The Pickwick Club Disaster

hey weirdos i'm elena i'm ash and this is morbid yay and you know what's crazy we don't have any business no business no real business no and i sound more like a real person this time yeah you know somebody literally said who narrated the last yeah and the thing is this is why you need to listen to the beginning of the episode because i told you this is where we tell you if one of us is sick we might sound a little weird or like you know i just love that somebody was like who the fuck was that it's like i'm sorry okay i know i don't know what to tell you and i think somebody else was like what happened to ash's voice and i was like if you listen to the beginning we said well my babes only so many things can happen yeah i don't know ursula visited me in the night and took it like what just listen to the beginning we said it well my babes only so many things can happen yeah i don't listen to the beginning come on it's just us chatting with you it's us trying to catch up with you that's all it is we're just going on we're trying to connect but that's all we won't connect this time because there's no business i'm not sick no anymore just hot the only thing i can say is get tickets to the live show while they're available while they're hot uh radio city music called june 27th for some reason i keep saying like get it while it's hot and i keep thinking get it while it's hot and it's one of the most cringy clips ever because it's when she's dressed in like a parisian and is she holding the mcdonald's mcdonald's right yeah get it while it's hot i don't know why it's been like my vocal stem lately i love that a lot so get them while they're hot uh and picture us in the racing yeah do that and pre-order the butcher legacy yeah get that while it's hot while it's hot do it um it's great it's i promise i that's my guarantee that it's great guaranteed great it's a great you should put that on the cover little period to the trilogy i like it so so go not an ellipses a period okay trilogy okay didn't say to the series okay trilogy all right i see what you're doing it's its own little story i like that yeah all right uh but that's it so here we are we're gonna start all right today we're gonna talk about um something that i think needs to be taught to more people this thing that happened especially people in massachusetts because like i didn't know about this and i was like hi born and raised am i gonna know about this what no absolutely not okay because like i don't think most people don't know yeah because the other thing about this we're talking about the pickwick club disaster and there's also what i found out at the end was there's no plaque or memorial for this what the hell yeah so i think we need to like try to make that happen because i feel like it needs to happen yeah a lot of people because even you're saying that i don't think i've heard of that and i think that's why a lot of people don't know about it is because there's nothing no like memorial existed at all that's really shitty so we need to make that happen yeah i love you boston let's do this let's do it damn we'll try for the coconut grove um fire yeah there is a memorial yeah and like if you take a duck tour they talk about the coconut grove but i don't think they talk about the pickwick we need one for the pickwick there was a lot of people who died in this and it was pretty rough oh no yeah again i have not heard of this yeah so let's begin shall we uh on beach street in boston's theater district theater uh in 1924 hyman bloomberg found himself trying to sell off a now defunct cafe dreyfus what's a cafe dreyfus the fuck uh so the cafe was a club it was like a place where you could gather in 1924 okay um it was actually kind of like a speakeasy-ish kind of thing because we're in the 20s in the 20s um and it had closed amidst like kind of skindall and some legal issues i don't love legal issues stuff going on so after finding trouble getting anyone to bite at the building a man named timothy berry expressed interest he said i want to rent the first floor okay place and berry told bloomberg he and several of his investors were interested in opening a new social club social club social club a club where you chat where you become social and have a little drink uh and they were only waiting on the city to approve their charter okay so they wanted the building um and desperate for a tenant bloomberg wasn't in the position to turn anyone away so he was like hell yeah you can take that space okay now the pickwick club social club opened in april occupied the first floor again what had once been cafe dreyfus it's unknown whether hyman bloomberg knew anything about his new tenant before he offered berry police oh no but if he did he probably wouldn't have been so eager perhaps in 1924 timothy berry was according to author john kief known as quote a man who had many friends in boston political legal and newspaper circles in other words he was a man of power strongly respected of having ties to organized crime oh now opening the business at the height of the prohibition era the pickwick was officially a social club quote unquote because those were like official things okay but in truth it was really a speakeasy okay like it was a speakeasy yeah in fact as a social club the pickwick like by definition as a social club was supposed to have strict rules for membership that's what a social club had i'm obsessed but in reality reality anyone could get in i love that as long as they knew what to say to the man at the door stop it which is a speakeasy i'm so obsessed with that now have you ever been to a speakeasy yes i love speakeasy it's just it's got such a vibe that's the thing like it feels dangerous we're like not great for women no like not great for like many people not