“Clubbed in Rent Riots”—while digging online for information about my great-great-grandparents, this sensationalistic headline from The Baltimore Sun leapt out of the screen, grabbing my attention more than one hundred years after it was first published.
That night, I had found myself parsing through Newspapers.com, searching for articles relating to Morris and Sarah Chashin, my grandfather’s grandparents. They were immigrants from the Russian Empire who, I had assumed, led relatively reserved lives in New York City working as a tailor and a nurse. One of the few photos we have of them shows them on a rooftop feeding pigeons—not exactly incendiary behavior. While I didn’t find anything in the New York papers about them, there was a hit in Maryland. A 1908 article in The Baltimore Sun detailed tenant protests in Manhattan that turned violent and ultimately led to the arrest of both of my great-great-grandparents.i I was certainly surprised. How did Morris and Sarah become wrapped up in these protests? Were they handcuffed and thrown into a jail cell? Why was this article printed in Baltimore? Fascinated, I set out to solve the mystery.
The 1908 article from The Baltimore Sun was labeled as a “special dispatch” from New York.ii If these events transpired in New York City—and if they were notable enough to merit a special dispatch across state lines—the local papers would have covered it, too. While my ancestors’ names didn’t pop up in New York at first, keywords from The Baltimore Sun piece such as “riot,” “Eleventh St.,” and “rent strike” struck gold. I learned that the protest-turned-brawl that got my ancestors arrested was a part of the 1907 New York City Rent Strike, which saw 10,000 families in Manhattan participate in a rent strike with the goal of reducing rent.iii Much of the rent strike was organized by activists like Pauline M. Newman, a young Jewish woman from the Russian Empire.iv
But I had more questions. What really happened that day? And what happened to Sarah and Morris after their arrest? I punched in a few keywords and my ancestors’ first names to look for articles on January 6th, 1908, and again, got lucky. Originally, I hadn’t found any articles using the name “Chashin” because the articles misspelled my family name as Chasin, Tchahin, and Chasim.v,vi,vii,viii Optical Character Recognition (OCR), the technology that allows newspapers to be searched by text, can also make mistakes, making it possible to miss important information about your family if a few letters are misidentified.ix I found one more newspaper that named my ancestors by considering the cultural context of the time. Many of the families involved with the strike were Jewish, like mine, and thus mostly spoke Yiddish as a first language. Jewish newspapers were also likely interested in these events, considering the people involved in it. A search of historical Jewish press revealed an article from Der Morgen Zshurnal (The Morning Journal), which detailed the events of the day in Yiddish.x
Putting all six articles together, I parsed through different information, perspectives, and biases regarding what happened on January 5th, 1908. Apparently, a New York City landlord, Abraham Lowenthal, was unable to collect rent and attempted to break up a tenant meeting in the hallway. But the various articles differed on how the police became involved.xi,xii,xiii,xiv One article said that Lowenthal went to the police because he feared violence.xv Another article said Lowenthal sought help from the police after being laughed at and jeered out of the building.xvi Yet another article said that Lowenthal was assaulted by the tenants and left on the sidewalk nearly unconscious by the attack when police rushed to his aid.xvii
Clearly, not all those accounts could be true, and these weren’t the only discrepancies. The address of the building where the altercation occurred, the names of the people arrested, the police officers on the scene, and the reported injuries varied from article to article. Was it sensationalistic journalism or just sloppy? One of the most serious mistakes printed was in the New York Times, which stated that, “Policeman Seinug said that Chasin had bitten his hand and struck him in the face.”xviii While it seems that my ancestor Morris Chashin was involved in the brawling, none of the other newspaper articles verified this claim of biting a police officer. To the contrary, they stated that another man bit the police officer and offered other details which support this claim, which would make the New York Times’ statement libelous.
Here is my attempt at reconstructing a rough account of what happened, using information from all six newspaper articles, each having a degree of bias and misinformation:xix,xx,xxi,xxii,xxiii,xxiv
On January 5th, 1908, there were ongoing rent strikes in the Lower East Side, with police involvement in protests on Cherry St., Monroe St., Rutgers St., and most seriously, East Eleventh St. The 30 families that lived in the double tenement house at 516-518 E. Eleventh St. had been withholding rent and were participating in the strikes. They hung red flags, associated with socialist movements, and signs out of the building, including at least one that said, “down with the landlords!” The landlord of the tenement buildings, Abraham Lowenthal, had attempted to collect rent and take down the flags and signs, but was rebuffed on both accounts by the tenants of the building. Returning to the building, he found the tenants gathered in the hallways and ordered them to disperse. Again, he was rebuffed—arguing and yelling ensued. Lowenthal then went to the East Fifth Street Police Station for assistance, and Lieutenant Edward Hall sent Officers Sieburg, O’Brien, and Miller to the scene. Many other families got involved, and the crowd size swelled. Police reinforcements arrived to deal with what they described as a riot, and the policemen and tenants engaged in violence—the policemen bruised, beat, and clubbed many tenants, and the tenants set upon the policemen, knocking them down and hitting them. Max Lichstein/Lichtenstein bit a finger on Officer Sieburg’s left hand. The blame for the first attack and escalation is in contention. The chaos resulted in the arrests of five people: Morris Chashin, tailor; Sarah Chashin, wife of Morris; Max Lichstein/Lichtenstein, tailor; Mr. Bauman, tailor; and David Chorost, paperhanger. Sarah had a child in her arms while brawling, and it is possible that the child was taken to jail with her. Chorost was released and ultimately not charged, but the other four were charged with disorderly conduct and/or inciting a riot. Lichstein/ Lichtenstein faced additional charges, including assault, for biting Officer Sieburg. The four were locked up and eventually taken to Night Court, where a magistrate fined the men $5 and the woman $1. It appears likely that communally raised funds were used to pay the fines. At the scene of the violence, the crowd eventually dispersed, and police moved on to deal with another strike.
