One such individual was the city’s Public Works Commissioner, who ordered worker shifts to be modified so that people worked during the coolest parts of the day. At the end of the day, there were only a few city officials who would do anything to mitigate the effects of the heat wave. It wouldn’t be until the very last day of the heat wave that New York City’s mayor William Strong would call an emergency meeting with department heads to combat the high temperatures. Ultimately it would be a combination of poor living conditions, poor working conditions, poor diet and poor medical care that set the stage for the heat wave’s monstrous impact. People to go down to the piers on the East River and sleep there, out in the open - and would roll into the river and drown.”įollowing the end of the heat wave, the ban would be removed. You’d have children who would go to sleep on fire escapes and fall off and break their legs or be killed. Inevitably, somebody would fall asleep or get drunk, roll off the top of a five-story tenement, crash into the courtyard below, and be killed. Kohn, professor of American history at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, explains in his novel Hot Time In The Old Town: “They took to the rooftops, and they took to the fire escapes, trying to catch a breath of fresh air. As a result of the ban, many New Yorkers seeking refuge from the sweltering heat inside their cramped apartments turned to more inventive sleeping locations - each more dangerous than the next.Īs Edward P. In addition, the sordid conditions of tenement living would have an even stronger impact on the heat wave’s high death toll due to a Parks Department city-wide ban on overnight sleeping in public parks. The eastern North America heat wave had a particularly damaging impact on the working poor who had far fewer resources to protect themselves.
Despite its high death toll, the heat wave is far less known, due in part to the type of people it most affected.
The 1896 eastern North America heat wave resulted in over 1,500 deaths, killing more people than the New York City draft riots of 1863 and the Great Chicago Fire combined. Not only has it piled up the death rate to alarming proportions, but it has kept all humanity sweltering in perspiration and maddening heat.” As the Boston Globe reported, “No warm wave which has visited this country in recent years has held out longer, has been more continuous in its intensity, or more fatal in its results. At night, temperatures never dropped below 72 degrees, with three consecutive nights at 80 degrees or above. Over a period of 10 days in August 1896, temperatures averaged at least 90 degrees Fahrenheit coupled with 90% humidity and little wind. Today marks the 125th anniversary of the eastern North America heat wave, which wreaked havoc across many of the region’s major cities including New York, Boston, Newark and Chicago.
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