great uh the vibe though the aesthetic the aesthetic honey that's all i say when i say i love the 20s yeah i don't want to be there no i want to visit i want us but like i want us to like dress like we're in the 20s again and for places to look like we're in the 20s that's what i want but to have modern day respect and uh understanding of community and culture i want what we that that's exactly what i want i want what we thought the night the 2020s was gonna be remember when we all entered 2020 and we said it's the roaring 20s you sent a shiver down my spine and we all said i'm so excited it's the roaring 20s back again yeah and then all of a sudden covid was like fuck y'all literally i want to do that i want to do the original thing that we want because that sucked yeah uh but yeah the 1920s the aesthetic is just barnum chef's kiss the best like the dress and the hairstyles the way men dressed oh my god i know i can't get over i love it i don't love the makeup i will say um it depends i don't like the makeup i don't like the makeup i don't like the i don't hate it i don't like the eyebrows the eyebrows leave something to be desired i really don't like the eyebrows but for someone with um really light eyebrows like that are like sparse yeah i think i would do okay all right because i really have to fill mine in you have good eyebrows so i feel like i thank you i fill them in but they look good i wouldn't have to in the 20s that's true just draw a line it's literally just a line which so easy and it expands a lot of your forehead hell yeah uh now at first the pickwick garnered little attention from anyone outside of the neighborhood and i was like oh my god i don't like the eyebrows i don't like the eyebrows then in january 1925 the club appeared in the headlines for the first time when a police raid turned up dozens of cases of rum whiskey and gin hidden in the basement yikes they arrested the bartender max malmatt uh and shut the place down for a few days but by early february max got off with a small fine and the pickwick opened its doors for business again now the pickway and i feel like that probably gave it like a little bit of like a like yeah dust off your shoulder exactly oh okay the pickwick club wasn't that different from the countless other speakeasies in boston at the time but after having been raided and found to be serving alcohol all of a sudden they jumped very quickly to the top of the boston police and licensing commission's list of establishments to keep a nice little eye on for that year but doesn't that guy have a little connection he does all right he sure does now in fact just hours after max paid his fine at the courthouse the raid oh that's not cool that isn't cool he just paid give him a second all right let him live this time though things would not go as smoothly as they had on the previous occasion when they entered the club and announced themselves the entire room erupted into chaos oh my god by the time the whole thing came to an end nine men were arrested on charges of public drunkenness and one man 29 year old william fitzhenry was arrested for assaulting an officer damn of course william fitzhenry was arrested for assaulting an officer william fitzhenry was arrested for assaulting an officer fitzhenry in boston is assaulting a police yeah he's assaulting a police officer to this day fitzhenry is the most fucking irish name boston name i could ever hear now according to the boston globe kid when the police quote dropped in unexpectedly at the club there was considerable excitement and that while the excitement was at its height fitzhenry struck the officer knocking him down and almost rendering him on content damn If there's one thing Fitz Henry is going to do, it's knock your ass out. It's one thing. less than a month later the pickwick was back on the front pages when a group of drunk young men led police on a two-mile car chase through boston's narrow winding streets until the pursuing officers managed to force the car off the road and take them into custody they had all been drinking at the pickwick prior to getting in the car and a few days after that police were called to the club to the club when a fight broke out they said everybody in the club is fighting they are now the police had been called by a nurse from the haymarket relief station after she treated a man who told her he'd been stabbed in the leg during a brawl at the pickwick tim the pickwick is not the pickwick goes crazy the pickwick does not fuck around when the officers arrived at the pickwick they entered to find a room full of drunk and very belligerent i don't know why this is it just is because it's so fucking boston it's just so boston like this part is funny yeah because it's just okay it's just everybody drank it yeah it's just pure just just chicanery i love it no so they come in they find a bunch of drug belligerent men who are no mood to see much less talk to the police according to the police report one of the officers told the men to beat it but no one made an attempt to leave they all just stared at him they were like fuck i said you beat it bitch you beat it why are you in here frustrated one of the officers attempted to arrest one of the drunk men which is when the scene just exploded into what the press described as quote a small riot in the pickwick club oh no as one of the officers grappled with the drunk men the other ran down the street to the nearest precinct for reinforcements and the scene was brought into order a short time later damn but with so many incidents in less than a year yeah this is all less than a year that's the craziest thing the pickwick had started to gain a reputation with the public i'd say so maybe a little seedy yeah maybe a little uh tough spot ill repute you know maybe i don't know whatever