Large Number of Families Evicted 1893
 

Non-Payment Of Rent
 
 
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Another feature of the landlord and tenant controversy, and one which is seldom given
publicity in consequence of the absence of news gatherers from the scene, is the constable's final sequel to the court action, that is, the last scene in the proceedings the ejectment of the recreant tenants.

 Not infrequently this part of the business is accompanied with considerable personal risk to the constable, as Joseph Lauby of the Sixteenth ward will readily testify. A few weeks ago an irate non rent paying female and a wood chopper's ax threatened to put a summary end to Constable Lauby's official career.

Armed with a dispossess warrant signed by Judge Petterson, Lauby about 5 o'clock one afternoon swooped down upon Mr. and Mrs. John Weidman in a rear tenement at 68 Scholes street. The couple, who occupied the lower floor of the building, according to the landlord and neighbors, had been conducting themselves in a very disorderly manner. When Lauby arrived with official order to vacate the premises husband and wife manifested a pronounced disposition to resist the court's interference. Lauby thereupon peremptorily proceeded to hustle the contents of the place into the street. Suddenly he was pounced upon by Weidman, a powerful longshoreman, and thrown tot he floor. While lying on his back, with Weidman holding him down, Mrs. Weidman picked up a long handled ax and, swinging it through the air, brought it down savagely upon the floor. The weapon was aimed at the prostrate constable's head, but he succeeded in wriggling out of its way and the blade sank two inches into the flooring. Lauby's shouts for assistance finally attracted the attention of the policeman on post in the neighborhood, and the officer released him from his perilous position. The rooms were afterward emptied and a warrant for the arrest of Weidman and his wife obtained.

The service of dispossess warrants in Brownsville, the Hebrew colony on the outskirts of the Twenty-sixth ward, is almost invariably the signal for a savage uprising. Constable Jacob Steinbacher of the Twenty-eighth ward, who, by virtue of an annual contract with the Twenty-sixth ward Landlords' league, controls this line of business up there, has had repeated experiences of an unpleasant character with Brownsvillians. Not long ago he visited the settlement for the purpose of ejecting Louis Cohyon, a non rent paying tenant of Eastern parkway and Christopher avenue. The constable found upon arriving upon the scene that somebody had nailed and padlocked the premises from cellar to attic. He proceeded to forthwith remove the barricade, when he was suddenly set upon by several hundred indignant and howling inhabitants led by a barking dog of big proportions. Between the dog and a score
of clubs and stones in the hands of the excited populace the constable's lot was emphatically not a happy one. He was being pretty roughly handled when a section of police from the Seventeenth precinct station house, whom somebody had summoned, swooped down upon the crowd. The Brownsvillians dispersed at sight of the police and Steinbacher, under police guard, carried the Cohen household goods to the street.

On the whole, landlord and tenant proceedings of a court nature are not favorite actions with any official whose duty compels him to take an active part therein.

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Website: The History Box.com
Article Name: Large Number of Families Evicted 1893
Researcher/Transcriber Miriam Medina

Source:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle September 3, 1893
Time & Date Stamp: