jgo
jgo's JournalOn This Day: U.S. bombs Switzerland by mistake, 40 killed - Apr. 1, 1944
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Aerial incidents in Switzerland in World War II
During World War II the neutral country of Switzerland underwent initially sporadic bombing and aerial combat events that became more frequent during the later stages of the war.
Switzerland was adjacent to and at times almost completely surrounded by Axis, or Axis-occupied, countries. On several occasions, Allied bombing raids hit targets in Switzerland resulting in fatalities and property damage. The Swiss government initially intercepted German aircraft in 1940 during the Battle of France but caved to German pressure and stopped intercepting their aircraft. Such events led to diplomatic exchanges.
While Allied forces explained the causes of violations as navigation errors, equipment failure, weather conditions, and pilots' errors, fear was expressed in Switzerland that some neutrality violations were intended to exert pressure on the country to end its economic cooperation with Nazi Germany. In addition to bombing raids, air attacks by individual fighter planes strafed Swiss targets toward the end of the war. The Swiss military, in turn, attacked Allied aircraft overflying Switzerland with fighters and anti-aircraft cannon.
Schaffhausen
The daylight bombing of Schaffhausen on 1 April 1944 by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) was the most serious of all incidents. Approximately 50 B-24 Liberators of a larger force misidentified Schaffhausen as their target Ludwigshafen am Rhein near Mannheim (about 146 mi) north of Schaffhausen), and dropped sixty tons of bombs on the town. Although an air raid alarm sounded in Schaffhausen, air raid sirens had been set off so many times without any attack that complacency had set in and the locals felt safe, and many failed to take cover.
A total of 40 people were killed and about 270 injured, and large parts of the town were destroyed. At the insistence of the Swiss government for an explanation, Allied investigations into the incident found that bad weather broke up the American formation over France, and that high winds that nearly doubled the ground speed of the bombers confused the navigators (two other widely scattered cities in Germany and France were also mistakenly bombed during the same mission). As Schaffhausen is situated on the right bank (north side) of the Rhine river, it was apparently assumed to be Ludwigshafen am Rhein. By October 1944, US$4,000,000 had been paid in restitution.
Background
During World War II, Swiss airspace was violated by both sides. During the Battle of France, the Swiss Air Force shot down eleven German planes violating Swiss airspace for the loss of three planes in return. The most significant of these incidents occurred after the Swiss shot down a Messerschmitt Bf 110 on 4 June 1940. In response to this, Hermann Göring ordered an incursion by 32 Bf 110s. These were intercepted by 14 Swiss Messerschmitt 109s, leading to the loss of four 110s. This resulted in a German threat of sanctions and retaliation, and on 20 June the Swiss government decided to order an end to interceptions of foreign aircraft in Swiss airspace.
With Allied and Axis aircraft freely overflying Switzerland, over 7,000 siren alarms were initiated in Switzerland during the war. Some Allied bombers took advantage of this situation by using Swiss airspace as a safer route than enemy air space on their bombing runs to and from targets in Germany, but more often, bombers in distress preferred to descend to neutral Switzerland for asylum rather than in German territory. As a result, Switzerland ultimately interned 1,700 American airmen.
From 1941 to 1942, Allied bombers very rarely flew over Switzerland, because the Swiss authorities, under German pressure, prescribed black-outs in order to complicate navigation for U.S. and British air crews. As neutral Swiss territory was safe for Allied bombers, Germany also pressured the Swiss into forcing the Allied air crews to land in Switzerland, instead of letting them continue bombing runs.
Axis violations of Swiss airspace
Nazi Germany repeatedly violated Swiss airspace. During the Battle of France, German aircraft violated Swiss airspace at least 197 times. In several air incidents, the Swiss shot down 11 Luftwaffe aircraft between 10 May 1940 and 17 June 1940, while suffering the loss of three of their own aircraft.
[Hitler furious]
Hitler was especially furious when he saw that German equipment was used to shoot down German pilots. He said they would respond "in another manner". Later, Hitler and Hermann Göring sent saboteurs to destroy Swiss airfields but they were captured by Swiss troops before they could cause any damage.
Allied violations of Swiss airspace
In 1943, the Swiss military began attacking Allied aircraft breaching Swiss airspace. Six Allied aircraft were shot down by Swiss Air Force fighters and four by anti-aircraft cannon, killing 36 Allied airmen.
Zürich and Basel
On 4 March 1945, six USAAF B-24H bombers hit Zürich with 12.5 tons of high explosives and 12 tons of incendiaries, killing five people. The intended target had been Aschaffenburg near Frankfurt am Main, 180 mi north. The six bombers had gone off course, and their crews believed they were bombing Freiburg im Breisgau. At virtually the same time, other bombers dropped 12.5 tons of high explosives and five tons of incendiaries on Basel.
Court-martial proceedings
Regarding the Zurich bombing, a court-martial proceeding took place in England on 1 June 1945. Col. James M. Stewart, the famous actor and wartime B-24 pilot, was the presiding officer of the trial. Accused were the lead pilot Lieutenant William R. Sincock and one of his navigators, Lieutenant Theodore Q. Balides, for violating the 96th Article of War, and Sincock specifically for having "wrongfully and negligently caused bombs to be dropped in friendly territory".
Weather conditions and equipment failure were found to be at fault; the defendants were found not guilty of criminal culpability. Prosecutors for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East once discussed this case as further precedent to prosecute Japanese pilots involved in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. However, they quickly dropped the idea after realizing there was no international law that protected neutral areas and nationals specifically from attack by aircraft.
Reparations
In addition to the US$4 million paid by October 1944, the United States government agreed to pay 62,176,433.06 Swiss francs (then equivalent to $14.4 million, or $249 million at current prices) to the Swiss government as full and final payment for damage to persons and property during World War II on 21 October 1949.
The actor Jimmy Stewart
Stewart was promoted to major following a mission to Ludwigshafen, Germany, on January 7, 1944. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for actions as deputy commander of the 2nd Bombardment Wing, the French Croix de Guerre with palm, and the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters. Stewart was promoted to full colonel on March 29, 1945, becoming one of the few Americans to ever rise from private to colonel in only four years. At the beginning of June 1945, Stewart was the presiding officer of the court martial of a pilot and navigator who accidentally bombed Zürich, Switzerland.
On July 23, 1959, Stewart was promoted to brigadier general, becoming the highest-ranking actor in American military history.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_incidents_in_Switzerland_in_World_War_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stewart
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On This Day: Daylight saving time starts, later condemned by health studies - March 31, 1918
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375197
On This Day: Early form of writing system discovered, later translated - Mar. 30, 1900
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375141
On This Day: Man commits two murders after repeated hypnosis - Mar. 29, 1951
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375113
On This Day: "Tyranny from the bench"- SC sides with judge who ordered forced sterilization - Mar. 28, 1978
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375027
On This Day: Was Typhoid Mary, who affected others, treated fairly? - Mar. 27, 1915
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374956
On This Day: Daylight saving time starts, later condemned by health studies - March 31, 1918
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Daylight saving time
Most of the United States observes daylight saving time, the practice of setting the clock forward by one hour when there is longer daylight during the day, so that evenings have more daylight and mornings have less.
During World War I, in an effort to conserve fuel, Germany began observing DST on May 1, 1916. The rest of Europe soon followed. The plan was not adopted in the United States until the Standard Time Act of March 19, 1918, which confirmed the existing standard time zone system and set summer DST to begin on March 31, 1918 (reverting October 27).
Several state and federal representatives have advanced legislation in support of the legalization of using daylight saving time as the year-round clock option. Bills have been introduced in more than 30 states to end DST or make it permanent.
On March 15, 2022, the US Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act by unanimous consent. This change would have meant that Daylight Saving Time zones would no longer return to standard time and remain on DST year round. However it was not passed by the House of Representatives.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has opposed the Sunshine Protection Act and called instead for permanent standard time, a position supported by the American College of Chest Physicians and the World Sleep Society, among others.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States
(edited from article)
"
Changing Clocks to Daylight Saving Time Is Bad for Your Health
A neurologist explains why our bodies fare better when aligned with the natural light of standard time
But the effects go beyond simple inconvenience. Researchers are discovering that “springing ahead” each March is connected with serious negative health effects, including an uptick in heart attacks and teen sleep deprivation. In contrast, the fall transition back to standard time is not associated with these health effects, as my co-authors and I noted in a 2020 commentary.
"
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/changing-clocks-to-daylight-saving-time-is-bad-for-your-health/
(edited from article)
"
The dark side of daylight saving time
Why can an hour's time change in spring disrupt our body, sleep, and mental health?
"That one-hour change may not seem like much, but it can wreak havoc on people's mental and physical well-being in the short term," says Dr. Charles Czeisler, professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School's Division of Sleep Medicine.
Research suggests that changing our clocks twice a year can have various health consequences. Of the two, springing ahead one hour tends to be more disruptive. That hour change can upset our circadian rhythms, the body's natural 24-hour cycles regulating key functions like appetite, mood, and sleep.