what have you um one reporter wrote many people have regarded it as sort of an underworld social center obsessed a place where bandits and their girlfriends might gather after the evening's work was over sign me the fuck up i said are you trying to keep people away sign me up you might be my bandits and their girlfriends here's the thing when i was like 12 years old i literally wanted to be a mob wife i used to watch mob wives and i said someday i will grow up and be treated to vanso yeah so back then oh yeah before my frontal lobe was developed before your frontal lobe was developed and you realized what that yeah but back then oh i would have loved this yeah i would have been a bandit's girlfriend now some of this reputation definitely came from the numerous times that the club's name had appeared in the papers yeah with arrests and criminal activity but at least a small portion of it was likely the result of the rumors of timothy and daniel barry's connections to organized crime figures as well whatever the case though the reputation and the frequent visits from the bpd started to take a toll on the pickwick's profits and in march barry announced the club was going to be shutting its doors for good or nor now the pickwick club did in fact shut down in march but the entire closure kind of looks like it was like a little bit of theater was it a ruse it looks like it was a little bit of theater oh in the theater district as well in the theater district maybe to have the club's image and kind of like rebuff the attention of local law enforcement okay just a few weeks after the club supposedly closed for good a new establishment the greenwich village club opened in its place okay with a large number of invitations going out to prominent members of the community in reality this was just a facade to hide the fact that the pickwick club had simply moved to the second floor and guests who appeared to be visiting the greenwich village club were in fact going to the second floor of the greenwich village club and they were going to the second floor of the pickwick club i'm so obsessed with that it's so shady i love a ruse now unfortunately for the patrons of the new pickwick club the second floor of the building had no restrooms so club goers had to either go to the first or third floor to go to the bathroom okay and at some point in late march a fire broke out at the tailor shop that was on the third floor oh no the fire caused a lot of damage to the upper floors and required about three thousand gallons of water to put out holy shit fortunately the first and second floors of the building were relatively unharmed so the pickwick club was able to remain open okay that said the firefighters had to chop large holes i almost because we're talking about boston i feel like my soul i almost just said large holes large holes but i've i've curbed it for this podcast like i feel like talking i know i've trained myself not to be like full but you can that this one feels like i'm like chop large holes you have to it's it's the ambience it just feels right the firefighters had to chop large holes they just did in various parts of the floor uh just to allow the water to drain properly into the basement okay a few weeks later timothy berry hired a carpenter to just patch over the holes so the club could reopen i feel like we could have done better than that now the greenwich village club never reopened after the fire and the tailor whose shop had started the fire had moved elsewhere leaving the pickwick club the only business in the building in the summer which is like all right let's go yeah the next time the club appeared in the press it was to be for far more shocking reasons than a small fire or a quote-unquote small riot oh no now on the evening of july 4th it was like july 3rd into july 4th 1925 the pickwick club opened its doors for the before the fourth dance okay being held that evening in celebration of you guessed it independence day america's birthday yeah having america having hired a five-piece orchestra and freshly decorated for the occasion that doesn't sound seedy at all no barry expected a large crowd that evening and once the evening got going his expectations were exceeded okay it was just to the gills bustling now that evening 29 year old may lawford was the first to arrive at the club and he was the first to arrive at the was out on a date with john owen and things were going well hell yeah uh what john told reporters later was mrs lawson had recently separated from her husband they hadn't been married very long and she was brokenhearted and i knew she liked to dance and i urged her to accompany me to the club oh no now john wasn't much of a dancer himself so he had no objections when another man came over to the table and asked me to dance he said sure you can dance oh that's a that's a man right that's nice um it was after midnight and the band had just begun playing 12th street rag a song perfectly suited for the charleston which was the most popular dance i love the charleston everybody do the charleston real quick obsessed now as the band wound up couples from every corner of the room were going to the floor the room was shaking with the enthusiasm of so many people jumping moving dancing doing that the same moves so the same jumps the same stomps all at the same time no uh john owen recalled later it was pretty wild in their horns and rattles and firecrackers too firecrackers people have been lighting and throwing them all night inside yeah you guys are right no no the light-hearted mood in the pickwick that night was kind of uncommon for this place yeah as i'm sure you can tell because usually people are just like fighting like gregarious just like jaunty enthusiastic jaunty kind of mood since the first raid in january there was always