Thomas Cut Rate Drug store, 2374 8th Avenue, c. 1939-1941.
1 media/nynyma_rec0040_1_01933_0001_thumb.jpg 2024-06-01T03:16:38+00:00 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bf 1 2 Source: DOF: Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos (New York City Municipal Archives). plain 2024-06-01T03:18:10+00:00 nynyma_rec0040_1_01933_0001 20180308 104854+0000 Stephen Robertson a1bf8804093bc01e94a0485d9f3510bb8508e3bfThis page has tags:
- 1 2023-12-13T11:09:28+00:00 Anonymous Department of Finance, Manhattan 1940s Tax Photos: 8th Avenue Anonymous 4 plain 2023-12-13T16:18:12+00:00 Anonymous
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Thomas Cut Rate Drug store looted
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Some time during the disorder, Thomas Babbitt, a forty-two-year-old Black man, allegedly took two cases of soap from the window of the Thomas Cut Rate Drug store at 2374 8th Avenue, on the northeast corner of West 127th Street. He did not smash the window. A Home News story described Babbitt as having "stolen two cases of soap from a drug store window"; the 28th Precinct police blotter included a less ambiguous description, that he "Put hand though Window. Stole merchandise." Detective Balkin of the 5th Division arrested Babbitt, according to the Harlem Magistrate's Court docket book; at some time in the disorder he also arrested James Hayes for allegedly looting the Danbury Hat store two blocks to the south, near 125th Street. The attack on the Thomas drug store was one of the northernmost reports of disorder on 8th Avenue; further uptown were the arrests of Jean Jacquelin at 128th Street, in possession of goods he allegedly took from a store on 7th Avenue, and Henry Stewart for allegedly breaking a window in a meat market at 2422 8th Avenue, between 130th and 131st Streets. Police shot and killed James Thompson on corner diagonally opposite the drug store at the end of the disorder. Police made three other arrests in the block south of the drug store, of Emmet Williams and Theodore Hughes, for allegedly breaking windows and looting a meat market, and Rose Murrell, for breaking windows. There is no evidence of when any of those events occurred. The businesses on the blocks of 8th Avenue north of 125th Street were almost entirely white owned when the MCCH business survey was taken in the second half of 1935.
Babbitt appeared in the Harlem Magistrates Court on March 20, charged with petit larceny, not burglary. That change was likely made because of a lack of evidence that he had broken the store window and entered the store to steal merchandise. Magistrate Renaud transferred him to the Court of Special Sessions, where the judges convicted Babbitt and sent him to the Workhouse for ten days.
Abraham Thomas, living at 1262 43rd Street in Brooklyn, is the complainant recorded in the docket book. Notwithstanding his last name, the forty-five-year-old white man appears to have been a staff member rather than owner of the store. In both the 1930 and 1940 census, Thomas gave his occupation as "drug clerk," and his employer as Thomas Pharmacy in his draft registration in 1942 (business owners recorded themselves as self employed). Further evidence that the store remained in business after the disorder comes from the MCCH business survey, which recorded a white-owned drug store, "Cut Rate Drug Store," at 2374 8th Avenue, and the Tax Department photograph, in which the store is visible.