Many people also have trouble adjusting their sleep schedule to the new time. For the first few days or even a week, they may go to bed later or wake up earlier than usual, which can cause sleep deprivation. One study found that the average person gets 40 minutes less sleep on the Monday after DST begins compared with other nights of the year.
"Disrupted sleep can cause people to feel fatigued, groggy, and less focused," says Dr. Czeisler. This may explain, in part, the 6% rise in car accidents following the spring time change, according to a 2020 study in the journal Current Biology. Poor sleep caused by DST also can exacerbate existing problems like depression, anxiety, and seasonal affective disorder.
"
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-dark-side-of-daylight-saving-time
(edited from article)
"
Daylight Saving Time and Your Health
"We know that sleep deprivation is bad for your physical and cognitive health," notes Dr. Zee. She explains that the transition to DST can create short-term health problems — sleep issues, fatigue and changes in blood pressure — that feel like prolonged jet lag. "Late starters," or those who wake up later in the morning, as well as teenagers, who tend to be night owls, are more vulnerable to these effects because they already sleep through more hours of natural morning light. DST can further throw off their circadian rhythms.
Additionally, DST can have long-term health effects. Studies show that DST is linked to:
Depression
Slowed metabolism
Weight gain
Cluster headaches
DST has also been linked to increased risk of developing certain disorders, from cognitive and mental health issues to digestive and heart diseases. And, if you already have these conditions, DST can make them worse.
During the week after the shift to DST, research shows an associated rise in:
Cardiovascular disease, with a 24% higher risk of heart attacks
Injuries, including a 6% spike in fatal car accidents
Stroke rate, which increases by 8%
Mental health and cognitive issues, with an 11% spike in depressive episodes
Digestive and immune-related diseases, such as colitis, which increase by 3% in females over age 60
"
https://www.nm.org/healthbeat/healthy-tips/daylight-savings-time-your-health
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On This Day: Early form of writing system discovered, later translated - Mar. 30, 1900
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375141
On This Day: Man commits two murders after repeated hypnosis - Mar. 29, 1951
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375113
On This Day: "Tyranny from the bench"- SC sides with judge who ordered forced sterilization - Mar. 28, 1978
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375027
On This Day: Was Typhoid Mary, who affected others, treated fairly? - Mar. 27, 1915
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374956
On This Day: Be-ins used to be a thing in Central Park, San Francisco, and elsewhere - Mar. 26, 1967
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374931
On This Day: Early form of writing system discovered, later translated - Mar. 30, 1900
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
The discovery and classification of Linear B (1886–1909)
Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of the Greek language. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the earliest known examples dating to around 1400 BC.
Linear B was first identified as a writing system by Arthur Evans, who excavated the first Linear B tablet at Knossos on Crete on 30 March 1900. By the end of the year, he had categorised the writing system of the tablets as a "linear script", as opposed to what he called the "hieroglyphic or conventionalized pictographic script" now known as Cretan hieroglyphs, and correctly realised that it was written from left to right. He categorised its signs as "for the most part syllabic", though asserted that "a certain number are unquestionably ideographic or determinative."
In 1909, Evans published the first volume of Scripta Minoa, which included the then-unpublished Phaistos Disc, which had been discovered in July 1908, and similarly-unpublished tablets excavated by Federico Halbherr from Hagia Triada. Evans named the script of these tablets "Class A" and that of the Knossos tablets "Class B".
Decipherment (1909–1952)
Most of the Knossos tablets, which numbered around 3500, remained unpublished in Scripta Minoa I. Evans published a selection of them in 1935, allowing serious efforts at decipherment to begin. To these were added, after 1939, the first tablets excavated at Pylos. The later decipherers John Chadwick and Michael Ventris, however, considered little of the work done towards a decipherment before 1944 to be of substantial value.
Building on important work by Arthur Cowley and later by Alice Kober, the decipherment of Linear B was completed by Michael Ventris between 1940 and 1952, with a particular "critical period" between 1948 and 18 June 1952. On 1 June, Ventris published a 'Work Note' to a group of Mycenaean scholars arguing that Linear B was used to write Greek. On 18 June, he wrote a letter to Emmett L. Bennett Jr., including the line "I think I've deciphered Linear B". In this letter, Ventris restated his conviction that the language of Linear B was Greek, and gave an account of some of its spelling rules and of certain transliterations between Classical Greek and Linear B. On 1 July, he announced the decipherment on BBC Radio 3.
PY Ta 641
PY Ta 641, sometimes known as the Tripod Tablet, is a Mycenaean clay tablet inscribed in Linear B, currently displayed in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Discovered in the so-called "Archives Complex" of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos in Messenia in June 1952 by the American archaeologist Carl Blegen, it has been described as "probably the most famous tablet of Linear B".
It was inscribed around 1180 BCE by a senior scribe working for the palatial administration at Pylos.
The role of PY Ta 641 in proving the decipherment
Ventris's announcement was largely met with scepticism from the scholarly community, including from John Chadwick, who later wrote that he had been "completely taken aback" by the idea that Linear B had been used to write Greek, which he had considered "preposterous". In particular, scholars such as Bennett worried about the possibility of circular reasoning: since Ventris had not tested his decipherment on any unseen material, it would have been possible for him to shape his solution in order to fit the available data, whether or not it was correct.
On 16 May 1953, Blegen sent Ventris a copy of PY Ta 641, in which he drew attention to the correspondence between the ideograms used for vases on the tablet and the corresponding adjectives given by reading the tablet with Ventris's values for the syllabograms. In his letter, he wrote "all this seems too good to be true. Is coincidence excluded?"
By early July, Chadwick had obtained a copy of Ventris's decipherment from R. A. B. Mynors, and become convinced of its accuracy. On 13 July, he wrote to Ventris, offering his help as a "mere philologist" in charting the development of the Greek language between Mycenaean and the better-known Archaic and Classical dialects.
Another early sceptic of the idea that Linear B encoded Greek, Sterling Dow, changed his mind by October 1952 after Ventris and Bennett shared with him the news of PY Ta 641: he was particularly influenced by the fact that Ventris had completed his decipherment before seeing the tablet, and that Blegen had been the only person to see the tablet when he had used Ventris's sign-values to read it. Chadwick is quoted as saying
"Greeks should be grateful to this tiny piece of charred clay, because it proved that the Linear B language is Greek."
Objections to Ventris's decipherment
By April 1954, when both Ventris and Dow wrote articles in The New York Times publicising the decipherment, most Anglophone scholars accepted it as correct. A minority, notably Chadwick's former lecturer Arthur J. Beattie – then in post at the University of Edinburgh – continued to doubt its validity. Shortly after Ventris's death in 1956, Beattie published an article in The Journal of Hellenic Studies which conceded that "this text [PY Ta 641] has probably done more than anything else to convince classical scholars that Mr. Ventris's decipherment is right." Beattie argued that "the apparent correspondence between words and ideograms is due to chance", and an artefact of the multiple possibilities offered by Ventris for the pronunciation of each Linear B sign.
Chadwick responded to Beattie's article in 1957, with a riposte, later described as "brief but effective", in the same journal. He rejected Beattie's objections, wrote of the "rapidity and unanimity" with which the decipherment had been accepted among the scholarly community, and concluded with "Professor Beattie underestimates the size of the windmill at which he is tilting."
In 1958, Beattie alleged that Ventris had seen a copy or photograph of PY Ta 641 before finalising his decipherment, and then fraudulently presented the tablet as independent evidence of its validity. Blegen, however, affirmed that the tablet had been locked away until late July, after Ventris had stated his conviction of the Greek solution to Linear B in June, and had remained illegible until the following year. Finally, in 1959, Beattie claimed that Ventris had seen, and subsequently destroyed, a similar tablet to PY Ta 641 prior to making his decipherment – a claim which the Mycenaean philologists John Killen and Anna Morpurgo Davies later described as "outrageous".
Beattie's arguments attracted only small-scale support, primarily in Scotland. By 1960, English-speaking scholars generally accepted the decipherment, though the pro-decipherment linguist Leonard Palmer wrote in 1965 of widespread "agnosticism" as to whether the matter could be considered proven. It remained more controversial among continental European scholars, such as the German philologist Ernst Grumach and the Belgian Byzantinist Henri Grégoire, who disputed it into the 1960s.
By the 1980s, the decipherment was almost universally accepted,[35] though it continued to be controversial in German-speaking scholarship until the early 1990s.
[Extent and structure of Linear B]
It is adapted from the earlier Linear A, an undeciphered script potentially used for writing the Minoan language, as is the later Cypriot syllabary, which also recorded Greek. Linear B, found mainly in the palace archives at Knossos, Kydonia, Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae, disappeared with the fall of Mycenaean civilization during the Late Bronze Age collapse. The succeeding period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, provides no evidence of the use of writing.
