LONG HOT THIRSTY SUMMER, continued ...
Gertie Long started working each night around 7:30 p.m. and continued till midnight.
She charged two, three, or five dollars, whatever she could hustle, her highest being $17 once; she averaged three or four customers a night, but some Saturday nights went with six or seven different men.
She generally took her clients to “Daly’s Hotel,” which was not a licensed establishment but rather a bunch of rooms over a carpenter’s shop at 50 East 13th Street.
The place charged one dollar for an hour and kicked back fifty cents to the prostitute.
In that era before photo identification, the desk clerk required every man to sign a name into the ledger, and Gertie always made sure to whisper to him to add “and wife.”
Many nights four different Mr. Smiths signed her in.
She said she paid the “fly cops” (i.e., the plainclothes cops) varying amounts at various times: Zimmerman (“$2.50 a week”), O’Rourke ($5 a week), Durrigan, Gilmartin, Schick, and others.
PROSECUTOR MOSS: What were those payments made for?
GERTIE LONG: To let you alone on the street and to take the other girls that was in your way that didn’t pay.
Gertie Long testified that not all of the fifty or so regular streetwalkers in the precinct had to pay to work.
The “copper girls” such as Chicago Lil and Irish Lelia were exempt.
What was a “copper girl”?
Gertie Long at first answered a bit vaguely: “women that is in with officers.”
She mentioned that Officer Jimmie Durrigan had one for six years and kept her even after he got married; Officer Zimmerman had Sadie Green.
Roundsman Foody even had one.
Gertie later clarified: “The [cops] have got their fling on these women.”
The expression “have a fling with” means “to have the pleasure of, to sow wild oats with.”
In case any confusion remained, lawyer Hess later asked whether “copper women” were “intimate with the policemen?”
Yes, sir.
“They have them girls that they can go to see.”
Another perk for the women of these officers was that unlike the others they could leave the side streets and trawl prime Fifth Avenue for clients.
Also, when the officers needed to make some token arrests to raise precinct statistics, they never chose their own women.
Gertie, no longer in her prime, seemed to resent these girls’ privileges.
She also recounted that she had been arrested about a dozen times; each time the aftermath involved some kind of payoff to someone.
One arresting officer said she could avoid sleeping in the jail if she paid five dollars for bail, and he rounded up a saloonkeeper to take her money and sign the papers.
She also paid five dollars to “Blumenthal” twice.
Another time, $15 got her thirty-day sentence on the Island terminated on day one.
This past winter the cops had frequently hassled her.
Officer Zimmerman cornered her one night and dragged her into the shadows by Denning’s Dry Goods store.
(He was a big strong “Hebrew” officer who sometimes forced his way into neighborhood brothels for “flings.”)
“I was always afraid of him,” Gertie admitted.
“How much coin ya got?” he snapped.
And though she had $70, she told him $5 and he said, “Five dollars aint in it.”
So she took off her diamond ring and told him to hold it.
She said she’d meet him the next night, give him another five dollars, and then he’d give the ring back.
In the courtroom she showed off the ring, bought from a Mrs. Friedman, in 1887.
Gertie Long said the unwritten rule was that it was not okay to solicit customers if you saw the captain.
She said Captain Eakins personally cleared out 13th Street about twice a month.
The streetwalkers would scurry to another block until some scout reported him gone.
She admitted she never knew anyone who paid money directly to Eakins.
“I am not against the captain but against those men that took the money from me, those hounds.”
Defense lawyer Hess tried to trip her up on details.
Gertie Long repeatedly held her own in exchanges with Hess.
She called testifying the “first dirty thing I have ever done” despite twenty years of streetwalking.
She said she always wanted to quit the business but the cops kept taking her savings.
She estimated she had shelled out about $8,000 to the police over the years.
“How are you going to be respectable when you give those fellows the money you make?”
She vowed she would never take any hush money from the cops.
“I meant to come down here, if they would hang me, [to speak] against those hounds.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
LONG HOT THIRSTY SUMMER, continued ...
Lawyer Hess, a bit ominously, asked her if she would wait to confer with him after the session ended.
She agreed.
Was it to offer her money?
Was it to give her a warning or to allow someone time to come to 300 Mulberry to follow her?
Gertie Long never testified again; she does not appear again in the indexes of the New York Times, New York Tribune, or New York Evening Post.
Police officers Schick, Zimmerman, and Durrigan appear in print as police officers for many years in the future.
The Sunday saloon crackdown only grew tighter for the poor.
The private clubs — on the advice of their attorneys — decided to ignore it.
The issue was polarizing the city, with temperance, women’s rights, and church groups staunchly supporting Roosevelt; and Tammany Hall, immigrants, and thousands of men opposing.
More than 20,000 members of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union converged on the city for its annual convention, selling out Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, August 7.
Archbishop Corrigan and other high-ranking religious officials shared the dais with the mayor and dozens of officials including Roosevelt.
The bland meeting took a sudden turn when one-armed state senator T. C. O’Sullivan (Democrat) had the nerve to enter the lion’s den and criticize the city’s Sunday crackdown.
He complained about the Puritans’ gloomy Sunday in New York, which he claimed discriminated against the poor.
He was hissed.
He analyzed the law and the police’s rigid enforcement.
He was hissed.
He painted a scene of poor men now buying bottles of hard liquor and “on Sunday in the presence of youth and innocence, the home becomes the scene of a debauchery darker by far with iniquity than the disorder which before flourished at the saloon or in the streets, within reach of the law.”
Throughout the speech Roosevelt grimaced in anger and bobbed his head, restless to respond.
The catcalls and hisses grew so loud near the end of the speech that the archbishop called for a song to restore calm.
All rose to sing “While We Are Marching for Temperance” to the tune of “Marching Through Georgia.”
Roosevelt was introduced next.
With his staccato gestures, he delivered the pithiest points of his stump speech.
He said he would rather fail enforcing the laws than succeed by ignoring them; he praised the Catholic Church for its work for temperance and for decent observation of the Sabbath.
“Never in the memory of any man have the saloons been closed as we have closed them.”
He painted a rosy future for dry Sundays in New York.
“I hope to see the time when a man shall be ashamed to take any enjoyment on Sunday which shall rob those who should be dearest to him and are dependent on him of the money he has earned during the week, when a man will be ashamed to take a selfish enjoyment and not to find some kind of pleasure which he can share with his wife and child.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Lawyer Hess, a bit ominously, asked her if she would wait to confer with him after the session ended.
She agreed.
Was it to offer her money?
Was it to give her a warning or to allow someone time to come to 300 Mulberry to follow her?
Gertie Long never testified again; she does not appear again in the indexes of the New York Times, New York Tribune, or New York Evening Post.
