# The Bowery Boys and the Black Tom Explosion

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 5 Aug 2022, 45 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/e405dea5-d1f9-4e8b-8db6-aee50159b7b1/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

Cautionary Tales returns next week, but in the meantime enjoy a story of disaster from The Bowery Boys Podcast. It's July 30th 1916, just after 2am, and a massive explosion rips apart the munitions depot on Black Tom, an island off Jersey City. Tons of debris and jagged shrapnel pepper neighboring Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Thousands of windows across New York are shattered, and millions of residents are awoken wondering what had just happened. Was it an accident or German sabotage? The Bowery Boys is show about the people and events that have shaped the history of New York City, and really, shaped America. Listen to more episodes of The Bowery Boys at https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/bowery-boys-first/bowery-boys-podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. In nineteen sixteen, New York was rocked by one
[0:22] Speaker 1: of the largest explosions the world had ever experienced. Windows
[0:27] Speaker 1: were shattered across Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty was badly damaged.
[0:32] Speaker 1: The sound of the explosion could be heard down in Philadelphia.
[0:37] Speaker 1: But how did this catastrophe occur? Was it a dreadful
[0:41] Speaker 1: accident or was it perhaps sabotage by foreign agents. I'll
[0:48] Speaker 1: be hosting Cautionary Tales as usual next week, but this
[0:51] Speaker 1: week I'm handing the detonator over to the Bowery Boys.
[0:55] Speaker 1: The tale they're about to tell you involves fireworks, spies,
[0:59] Speaker 1: opera singers, suspected sex workers, German nobility, and cigar bombs.
[1:04] Speaker 1: It's quite the story. Barry Boys is a fortnightly podcast
[1:09] Speaker 1: all about the history of New York City. It's full
[1:12] Speaker 1: of fascinating curiosities and surprising stories. The hosts Greg Young
[1:16] Speaker 1: and Tom Meyers have been making the show since two
[1:19] Speaker 1: thousand and seven, so as you can imagine, they really
[1:22] Speaker 1: know what they're talking about. You can, of course find
[1:26] Speaker 1: the Bowery Boys podcast in all the usual places. So
[1:30] Speaker 1: now caution Retales presents Danger in the Harbor from the
[1:34] Speaker 1: Bowery Boys, The Barry Boys, Episode one ninety seven, Danger
[1:40] Speaker 1: in the Harbor, The Black Tarn Explosion. Hey it's the
[1:43] Speaker 1: Bowery Boys. Hey, hi there, Welcome to the Bowery Boys.
[2:01] Speaker 1: This is Greg Young and this is Tom Myers. There
[2:04] Speaker 1: once was a very special place in one of America's
[2:08] Speaker 1: most famous land marks where visitors got to observe the
[2:11] Speaker 1: New York Harbor from a very unique perspective. But for
[2:16] Speaker 1: almost one hundred years, that vantage spot, that place at
[2:20] Speaker 1: this landmark has been permanently closed. This is the story
[2:25] Speaker 1: of how that came to be. This is a story
[2:28] Speaker 1: about millions of pounds of war munitions and explosives that
[2:32] Speaker 1: were detonated late one Saturday night in nineteen sixteen. It
[2:36] Speaker 1: shook the entire region, and it alarmed an entire nation,
[2:41] Speaker 1: a nation that was trying to remain neutral as war
[2:45] Speaker 1: spread throughout Europe. Today, we referred to this event as
[2:49] Speaker 1: the Black tom explosion, which is named for a very
[2:52] Speaker 1: small island that was right up the coast of New
[2:55] Speaker 1: Jersey in the New York Harbor, an island which is
[2:58] Speaker 1: no longer there because of this event. This is generally
[3:01] Speaker 1: considered to be the largest German act of sabotage on
[3:06] Speaker 1: US soil during World War One. It's an event that
[3:10] Speaker 1: is so dramatic, and yet it's something that I feel
[3:13] Speaker 1: that is relatively unknown or not remember today. The story
[3:19] Speaker 1: is quite intriguing, very deathifying, and very surprising. So join
[3:24] Speaker 1: us as we investigate the danger in New York Harbor
[3:28] Speaker 1: and the Black Tom explosion of nineteen sixteen. So, Tom,
[4:00] Speaker 1: you and I are about to discuss the Black Tom
[4:03] Speaker 1: explosion which happened in the early morning hours of July thirtieth,
[4:07] Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen. Right, and it happened on Black Tom Island,
[4:13] Speaker 1: which is a small island just off Liberty Island and
[4:16] Speaker 1: ellis Island, just to the west of those in New
[4:19] Speaker 1: York Harbor. Now, this island Black Tom, let's just get
[4:22] Speaker 1: this out of the way. It is allegedly named after
[4:26] Speaker 1: the islands one time only residents and the African American
[4:31] Speaker 1: fisherman who went by the name Black Tom. It was
[4:35] Speaker 1: originally very small, tiny little things connected later to the
[4:39] Speaker 1: mainland in New Jersey by land Bridge in the late
[4:42] Speaker 1: nineteenth century, and railroad tracks were laid upon the land
[4:46] Speaker 1: bridge and the island. Black Tom Island was used as
[4:49] Speaker 1: a railroad depot in the turn of the century. So
[4:52] Speaker 1: it was actually a sizeable island. It wasn't It wasn't
[4:55] Speaker 1: super tiny. It actually had enough space for a few buildings. Well,
[4:59] Speaker 1: it was built up with landfill, so it would end
[5:01] Speaker 1: up being much larger than the original natural island. But yes,
[5:06] Speaker 1: they would build this mile long pier into New York
[5:09] Speaker 1: Harbor to which vessels and barges could be docked on
[5:14] Speaker 1: the island itself. There were plenty of warehouses depots for
[5:18] Speaker 1: the trains. It was a pretty big operation, and by
[5:22] Speaker 1: nineteen oh five the railroad facility was owned and operated
[5:26] Speaker 1: by the Lehigh Valley Railroad. They ran the shipping board
[5:29] Speaker 1: and they were the ones responsible for expanding the island.
[5:33] Speaker 1: And shortly thereafter the island fell under the jurisdiction of
[5:36] Speaker 1: Jersey City, so it was part of Greater Jersey City.