the potential for the police or some other city authority to come by anytime and break up a party so things were generally fairly chill before this but that night everyone was in good spirits there was no sign of the police anywhere and a raid was kind of like the furthest thing from anyone's mind finally they were busy you know they were having fun it sounds like it was a great time now the party was scheduled to shut down at 4 a.m damn that's a party i was gonna say boston doesn't do that anymore no they do not you get out of there at one yep no so around 3 30 a.m the orchestra leader billy glennon which of course yeah we all i think i knew him yeah i was gonna say i think i knew billy glennon who doesn't uh he started looking through his sheet music for one last song to send everybody on their way nice um he later said i was just about to pick out the last piece we were going to play when rocco yelled at me that the lights looked dim i said gee yeah they do then the porter said to me look at the sand coming down from the ceiling uh what glennon's brother jimmy was the manager of the club of course jimmy glennon was the manager yeah duh so billy knew about the fire and how the firefighters had hacked holes into the floors to allow for drainage and that since then the holes had been covered over with cheap trap doors to allow for drainage of heavy rain okay it had rained heavily in recent days so billy figured the dust and plaster drifting down from the ceiling must have been caused by the recent rains and the building was just resettling you know yeah how great billy glennon went back to sifting through his sheet music then just a few seconds later he heard an alarming sound shoot through the room he later said in a couple of seconds there was a ripping tearing noise and i saw the ceiling start to fall in and the wall on the left of at the front of the room seemed to move what then the lights went out and there was a terrible crash oh my god now cambridge cab driver and garvey had arrived just before the collapse and was standing at the far side of the room waiting on a fare who had gone to get their coat from the coat check he said i looked over at the corner and i saw everyone jump up i thought it was a fight at first and all of a sudden there was a big noise and the lights went out the next thing i knew i was lying down with things pressing onto my back and sides oh god he tried to get up but he was pinned to the floor by something heavy and his face was pressed into the floor and he's like choking on dust and debris what the fuck he said a lot of things went through my head i could hear people fighting to get out when someone grabbed hold of me tom garvey was close to the door so it was easy for whoever grabbed him to pull him to safety which like thank goodness he did but those stuck inside were in a much more dire situation uh john owen who we talked about before said a second after the collapse the room was filled with shrieks and the floor on one side started to give way and the dancing couples were thrown into a gaping wound in the floor what the i turned around just in time to see mrs lawson and her partner disappear through the floor oh my god he made his way to where his date was or had just been but when he looked into the hole in the floor he said all he saw was blackness just a black hole he said he turned to crawl back to where he had just been and he found there was nothing for him to hold on to as the floor beneath him started to crumble seconds later he too was swallowed up by the cavernous hole what the hell is going on having been in the pickwick countless times before the cavernous hole was the only place where he could have been this billy glennon knew the layout and was able to get himself and several others to the office near the back of the club he said i don't remember just how i got out through the office window or who went before me johnny donovan our drummer got out all right and so did frank mulvey the piano player outside he looked around for his brother jimmy and the rest of the band but he couldn't see any of them anywhere then to his absolute horror he said he looked back at the disaster where he just escaped from and the entire band was gone he said after the thing went down there was absolute silence that was one of the darndest things about it no yelling or anything after the place settled we knew there must be a lot of people in there but none of them let out a yip it was just as still as if the place was shut up that's a nightmare isn't that bone chilling that's a nightmare at a certain point the stories of the and watches in horror as their date their friend or a stranger who had just been sitting next to them loses their balance and disappears into the dark cavernous hole in the floor eddie whalen watched helplessly as his friend john mclaughlin slid into the hole in the floor the same was true for frank and virginia vera the couple had just been in the hall when this floor started to give way virginia managed to make it to the front door unharmed but when she turned back to grab her husband frank was gone oh virginia vera was dead very likely the last person to make it out through the front door when the building came down wow now in the darkness of the wreckage on the first floor it took some time but eventually john owen regained his senses and came out of the days that followed the fall he said five minutes went by which seemed like hours to me when finally the police rescued me and i was taken to safety with the cries of injured and screams for help coming from all corners now being in the heart of the city it didn't take long for emergency responders to arrive at the scene that's good seconds after the collapse began the doorman rocco scarpardo ran out into the street and started shouting