Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries by Molly Caldwell Crosby
Authors: Molly Caldwell Crosby
Ads: Link
below ground. One forward-thinking New Yorker predicted, “surface travel will be an oddity in New York twenty years from now.” Futuristic plans for the city also included second-story sidewalks made of glass, leaving the dusty and dirty streets to automobiles and double-decker buses.
For New Yorkers, for Americans, and for the world, the 1920s would prove to be the decade with the most rapid technological change in history. In one generation, travel by horse and carriage would make way for autos; people would travel underground, and soon, in the sky; wireless radio would change ship travel; kitchen appliances and indoor plumbing would become mainstream; light would come from a switch and heat through pipes; telephones would appear in the majority of homes; and the canned music and crackling voice of radio would provide home entertainment and news.
Of course, those modern conveniences would not reach all corners of society. A simple walk into the tenement housing showed exactly where the borders of modern life stopped. The faded, water-stained brick buildings had no indoor plumbing or electricity, a fact made more obvious by the clothing lines strung between the buildings, with linens, cloth diapers, and the limp legs of stockings waving like white flags. The monotonous façades of naked windows were broken only by the skeletal staircases fronting every floor. In more appreciated New York architecture, the façades of the buildings boasted ornate detailing, columns, eaves, and tresses. In tenement housing, it was the fire escapes.
With or without those modern conveniences, this modern life was creating a new kind of stress. The War to End All Wars ushered in America’s most violent century in history, and Americans had just come out of a war that seemed to have no definitive finish, established no sound peace. The draft had also been enacted in 1917, changing attitudes toward war, especially one fought in another part of the world during a time of isolationism.
Those immediate dangers, however, were still across the Atlantic. It was on American soil that a new fear arose to add to the amalgam of modern stress, and it was known as the Red Scare. New Yorkers now passed armed police outside every church and federal or municipal building in the city. Anti-immigrant sentiment, particularly toward Germans, peaked during the war; but it was the Bolshevik revolution in Russia that was igniting fear in the United States. A flurry of legislative activity like the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 addressed these fears, but the laws only fueled more anarchist activity. In the spring of 1919, a plot to explode thirty-six bombs in the United States was thwarted just in time. On June 2, however, another anarchist plot was not uncovered fast enough, and eight bombs exploded just before midnight in eight different cities. The targets were judges, attorneys, and congressmen involved in anti-anarchist legislation. In New York, at the home of a judge, a bomb exploded prematurely on the front porch of a brownstone on East Sixty-first Street. The judge himself was not home, but his wife and the housekeeping staff were there when the explosion took out the front half of the home. A child came down the staircase just moments before it collapsed. Windows shattered, and iron was found embedded in the walls of neighboring homes. In spite of that, there were only two deaths, a man and a woman believed to be the bomb makers. The Times did not mince words with the morning coverage on June 3: “A man and a woman were blown to pieces this morning.” The article went on to explain how investigators located body parts all over the block. Those explosions were followed a few months later by a large explosion outside of J. P. Morgan’s bank on Wall Street.
In addition to the anarchist violence was the birth of bootlegging. The Five Points Gang, now boasting members like A1 “Scarface” Capone, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, and
For New Yorkers, for Americans, and for the world, the 1920s would prove to be the decade with the most rapid technological change in history. In one generation, travel by horse and carriage would make way for autos; people would travel underground, and soon, in the sky; wireless radio would change ship travel; kitchen appliances and indoor plumbing would become mainstream; light would come from a switch and heat through pipes; telephones would appear in the majority of homes; and the canned music and crackling voice of radio would provide home entertainment and news.
Of course, those modern conveniences would not reach all corners of society. A simple walk into the tenement housing showed exactly where the borders of modern life stopped. The faded, water-stained brick buildings had no indoor plumbing or electricity, a fact made more obvious by the clothing lines strung between the buildings, with linens, cloth diapers, and the limp legs of stockings waving like white flags. The monotonous façades of naked windows were broken only by the skeletal staircases fronting every floor. In more appreciated New York architecture, the façades of the buildings boasted ornate detailing, columns, eaves, and tresses. In tenement housing, it was the fire escapes.
With or without those modern conveniences, this modern life was creating a new kind of stress. The War to End All Wars ushered in America’s most violent century in history, and Americans had just come out of a war that seemed to have no definitive finish, established no sound peace. The draft had also been enacted in 1917, changing attitudes toward war, especially one fought in another part of the world during a time of isolationism.
Those immediate dangers, however, were still across the Atlantic. It was on American soil that a new fear arose to add to the amalgam of modern stress, and it was known as the Red Scare. New Yorkers now passed armed police outside every church and federal or municipal building in the city. Anti-immigrant sentiment, particularly toward Germans, peaked during the war; but it was the Bolshevik revolution in Russia that was igniting fear in the United States. A flurry of legislative activity like the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 addressed these fears, but the laws only fueled more anarchist activity. In the spring of 1919, a plot to explode thirty-six bombs in the United States was thwarted just in time. On June 2, however, another anarchist plot was not uncovered fast enough, and eight bombs exploded just before midnight in eight different cities. The targets were judges, attorneys, and congressmen involved in anti-anarchist legislation. In New York, at the home of a judge, a bomb exploded prematurely on the front porch of a brownstone on East Sixty-first Street. The judge himself was not home, but his wife and the housekeeping staff were there when the explosion took out the front half of the home. A child came down the staircase just moments before it collapsed. Windows shattered, and iron was found embedded in the walls of neighboring homes. In spite of that, there were only two deaths, a man and a woman believed to be the bomb makers. The Times did not mince words with the morning coverage on June 3: “A man and a woman were blown to pieces this morning.” The article went on to explain how investigators located body parts all over the block. Those explosions were followed a few months later by a large explosion outside of J. P. Morgan’s bank on Wall Street.
In addition to the anarchist violence was the birth of bootlegging. The Five Points Gang, now boasting members like A1 “Scarface” Capone, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, and
Similar Books
