User:Ira Leviton/sandbox

Summary
The largest polio epidemic that ever occurred in the United States took place in New York City and lasted from June to November in 1916. It caused a widespread and sustained panic to grip the city and beyond, with thousands of families fleeing to nearby mountain resorts or to wherever else they could. Movie theaters were closed, meetings were canceled, public gatherings were almost non-existent, and children were warned not to drink from water fountains or go to amusement parks, swimming pools, and beaches. Names and addresses of those affected were routinely published daily in newspapers, placards placed on their houses, and families placed in quarantine. By the time the epidemic ended, more than 23,000 people from Washington, D.C. to Vermont and Canada had been affected, resulting in about 5,000 deaths. The vast majority in both categories were children.

Background
Polio had been a well-known disease for hundreds of years, but the virus that caused it had been identified by Karl Landsteiner and others only several years before the epidemic, in late 1908. The epidemiology the disease and the means of transmission of the polio virus were not well-known, even by experts, although the propensity for infections to occur during warm months had been observed in numerous previous epidemics.

From January to April 1916, there were 13 cases of polio in New York city, fewer than in any corresponding period since the disease had been made reportable to the New York City Department of Health in November 1910. These cases were determined to be not part of the epidemic because they were widely scattered over the city and could not be linked to the cases that followed.

The Onset
During the month of May 1916, no cases of polio were reported in Brooklyn to the New York City Department of Health, and there were only five cases in the remainder of the city. Although polio was a feared disease at that time, it was not rare, and the number of cases in May was few compared to those of other months.

Then, two cases were reported in Brooklyn on June 6 and four more cases on June 8, all from the same Italian neighborhood, bounded by Fourth Avenue, Nevins, Carroll, and Union Streets. When a notice was received by the Department of Health from its research laboratory that an unusual number of requests had been received for the diagnosis of polio, a house-to-house investigation was made, and 29 additional but undiagnosed and unreported cases of probable polio during the month of May were discovered in New York City – 22 in Brooklyn – all previously unknown to the Department of Health. Some of those cases had not even been brought to medical attention because they were mild.

On June 15, several cases of recent paralysis were noted in infants at the Baby Health Station at 184 Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn.

On Saturday, June 17, 1916, the New York City Board of Health announced that there had been 24 recent cases of polio in Brooklyn, mainly in the neighborhoods of South Brooklyn, Bay Ridge, and Williambsurgh. The New York Times carried only a brief, one paragraph article, buried in its sports section, which said that health officials were not "unduly alarmed." Four days later, the Times published another article, stating the number of cases was 43, mostly in South Brooklyn, with additional cases being labeled suspicious, and mentioned that there had been three deaths. By June 28 the number of cases reached 183, and two days later the count had reached 255, with 12 deaths and cases in all boroughs except Queens.

Because of the very rapid rise in cases and their quick spread, by that time, the level of public concern was high. The Board of Health began to mobilize its resources so that all their available personnel were arranging meetings with local physicians, seeking cases that otherwise may have been overlooked, and enforcing quarantines and isolation. A special unit was set up in the Kingston Avenue Hospital, a city-run hospital in Brooklyn, for patients who could not be isolated at home. Newspaper reports about the epidemic started to appear every day. The Department of Street Cleaning devoted special attention to affected areas, and the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was called in to remove cats from tenements. Parents were warned to keep their children away from others and not to bring them to moving picture theaters and other places of amusement, churches, picnics, and other types of gatherings, especially those that were indoors. The public was also told that the polio virus could be spread by kissing, coughing, and sneezing, and that flies often carried the disease. (At the time, the means by which polio virus was transmitted were incorrectly understood.). On Sunday, July 2, polio cases were discovered in Beacon, N.Y. in Dutchess County and the New York State Department of Health became involved in tracking and controlling the epidemic. The following day, children under 16 years of age were banned from movie theaters in New York City by the Commissioner of Licenses as coverage of the epidemic moved to the front page of the New York Times. There was even a plan to keep every child under the age of 16 in their homes for two weeks to stop the epidemic.

Because the first cases had occurred in Italian children, there was suspicion that the disease had been brought to New York by Italian immigrants, but careful investigations did not find any cases of polio in recent immigrants or even in their towns of origin in Italy.

