New-York tribune., 1910-01-06
CITY'S ICY MANTLE
HUNDREDS HURT BY
FALLS IN STREETS.
Horses Unhitched and Wagons
Aband0ned-MOtOr Vehicles
Reap Harucst.

New York hit the toboggan last night.
The horses We're called off the streets
and all those pedestrians who could keep
out of the cutters took to the middle OF
the roadways Some put on ice skates,
which were safer than plain shoe leather
or rubbers, and mixed couples could be
spied curving through upper Broadway
on privately conducted pole dashes. But
for the most part Jack Frost had the
citizens charmed to a standstill, scared
to move
Many We're the fervent prayers for the
arrival of that blizzard long and loudly
heralded, and yet, should the sun shine
this morning, New York would awake a
dream city. But beauty . scant COM
pensation for broken legs and arms,
and a fight in the open. even with the
Gus ambush OF sleet,
At least two hundred persons were
more or less seriously injured by falls
in the greater city. Roosevelt Hospital
reported twenty cases early in the even
ing; Flower Hospital twelve and j.
Hood Wright Hospital eight. AS the
night advanced the records grew with
startling rapidity, and at l o'clock this
morning the early figures had doubled.
Bellevue Hospital had one of the busi-
est nights in the history of the institu-
ton. Between 3 p. IN. and midnight
there were nearly one hundred cases OF
accidents due to falls on the slippery
sidewalks. The staff of the hospital was
pressed to its utmost, and sometimes all
the four horse ambulances. the two au-
tomobiles and two or three transfer
wagons used temporarily as ambulances
were out at once.
The equine victims as might he sup
posed, were numberless and nameless,
for it is not the thoroughbred with pedi-
gree that suffers on an afternoon and
night like yesterday, but the work
horses, which have to make the best of
things. Down they went in every street
and avenue. and not only did they tie up
traffic on the surface lines by falling in
front of the cars, out frequently the
space between the tracks was the only
place they could get footholds, and their
drivers would not turn out
On Fifth avenue the inability of the
horses in many cases to make any head
way at ali with their vehicles caused the
drivers and traffic policemen to unhitch
them and abandon the wagons right
there in the roadway to wait until the
blizzard came and covered them up or
the sun melted the malevolent coating of
ice and they could be hauled off other
streets had their abandoned wagons. too.
and in few were dead horses. whose
drivers were waiting for the A. S. P. c. A.
wagon. There are no hospital accommo-
dations for horses with broken legs
The touch of the wizard was upon the
elevated railways too. The antics on
these steel thoroughfares We're just as
capricious as those going on in the
streets below, but were in the form of
fire and fireworks. AS the trains thun-
dered along the shoes brushed great
sparks off the third rails and every now
and then lighted up whole neighborhoods
with great flashes of green light
One of these flashes threw the tenants
of three tenement houses at Nos. 4O5S.
1850 and 1902 Third avenue, The Bronx.
into a panic, caused the summoning of
fremen and tied up the Third avenue
az" and surface lines for forty minutes.
The tenants We're just finishing their
dinners when they We're startled by
dull explosion and rushed To their win
dows to find that a sheet of blue flame
was shooting nearly fifty feet in the air
from a point on the Il structure. di-
rectly in front of the buildings Large
sparks were blowing from the tracks
against the fronts of the houses The
occupants ran TO the street, where they
were reassured by policeman and
went back
Hundreds of persons We're marooned i'm
front of the theatres through the failure
ot taxicab drivers to call for their fares
who had ordered them TO return. In
front of the Manhattan Opera House
fully two hundred persons. many of
them women thinly clad. were in such
plight
The trouble was brought about prin
cipally by some of the opera house en-
ployes who. encouraged by large tins
which they split up with the taxicab
men, got the drivers to abandon their
original fares and take those who were
selected by the Manhattan employes
Continued an \