Linear B was deciphered in 1952 by English architect and self-taught linguist Michael Ventris based on the research of American classicist Alice Kober. It is the only Bronze Age Aegean script to have been deciphered, with Linear A, Cypro-Minoan, and Cretan hieroglyphic remaining unreadable.
Linear B consists of around 87 syllabic signs and over 100 ideographic signs. These ideograms or "signifying" signs symbolize objects or commodities. They have no phonetic value and are never used as word signs in writing a sentence.
The application of Linear B appears to have been confined to administrative contexts. In all the thousands of clay tablets, a relatively small number of different people's handwriting have been detected: 45 in Pylos (west coast of the Peloponnese, in Southern Greece) and 66 in Knossos (Crete). Once the palaces were destroyed, the script disappeared.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PY_Ta_641
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On This Day: Man commits two murders after repeated hypnosis - Mar. 29, 1951
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375113
On This Day: "Tyranny from the bench"- SC sides with judge who ordered forced sterilization - Mar. 28, 1978
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375027
On This Day: Was Typhoid Mary, who affected others, treated fairly? - Mar. 27, 1915
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374956
On This Day: Be-ins used to be a thing in Central Park, San Francisco, and elsewhere - Mar. 26, 1967
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374931
On This Day: Locked factory doors fire tragedy spurs reforms and women's union movement - Mar. 25, 1911
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374864
On This Day: Man commits two murders after repeated hypnosis - Mar. 29, 1951
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Copenhagen hypnosis murders
The Copenhagen hypnosis murders were a double-murder case in connection with a failed bank robbery that happened in Denmark on 29 March 1951. After extensive police, psychiatric and psychological investigations and the ensuing trial proceedings, two people were convicted of the murders: Palle Hardrup and Bjørn Schouw Nielsen. It was the view of the trial court, in a decision that the Danish Supreme Court affirmed, that Schouw Nielsen had hypnotized the 28-year-old Hardrup to carry out the robbery and the murders.
Both men served prison terms and were released in 1967. Nielsen died by suicide in 1971; Hardrup died in 2012.
Robbery
When Hardrup committed the robbery, he shot one of the bank's cashiers and then the branch manager. Hardrup then fled by bicycle to a nearby street and entered a building. Several eyewitnesses went in after him, and the police were directed to a stairwell where Hardrup had tried to hide. Hardrup quickly surrendered to the police without resistance.
The investigation
The bicycle used by Hardrup in his escape belonged to Bjørn Schouw Nielsen. A few days after the incident, Nielsen himself contacted the police and claimed he wanted to make sure he was not a robbery suspect just because Hardrup had used his bicycle.
Bjørn Schouw Nielsen and Palle Hardrup had previously shared the same cell at Horsens State Prison, where they had served sentences for treason after World War II. During their time in prison, both men had shown great interest in Asian philosophy, yoga and hypnosis.
After the robbery, the police department began to suspect that Nielsen might have used hypnosis to manipulate Hardrup to commit the bank robbery and the related murders. The theory was corroborated by forty witness statements from prisoners and guards at Horsens State Prison: these statements suggested that Hardrup was already under Nielsen's mental control in prison. The guards and prisoners reported that Nielsen manipulated Hardrup like a puppet and that he was able to make Hardrup behave as if he were in a trance. Hardrup had also told several fellow inmates that Nielsen hypnotized him regularly.
The investigation was led by forensic investigator Roland Olsen. Olsen was assisted by Max Schmidt, the chief psychiatrist at the police department, and by Dr. Paul Reiter. Using suggestion and hypnosis, Max Schmidt and Paul Rieter explored Palle Hardrup's mental states and his susceptibility to hypnosis. Paul Reiter had been researching the use of hypnosis for criminal activity for years and believed that it was possible to hypnotize another person to commit crimes. Rieter conducted extensive interviews and had several discussions with the Hardrup family and Hardrup's closest relatives.
The interviews served as evidence for Rieter’s conclusions about Hardrup’s mental state. At the trial, it was Reiter who specifically spoke of the fact that a person can be hypnotized to do something the person would not normally do, as long as the act is, in that person's view, morally justified. According to Reiter’s theory, Nielsen had already started manipulating Hardrup mentally and emotionally in prison, so that in the end Hardrup came to feel that committing murder was not only an acceptable but even an inevitable act. This level of manipulation was made possible and reinforced by Nielsen’s often repeated hypnotic suggestions. Reiter has authored numerous publications on the subject, including Antisocial or criminal acts and hypnosis: a case study.
After an extensive set of legal proceedings that ended eventually in 1955, Palle Hardrup was sentenced to be imprisoned indefinitely at the Institution of Herstedvester. The Danish Supreme Court upheld Bjørn Schouw Nielsen's sentence to life imprisonment, and declined to reopen the case. At the time of the Supreme Court's decision, the Danish Medico-Legal Council had stated that they were unable either to confirm or dispute Reiter's theory. However, in December 1956, after a thorough examination of the case file, the Council issued its final public statement on the case, finding that there had been a significant mental disorder in Hardrup's state of mind - the influence of another person, which in these circumstances involved hypnosis. A few years later, the subcommittee of the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights reopened the case for special consideration. In 1960, the subcommittee found that Nielsen had been properly convicted by the Danish judiciary. This decision was further upheld by the Human Rights Court in 1961.
Both Nielsen and Hardrup were released, independently, in 1967. Bjørn Schouw Nielsen committed suicide with potassium cyanide in 1974. Palle Hardrup died in 2012.
Film adaptation
A movie based on the hypnosis murders case, Murderous Trance (The Guardian Angel), premiered in 2018. The movie was an international co-production, shot in Denmark and Croatia, and stars Pilou Asbæk, Josh Lucas, Rade Šerbedžija, Cyron Melville and Sara Soulié. The movie's director, writer and co-producer Arto Halonen first met Palle Hardrup in 1997 and was one of the few people to interview him.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_hypnosis_murders
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On This Day: "Tyranny from the bench"- SC sides with judge who ordered forced sterilization - Mar. 28, 1978
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016375027
On This Day: Was Typhoid Mary, who affected others, treated fairly? - Mar. 27, 1915
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374956
On This Day: Be-ins used to be a thing in Central Park, San Francisco, and elsewhere - Mar. 26, 1967
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374931
On This Day: Locked factory doors fire tragedy spurs reforms and women's union movement - Mar. 25, 1911
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374864
On This Day: NATO starts bombing sovereign country, without Security Council approval - Mar. 24, 1999
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374840
On This Day: "Tyranny from the bench"- SC sides with judge who ordered forced sterilization - Mar. 28, 1978
(edited from article)
"
"A SORDID CASE”: STUMP V. SPARKMAN, JUDICIAL IMMUNITY,
AND THE OTHER SIDE OF REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
LAURA T. KESSLER
Maryland Law Review
"
This Article presents a new historical account of Stump v. Sparkman, one of the most controversial Supreme Court decisions in the past fifty years. Stump is the 1978 judicial immunity opinion in which the Supreme Court declared that judges are absolutely immune from liability for their official judicial acts, even if such acts are done maliciously or flawed by the commission of grave procedural errors. The context of the case was horrific. It involved the involuntary sterilization of a fifteen-year-old girl; she was sterilized pursuant to a court order that her mother had obtained from a state judge without any notice to the child, appointment of a lawyer to represent her, presentation of evidence, or opportunity to appeal. As an adult she sued the judge and lost on the basis of the judicial immunity doctrine
...
Sparkman appealed to the Seventh Circuit, which unanimously reversed on the immunity question. Although the court acknowledged Bradley and Pierson as relevant authority, it found the facts of Sparkman’s case to lie outside the boundaries of the judicial immunity doctrine as defined by those precedents. “Judicial immunity,” the court said, “is available . . . only where the judge has jurisdiction.” Judge Stump’s action did not meet this requirement, according to the court. Indiana statutes in existence at the time permitted sterilizations, but only of institutionalized persons and only if certain procedures were followed. These procedures included the right to notice, the opportunity to defend, and the right to appeal. According to the Seventh Circuit, this statutory scheme “negat[ed]” subject matter jurisdiction; there was simply no statutory authority for Judge Stump’s actions. Nor did the common law, according to the court, provide any jurisdictional basis for Judge Stump’s order. In sum, the Seventh Circuit found no express basis in statutory or common law for a court to order the sterilization of a
minor child simply upon a parent’s petition. To give judges immunity in such cases, Judge Swygert wrote, “would be sanctioning tyranny from the bench.”
Judge Stump and his co-defendants appealed to the Supreme Court. The law clerk assigned to review Stump’s petition for certiorari recommended against hearing the case, because he thought there would be “institutional costs.” As he explained:
This is a sordid case. If this Court grants review the case will
attract even wider attention and publicity than it has already
received—all for the wrong reasons.
