Kansas Physician Confirms Howard Report

[TradeName]

The New York Times obit for John Graham seems to imply that Graham represented Edward Z. C. Judson ("Ned Buntline") at the trial for the Astor Place Riot, but an account of the trial identifies Judson's lawyer as James M. Smith. An anti-Graham editorial in the New York Herald did link Graham to the "Buntline gang"

A summary of the riot.

Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events (New York: D. Appleton, 1870), Pages 658-659

In May, 1849, occurred the Astor Place Riots, which were effectually put down by Recorder Tallmadge's decision and energy. The history of these riots was briefly this: Edwin Forrest, the tragic actor, had become a leader in the Native American movement, and was attempting to obtain a nomination and election to Congress through it. He was at the same time vaunting himself as the great American tragedian. William C. Macready. a well-known and able English tragedian, had, at the time, an engagement at the Astor Place Opera-House. Certain partisans of Forrest, led by E. Z. C. Judson (Ned Buntline), and secretly supported, it was said, by Captain Rynders, Mike Walsh, and others, determined to mob Macready, and assaulted the Opera House. during his performance, with a shower of paving-stones. The Seventh Regiment were called out to preserve the peace, but were assailed by the rioters and thrown into disorder. The Sheriff (Westervelt) was urged by prominent citizens to order the military to clear the streets, but he had not the nerve to do it. They then appealed to the Mayor (C. S. Woodhull), but he was even more timid than the sheriff. Meantime the riot was increasing, the police were useless, and the military powerless for want of orders. At this juncture, Recorder Tallmadge came upon the ground, and, having commanded the mob to disperse, ordered the military to fire over their heads. They did so. but, as no one was hurt, the rioters rushed upon them, hurling paving-stones and other missiles at them with great violence. The soldiers held their lines without wavering though a number of their men were injured. Recorder Tallmadge immediately gave his second order to fire, and aim low, and within thrwe minutes nearly twenty of the rioters were killed, more than thirty seriously wounded, and the remainder in full flight. His action received the approval of all pood citizens. It was eight years before another riot was attempted in New York.

----end

A link to an account of the trial of the rioters. (No mention of Graham)

Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of Common Pleas, Volume 11 (New York: Banks and Brothers, 1885), Pages 1-91
By Charles Patrick Daly

Astor Place Riot Case

The People against Edward Z. C. Judson et al

(New York General Sessions

(September Term, 1849)


A link to an account focusing on the Forrest/MacReady dispute.

A Rejoinder to The Replies from England, etc. (New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1849), link
By An American Citizen


The anti-Graham editorial by James Gordon Bennett, Sr. which accuses Graham of being linked to Ned Buntline and George Wilkes, publisher of the National Police Gazette.

The New York Herald, October 13, 1850, Page 2, Column 1

The Tammany Hall Nominations--The Mayoralty, and the District Attorneyship

The nominating conclave af Tammany Hall,
representing the big-fisted democracy of this city,
have nominated candidates for some of the principal
offices to be voted for at the next election, On
Friday night Fernando Wood got the nomination
for Mayor of this city,and John Graham succeeded
in procuring the nomination for District Attorney.

[...]

