New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1904-05-21
DRAWBRIDGE FOR ESCAPE
1t Led from Alleged PooIroone HIN
doe to Roof.

The Tenderloin police, when they raided the
building at No. st West Twenty eighth-st..
occupied. they say. by a club known as the
Home Club. met with device for allowing
prisoners to escape. This was large wooden
bridge used as an ancient drawbrtdse would
have been used. the fugitves drawing the bridge
up after all had passed over it.
Captain CottreH had about twenty patrolmen
in plain clothes on the scene, when. accom-
panied by Inspectors Brooks and Walsh, he
gave the order TO break down the doors The
first group Of policemen. armed with heavy
sledgehammers pounded down the street door
and afterward the two interior doors leading up
stairs 10 the part said by the police TO have
been used as poolroom.
1t took the police some time TO get in. and in
the mean time all of the occupants had fed out
Of a rear window over the drawbridge to an ad-
joinging roof.
crowd of people that blackened the street
from Broadway to Sixth-ave. made the street
impossible for half an hour. A corps OF police
had TO rush the crowd back TO open the street 70
traffic. Soon after o'clock, in the rush hour"
the police had a second brush with the throng.
At that hour hundreds of people. who had been
watching the house that was raided from points
near by. were joined by the shop workers going
home Passengers on the elevated road, seeing
the crowd in the street. quilted the trains and
eighth-st
When Captain Tighe of the Mercer-st sta
ton with dozen men and crowbars and axes
went 10 raid The Aliens old West Side
Club, at No. 50 Sixth-ave., for the eighty-secono
time in its history. they met the doorkeepe:.
who pleaded with them:
Don't smash things. boss. Just go right up"
A hundred men, sitting calmly on benches on
the second floor made no move when the police
flied in, and all Captain Tighe could find was
single telephone behind boiler iron partition,
which he knocked off and took 10 the station
The doorkeeper had followed the police UP. and
he said to Captain Tighe:
Nothing left. cap. The Western Union sent
fellows UP here this morning and they chopped
or all the wires
The police put the hundred men out and closed
the place.
Acting Captain McCann- OF the West Forty
seventh-st. station. took charge Of the raid in
the New-York Theatre Building, No. LOLA to
152S Broadway, between Forty-fourth and For
ty-fifth SITS With about a dozen men they went
to the big building with axes and crowbars
wrapped up in paper. They assembled in the
elevators TO the fifth floor and went TO Room
No O. rapping for admission. They heard tele-
phone bells ringing inside. scuffiins and then
silence The door was smashed in, and the
ten men inside began TO try TO scatter. The
police arrested all.
There were two telephone swttchboards
against the wall and eleven telephones. while
here and there were electric bell buzzers or bells
that make a buzzing sound instead of ringing
Mccain cut them all down and carted them OF
IN the patrol wagon He says this place was
an exchange or distributing office, and that It
supplied si, pooIroons with information daily.
C,aDtain NTcNaIly and Detective Reardon, OF
the East One-hundred- and twenty-sixth-st. sta
ton arrested a man who says he is Robert New
man OF No. 2023 Lexington-ave-. on the charge