Carbon Copy of 1888

On March 12, 1888 the heavens reached down and smothered the North Atlantic coast under a blanket of snow from 21 in. to 50 in. deep. For a full week the normal activities of civilized life all but ceased. Since that time, all winter cataclysms in the east have been compared to the historic Blizzard of '88. There were memorable storms in 1893, 1910 and 1920. But last week brought two storms which lashed New England to its knees, knotted its icy grip on New York and New Jersey and jolted the entire Southeast. One swept up from Cape Hatteras, the other from the Rio Grande. Meteorologically separate, they will be associated in popular memory as a single catastrophe, with the title of "the worst since '88."

Massachusetts felt the full impact. In Charlestown prison, the storm brought 24 hours of unexpected life to three condemned murderers because their executioner was snowbound. A snow plow ran into a train on the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn line, badly injured two passengers. At Worcester all stores closed. School was called off for thousands of Massachusetts children. The Eastern Dog Show in Boston had to delay most of its class competitions a day because exhibitors were stranded out of town. A midnight train from Boston due in Manhattan early next morning arrived twelve hours late. U. S. Route No. 1 was frozen tight all the way south to Philadelphia. All bus service was suspended. No airmail or air express or air passenger service attempted to get through to Boston.

Connecticut caught the brunt of the storm in its fullest fury. Power lines went down, and with them out went oil-burning furnaces. Schools shut up for a week. A ball to be given Governor Cross by the Governor's Foot Guard was called off. Danbury bakers began charging 25-c- a loaf for bread. There was no milk in New Haven for two days. A Wilton mother bore her baby in front of an open fireplace and by candle-light after a doctor had dug through a 18-ft. drift to her door. Six funerals were postponed in Bridgeport, where banks and stores closed.

The wind blasted the overhead cables from the pantographs of the New York, New Haven & Hartford trains. Service between Boston and New York was from one to 14 hr. late. The New Haven's stranded passengers were no worse off than President John Jeremiah Pelley, marooned in his office car at Devon, Conn. With him was a party of railway officials who had been attending a conference in Boston. After waiting four hours for the line to clear to New York, President Pelley & friends turned back to New Haven.

New York. There was a vicious punch in the storm's great white fist when it struck New York State. At Lake Placid the thermometer slumped to --12DEG, freezing out the hardy contestants in the North American bobsled races. In Manhattan, 9.2 in. of snow fell. In the metropolitan area 500,000 commuters could not get to work. The Stock Exchange opened an hour late. Setting aside another $2,000,000 to pay 50,000 men to dig his hard-strapped city out, Mayor La Guardia moaned: "I get the jitters every time I see snow." Because all city life did not come to a standstill Brooklyn Druggist Otto Raubenheimer, a member of the Blizzard Men of '88, jeered: "A mere flurry! This snowstorm is a carbon copy of the blizzard of '88, and a third or fourth carbon copy at that."

For Long Island, with a two-ft. fall, the storm was no carbon copy. The Long Island Railroad completely broke down. Service beyond Jamaica was erratic for 48 hr. Much of the area was without milk and meat deliveries for two days.

Wrote Ralph H. Graves, longtime New York Times Sunday editor, now a Doubleday, Doran executive at Garden City, where he was isolated: "A man lies unburied two days after the funeral hour because a coffin could not be got to his house. A young woman was dragged unconscious, half frozen, from a snow heap half a mile from her home. Electric wires were dead. . . . Telephone wires were useless. Taxicabs and private automobiles stayed in their garages or stuck in the snow. . . . For the better part of 24 hr. no help could be had, for love or money, in case of fire or serious illness."

Out at the end of the island, Drama-critic Percy Hammond managed to telephone in from East Hampton that he had eaten his last can of salmon. Just north of him, at Montauk Point, the heavy seas ripped half of the New London ferry dock away.

In New Jersey the storm blocked the huge Brunswick Pike. At one point, near Princeton, 250 motorists left their cars in snowbanks, put up for the night in filling stations, farms, hot dog stands. Chesapeake Bay shipping was partially paralyzed. The Eastern Shore of Maryland lay buried under a foot of snow. The gale lashed its angry tail when it reached Washington, ripped a huge hanging lantern out of the White House porch. In northern Florida, the storm threatened to wreck the citrus fruit crop with subfreezing temperatures at Jacksonville.

Death and injury came in curious ways. A New Jersey fireman, knocked into a drift by a fire hose, lay there unconscious until his fellows discovered him, a solid block of ice. A Long Islander tried to get home, found he could not make it, broke a window to find shelter in a vacant house, gashed his arms and bled to death. Three Jerseymen were marooned all night in their car near Harmony. Next morning they set out for help. One fell exhausted. When his companions returned with help he was frozen stiff. The Long Island R.R.'s one rotary snowplow was derailed, crushing a trainman to death. A rotoetcher of the New York Times froze to death in his stalled car before an automobile, a police emergency car and an ambulance could reach him.

Second Punch. Four days after the first storm knocked the Eastern seaboard groggy, a second punch came from a different direction. Tornadoes gathered over Texas, headed north, bowled over trees and houses in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, struck a low pressure area on the coast, leaving behind 42 dead. Again a deep blanket of snow settled, snarling communications and bringing more deaths. This time the area affected reached all the way to the Mississippi.

Total dead in "the worst since '88": 80.

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