Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll meet a man who will saddle up to play the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow this weekend in the very place where the famous short story was set. We’ll also find out why violence has surged in New York City’s juvenile jails.
Before he lost his head, the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow had not had two hips and a knee replaced. He had never raced an airplane or a car.
But Hugh Francis, who plays the headless horseman in the very place where the Washington Irving story was set — Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., about 30 miles from Midtown Manhattan — has two nearly new hips and new knee (“I’m running on used parts,” he said). And he (and his horse) beat the airplane (a World War I-era biplane) and the car (a Model T) in a Massachusetts race.
Though Francis is 89, he will gallop tomorrow night and again on Sunday night through where the story says the headless horseman was buried — the cemetery where Irving himself was buried, next to the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow.
“Most people look at this as some guy in a black coat riding around on a horse,” he said.
Some in the crowd may wonder if the notorious ghost really lobbed that pumpkin at Ichabod Crane, the gullible schoolmaster who suffered impossible heartbreak before the terrible ride. Some may have heard a high school English teacher call “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” America’s first short stories.
And while Irving wrote that the headless horseman’s head “had been carried away in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War,” Francis is among those who believe it happened in the Battle of White Plains, “which I have re-enacted, not as a headless horseman but as a cavalryman.”
Playing the role of the headless horseman is not as easy as Francis makes it seem. He said he usually prepares by reading a few pages of Irving’s short story “to get hyped up.”
“You have to get it in your head,” he said. “You’ve got to get a mental state where you think you are whoever you’re presenting. You just can’t mechanically go out there and be yourself.”
The costume is the easy part — he has several. “You have a little screen, almost like a window, built into the front,” he said. “That cuts your vision by 60, 70 percent, and especially when you get in twilight or moonlight, you see shadows.”
So he rehearses, first with a trip to the cemetery, even though it is by now familiar territory to him and his horse. “You’ve got to memorize where the gravestones are,” he said. “You go in the daytime, and you familiarize yourself with where the obstacles are, and the night before we do a performance I go around with the costume off, double-checking.”
Francis was never a gullible schoolmaster like Ichabod Crane. “I spent 25 years as a mounted cop in Paterson, N.J.,” he said. “This was not running around shooting bad guys. It was, for the most part, ceremonial things and crowd control.”
Later he became a re-enactor — he has also portrayed George Washington — and has done stunt work. He mentioned appearing in battle scenes in the 2000 film “The Patriot,” which starred Mel Gibson. He has been filmed in documentaries about Sleepy Hollow and has also appeared in tourism commercials for New York State. “I never see them here,” he said, “but my friends in Memphis see it.” He has a love of fox hunting, and he rides with the Windy Hollow Hunt in Port Jervis, N.Y.
Francis has portrayed the headless horseman in 18 performances this month. “October is intense,” he said.
But so was January, when he rode into the Hudson River during an annual cold-weather stunt for swimmers. Headless in costume, he rode his horse in. “When you ride a horse into that river with people screaming, and the wind whips up, and you’re freezing your tail off,” he said, “you’d think it’s the ocean.”
In the 205 years since “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was published, a local identity has surrounded the headless horseman. “The Fire Department has the headless horseman on the fire trucks,” Francis said. “The Police Department has the headless horseman on the police cars. The football team is led out on the field by the headless horseman.” By Francis, that is.
“‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ — that’s not just one day in October,” he said. “This goes on year round. We do weddings in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.”
Weather
Expect a sunny day, with a high near the mid-60s. Tonight, the sky will be cloudy with temperatures near the low 50s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended today (for Shemini Atzeret).
The latest New York news
-
Another challenger to Mayor Eric Adams: Jim Walden, a lawyer who has represented causes across the political spectrum, plans to enter the mayor’s race.
-
A barber’s electric bill: When Donald Trump stopped for a photo op in the Bronx last week, a barber complained about his utility bill. What he said was edited and condensed for television — and set off a social media frenzy.
-
A Republican underdog: After redistricting, Representative Brandon Williams of Central New York is the only House Republican whose race is considered “lean Democrat.”
-
A man’s best friend: The New-York Historical Society explores the relationships between New Yorkers and their pets.
-
Celebrating the Liberty: The W.N.B.A.’s newest champions were honored along the Canyon of Heroes on Broadway, the third time a women’s sports team has been granted that privilege.
-
Met Opera lawsuit: The mezzo-soprano Wendy White fell while singing in a production of “Faust” in 2011. She has settled her lawsuit against the company, one of its longest-running court cases.
-
Remembering Monique Knowlton: The German-born model and Manhattan gallerist, whose roguish glamour once elevated the covers of Vogue and the work of image-makers like the fashion photographer Bert Stern, died on Oct. 8 at her home in Manhattan. She was 87.
Violence surges at juvenile jails
Workers at New York City’s two juvenile detention centers are struggling to control an influx of minors charged with serious crimes. The city’s Department of Investigation says the stream of 16- and 17-year-olds has led to assaults and threats, along with an increase in weapons like ceramic blades, razors and scalpels.
City investigators began examining the centers after a state statute known as the Raise the Age law was approved in 2017. It sent most 16- and 17-year-olds accused of crimes directly to Family Court or to judges with special training. The law meant that even those under 18 accused of violent crimes were no longer placed in adult jails on Rikers Island. They were sent instead to the juvenile centers — Horizon in the Bronx and Crossroads in Brooklyn.
A report from the Investigation Fepartment said that between April 2018, six months before the law was enacted, and May 2023, the number of residents of the centers who were 16 and older and accused of murder rose to 134 from seven.
Staff members were not equipped to deal with the deluge, according to a 75-page report from the Investigation Department. According to the report, the vast majority of workers said that residents run the facilities. The report described riots in which staff members were punched and kicked and the police had to be called.
Some employees were so worried about being stabbed that they wore layers of clothing under their uniforms. After one worker was slashed, others overheard the minor who was responsible say that “cutting season on staff has just begun, and we are 17 so nothing will happen,” the report said.
The city’s Administration for Children’s Services, which runs the facilities, said that because the investigation ended in May 2023, the report did not reflect that the number of assaults on residents and staff fell substantially at both centers this year, even as the population grew to 134 minors at Horizon and 132 at Crossroads.
METROPOLITAN diary
Roses
Dear Diary:
A few years ago I was sitting in a crowded subway car one morning when an older woman got on, holding a large bunch of roses.
She gestured to people on the train to see if they would buy one of the flowers. After being rejected by everyone, she stood wondering what to do.
A young man approached her. He was dressed well, as if on his way to work. He asked how much for the whole bunch.
Fifty dollars, the woman said.
He gave her $50 and proceeded to hand out roses to all the women on the car.
— Mary Herr
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. Maia Coleman will be here on Monday. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Hannah Fidelman and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
The post For This Headless Horseman, October Is the Busiest Month appeared first on New York Times.