---

That year, there were over 27,000 cases and more than 6,000 deaths due to polio in the United States, with over 2,000 deaths in New York City alone.[14] The names and addresses of individuals with confirmed polio cases were published daily in the press, their houses were identified with placards, and their families were quarantined.[15] Dr. Hiram M. Hiller, Jr. was one of the physicians in several cities who realized what they were dealing with, but the nature of the disease remained largely a mystery. The 1916 epidemic caused widespread panic and thousands fled the city to nearby mountain resorts; movie theaters were closed, meetings were canceled, public gatherings were almost nonexistent, and children were warned not to drink from water fountains, and told to avoid amusement parks, swimming pools, and beaches.[14] From 1916 onward, polio epidemics appeared each summer in at least one part of the country, with the most serious occurring in the 1940s and 1950s.[1] 1.	^ a b c d e f Trevelyan B, Smallman-Raynor M, Cliff A (2005). "The Spatial Dynamics of Poliomyelitis in the United States: From Epidemic Emergence to Vaccine-Induced Retreat, 1910–1971". Ann Assoc Am Geogr 95 (2): 269–293. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00460.x. PMC 1473032. . 14^ :a b Melnick J (1 July 1996). "Current status of poliovirus infections". Clin Microbiol Rev 9 (3): 293–300. PMC 172894. . 15	^ Risse, GB; Fee E, Fox DM (editors) (1988). Epidemics and History: Ecological Perspectives. in AIDS: The Burden of History. University of California Press, Berkeley.ISBN 0-520-06396-1.

A Summer Plague Polio and its Survivors By Tony Gould Yale University Press (C) 1995 by Tony Gould All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-300-06292-3

External link

 * A Monograph on The Epidemic of Poliomyelitis (Infantile Paralysis) in New York City in 1916 – Based on the Official Reports of the Bureaus of the Department of Health, Department of Health of New York City (Public Health Monographs, vol. 2, part 2, no. 16, 1917), H34.31m, New York City Municipal Reference Library, 31 Chambers Street, room 111

Baron Hirsch Cemetery references
Improperly incorporated, outrageous fees, no annual election of trustees as required.

Philip Gresser is paid $1,200 a year and living quarters, gets 10% commission for selling plots, is superintendent, admits automobiles are barred, grave opening fee $3 before WW2 to $9 at time of article

Annual care increased from $1 to $2 in 1926.

Pre-Consolidation Police Commissioners
1882-4

Police Commissioners of the City of New York
Until 1844, New York City had a watch system, not a police force. The Municipal Police and the position of Chief of Police were established by the Laws of the State of New York of 1844,, and restated in the Laws of 1846. The Laws of 1849 amending the charter of the City of New York stated that the Mayor was the head of the police, but that the chief officer was the Chief of Police.

In 1853, the state legislature created a police commission, making the Mayor, Recorder, and City Judge, as the "board of commissioners for the trial of officers, policemen and doormen of the police department," also giving them responsibility for appointing officers.

However, police corruption under Mayor Fernando Wood prompted the legislature to pass another law in 1857, taking away control of the police from the Mayor and giving it to the Governor via a police commission. The Municipal Police and Police Board were dissolved, and replaced by a Metropolitan Police District consisting of the counties of New York, Kings, Westchester (which then included the Bronx), and Richmond. The Governor was responsible for the appointment of five police commissioners — three from New York County, one from Kings County, and one from either Westchester or Richmond Counties, with the Mayors of New York and Brooklyn serving as ex-officio members of the commission. Wood refused to recognize the new commission, declined to attend its meetings, and challenged its validity in court. He also refused to disband the Municipal Police even after the New York Supreme Court, the trial level court, upheld the new law. This resulted in two police forces at the same time, the Municipals and the Metropolitans, with one often interfering with the other. The arrest of Wood was ordered by the commission for the Metropolitans, and when member of that force tried to enter City Hall on June 16, 1857, the New York City Police riot occurred, with many officers being injured and the Metropolitans retreating. On July 3, the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, upheld the law. Mayor Wood backed down and disbanded the Municipal Police and his commissioners.

In 1860, the towns of Newtown, Flushing, and Jamaica in Queens were added to the Metropolitan Police District and the number of commissioners was reduced to three.

After Governor Horatio Seymour tried to remove all the commissioners in 1863, resulting in another stand-off with two police commissions, a bill was passed as a political compromise, increasing the number to four.

In 1873, the Brooklyn police were separated into its own jurisdiction, although the number of police commissioners for New York remained at four

The police commission in its various forms spent much of their time reviewing and approving the hiring of new police officers, and serving as the judge and jury for complaints such as drunkenness, dereliction of duty, not following orders, or failure to prevent crimes were lodged against members of the force. They were also had other duties, such as serving on the Board of Health, selecting monitors for elections, and making sure the streets were kept clean — including clearing snow. One of the ongoing problems with the arrangement for the four-man commission after 1863 was that two commissioners were selected from the two major political parties, primarily because of their responsibility for annually selecting election inspectors and poll clerks to make sure voting ran smoothly, so they had to be non-partisan. But it also sometimes made it difficult to reach decisions in other matters, and led to paralysis on numerous issues. Corruption on the force was an ongoing problem for decades, in part because the work was hard and the pay was poor.