for help before running back inside to help get others out rocco was in the building when the floor gave way and suffered a minor injury to his knee but his yelling in the street prompted a local beat officer to trigger the alarm box on mason street which drew the men from the local firehouse to come that was good when the building came down there was roughly a hundred or so people in the pickwick oh my god by the time rescue crews were able to get out of the the building about half of those inside had made it out but many many more remained trapped in the rubble with four stories of building on top of them now that is unthinkable the men were quickly to reach the injured who they located now from the screams that were finally happening beneath the debris the sound of those trapped beneath the rubbles was among the most troubling aspects of of the scene according to everybody who talked about it later i'm sure um survival ethel conlon said i couldn't get them out of my mind for days they were just awful the ptsd that you would suffer after something like that i can't even imagine no it took nearly 100 men hours of digging in near pitch dark conditions but finally the first bodies four men and two women were found in a pocket in the corner of the building a short time later boston mayor james curly arrived at the scene and seeing the catastrophe sent a request for 100 more firefighters now at the time of the collapse rescue workers were limited in terms of the equipment and the equipment that they were using and the equipment that they were using and available to really help recover survivors although motorized vehicles did exist few if any were strong enough to handle the incredible weight of four stories of trapped debris and 50 people underneath it right instead workers had to move slowly and methodically through the wreckage looking for survivors and when they found one they had to remove whatever debris they could by hand and try to pull the individual out larry doyle of ladder eight had been working for the for about half an hour when he came upon um arrestee chiba he was alive but pinned beneath two giant timbers that left no room for doyle to get a hold of him instead doyle tied a rope around his waist and attempted to pull him out but immediately after he started pulling uh chiba cried out stop you're tearing me apart you're going to kill me oh my god he stopped and he tried to kind of like him a little bit and with no other ways of getting him out of here he waited a gave the rope one more yank and ultimately he did free him okay good but the timbers did allow for him to like scoose him out kind of thing like just like like he didn't get torn in half now he probably had so many broken bones that's probably why he felt like exactly and it was probably like actually pulling him apart at that point so after he had saved chiba he doyle climbed back into the debris and began feeling his way through looking for survivors and after a few minutes his hand fell upon what felt like a woman's leg and he called out to her but he got no response a few minutes later he'd removed enough debris to get up beside her which is when he realized the woman was dead and he said this woman's spine was snapped backwards at a 90 degree angle oh my god which i can't imagine i can't even picture that after more than an hour digging around an hour digging around looking like through the rubble for survivors yeah larry doyle had breathed in an incredible amount of dust and debris and he was having trouble breathing but he insisted there were more people trapped inside and he was ready to go back in it was only after he collapsed from exhaustion and respiratory trouble that he finally agreed to be seen by a doctor at the nearest hospital and even then it took four other firefighters to keep him from going back into the wreck after they let him out what a hero yeah larry doyle for real now given the size and scope of the disaster the rescue operation quickly turned into what the press called a quote all helpers volunteer and the rescue operation quickly turned into a volunteer event meaning anyone with expertise was encouraged to come out and lend a hand while most who pitched him were emergency responders city workers construction crews there was also a lot of doctors nurses and paramedics that came to the site as first responders in one case dr michael garrity of boston city hospital crawled down to a man who was trapped under the rubble as a result of his finger being hopelessly stuck between two pieces of concrete oh my god this is insane after applying a local anesthetic dr garrity was able to amputate his finger and the man was pulled to safely and taken to the hospital you gotta be kidding me dr garrity crawled into the rubble and safely performed an amputation that's next in 1925 in total darkness in total darkness that's next fucking level that's incredible that's a fucking doctor other doctors from the city hospital were at the scene pulling him out of the hospital and taking him to the hospital performing similar rescues in near darkness all while several hundred or even thousands of pounds a precarious rubble ominously cracked and groaned around them and they're performing amputations to save people yeah that's incredible now eventually the cries and pleas from the injured started to quiet until finally they couldn't be heard at all by the time the sun came up there were still at least 50 people reported missing but the consensus belief was that if they were still in the rubble they probably wouldn't be found alive oh that morning the first report of the collapse went out on the front page of the boston daily globe announcing 12 confirmed dead but by the time the rescue operation was complete the death toll rose to 44 with countless others injured now