Police officers Schick, Zimmerman, and Durrigan appear in print as police officers for many years in the future.
The Sunday saloon crackdown only grew tighter for the poor.
The private clubs — on the advice of their attorneys — decided to ignore it.
The issue was polarizing the city, with temperance, women’s rights, and church groups staunchly supporting Roosevelt; and Tammany Hall, immigrants, and thousands of men opposing.
More than 20,000 members of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union converged on the city for its annual convention, selling out Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, August 7.
Archbishop Corrigan and other high-ranking religious officials shared the dais with the mayor and dozens of officials including Roosevelt.
The bland meeting took a sudden turn when one-armed state senator T. C. O’Sullivan (Democrat) had the nerve to enter the lion’s den and criticize the city’s Sunday crackdown.
He complained about the Puritans’ gloomy Sunday in New York, which he claimed discriminated against the poor.
He was hissed.
He analyzed the law and the police’s rigid enforcement.
He was hissed.
He painted a scene of poor men now buying bottles of hard liquor and “on Sunday in the presence of youth and innocence, the home becomes the scene of a debauchery darker by far with iniquity than the disorder which before flourished at the saloon or in the streets, within reach of the law.”
Throughout the speech Roosevelt grimaced in anger and bobbed his head, restless to respond.
The catcalls and hisses grew so loud near the end of the speech that the archbishop called for a song to restore calm.
All rose to sing “While We Are Marching for Temperance” to the tune of “Marching Through Georgia.”
Roosevelt was introduced next.
With his staccato gestures, he delivered the pithiest points of his stump speech.
He said he would rather fail enforcing the laws than succeed by ignoring them; he praised the Catholic Church for its work for temperance and for decent observation of the Sabbath.
“Never in the memory of any man have the saloons been closed as we have closed them.”
He painted a rosy future for dry Sundays in New York.
“I hope to see the time when a man shall be ashamed to take any enjoyment on Sunday which shall rob those who should be dearest to him and are dependent on him of the money he has earned during the week, when a man will be ashamed to take a selfish enjoyment and not to find some kind of pleasure which he can share with his wife and child.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
LONG HOT THIRSTY SUMMER, continued ...
The 7,000 people in the hall erupted in cheers that lasted five full minutes.
Commissioner Parker rushed over and shook his hand, as did the bishops.
Women climbed onto their seats and “howled” with praise.
“Never in my life did I receive such an ovation,” TR enthused in a letter to Lodge.
Although Roosevelt repeatedly tried to declare victory in the Sunday shutdown, several newspapers, notably the World on Monday, August 12, claimed any New Yorker and most tourists could easily find a drink at about three-quarters of the city’s 8,000 saloons on Sundays.
“Individual members of the police force in every precinct admitted that the Roosevelt experiment had failed.”
The newspaper claimed the city was “as wet as before Commissioner Roosevelt snapped his teeth.”
It said bar owners manned side doors, scrutinized for regulars, and did a quiet thriving business.
The Washington Post chimed in with a similar story, quoting “Copper Jim,” a New York policeman.
“The saloons and the hotels, raked in more long green and shoved more red liquor across their bars last Sunday than any day except Patrick’s in the year.”
Roosevelt decided to find out for himself.
He cut short his weekend escape and returned on Sunday, August 18, from Sagamore Hill, taking the ferry from Long Island City to 34th Street and arriving at 10 a.m.
Roundsman Michael Tierney was waiting for him and had a closed carriage with a top-hatted driver ready.
Inside sat Jacob Riis, who as a “personal friend” had agreed to write up the tour “ at Roosevelt’s request” for the New York Evening Sun.
The trio embarked on a whirlwind inspection.
Beyond whirlwind.
They would spend seven and a half of the next nine hours inside the vehicle, traveling from as far north as 71st Street to the southern tip of the Battery and zigzagging three times east and west, driving by 728 saloons.
Roosevelt and his companions first headed north along First Avenue past the slaughterhouses where butchers were sawing carcasses to deliver fresh meat for Monday.
Riis, who relayed Roosevelt’s opinions in his Evening Sun article, noted that butchers were supposed to be brawny men and “proverbial beer drinkers” but the saloons there were shut tight.
Instead, the three observers “everywhere encountered a contented good humored crowd.”
Riis said when Roosevelt was recognized, he received mostly “respectful and admiring glances” with some occasional good-natured kidding.
They drove to Louis Gobhardt’s saloon at 999 First Avenue and Roundsman Tierney thought the woman and child on the nearby stoop might be lookouts.
Before the carriage reached the end of the block, they saw men entering a side door.
TR dispatched a message to the precinct to send an officer.
Roosevelt came armed with the names of three saloons in the brewery district he wanted to check: Smith’s at 69th Street and Second Avenue, Rooney’s at 70th Street and Second Avenue, and another at 71st Street and Third Avenue.
All three seemed a little suspicious, with crowds nearby, and TR had extra officers sent to walk there.
The carriage stopped at the 21st Precinct house at East 35th Street.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
The 7,000 people in the hall erupted in cheers that lasted five full minutes.
Commissioner Parker rushed over and shook his hand, as did the bishops.
Women climbed onto their seats and “howled” with praise.
“Never in my life did I receive such an ovation,” TR enthused in a letter to Lodge.
Although Roosevelt repeatedly tried to declare victory in the Sunday shutdown, several newspapers, notably the World on Monday, August 12, claimed any New Yorker and most tourists could easily find a drink at about three-quarters of the city’s 8,000 saloons on Sundays.
“Individual members of the police force in every precinct admitted that the Roosevelt experiment had failed.”
The newspaper claimed the city was “as wet as before Commissioner Roosevelt snapped his teeth.”
It said bar owners manned side doors, scrutinized for regulars, and did a quiet thriving business.
The Washington Post chimed in with a similar story, quoting “Copper Jim,” a New York policeman.
“The saloons and the hotels, raked in more long green and shoved more red liquor across their bars last Sunday than any day except Patrick’s in the year.”
Roosevelt decided to find out for himself.
He cut short his weekend escape and returned on Sunday, August 18, from Sagamore Hill, taking the ferry from Long Island City to 34th Street and arriving at 10 a.m.
Roundsman Michael Tierney was waiting for him and had a closed carriage with a top-hatted driver ready.
Inside sat Jacob Riis, who as a “personal friend” had agreed to write up the tour “ at Roosevelt’s request” for the New York Evening Sun.
The trio embarked on a whirlwind inspection.
Beyond whirlwind.
They would spend seven and a half of the next nine hours inside the vehicle, traveling from as far north as 71st Street to the southern tip of the Battery and zigzagging three times east and west, driving by 728 saloons.