[5:39] Speaker 1: So a routine industrial island delivering freight back and forth
[5:43] Speaker 1: between ships and the railroad. Yes, and had a prized
[5:47] Speaker 1: position right here in New York Harbor. It seemed to
[5:50] Speaker 1: operate without much drama for much of its existence. The
[5:53] Speaker 1: only thing of note that I could find in the
[5:56] Speaker 1: papers was a small piece like three paragraphs in the
[5:59] Speaker 1: New York Times on July seventeenth, nineteen oh seven, about
[6:03] Speaker 1: two sailors who had drowned off the island. The headline
[6:07] Speaker 1: was drowned in each other's arms. Two schooner hands on
[6:10] Speaker 1: furlough apparently fell off the bridge, and later in the
[6:14] Speaker 1: article it states it is presumed that while walking along
[6:16] Speaker 1: the narrow plank on the bridge leading from the island
[6:20] Speaker 1: to the shore, one of the sailors fell off and
[6:23] Speaker 1: the other attempted to rescue him. The island was really
[6:27] Speaker 1: just known for its shipping business, a business that turned
[6:31] Speaker 1: to munitions and firearms and explosives with the onset of
[6:36] Speaker 1: World War One, which we'll get into a little bit
[6:39] Speaker 1: more detail in the second right. But let's just say
[6:42] Speaker 1: at this point that by nineteen fifteen, because of developments
[6:46] Speaker 1: in the war and the blockade of Germany by the
[6:49] Speaker 1: British Royal Navy, the US, even though the US was
[6:53] Speaker 1: a neutral country at this time, the US was only
[6:56] Speaker 1: trading arms with the Allied forces of Great Britain, France,
[7:00] Speaker 1: and Russia, so shipping lots of explosives through New York
[7:03] Speaker 1: Harbor and specifically this particular place right. The railroads would
[7:08] Speaker 1: bring these explosives across the country from their munition plants
[7:13] Speaker 1: to Jersey City and out along this land bridge to
[7:17] Speaker 1: unload into the warehouses, are directly onto barges that would
[7:20] Speaker 1: take them out to the ships. They weren't exactly advertising
[7:24] Speaker 1: this fact that they were shipping off, you know, dynamites
[7:27] Speaker 1: and all manner of other explosives, because that wasn't really
[7:30] Speaker 1: something that they wanted residents to know too much, not exciting,
[7:34] Speaker 1: nor did they want you know, German secret agents who
[7:37] Speaker 1: were of course by that point, crawling around Lower Manhattan
[7:41] Speaker 1: kind of gazing around trying to figure out where pro
[7:44] Speaker 1: Allied activity was taking place. But this is kind of
[7:46] Speaker 1: the set of for the summer of nineteen sixteen. Why
[7:49] Speaker 1: don't we pull back a little bit maybe to the
[7:51] Speaker 1: start of the war in nineteen fourteen. Right, So, war
[7:54] Speaker 1: had broken out in Europe in nineteen fourteen between the
[7:57] Speaker 1: Central Powers that's Germany and Austria, Hungary versus the Allied Powers,
[8:02] Speaker 1: which was initially Great Britain, France, and Russia. Now these
[8:06] Speaker 1: two sides would gain additional nations as the conflict continued
[8:10] Speaker 1: for years. The US under President would Wilson, would declare
[8:14] Speaker 1: itself neutral, but would end up really only trading munitions
[8:18] Speaker 1: with the Allied forces, which was noticed by the German
[8:22] Speaker 1: secret agents. So there's already German secret agents in the
[8:26] Speaker 1: city even at the beginning of the war, right, because
[8:28] Speaker 1: I assume they were kind of stranded here right, Well, some,
[8:34] Speaker 1: but we have to look at the ambassador from Germany
[8:36] Speaker 1: who came to the neutral United States to serve as ambassador.
[8:40] Speaker 1: That's a man named Count Johann von Bernsdorff, who brought
[8:44] Speaker 1: with him to Washington and to his New York office
[8:47] Speaker 1: because he had an office at sixty Wall Streets. Not
[8:50] Speaker 1: your typical cast of diplomats but instead of rather colorful
[8:54] Speaker 1: cast of characters, and a huge budget one hundred and
[8:58] Speaker 1: fifty million dollars, much of which was slated for intelligence
[9:03] Speaker 1: gathering and sabotage, where they would, among other things, issue
[9:07] Speaker 1: fake passports to German undercover agents to go off to
[9:11] Speaker 1: France and to Great Britain. So the passports themselves were
[9:15] Speaker 1: actually real passports, but what they would do is bribe
[9:19] Speaker 1: or just pay off men who were out of work
[9:23] Speaker 1: and you know, weren't planning on going out of the
[9:25] Speaker 1: country anytime soon, so they would they would get real
[9:29] Speaker 1: passports and then of course would then be faked with
[9:32] Speaker 1: the names and identities of Germans who were already residing
[9:35] Speaker 1: in New York at this time, so then they could
[9:37] Speaker 1: go back and engage in battle back home. But they
[9:40] Speaker 1: were also issuing fake passports to allow undercover agents to
[9:45] Speaker 1: travel to France and to Great Britain and spy over
[9:48] Speaker 1: there and spy for the Central Powers. But of course,
[9:51] Speaker 1: a great great majority of the German Americans who were
[9:53] Speaker 1: living in New York, millions of people who had immigrated
[9:57] Speaker 1: into the United States in the second half of the
[9:59] Speaker 1: nineteenth century and early twentieth century, were not at all
[10:03] Speaker 1: involved in any of this. And furthermore, they had assimilated
[10:06] Speaker 1: quite well into the American society, becoming successful businessmen, very
[10:12] Speaker 1: well respected citizens. So this was dragging their reputation a
[10:16] Speaker 1: bit through the mud. There were already two or three
[10:18] Speaker 1: generations of German immigrants in New York City who had
[10:22] Speaker 1: who were basically the bedrock of a lot of neighborhoods,
[10:26] Speaker 1: so of course there was also a lot of anti
[10:28] Speaker 1: German sentiment. And meanwhile, the Yellow Press was filled with
[10:32] Speaker 1: sensational stories of saboteurs and of German double agents men
[10:38] Speaker 1: popping out of cars in the middle of the night
[10:40] Speaker 1: and running down alleyways. It was all spy and all intrigue.
[10:44] Speaker 1: But some of that was rooted in fact, because between
[10:47] Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen and nineteen eighteen, German agents sabotage more than
[10:52] Speaker 1: fifty sites in the US, and thirty of those were
[10:55] Speaker 1: in New York alone. Which isn't really that surprising that
[10:59] Speaker 1: there would be so many that were sabotaged in New
[11:01] Speaker 1: York and New York Harbor because the area was home
[11:04] Speaker 1: to so many factories and such important large ports shipping
[11:08] Speaker 1: things back to Europe. So then it would make sense
[11:11] Speaker 1: that this little island, Black tom Island, with this very
[11:15] Speaker 1: active railroad bridge, with these warehouses, with these barges loading
[11:19] Speaker 1: munitions on ships, would be a prime target. I'm gonna
[11:23] Speaker 1: be cut back to this point because i want to
[11:25] Speaker 1: spend a little bit more time here on the absurdity
[11:27] Speaker 1: of munitions and explosives being built. We're talking millions and
[11:33] Speaker 1: millions of pounds of explosives that came through here, that
[11:37] Speaker 1: were either manufactured here or that were of course being
[11:40] Speaker 1: transferred from here. This was not just a phenomena of
[11:44] Speaker 1: World War One. This is actually how it had been
[11:47] Speaker 1: for decades. A sort of lighter example of this, of course,
[11:51] Speaker 1: was the many dozens of places around here that manufactured fireworks,
[11:55] Speaker 1: and well, for a short time even fireworks were sold
[11:58] Speaker 1: on a street just off of City Hall and it
[12:00] Speaker 1: was nicknamed Firecrackery Lane. There would be several distributors of fireworks,
[12:05] Speaker 1: like in the middle of the city. Wow, for a
[12:07] Speaker 1: short while, building would actually catch on fire here. So yeah,
[12:11] Speaker 1: so they had to eventually run that out of town, clearly.
