“It is impossible to couple benrvo-plence with bigotry,” was the reaction of Hon. James J. Walker, the Mayor of the City of New York, to the reports of the excesses perpetrated upon three Jewish internes in Kings County Hospital.
In line with this attitude, one of the first acts of the Mayor was to suspend the six internes accused by the three Jewish doctors of responsibility for the attack. The six are under criminal charges of assault.
A city wide investigation of hospitals and institutions to ascertain where there has been any discrimination in race, color or creed, will be undertaken by order of the Mayor. An open public hearing will take place at City Hall next Thursday, the Mayor announced Mayor Walker will act as Magistrate at the hearing.
The investigation will embrace 25 municipally controlled hospitals and will affect three city government departments. Rumors have it that Bird S. Coler. Commissioner of Public Welfare, and Frederick A. Wallis, Commissioner of Correction, may be involved in the results of the inquiry.
When asked whether be planned to investigate if the application forms for nernes in city hospitals include questions pertaining to religion, the mayor replied that this is one of the things he ntends to take up. It developed that the application blanks at the Kings County Hospital contain the question concerning the religion of applicantion.
Immediately upon the formulation of the charges, Mayor Walker went to Kings County Hospital to make an inspection of the institution. A committee of Brooklyn Rabbis, headed by Dr. Louis M. Gross, Rabbi of Union Temple, and Rabbi Harry Weiss, accompanied by Supreme Court Justice Edward Lavansky, called on Commissioner Bird, stalemiting a complaint concerning the mistreatment of the Jewish intenes.
Investigation of racial and religious preiudice at Kings County Hospital took an unexpected turn today when Xathan Sweedler, atterney for Dr. Hyman Solovay, insisted that the hazing of his client and two other internes originated under the influence of the Ku Klux Klan.
The excesses perpetrated against the three Jewish physicians were strongly condemned in editorials in many of the metropolitan newspapers as well as in the Jewish press.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
