by Barron H. Lerner
Nearly 100 years ago, through a combination of bad luck and a series of bad decisions, a Hastings pedestrian died after being hit by two cars. The following is a story about alcoholism, stigma and medical error – and has great relevance today.
The incident occurred just after midnight on August 15, 1930, when Thomas Higgins, described as either 45 or 54 years old and a “gardener on the Garcia estate in Pinecrest,” decided to cross Warburton Avenue near St. Matthews Roman Catholic Church. It was pouring rain.
Unfortunately, Walter Daley, a driver for the M+J Taxi Company heading southbound, didn’t see Higgins and crashed into him. A passenger in the cab realized what had happened and rushed outside but not before a second car, heading northbound, also hit Higgins. Local newspapers, particularly the Yonkers [Herald] Statesman, covered the crash and its aftermath very closely, and this essay draws primarily on their articles.
Daley did the right thing, alerting the police and himself driving Higgins to Dobbs Ferry Hospital on Ashford Avenue around 12:30 AM. Doctors diagnosed Higgins with several rib fractures, which they treated by strapping his chest and dressing several cuts.
By most accounts, Higgins was “unruly and very noisy” at the hospital. As will be discussed below, it is possible he was drunk. His behavior and possible inebriation led the staff to refuse him admission, although they did recommend that he be transferred to Grasslands Hospital, a county facility located near the site of the current Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla. Instead, the Hastings police brought Higgins back to a jail cell between 1:30 and 2:00 AM, with plans to take him back to Dobbs Ferry for x-rays the next morning.
But the police were nervous about Higgins’ condition. He continued to complain of chest pain and was so weak that when he asked for water, it needed to be poured into his mouth. As such, the police called Gedney Jenks, a Hastings general practitioner, to see Higgins in the middle of the night.
Jenks agreed that there were rib fractures and that Higgins should go to Grasslands if not Dobbs Ferry. Another physician, former village health officer Evart Sands, saw Higgins around 10 AM that same morning. Fearing internal injuries, he induced the police to take Higgins to Grasslands.
Sadly, Higgins died at Grasslands two days later on August 17th. Details of his hospitalization are not known but it is reasonable to suspect that he might have survived if he had been immediately admitted to either hospital. Higgins’ cause of death was listed as fractured ribs and internal chest injuries.
The case caught the eye of Westchester County Medical Examiner Amos Squire, who was concerned about what had happened at Dobbs Ferry Hospital. “This case has a very serious bearing on the future action of all hospitals in our County,” he stated. “Persons are apt to mistake in diagnosis.”
Squire conducted a probe over several months. Not surprisingly, perhaps, he got many different versions of the story. Both Alice Cameron, the hospital superintendent, and Joseph Petruzzelli, the treating physician, testified that Higgins was intoxicated. The hospital, Cameron stated, did not admit drunk or unruly patients: “No person suffering with insanity, contagious disease, delirium or any disease causing discomfort to other patients are admitted.” This is why, she explained, the Dobbs Ferry staff had recommended Grasslands, a county facility that accepted all comers. But the Hastings police, she said, had concluded that Grasslands was too far away and that it was too late to bring him there, thus deciding to use the jail cell overnight. Petruzzelli testified that they would have admitted Higgins if a Hastings police officer would have spent the night with Higgins to “keep him quiet.”
Officer Walter Cronell remembered things very differently. Although he admitted having seen Higgins inebriated earlier that week, he was not certain that he had been drinking on the night of the crash. Neither Jenks nor Sands said that they had smelled alcohol on Higgins’ breath.
Alcohol was very much in the news in 1930. The United States was 11 years into its soon-to-fail experiment with Prohibition (officially known as the Volstead Act). Yet even though the country was supposedly dry, bootleggers could easily produce liquor and find customers like Higgins. To groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which had helped pass the Volstead Act, drinkers were lazy and of low moral character. Particular scorn was saved for so-called winos or Skid Row bums. Although scientists would soon develop the concept of alcoholism (Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935), tremendous stigma still existed.
That stigma was evident from the attitude of the Dobbs Ferry Hospital staff. Acting Hastings police captain Thomas Hogan testified that Cameron had told him “You know we don’t want people like that.” And when Higgins was ready for discharge, she had said “Come up and get your drunk.”
Ultimately, Medical Examiner Squire sided with the police. He concluded that Higgins’ groaning and unruliness more likely stemmed from severe injuries as opposed to being inebriated. It would have been appropriate, he concluded, for the patient to stay at Dobbs Ferry Hospital until an ambulance could have transferred him to Grasslands. The ramifications of Squire’s opinion are not available in the existing documentation. Although he mentioned “criminal negligence” in his summary, it is unclear if the hospital was ever legally charged.