In regard to the other candidate--John Graham
--we have also something of a mixed character to
say in relation to his capacity and his fitness for
the office to which he aspires, and for which he
has been nominated. We know a good deal of the
career of John Graham; and although he has some
qualities that are creditable in several points of
view, we are sorry to say that, as District Attorney,
he is entirely unsuited and unfit; and we are
confident that his elevation to that office would be
a very deplorable event for the administration of
criminal justice in this city. We are sorry in being
compelled, from the duty we owe to truth, justice,
the community, and the correct administration of
criminal jurisprudence, to say this of John Graham;
for he is a son of one of our oldest friends--
a man of the highest character for truth, and
veraeity, and honor--we mean.the late David Graham,,
who waa our former counsel in many cases of difficulty.
No man ever entertained a opinion,
in point of learning and purity of character,
for any one, than we did of the late David Graham,
father of John Graham. We are sorry,
however, to say, that the feelings of reapect,
Yeneration and confidence, which we entertained for
the father, have by no means descended in strict
hereditary succession to the sons; hut more especially
may this be declared of John Graham,
now a candidate for the office of District Attorney.
From his associations, his reputation, his talents,
and a variety of other circumstances, we are
perfectly satisfied that he is totally unfit and
incompetent to occupy the office of District Attorney, or
to manage the criminal juriaprudence of thia city.
He haa been connected, as counsel, as adviser, as
agent, with certain criminal gangs, and certain
criminal affairs, daring the laat two years, which
augur any thing else but respect and eateem for
him, or any probability that he would ever be
able to manage the criminal affairs of this city
with any degree of justice to the community, or to
the satisfaction of the public. The Warner stool-pigeon
gang, the Wilkes stool-pigeon gang, the
Ned Buntline gang, and various other gangs, have
alwaya looked upon him as one of their principal
pupils, agents and advisers; and his connections in
a legal and other points of view, have been with
persons and characters of such a description as to
entirely unfit him for the post of District Attorney.

----end

Shortly before the riot, Buntline had been assaulted by a woman he had written about unfavorably in his weekly paper.

The New York Herald, April 05, 1849, Page 1, Column 4

Flare Up in Broadway--An Editor Cowhided by a Woman

A most exciting and extraordinary scene
occurred in Broadway, at tbe corner of Duane street,
about one o'clock yesterday afternoon, the particlars
of which, as we have gathered them from responsible
sources. are as follows:--Edward Z. C Judson,
editor of a paper in this city. known as Ned Buntline's
Own, was walking down Broadway, accompanied by
two friends. As the three reached the corner of
Duane street, a dashing-looking and fashionably
dressed female rushed upon Mr. Judson, and, with a
cowhide in ber hand demanded of the editor why he had
published her in his paper. To this demand he had
scarcely time to make a reply before he received
several severe blows on the head and shoulders
from the woman,who plied her weapon of revenge most
dexterously. He then ran across the street, and she
followed, giving him a blow tor every step, until satified
that she had avenged the insult she had received,
A large crowd of persons gathered around immediately,
and tbe belligerent parties separated--the woman
walking up Broadway. During tbe affray, it is alleged
that the editor drew a pistol and threatened the life of
of his fair assailant; but we believe no shots were fired.
The woman, we learn, is Miss Kate Hastings, keeper
of a boarding house in Leonard street. The occurrance,
taking place as it did, at an hour of tbe day,
when Broadway is most thronged with spectators,
caused an unusual excitement. Mr. Judson, immediately
after the affray, proceeded before the Mayor,
and made an affidavit respecting the assault, but his
Honor, up to a late hour last night, had not issued any
warrant or process for the arrest of Miss Kate. It is
possible, however, that his Honor will send for this
bold creature this forenoon, as there appears to be
some curiosity to see this "female lion," who would
dare to horsewhip an editor.

----end

The New York Herald, April 18, 1849, Page 2, Column 4

Court of Special Sessions

[...]

Catharine Hastings, the above named defendant,
being duly sworn, deposes and says, that, in a paper
called Ned Buntline's Own, of a recent date, and prior
to the assault complained of in this case, the following
scurrilous attack was published of and concerning
this deponent, as follows:--

(Here was inserted the obnoxious article referred to
above.)