"
https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=057096091031106009079096109026023072027012061042040087126089114023083014117001097070010012060033019023016099123114120065070073006005047059076011110095064027023106001045023083067086024065064069004114021097079074007120001019098081005004069024067017103&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Stump v. Sparkman
Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978), is the leading United States Supreme Court decision on judicial immunity. It involved an Indiana judge who was sued by a young woman who had been sterilized without her knowledge as a minor in accordance with the judge's order. The Supreme Court held that the judge was immune from being sued for issuing the order because it was issued as a judicial function. The case has been called one of the most controversial in recent Supreme Court history.
Facts
In 1971, Judge Harold D. Stump granted a mother's petition to have a tubal ligation performed on her 15-year-old daughter, who the mother alleged was "somewhat retarded". The petition was granted the same day that it was filed. The judge did not hold a hearing to receive evidence or appoint a lawyer to protect the daughter's interests. The daughter underwent the surgery a week later, having been told that she was to have her appendix removed.
The daughter married two years later. Failing to become pregnant, she learned that she had been sterilized during the 1971 operation. The daughter and her husband sued the judge and others associated with the sterilization in federal district court.
The district court found that the judge was immune from suit. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision, holding that the judge had lost his immunity because he failed to observe "elementary principles of due process" when he ordered the sterilization. Finally, in 1978, [on March 28,] the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-3 decision, reversed the Court of Appeals, announcing a test for deciding when judicial immunity should apply and holding that the judge could not be sued.
The holding
Addressing Judge Swygert's assertion that even if Judge Stump had jurisdiction he was deprived of immunity because of his failure to observe elementary principles of procedural due process, Justice White countered:
A judge is absolutely immune from liability for his judicial acts even if his exercise of authority is flawed by the commission of grave procedural errors.
["a loose cannon"]
Associate Justice Potter Stewart entered a vigorous dissent. Agreeing that judges of general jurisdiction enjoy absolute immunity for their judicial acts, he wrote, "...what Judge Stump did...was beyond the pale of anything that could sensibly be called a judicial act." Stating that it was "factually untrue" that what Judge Stump did was an act "normally performed by a judge", he wrote "...there is no reason to believe that such an act has ever been performed by any other Indiana judge, either before or since."
Justice Stewart also denounced it as "legally unsound" to rule that Judge Stump had acted in a "judicial capacity". "A judge is not free, like a loose cannon", he wrote, "to inflict indiscriminate damage whenever he announces that he is acting in his judicial capacity."
Concluding, Justice Stewart argued that the majority misapplied the law of the Pierson case:
Not one of the considerations...summarized in the Pierson opinion was present here. There was no "case," controversial or otherwise. There were no litigants. There was and could be no appeal. And there was not even the pretext of principled decision making. The total absence of any of these normal attributes of a judicial proceeding convinces me that the conduct complained of in this case was not a judicial act.
Justice Powell's dissent
Joining in Justice Stewart's opinion, Justice Lewis Powell filed a separate dissent that emphasized what he called "...the central feature of this case - Judge Stump's preclusion of any possibility for the vindication of respondents' rights elsewhere in the judicial system." Continuing, he wrote:
Underlying the Bradley immunity...is the notion that private rights can be sacrificed in some degree to the achievement of the greater public good deriving from a completely independent judiciary, because there exist alternative forums and methods for vindicating those rights.
But where a judicial officer acts in a manner that precludes all resort to appellate or other judicial remedies that otherwise would be available, the underlying assumption of the Bradley doctrine is inoperative.
Legacy
The decision has been called one of the most controversial decisions in Supreme Court history.
2007 marked the centennial of the 1907 Indiana sterilization law, the first of its kind in the world. Although Linda Sparkman was not sterilized under any of the eugenics laws still on the books in Indiana in 1971, she was invited to unveil a state historic marker describing the original law on April 12, 2007, in Indianapolis. Indiana repealed all laws concerning sterilization of the mentally ill in 1974.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stump_v._Sparkman
---------------------------------------------------------
On This Day: Was Typhoid Mary, who affected others, treated fairly? - Mar. 27, 1915
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374956
On This Day: Be-ins used to be a thing in Central Park, San Francisco, and elsewhere - Mar. 26, 1967
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374931
On This Day: Locked factory doors fire tragedy spurs reforms and women's union movement - Mar. 25, 1911
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374864
On This Day: NATO starts bombing sovereign country, without Security Council approval - Mar. 24, 1999
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374840
On This Day: "Gifted" Confederate commander begins campaign that embarrasses Union forces - Mar. 23, 1862
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374812
On This Day: "Tyranny from the bench"- SC sides with judge who ordered forced sterilization - Mar. 28, 1978
(edited from article)
"
"A SORDID CASE”: STUMP V. SPARKMAN, JUDICIAL IMMUNITY,
AND THE OTHER SIDE OF REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
LAURA T. KESSLER
Maryland Law Review
"
This Article presents a new historical account of Stump v. Sparkman, one of the most controversial Supreme Court decisions in the past fifty years. Stump is the 1978 judicial immunity opinion in which the Supreme Court declared that judges are absolutely immune from liability for their official judicial acts, even if such acts are done maliciously or flawed by the commission of grave procedural errors. The context of the case was horrific. It involved the involuntary sterilization of a fifteen-year-old girl; she was sterilized pursuant to a court order that her mother had obtained from a state judge without any notice to the child, appointment of a lawyer to represent her, presentation of evidence, or opportunity to appeal. As an adult she sued the judge and lost on the basis of the judicial immunity doctrine
...
Sparkman appealed to the Seventh Circuit, which unanimously reversed on the immunity question. Although the court acknowledged Bradley and Pierson as relevant authority, it found the facts of Sparkman’s case to lie outside the boundaries of the judicial immunity doctrine as defined by those precedents. “Judicial immunity,” the court said, “is available . . . only where the judge has jurisdiction.” Judge Stump’s action did not meet this requirement, according to the court. Indiana statutes in existence at the time permitted sterilizations, but only of institutionalized persons and only if certain procedures were followed. These procedures included the right to notice, the opportunity to defend, and the right to appeal. According to the Seventh Circuit, this statutory scheme “negat[ed]” subject matter jurisdiction; there was simply no statutory authority for Judge Stump’s actions. Nor did the common law, according to the court, provide any jurisdictional basis for Judge Stump’s order. In sum, the Seventh Circuit found no express basis in statutory or common law for a court to order the sterilization of a
minor child simply upon a parent’s petition. To give judges immunity in such cases, Judge Swygert wrote, “would be sanctioning tyranny from the bench.”
Judge Stump and his co-defendants appealed to the Supreme Court. The law clerk assigned to review Stump’s petition for certiorari recommended against hearing the case, because he thought there would be “institutional costs.” As he explained:
This is a sordid case. If this Court grants review the case will
attract even wider attention and publicity than it has already
received—all for the wrong reasons.
"
https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=057096091031106009079096109026023072027012061042040087126089114023083014117001097070010012060033019023016099123114120065070073006005047059076011110095064027023106001045023083067086024065064069004114021097079074007120001019098081005004069024067017103&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Stump v. Sparkman
Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978), is the leading United States Supreme Court decision on judicial immunity. It involved an Indiana judge who was sued by a young woman who had been sterilized without her knowledge as a minor in accordance with the judge's order. The Supreme Court held that the judge was immune from being sued for issuing the order because it was issued as a judicial function. The case has been called one of the most controversial in recent Supreme Court history.
Facts
In 1971, Judge Harold D. Stump granted a mother's petition to have a tubal ligation performed on her 15-year-old daughter, who the mother alleged was "somewhat retarded". The petition was granted the same day that it was filed. The judge did not hold a hearing to receive evidence or appoint a lawyer to protect the daughter's interests. The daughter underwent the surgery a week later, having been told that she was to have her appendix removed.
The daughter married two years later. Failing to become pregnant, she learned that she had been sterilized during the 1971 operation. The daughter and her husband sued the judge and others associated with the sterilization in federal district court.
The district court found that the judge was immune from suit. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision, holding that the judge had lost his immunity because he failed to observe "elementary principles of due process" when he ordered the sterilization. Finally, in 1978, [on March 28,] the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-3 decision, reversed the Court of Appeals, announcing a test for deciding when judicial immunity should apply and holding that the judge could not be sued.
The holding
Addressing Judge Swygert's assertion that even if Judge Stump had jurisdiction he was deprived of immunity because of his failure to observe elementary principles of procedural due process, Justice White countered:
A judge is absolutely immune from liability for his judicial acts even if his exercise of authority is flawed by the commission of grave procedural errors.
["a loose cannon"]
Associate Justice Potter Stewart entered a vigorous dissent. Agreeing that judges of general jurisdiction enjoy absolute immunity for their judicial acts, he wrote, "...what Judge Stump did...was beyond the pale of anything that could sensibly be called a judicial act." Stating that it was "factually untrue" that what Judge Stump did was an act "normally performed by a judge", he wrote "...there is no reason to believe that such an act has ever been performed by any other Indiana judge, either before or since."
Justice Stewart also denounced it as "legally unsound" to rule that Judge Stump had acted in a "judicial capacity". "A judge is not free, like a loose cannon", he wrote, "to inflict indiscriminate damage whenever he announces that he is acting in his judicial capacity."
