You Are There… Graphic History Series.
Historical Backdrop
On Thursday, October 24, 1929, the decade-long American stock boom finally snapped. The “Roaring Twenties” had convinced millions of everyday people — barbers, taxi drivers, widows, farmers — to pour their savings into stocks, often buying “on margin” with borrowed money. By early October, prices were already wobbling, but most Wall Streeters still believed in the Great Bull Market.
Our subject is Thomas “Tommy” Kilduff, 19 years old, a floor runner at the New York Stock Exchange. Irish-American, born and raised in a cold-water flat in Brooklyn’s Vinegar Hill. You make $18 a week running paper slips between telephone clerks and the bellowing brokers at the trading posts.
October 24, 1929 — 5:47 AM — Kilduff family tenement, 34 Gold Street, Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, NY
You pull the thin wool blanket off your legs and swing them onto the cold linoleum. Your breath fogs in the grey dark. A single lightbulb on a twisted cord hums over the kitchen table where your father’s lunch pail sits empty. You splash water from a chipped enamel basin onto your face and neck. Your little sister Mary coughs twice in the next room. You comb pomade into your hair by the cracked shaving mirror and knot your tie tight, because Mr. Paulson fires boys with loose ties.
October 24, 1929 — 6:34 AM — BMT subway platform, York Street Station, Brooklyn
You push through the wooden turnstile with your nickel and stand on the crowded platform. The air tastes like ozone and wet wool. Men in dark overcoats pack the edge of the platform, reading folded copies of the Herald Tribune and the Journal. A headline catches your eye on the man next to you: “STOCKS DROP SHARPLY — RALLY LATE.” Someone behind you mutters, “It’ll bounce today, you watch.” The wooden train rolls in with a shriek of brakes and sparks.
October 24, 1929 — 7:20 AM — Child’s Restaurant lunch counter, 56 Broadway, Manhattan
You sit at the long marble counter and spin a dime for the waitress. She brings you coffee in a thick white china mug and two slices of buttered toast for fifteen cents. Two bond salesmen in pinstripes are arguing two stools down — one is pale and his hand shakes on his cup. “I’m in for forty thousand on margin, Eddie. Forty thousand.” You eat fast. The brass clock over the mirror says 7:34.
October 24, 1929 — 9:45 AM — Trading floor, New York Stock Exchange, 11 Wall Street