While all of this was a surprise to me, I can appreciate my great-great-grandparents' point of view and the actions they took, which helped lead to the activism that ultimately resulted in rent control in New York City.xxv In what is likely a fictionalized account, the New York American newspaper wrote that my great-great-grandmother, Sarah, said to a police officer after her arrest, “You know, Mr. Policeman, we are fighting not only for our children’s sake, but also for your children and wife. If we win it means that you will have cheaper rent.”xxvi While I doubt that this was an exact quote, I have no doubt that Morris and Sarah did what they did for their children and grandchildren to one day have a better life than they did in the Russian Empire—and for that, I'm grateful.
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Notes
i. “Clubbed in Rent Riots,” The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Md.), 6 January 1908, page 2, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
ii. “Clubbed in Rent Riots,” The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Md.), 6 January 1908, page 2, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
iii. Jewish Women’s Archive. “Pauline Newman organizes influential New York rent strike.” Viewed on September 6, 2024 , https://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/26/1907/pauline-newman
iv. Jewish Women’s Archive. “Pauline Newman organizes influential New York rent strike.” Viewed on September 6, 2024 , https://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/26/1907/pauline-newman
v. “Police Hurt in Rent War,” Courier-Post (Camden, N.J.), 6 January 1908, page 5, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
vi. “Rent Strikers Fight the Police,” The New York Times (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 7, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
vii. “Rent Strike Flags Lowered,” The Sun, (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 2, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
viii. “Rent Rioters Are Charged by the Police,” New York American, (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 5, viewed on GenealogyBank.com.
ix. “Newspapers.com. “No Matches? 5 Strategies to Try Next on Newspapers.com.” Viewed on September 6, 2024, https://blog.newspapers.com/ocr-strategies/
x. "רענט רייאָטס אויף דיא איסט סייד” Der Morgen zshurnal (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 7, in Historical Jewish Press [database on-line], The National Library of Israel and Tel Aviv University, 2024.
xi. “Police Hurt in Rent War,” Courier-Post (Camden, N.J.), 6 January 1908, page 5, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
xii. “Clubbed in Rent Riots,” The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Md.), 6 January 1908, page 2, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
xiii. “Rent Strikers Fight the Police,” The New York Times (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 7, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
xiv. “Rent Rioters Are Charged by the Police,” New York American, (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 5, viewed on GenealogyBank.com.
xv. “Police Hurt in Rent War,” Courier-Post (Camden, N.J.), 6 January 1908, page 5, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
xvi. “Rent Strikers Fight the Police,” The New York Times (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 7, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
xvii. “Rent Rioters Are Charged by the Police,” New York American, (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 5, viewed on GenealogyBank.com.
xviii. “Rent Strikers Fight the Police,” The New York Times (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 7, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
xix. “Police Hurt in Rent War,” Courier-Post (Camden, N.J.), 6 January 1908, page 5, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
xx. “Clubbed in Rent Riots,” The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Md.), 6 January 1908, page 2, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
xxi. “Rent Rioters Are Charged by the Police,” New York American, (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 5, viewed on GenealogyBank.com.
xxii. “Rent Strikers Fight the Police,” The New York Times (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 7, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
xxiii. “Rent Strike Flags Lowered,” The Sun, (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 2, viewed on Newspapers.com, 2024.
xxiv. “רענט רייאָטס אויף דיא איסט סייד,” Der Morgen zshurnal (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 7, in Historical Jewish Press [database on-line], The National Library of Israel and Tel Aviv University, 2024.
xxv. Jewish Women’s Archive. “Pauline Newman organizes influential New York rent strike.” Viewed on September 6, 2024 , https://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/26/1907/pauline-newman
xxvi. “Rent Rioters Are Charged by the Police,” New York American, (New York, N.Y.), 6 January 1908, page 5, viewed on GenealogyBank.com.
