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  • Newspaper Articles
    • The Brooklyn Eagle
      • July 20, 1899: “Newsboys Start A Strike.”
      • July 21, 1899: “The Newsboys’ Strike.”
      • July 24, 1899: “Messenger Boys Join the Army of Strikers.”
      • July 24, 1899: “The Newsboys’ Strike.”
      • July 30, 1899: “The Newsboys’ Strike.”
    • The Evening Telegram
      • July 20, 1899: “Newsboys Strike Against Two Papers”
      • July 21, 1899: “Newsboys’ Strike Spreads to Harlem”
      • July 22, 1899: “Boy Strikers Sweep the City”
      • July 24, 1899: “Can’t Break Boys’ Tie-Up”
      • July 25, 1899: “Newsboy Strike Gains Ground”
      • July 26, 1899: “Newsboys Ready to Show Strength”
      • July 27, 1899: “Salvation Lassies Wouldn’t Sell Them”
      • July 28, 1899: “Newsboys See Victory Ahead”
      • July 31, 1899: “Union to Enforce Newsboys’ Strike”
    • The New York Herald
      • July 21, 1899: “Newsboys Strike for Better Terms”
      • July 22, 1899: “Spread of Strike Fever Among Lads”
      • July 23, 1899: “Newsboys’ Strike Promises Success”
      • July 25, 1899: “Newsboys Wage A Merry War”
      • July 26, 1899: “Newsboys’ Strike Becomes General”
      • July 27, 1899: “Newsdealers and the Boy Strikers”
      • July 28, 1899: “Dealers Boycott to Aid Newsboys”
      • July 29, 1899: “Newsboy Strikers Keep Up the Fight”
      • July 30, 1899: “Striking Newsboys Stand Firm”
      • July 31, 1899: “Newsboys Form An Organization.”
    • The New York Times
      • July 21, 1899: “Newsboys Go On Strike”
      • July 22, 1899: “The Strike of the Newsboys”
      • July 23, 1899: “Striking Newsboys Are Firm”
      • July 23, 1899: “Newsboys May Be Uniformed”
      • July 24, 1899: “Mass Meeting of Newsboys”
      • July 25, 1899: “Newsboys Act and Talk”
      • July 25, 1899: “Violent Scenes During Day”
      • July 26, 1899: “Newsboys Still Hold Out”
      • July 26, 1899: “Seek To Help the Newsboys”
      • July 27,1899: “Newsboys Are Weakening”
      • July 28, 1899: “Newsboys Still Hold Out”
      • July 31, 1899: “Newsboys Form A New Union”
      • August 1, 1899: “Newboys Up For Blackmail”
      • August 1, 1899: “Declare Newsboys’ Strike a Failure.”
    • The New York Tribune
      • July 21, 1899: “Newsboys Go On Strike”
      • July 22, 1899: “Newsboys’ Strike Goes On”
      • July 23, 1899: “Newsboys’ Word Stands”
      • July 24, 1899: “A Newsboys’ Meeting”
      • July 25, 1899: “Boys Forsee A Victory”
      • July 25, 1899: “Newsboys Riot in Mount Vernon”
      • July 25, 1899: “Trenton Newsboys Strike”
      • July 25, 1899: “Park Row Capulets and Monatgues”
      • July 26, 1899: “‘Newsies’ Standing Fast”
      • July 26, 1899: “Yonkers Boys Form A Union”
      • July 26, 1899: “New-Haven Newsboys Strike, Too”
      • July 26, 1899: “Newsboys Striking In Paterson”
      • July 26, 1899: “Strikers in Cincinnati”
      • July 26, 1899: “Strikers Ahead in Mount Vernon”
      • July 27, 1899: “Tried for High Treason”
      • July 27, 1899: “Boys Eloquent in Brooklyn”
      • July 28,1899: “‘Kid’ Blink Arrested”
      • July 28, 1899: “Yonkers Boys Win A Victory”
      • July 28, 1899: “Providence Boys Join the Strike”
      • July 30, 1899: “‘Kid’ Blink Fined”
      • July 30, 1899: “Fable Repeated In Fact”
      • July 30, 1899: “New-York Newsboys,” Illustrated Supplement
      • July 31, 1899: “Newsboys’ Strike On Again”
      • July 31, 1899: “Yonkers Boys to Parade”
      • August 1, 1899: “Newsboys Plan Another Meeting”
      • August 1, 1899: “A Big Parade in Yonkers”
      • August 1, 1899: “Newsboys’ Strike in Asbury Park”
      • August 2, 1899: “Newsboys’ Boycott Over”
    • The Sun
      • July 20, 1899: “Newsboys ‘Go Out'”
      • July 21, 1899: “The Only Tie-Up In Town”
      • July 22, 1899: “Strike That Is A Strike”
      • July 23, 1899: “Newsboys’ Strike Swells”
      • July 24, 1899: “Plan to Down Newsboys”
      • July 24, 1899: “Sociological Students in Court”
      • July 25, 1899: “Great Meet of Newsboys”
      • July 25, 1899: “Troy Newsboys In Fight”
      • July 26, 1899: “Newsboys Parade To-Night”
      • July 27, 1899: “Parade To-Night, Sure”
      • July 27, 1899: “Newsboys Gain A Point”
      • July 28, 1899: “Newsboys Get New Leaders”
      • July 28, 1899: “Stole Newspapers from Girls and Women”
      • July 29, 1899: “Newsboys’ New Leader”
      • July 29, 1899: “A Kindergarten for Strikers”
      • July 31, 1899: “Rochester Newsboys to Go On Strike”
      • July 31: “Striking Newsboys Elect Officers”
      • August 1, 1899: “‘World’ Jails Newsboys”
      • August 2, 1899: “Newsboys Strike Up the State”
      • August 2, 1899: “Three Newsboys Arrested for Assault”
    • The World
      • July 30, 1899: “Herald Employees Sued for $10,000”
      • August 1, 1899: “Blackmailers Try to Profit by Strike”
      • August 3, 1899: “Plain Statement of Facts for Public Consideration”
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City Hall Park 1899