[12:14] Speaker 1: But because of this, a lot of businesses around the area,
[12:17] Speaker 1: including Staten Island, which was also very well known for
[12:20] Speaker 1: these kind of places, they sort of had fireworks as
[12:23] Speaker 1: their kind of cover, but what they actually manufactured were
[12:26] Speaker 1: things that were a lot more serious, either munitions or
[12:29] Speaker 1: the machinery or chemicals that could make munitions. And these
[12:33] Speaker 1: were produced in factories in New York City. Yes, and
[12:37] Speaker 1: so you may of course wonder why, but by the
[12:40] Speaker 1: time of World War One, America was actually in a
[12:43] Speaker 1: financial slump. There was almost one million people unemployed. This
[12:47] Speaker 1: war had cut into profits in other ways and other
[12:51] Speaker 1: industries and really damage the export industry for a short
[12:55] Speaker 1: time anyway, But munitions were a growth industry here, right,
[12:58] Speaker 1: So if you were already manufacturing fireworks and it was legal,
[13:02] Speaker 1: and why wouldn't you just sort of expand it if
[13:05] Speaker 1: you knew you could get a lot more income, right,
[13:08] Speaker 1: makes perfect sense, although it sounds still pretty dangerous. As
[13:12] Speaker 1: production increased here in these years, as you mentioned, there
[13:15] Speaker 1: were larger number of accidents. Between nineteen fourteen and nineteen
[13:19] Speaker 1: sixteen there were the most accidents because of course they
[13:21] Speaker 1: weren't Jess manufacturing fireworks, but that was always the cover
[13:26] Speaker 1: a smoke screen, if you're definitely a smoke screen. One
[13:29] Speaker 1: example of one of these quote unquote fireworks companies on
[13:34] Speaker 1: October third, nineteen fourteen, in Jersey City, so really not
[13:37] Speaker 1: that far from Black Tom, the Twiller and Street fireworks
[13:41] Speaker 1: plant exploded. Four people were killed instantly, and the New
[13:46] Speaker 1: York Tribune actually noted the unwillingness of the executives that
[13:51] Speaker 1: even talk about the blast at all, because of course
[13:54] Speaker 1: they weren't supposed to be making munitions. They were just
[13:57] Speaker 1: supposed to be making celebration goods. Did they expect foul
[14:02] Speaker 1: play or was it just another case of a fireworks
[14:06] Speaker 1: factory exploding? Well in eerie parallel to those story that
[14:09] Speaker 1: we're about to tell it is later believed that this
[14:12] Speaker 1: particular fireworks plant was sabotaged. But the thing is is
[14:15] Speaker 1: that there were these explosions all the time. That's the
[14:18] Speaker 1: sort of sad reality that these things kind of happened
[14:21] Speaker 1: once in a while, and because of just the improper
[14:24] Speaker 1: care of these particular explosive devices. But Germans already by
[14:28] Speaker 1: this time, by nineteen fourteen, when this fireworks plant exploded,
[14:32] Speaker 1: these were already being targeted. So from a book I
[14:35] Speaker 1: read called the German Secret Service in America nineteen fourteen
[14:39] Speaker 1: to nineteen eighteen, quote a circular dated November eighteenth, nineteen fourteen,
[14:44] Speaker 1: issued by German Naval Headquarters to all naval agents throughout
[14:48] Speaker 1: the world ordered mobilized, all agents who are overseas and
[14:51] Speaker 1: all destroying agents in ports where vessels carrying war material
[14:56] Speaker 1: are loaded in England, France, Canada, the United States and Russia.
[15:01] Speaker 1: So the thing I guess that we've really reinforced here
[15:04] Speaker 1: is even though we were neutral, we were essentially the enemy,
[15:07] Speaker 1: and we were essentially on the Allied side. And this
[15:09] Speaker 1: is further proof that there were German agents living here
[15:12] Speaker 1: and operating here in New York City, Here's an excerpt
[15:15] Speaker 1: tom from a German notebook that outlined the code phrases
[15:21] Speaker 1: that operatives would use when they were talking on the
[15:24] Speaker 1: telephone in New York City. Okay, okay, okay, so this
[15:28] Speaker 1: is from the code. It's been translated. I'm not very
[15:33] Speaker 1: good at German. That would be kind of funny to
[15:35] Speaker 1: have me read the German and then translated. But now
[15:38] Speaker 1: quote a street number in Manhattan named over the telephone
[15:43] Speaker 1: means that the meeting will take place five blocks further
[15:46] Speaker 1: uptown than the street mentioned. Pennsylvania Railroad Station means Grand
[15:52] Speaker 1: Central Depot hotel, and Sonia means the cafe at the
[15:57] Speaker 1: hotel Manhattan Basement. Hotel Belmont means at the bar in
[16:02] Speaker 1: pass in Columbus Circle, unquote. And it went on and
[16:06] Speaker 1: on and on that one place would actually mean other place,
[16:09] Speaker 1: and these would really confusing. You have to really be
[16:13] Speaker 1: up on your on your cracked codes here because it
[16:15] Speaker 1: would change every single month. We would be so bad
[16:18] Speaker 1: at this cred. We would constantly be in the wrong bar,
[16:21] Speaker 1: in the wrong hotel. I would always be showing up
[16:23] Speaker 1: the paps going like, where's my spies at No, But
[16:27] Speaker 1: so there's cafes all over the place. There's a lot
[16:30] Speaker 1: of meeting spots, okay, where a lot of diabolical behavior
[16:34] Speaker 1: was being crafted. But perhaps the center of all German
[16:39] Speaker 1: intrigues in World War One was in fact in a
[16:43] Speaker 1: townhouse in Chelsea, tom The address is one twenty three
[16:47] Speaker 1: West fifteenth Street, that's between sixth Avenue and seventh Avenue.
[16:52] Speaker 1: This was the home of renowned opera singer Baroness Martha
[16:57] Speaker 1: held Wait, the so called center of German intrigues was
[17:02] Speaker 1: in a baroness opera singer's Chelsea townhouse. Yes, her name
[17:07] Speaker 1: was Martha held Now. It was from a marriage that
[17:10] Speaker 1: we don't really know where she got the name. Perhaps
[17:12] Speaker 1: she just started to call herself the baroness. Okay. Every
[17:15] Speaker 1: description that I've read of her describes her as a
[17:18] Speaker 1: robust woman, a striking brunette. According to this author, Jules Whitcoker,
[17:23] Speaker 1: quote busty and bucksham, with shiny black hair, dark blue eyes,
[17:27] Speaker 1: a pointed chin, and a voice that could shatter China,
[17:32] Speaker 1: the nation or the plates, the plates, many plates. Probably
[17:37] Speaker 1: not the whole nation, maybe a smaller country. Well. Anyway,
[17:40] Speaker 1: her parlor was frequently filled with guests entertained of course,
[17:45] Speaker 1: by Misheld's voice. But of course it was a very
[17:48] Speaker 1: fancy house, perhaps a little too fancy for a modestly
[17:52] Speaker 1: successful opera singer. From the moment she first rented to
[17:56] Speaker 1: this town house, neighbors begin suspecting that perhaps she was
[18:00] Speaker 1: a madam, for there were many gentleman callers who snuck
[18:04] Speaker 1: in through the basement door. This kind of behavior would
[18:08] Speaker 1: have been seen for the rep in the Tenderloind and
[18:10] Speaker 1: perhaps not a surprise in this area. During this time,
[18:13] Speaker 1: the suspicious landlord declared, quote, I noticed there was a
[18:16] Speaker 1: great deal of wine and liquor about in the house.
