![]() The heat ascended from the apartments below, and the sun beating the tar roof nearly baked them alive. ![]() With each flight of stairs the temperature inched toward boiling, so the upper rooms were like hell. The rented room on the top floor of Annie Jones’s house was unbearable. On a night like this, all conspired to escape the suffocation of tenement flats, airless back bedrooms and sweltering buildings, to flee the assault of rank bodies, crying babies, embattled couples, and to shake off the general misery. Mothers with their children camped out on front stoops, small groups of men clustered at the corners, those with an extra nickel or dime to spare elbowed their way into crowded saloons for a pitcher of cold beer. ![]() The temperature hovered near one hundred degrees, driving decent and hardworking folks into the company of whores, thugs, policy runners, and gamblers: the folks who owned the street after midnight. ![]() Bodies scantily clad in undershirts and nightgowns rested in public view. Heads peered from the windows of rented rooms, drowsy and irritable the desperate lay on makeshift beds tick mattresses and folded sheets were spread on fire escapes and rooftops. The August heat was brutal and no one could sleep. ![]()
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