Howell Street

Howell Street is in East Camden. Today it begins at 20th Street just east of East State Street, in the shadow of the bridge that crosses the railroad yard. At one time there were a few houses below State Street. Howell Street runs parallel to the railroad tracks to 27th Street, then across 27th to 30th Street. Several businesses located along Howell Street during Camden's industrial years, and the first Catholic parish in East Camden, St. Joseph Church, was originally located at 25th & Howell Street. This site has been a ball field for many years. Other businesses to locate on Howell Street over the years included Nick's Auto Parts and the Pavonia Ice & Coal Company.

Homes were built on Howell Street by the 1880s. An early family, the Grosmicks, remained on the street into the late 1940s and in the neighborhood for years afterwards. The Vennells were there into the 1930s as well. Lewis Mote moved toward River Road; his family also remained in Camden well into the 1960s and in the neighborhood. Thomas McClintock came in 1890, and resided on Howell till past 1920.

Across 27th Street, Howell Street was an altogether different story. With the exception of the Grosmicks and the John Carter family, most all of the homes on Howell Street seem to have been rental properties, and it seemed that no one stayed there very long. One of these families who passed through here was that of John S. Dukinfield, a relation of famous comedian and actor W.C. Fields, who was born William Claude Dukinfield.

Many of the houses that were on Howell Street have been demolished. This process accelerated in the 1980s, when the crack cocaine epidemic ravaged the neighborhood between 20th and 27th Streets.

Phil Cohen

2027–2047 Howell Street: 1991 Fire Watch Magazine Advertisement.

To the Editor:

Sir—There are nearly a million cars registered in New Jersey. This inspection will make a half million in six months and that is more than the stations and equipment costs.

What will become of the money that is left over? They are not going to give us a lower license fee so let’s all get together and back up Horace Dixon.

We helped kill the sales tax. Why not kill this one too before the state get any more 50 cent pieces out of us.

Mr. Dixon starts circulating petitions, I will be one of the first to give my help in getting them around to the different ones for their names.

Let’s hear from some of the other disgusted motorists.

PAUL E. PURSCH
2000 Howell Street

Bus Kills Husband Returning Unexpectedly From Distant Work

Fate and the heavy wheels of a bus turned to tragedy a surprise planned by Arthur Hickman, 45, of 2021 Howell Street, for the wife he had not seen for five weeks.

Returning unexpectedly last night from Auburn, N.Y., where he had been working as an asbestos pipe coverer, Hickman was but a few blocks from his home when he was struck by a bus and killed instantly. The tragedy occurred on Twenty-seventh Street, between Howell and Thompson Streets.

Hickman had written a letter to his wife, Lottie, telling her that his work soon would be finished and that he expected to arrive here Saturday. The work, however, was completed earlier than he had expected and Hickman arrived in Camden last night.

He left a bus at Twenty-seventh and Howell Streets and stopped for a moment at the home of a friend nearby. Shortly after 6 p. m. he stepped from the curb and ran across Twenty-seventh Street in the path of a Schultz Pennsauken-Philadelphia bus. The front right wheel passed over his head. Identification was made possible only through papers in his pockets and his suitcase.

William Renfrey, 24, of 2936 Cramer Street, driver of the bus, was held in $1000 bail on a charge of manslaughter by Police Judge Garfield Pancoast.

Hickman was well known in Camden as a pigeon fancier. Beside his wife, he is survived by a son, Joseph, 24, attached to the aviation corps at Honolulu.

2109–2113 Howell Street: 1991 Fire Watch Magazine Advertisement.

A Camden city fireman’s automobile figured in two successive accidents that injured four persons last night. The fireman is John C. Voll, 33, of 1230 North Nineteenth Street, attached to Engine Company Number 9, Twenty-seventh and Federal streets. Voll was treated at Cooper Hospital for severe cuts on the face and mouth.

His machine collided at Eighteenth Street and River Road about 11 p.m. with the car of Steve Liperi, 23, of 408 West Third Street, Palmyra, injuring Liperi’s mother-in-law.

Liperi told police Voll’s car came at him in a zig-zag manner a block until it struck a pole at Seventeenth Street and River Road, went on the sidewalk and struck two women. One of these, Mrs. Lydia Ramsey, 32, of 2108 Howell Street, was treated at Cooper Hospital for severe cuts on the leg. The other, Miss Pauline Comfort, 22, of 1238 Liberty Street, was treated at West Jersey Homeopathic Hospital for severe bruises.

Liperi and his wife, Grace, 19, were unhurt, but her mother, Mrs. Mary Mancuso, 45, of 885 Velde Avenue, Delair, suffered cuts and bruises. No charges were made by either driver.

A 1955 photograph of the intersection of North 23rd Street and Howell Street, taken looking at Howell Street from North 23rd Street, was contributed by John “Jack” Griffith, formerly of 2216 Howell Street, who is himself the subject of the picture. The photograph was published on the original site but is no longer held in the archive; this record of it is all that survives.

Found guilty of carrying a gun, Richard H. Morrow, 24, of 2319 Howell Street, was fined $150 by Judge Shay in Criminal Court yesterday. He will be permitted to pay the fine in installments.

The fine was imposed after a plea for leniency was made by Morrow’s attorney, Bernard Bertman. Morrow was arrested in a raid on a house at Second and Spruce Streets.

