Two men argued outside Mrs. Abram S. Hewitt’s home over which of them would ask for money. They had tried to decide by tossing a coin; the dispute became a fight. Detectives arrested both, and the Times reported that each received six months in the Workhouse.
The item places the arrests within a wider police response. Following a complaint from Secretary Lamb of the National Arts Club, the captain of the East 22nd Street station had sent two officers in plain clothes to the Park. Five men were arrested within an hour.
Whose account survives?
The report says that household servants had faced insults when they refused money at the door. It also repeats, with evident amusement, the grand addresses claimed by several arrested men. We hear very little about their circumstances or their own understanding of the events.
Read beside accounts of club dinners and carefully guarded quiet, this small article changes the view. Gramercy’s houses were also points of contact between people with very different resources. The National Arts Club appears here as a participant in neighborhood complaints, and the newspaper records how quickly those complaints became police action.
The clipping supports that specific episode. It does not tell us how typical the encounters were, whether all the allegations were substantiated, or what happened to the men afterward.
The collection contained two copies of this article; one is presented here. The newspaper’s descriptions and allegations are attributed to the report. The two men arrested for fighting were reported sentenced to the Workhouse; the clipping does not give the outcomes for the other three men.
Paragraph breaks and line-end hyphenation have been adjusted for reading. Original wording and period language are retained; editorial additions appear in square brackets.
FOUGHT IN GRAMERCY PARK. Police Bag Five Beggars Who Had Been Holding Up Householders.
Two men were arrested last night in front of the home of Mrs. Abram S. Hewitt, in Gramercy Park, for fighting over which should apply at the house and beg. Both wanted to go and had “tossed” a coin to decide. A dispute arose as to whether it was heads or tails, and they were rolling on the pavement when Detectives Thornton and Adams ran up.
They gave their names as William Kenney of 342 East Twenty-third Street and John Sutton of 346 East Twenty-sixth Street. Magistrate Barlow, in the Night Court, sent them to the Workhouse for six months each.
For weeks Gramercy Park has been overrun with panhandlers and beggars, and on complaint of Secretary Lamb of the National Arts Club Capt. McDermott of the East Twenty-second Street Station sent two plain-clothes men to the park last night, and five men were caught in an hour.
The recent begging had amounted almost to hold-ups, for insults to women servants followed a refusal of money when they answered the door bell. George Ohler, among those arrested last night for begging, gave his residence as the St. Regis, and he was so recorded on the police blotter. Kenney said he had just given up his Winter residence in Los Angeles, and Sutton declared that he was once a dweller in Fifth Avenue.
Source & image credits
“Fought in Gramercy Park.” The New York Times, May 25, 1908, p. 8. Newspaper clipping supplied to the GPBA research collection. The source scan is reproduced without changes to its contents.
