100 years ago in The Record
Monday, Sept. 30, 1918
Harris Friedman is free tonight on $1,000 bond after his arrest for leasing a downtown building to the madam of a disorderly house, The Record reports. Friedman is accused of leasing his property on Sixth Avenue between State Street and Broadway to a woman currently under indictment for operating a house of prostitution. That stretch of Sixth is known as Troy’s red-light district for its actual and alleged disorderly houses in close proximity to the Union Depot. An alleged surge in prostitution amid an increase in the student and soldier population in Troy provoked the latest crackdown on downtown vice. “This is the first step in prosecuting the owners or agents of property renting or leasing the same for immoral purposes,” Rensselaer County district attorney John P. Taylor tells reporters. Taylor issued a warning last week to Friedman and other owners of recently raided properties that they would be held accountable if prostitution continued in their buildings. “I mean to co-operate with the United States military authorities in ridding the city of a menace to soldiers and sailors stationed here, and I mean to protect as far as I can students and the youth of the community in general,” Taylor says, “I expect to have in my efforts the active cooperation of the police department of Troy.”
Taylor believes that targeting property owners finally gets to the root of the prostitution problem. “There is but little gained by the prosecution of a disorderly house keeper if immediately after her ousting from premises on conviction the property is to be rented from another of the same kind. The owners and agents must stop renting or leasing property for immoral use, and if they do not, prosecution will follow.”
Friedman is taken into custody by police detective John Lawrenson, but his stay in jail is brief. Jacob C. Rosenthal puts up the bond money that will keep Friedman a free man until his hearing on October 8.
Boys Are Giving Their All For Us
More details about the death of Private Stephen J. Healy emerge in letters just received in Troy. Word of Healy’s death by shrapnel first reached Troy last weekend.
According to Private John Burke, Healy and two other soldiers were killed at the same time when a shell hit a dugout at Third Battalion headquarters. “I know how you feel but it was God’s will,” Burke wrote to Healy’s parents.
“All the articles Steve had on him was a cigarette case, a comb and a fountain pen,” Burke notes, “If there is any way to get them home to you I will.”