I lived in East Camden from December of ’43 to July of ’46. It was only a short time but these two plus years were the happiest of my life. I was 15 then and after living on a small street in South Philadelphia then moving to a house with a lawn, driveway and a garage was heaven.

My two older sisters didn’t care much for it because they had social ties in Philadelphia but I quickly made new friends in the neighborhood. The address was 2312 Howell Street across the street from the Pavonia railroad yard. I can still remember my mother hanging out laundry only to have to take it down and re-wash it when the switch engine across the street would blow its stack sending a cloud of black smoke and ash over the whole neighborhood.

Remember when? St. Joseph’s Church stood on the corner of 26th and Howell Streets at the turn of the century. Now, a playground is on the spot and the Church is located at 29th and Federal Streets. The photograph was submitted by Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hufner, of 2732 Polk Avenue. They were married in this church on June 19, 1901.

Lads, 11 and 10, Charged by East Camden Woman With Taking Purse and $725 Diamond

Charged with the theft of a $725 diamond ring, two small boys were ordered held for Juvenile Court by Police Judge Pancoast yesterday. One of the boys, William McGinnis, 11, of 2639 Carman Street, had been released from the county detention home last Thursday on probation by Judge Shay. He had been one of six boys held in connection with a series of nine robberies in East Camden.

The other boy is John Auletto, 10, of 2824 Howell Street.

Mrs. Catherine Tydeman testified the pair had come to her apartment at Twenty-eighth Street and Westfield Avenue Thursday afternoon and told her she was wanted on the phone. Returning, she saw the two boys leaving her apartment, and a short time later she discovered that her pocketbook containing a $725 diamond ring was missing. District Detective William Hurlock arrested the pair at the Garfield School. He said he found the ring in their possession.

Parents of the McGinnis boy pleaded for him before Judge Shay last Thursday and said he was “backward” because of a fractured skull he had suffered in an accident.

Charles H. Nelson, 86, a wood finisher, of 2812 Howell Street, suffered a fatal heart attack yesterday afternoon at Twenty-seventh and Sherman streets.

He was walking at 3.30 p.m. with his sister, Mrs. Anna Louderback, with whom he resided, when he was stricken. The First District police patrol took him to Cooper Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Coroner Benjamin R. Denny issued the death certificate. Mr. Nelson had been under treatment for heart trouble for some time.

Camden County Prosecutor's Office
Vincent P. Sarubbi, Camden County Prosecutor
MEDIA INFORMATION

May 26, 2004

Camden County Prosecutor Vincent P. Sarubbi and Acting Camden Police Chief Edwin Figueroa reported today that a 35-year-old man was charged with Murder on Tuesday, May 25, 2004, accused of fatally stabbing and beating Diane Jackson, F/39, during the early morning hours of Jan. 9, 2004, in Camden, N.J.

Ronelle Bush, a homeless man whose last known address was in the 2800 block of Howell Street in Camden, was arrested Tuesday on outstanding municipal warrants. Investigators acting on a tip were performing surveillance on Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia when they spotted Bush and arrested him. He was later charged with Murder. He is being held in Philadelphia pending extradition to Camden County.

On Jan. 9, Camden Police were called to the Tamarack Apartments on Ferry Avenue at approximately 10:16 a.m. after maintenance workers at the apartment complex discovered the victim’s body in a closet in a vacated unit. Jackson had just finished moving out of the unit, where she had lived. Jackson had suffered multiple stab wounds and blunt trauma to the head.

Investigation indicates that Bush and the victim were acquaintances and got into an argument during the early morning hours that day. Sarubbi and Figueroa credited Prosecutor’s Office Senior Investigator Jeffrey Long and Camden Police Detective Wayne Matthews, the lead investigators on the case, for their determination and perseverance in pursuing leads in the case.

July 19, 2004

Camden County Prosecutor Vincent P. Sarubbi and Acting Camden Police Chief Edwin Figueroa reported that a 25-year-old man died this morning as a result of gunshot wounds he sustained on June 18, 2004, in Camden, N.J.

Zabdiel Cardona, of the 2000 block of Howell Street in Camden, was pronounced dead at 8:02 a.m. today at Cooper University Hospital. Cardona was shot once at approximately 2:34 a.m. on June 18 at 23rd and Federal streets in front of the Tierra Dominicana bar. The bullet pierced his liver. No arrests have been made.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER — September 25, 2004

Man charged in fellow inmate’s fatal overdose

A Camden County inmate has been charged with smuggling heroin into the jail and supplying it to another inmate, who then died from the effects of the drug.

Jose J. Maldonado, 38, of the 2000 block of Howell Street in Camden, faces two drug charges as well as a charge of strict liability for a drug-induced death, a 1997 law that seeks to punish those who supply drugs to overdose victims. That charge carries a 20-year maximum sentence.

Maldonado, whose bail was set at $200,000, originally was arrested on a drug charge and taken to the jail on Sept. 15. Authorities said he smuggled heroin into the jail in a body cavity. He has been charged with supplying heroin to Daniel Green, 31, of Camden. Green, a state prison inmate serving a seven-year sentence for aggravated assault and drug charges, was in the Camden County jail awaiting transfer to another state prison. He was found dead in his cell September 17.