Medicine: Brooklyn Misdemeanor

A telephone operator of Brooklyn’s big Jewish Hospital, one Margaret Rhatigan, was discharged last October. Declaring that Dr. Morris Hinenburg, a young man who had become director of the hospital only six months prior, had dismissed her because she was trying to unionize the employes, Mrs. Rhatigan began an organization campaign which culminated in March when 200 cooks, dishwashers, laundresses, electricians, slop women and orderlies put on a sit-down strike in the hospital’s kitchens, pantries and ice plant. Babies cried because their wet diapers were not changed. Doctors and nurses were obliged to go to public restaurants for their meals. After eight hours, police broke up the strike by throwing the help in jail following a stiff scrimmage.

Last week 16 hospital employes and the president of the Hospital Employes’ Union, Fred Gardner, went on trial as a result of that strike. In addition to routine accusations of forcible entry & detainer, committing & maintaining a public nuisance, conspiracy to prevent others from working, they were charged with violating a New York statute passed in 1881. “A person who wilfully and maliciously . . . breaks a contract of service or hiring, knowing . . . that the probable consequence of his so doing will be to endanger human life, or to cause grievous bodily injury, or to expose valuable property to destruction or serious injury, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

The power over strikers which that statute gives New York police is so extensive that up to last week no prosecutor ever dared to cite it in a labor dispute. Brooklyn’s Assistant District Attorney Edward Levine nonetheless used it last week and won convictions of all the accused. While the three justices who presided over the trial retired for a week to cogitate sentences which may amount to twelve years’ imprisonment for each of the 17, the Jewish Hospital’s original malcontent, Telephone Operator Rhatigan, continued to picket the institution. Director Hinenburg, fed up with labor troubles, announced that he was quitting. His new job: superintendent and medical director of the rich, peaceful sanatorium of the Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society at Denver.