Concluding, Justice Stewart argued that the majority misapplied the law of the Pierson case:
Not one of the considerations...summarized in the Pierson opinion was present here. There was no "case," controversial or otherwise. There were no litigants. There was and could be no appeal. And there was not even the pretext of principled decision making. The total absence of any of these normal attributes of a judicial proceeding convinces me that the conduct complained of in this case was not a judicial act.
Justice Powell's dissent
Joining in Justice Stewart's opinion, Justice Lewis Powell filed a separate dissent that emphasized what he called "...the central feature of this case - Judge Stump's preclusion of any possibility for the vindication of respondents' rights elsewhere in the judicial system." Continuing, he wrote:
Underlying the Bradley immunity...is the notion that private rights can be sacrificed in some degree to the achievement of the greater public good deriving from a completely independent judiciary, because there exist alternative forums and methods for vindicating those rights.
But where a judicial officer acts in a manner that precludes all resort to appellate or other judicial remedies that otherwise would be available, the underlying assumption of the Bradley doctrine is inoperative.
Legacy
The decision has been called one of the most controversial decisions in Supreme Court history.
2007 marked the centennial of the 1907 Indiana sterilization law, the first of its kind in the world. Although Linda Sparkman was not sterilized under any of the eugenics laws still on the books in Indiana in 1971, she was invited to unveil a state historic marker describing the original law on April 12, 2007, in Indianapolis. Indiana repealed all laws concerning sterilization of the mentally ill in 1974.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stump_v._Sparkman
---------------------------------------------------------
On This Day: Was Typhoid Mary, who affected others, treated fairly? - Mar. 27, 1915
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374956
On This Day: Be-ins used to be a thing in Central Park, San Francisco, and elsewhere - Mar. 26, 1967
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374931
On This Day: Locked factory doors fire tragedy spurs reforms and women's union movement - Mar. 25, 1911
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374864
On This Day: NATO starts bombing sovereign country, without Security Council approval - Mar. 24, 1999
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374840
On This Day: "Gifted" Confederate commander begins campaign that embarrasses Union forces - Mar. 23, 1862
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374812
On This Day: Was Typhoid Mary, who affected others, treated fairly? - Mar. 27, 1915
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Mary Mallon
Mary Mallon (1869–1938), commonly known as Typhoid Mary, was an Irish-born American cook believed to have infected between 51 and 122 people with typhoid fever. The infections caused three confirmed deaths, with unconfirmed estimates of as many as 50. She was the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogenic bacteria Salmonella typhi.
She was forcibly quarantined twice by authorities, the second time [starting on March 27, 1915] for the remainder of her life because she persisted in working as a cook and thereby exposed others to the disease. Mallon died after a total of nearly 30 years quarantined. Her popular nickname has since become a term for persons who spread disease or other misfortune, not always aware that they are doing so.
Early life
Mary Mallon was born in 1869 in Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland. She may have been born with typhoid fever as her mother was infected during pregnancy. In 1884 at the age of 15, she emigrated from Ireland to the United States. She lived with her aunt and uncle for a time and worked as a maid, but eventually became a cook for affluent families.
Career
From 1900 to 1907, Mallon worked as a cook in the New York City area for eight families, seven of whom contracted typhoid. In 1900, she worked in Mamaroneck, New York, where within two weeks of her employment, residents developed typhoid fever. In 1901, she relocated to Manhattan, where members of the family for whom she worked developed fevers and diarrhea. Mallon then went to work for a lawyer and left after seven of the eight people in that household became ill.
In June 1904, she was hired by a prosperous lawyer, Henry Gilsey. Soon four of the seven servants were ill. No members of Gilsey's family were infected because they resided separately, and the servants lived in their own house. Immediately after the outbreak began, Mallon left and relocated to Tuxedo Park, where she was hired by George Kessler. Two weeks later, the laundry worker in his household was infected and taken to St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center, where her case of typhoid was the first in a long time. The investigator Dr. R. L. Wilson concluded that the laundry worker had caused the outbreak, but he failed to prove it. The laundry worker died soon afterward.
In August 1906, Mallon began a job in Oyster Bay on Long Island with the family of a wealthy New York banker, Charles Elliot Warren. Mallon went along with the Warrens when they rented a house in Oyster Bay for the summer of 1906. From August 27 to September 3, six of the 11 people in the family came down with typhoid fever. The disease at that time was "unusual" in Oyster Bay, according to three medical doctors who practiced there. The landlord, understanding that it would be difficult to rent a house with the reputation of having typhoid, hired several independent experts to find the source of infection. They took water samples from pipes, faucets, toilets, and the cesspool, all of which were negative for typhoid.
Investigation
George Soper, an investigator hired by the Oyster Bay property owner after the outbreak there, had been trying to determine the cause of typhoid outbreaks in affluent families, when it was known that the disease typically occurred in unsanitary conditions. He discovered that a female Irish cook, who fitted the physical description he had been given, was involved in all of the outbreaks. He was unable to locate her because she generally left after an outbreak began, without giving a forwarding address. The Park Avenue outbreak helped to identify Mallon as the source of the infections. Soper learned of the case while it was still active and discovered Mallon was the cook.
Soper first met Mallon in the kitchen of the Bownes' Park Avenue penthouse and accused her of spreading the disease. Though Soper himself recollected his behavior "as diplomatic as possible," he infuriated Mallon and she threatened him with a carving fork. When Mallon refused to give samples, Soper decided to compile a five-year history of her employment. He found that, of the eight families that had hired Mallon as a cook, members of seven claimed to have contracted typhoid fever. Then Soper learned where Mallon's boyfriend lived and arranged a new meeting there. He took Dr. Raymond Hoobler in an attempt to persuade Mary to give them samples of urine and stool for analysis. Mallon again refused to cooperate, claiming that typhoid was everywhere and that the outbreaks had happened because of contaminated food and water. At that time, the concept of healthy carriers was unknown even to healthcare workers.
Soper published his findings on June 15, 1907, in the Journal of the American Medical Association. He wrote:
It was found that the family changed cooks on August 4. This was about three weeks before the typhoid epidemic broke out. The new cook, Mallon, remained in the family only a short time and left about three weeks after the outbreak occurred. Mallon was described as an Irish woman about 40 years of age, tall, heavy, single. She seemed to be in perfect health.
First quarantine (1907–1910)
Soper notified the New York City Health Department, whose investigators realized that Mallon was a typhoid carrier. By sections 1169 and 1170 of the Greater New York Charter, Mallon was arrested as a public health threat. She was forced into an ambulance by five policemen and Dr. Josephine Baker, who at some time had to sit on Mallon to restrain her.
Mallon was transported to the Willard Parker Hospital, where she was restrained and forced to give samples. For four days, she was not allowed to get up and use the bathroom on her own. The massive numbers of typhoid bacteria that were discovered in her stool samples indicated that the infection source was in her gallbladder. During questioning, Mallon admitted that she almost never washed her hands. This was not unusual at the time; the germ theory of disease still was not fully accepted.
On March 19, 1907, Mallon was sentenced to quarantine on North Brother Island. While quarantined she gave stool and urine samples three times per week. Authorities suggested removing her gallbladder, but she refused because she claimed she did not believe she carried the disease. At the time, gallbladder removal was dangerous, and people had died from the procedure. Mallon was also unwilling to stop working as a cook, a job that earned more money for her than any other. Having no home of her own, she was always on the verge of poverty.
After the publication of Soper's article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Mallon attracted extensive media attention and received the nickname "Typhoid Mary." Later, in a textbook that defined typhoid fever, she again was termed "Typhoid Mary."
Soper visited Mallon in quarantine, telling her he would write a book and give her part of the royalties. She angrily rejected his proposal and locked herself in the bathroom until he left. She hated the nickname and wrote in a letter to her lawyer:
I wonder how the said Dr. William H. Park would like to be insulted and put in the Journal and call him or his wife Typhoid William Park.
Not all medical experts endorsed the decision to forcibly quarantine Mallon. For example, Milton J. Rosenau and Charles V. Chapin both argued that she just had to be taught to carefully treat her condition and ensure that she would not transmit the typhoid to others. Both considered isolation to be an unnecessary, overly strict punishment.
Mallon suffered from a nervous breakdown after her arrest and forcible transportation to the hospital. In 1909 she tried to sue the New York Health Department, but her complaint was denied and the case dismissed by the New York Supreme Court. In a letter to her lawyer she complained that she was treated like a "guinea pig." She was obliged to give samples for analysis three times a week, but for six months was not allowed to visit an eye doctor, even though her eyelid was paralyzed and she had to bandage it at night. Her medical treatment was hectic: she was given urotropin in three-month courses for a year, threatening to destroy her kidneys. That was changed to brewer's yeast and hexamethylenetetramine in increasing doses. She was first told that she had typhoid in her intestinal tract, then in her bowel muscles, then in her gallbladder.
