New-York tribune., 1910-06-22
FOUR DIE ON HOTTEST
DAY JUNE HAS HAD YET
MANY Prostrations Recorded,
While Two Men Go Insane as
Thermometer Scars.
NO PROSPECT OF RELIEF
New Workers Grapple with Prob
lem of Reducing Their Dis
comfort in Many Ways,
with Little Success.

-
The thaw continued yesterday. Every
one ran little, even the iciest. The
flesh melting point was exceeded al
day, so that it became desperate prob
lem to retain ones substance IN solid
form and at the same time to get rid of
1t when 1t melted. Some tried evapora-
ton under a fan, others desiccation In
the breezes of the bay; some tried to
CONCEAL themselves artificially from the
inside, and others let nature take her
ance, providing merely convenient
blotter here and there. such as hand
kerchief tucked In the collar.
Some, indeed, if 1t hadn't been for
their "blotters' might have left a little
trail of tiny drops along the pavement,
for the mercury registered 90 degrees at
$40 o'clock in the afternoon after hav-
ing climbed from 20 degrees at $50
o'clock in the morning. Last year on
the corresponding day the maximum was
50 degrees That was a record then,
and last June was considered a bit tepid,
as a large percentage of the population
will remember.
But this years record has a tragic
side; 1t marks the death of four per-
sons, caused by the intense heat. One
was overcome as late as O'Clock last
evening and breathed his last before
the ambulance surgeon could reach him.
He was Benjamin James. fifty eight
years old, of No. 800 Tillary street,
Brooklyn, who was employed in the
building at No. so Park avenue, Brook
lyn, as night watchman. James was in
side the building when he was stricken
and died before DR.. Buddington could
reach him from the Brooklyn Hospital.
The physician said his death was due
to heart disease, superinduced by the
heat
In the afternoon John Link, forty six
years old, q dock builder of SD street
and Tenth avenue was overcome on a
pier at 95th street and the North River.
An ambulance rushed him to the j.
Hood Wright Hospital, but in spite Of
the efforts of the surgeons to revive
him, he died few minutes after his
arrival
Two other Brooklynites died from the
effects of the heat in the morning. Miss
Sophie Mensins, seventy-four years old,
became i'll at her home, No. 29I Van
Brunt street, and died after being at
tended by a surgeon from the Long ISL
and College Hospital William Bradley,
an artisan, thirty-f1ve years old, was
also overcome at his home, but died be-
fore the arrival of a physician. He lived
at No 255 Wythe avenue.
Two men We're driven insane by the
heat One, homeless wanderer. be-
came demented in the street, and was
taken to the West 4Tth street station.
Thence he went to Bellevue. Joseph
Passone, fifty-four years old, whose ad
dress could not be learned, alighted from
an elevated train at Fifth avenue and
10th street, Brooklyn, and began to
shout Captain Murphy, of the Fifth
avenue police station. attempted to lead
him away and was knocked down. After
a furious struggle, PaSsone was finally
subdued and taken to the police station,
when he was removed in straitjacket
to the Kings County Hospital.
The hospitals had records of sixteen
prostrations in Manhattan and eleven in
Brooklyn.
Everywhere east of the Rocky Noun
tains says the Weather Bureau at
Washington, the country is in the grip
of a heat wave which is smashing June
records and promises to continue, with
no relief in sight. The Weather Bu-
oil for 81 tod nv
trees on the street level of Pennsylvania
avenue Washington, registered 100 de-
grees at o'clock in the. afternoon.
From the states of the Northwest the
bureau got reports of temperatures as
high as 105. Damage to crops is threat
ened by the continued drouth in that
section.
- this sizzling city of sweltering souls
there was one alleviating circumstance
the humidity lessened as the day wore
on until late in the afternoon it was
around 40 The severe electrical storm
in the early morning. which caused con-
stdera BILE damage in The Bronx and Har-
lem, instead of clearing the atmosphere,
as every we'll regulated electrical storm
is supposed to do had merely raised the
humidity to so. And that after a night
of the horrors
1t was the usual touch of prickly heat
which old Father Knickerbocker expert
ences on occasion each summer, even at
his advanced age. The rash broke out
temporarily on Saturday just after the
Roosevelt parade These attacks always
follow sudden dip into the tropics.