Aunt Patty told us years ago about her Uncle Lew sending a big black car to take the younger kids to school when he was Police Commissioner. She was about 6 when he got that job in 1934 and he held it throughout her school years.
I loved hearing about the giant limousine that took them to grade school but it seemed like a strange perk for the Commissioner's nieces and nephews. I was recently looking at news stories about Lewis Valentine and saw several that explained why the McNally children rode in a police car to school.
"Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine and his daugher, Ruth who with her sister Miriam has been threatened by gangsters as a result of the police drive on policy and other racketeers. Detectives have been assigned to patrol the area within a block of the Valentine home at 1650 68th Street, Burough Park, Brooklyn."
These articles are from March, 1935. See complete transcriptions at the bottom of the post.
This one says that Ruth was 18 and Miriam 16 when a phone threat was received by a neighbor:
"You tell Mrs. Valentine and you can tell him, too, that Ruth and Miriam are liable to be snapped and we won't be responsible."
All the articles obligingly give the Commissioner's home address in case anyone thought kidnapping anybody was a good idea. The article above also says:
The younger daughter, who attends St. Brendan's Roman Catholic School at Avenue O and East Twelfth Street in the North Sheepshead Bay area, has been taken to and from school every day in a police car with two detectives from the Borough Park police station as an escort.
Miriam, her father and the boys in the neighborhood
There was some thought that the threats came from gambling interests who were upset with the new drive against the policy racket and vice, a campaign that received a good deal of newspaper publicity.
The Commissioner and a confiscated roulette table
LaGuardia at left next to the Commissioner
tossing slot machine parts into the harbor
The Commissioner said in print that he was inclined to treat the threat lightly, but my guess is that he added an escort for his nieces and nephews as well as his own girls. Kidnapping was often in the headlines in the 1930s. The trial of the Lindbergh baby's murderer was going on in February,1935. Newspapers around the country had similar stories of ransoms and "snatches".
Nothing seems to have come of the Valentine kidnapping threat. I watch a lot of NCIS and I would have grilled that neighbor. The kids got a nice ride out of it anyway.
Transcripts of the two articles
New York Times March 9, 1935
Valentine's Daughters Guarded by Police;
Threatened at Start of Policy Inquiry
Two daughters of Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine have been under the guard of detectives whenever they have appeared outside their home in Brooklyn as the result of a telephone call two weeks ago threatening bodily harm to them, it was learned last night.
The two daughters are Ruth, 18 years old, and Miriam, 16. The telephone call was received at about the time preparations were being made for the present investigation of the policy game and other rackets.
Patrols of two detectives in police cars, it was learned have been assigned all day and all night to the area within a block of the commissioner's home at 1,650 Sixty-eighth Street in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn.
The younger daughter, who attends St. Brendan's Roman Catholic School at Avenue O and East Twelfth Street in the North Sheepshead Bay area, has been taken to and from school every day in a police car with two detectives from the Borough Park police stations as an escort.
The older girl does not go to school. But when she wished to go shopping in New York a few days ago a police car called for her at her home and two detectives accompanied her while she was shopping.
Both daughters attended Lenten services at 8 o'clock last night at the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Seventy-Second Street and Fifteenth Avenue. They were taken to the church in a police car with an escort of detectives, and the police car was waiting for them when services were over at 9:30.
The call threatening the girls was received by a neighbor of the Police Commissioner, whose telephone number is not listed in the telephone directory. The voice over the telephone to the neighbor, it was learned said:
"You tell Mrs. Valentine and you can tell him, too, that Ruth and Miriam are liable to be snapped and we won't be responsible."
The neighbor immediately informed Mrs. Valentine of the call. At his home last night Commissioner Valentine had "nothing to say," when asked about the guards. A police radio car drove by the Valentine home twice between 9 and 9:30 P.M. and at a later hour a radio car with two men was seen parked with the lights out within four doors of the home.
New York Times March 18, 1935
Valentine Confirms Kidnapping Threat
Police Commissioner Asserts Warning Had No Connection With Drive on Gambling
Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine at the daily press conference at police headquarters confirmed yesterday the reports of the threat to kidnap his two daughters, Ruth and Miriam, which was received on February 18 by Mrs. George Scanlon, a neighbor, living at 1,660 Sixty-Eight Street, Brooklyn.
The threat came by telephone, he said, and the caller did not seem to be speaking for the would-be kidnapper himself but was attempting to give friendly warning. He said that in the version of the phraseology used, as he had understood, it was:
I have reliable information to the effect that they are threatening to snatch Mr. Valentine's youngest daughter."
"A man in public life," the commissioner asserted, "is bound to make a lot of friends, and also a lot of enemies. I know that the threats were not connected with the present drive against policy and vice because that was before the drive was announced."
The commissioner was inclined to treat the threat lightly. He admitted he had sent a detective to guard Miss Miriam immediately after the message was received.
The Valentine home is at 1,650 Sixty-Eighth Street.