Roosevelt and his companions first headed north along First Avenue past the slaughterhouses where butchers were sawing carcasses to deliver fresh meat for Monday.
Riis, who relayed Roosevelt’s opinions in his Evening Sun article, noted that butchers were supposed to be brawny men and “proverbial beer drinkers” but the saloons there were shut tight.
Instead, the three observers “everywhere encountered a contented good humored crowd.”
Riis said when Roosevelt was recognized, he received mostly “respectful and admiring glances” with some occasional good-natured kidding.
They drove to Louis Gobhardt’s saloon at 999 First Avenue and Roundsman Tierney thought the woman and child on the nearby stoop might be lookouts.
Before the carriage reached the end of the block, they saw men entering a side door.
TR dispatched a message to the precinct to send an officer.
Roosevelt came armed with the names of three saloons in the brewery district he wanted to check: Smith’s at 69th Street and Second Avenue, Rooney’s at 70th Street and Second Avenue, and another at 71st Street and Third Avenue.
All three seemed a little suspicious, with crowds nearby, and TR had extra officers sent to walk there.
The carriage stopped at the 21st Precinct house at East 35th Street.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
LONG HOT THIRSTY SUMMER, continued ...
As the sergeant “prattled” on about the effectiveness of the men, Roosevelt noticed the captain’s Sunday saloon report on the desk.
It stated: “From personal observation, together with the reports of the patrolmen on various posts and from the men I have detailed in citizen’s clothes I find the law was uniformly enforced and well-observed.”
The report was dated Monday, August 19.
The current time was Sunday, August 18, 11:55 a.m.
Roosevelt took the “premature” update and didn’t smile while the sergeant pointed out the blank lines remaining to note violations.
During the tour, TR exited the carriage to visit eleven station houses, got out to try the doors of three saloons, and ate lunch at Mike Lyons.
Roosevelt especially sought out several saloons that had promised to fight the shutdown: Murphy’s on 23rd Street and First Avenue and another Murphy’s on 20th Street and Second Avenue.
The first Murphy’s, its doors wide open, gave out free ice water.
The second was shut tight.
Tompkins Square, ringed by saloons, was crowded “with mothers and their babes ... men sat and smoked on benches.”
The Roosevelt carriage rolled on south into Devery’s old 11th Precinct, where Polish and Russian names abounded, where overcrowding would create the most thirst.
“Small beer saloons fairly teem among the tenements,” noted Riis.
He and TR — neither shy of hyperbole — found that the poor people “seemed never so happy or content as on the one midsummer day in their experience when the saloons were closed.”
Roosevelt saw the clearing of Mulberry Bend with the buildings leveled to make room for a park; he saw an Italian selling watermelon and gelato.
The group swung down through Chinatown and Roosevelt ordered the driver to stop in front of Mike Callahan’s saloon.
He alighted and tried the door, put his ear to the wall, and walked around to ensure that Mike was not doing business.
He was quite pleased.
Roosevelt viewed the hundreds of closed Sunday saloons as an “unconditional surrender” by the saloon keepers and reveled in seeing “the raising of their blinds everywhere in token of submission.”
In conclusion, Riis stated that peering out the window, they found 684 of the 728 saloons “shut tight,” 41 open to “possibly doing business,” and saw men enter only three drinking joints during the entire trip; they observed only one drunk and saw no one carrying liquor through the streets.
“The stories printed by some of the newspapers about the general failure of the police to close the saloons on Sunday have been comically untrue,” TR later commented.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
As the sergeant “prattled” on about the effectiveness of the men, Roosevelt noticed the captain’s Sunday saloon report on the desk.
It stated: “From personal observation, together with the reports of the patrolmen on various posts and from the men I have detailed in citizen’s clothes I find the law was uniformly enforced and well-observed.”
The report was dated Monday, August 19.
The current time was Sunday, August 18, 11:55 a.m.
Roosevelt took the “premature” update and didn’t smile while the sergeant pointed out the blank lines remaining to note violations.
During the tour, TR exited the carriage to visit eleven station houses, got out to try the doors of three saloons, and ate lunch at Mike Lyons.
Roosevelt especially sought out several saloons that had promised to fight the shutdown: Murphy’s on 23rd Street and First Avenue and another Murphy’s on 20th Street and Second Avenue.
The first Murphy’s, its doors wide open, gave out free ice water.
The second was shut tight.
Tompkins Square, ringed by saloons, was crowded “with mothers and their babes ... men sat and smoked on benches.”
The Roosevelt carriage rolled on south into Devery’s old 11th Precinct, where Polish and Russian names abounded, where overcrowding would create the most thirst.
“Small beer saloons fairly teem among the tenements,” noted Riis.
He and TR — neither shy of hyperbole — found that the poor people “seemed never so happy or content as on the one midsummer day in their experience when the saloons were closed.”
Roosevelt saw the clearing of Mulberry Bend with the buildings leveled to make room for a park; he saw an Italian selling watermelon and gelato.
The group swung down through Chinatown and Roosevelt ordered the driver to stop in front of Mike Callahan’s saloon.
He alighted and tried the door, put his ear to the wall, and walked around to ensure that Mike was not doing business.
He was quite pleased.
Roosevelt viewed the hundreds of closed Sunday saloons as an “unconditional surrender” by the saloon keepers and reveled in seeing “the raising of their blinds everywhere in token of submission.”
In conclusion, Riis stated that peering out the window, they found 684 of the 728 saloons “shut tight,” 41 open to “possibly doing business,” and saw men enter only three drinking joints during the entire trip; they observed only one drunk and saw no one carrying liquor through the streets.
“The stories printed by some of the newspapers about the general failure of the police to close the saloons on Sunday have been comically untrue,” TR later commented.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
LONG HOT THIRSTY SUMMER, continued ...
He ate dinner at 689 Madison that Sunday night with Edith and Riis and burly roundsman Tierney.
They relished what they had seen.
Roosevelt had been very privately leaning toward supporting some kind of limited Sunday saloon opening, maybe four hours a day, but he changed his mind.
“I have now begun to think that we ought not to have the saloons open on Sunday,” Roosevelt confided in a letter to Lodge, “and that all we need ... is to alter certain of its provisions so as to make it easier to enforce.”
He was considering lobbying the legislature to require saloon curtains to be drawn open on Sundays.
The Liquor Dealers’ Association concocted a devious new strategy to fight Roosevelt; they would exercise their legal right to demand a jury trial for each of the hundreds of pending excise cases, shifting them out of the Court of Special Sessions.