That the complainant in this case, Edward Z. C.
Judson, is notoriously the editor of the said paper,
and that he has for a considerable period published
similar gross attacks upon deponent, all of which have
been calculated to and did arouse the anger of this deponent
against him. Deponent further says, that the
documents marked A and B, which are hereto annexed,
(These letters contain expressions too gross and indecent
to meet the public gaze in a newspaper, and
hence we cannot give them. They were mere blackguard
missives couched in the plaiest and most indecent
terms.) were sent to this deponent, as deponent
verifly believs by the said E. Z. C. Judson, as his name
is subscribed to the one marked A; and portions of the
one marked B. are similar to the writing of the one to
which his name is signed. Deponent further says, that
the chastisement she indicted upon the said Judson
was induced solely by these attacks upon her, and by
no other cause. Deponent further says, that she is informed
and verily believes the fact so to be, that this
case has been presented to the Grand Jury, as appears
by an endorsement upon the back of the complaints;
and as deponent is informed and believes,
in consequence of there not being a sufficient
number of votes to find a bill against this
deponent; and this deponent further saith. that
it has not been her intention to deny that she inflicted
personal chastisement upon the said Judson and
as the Grand Jury are unable to pronounce upon her
guilt, she freely admits chastising him. thus saving the
county the expense of a trial, under the full impression
and belief that the said Judson fully merited even severer
punishment than he has received at her hands,
in consequence of these scurrilous attacks upon this
deponent. CATHARINE HASTINGS.

Sworn before me this 17th day of April, 1849.
HENRY VANDERVOORT, Clerk

The Recorder said the court had perused the papers
in the case, and had come to the conclusion to impose
a fine of six cents on Miss Hastings, and he trusted she
would never attack this man again.

When the sentence had been pronounced, Kate very
deliberately opened an elegant purse which she held in
her hand, and was about to pay the sixpence down at
once, but her counsel interposed, saying to her that the
amount was merely nominal, and that she might leave
it to him to arrange. When the affair was ended,
voices were beard all round the room, expressing approbation
at the decision of the court. As the prisoner
was about leaving the court, she remarked, audibly,
that if Judson did not leave her alone in future, if she
got at him again, he would not be able to come to court
to make a complaint. When she had left, the crowd
gradually dispersed,

----end

Link to a novel by Buntline from the period of the riot.

The Mysteries and Miseries of New York: A Story of Real Life (New York: W. F. Burgess, 1849), link
By Ned Buntline (Edward Z. C. Judson)


Link to a later article about the riot.

Pearson's Magazine, Volume 29, April, 1913, Pages 452-462

The Bloodshed in Astor Place

by Alfred Henry Lewis


Link to a friendly biography of Buntline.

Life and Adventures of "Ned Buntline" (New York: Cadmus Books Shop, 1919), link
By Frederick Eugene Pond

[TradeName]

John Graham was one of the defense attorneys at the trial for New York Congressman Daniel Sickles for gunning down the son of Francis Scott Key in Washington, D.C., after learning that Key was having an affair with his wife.

Trial of the Hon. Donald E. Sickles for Shooting Philip Barton Key, Esq. (New York: R. M. Dewitt, 1859), link
By Felix Gregory De Fontaine

Pages 25-36

Speech of John Graham, Esq.


Graham later defended a jealous husband who gunned down a New York Tribune reporter in the Tribune office.

The Richardson-McFarland Tragedy (Philadelphia: Barclay, 1870), link


Modern Jury Trials and Advocates: Containing Condensed Cases (New York: Banks & Brothers, 1882)
By John Wesley Donovan

Pages 314-353

McFarland-Richardson Case


The NY Times obit mentions the Polly Bodine case, but this seems to have been handled by Graham's brother, David.

The Era Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly, Volume 14, October, 1904, Pages 324-333

The Staten Island Mystery of 1843

Polly Bodine, the veiled Woman, and Her Three Trials for the Housman Murder

by Will M. Clemens

[TradeName]

An account of the Astor Place Riot contains mentions of a Marcus Cicero Stanley, who seems to have been a worthy associate of the young Ned Buntline (Judson).

Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of Common Pleas, Volume 11 (New York: Banks and Brothers, 1885)
By Charles Patrick Daly

Astor Place Riot Case

The People against Edward Z. C. Judson [Ned Buntline] et al

(New York General Sessions

(September Term, 1849)

Page 53

[Prosecutor] James R. Whiting's Speech

There is evidence enough to convict him, even without the testimony of young Bennett; but of that testimony let me say a word. You saw him on the stand: his evidence was simply given, and goes to prove the cunning and adroitness of the accused; you heard of Mr. Marcus Cicero Stanley, his friend and coadjutor in the newspaper, who was present to relieve him of his pistols, which, if found upon his person, would have been damning evidence of his guilt. But where was Marcus Cicero Stanley when we wanted him and said we could not find him? Judson's counsel replied that we need not trouble ourselves, that he intended to introduce him himself. Where is he? (Mr. Smith—Me has not yet returned.)


Pages 71-72

The District Attorney then referred to the testimony of the witnesses as to Judson's conduct in exciting the mob and directing their movements, and to the testimony of Mrs. Bennett, that Judson's pistols were brought back to the house by Stanley, Judson's partner. He referred to the cunning of Judson, after his arrest, in having Stanley take the pistols from his pockets, and then Judson insisting on being searched, when he knew nothing could be found on him.

----end

An account of Stanley's earlier life in Texas and London.

The Camden Journal (South Carolina), March 10, 1841, Page 1, Column 4

An Unmitigated Scoundrel

[from the New Orleans Picayune]

Marcus Cicero Stanley, the young man
who was recently sent to the House of
Correction in London for robbing Mr.
Catlin at his Indian Portrait Gallery, is
one of the blackest-hearted wretches we
have ever heard of. The circumstances
of his arrest in London are as follows:

He had been on intimate terms with
Mr. Catlin, having, by his gentlemanly
address, ingratiated himself into his favor.
For some time Mr. C. had been losing
money from his pantaloons pockets while
they were lying in his dressing room
attacned to the hall where his curiosities
were. The night on which Stanley was
arrested, Mr. Catlin, previous to changing
his dress, marked four sovereigns and
four shilling pieces which he left in his
pockets, and then secreted a police man
in the room to watch. But a few minutes
lapsed when Stanley came into the room,
took up the pantaloons; abstracted a part
of the money from the pockets and transferred
it to his own, and then left the
room and joined the audience. The
policeman followed him, and, after telling
him he was a peace officer, asked what
money he had in his pocket. Stanley
pretended to be very much affronted at
being accused of doing wrong and refused
to tell. The Constable, however,
persisted in his duty, and searching him
found five sovereigns and a half in gold
and silver upon him. Two of the
sovereigns and 6s. formed part of the marked
money. He was then taken into custody.

On the trial Stanley said he did not
intend to appropriate the money to his own
use--he only intended to show it to Mr.
Catlin after the exhibition, to convince
him how carelessly he left his property
exposed--said that had he intended robbing
him he would have taken his gold
watch which was in the same garment.--
Mr.Catlin denied this, as since he had
suspected himself of being robbed he
had taken the precaution of secreting his
watch.

On the deposition being read over
Stanley complained that the chief clerk
had not used sufficiently expressive
language in taking down his defence. He
also appealed to the reporters to suppress
the case for the sake of his family in this
country [USA], which was highly respectable.--
He was sentenced to six months hard labor
in the House of Correction.

But the offence for which he is now
suffering in England is nothing in comparison
to his rascalities in this country and
Texas. Some two or three years since
he was in this city [New orleans] and cut even a greater
dash than the notorious Stith. We next
hear of him in Texas, concerned in the
fatal duel in which the lamented Laurens
was killed by Goodrich, in 1837. It may
be recollected that some or five or six
young men slept in a room together at
Houston, among whom were Goodrich,
Stanley and Laurens. During the night
a $1000 bill was stolen from Goodrich,
who, instigated by Stanley, charged Laurens
with the theft. Highminded and
honorable and at the same time innocent,
the latter could not brook this charge and
immediately sent Goodrich a challenge.
They fought with rifles and Laurens was
killed--Stanley acting as his second.--
Subsequently it was proved that Stanley
himself stole the money, when Goodrich,
conscience-stricken at what he had done
became dissipated and finally blew his
own brains out.

