TOO HOT

Depending on where you are, it’s been a rough summer, or a record-setting disaster, and it’s not over yet. Even so, we’re confronting this misery with a lot of modern conveniences that people didn’t have in the 19th century – like air conditioning, refrigeration, and sanitation for starters.
In the Heatwave of 1896, most New Yorkers were pretty much on their own.
It’s hard to be sure exactly how hot it got. One writer suggests that if temperatures were in the mid-90s on gauges placed high on buildings, it was probably closer to 120 on the black asphalt. The precise number wasn’t really important as the sun beat mercilessly down, turning the pavement to a grill, and tenements to roasters.
Those tenements were some of the worst, and most dangerous, places to be. People were packed in at levels that we can’t imagine now, and it was stuffy on a good day. During the heatwave, residents did the only thing they could, hanging out windows and climbing onto roofs for any breath of air they could find.
It didn’t save them.
Hundreds died inside from heat stroke, especially babies, who were the first casualties because their tiny bodies don’t regulate temperature as well. The climbers didn’t fare much better. Deaths from falls became so bad that the city opened up parks for sleeping.
The other group that suffered most is the same one that suffers today: outdoor laborers. The majority of people who died were actually working-class men, who had to go out there and do whatever backbreaking job they usually did, only on streets that held the heat and radiated it back at them.
At first, the City didn’t do much, leaving it to people to just deal with it as best they could. As the heat wore on, the death toll rose, and the sheer misery increased, the outcry grew. And finally, when it was almost over, leaders decided to act. The Public Works Department re-arranged shifts so its men (and they were all men then) didn’t have to work in the heat of the day, and started opening fire hydrants to give people a chance to cool off.
And the Police Commissioner brought out the ice.
The Commissioner, a fellow by the name of Theodore Roosevelt, gave away free ice from police stations and made sure it was taken into the tenements. He learned a lot about his fellow New Yorkers and their lives, and at least one writer (Ed Kohn, who literally wrote the book on the heatwave: HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN, 2010) believes the experience helped shape his later policies as president.
After ten days, the heat finally broke.
For the survivors, it would be a terrible memory, and if they lived long enough, a wonderful story with which to torment their grandchildren. But this time, when Grandpa said he lived through the worst heat wave ever, he wasn’t exaggerating for effect.
There’s also some truth to the walking to school through three feet of snow thing…but that’s another post.

(Got a #ThrowbackThursday idea? Drop it in the comments)