At the new venue, a grand jury would have to be convened to review each case and opt whether to indict, a jury would have to be empaneled, the case would be tried, and then Recorder John Goff — elected in the 1894 reform tidal wave to replace Tammany’s Smyth — would have to pass sentence on the convicted.
The process was hugely time-consuming, and usually reserved for serious crimes such as murder.
“Cleopatra’s needle will have crumbled and the bones of the violators will be dust before they could all be heard,” sniped the New York World, with undisguised admiration.
The backlog totaled 7,000 excise cases.
Recorder Goff called this flood-of-cases strategy an attempt to undermine the legal system and, with his usual flinty contrariness, vowed to fight back.
He said he would open his courtroom Monday, August 19, from 9:30 a.m. to midnight and do so every day as long as needed.
Goff, with a jury conviction already in hand, sentenced Dennis Mullins, owner of four saloons who had refused to pay excise fines for his bartenders, to thirty days in the Tombs city prison and a $250 fine — and if he didn’t pay it, he would have to spend three months in a state penitentiary such as Sing Sing.
That was an opening shot, like a loud warning before a blast.
Judge William Travers Jerome, whose court was the one being bypassed, still had some cases in the pipeline, and he and his two fellow judges intended to inflict harsh sentences.
The judges were clearly ready to slam down the gavel.
“As soon as we begin to send a few of these recalcitrant saloon keepers to jail,” gushed an assistant district attorney, “the accumulation of excise cases will rapidly cease.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
He ate dinner at 689 Madison that Sunday night with Edith and Riis and burly roundsman Tierney.
They relished what they had seen.
Roosevelt had been very privately leaning toward supporting some kind of limited Sunday saloon opening, maybe four hours a day, but he changed his mind.
“I have now begun to think that we ought not to have the saloons open on Sunday,” Roosevelt confided in a letter to Lodge, “and that all we need ... is to alter certain of its provisions so as to make it easier to enforce.”
He was considering lobbying the legislature to require saloon curtains to be drawn open on Sundays.
The Liquor Dealers’ Association concocted a devious new strategy to fight Roosevelt; they would exercise their legal right to demand a jury trial for each of the hundreds of pending excise cases, shifting them out of the Court of Special Sessions.
At the new venue, a grand jury would have to be convened to review each case and opt whether to indict, a jury would have to be empaneled, the case would be tried, and then Recorder John Goff — elected in the 1894 reform tidal wave to replace Tammany’s Smyth — would have to pass sentence on the convicted.
The process was hugely time-consuming, and usually reserved for serious crimes such as murder.
“Cleopatra’s needle will have crumbled and the bones of the violators will be dust before they could all be heard,” sniped the New York World, with undisguised admiration.
The backlog totaled 7,000 excise cases.
Recorder Goff called this flood-of-cases strategy an attempt to undermine the legal system and, with his usual flinty contrariness, vowed to fight back.
He said he would open his courtroom Monday, August 19, from 9:30 a.m. to midnight and do so every day as long as needed.
Goff, with a jury conviction already in hand, sentenced Dennis Mullins, owner of four saloons who had refused to pay excise fines for his bartenders, to thirty days in the Tombs city prison and a $250 fine — and if he didn’t pay it, he would have to spend three months in a state penitentiary such as Sing Sing.
That was an opening shot, like a loud warning before a blast.
Judge William Travers Jerome, whose court was the one being bypassed, still had some cases in the pipeline, and he and his two fellow judges intended to inflict harsh sentences.
The judges were clearly ready to slam down the gavel.
“As soon as we begin to send a few of these recalcitrant saloon keepers to jail,” gushed an assistant district attorney, “the accumulation of excise cases will rapidly cease.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
LONG HOT THIRSTY SUMMER, concluded ...
Later on Monday, two liquor dealers — with Mullins’s harsh sentence fresh in their minds — stood before Recorder Goff, waived their right to a jury trial, and pled guilty, meekly vowing never to break the excise law again.
Goff, enjoying their contrition, fined them only $30 each.
The lawyer for the Liquor Dealers’ Association, Frederick B. House, also contrite, informed Recorder Goff there was no conspiracy to inundate his court calendar but that 90 percent of his members faced bankruptcy and were desperately trying to avoid fines.
(Mortgage records indicated that the previous week marked the biggest weekly borrowing by saloons — $434,941 by 277 saloons from breweries — ever recorded.)
Lawyer House approached Judge Jerome and Recorder Goff about a deal.
It was a game of chicken and the judges had shown they were ready to send liquor men to prison even if they had to keep their courtrooms working triple overtime.
Fred House offered that the liquor men would stop demanding jury trials, that they would plead guilty, hoping for lower fines, and would promise to cease selling liquor on Sundays after September 1, 1895.
The association represented about half the saloon owners in the city; they also expected the police to crack down on the nonmembers.
The judges refused to specify the fine amount (“dignity of the court”) but promised to inflict much harsher fines and prison terms after the deadline.
The police agreed to crack down and follow up on any leads provided.
The Central Liquor Committee met at the law office of Friend, House, and Grossmanon Thursday night, approved the deal, and scheduled it for a vote at a mass meeting on Tuesday, August 27.
The saloon men — fearing TR’s hounding and the judges’ sentences — voted aye.
When TR was informed, he cried: “I am deeee-lighted."
"I’m really deee-lighted.”
(This marks an early instance of his irrepressible catchphrase.)
TR went out of his way to thank two judges: John Goff and William Travers Jerome.
On Friday, August 30, the final day when excise violators could plead guilty, Justice Jerome set up a “Bargain Day,” allowing them to pay a fine of $25 to clear their cases.
Newspapers noted the courtroom that day more resembled a bank, as almost 500 liquor dealers jammed in and waited on long lines to plead and pay.
The World reporter saw so many men fishing out small stacks of dollar bills and waving them about, he said the room took on a “distinct greenish hue.”
Coins jangled, piles of greenbacks grew mountainous.
The court collected a one-day record $8,050 in small fines.
Judge Jerome, amidst the din, loudly and repeatedly promised $200 fines and three-month prison sentences for violations after September 1.
Judge Goff mentioned up to $1,000 and one year in prison.
Just as the deal was going down, Pulitzer’s Evening World pulled one last yellow journalism stunt, perhaps hoping to derail the saloon owner Sabbath surrender.
It ran a piece about an unnamed mother trying on Sunday, August 25, to buy a five-cent chunk of ice to cool the fever of her seriously ill child.
And as the unnamed iceman was handing it over, an unnamed policeman arrested them both for violating the Sabbath and hauled them off to an unnamed precinct house.
The bluecoat dismissed her excuses about a sick child.
She hurried back to the tenement where she lived.
She ran upstairs and entered her room.
“I was kept away and couldn’t get back sooner, darling,” she said.