[18:19] Speaker 1: Always had a German atmosphere. What does that mean? A
[18:24] Speaker 1: German atmosphere? I should continue. Missus Held told me on
[18:28] Speaker 1: several occasions that the sea captains on the German boats
[18:31] Speaker 1: were accustomed to coming there, and she said she would
[18:33] Speaker 1: give them little dinners at night. So this was in
[18:36] Speaker 1: fact a safe house for German intelligence officers and operatives
[18:40] Speaker 1: that were connected to the top level German ambassador von Bernsdorff,
[18:44] Speaker 1: the man that you mentioned earlier. Right, So this was
[18:46] Speaker 1: a hotbed of scheming and scandal. Miss Held actually had
[18:50] Speaker 1: young women callers around to entertain the men so it
[18:54] Speaker 1: certainly look a lot like a brothel. Now one frequent
[18:57] Speaker 1: guest and a woman who will come into play a
[18:59] Speaker 1: very important way later in the story. It's a young
[19:02] Speaker 1: lady named Mena Rice. She would of course be known
[19:06] Speaker 1: as the Eastman girl, for she was a mole in Eastman.
[19:10] Speaker 1: Kodak advertisements a very lovely young woman. Oh, I hear
[19:14] Speaker 1: her career was developing. Let me give you a little
[19:16] Speaker 1: snapshot of her time in the house from a book
[19:20] Speaker 1: from nineteen thirty seven called The Enemy Within, which describes
[19:24] Speaker 1: some of Mina's testimony regarding her time in the townhouse. Quote.
[19:28] Speaker 1: The destruction of munitions and factories and other equipment which
[19:32] Speaker 1: was of service to the Allied government was a constant
[19:34] Speaker 1: topic of conversation. Sometimes English was spoken, but even when
[19:38] Speaker 1: German was used, which was generally the case, Miss Rice
[19:41] Speaker 1: miss edwards. She had been married by this particular time
[19:44] Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty seven. Although she could not talk the
[19:46] Speaker 1: language fluently, understood enough German to follow what was said
[19:51] Speaker 1: at these conferences. Bombs were often carefully handed around. Men
[19:55] Speaker 1: brought them in satchels from Hoboken, and Madame Held stored
[20:00] Speaker 1: them in a cupboard in readiness to be given later
[20:03] Speaker 1: to others who carried them away. Hold on, hold on
[20:05] Speaker 1: or held on. Here they're passing around bomb. How big
[20:09] Speaker 1: are these bombs? I've seen them described in several different ways.
[20:12] Speaker 1: One of them is a cigar bomb. Another I've seen
[20:15] Speaker 1: as a pencil bomb. The pencil bombs I read about these,
[20:18] Speaker 1: so apparently they would just pass undetected because they would
[20:22] Speaker 1: be so small, and say, be boarded onto a ship,
[20:25] Speaker 1: and their slow burning fuse could sort of eat away
[20:29] Speaker 1: at the pencil bomb and cause an explosion, often when
[20:33] Speaker 1: this ship was way out at sea. So it's a
[20:36] Speaker 1: kind of extraordinary thing, right to imagine these very deadly
[20:39] Speaker 1: objects in satchels and briefcases in a townhouse here on
[20:45] Speaker 1: fifteenth Street, right, And not only bombs, it would be
[20:48] Speaker 1: blueprints that would be unfurled. It would be photographs that
[20:51] Speaker 1: would be carefully examined. Just imagine the scene of the
[20:55] Speaker 1: typical evening here in the parlor of German operatives here
[21:00] Speaker 1: describing destroying things here in the New York City area.
[21:04] Speaker 1: And then absurdly, as pictures of misheld stare down upon
[21:08] Speaker 1: these particular events, then Miss Heald would then frequently break
[21:12] Speaker 1: into operatic song here as miss Rice here is sort
[21:15] Speaker 1: of floating around the edge, kind of listening to everything
[21:19] Speaker 1: sounds sinister. Well, one evening, a few days before the
[21:23] Speaker 1: sabotage out at Black tom two chemists, according to Mana,
[21:27] Speaker 1: came into the house with explosive chemicals and they were
[21:30] Speaker 1: stored up in the cupboard, and then they began speaking
[21:33] Speaker 1: about something that was about to happen very very soon.
[21:37] Speaker 1: She got freaked out. In fact, that weekend left town,
[21:40] Speaker 1: so she's not even in town for the events that
[21:42] Speaker 1: we were about to describe here, so she took off.
[21:45] Speaker 1: Did she tell anybody on her way out of town?
[21:47] Speaker 1: She didn't. This is kind of one of the big
[21:50] Speaker 1: mysteries of this whole story. One theory is the fact
[21:53] Speaker 1: that if she announced her participation in this, or that
[21:56] Speaker 1: she went to this house, that no one would believe
[21:59] Speaker 1: her and would look at her life and the number
[22:02] Speaker 1: of times she would go there and think, oh, well,
[22:03] Speaker 1: you're a prostitute at a brothel and you're just trying
[22:06] Speaker 1: to cover this up. She didn't feel like she had
[22:08] Speaker 1: a lot of credible ability in this, and it's true,
[22:11] Speaker 1: who knows if they would have listened to her, But
[22:13] Speaker 1: I mean, we'll never know that now, and I should
[22:15] Speaker 1: mention that. Another thing that really freaked Hero out was
[22:18] Speaker 1: the conversation about watchmen out at Black Tom who had
[22:22] Speaker 1: been paid off over the past couple months, paid off
[22:25] Speaker 1: to sort of look the other way, if not exactly
[22:28] Speaker 1: assist in the sabotage that was about to occur. So
[22:31] Speaker 1: she was hearing people actually discuss details involving the phrase
[22:36] Speaker 1: Black Tom Island. Yes she did, and she didn't really
[22:40] Speaker 1: reveal all of this until her full testimony all the
[22:43] Speaker 1: way in nineteen thirty seven. So on the evening of
[22:46] Speaker 1: January twenty ninth, nineteen sixteen, a group of saboteurs headed
[22:50] Speaker 1: that evening to Blacktom Island. Again, a lot of the
[22:53] Speaker 1: details are little hazy because of course many of these
[22:57] Speaker 1: people would escape and never be caught for their crimes.
[23:00] Speaker 1: So we're piecing together information of the events of this
[23:03] Speaker 1: particular evening. But there were two saboteurs, two Germans by
[23:08] Speaker 1: the name of lothar Aska and Kurt Janka, and they
[23:12] Speaker 1: traveled by boat. They traveled by a small rowboat and
[23:16] Speaker 1: crossed the Hudson River to Blacktom Island and had no resistance.