~ History of the Newsboys Strike of 1899, through actual newspaper articles from the time.

City Hall Park 1899

Tag Archives: Brace Memorial Lodging House

“‘Newsboy’ Josephine Beck?”

01 Monday May 2017

Posted by cityhallpark1899 in General, The Sun

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"Joe" Becker, Assistant Superintendent Gordon, Brace Memorial Lodging House, Josephine Beck, Matron Hike, newsboys' house, newsgirls, runaway

From the May 1, 1904 edition of The Sun:

“Newsboy” Josephine Beck?

As Joe Becker She Fooled the Lodging House.

She’s 14, and She Acted Like a Girl in Some Ways, but Her Sex Wasn’t Suspected Until She Had Been Sent to the Children’s Aid Society’s Kensico Farm.

Mrs. Charles F. Beck of Newark, N.J., learned yesterday of the appearance at the Newsboys’ Lodging House in this city of Joe Becker, who turned out to be a girl, and she believes that the child is her fourteen-year-old daughter Josephine, who left home on April 14.

The girl disappeared with part of her father’s and part of her brother’s clothing. In her room were found curls of her hair and the scissors with which she had cut them off.

Mrs. beck came to New York last night searching for the child, who had been sent from the lodging house to the Children’s Aid Society’s farm at Kensico and then, when her sex was discovered, returned to this city.

The officials of the society were noncommittal yesterday about the Joe who should have been Josephine, barely admitting that a girl had been at the lodging house and that she is now in one of their institutions. But the newsboys, Matron Hike and Assistant Superintendent Gordon had ideas of their own and freely expressed them.

“Just eleven days ago—to-night,” said Gordon, consulting his register, “he—er,she—came here late at night and asked for a night’s lodging. That’s not unusual. It happens every night. The only thing I noticed was high scared-like voice and eyes as pretty as a girl’s. Joe—that was the name he gave—was bashful, but lots of boys at first are.

“Now this is the pedigree of Josephine, or whatever his—or her—name is.” And Gordon produced a filled out official blank, which stated:

Name? Joseph Becker.
Born? Newark, N.J., Aug 3, 1889.
Parents? No answer.
Profession of trade? Brush maker.
Last employer? J. J. Pett.
Why not working now? Can’t get any.
Ever been in an institution? No.
How much money have you been making? Three dollars a week.
Can you read or write? Yes.
Where have you been during the last week? Roving.
Have you any friends? No.

the boy-girl got a berth in the big five cent dormitory on the third floor, and slept late the next morning. When she appeared at the superintendent’s office about 11 o’clock she asked for some kind of work, and was told to assist the janitor in cleaning up.