“I couldn’t get the ice because ...”
Suddenly the words died on her lips.
She knelt down by the bed and took a little wasted hand in hers.
Then, raising her face, she gazed up with dry eyes that yet saw nothing and whispered: “Thy will be done, O God!"
"Thou knowest best!”
For the child was dead.
Roosevelt later read the story and was appalled by the fraud and dishonesty of the newspaper.
The writer deserved the severest punishment, he said.
Nothing would sully the righteousness of the reform movement’s Sunday saloon victory.
“I am doing my best to ... manage [the police force] in accord with the Decalogue [Ten Commandments] and the Golden Rule,” he told a political gathering.
“Be assured that the principles of public honesty and public decency will win in the end.”
After all the hyperbole and fireworks, Sunday, September 1, had truly ranked among the driest in New York City history.
This sudden resolution of the excise battle marked a huge victory for Roosevelt.
Others around the country were observing him as well.
“Undeniably Theodore Roosevelt is the ‘biggest man’ in New York today, if not the most interesting man in public life,” enthused the Chicago Times-Herald.
“You are rushing so rapidly to the front that the day is not far distant when you will come into a large kingdom,” wrote Henry Cabot Lodge from London, “and by that time I will probably be a back number and I shall expect you to look after me and give me a slice.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Later on Monday, two liquor dealers — with Mullins’s harsh sentence fresh in their minds — stood before Recorder Goff, waived their right to a jury trial, and pled guilty, meekly vowing never to break the excise law again.
Goff, enjoying their contrition, fined them only $30 each.
The lawyer for the Liquor Dealers’ Association, Frederick B. House, also contrite, informed Recorder Goff there was no conspiracy to inundate his court calendar but that 90 percent of his members faced bankruptcy and were desperately trying to avoid fines.
(Mortgage records indicated that the previous week marked the biggest weekly borrowing by saloons — $434,941 by 277 saloons from breweries — ever recorded.)
Lawyer House approached Judge Jerome and Recorder Goff about a deal.
It was a game of chicken and the judges had shown they were ready to send liquor men to prison even if they had to keep their courtrooms working triple overtime.
Fred House offered that the liquor men would stop demanding jury trials, that they would plead guilty, hoping for lower fines, and would promise to cease selling liquor on Sundays after September 1, 1895.
The association represented about half the saloon owners in the city; they also expected the police to crack down on the nonmembers.
The judges refused to specify the fine amount (“dignity of the court”) but promised to inflict much harsher fines and prison terms after the deadline.
The police agreed to crack down and follow up on any leads provided.
The Central Liquor Committee met at the law office of Friend, House, and Grossmanon Thursday night, approved the deal, and scheduled it for a vote at a mass meeting on Tuesday, August 27.
The saloon men — fearing TR’s hounding and the judges’ sentences — voted aye.
When TR was informed, he cried: “I am deeee-lighted."
"I’m really deee-lighted.”
(This marks an early instance of his irrepressible catchphrase.)
TR went out of his way to thank two judges: John Goff and William Travers Jerome.
On Friday, August 30, the final day when excise violators could plead guilty, Justice Jerome set up a “Bargain Day,” allowing them to pay a fine of $25 to clear their cases.
Newspapers noted the courtroom that day more resembled a bank, as almost 500 liquor dealers jammed in and waited on long lines to plead and pay.
The World reporter saw so many men fishing out small stacks of dollar bills and waving them about, he said the room took on a “distinct greenish hue.”
Coins jangled, piles of greenbacks grew mountainous.
The court collected a one-day record $8,050 in small fines.
Judge Jerome, amidst the din, loudly and repeatedly promised $200 fines and three-month prison sentences for violations after September 1.
Judge Goff mentioned up to $1,000 and one year in prison.
Just as the deal was going down, Pulitzer’s Evening World pulled one last yellow journalism stunt, perhaps hoping to derail the saloon owner Sabbath surrender.
It ran a piece about an unnamed mother trying on Sunday, August 25, to buy a five-cent chunk of ice to cool the fever of her seriously ill child.
And as the unnamed iceman was handing it over, an unnamed policeman arrested them both for violating the Sabbath and hauled them off to an unnamed precinct house.
The bluecoat dismissed her excuses about a sick child.
She hurried back to the tenement where she lived.
She ran upstairs and entered her room.
“I was kept away and couldn’t get back sooner, darling,” she said.
“I couldn’t get the ice because ...”
Suddenly the words died on her lips.
She knelt down by the bed and took a little wasted hand in hers.
Then, raising her face, she gazed up with dry eyes that yet saw nothing and whispered: “Thy will be done, O God!"
"Thou knowest best!”
For the child was dead.
Roosevelt later read the story and was appalled by the fraud and dishonesty of the newspaper.
The writer deserved the severest punishment, he said.
Nothing would sully the righteousness of the reform movement’s Sunday saloon victory.
“I am doing my best to ... manage [the police force] in accord with the Decalogue [Ten Commandments] and the Golden Rule,” he told a political gathering.
“Be assured that the principles of public honesty and public decency will win in the end.”
After all the hyperbole and fireworks, Sunday, September 1, had truly ranked among the driest in New York City history.
This sudden resolution of the excise battle marked a huge victory for Roosevelt.
Others around the country were observing him as well.
“Undeniably Theodore Roosevelt is the ‘biggest man’ in New York today, if not the most interesting man in public life,” enthused the Chicago Times-Herald.
“You are rushing so rapidly to the front that the day is not far distant when you will come into a large kingdom,” wrote Henry Cabot Lodge from London, “and by that time I will probably be a back number and I shall expect you to look after me and give me a slice.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION
Elections loomed two months away, and would mark yet another crucial test for Police Commissioner Roosevelt.
Although his name was not on the ballot, his strict policies dominated the political discussion.
Would New York City voters on Tuesday, November 5, 1895, elect reform-minded candidates for the legislature and for key judgeships?
Would they elect Republicans?
Or would they miss their Sunday beer and stampede back to Tammany?
This local election — although the mayor would stay in office for two more years — would reveal whether the voters wanted to continue high-minded reform or preferred to backslide toward seamier, more tolerant ways.
Publicly, Roosevelt wrote in articles and repeated in forceful speeches that his law-and-order crackdown would rally voters away from Tammany.
But very privately, to the likes of Cabot and Bamie, he expressed his doubts.
In mid-September, Republicans from every corner of New York State boarded ferries and trains and horse carriages to flood into the racetrack town of Saratoga, New York, for the convention.
One politician looked poised to dominate the September 17 event, and that man had decreed that Theodore Roosevelt be banned.
Thomas Collier Platt, a former elected official and currently the president of a shipping company, was the Republican party boss for New York State.