Mallon herself claimed never to believe that she was a carrier. With the help of a friend, she sent several samples to an independent New York laboratory. All came back negative for typhoid. On North Brother Island, almost a quarter of her analyses from March 1907 through June 1909 were also negative.
After 2 years and 11 months of Mallon's quarantine, Eugene H. Porter, the New York State Commissioner of Health, decided that disease carriers should no longer be quarantined and that Mallon could be freed if she agreed to stop working as a cook and take reasonable efforts to avoid transmitting typhoid to others. On February 19, 1910, Mallon said she was "prepared to change her occupation (that of a cook), and would give assurance by affidavit that she would upon her release take such hygienic precautions as would protect those with whom she came in contact, from infection." She was released from quarantine and returned to the mainland.
Release and second quarantine (1915–1938)
Upon her release, Mallon was given a job as a laundry worker, which paid less than cooking—$20 per month instead of $50. After a time she wounded her arm and the wound became infected, meaning that she could not work at all for six months. After several unsuccessful years, she started cooking again. She used fake surnames like Breshof or Brown, and accepted jobs as a cook against the explicit instructions of health authorities. No agencies that hired servants for affluent families would offer her employment, so for the next five years, she worked in a number of kitchens in restaurants, hotels, and spa facilities. Almost everywhere she worked, there were outbreaks of typhoid. However, she changed jobs frequently, and Soper was unable to find her.
In 1915, Mallon started working at Sloane Hospital for Women in New York City. Soon 25 people were infected, and two died. The chief obstetrician, Dr. Edward B. Cragin, called Soper and asked him to help in the investigation. Soper identified Mallon from the servants' verbal descriptions and also by her handwriting.
Mallon fled again, but the police were able to find and arrest her when she took food to a friend on Long Island. Mallon was returned to quarantine on North Brother Island on March 27, 1915.
Little is known about her life during the second quarantine. She remained on North Brother for more than 23 years, and the authorities gave her a private one-story cottage. As of 1918, she was allowed to take day trips to the mainland. In 1925, Dr. Alexandra Plavska came to the island for an internship. She organized a laboratory on the second floor of the chapel and offered Mallon a job as a technician. Mallon washed bottles, did recordings, and prepared glasses for pathologists.
Media reception
After Mallon was sent into her initial quarantine, the newspapers changed their opinion of her case. The articles at first mentioned how Dr. Josephine Baker claimed Mallon attacked her and the other doctors with forks, and came at them fighting and swearing. Later the press articles shifted the blame away from being her fault, the claim being that she was unaware she was carrying anything and instead germs that she had no control over were to blame.
The newspapers also claimed that Mallon was prohibited from using the telephone to contact anybody except the surgeons treating her and her guard. Stories that once celebrated the public health department and legal system eventually became sympathetic to Mallon and the events she supposedly encountered. Public health officials claimed the opposite, that she was treated to their best ability but in return refused to comply with the requests of the health officials.
Death
Mallon spent the rest of her life in quarantine at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island. She died at age 69.
Some sources claim that a post-mortem autopsy found evidence of live typhoid bacteria in Mallon's gallbladder. Soper wrote, however, that there was no autopsy, a claim cited by other researchers to assert a conspiracy to calm public opinion after her death.
Aftermath
Mallon's case became the first in which an asymptomatic carrier was discovered and isolated forcibly. The ethical and legal issues raised by her case are still discussed. Research has resulted in an estimate that Mallon had contaminated "at least one hundred and twenty two people, including five dead". Other sources attribute at least three deaths to contact with Mallon, but because of health officials' inability to persuade her to cooperate, the exact number is not known. Some have estimated that contact with her may have caused 50 fatalities.
In a 2013 article in the Annals of Gastroenterology, the authors concluded:
The history of Mary Mallon, declared "unclean" like a leper, may give us some moral lessons on how to protect the ill and how we can be protected from illness [...] By the time she died New York health officials had identified more than 400 other healthy carriers of Salmonella typhi, but no one else was forcibly confined or victimized as an "unwanted ill".
Two scholarly sources combined to provide this conclusion:
This case highlighted the problematic nature of the subject and the need for an enhanced medical and legal-social treatment model aimed at improving the status of disease carriers and limiting their impact on society.
Other healthy typhoid carriers identified in the first quarter of the 20th century include Tony Labella, an Italian immigrant, presumed to have caused more than 100 cases (with five deaths); an Adirondack guide dubbed "Typhoid John", presumed to have infected 36 people (with two deaths); and Alphonse Cotils, a restaurateur and bakery owner.
The health technology of the era did not have a completely effective solution: there were not any antibiotics to fight the infection, and gallbladder removal was a dangerous, sometimes fatal operation. Some modern specialists claim that typhoid bacteria can become integrated in macrophages and then reside in intestinal lymph nodes or the spleen.
Ethics
The ethical question of her arrest and forced quarantine is still being debated. Historians frequently discuss the argument of Mallon knowing that she was infecting her clients with typhoid based on the frequency of the disease being present after her departure. They also cite the argument that antibiotics did not exist at this time and ten percent of those affected by Mallon carrying the infection died. By this argument Mallon could be considered a murderer of those ten percent of people if she knew she was a carrier of the disease, and would be a justification for her arrest.
Others argue that Mallon did not know that she had the bacteria and therefore did not deserve to be arrested when she never committed a crime. At the time, asymptomatic carriers were not understood and Mallon was believed to have said that she did not feel sick, look sick, or have any sort of visible sickness. Although Mallon did not feel ill or look sick, the disease was living dormant in what was assumed to be her gallbladder.
Lessons learned
Mallon was the first person found to be an asymptomatic carrier of the typhoid bacterium, and this caused the health officials to have little to no idea of how to deal with her. However, Mallon's case helped these officials identify other people who carried diseases that were dormant in their bodies based on the information they learned from Mallon's case. Mallon's case created controversy concerning personal autonomy and social responsibility. It also was the first case that provided good evidence of the existence of asymptomatic carriers.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon
---------------------------------------------------------
On This Day: Be-ins used to be a thing in Central Park, San Francisco, and elsewhere - Mar. 26, 1967
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374931
On This Day: Locked factory doors fire tragedy spurs reforms and women's union movement - Mar. 25, 1911
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374864
On This Day: NATO starts bombing sovereign country, without Security Council approval - Mar. 24, 1999
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374840
On This Day: "Gifted" Confederate commander begins campaign that embarrasses Union forces - Mar. 23, 1862
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374812
On This Day: 50 years of Roman Empire civil war, invasions, economic collapse begin - Mar. 22, 235
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374769
On This Day: Be-ins used to be a thing in Central Park, San Francisco, and elsewhere - Mar. 26, 1967
(edited from article)
"
March 26: The Central Park Hippie “Be In” (1967)
The hippies may have been a small subsection of the 1960s counterculture, but they had a pretty awesome run. On March 26, 1967, over 10,000 congregated in Central Park for an Easter Sunday “Be In.” The event, which defies obvious description, was the first of many such events in New York City during what became famously known as the “Summer of Love.”
The only reliable coverage of the day’s events can be found in the Village Voice, yet another reminder of that once essential newspaper’s sad demise over the past decade. Don McNeil captured the moment:
Bonfires burned on the hills, their smoke mixing with bright balloons among the barren trees and high, high above kites wafted in the air. Rhythms and music and mantras from all corners of the meadow echoed in exquisite harmony, and thousands of lovers vibrated into the night. It was miraculous.
It was a feast for the senses; the beauty of the colors, clothes, and shrines, the sounds and the rhythms, at once familiar, the smell of flowers and frankincense, the taste of jellybeans. But the spirit of the Be-In was tuned — in time — to past echoes and future premonitions. Layers of inhibitions were peeled away and, for many, love and laughter became suddenly fresh.
People climbed into trees and made animal calls, and were answered by calls from other trees. Two men stripped naked, and were gently persuaded to re-clothe as the police appeared. Herds of people rushed together from encampments on the hills to converge en masse on the great mud of the meadow. They joined hands to form great circles, hundreds of yards in diameter, and broke to hurtle to the center in a joyous, crushing, multi-embracing pigpile. Chains of people careened through the crowds at a full run. Their energy seemed inexhaustible.
https://janos.nyc/history/today-in-nyc-history/march-26-the-central-park-hippie-be-in-1967/
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Central Park be-ins
In the 1960s, several "be-ins" were held in Central Park, Manhattan, New York City to protest against various issues such as U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and racism.
Background
During the 1960s America was involved in the Vietnam War. This war was a controversial one because many people were against the United States' involvement in South Vietnam. Adding to the tension of the Americans against the war was the emergence of a generation of people who were a part of the counter-culture and believed that they should do anything possible to go against the establishment. The counter-culture generation decided that Central Park would be the perfect host for their demonstrations.
In 1965, citizens of New York experienced their first blow against their freedom of speech as Commissioner, Newbold Morris, refused to give them a permit that they would need in order to use a section of the park for anti-war speeches. Opponents of the ban called it a form of discrimination. In 1967, Parks Commissioner August Heckscher II said that Central Park would no longer be allowed to serve as a venue for mass demonstrations because they were disruptive and caused damages to the park which were costly.