Since then Stanley has figured extensively
in this city, and in fact all over the
country. In 1839 he again visited Texas,
where he stole a $600 bill from a
companion. He afterwards passed the bill, it
was identified, and Stanley was arrested.
He found means to procure bail, when,
thinking he was too well known in this
country and Texas, He immediately left
for England, where he has since been
living by his rascalities.

We recollect Stanley here, a small but
well made and genteel young man, wearing
his hair long, after the present fashion
some year or two before it was introduced
by any one else. His high family connections,
education and prepossessing manners,
gave him access to the best society,
and his expulsion from it was always on
account of some theft or swindling
transaction. His family have long since.
discarded him, and he is now in a situation
where he can commit no rascalities at
least for a season. Our only regret is,
that instead of six months imprisonment,
the English authorities did not sentence
him to six score years and ten.--N. O.
Picayune.

----end

A two-volume work by the "Indian Gallery" guy mentioned above.

The Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North-American Indians, Volume 1 (London: 1841), link
By George Catlin


The Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North-American Indians, Volume 2 (London: 1841), link
By George Catlin


A sample of Catlin's work.



The New York Herald, July 20, 1842, Page 2, Column 2

Severely Cowhided

Marcus Cicero Stanley,
the brother [sic] of the celebrated Stanley, the whig
member of Congress, was most severely cowhided
last night in the Park, by a gentleman, who
considered that Stanley had grossly injured him. This
is the same Stanley who was arrested in London
for robbing Mr. Catlin. He is still in the city

----end

Libel case involving a pamphlet about Stanley.

The New York Herald, February 22, 1845, Page 2, Column 4

Police Office

Curious Case of Libel

One of the most curious libel cases that has ever come up
in any court of justice, will probably be tried at the next
term of the Court of Sessions, or as soon after as practicable.
The accused is Herman Atwell, a custom house
officer, and the complainant, Marcus Cicero Stanley, is an
individual not altogether unknown in this city. The
complainant makes affidavit that a certain pamphlet under
the title of "Autobiography of Marcus Cicero Stanley,
of infamous notoriety, containing an account of his frauds
and villanies, in Texas, London, Paris and New York;
detailing his robbery in Texas, and murder of Levy
Lazarus of New York, and his robbery of George Catlin in
London, also, an account of his 'pigeoning' the
'policy dealers' of New York and other cities. Dated New
York, January, 1846. Probono publico," was published
by John McLaughlin, of No. 11 Bowery, from an original
manuscript, written by Atwell, and corrected by Dr
Thiers. He sets forth that "it makes him (Stanley)
appear a monster of iniquity, which the deponent believes
he is not." The affidavit concludes in these words--
"That the said Atwell has written a number of letters to
a certain lady, whose name, from a personal, regard for
her, deponent is unwilling to mention, in which he
avows the most tender and ardent love for the said lady,
coupled with a determination to sink deponent and
injure him both in his character and person. That the said
A. is married, and has two children, and is a clerk in the
Custom House at this city, and in the receipt of a large
salary, and is able to give good and heavy bail." Upon
this affidavit A. was arrested. He has also been arrested
and held to bail in a civil suit for damages. When the
trial comes up, some of the funniest and most peculiar
developments will oome out. The letters spoken of are
peculiarly rich.

----end

The New York Herald, August 21, 1845, Page 2, Column 5

Marcus Cicero Stanley

This individual was yesterday
arrested on complaint of Herman H. Atwill [sic] and N. H.
Carpenter, charged with having stolen some promissory
notes, &c., in October last, from the rooms occupied by
Mr. Carpenter at that time, located at No. 97 Wall
street.