Though largely forgotten today, Platt was matter-of-factly identified in the Boston Daily Globe in May of that year as “one of the half dozen best-known men in the United States.”
Joked a Tammany man: “When Platt takes snuff, every Republican sneezes.”
He was a rainmaker who by controlling New York’s various representatives could sway national politics.
As American political bosses go, Platt, then sixty-two, certainly did not fit the back-slapping, domineering stereotype.
His limp, damp handshake surprised well-wishers; his shy demeanor, subtle smiles, and whispered suggestions earned him the nickname “Easy Boss.”
But Platt had the ear — and interests — of the plutocrats of the age such as J. P. Morgan, whose contributions helped bankroll his power.
Skeletal and stoop-shouldered, the former Yale divinity student from Owego, New York, made so many crucial decisions on Sundays in a corridor of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where he stayed, that it was dubbed “Amen Corner.”
Reverend Parkhurst found Tammany’s boss Richard Croker an unapologetic rascal but he called Platt “such a mixture of good and bad that nobody ever knows where he stands.”
Issuing orders from Cottage number 9 of the U.S. Hotel in Saratoga, Platt dictated to his minions that the name of Roosevelt should not be uttered and that the issue of Sunday excise laws should be ignored.
They obeyed.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Elections loomed two months away, and would mark yet another crucial test for Police Commissioner Roosevelt.
Although his name was not on the ballot, his strict policies dominated the political discussion.
Would New York City voters on Tuesday, November 5, 1895, elect reform-minded candidates for the legislature and for key judgeships?
Would they elect Republicans?
Or would they miss their Sunday beer and stampede back to Tammany?
This local election — although the mayor would stay in office for two more years — would reveal whether the voters wanted to continue high-minded reform or preferred to backslide toward seamier, more tolerant ways.
Publicly, Roosevelt wrote in articles and repeated in forceful speeches that his law-and-order crackdown would rally voters away from Tammany.
But very privately, to the likes of Cabot and Bamie, he expressed his doubts.
In mid-September, Republicans from every corner of New York State boarded ferries and trains and horse carriages to flood into the racetrack town of Saratoga, New York, for the convention.
One politician looked poised to dominate the September 17 event, and that man had decreed that Theodore Roosevelt be banned.
Thomas Collier Platt, a former elected official and currently the president of a shipping company, was the Republican party boss for New York State.
Though largely forgotten today, Platt was matter-of-factly identified in the Boston Daily Globe in May of that year as “one of the half dozen best-known men in the United States.”
Joked a Tammany man: “When Platt takes snuff, every Republican sneezes.”
He was a rainmaker who by controlling New York’s various representatives could sway national politics.
As American political bosses go, Platt, then sixty-two, certainly did not fit the back-slapping, domineering stereotype.
His limp, damp handshake surprised well-wishers; his shy demeanor, subtle smiles, and whispered suggestions earned him the nickname “Easy Boss.”
But Platt had the ear — and interests — of the plutocrats of the age such as J. P. Morgan, whose contributions helped bankroll his power.
Skeletal and stoop-shouldered, the former Yale divinity student from Owego, New York, made so many crucial decisions on Sundays in a corridor of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where he stayed, that it was dubbed “Amen Corner.”
Reverend Parkhurst found Tammany’s boss Richard Croker an unapologetic rascal but he called Platt “such a mixture of good and bad that nobody ever knows where he stands.”
Issuing orders from Cottage number 9 of the U.S. Hotel in Saratoga, Platt dictated to his minions that the name of Roosevelt should not be uttered and that the issue of Sunday excise laws should be ignored.
They obeyed.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION, continued ...
This election, like so many in the Empire State, was shaking out to be two elections: New York State races and New York City races.
With its capital parked in a relative backwater, a former fur-trading post called Albany, the state in broad strokes — with the exception of upstate cities such as Buffalo and Syracuse — broke down into the homogenous churchgoing native-born upcountry folk versus the two-million-strong ethnic stew of Manhattan.
Upstate, Republicans looked poised to keep both houses of state government, although the Democrats saw an outside chance.
In New York City, Tammany Hall Democrats hoped for a comeback, riding a wave of anti-Roosevelt feeling.
Since the Republicans appeared heavily favored to win statewide, Boss Platt chose to orchestrate a cautious platform packed with safe platitudes: kudos for the Republican governor, Levi Morton, darts for the Democratic president, Grover Cleveland, and ... don’t forget to blame the recent state tax hike on the cost of caring for New York City’s vast population of mentally deficient vagrants.
Platt was convinced that Mayor Strong had reneged on preelection promises to appoint Republicans, and he dismissed Roosevelt as a strong-willed reformer.
Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Roosevelt’s friend and mentor, had hoped that Platt would embrace Roosevelt and Sunday saloon laws “but [Platt] is singularly lacking in political sense of the large kind.”
One political observer summed up Platt’s philosophy as: “Whoever pushes you up the apple tree is the boy to share the apples with.”
Saratoga was packed with party faithful dressed in their Sunday best, entering the hall under canopies of fall foliage.
Small-town lawyers jostled big-city full-time politicians.
By noon on the second day of meetings, the delegates had reached their seats for the main event.
At 12:15 p.m. Platt, walking alone and slowly, entered the convention hall to band music and sustained passionate applause and foot stomping.
The convention, which the New York Times labeled “tame, thin, indifferent,” briefly flickered to life.
Then it settled back into Platt’s low-key script.
The World compared Platt to a puppeteer.
A few hours later, when the topic of the party’s platform — already written in committee — was brought up for ratification, half a dozen men clamored for the attention of the convention chairman, Senator Clarence Lexow.
(Platt had rewarded him for his namesake committee that had helped topple Tammany the year before.)
Lexow ignored them.
They shouted demands to read a minority report complaining that the Sabbath and Sunday excise laws — in their view, the most important issues in the state — were being back-burnered.
Lexow, following Platt’s commands, ordered the minority report tabled and was moving swiftly forward to the next item of business.
The hubbub filling the hall seemed to be subsiding when from the very back, a stout mustachioed man began bellowing something, demanding to be heard.
The voice of former U.S. senator Warner Miller eventually pierced the din.
“There should be no gag law in this Republican meeting,” he shouted.
A bit flustered, Chairman Lexow hesitated, then said there would be no gag law and granted the man the floor.
Hundreds of heads swiveled toward the back.
Warner Miller — a longtime supporter of temperance and the Sabbath — abruptly recited a brief resolution to add to the party platform.
“We favor the maintenance of the Sunday law in the interest of labor and morality.”
The puppets were rebelling against the puppetmaster.