After Hecksher was met with great opposition by protestors who held up unauthorized banners and burned draft cards in the park anyway, he decided to set up designated areas just for these types of demonstrations such as Randall's Island. As a part of the compromise made by the New York Civil Liberties Union, a separate area in Central Park was set aside for big demonstrations.
1967
On New Year's Eve 1967, a group of one thousand people accompanied by music and geese burned down a Christmas tree in Central Park. The city's parks commissioner, Thomas P.F. Hoving, was present at the event. About this demonstration, he stated, "We're going to do this again... you know, it's old hat to go to Times Square when we can have such a wonderful happening in Central Park".
The Easter 1967 be-in was organized by Jim Fouratt, an actor; Paul Williams, editor of Crawdaddy! magazine; Susan Hartnett, head of the Experiments in Art and Technology organization; and Claudio Badal, a Chilean poet and playwright. With a budget of $250 they printed 3,000 posters and 40,000 small notices designed by Peter Max and distributed them around the city. The Police and Parks Departments quietly and unofficially cooperated with the organizers. An estimated 10,065 people participated in the event at the Sheep Meadow in Central Park.
The majority of participants were hippies. They were joined by families who had attended the Easter parade and members of the Spanish community who were notified of the event by Spanish language posters. The New York Times described them as "poets from the Bronx, dropouts from the East Village, interior decorators from the East Side, teachers from the West Side and teeny boppers from Long Island" and said that "they wore carnation petals and paper stars and tiny mirrors on foreheads, paint around the mouth and cheeks, flowering bedsheets, buttons and tights".
The event was guarded by small number of police. At 6:45 a.m. the first police car arrived. The car was covered with flowers while the crowd chanted of "daffodil power" at which point the police quickly retreated. While police held their distance most of the day, 5 officers did approach two nude participants, at which point the officers were surrounded while the crowd chanted "We love cops/"Turn on cops".
The situation was defused when the crowd at the urging of other participants backed off. At 7:30 at night the police beamed lights on the group and used bullhorns to tell participants to disperse. Again the police were rushed by participants. Following a brief period of tension the police decided to let the event continue. Black and white film footage from this event appears in the 1972 film Ciao! Manhattan.
Less than a month later, on April 15, another anti-war rally took place as a part of the "Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam". Once again the number of demonstrators grew drastically to an estimated 100–400 thousand attendees. This peace rally, which assembled and started off in Central Park and then marched to the United Nations, was said to be the largest of its kind at its time. The demonstrators ranged from Sioux Indians from South Dakota to members of the African American community all rallying for one cause, peace. There was a peace fair, which featured performances by folk singers and rock groups. People held signs that read "Don't Make Vietnam an American Reservation" "Make Love not War" and "No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger".
The protesters then made their way from Central Park to the U.N., where speeches were given by several leaders including Benjamin Spock, James Bevel, and Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King declared that the war in Vietnam was a "conflict against a coloured people" and that "white Americans are not going to deal in the problems of coloured people when they're exterminating a whole nation of coloured people". Although there were five arrests made during this demonstration, they were of counter-demonstrators who staged an Anti-Communist rally. Around 75 protesters burned their draft cards.
Later that spring the counter-culture revolution continued in Central Park but this time "Armed with electric guitars". About 450 people attended the concert. Various bands such as the Grateful Dead performed for the gatherers who originally were scheduled to gather in Tompkins Square Park but was forced to move to Central Park. The New York Times described the attendees as "young people, some with bare feet and others wearing sandals or socks who did some moderately contortionate dancing at first. But then the pace quickly changed and soon they were jumping around like rag dolls being jerked by wires".
-------------
Human Be-In
The Human Be-In was an event held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park Polo Fields on January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to San Francisco's Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a symbol of American counterculture and introduced the word "psychedelic" to suburbia.
Counterculture
The Human Be-In focused the key ideas of the 1960s counterculture: personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralization, communal living, ecological awareness, higher consciousness (with the aid of psychedelic drugs), acceptance of illicit psychedelics use, and radical New Left political consciousness. The hippie movement developed out of disaffected student communities around San Francisco State University, City College and Berkeley and in San Francisco's beat generation poets and jazz hipsters, who also combined a search for intuitive spontaneity with a rejection of "middle-class morality".
Protests
The Human Be-In took its name from a chance remark by the artist Michael Bowen made at the Love Pageant Rally. The playful name combined humanist values with the scores of sit-ins that had been reforming college and university practices and eroding the vestiges of entrenched segregation, starting with the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee. The first major teach-in had been organized by Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Michigan, 24–25 March 1965.
Event
The Human Be-In was announced on the cover of the fifth issue of the San Francisco Oracle as "A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In". The occasion was a new California law banning the use of the psychedelic drug LSD that had come into effect on October 6, 1966. The speakers at the rally were all invited by Bowen, the main organizer. They included Timothy Leary in his first San Francisco appearance, who set the tone that afternoon with his famous phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out" and Richard Alpert (soon to be known as "Ram Dass"
, and poets like Allen Ginsberg, who chanted mantras, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure. Other counterculture gurus included comedian Dick Gregory, Lenore Kandel, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jerry Rubin, and Alan Watts. Music was provided by a host of local rock bands including Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Blue Cheer, most of whom had been staples of the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom. "Underground chemist" Owsley Stanley provided massive amounts of his "White Lightning" LSD, specially produced for the event, as well as 75 twenty-pound turkeys, for free distribution by the Diggers.
The national media were stunned, publicity about this event leading to the mass movement of young people from all over America to descend on the Haight-Ashbury area. Reports were unable to agree whether 20,000 or 30,000 people showed up at the Be-In. Soon every gathering was an "-In" of some kind: Just four weeks later was Bob Fass's Human Fly-In, then the Love-In (March 26, 1967 at Elysian Park, Los Angeles), the Emmett Grogan inspired Sweep-In, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In comedy television show began airing over NBC just a year later on January 22, 1968. This was followed by the first "Yip-In" (March 21, 1968, at Grand Central Terminal), another "Love-In" (April 14, 1968, at Malibu Canyon) and, John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Bed-In" (March 25, 1969, in Amsterdam).
Inspiration
The Human Be-In was organized mainly by Bowen with the assistance of poet Allen Cohen in the organizational work. The idea of the Human Be-In was born of a fear that the movement would be erased due to tensions between factions of the Hippie movement. Bowen writes "The anti-war and free speech movement in Berkeley thought the Hippies were too disengaged and spaced out. Their influence might draw the young away from resistance to the war.
Legacy
The counterculture that surfaced at the "Human Be-In" encouraged people to "question authority" with regard to civil rights, women's rights, and consumer rights. Underground newspapers and radio stations served as its alternative media.
A Human Be-In was put on in Denver, Colorado in July 1967 by Chet Helms and Barry Fey to harness the energy of the famed San Francisco event that occurred in January and promote their new Family Dog Productions venue, The Family Dog Denver. The event attracted 5,000 people and featured performances by Grateful Dead, Odetta and Captain Beefheart. Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey were said to have also been in attendance.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_be-ins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Be-In
---------------------------------------------------------
On This Day: Locked factory doors fire tragedy spurs reforms and women's union movement - Mar. 25, 1911
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374864
On This Day: NATO starts bombing sovereign country, without Security Council approval - Mar. 24, 1999
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374840
On This Day: "Gifted" Confederate commander begins campaign that embarrasses Union forces - Mar. 23, 1862
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374812
On This Day: 50 years of Roman Empire civil war, invasions, economic collapse begin - Mar. 22, 235
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374769
On This Day: A step forward from feudalism, a devastating step back for women and slavery - Mar. 21, 1804
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374692
On This Day: Locked factory doors fire tragedy spurs reforms and women's union movement - Mar. 25, 1911
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on Saturday, March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers – 123 women and girls and 23 men – who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, falling, or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Italian or Jewish immigrant women and girls aged 14 to 23; of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was 43-year-old Providenza Panno, and the youngest were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and Rosaria "Sara" Maltese.
The factory was located on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the Asch Building, which had been built in 1901. Later renamed the "Brown Building", it still stands at 23–29 Washington Place near Washington Square Park, on the New York University (NYU) campus. The building has been designated a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark.
Because the doors to the stairwells and exits were locked – a common practice at the time to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft – many of the workers could not escape from the burning building and jumped from the high windows. There were no sprinklers in the building. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.
Background
The Triangle Waist Company factory occupied the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the 10-story Asch Building on the northwest corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, just east of Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. The factory produced women's blouses, known as "shirtwaists". The factory normally employed about 500 workers, mostly young Italian and Jewish immigrant women and girls, who worked nine hours a day on weekdays plus seven hours on Saturdays, earning for their 52 hours of work between $7 and $12 a week, the equivalent of $191 to $327 a week in 2018 currency, or $3.67 to $6.29 per hour.