“That’s where my first suspicions came in,” said the janitor. “Never a boy could make a bed quick and tidy as that.”

“I just thought he was the prettiest, sweetest little boy I ever come across,” said Matron Hite. “He was so polite and he used to blush when the boys said things.”

“Gee!” said one of the newsboys in the “Waldorf” dormitory, so called because there are a chair and a little locker for each bed and because the cost is 15 cents the night. “Gee! That kid Joe’s a girl.”

“Say, yer slow, Mike,” answered his partner, “yer slow. Half the fellers called him ‘sis.’ Pat Hanley says she gave herself dead away in the gym first time she went there. Somebody pitched a ball her way and she tried to ketch it in her lap.

“She didn’t want to mix up wid us much, ‘cept in sellin’ papers,” said another boy. “Said she wus from de country and asked Pete to show her how ter sell papers. Den she beats Pete at his own game. Say, she had us conned all right, all right. but I wouldn’t ha’ bullied her so much ef I’d ha knowed she wus a girl.”

Just what the real antecedents of Josephine are, no one seems to know. She told several tales, all of which vary and it is believed that she is a runaway girl. She gave her age at first as 15, later as 14, and it is now stated that she is 13. She is about 5 feet tall, well built, blue eyed and golden haired. Her hair was cut short and parted on one side. She had smooth, fair skin and a pretty mouth and teeth.

The youngster’s real sex, it is said, was not discovered until Wednesday, when the superintendent of the society’s farm at Kensico, where Josephine had been sent, became suspicious and asked the disguised adventuress to reveal her identity. Then she confessed.

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“Newsboys Home Fixed Up”

21 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by cityhallpark1899 in Newspaper Articles, The Sun

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Brace Memorial Lodging House, newsboys' house, renovations

From the December 21, 1903 edition of the New York Sun:

Newsboys’ Home Fixed Up.

Changes and Betterments in the Old Duane Street Building.

After being closed for repairs for nearly six months, the Newsboys’ Lodging House, at Duane and New Chambers streets, is again open.
The old dark stairs leading to Duane street have been replaced by a wide, well lighted flight of stone steps leading to New Chambers street. A new doorway and an artistic illuminated sign, presented by one of the managers of Tiffany’s, make the entrance attractive.
The assembly room has been repainted and has a new hardwood floor. New steam-fitting and plumbing have been put throughout the building. The gymnasium has been put in good shape and the house is ready for more boys than ever before.

“Newsboys’ ‘Foster Father’ Tells How They Won Fame”

27 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by cityhallpark1899 in Newspaper Articles

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Brace Memorial Lodging House, Children's Aid Society, Henry L. Gassert, Johnny Brady, Johnny Burke, Josephine Beck, life, Little Minnie, Little Timmy, Mother Heig, Narrow Mike, newsboy code, newsboys, newsboys' house, newsies, oral history, Pop Rudolph, Rudolph Heig, Skinny, superintendent, Swipes, Yaller the Butcher

June 30, 1910 marked the last day that Rudolph Heig served as superintendent of the Newsboys’ Lodging House located at No. 9 Duane Street. His wife, who served as the lodging house’s matron, retired alongside him. The Evening Telegram ran the following article about his career on June 27, 1910:

Newsboys’ “Foster Father” Tells How They Won Fame

Pop Heig, Thirty-Five Years in Charge of Home, Relates Story of 100,000 Charges.

“Pop” Rudolph is going to quit. That is not all. “Mother” Heig has decided that she will have to leave with him, and as she is his wife it isn’t strange that she reached this conclusion. Of course the announcement doesn’t mean much to the ordinary New Yorker when there are other things to read about and he is not sure yet whether the Jeffries-Johnson fight is really going to take place or the Giants are beginning to get in better form. It is merely a little item sandwiched in among a lot of advertisements announcing that the Children’s Aid Society has accepted the resignations of Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph Heig as superintendent and matron, respectively, of the Newsboys’ Home, at No. 14 New Chambers street, and that some one else will be appointed to take their places. It doesn’t mean much to some, but it certainly does mean a whole lot to more than a hundred thousand boys and one girl who knew them as their friends, aids and advisers when every one else in the whole world was against them and the outlook for life was about as black as it can appear to the juvenile mind, which ought to be naturally optimistic. It doesn’t mean newsboys who regret their leaving, but it means newsboys, Governors of States and Territories, financiers and lawyers, who still regard the couple as the only persons in the country who took them in and befriended them when no one else thought them worth caring for.evetelegram_6-27-1910_mrs-mrs-heig

Started as Newsboy.