Platt, earning his reputation as “Easy,” whispered to Edward Lauterbach, the chairman of the New York County [i.e., City] Republican Committee, and Lauterbach — a Jewish corporate lawyer from New York City — stood and endorsed the resolution.
“That is the sentiment to which I am sure every Republican will subscribe.”
Lauterbach’s nickname was “Smooth Ed.”
(He was as anti-Roosevelt as Platt but equally pragmatic in a crisis.)
Warner Miller, an upstate churchgoing man, took the Lauterbach endorsement as his cue to make a speech.
He stressed it was key for the Republican Party not to retreat from its historic values of enforcement of the law and observance of the Sabbath.
And he explained that the Democratic Party was backing an “infamous” brand of personal liberty.
“That kind of liberty is opportunity to evade the laws, liberty to levy blackmail, liberty to make contracts with certain men if they support Democracy and Tammany Hall.”
He drew his biggest ovation when, with more than a hint of xenophobia, he singled out the foreigners of the City as clamoring for change.
“The people who come into our country must recognize our laws and our customs."
"The demand for liberties for these people such as they had abroad cannot be considered by the American people."
"We have a Sabbath that all recognize.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
This election, like so many in the Empire State, was shaking out to be two elections: New York State races and New York City races.
With its capital parked in a relative backwater, a former fur-trading post called Albany, the state in broad strokes — with the exception of upstate cities such as Buffalo and Syracuse — broke down into the homogenous churchgoing native-born upcountry folk versus the two-million-strong ethnic stew of Manhattan.
Upstate, Republicans looked poised to keep both houses of state government, although the Democrats saw an outside chance.
In New York City, Tammany Hall Democrats hoped for a comeback, riding a wave of anti-Roosevelt feeling.
Since the Republicans appeared heavily favored to win statewide, Boss Platt chose to orchestrate a cautious platform packed with safe platitudes: kudos for the Republican governor, Levi Morton, darts for the Democratic president, Grover Cleveland, and ... don’t forget to blame the recent state tax hike on the cost of caring for New York City’s vast population of mentally deficient vagrants.
Platt was convinced that Mayor Strong had reneged on preelection promises to appoint Republicans, and he dismissed Roosevelt as a strong-willed reformer.
Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Roosevelt’s friend and mentor, had hoped that Platt would embrace Roosevelt and Sunday saloon laws “but [Platt] is singularly lacking in political sense of the large kind.”
One political observer summed up Platt’s philosophy as: “Whoever pushes you up the apple tree is the boy to share the apples with.”
Saratoga was packed with party faithful dressed in their Sunday best, entering the hall under canopies of fall foliage.
Small-town lawyers jostled big-city full-time politicians.
By noon on the second day of meetings, the delegates had reached their seats for the main event.
At 12:15 p.m. Platt, walking alone and slowly, entered the convention hall to band music and sustained passionate applause and foot stomping.
The convention, which the New York Times labeled “tame, thin, indifferent,” briefly flickered to life.
Then it settled back into Platt’s low-key script.
The World compared Platt to a puppeteer.
A few hours later, when the topic of the party’s platform — already written in committee — was brought up for ratification, half a dozen men clamored for the attention of the convention chairman, Senator Clarence Lexow.
(Platt had rewarded him for his namesake committee that had helped topple Tammany the year before.)
Lexow ignored them.
They shouted demands to read a minority report complaining that the Sabbath and Sunday excise laws — in their view, the most important issues in the state — were being back-burnered.
Lexow, following Platt’s commands, ordered the minority report tabled and was moving swiftly forward to the next item of business.
The hubbub filling the hall seemed to be subsiding when from the very back, a stout mustachioed man began bellowing something, demanding to be heard.
The voice of former U.S. senator Warner Miller eventually pierced the din.
“There should be no gag law in this Republican meeting,” he shouted.
A bit flustered, Chairman Lexow hesitated, then said there would be no gag law and granted the man the floor.
Hundreds of heads swiveled toward the back.
Warner Miller — a longtime supporter of temperance and the Sabbath — abruptly recited a brief resolution to add to the party platform.
“We favor the maintenance of the Sunday law in the interest of labor and morality.”
The puppets were rebelling against the puppetmaster.
Platt, earning his reputation as “Easy,” whispered to Edward Lauterbach, the chairman of the New York County [i.e., City] Republican Committee, and Lauterbach — a Jewish corporate lawyer from New York City — stood and endorsed the resolution.
“That is the sentiment to which I am sure every Republican will subscribe.”
Lauterbach’s nickname was “Smooth Ed.”
(He was as anti-Roosevelt as Platt but equally pragmatic in a crisis.)
Warner Miller, an upstate churchgoing man, took the Lauterbach endorsement as his cue to make a speech.
He stressed it was key for the Republican Party not to retreat from its historic values of enforcement of the law and observance of the Sabbath.
And he explained that the Democratic Party was backing an “infamous” brand of personal liberty.
“That kind of liberty is opportunity to evade the laws, liberty to levy blackmail, liberty to make contracts with certain men if they support Democracy and Tammany Hall.”
He drew his biggest ovation when, with more than a hint of xenophobia, he singled out the foreigners of the City as clamoring for change.
“The people who come into our country must recognize our laws and our customs."
"The demand for liberties for these people such as they had abroad cannot be considered by the American people."
"We have a Sabbath that all recognize.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION, continued ...
The hall erupted in cheers.
Another Platt crony, Hamilton Fish of the platform committee, leaped to his feet and endorsed the plank.
He claimed — implausibly — the committee had steered away from the issue because they thought it pertained only to New York City.
Chairman Lexow put the plank up for vote by acclamation.
The convention in one full-throated voice, with plenty of foot stomping and hand clapping, added the Sunday enforcement plank to the platform.
WARNER MILLER STAMPEDES PLATT’S STATE CONVENTION ran one headline.
Somewhat surprisingly, when Roosevelt learned of the doings of the convention, he was a bit disappointed.
In letters to Lodge, he couldn’t stop fuming over Platt trying to bury him, and though he was pleased with Warner Miller, he considered it an “ill drawn and ill considered” resolution.
“I have the courageous and enthusiastic support of the men who make up the backbone of the Republican party but I have no hold whatever on the people who run the Republican machine.”
With genuine distance, Henry Cabot Lodge, an astute political observer, drew quite a different conclusion.
Lodge, then traveling in Europe, interpreted the Saratoga convention as the New York State Republican Party courageously defying the boss to endorse Roosevelt.
In very prescient words, Lodge explained: “You do not realize how you have impressed the popular imagination and that means getting what you want.”
Lodge was genuinely enthused.
