1939 IN NEW YORK

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 1, 3 January 1939, Page 9

1939 IN NEW YORK

NATIONAL CASUALTIES

113 PERSONS KILLED

(By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright.) NEW YORK, January 1. The birth of the World's Fair this year was the theme of the New Year observance in New York; 15,000,000 dollars were spent on noisy celebrations. Night clubs and hotels, despite a cover-charge of 15 dollars, were sold out. Thirteen hundred police and 128 mounted police sought to maintain order in Times Square and Broadway, which were jammed. One hundred and sixty-five detectives were assigned to escort to their homes bejewelled debutantes lest they might be attacked by thugs. One hundred and thirteen Americans were killed during the celebrations, the majority through car accidents. The proprietor's wife, his three children, and one guest were burned to death when fire broke out during a party at a. hotel in Rumford (Maine). The building was destroyed. A miner ran amuck and died fromblack damp when he was trapped in a corridor through fire breaking out „in a shaft of a mine at Clinton (Indiana). 'Eighteen other miners were saved after 12 hours. Their rescuers advanced behind a wall of pure air forced in under pressure. A dentist, Henry Steil, committed suicide in a strange manner. He entered a New York hotel filled with revellers, sat down, and propped up his watch. He waited until 1938 had ticked away and fired a bullet through his heart on the stroke of midnight. Police snatched to safety a man who had climbed out on the coping of a skyscraper. Several persons died in free-for-all fights, in ■ one of. v^hich 80 men and women participated, in New York alone 142 persons were admitted to hospital suffering from alcoholism. Forty men and three women are in a serious condition.

The biggest robbery was a 100,000----dollar haul from a New York antique dealer who lost Marie Antoinette's watch and. a miniature of George Washington's mother valued at 50,000 dollars.. '