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Thomas Cut Rate Drug store looted
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.
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This page references:
- "Transcripts of Police Blotter - Precinct 28, March 19 & 20, 1935," MCCH - Juvenile Delinquency - 1935-36, Departmental Correspondence. Box 34, Folder 1 (Roll 171), Records of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, 1934-1945.
- New York Penal Law, § 1298-1299: Petit larceny
- Harlem Magistrates Court docket book
- Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Fourth Registration, 1942, New York, Records of the Selective Service System, Record Group Number 147, National Archives and Records Administration. (Ancestry.com).
- US Census, 1930, Enumeration District 24-188, Sheet 5A, Brooklyn, Kings, New York (Ancestry.com).
- US Census, 1940, Enumeration District 24-931, Sheet 6A, Brooklyn, Kings, New York (Ancestry.com).
- "Harlem: Survey - Census Tracts #223-24 (28)," 1935, Roll 80, Subject Files, Office of the Mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia records (New York City Municipal Archives).