[23:20] Speaker 1: People later did say that they saw two men in
[23:23] Speaker 1: a rowboat, but nothing was done about it. Meanwhile, there
[23:26] Speaker 1: was a third Sabot tour named Michael Kristoff who traveled overland,
[23:30] Speaker 1: did not come via boat, and he got to the
[23:34] Speaker 1: side as well thanks to some of these bribes that
[23:36] Speaker 1: had been distributed throughout the past few weeks. Now, unfortunately,
[23:41] Speaker 1: the rail yards were filled with locomotives filled with two
[23:46] Speaker 1: to four million pounds of explosives. So this was just
[23:51] Speaker 1: a little bit before midnight. Within two or three hours,
[23:55] Speaker 1: New York City and the entire region would be shaken
[23:58] Speaker 1: to the bone. We'll get to the details of this chaotic,
[24:03] Speaker 1: frightening event after the commercial break. Cautionary Tales will return
[24:11] Speaker 1: with Danger in the Harbor in just a moment. Tim
[24:18] Speaker 1: Halford here you're listening to the Bowerie Boys on Cautionary Tales.
[24:22] Speaker 1: Back to Greg and Tom. So it's Saturday, July twenty ninth,
[24:27] Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen. It's a very warm summer's night. It was
[24:32] Speaker 1: now after midnight, so we're in the very early morning
[24:36] Speaker 1: of Sunday, July thirtieth. It's still hot and the air
[24:40] Speaker 1: is thick with mosquitoes. On Black Tom Island, there's seventy
[24:44] Speaker 1: to one hundred railroad cars that were stopped in their
[24:47] Speaker 1: tracks for the night. They were packed with more than
[24:50] Speaker 1: a thousand tons of munitions, and just off the island
[24:54] Speaker 1: on the piers, freighters and barges sat tied up, many
[24:58] Speaker 1: packed and waiting for the morning to be shipped off
[25:01] Speaker 1: to England and France. It was a huge amount of munitions,
[25:05] Speaker 1: even more than usual. And there were some guards. There
[25:08] Speaker 1: were what six or eight guards walking around the island.
[25:13] Speaker 1: There were some detectives. They were hired actually by the
[25:15] Speaker 1: British who did suspect that there might be some kind
[25:18] Speaker 1: of sabotage or foul play, but they certainly weren't enough. Well,
[25:23] Speaker 1: there was a lot to guard. They had all those warehouses,
[25:26] Speaker 1: they had the ships, they had the hundred train cars.
[25:29] Speaker 1: Some of these guards had lit so called smudgepots. These
[25:33] Speaker 1: are pots that were meant to keep the mosquitoes away
[25:37] Speaker 1: because it's just so hot and sticky and you know
[25:39] Speaker 1: how awful it gets, kind of like a citronella candle
[25:42] Speaker 1: is today if you're sitting on your patio. But smudgepot
[25:45] Speaker 1: to get the mosquitoes out of the air. Now, just
[25:48] Speaker 1: after midnight, some of the guards spotted fires on the
[25:51] Speaker 1: island and on the pier. Some of the guards tried
[25:54] Speaker 1: to put it out right away as best they could,
[25:57] Speaker 1: while others sensed the danger that they were in and
[26:01] Speaker 1: they raced to land over to Jersey City to call
[26:04] Speaker 1: upon the fire department. And firemen responded, but they were
[26:08] Speaker 1: extremely cautious and concerned. What were they supposed to do?
[26:12] Speaker 1: Everybody knew the big danger here. It was tied up
[26:15] Speaker 1: right there to the pier. There was this huge cargo
[26:19] Speaker 1: barge called the Johnson seventeen. It was packed with one
[26:23] Speaker 1: hundred thousand pounds of dynamite, just tied up to that pier,
[26:28] Speaker 1: and the fire was just drawing closer. And despite their efforts,
[26:33] Speaker 1: at two o eight in the morning, the Johnson seventeen
[26:37] Speaker 1: caught fire and it exploded, rocking the tiny island and
[26:42] Speaker 1: sending thousands of pounds of shrapnel through the air. It
[26:46] Speaker 1: was an incredibly powerful explosion. In today's terms, it would
[26:50] Speaker 1: measure a five point five on the Richter scale, like
[26:53] Speaker 1: an earthquake. It's almost hard to imagine whine it was
[26:56] Speaker 1: felt ninety miles away, as far away as Philadelphia, and
[27:01] Speaker 1: so you can imagine just right here in the Harbor
[27:03] Speaker 1: across from Black Tom Island. How it pounded the skies,
[27:06] Speaker 1: and it rattled the ground, residents in New York and
[27:10] Speaker 1: New Jersey out of their beds and into the streets,
[27:13] Speaker 1: and shattering glass everywhere. Not just some glass, but like
[27:17] Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of panes of glass all through the city.
[27:21] Speaker 1: The next day's papers, it was almost the only thing
[27:24] Speaker 1: on the front page from the New York Times the
[27:26] Speaker 1: next day, the headline barge cargoes blow up sparks from
[27:30] Speaker 1: small blaze reach explosives. Firemen trapped, city is terror stricken,
[27:35] Speaker 1: great part of population rushes to the streets, many in
[27:39] Speaker 1: night attires seeking safety. The article starts a series of explosions,
[27:44] Speaker 1: beginning with a terrifying one at two o eight this morning,
[27:47] Speaker 1: shook New York and New Jersey and spread panic and
[27:50] Speaker 1: destruction through the city and suburbs. The explosion occurred on
[27:54] Speaker 1: fourteen barges stored with high explosives at the piers of
[27:58] Speaker 1: the National Storage Company on Black Tom Island and New
[28:01] Speaker 1: York Harbor, opposite Bedlow's Island. Firemen who were fighting the
[28:05] Speaker 1: fire were hurled high into the air as the first
[28:07] Speaker 1: barge of explosives let go fireman shot Gregg fifty feet
[28:12] Speaker 1: in the air. The papers. City officials didn't know at
[28:16] Speaker 1: that point the next day how many people had died.
[28:19] Speaker 1: In fact, in this article they're estimating that thirty three
[28:22] Speaker 1: people unperished. That would later come down quite a bit
[28:25] Speaker 1: around ten it was estimated. Still today there's some ambiguity
[28:29] Speaker 1: about the number of people who perished in this however,
[28:32] Speaker 1: the article continues that there was loss of life. However,
[28:35] Speaker 1: was certain firemen, blackened by smoke and their clothing torn
[28:39] Speaker 1: to tatters, came staggering out of the smoke, But they
[28:42] Speaker 1: were two days to tell what had happened. So this
[28:45] Speaker 1: was a two oway. This first big, giant explosion that
[28:49] Speaker 1: sent shrapnel through the air and through the entire area.
