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The Malbone Street Wreck
by Brian Cudahy
Reviewed by Paul Matus Page 2
The Narrative
Cudahy starts
slowly in setting the scene of his story by describing the ordinary
events of November 1, 1918, a common literary device. The Great War is
near an end, the famous and deadly influenza epidemic of 1918 is in full
swing, an important election campaign is reaching its climax. He falls
into a little too much minutiae,
perhaps, as he tells us the times of the high and low tides off Governor's
Island. For a moment I suspected that the evening high tide would, in some
odd and unsuspected way, impact on our story--perhaps we would learn that
a ferryboat delayed by the inrushing tide would arrive late at nearby
Fulton Ferry, delaying a train that would make the Malbone Street train
late in turn ... but this didn't happen. I suppose I've simply read too
many old English novels.
In the second
chapter, we learn some of the history of the Brighton Beach Line, the
route where the train would meet its fate. This does not bear too heavily
on the story, but it does explain how the deadly curve, the final
essential element in the unfortunate chain of events, came to
be.
In chapter three, the story begins to attain
its focus, as Cudahy accurately describes the causes of the Brotherhood
of Locomotive Engineers strike without which the BRT would not have
been scrambling for motormen, even to the extent of sending an insufficiently
trained dispatcher out on the road at the controls of a train
full of rush hour passengers.
We meet Edward
Luciano, the motorman of the ill-fated train, in the fourth chapter.
Cudahy describes his regular job, some of his training, and important
details of his personal life which may have contributed to his actions on
the Brighton Line that day. The motorman's name, in itself, is an issue in
the narrative, as different contemporary accounts give him a number of names, various
combinations of Edward, Anthony, Antonio for his given and middle names;
Lewis, Luciano or Luciana for his surname. Cudahy cites anti-Italian
prejudice as motivation for Luciano using the Anglicized version of his
surname, but he doesn't tell us whether Luciano was an immigrant or native
born, which may have had some bearing on this. He correctly tells us that
he was known as "Billy" Lewis to his friends, a note I've seen nowhere
else.
At any rate, Edward Luciano was the name
under which the motorman was indicted, and perhaps that is the reason
Cudahy settled on that name.
The fourth chapter describes
the events leading up to Luciano being assigned as motorman of the train,
and describes the route by which the train reached Park Row from its
origin at Kings Highway on the Culver Line. From Park Row, we get a
detailed description of the train's actions from
the time it left Park Row via the Fulton
Street and Brighton Lines until it met its fate at Malbone
Street.
This is perhaps
the most absorbing chapter of the book, in that Cudahy, with some
conjecture, creates a plausible picture of the ride, Luciano's actions,
and the grim results..
Chapter five tells of
the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, the rescue effort and Cudahy's
idea of what Luciano did in the wake of the
accident.
The following chapter takes
us through the legal proceedings that followed--the Kangaroo Court [my
characterization] assembled by the transit-hating Mayor Hylan and the
actual trial of the motorman and five officials of the BRT on charges of
manslaughter. It doesn't give away any great secret to reveal that all
were acquitted, a result which Cudahy attributes mainly to
prosecutorial incompetence, but which must also take into account the
inherent weaknesses of the case.
The
Epilogue sums up "where they are now" or at least where they were in the
years following the accident--the fate of the BRT and its successor BMT and some
of its officials, the Brighton Line and the crash site, Hylan, Luciano and
even Malbone Street itself. As we conclude, Cudahy has told his story in an
economical 104 pages.
Continued on page 3
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