And in New York City, at Macy’s, hundreds of screaming men and women broke the windows of the delicatessen hall on 33rd Street and poured into the store, leaving amidst the shattered glass two dead women and one man with his left cheek sliced off. The crowds looted all the fresh and canned food they could tear from the shelves, and then they rampaged through the rest of the store, oblivious to the shrilling alarms and the policemen with nightsticks who patrolled the counters with orders to ‘contain, but not arrest.’

One of the managers of Macy’s who witnessed the looting said, ‘It was terrifying. It was like sale time in Hades.’ And New York’s Commissioner of Police, in a hurriedly-called television interview, explained, ‘It’s a disaster. But, it’s way beyond our power to prevent looting and theft on such a grand scale. We have neither the men nor the facilities. All we can do is try to ensure that the looting is carried out with the minimum of risk to life and property.’

During the night, Manhattan was a hideous nightmare. Ambulances and police cars whooped and screamed through the echoing streets, and there was the sporadic crackling of gunfire from Harlem and the West Side. The South Bronx, already devastated by arson, became an inferno whose glow could be seen as far away as New Rochelle. In Brooklyn, fifteen women were trapped and burned to death in a Woolworth store as they tried to escape with hair dryers, bicycles, garden furniture, and cosmetics. Their bodies were twisted up ‘like little black monkeys’ and their loot was melted in their claws. Almost all the food had been pillaged now from restaurants and stores, and people were helping themselves to whatever was left.

The Mayor of New York said on television, ‘What we’re seeing here is consumer anarchy. We’ve led people to expect certain privileges if they live here in the United States, and one of those privileges is an abundance of food. Now that privilege is threatened, and people won’t let it go lightly. They’ll tear this city apart first.’