclaimed or identified deaths, according to New York City policy, bodies were traditionally shipped to the City Morgue at Bellevue and later passed on to potter’s field at Hart Island.
It was certain that the 22 identified victims of the Triangle Shirt Waist fire would be laid to rest there, as well, except for the extraordinary intervention of the Hebrew Free Burial Society.
The ship lurched in the heavy North Atlantic swell, its bow plunging deep in the troughs as it pitched sharply, its seasick passengers crammed into its small hold. The young lady, dressed simply, was just another anonymous face in the crowded ship. She kept to herself, as she’d always done. But the new world beckoned, and she tried to think about what awaited her. Her name was Louisa Van Slyke, and little did she know how short her stay would be.
Founded in 1849 to care for indigent immigrants in Greenwich Village, St. Vincent’s Hospital was sold in 2010 to create multi-million-dollar homes. In its 161 years of existence, the legendary institution treated survivors of the Titanic, tended to victims of both World Trade Center attacks, and served as Ground Zero of the AIDS Crisis.
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, located at 97 and 103 Orchard Street, in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, is a National Historic Site. The Museum’s two historical tenement buildings were home to an estimated 15,000 people, from over 20 nations, between 1863 and 2011.
Fifteen years after a Manhattan hospital sent her stillborn baby to New York City’s potter’s field for burial, MJ Adams heard the name Hart Island for the first time.
For a man with a little known history, no legitimate records to prove his place of birth, or even his date of birth, and who would eventually be buried in a mass grave on Hart Island, Leo Birinski became a known playwright, , screenwriter, and film director.
The influenza pandemic is believed to have killed somewhere between 50-100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. In New York City alone, more than 33,000 people died in a matter of weeks. The gaping maw of the common trench on Hart Island waited solemnly prepared to accept its new denizens.
“The Bowery is one of the oldest stretches of land in Manhattan, and was once a footpath used by members of the Lenape tribe to transverse Manhattan Island. Once the home of the most affluent members of New York social circles, by the mid 1900’s its streets were occupied by low-brow concert halls, German beer gardens, dime museums, gambling parlors, and brothels.
Ruth Proskauer Smith, or Ruth P. Smith as she became more commonly known as, was a historic pro-choice reproductive rights, and pro-right to die advocate. Even after she was over one hundred years old, she spent much of her time teaching other senior citizens about the Supreme Court, as she wanted to pass on her knowledge to others before she died.