[28:53] Speaker 1: But that wasn't the only explosion. There would be additional
[28:56] Speaker 1: explosions throughout the night, a second, smaller one about thirty
[28:59] Speaker 1: minutes later, and smaller ones all through the night. By
[29:03] Speaker 1: three thirty in the morning, according to the Times quote,
[29:06] Speaker 1: the entire island, Black Tom Island, appeared to be covered
[29:09] Speaker 1: in a sheet of flame. It must have almost looked
[29:12] Speaker 1: as if Jersey City was on fire. Yes, for those
[29:15] Speaker 1: who were able to get over to the water's edge
[29:16] Speaker 1: and look across and see. But millions of people in
[29:20] Speaker 1: New York woke up at the same moment. Some were
[29:23] Speaker 1: still up because it was just two o'clock in the
[29:25] Speaker 1: morning on a Saturday night. And yeah, some of them
[29:27] Speaker 1: were up at Columbus Circle, still parting, still having you know,
[29:30] Speaker 1: still having dinner, still dancing. But many more had tucked
[29:34] Speaker 1: themselves into bed at home or in hotels and got
[29:38] Speaker 1: out of bed or fell out of bed and ran
[29:40] Speaker 1: out into the street to see what in the world
[29:42] Speaker 1: had happened, you know. Wasn't like most people just immediately
[29:45] Speaker 1: suspected that munitions over on Black tom Island had exploded.
[29:50] Speaker 1: Most people thought that there was something much closer to
[29:52] Speaker 1: where they were that had exploded, perhaps even on their
[29:54] Speaker 1: own block. Many firemen who lived in Manhattan, their natural
[29:58] Speaker 1: inclination was to actually head down to the Italian Quarter,
[30:03] Speaker 1: to where Little Italy is today, because because many of
[30:05] Speaker 1: them assumed it was bombs related to the Black Hand,
[30:09] Speaker 1: to Italian blackmailers who frequently left small bombs all over
[30:13] Speaker 1: the city, So that was their first assumption. Was so
[30:15] Speaker 1: this was just a major version of that, And that
[30:18] Speaker 1: was just one hypothesis people were pulling fire alarms and
[30:21] Speaker 1: calling fire stations all over town, thinking that there had
[30:24] Speaker 1: been an explosion right in their neighborhood. They were calling
[30:27] Speaker 1: the police department. So there was a crazy amount of
[30:29] Speaker 1: police and fire activity trying to get through streets that
[30:33] Speaker 1: were clogged already with panicked residents trying to figure out
[30:37] Speaker 1: what had happened. So it was complete chaos. It was
[30:40] Speaker 1: really described as rush hour traffic, and of course, with
[30:43] Speaker 1: the police tied up in false reports of buildings being dynamited.
[30:47] Speaker 1: There was some report of looters taken advantage of the situation,
[30:51] Speaker 1: and panes of glass all over the city. Thousands of
[30:54] Speaker 1: windows shattered from the Financial District, all of JP Morgan's offices,
[30:59] Speaker 1: windows shattered to Times Square, to Riverside Drive, the windows
[31:04] Speaker 1: of the New York Public Library shattered on Fifth Avenue,
[31:07] Speaker 1: and at Times Square, guest jumped from their beds at
[31:10] Speaker 1: the Knickerbocker Hotel and they raced in their pajamas into
[31:13] Speaker 1: Times Square. And meanwhile, and you can just imagine the
[31:16] Speaker 1: chaos of this situation. At the same time, a water
[31:19] Speaker 1: main burst in sixth Avenue near forty second Street and
[31:22] Speaker 1: flooded a block in four directions. According to the Times,
[31:25] Speaker 1: it must have seen that the world was ending at
[31:27] Speaker 1: forty second and sixth Avenue from the Times, quote from
[31:31] Speaker 1: the large hotels, women rushed out scantily clad, and men
[31:34] Speaker 1: who wore pajamas covered with overcoats. And it wasn't just
[31:37] Speaker 1: in Manhattan and Brooklyn. It rattled two different elevated trains
[31:41] Speaker 1: crossing the Brooklyn Bridge into the Borough Scary. You can
[31:45] Speaker 1: imagine what it would have been like to be on
[31:47] Speaker 1: board one of those, and it shattered those train windows
[31:49] Speaker 1: as well. It shaped and it rattled, and it actually
[31:53] Speaker 1: swayed the Brooklyn, the Manhattan and the Williamsburg bridges, causing
[31:57] Speaker 1: panic among the people who were crossing in automobiles and
[32:00] Speaker 1: crossing by foot. A building on Myrtle Avenue in Washington
[32:03] Speaker 1: Street had been quote knocked down by the explosion. There
[32:07] Speaker 1: was a lot of shaking around the Borough Hall neighborhood,
[32:09] Speaker 1: including the offices of the Brooklyn Eagle, where the staff
[32:12] Speaker 1: was busy getting out the next day's paper, and they
[32:15] Speaker 1: all of a sudden all of their windows shattered. And meanwhile,
[32:18] Speaker 1: in New Jersey, a two and a half month old
[32:20] Speaker 1: child in Jersey City was tragically thrown from his crib
[32:23] Speaker 1: and died from the shock. In Jersey City, practically every
[32:27] Speaker 1: windows shattered, and to make matters only worse, basically every
[32:31] Speaker 1: telephone line between New York and New Jersey was down.
[32:34] Speaker 1: The connection had been blown up. You're describing all of
[32:38] Speaker 1: these panes of glass breaking, like thousands and thousands and
[32:41] Speaker 1: thousands of windows here. I actually, I just can't believe
[32:44] Speaker 1: that there are actually no deaths attributed to all of
[32:47] Speaker 1: this broken glass. I mean, there were some, certainly hundreds
[32:49] Speaker 1: of injuries, but because it was so early in the
[32:52] Speaker 1: morning that there weren't actually a lot of people on
[32:55] Speaker 1: the streets for the initial blasts or for the glass
[32:58] Speaker 1: coming down onto the sidewalks and streets. But then also
[33:01] Speaker 1: all of the people, you know, hundreds of thousands of
[33:04] Speaker 1: people who raced out into streets and tried to figure
[33:06] Speaker 1: out what was going on, and thousands of people who
[33:09] Speaker 1: tried to make their way over to the water's edge
[33:12] Speaker 1: to see what was happening, to gaze upon the spectacle
[33:16] Speaker 1: of the fire as it was burning. You can imagine
[33:18] Speaker 1: how dangerous it was to have these thousands of people
[33:21] Speaker 1: stomping upon all of this broken glass. She told us
[33:24] Speaker 1: about Jersey City and Manhattan and Brooklyn. But what about
[33:27] Speaker 1: the two islands that are actually closest here to Black Tom,
[33:31] Speaker 1: which was Bedlow's Island, of course, Liberty Island and Ellis Island. Well,
[33:36] Speaker 1: on Ellis Island about six hundred to seven hundred immigrants,
[33:40] Speaker 1: many of them who were patients at the hospital facility
[33:43] Speaker 1: on the island, had to be transferred to Manhattan. And meanwhile,
[33:47] Speaker 1: over on Bedlow's Island, shrapnel actually struck the back of
[33:51] Speaker 1: the Statue of Liberty, doing great damage one hundred thousand
[33:54] Speaker 1: dollars in damage to her torch and to her robe.