He knew that his friend had languished a bit in the backwaters for six years as a civil service commissioner; he knew TR currently served as a high-ranking appointed official in the nation’s largest city, but Lodge judged it time to dangle the bigger prizes.
“There are to be two Republican Senators from New York soon — one very soon."
"There is a good chance for you to get the first one if you put yourself at the head of the element which forced your issue on the convention."
"I do not say you are to be president tomorrow."
"I do not say it will be — I am sure that it may and can be."
"I do say that the Senate, which is better, is well within reach."
"Stump the State."
"Get to know the people and insist everywhere on the vital importance of electing a Republican legislature to choose a Republican Senator.”
(The New York State legislature chose U.S. senators until 1914.)
TO BE CONTINUED ...
The hall erupted in cheers.
Another Platt crony, Hamilton Fish of the platform committee, leaped to his feet and endorsed the plank.
He claimed — implausibly — the committee had steered away from the issue because they thought it pertained only to New York City.
Chairman Lexow put the plank up for vote by acclamation.
The convention in one full-throated voice, with plenty of foot stomping and hand clapping, added the Sunday enforcement plank to the platform.
WARNER MILLER STAMPEDES PLATT’S STATE CONVENTION ran one headline.
Somewhat surprisingly, when Roosevelt learned of the doings of the convention, he was a bit disappointed.
In letters to Lodge, he couldn’t stop fuming over Platt trying to bury him, and though he was pleased with Warner Miller, he considered it an “ill drawn and ill considered” resolution.
“I have the courageous and enthusiastic support of the men who make up the backbone of the Republican party but I have no hold whatever on the people who run the Republican machine.”
With genuine distance, Henry Cabot Lodge, an astute political observer, drew quite a different conclusion.
Lodge, then traveling in Europe, interpreted the Saratoga convention as the New York State Republican Party courageously defying the boss to endorse Roosevelt.
In very prescient words, Lodge explained: “You do not realize how you have impressed the popular imagination and that means getting what you want.”
Lodge was genuinely enthused.
He knew that his friend had languished a bit in the backwaters for six years as a civil service commissioner; he knew TR currently served as a high-ranking appointed official in the nation’s largest city, but Lodge judged it time to dangle the bigger prizes.
“There are to be two Republican Senators from New York soon — one very soon."
"There is a good chance for you to get the first one if you put yourself at the head of the element which forced your issue on the convention."
"I do not say you are to be president tomorrow."
"I do not say it will be — I am sure that it may and can be."
"I do say that the Senate, which is better, is well within reach."
"Stump the State."
"Get to know the people and insist everywhere on the vital importance of electing a Republican legislature to choose a Republican Senator.”
(The New York State legislature chose U.S. senators until 1914.)
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: ON TEDDY ROOSEVELT
THE ELECTION, continued ...
Back in Manhattan, Roosevelt persevered with his reform agenda.
Judge Jerome kept his word about tough excise verdicts after September 1, and sentenced widow Mary O’Hearn, who ran a small saloon (140th Street near the East River), to three months in the penitentiary for a Sunday violation.
Sundays would be dry through the election.
The reform board continued trying to weed out bad cops; in four months, it had fired thirty-five and would tally eighty-eight dismissals by year’s end, which might seem few, but that dwarfed forty-one the previous year or eleven the year before that.
The board dismissed Edward Hahn for drinking in uniform; it dismissed his brother Frank for living in and aiding a brothel at 70 Eldridge Street; it also axed twelve-year veteran Edward Rothschild, after Lena Bendiener, twenty-two years old, holding her baby, testified that the officer had seduced her with promises of marriage.
She said that they had set up house together on East 6th Street and he came home most days to eat and every fourth night to sleep.
The biggest impediment to their happiness was that Rothschild was married with three children.
Hiring new cops, however, hit a snag.
The new higher standards tripped up reform’s effort to fill 325 vacancies for patrolmen.
Of the first 1,497 applicants, more than half were rejected for being either undersized (less than five feet eight inches and 140 pounds) or medically defective (from flat feet to foreskin phimosis).
Then only one-third of the survivors, that is, 148 recruits, passed the inaugural police civil service exam — “Multiply 252 by 504 and divide the product by 378” — and twenty-five of these men were excluded, some for cheating on the exam, others because the commissioners found “their personal characteristics or their antecedents” objectionable.
(“Antecedents” presumably referred to close relatives convicted of crimes.)
Undaunted by the delays, Roosevelt in an interview described the ideal kind of police recruit.
First and foremost: excellent character.
“He must not be a drinking man,” Roosevelt told the Herald.
“He must not be a man of loose habits of living.”
Roosevelt expected the man to be a good son or a father; he must not have “evil” companions; he would prefer a man of great courage, someone alert, obedient, and with good judgment.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Back in Manhattan, Roosevelt persevered with his reform agenda.
Judge Jerome kept his word about tough excise verdicts after September 1, and sentenced widow Mary O’Hearn, who ran a small saloon (140th Street near the East River), to three months in the penitentiary for a Sunday violation.
Sundays would be dry through the election.
The reform board continued trying to weed out bad cops; in four months, it had fired thirty-five and would tally eighty-eight dismissals by year’s end, which might seem few, but that dwarfed forty-one the previous year or eleven the year before that.
The board dismissed Edward Hahn for drinking in uniform; it dismissed his brother Frank for living in and aiding a brothel at 70 Eldridge Street; it also axed twelve-year veteran Edward Rothschild, after Lena Bendiener, twenty-two years old, holding her baby, testified that the officer had seduced her with promises of marriage.
She said that they had set up house together on East 6th Street and he came home most days to eat and every fourth night to sleep.
The biggest impediment to their happiness was that Rothschild was married with three children.
Hiring new cops, however, hit a snag.
The new higher standards tripped up reform’s effort to fill 325 vacancies for patrolmen.
Of the first 1,497 applicants, more than half were rejected for being either undersized (less than five feet eight inches and 140 pounds) or medically defective (from flat feet to foreskin phimosis).
Then only one-third of the survivors, that is, 148 recruits, passed the inaugural police civil service exam — “Multiply 252 by 504 and divide the product by 378” — and twenty-five of these men were excluded, some for cheating on the exam, others because the commissioners found “their personal characteristics or their antecedents” objectionable.
(“Antecedents” presumably referred to close relatives convicted of crimes.)
Undaunted by the delays, Roosevelt in an interview described the ideal kind of police recruit.
First and foremost: excellent character.
“He must not be a drinking man,” Roosevelt told the Herald.
“He must not be a man of loose habits of living.”
Roosevelt expected the man to be a good son or a father; he must not have “evil” companions; he would prefer a man of great courage, someone alert, obedient, and with good judgment.
TO BE CONTINUED ...