Medical schools today routinely teach the topic of medical errors. Higgins’ case would likely be classified as an example of both human error by the doctors and superintendent, as well as a systems error: there was not a good enough system in place to deal with Higgins’ likely internal injuries at a hospital that refused to admit him. Fortunately, in 1986, Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA), which mandates that emergency rooms stabilize all patients prior to discharge, regardless of their insurance status.
Barron H. Lerner is a physician and historian of medicine at New York University. He has lived in Hastings for over 30 years.
Very interesting! A compelling look at which patients are considered more or less deserving of care.
FYI per the 1930 census, he was 50 years old.
Very interesting article, Barron, tight up your alley.
Very interesting article illustrating how social attitudes have, for the most part, changed.
Thank you for this article. Imagine my surprise when I spotted a photo of the building where I spent my very early childhood. It is the building right next to the garage which at the time was the Phelps garage owned by two brothers one of whom was known as Chickie. I delighted that a man could have that name. The building with the awning was owned by my parents and grandparnts. In it they ran the Villard Bakery in it begining in 1946. The war had just ended and we all lived upstairs in the apartment above the bakery, All of us were my grandparents Bronislava (Blanche) and Mikael (Michael) Winski, my parents, Luke and Adele De Rosa and my Aunt Peggy Finlay Winski and her husband, my Uncle Eddie Winski plus my baby brother, Davie. Quite a crowd!
Each Sunday as Mass at St. Matthew’s would let out the bakery was overwhelmed by people wanting baked good to take home. I just hated that all the women used to love pinching my cheeks and my brother and I, to try to avoid them, would hide under the tables set up for people who wanted to have their sweets then and there. I also remember that the man would come every evening to light the gas lantern right out the door of the bakery. The original post office was just on the other side of the bakery. Nana’s restaurant was across the street and sometimes my Dad would go there for breakfast because his early shift at the bakery began well before sun-up. I will try to scan some of our old photos for you.
Then, there were Mr. and Mrs. Craft, Aunt Peggy’s grandparents who had a two-family house where the post office is now. I have a very pretty picture of Aunt Peggy sitting in the beautiful garden the Crafts had to the south of their house. They lived upstairs and the Stepaniks lived downstairs. Mrs. Craft had a real ice box and sometimes I got to go with them to Yonkers to the ice house to get ice for it. They also had a wood burning monster of a stove. Imagine my surprise when in 2024 I visited Hastings for my 60th class reunion and was actually reunited with that same stove as that bete noire had once burned me very badly on my arm! The Crafts took the stove with them to their new house that Mr. Craft built on Hamilton and they stored it in the basement. Eventually, we moved out of the apartment above the bakery to a duplex at 130 Cochrane Avenue along with Aunt Peggie and Uncle Eddie. Among the children with whom we played were the Neubauer kids. I was very happy to see that the Neubauers still lived there and they courteously invited me in to see their behemouth cookery, a bittersweet experience!
Many, many memories of Hastings… My brother, Davie, and I would always stop in to visit Tony Palazzo, the famous illustrator who lived down a bit on Mt. Hope Blvd. He would let us in his basement where he had his art studio to play while he drew. Little did we know he was using us as models for his books! Then there was the scary widow lady who lived in a run-down yellow house on the northwest corner of Mt. Hope and Lefurgy. She drove a really old black car and always wore widow’s weeds. All of us kids were afraid of her, but Davie befriended her when no one else would. You probably already know she was Mrs. Nye, whose maiden name was Draper.
Hastings had so much to offer in those days of yore. I don’t know if the old dame has lost some of her patina as Mrs. Ann Neubauer who was 95-years old in 2024 pointed out to me. Back then Hastings was populated by salt of the earth people mixed in with some very wonderful surprises such as Mr. Litschitz who chased us away when we climbed the walls of his studio to get a look in the high windows because the word was there were naked people in there (!) and Mrs. Zolotow who wrote “David’s Doll” and Mr. Rainwater, down on the other side of Mt Hope… people who to us were just people. What a wonderful melange.
Thank you for your reminiscence, Suzanne! We’ll put your comment in our files and – if it’s OK with you – think about including it as a follow up in a future newsletter.
Villard Bakery, I did not live in the building, but I visited daily.
A solid bakery of bread it was,
the fancy pastries were downtown at the Hastings Bakery.
Hard rolls, crispy on the outside and squishy on the inside, excellent.
But, my favorite was a crumb bun,
one a day for my walk home from school,
and only a nickel.
Bet you can not eat one without getting powdered sugar
all over your front.