[33:57] Speaker 1: Imagine Greg, these bullets and these bombs that had been
[34:01] Speaker 1: meant for a war in Europe actually attacking instead the
[34:06] Speaker 1: very symbol of liberty here in the United States. That
[34:09] Speaker 1: is some unfortunate symbolism here. When it was all done,
[34:13] Speaker 1: Black Tom Island was almost entirely destroyed, It's pure and
[34:18] Speaker 1: its docks nearly completely demolished. And we both saw conflicting
[34:22] Speaker 1: numbers of people killed in the explosions. I saw his few, seven,
[34:27] Speaker 1: I saw ten. Also, it's difficult to say because so
[34:30] Speaker 1: many people suffered from injuries and from falls that were
[34:34] Speaker 1: related to this incident. But we're not directly attributed to it.
[34:37] Speaker 1: One of those victims was the captain of the Johnson seventeen,
[34:41] Speaker 1: whose body washed up onto the shore of Jersey City
[34:44] Speaker 1: just a few days later. The explosions resulted in over
[34:49] Speaker 1: twenty million dollars in damages in at nineteen sixteen dollars,
[34:53] Speaker 1: which is about five hundred million dollars worth of damage today.
[34:57] Speaker 1: And you want to know the really sad thing about this,
[34:59] Speaker 1: the sad statement of the day is even this explosion,
[35:03] Speaker 1: this massive explosion, the biggest explosion that any most people
[35:07] Speaker 1: had ever seen ever experience. Well, many just presumed it
[35:10] Speaker 1: was an accident. There have been many people warning about
[35:13] Speaker 1: all these extra storage of explosives that were on this
[35:16] Speaker 1: island and how it needed to get off of this island.
[35:18] Speaker 1: It needed to be distributed a little bit better. In fact, afterwards,
[35:22] Speaker 1: some of the first arrests were actually officials at the
[35:24] Speaker 1: plant here and Black Tom's who were later charged with
[35:28] Speaker 1: quote criminal and gross negligence. These were the guards, These
[35:32] Speaker 1: were the owners of some of the warehouses and the
[35:34] Speaker 1: plants here. Now do you remember Michael Christophe He was
[35:38] Speaker 1: one of the three saboteurs who traveled along lands who
[35:42] Speaker 1: got him because of the bribery of the guards. Well,
[35:45] Speaker 1: he was actually arrested in Bayonne, New Jersey. He was
[35:51] Speaker 1: questioned and then let go because he was presumed to
[35:55] Speaker 1: be a little deranged actually, and the weirdest detail about him,
[36:00] Speaker 1: and we'll get to him a little bit more later,
[36:02] Speaker 1: but the weirdest details. And after this in nineteen seventeen,
[36:05] Speaker 1: he then enlists in the US Army. Believe it or not, Tom.
[36:08] Speaker 1: Just a few months later, on January eleventh, nineteen seventeen,
[36:13] Speaker 1: it is believed that saboteurs struck at another Munisians factory
[36:18] Speaker 1: just eight miles away in Kingsland, New Jersey. Today that's Lyndhurst,
[36:23] Speaker 1: New Jersey if you're familiar with that town. This was
[36:26] Speaker 1: equally forceful in nature, similar to Black Tom's. The damage
[36:30] Speaker 1: was about seventeen million dollars here. Fortunately, this was not
[36:34] Speaker 1: as tragic an explosion thanks to one brave switchboard operator
[36:39] Speaker 1: named Tesse McNamara who stayed at her post as the
[36:43] Speaker 1: explosion was happening here at Kingsland and transmitted a message
[36:47] Speaker 1: to all of the buildings on the site and so
[36:50] Speaker 1: because of her, no one died in the Kingsland explosion.
[36:55] Speaker 1: And so she became a hero afterwards, Again, speculation of
[37:00] Speaker 1: the Kingsland explosion, it was also believed to have just
[37:02] Speaker 1: been an accident. You know, I don't know what's a
[37:05] Speaker 1: freaky coincidence. Yes, well, I mean things apparently exploded all
[37:09] Speaker 1: time back then because of all of these all of
[37:11] Speaker 1: these factories. And I also think there was just something
[37:14] Speaker 1: about a lot of Americans just didn't want to be
[37:16] Speaker 1: pulled into this war until like they absolutely had too.
[37:19] Speaker 1: So I think a lot of this was trying to
[37:22] Speaker 1: prove they were an accident because they didn't want to
[37:24] Speaker 1: believe that they were sabotage. Well, America would enter World
[37:28] Speaker 1: War One less than a year after the Big Black
[37:31] Speaker 1: Tom explosion, and shortly after Germany, perhaps knowing that US
[37:37] Speaker 1: entry into the war was inevitable at this time, had
[37:40] Speaker 1: announced unrestricted submarine warfare. Had it promptly sunk another US ship.
[37:46] Speaker 1: We forgot to even mention Tom the Lusitania that had
[37:50] Speaker 1: left New York City and had been another victim of
[37:54] Speaker 1: this war. But in terms of the Black Tom, did
[37:57] Speaker 1: anybody ever get arrested for this? Amazingly, trying to find
[38:01] Speaker 1: the identity of the culprits of the Black Tom disaster
[38:04] Speaker 1: would take far longer than the war would actually take
[38:08] Speaker 1: a couple more decades. Believe it or not. The end
[38:11] Speaker 1: of the war was on June twenty eighth, nineteen nineteen,
[38:14] Speaker 1: when the Germans and the Allied countries signed the Treaty
[38:17] Speaker 1: of Versailles. An investigation into the Blacktom explosion was reopened
[38:23] Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty two, and Congress formed a commission which
[38:26] Speaker 1: would allow private companies to then sue these war powers
[38:31] Speaker 1: for alleged crimes against their property. But it was kind
[38:33] Speaker 1: of an interesting concept, right, Bud. Sure, but if you
[38:36] Speaker 1: think about the Lehigh Valley Railroad, they had suffered a
[38:38] Speaker 1: tremendous damage to their shipping ports. I mean, it was
[38:41] Speaker 1: a private company that suffered because of this international crisis,
[38:46] Speaker 1: and you know, and on top of it, they literally
[38:48] Speaker 1: lost an island. The entire island was gone. So so
[38:51] Speaker 1: it was because of Lehigh that the investigation was reopened.
[38:56] Speaker 1: They brought back mister Michael Kristoff, who then became a
[38:59] Speaker 1: leading suspect. Although again it's hard to know if he
[39:03] Speaker 1: was like a crafty actor who was like pulling the
[39:07] Speaker 1: wool over these people's eyes, or if he was just
[39:10] Speaker 1: maybe kind of a dense person and not a very
[39:13] Speaker 1: intelligent person, and they couldn't believe that he would have
[39:16] Speaker 1: been part of this elaborate conspiracy. Mister Kristoff was actually
[39:22] Speaker 1: involved in this investigation even after his death in nineteen
[39:26] Speaker 1: twenty eight. They actually went as far as exhuming his
[39:28] Speaker 1: body from Estaten Island Potter's Field and even here, and
[39:33] Speaker 1: this is where it gets really mysterious and where maybe
[39:35] Speaker 1: he was not exactly what he said he was for.