“Pop” Rudolph Heig didn’t make any fortune for himself and neither did his wife, known from coast to coast by thousands of boys as “Mother Heig.” but if the youngsters whom they have befriended and put on the right road since they first took charge of the Newsboy’s Home had their way they would have the first place in the hall of fame.

Having started life as a newsboy himself there was no one whom the Children’s Aid Society could pick who was more eminently fitted for the place of superintendent of the home for the “newsies” when the home was opened in New Chambers street thirty-five years ago than Mr. Heig. At that time he was a youngster himself, having given up his selling papers in Park row to become office boy in the uptown office of the society and then clerk. He knew boys, and especially newsboys, as only a man who was one himself could know them. He was as well acquainted with their code of honor, division of districts and unwritten fraternal laws as they were themselves and he knew that a newsboy wasn’t to be treated with the same regulations that a youngster of the upper ten would expect. To be pampered and coaxed was disgusting to them, and to have any one start in “preaching” in a vernacular they didn’t know was something that any youngster who had to hustle for himself hated worst of all. Mr. Heig knew this.

A reception is to be tendered Mr. and Mrs. Heig on Thursday night, which will be the last night they will spend in the old lodging house, and it is expected that their boys from all parts of the country will be present.

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“Waldorf Room at the Newsboys’ Lodging House”

17 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by cityhallpark1899 in Tribune

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Brace Memorial Lodging House, Collars, Dutch Pete, Five Cent Blokes, life, newsboy code, newsboys, newsboys' house, newsgirls, Paddy the Pug, photographs, Reggie from Paris, savings bank, superintendent Heig, The Man Behind, Waldorf Gang, Waldorf Room

From the New York Tribune’s Illustrated Supplement on April 17, 1904:

Waldorf Room at the Newsboys’ Lodging House

Some Picturesque Characteristics of the Little Fellows Who Sell “Uxtrys” in the Streets of New-York.

Whatever the newsboy may lack in appearance, he has a bottom all the instincts of an aristocrat. Let the sunshine of prosperity beam on him even for a moment, and he buds with the true flowers of a patrician. If he makes a couple of dollars by the help of the Japanese fleet, whose latest manoeuvres has furnished him with a startling bit of news, he spends his money with a lavish hand. instead of a box at the opera, he buys tickets for the “gang” just beneath the grimy roof of some Bowery theatre.

A striking illustration of the “newsies” latent gentility is furnished by a new feature of the Newsboys’ Lodging House, near Chatham Square, which has been called the “Waldorf room.” Although plenty of white, clean beds were to be had in the two big halls for 5 and 10 cents a night, yet an exclusive circle of newsboy society demanded apartments of great privacy. Some of them had obtained work in nearby business houses, where they were enjoying incomes of $10 and $15 a week; and as “Dutch Pete,” who is now loading delivery wagons across the alley from the lodging house expressed it:

“W’en you’se got de wad, you’se might as well lif’ like a gent. An’ yer can’t be a gent widdout piracy. yer can’t mix up wid de bunch and perserve yer rights as a gent.”

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“Newsboys Telegraph President.”

16 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by cityhallpark1899 in Tribune

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Brace Memorial Lodging House, H. Delano Weekes, President Roosevelt, President's Day

In honor of President’s Day, an article that appeared in the New York Tribune on February 13, 1906:

Newsboys telegraph President.

Answer Message from Him While They Were at H. D. Weekes’s Lincoln Day Dinner.

Four hundred happy “newsies” ate turkey and cranberries and lots of other good things yesterday at the annual dinner given by H. Delano Weekes, the attorney, at No. 14 Chambers-st. Letters of regret were read from President Roosevelt, Mayor McClellan and others. At the close the boys asked Mr. Weeks to send a telegram to the President, and the following was sent:

The boys of the Brace Memorial Lodging House of the Children’s Aid Society, who are assembled this evening to celebrate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, respectfully send their thanks and express the deepest gratitude for the President’s kind letter just received. His remembrance of us will never be forgotten, and will always help us to be good and loyal citizens.

Signed, “Kid” Betts, “Lise” Adams, “Sunny” Jim, “Kid” Biscuit and “Canalboat” Joe.

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