when news of the accident started spreading around the city some people showed up to volunteer or offer support like reverend lawrence morris from saint james church arrived at the site to provide last rites to the victims while others brought food and other essentials to help volunteers there were many others however who simply showed up to the scene to take a look that's so gross the work of digging out the ruins went on for several days and by the second day thousands have had come to see the scene some in hopes of finding a missing relative of course but most just to see the wreckage looky lose yeah now according to the press quote there was no disorder no wild attempts to break the police line no noise let's go Somehow the crowds even forbore to push an elbow each other to get a better point of vantage so they were at least like chill yeah now they were just there to take in the tragedy of an unimaginable thing that had happened i don't know why you would want to see that when asked for comment about the crowds one officer tasked with guarding the site said if they had to do this for pay they'd wish they were somewhere else they can't see anything and they are far too far away to even hear what's going on so he's like get the fuck out he's like what's the point now before the first day was even over serious questions of accountability were being raised by those in positions of power yeah building commissioner john mahoney had long lamented the crumbling buildings in boston and suspected that might be the cause i would think that would be at least part of it mayor james curly on the other hand blamed the collapse on overcrowding in a public's in a statement of the public he said considering the fact that no official with authority to prevent overcrowding was present in the building it is most probable that the club management taking advantage of the night before crowds seeking unrestrained freedom in their pursuit of pleasure readily accepted all who came to the club after the closing of the property licensed amusement places in boston now at the time it would have been impossible for the mayor or anyone else to make such a definitive statement on the cause of the accident since an investigation into the cause had not even begun yeah so everybody was just kind of guessing but his statements james curly's statements reflect the widespread very conservative perspective in boston that viewed nightclubs dance halls and other similar spaces as contributing to immorality now the following day the globe offered a different perspective and potential cause of the collapse this time from someone who was inside the building when it came down according to frank decker one of the singers performing in the club that night it was quote the steady swaying of the dancers and their stamping of feet as they all performed the charleston that could have caused the collapse he said imagine the force of 50 couples leaping up and down in unison the heavy trampling set the floor swaying then it cracked i paid no attention to this shark crack at the moment as i thought someone had set off a firecracker but the real meaning of it came to me a moment later now in retrospect frank decker's theory that dancing had caused the collapse might seem like kind of silly since most buildings are designed to withstand a far greater shock of course a few dozen people dancing but what we know now that there was like trap doors and that kind of thing that's the thing at the time it seemed intuitive to bostonians following the story in the press and remained a popular urban legend long after the real cause had been revealed that it was dancing the charleston caused this collapse oh no so now the charleston was cursed yeah it was cursed now during one of the trials that followed the incident one of the structural engineers tasked with evaluating the building testified and said as the steady pounding of feet continued the wooden jousts under the linoleum floor began to vibrate structural engineers used the term mechanical resonance to describe what was happening under certain conditions a suspended beam or cross member will violate vibrate violently when the when subjected to steady rhythmic oscillations those vibrations have been known to cause catastrophic failures in bridges buildings and even airplanes the pickwick club dancers knew nothing about resonance they had no idea what was going on under their feet of course before anyone could arrive at the accurate at an accurate explanation for why the building collapsed city workers needed to clear away the rubble which proved more challenging than expected in addition to the expected difficulties of moving you know several tons of debris the large crowd surrounding the area was like a big challenge yeah and while most of them were orderly and complied with police directions others were less respectful people are always going to people this is gonna enrage you on july 6th just days after the collapse police arrested one of the workers angelo cook after he was seen stealing cash from the pockets of the few remaining dead bodies in the ruins you gotta be fucking kidding me dead people's wallets pockets and stealing their money that's a piece of shit there's a special place in hell lowest type of low yeah that's the karmic retribution on that that it will it will reverberate through generations of his family wow like fuck that wow on july 7th the majority of the ruins had been cleared from the scene and the last of the bodies had been removed to go to the morgue for identification meanwhile across the city a grand jury was being convened to hear testimony and evaluate the evidence that afternoon after hearing some survivor testimony district attorney thomas o'brien no led the guard there was gonna be an o'brien there's gotta be uh he