[39:39] Speaker 1: When they exhumed his body, they discovered that the body
[39:42] Speaker 1: held papers that matched Kristoff's name, but the dental records
[39:47] Speaker 1: of this body did not match those of Michael Kristoff,
[39:50] Speaker 1: leading someone to believe that his death was faked, that
[39:54] Speaker 1: they had buried another person that to escape and to
[39:57] Speaker 1: lose his identity, that he took another body, said it
[40:01] Speaker 1: was him, buried it under his name with his own papers,
[40:04] Speaker 1: and then left town. Now Lehigh actually originally lost their
[40:08] Speaker 1: case with the commission, but it then was eventually reopened
[40:12] Speaker 1: and stretched well into the nineteen thirties. And it was
[40:15] Speaker 1: around this particular time that we got the testimony of
[40:18] Speaker 1: our Eastman girl who began telling her stories of the
[40:22] Speaker 1: mysterious Chelsea Townhouse of Martha held. They also retrieved the
[40:27] Speaker 1: confession of a man named Paul Hilkin, who was a
[40:30] Speaker 1: man who lived in Baltimore and who was connected with
[40:33] Speaker 1: the bribery scheme of bribing these guards. He was the
[40:37] Speaker 1: paymaster for the German agents and had in fact paid
[40:40] Speaker 1: the agents that were connected to the Black Tom explosion.
[40:44] Speaker 1: Now with his cooperation, he actually was able to prove
[40:48] Speaker 1: that he was part of this by delivering to the
[40:50] Speaker 1: investigation a magazine from nineteen seventeen that had penciled in
[40:55] Speaker 1: payments to the various men that were responsible for the explosion.
[41:00] Speaker 1: And the penciled in parts I loved this were in
[41:03] Speaker 1: invisible ink. They were in lemon juice and you could
[41:06] Speaker 1: only read them when a heat was applied. Just to
[41:09] Speaker 1: add almost a cliche of sabotage at this point in
[41:12] Speaker 1: the story. Wow, this tale just took an unexpected Encyclopedia
[41:16] Speaker 1: brown twist. Greg, Yeah, I hope it didn't sour on you.
[41:22] Speaker 1: I won't get into all the legal specifics, because this
[41:24] Speaker 1: thing drags all the way to the Supreme Court in
[41:26] Speaker 1: nineteen forty one, so reaching all the way then to
[41:30] Speaker 1: the Second World War. By the nineteen fifties. Even after
[41:33] Speaker 1: the Second World War, the German government agreed to finally
[41:37] Speaker 1: compensate the victims of the Black Tom explosion, which even
[41:41] Speaker 1: that then took an incredibly long time to complete. This
[41:45] Speaker 1: payment of fifty million dollars. The final installment of the
[41:48] Speaker 1: payment was paid as late as nineteen seventy nine. Wow,
[41:54] Speaker 1: Well what exists today of any of this? There are
[41:58] Speaker 1: actually three places you can visit. So the first place
[42:01] Speaker 1: is the actual site of Black Tom Island. It is
[42:04] Speaker 1: in the area of today's Liberty State Park in Jersey City.
[42:08] Speaker 1: It's inside the park. It's in the park, Yeah, the
[42:11] Speaker 1: southeastern part of the park. If you go there today,
[42:15] Speaker 1: you'll find a small plaque that says, quote, you are
[42:18] Speaker 1: walking on a site which saw one of the worst
[42:20] Speaker 1: acts of terrorism in American history. Now. The second place
[42:25] Speaker 1: that you can visit you can't go inside, of course,
[42:27] Speaker 1: but one twenty three West fifteenth Street. That building is
[42:32] Speaker 1: still there, that townhouse is still there, but it is
[42:34] Speaker 1: radically redone on the front of it. It looks nothing
[42:38] Speaker 1: like it would have back then. I believe that there's
[42:40] Speaker 1: even a garage, which is an odd thing to have
[42:43] Speaker 1: on a side street. In Chelsea, but it shows no
[42:46] Speaker 1: evidence of being the layer of a German opera diva,
[42:49] Speaker 1: believe it or not. There's no marker or plaque that
[42:51] Speaker 1: alerts us to the fact that a baroness had a
[42:57] Speaker 1: parlor filled with German spies at that particular spot. And
[43:01] Speaker 1: of course, the third site on this list that you
[43:04] Speaker 1: can visit, that you can see is, of course the
[43:07] Speaker 1: Statue of Liberty, which suffered over one hundred thousand dollars
[43:11] Speaker 1: in damage because of the Black Tom explosion. But what
[43:14] Speaker 1: you cannot see is the view that many before nineteen
[43:19] Speaker 1: sixteen could have enjoyed from the Statue of Liberty, and
[43:22] Speaker 1: that is the view from the torch oh right, because
[43:25] Speaker 1: the Statue of Liberty suffered injuries to her robe right
[43:29] Speaker 1: and also to the torch in the flame. And as
[43:32] Speaker 1: we hinted at the very first part of our show here,
[43:35] Speaker 1: since nineteen sixteen, since the Black Tom explosion, regular visitors
[43:40] Speaker 1: have not been allowed to go visit the observation deck
[43:45] Speaker 1: on the torch of the Statue of Liberty, and it
[43:48] Speaker 1: has been closed this whole time. It's been closed one
[43:50] Speaker 1: hundred years, one hundred years. I mean, it's great, it's funny,
[43:53] Speaker 1: because when you see early pictures, there's clearly an observation
[43:57] Speaker 1: deck where you can kind of walk around it. It
[43:58] Speaker 1: looks a little frightening to me when you look at
[44:01] Speaker 1: those photographs because you're so high in the air. But
[44:03] Speaker 1: because of this disaster, regular visitors have not been allowed
[44:07] Speaker 1: into the torch, but the crow is open. The crown
[44:10] Speaker 1: has been closed, like for instance, because of nine to eleven,
[44:13] Speaker 1: but the crown was reopened a few years ago, but
[44:16] Speaker 1: not the torch. But not the torch, I mean, it's
[44:19] Speaker 1: it's as much smaller space, it's much harder security, and
[44:23] Speaker 1: probably not up to code, certainly not up to code.
[44:27] Speaker 1: But it is here that you can find the lasting
[44:29] Speaker 1: legacy of the Black Tom explosion. Join us on our
[44:33] Speaker 1: website Bowery Boys History dot com to see photos, illustrations, maps,
[44:39] Speaker 1: and other stories about the explosion here on Black Tom Island.
[44:44] Speaker 1: You can also join us on Twitter and join our
[44:47] Speaker 1: growing communities on Facebook and on Instagram. And of course
[44:51] Speaker 1: we send big thanks in groted toude to our patrons
[44:54] Speaker 1: and supporters who have joined us at patreon dot com.
[44:58] Speaker 1: That's pat r o n dot com slash Bowery Boys,
[45:02] Speaker 1: thank you so much for your support. It's because of
[45:04] Speaker 1: you that we've been able to produce a new show
[45:07] Speaker 1: every two weeks, So thank you very much for listening.
[45:11] Speaker 1: Have a great New York week, whether you live here
[45:12] Speaker 1: or not. See a real sound that was Danger in
[45:25] Speaker 1: the Harbor from the Bowery Boys podcast hosted by Greg
[45:29] Speaker 1: Young and Tom Meyers. If you liked it, you know
[45:32] Speaker 1: the places to find more episodes. Cautionary Tales will return
[45:36] Speaker 1: with a new story next week.

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