Monday, May 5, 2025

Diary of George Templeton Strong: February 3, 1860

Last night’s Elm Street fire was a sad business. Some eighteen or twenty people perished. There was another fire in Lexington Avenue (dwelling houses) due to these pestilent furnaces. Two factories have just been blown to bits in Brooklyn by defective or neglected steamboilers, with great destruction of life. We are still a semi-barbarous race. But the civilizing element also revealed itself this morning at the Tombs, when Mr. Stephens was hanged for poisoning his wife. If a few owners or builders of factories and tenement houses could be hanged tomorrow, life would become less insecure.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 6

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