[Far-reaching reforms accomplished]
Rose Schneiderman, a prominent socialist and union activist, gave a speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2, 1911, to an audience largely made up of the members of the Women's Trade Union League. She used the fire as an argument for factory workers to organize:
I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting... We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers, and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.
Public officials have only words of warning to us-warning that we must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back, when we rise, into the conditions that make life unbearable.
I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.
Others in the community, and in particular in the ILGWU, believed that political reform could help. In New York City, a Committee on Public Safety was formed, headed by eyewitness Frances Perkins – who 22 years later would be appointed United States Secretary of Labor – to identify specific problems and lobby for new legislation, such as the bill to grant workers shorter hours in a work week, known as the "54-hour Bill".
The committee's representatives in Albany obtained the backing of Tammany Hall's Al Smith, the Majority Leader of the Assembly, and Robert F. Wagner, the Majority Leader of the Senate, and this collaboration of machine politicians and reformers – also known as "do-gooders" or "goo-goos" – got results, especially since Tammany's chief, Charles F. Murphy, realized the goodwill to be had as champion of the downtrodden.
The New York State Legislature then created the Factory Investigating Commission to "investigate factory conditions in this and other cities and to report remedial measures of legislation to prevent hazard or loss of life among employees through fire, unsanitary conditions, and occupational diseases."
The Commission was chaired by Wagner and co-chaired by Al Smith. They held a series of widely publicized investigations around the state, interviewing 222 witnesses and taking 3,500 pages of testimony. They hired field agents to do on-site inspections of factories. They started with the issue of fire safety and moved on to broader issues of the risks of injury in the factory environment. Their findings led to thirty-eight new laws regulating labor in New York state, and gave them a reputation as leading progressive reformers working on behalf of the working class.
In the process, they changed Tammany's reputation from mere corruption to progressive endeavors to help the workers. New York City's Fire Chief John Kenlon told the investigators that his department had identified more than 200 factories where conditions made a fire like that at the Triangle Factory possible. The State Commissions's reports helped modernize the state's labor laws, making New York State "one of the most progressive states in terms of labor reform."
New laws mandated better building access and egress, fireproofing requirements, the availability of fire extinguishers, the installation of alarm systems and automatic sprinklers, and better eating and toilet facilities for workers, and limited the number of hours that women and children could work. In the years from 1911 to 1913, 60 of the 64 new laws recommended by the Commission were legislated with the support of Governor William Sulzer.
As a result of the fire, the American Society of Safety Professionals was founded in New York City on October 14, 1911.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), whose members were employed in the women's clothing industry, was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first US unions to have a primarily female membership, and a key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s. The union, generally referred to as the "ILGWU" or the "ILG", merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in the 1990s to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE. The two unions that formed UNITE in 1995 represented 250,000 workers between them, down from the ILGWU's peak membership of 450,000 in 1969.
The union also became more involved in electoral politics, in part as a result of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The fire had differing effects on the community. For some it radicalized them still further.
Others in the union drew a different lesson from events: working with local Tammany Hall officials, such as Al Smith and Robert F. Wagner, and progressive reformers, such as Frances Perkins, they pushed for comprehensive safety and workers' compensation laws. The ILG leadership formed bonds with those reformers and politicians that would continue for another forty years, through the New Deal and beyond.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Ladies_Garment_Workers_Union
---------------------------------------------------------
On This Day: NATO starts bombing sovereign country, without Security Council approval - Mar. 24, 1999
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374840
On This Day: "Gifted" Confederate commander begins campaign that embarrasses Union forces - Mar. 23, 1862
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374812
On This Day: 50 years of Roman Empire civil war, invasions, economic collapse begin - Mar. 22, 235
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374769
On This Day: A step forward from feudalism, a devastating step back for women and slavery - Mar. 21, 1804
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374692
On This Day: Einstein publishes "the most beautiful of all existing physical theories" - Mar. 20, 1916
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374627
On This Day: Locked factory doors fire tragedy spurs reforms and women's union movement - Mar. 25, 1911
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on Saturday, March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers – 123 women and girls and 23 men – who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, falling, or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Italian or Jewish immigrant women and girls aged 14 to 23; of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was 43-year-old Providenza Panno, and the youngest were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and Rosaria "Sara" Maltese.
The factory was located on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the Asch Building, which had been built in 1901. Later renamed the "Brown Building", it still stands at 23–29 Washington Place near Washington Square Park, on the New York University (NYU) campus. The building has been designated a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark.
Because the doors to the stairwells and exits were locked – a common practice at the time to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft – many of the workers could not escape from the burning building and jumped from the high windows. There were no sprinklers in the building. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.
Background
The Triangle Waist Company factory occupied the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the 10-story Asch Building on the northwest corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, just east of Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. The factory produced women's blouses, known as "shirtwaists". The factory normally employed about 500 workers, mostly young Italian and Jewish immigrant women and girls, who worked nine hours a day on weekdays plus seven hours on Saturdays, earning for their 52 hours of work between $7 and $12 a week, the equivalent of $191 to $327 a week in 2018 currency, or $3.67 to $6.29 per hour.
[Far-reaching reforms accomplished]
Rose Schneiderman, a prominent socialist and union activist, gave a speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2, 1911, to an audience largely made up of the members of the Women's Trade Union League. She used the fire as an argument for factory workers to organize:
I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting... We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers, and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.
Public officials have only words of warning to us-warning that we must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back, when we rise, into the conditions that make life unbearable.
I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.
Others in the community, and in particular in the ILGWU, believed that political reform could help. In New York City, a Committee on Public Safety was formed, headed by eyewitness Frances Perkins – who 22 years later would be appointed United States Secretary of Labor – to identify specific problems and lobby for new legislation, such as the bill to grant workers shorter hours in a work week, known as the "54-hour Bill".
The committee's representatives in Albany obtained the backing of Tammany Hall's Al Smith, the Majority Leader of the Assembly, and Robert F. Wagner, the Majority Leader of the Senate, and this collaboration of machine politicians and reformers – also known as "do-gooders" or "goo-goos" – got results, especially since Tammany's chief, Charles F. Murphy, realized the goodwill to be had as champion of the downtrodden.
The New York State Legislature then created the Factory Investigating Commission to "investigate factory conditions in this and other cities and to report remedial measures of legislation to prevent hazard or loss of life among employees through fire, unsanitary conditions, and occupational diseases."
The Commission was chaired by Wagner and co-chaired by Al Smith. They held a series of widely publicized investigations around the state, interviewing 222 witnesses and taking 3,500 pages of testimony. They hired field agents to do on-site inspections of factories. They started with the issue of fire safety and moved on to broader issues of the risks of injury in the factory environment. Their findings led to thirty-eight new laws regulating labor in New York state, and gave them a reputation as leading progressive reformers working on behalf of the working class.
In the process, they changed Tammany's reputation from mere corruption to progressive endeavors to help the workers. New York City's Fire Chief John Kenlon told the investigators that his department had identified more than 200 factories where conditions made a fire like that at the Triangle Factory possible. The State Commissions's reports helped modernize the state's labor laws, making New York State "one of the most progressive states in terms of labor reform."
New laws mandated better building access and egress, fireproofing requirements, the availability of fire extinguishers, the installation of alarm systems and automatic sprinklers, and better eating and toilet facilities for workers, and limited the number of hours that women and children could work. In the years from 1911 to 1913, 60 of the 64 new laws recommended by the Commission were legislated with the support of Governor William Sulzer.
As a result of the fire, the American Society of Safety Professionals was founded in New York City on October 14, 1911.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), whose members were employed in the women's clothing industry, was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first US unions to have a primarily female membership, and a key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s. The union, generally referred to as the "ILGWU" or the "ILG", merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in the 1990s to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE. The two unions that formed UNITE in 1995 represented 250,000 workers between them, down from the ILGWU's peak membership of 450,000 in 1969.
The union also became more involved in electoral politics, in part as a result of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The fire had differing effects on the community. For some it radicalized them still further.
Others in the union drew a different lesson from events: working with local Tammany Hall officials, such as Al Smith and Robert F. Wagner, and progressive reformers, such as Frances Perkins, they pushed for comprehensive safety and workers' compensation laws. The ILG leadership formed bonds with those reformers and politicians that would continue for another forty years, through the New Deal and beyond.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Ladies_Garment_Workers_Union
---------------------------------------------------------
On This Day: NATO starts bombing sovereign country, without Security Council approval - Mar. 24, 1999
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374840
On This Day: "Gifted" Confederate commander begins campaign that embarrasses Union forces - Mar. 23, 1862
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374812
On This Day: 50 years of Roman Empire civil war, invasions, economic collapse begin - Mar. 22, 235
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374769
On This Day: A step forward from feudalism, a devastating step back for women and slavery - Mar. 21, 1804
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374692
On This Day: Einstein publishes "the most beautiful of all existing physical theories" - Mar. 20, 1916
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016374627
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