led the grand jury to the site so they could see the space for themselves and view the foundation of the building by that time structural engineers had begun evaluating the building and suspected the collapse had not been done yet and the caused by dancers but by a structural issue with the party wall and i'll tell you what a party wall is okay um it's basically the shared wall between the building that housed the pickwick and the building next to it oh now in the era when the dreyfus was built uh buildings were often built to lean against one another as a source of stability they were very close to each other and that shared wall was the party wall between them so it's almost like a like a condo or like it was just like they were just almost like a condo except it's not all the same building there's the buildings that are so close to each other they lean on each other for support that's wild yeah now in this case the building next to the pickwick had recently been torn down thus removing a potentially significant source of support in the party wall stop based on their initial observations the engineers suspected that that could have been the reason for the collapse yeah testifying before the grand jury harry haven one of the engineers in charge of the project uh to be built next to the pickwick said there were concerns about the structural integrity integrity of the pickwick building itself and that those concerns had been shared with the property owners but nothing had been done about it now after several days of testimony and evidence the grand jury indicted six individuals in the pickwick case the following were indicted on charges of manslaughter timothy berry the owner of the club george funk the architect in charge of the building's repair project following the pickwick building's fire and hyman bloomberg the owner of the building three others associated with the pick club were indicted on like lesser charges fair enough to me now a few days later the grand jury reconvened and returned six more indictments for manslaughter against the architects involved in the restoration and construction projects including fritz nathan john pultz john tobin edward romer james hendrick and lawrence perkins all nine men pleaded not guilty and their trials were scheduled for the following uh following months okay now given the high profile nature of the pickwick case everyone from the district attorney to the mayor urged a speedy trial for those accused of manslaughter if for no other reason than to demonstrate that the city took the matter of unstable infrastructure very seriously now just one week after the grand jury returned indictments for the accused the trial against all 12 of the men began at suffolk county superior court the first trial was in the city of suffolk county superior court the first trial to testify was chief of police daniel senate who among several other individuals who testified they were testifying to the level of destruction caused by the fire that had occurred on the third floor several months earlier okay the consensus among those who spoke on the effect of the fire was that while the third floor had been quote very badly burned the building itself remained structurally sound okay now it's kind of hard to it is like to i don't know to feel comfortable yeah yeah exactly exactly thank you now according to guy amerson the expert for the prosecution he said the collapse of the pickwick club was due to a failure of the concrete piers under the foundation due to a lack of lateral bracing on the easterly side now after the building beside the pickwick was torn down effectively making the party wall useless bloomberg hired a construction firm to add to the concrete piers to provide structural support okay i knew the party wall was going to be weak but also you probably should have closed down the club before like you should have closed down the club before you closed down the party wall while that was going to happen well also the piers were very poorly built and weren't capable of supporting the hundred thousand pounds that they were required to support so that was uh useless according to one of the evaluating engineers one of the piers was quote the rottenest piece of concrete i ever saw there were pockets of gravel in the mixture the cement was of poor quality and there wasn't enough of it the shoddy craftsmanship of the piers creating the perfect conditions for a kind of quote domino-like collapse under the right circumstances now that's what's crazy about this is it's like this somewhat strange twist where it turned out that it wasn't one single theory that was correct a lot of them several were kind of working in combination with each other the concrete piers had been poorly made and unprofessionally installed so when the music and the dancing reached its peak it caused the pockets into which the piers had been placed to crumble and the piers to fall without the support from the concrete piers the building simply collapsed into itself unable to withstand the weight just picturing that is like so the scariest thing just a like a building swallowing itself truly it's like when you see videos of like sinkholes yeah oh scary as shit me oh so scary i hate it now given the number of things that had to go wrong in order for the pickwick club to collapse the jury was unable to agree that any of the men on trial were directly responsible for the tragedy and all were found not guilty hmm it's because there was so many things that contributed to this i think they didn't know who actually was at fault here i'm like maybe we can just say that everybody was then now after the verdicts were read judge loomis addressed the jury he said if i had been a member of the jury i would have joined in your verdict there never was sufficient evidence