timothysullivan

The date is right on top, 6/30/13

falcon67: Thanks for catching the date. We will add it to the description of the image and update the database.

Sometimes called the Big Tim Sullivan Association Timothy Daniel Sullivan (July 23, 1862 – August 31, 1913) was a New York politician who controlled Manhattan's Bowery and Lower East Side districts as a prominent figure within Tammany Hall. He was euphemistically known as "Dry Dollar", as the "Big Feller", and, later, as "Big Tim" (because of his large stature). During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he controlled much of the city's criminal activities between 14th Street and the Battery in New York City. He is credited as being one of the earliest ward representatives to use his position to enable the activities of criminal street gangs.

The Association quite liked outings to College Point. See some details here: www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/3682650860/ And since we can see the date on the plate of "6/30/13", here is the report from the next day's New York Times: OUTING MINUS "BIG TIM"; Boweryites Miss Absent Chieftain on Their Annual Excursion" query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D05E4D71139E6... Highlight of the fun and games was a baseball game of teams comprised of Lean Men versus Fat Men. Read the linked story to see who won.

In this Bain/LOC photo, taken at the docking of the IMPERATOR on July 17, 1913, Big Tim Sullivan is the tall man at the right. Dying of syphilis, maybe he already knew that he would be dead by the end of August:

LOC -- "Bowery" should be capitalized.

Wystan, Thanks for the information. We will add to the record and fix the typo when we update.

Big Tim Sullivan - political hard man who met an ignominious end.

Larry Mulligan was Big Tim's half brother. Can't figure out who Hicks is. Ignominious end, yes, but 25,000 turned out for his funeral. That's after his body went unrecognized for two weeks and he nearly ended up in potter's field. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Sullivan

Photo is dated 7-17-1913.

Nice work Wystan. Almost missed it inverted on the right edge.

Mona, I have trouble reading the dates, but once someone like Wystan has found a date on the plate negative, then we can do a search of the New York Times to find out more. If we go to the advanced search funtion of the NYT archive, and knowing that Tim Sullivan is the most well known person in this group, let's search of "Tim Sullivan" from July 1, 1913 to July 31, 1913: query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=... Then scan the headlines and dates together, and we see a headline "Big Tim Sullivan Returns Imroved; Presence of Politician on Imperator a Secret Until Ship Reaches ..." and dated July 17, 1913. Usually, we look for an article dated the day after the date on the negative, but there is no article for July 18, 1913 in this search. So let's try the one on July 17, 1913: query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9904E5DD163DE633A... and here: query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9904E... Neither of these articels exactly correlates with the date on the plate identified by Wystan, but we get a good idea of the fact that a sick Big Tim is back in town.