that these defendants had been willfully recklessly or wantonly negligent okay now the acquittal of all 12 men was definitely a disappointment to the victim's families who just hope to see someone responsible for the loss of the lives at the club that night in the years that followed a number of civil suits were filed in total 6.1 million dollars which were is roughly 90 million in 2026 wow but the plaintiffs uh eventually settled for around 40 000 or 1 000 per life lost at the pickwick club i feel like that happens too often it does now in the years that followed the building was eventually repaired and reopened from the 1960s into the late 1980s the building was home to the famous naked eye cabaret oh until it was torn down and a parking garage was built on the site and still remains not a parking garage as of now there is no plaque or memorial to indicate the 44 people whose lives were lost that night that's such bullshit and again few people remember or are aware that this actually happened well in the fact that it just became don't me either and the fact that it just became a parking garage yeah i just feel like more should have been done to protect the site yeah you know and let me just now that we're at the end of this i'm gonna read the 44 people's names uh benjamin alexander ella callie burton and i'm gonna read the 44 people's names uh benjamin alexander ella callie burton and Chapman, William Cochran, Ralph Congdon, Michael Ciafalo, Charles DeCostas, Francis Driscoll, Pauline DeLuca, Gelato Lombardi, Wayne Marr, Mary McEachern, Lillian McIsaacs, John McLaughlin, Francis McLean, Thomas McManus, Mary Moore, Max Melmet, John Duffy, Mabel Dixon, Edward Flanagan, Clara Frederick, Patrick Galvin, James Glennon, Arthur Graham, William Grossman, Paul Halloran, Stuart Henderson, Edith Jordan, Loretta Keegan, Peggy Lawson, Margaret Murphy, John Murphy, William Murray, James Murray, Bart O'Donnell, Carl Poslin Jr., Joseph Fanef, John Scales, Doris Stern, Frank Tilo, Frank Vera, Charles Whalen, and Esther Wilson. So sad that that. That many people lost their lives. Yeah. It's just, it's really getting to me that there's no memorial. That's nuts. And these, these are all like ranging from age 20 to, we have a 43 year old, we have a 42 year old, everything in between. That's a lot of young people. Yeah, I think it's like 43, it's like 20 to, ages 20 to 43, everything in between. That's crazy. Yeah, a lot of 30 year olds, a lot of, you know, like people just having fun. Yeah, just young people. Like it sucks. They weren't doing anything wrong. They were just there dancing with Charleston. They were just celebrating a holiday. Yeah. It's really sad. And I really hate that it doesn't have a plaque. I think that, that garage, that parking garage needs to have a plaque. I think we should write to Mara Healy. I was like, we, I was looking up how to petition to do this. And I think we are going to try to petition to do this. I just think it's right. I do too. And I don't like that I didn't know that this was a thing. Yeah, we should learn about this in school. Because you, I mean, you do learn about the Coconut Grove. And like the molasses flood, you know, like it's all part of. About these things. Like people lost their lives in this stuff. We should know about it. Absolutely. Especially you're just parking in a garage. I know. You don't know that like underneath was the site of a horrific tragedy. I really do feel like it should be something else. We're going to see what we can do to petition. Yeah, we're going to try to talk to Mara. We're going to get some, get some signatures. Yeah, let's go. Maybe we can start something up. We'll get some information gathered and hopefully update you next episode. Yeah, we'll let you guys know how it's going. That's our new thing right now. We're going to do this. Yeah, we're planning a live show. We're planning. We're planning a memorial. Exactly. So. I like it. Fun fact, Play-Doh was originally used as wallpaper cleaner. Huh. Yeah. You just rub it all over your wall. I guess so. Does it still work? I don't know. I wonder. Let's look a little more into this. That's an interesting one. Play-Doh wallpaper cleaner. It was originally invented as wallpaper cleaner. In the 1930s, Coutal Products in Cincinnati, Ohio, created a pliable non-toxic putty used to lift coal soot off of walls. When home switched to cleaner heating after World War II, the company repurposed the cleaner as a toy, which became Play-Doh. Wow. Isn't that fun? Damn, that's cool. So it was like an accidental toy. Look at Play-Doh. I love accidental inventions. I do too. Remember eating Play-Doh when you were little? Eating Play-Doh? It was so salty. Oh, yeah. I did. I remember now. Everybody ate Play-Doh. Yeah. And I just remember the smell, really. Oh, I can smell it like right now. Because like the kids have Play-Doh. Yeah. So I can still smell it. Play-Doh? That's crazy. Because, I mean, it was after World War II. It was after World War II that they switched and made it a toy, and our kids are still playing with it. Yeah, still playing with Play-Doh. Like, that's nuts. And it's so simple. Yeah. See? It's the simplest stuff. It really is. Not the high-tech bullshit. Oh, and I love when you got like the Play-Doh sets where you can like make it like noodles. Smush it through something. Yeah, it's like spaghetti. I love smushing it through something. I love that. Let's go play with Play-Doh right now. Let's do that. All right. Well, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But it's so weird that you don't go buy some Play-Doh right now and smush it. Yeah. Just don't eat it anymore because you're like, I don't think you're supposed to. I'm sure it's not good for you. It's probably fine, but like, I don't know. I'm sure it's not good for you.