---end

The New York Herald, September 18, 1845, Page 1, Column 5

Marcus Cicero Stanley

It will doubtless be recollected
that a few weeks ago, this individual was arrested on
complaint of Herman Atwell, who charged him
with having stolen about $60 worth of property from Mr.
Nuthaniel H. Carpenter, some time in June 1844. Since
the arrest of Stanley, the matter has been under
investigation before Justice Osborne, who dismissed the case
this morning without requiring the accused to otter any
defence. Counsel for the delendant, Thomas Warner,
Esq.; for Mr. Atwell, Messrs. Boyd and Hastings.

---end

A favorable obituary for Stanley, if you can overlook a bit of blackmail.

New-York Tribune, July 10, 1885, Page 5, Column 5

Marcus Cicero Stanley

The Close of a Singular Career

Death of a Man Who Was the Bitter Foe of Faro Banks and Policy Shops

Marcus Cicero Stanley, one of the most
widely known men of New-York,died at 4:17 p.m. yesterday
at his home in the Gramercy Park Apartment House.
He bad been an invalid for years, but possessing rare
courage and spirit, he never succumbed to his
indisposition until the last week in June. [...]

Mr. Stanley had a singular career. He
never told his age and was strangely
sensitive upon that subject. His birthday was
August 2, and it is believed that had he lived a few weeks
longer he would have been sixty-five years old. He was
born in Newbern [sic], N. C. His father was John Stanley,
distinguished in the early politics of that State--a man
of fine family, rare culture, learning and ability.
Edward Stanley, his oldest brother, was
appointed military governor of North carolina
by President Lincoln. Another brother was
Admiral Fabius Stanley, well known as a naval officer.
He died a few years ago. When Marcus Cicero Stanley
was about fifteen years old, his father died, and his
mother went to live with her daughter, Mrs. General
Armstrong, of Ben Lomond, West Virginia. Marcus
came to the this city and lived with the Rev. Dr.
Hawks, then rector of St. Thomas's Episcopal
Church, which was at Houston-st. and Broadway.
Dr. Hawks had studied law with John Stanley, and consented
to be Marcus's guardian. He placed the boy in a
drug-store, where he remained as clerk for some
time. Tiring of that prosaic life, he began the
study of law, and showed much fondness and
ability for criminal cases. His mind was
active and penetrating and it dwelt on the sinister and
evil phases of life. He was a born detective, and after
a little following his natural inclination he became a
reporter for the early issues of The Police Gazette. In
this capacity he saw much of the undercurrents of
human life, of its miseries and criminalities. He became
connected with the Herald later, working still among
the classes of people in whom he found such a strange
fascination.

With his keen penetration, his ever active mind, his
watchful suspicion and his naturally subtle mental
temperament, ever alive for the discovery of motive,
far-seeing in his views of purpose and marvellous
in his intuitive judgment of character,
Stanley soon obtained an unparalleled
knowledge of the criminals of New-York, their
habits, faces, deeds and haunts. This knowledge
extended to all classes of people, from the most
depraved of brutal knaves to the polished scoundrel, and
even to those whom accident, revenge and passion had
involved in sudden and unwonted crime. He traced mystery
to its most secret and impenetrable sources, and
held in his mental possession the proof of many an
unpunished sin. Speaking of death to his wife a few days
before the end came, he said: "There's many a man
who will be happier when I am gone."

Stanley was one of the original incorporators of the
Louisiana State Lottery Company, in which he held
a large interest until its reorganization
some years ago. He had interests in other lotteries, and
was supposed to be associated with a complex system of
policy-dealing and lottery prizes. His nature was
devoted in its friendships and wholly uncompromising in its
enmities. He waged a terrible warfare on some varieties
of gamblers, and was of frequent and inculculable service
both to the police and to the press
in the discovery and punishment of many
notorious criminals. He possessed great courage,
which was required in many an emergency. He was
accused of wholesale blackmailing, of gambling, and of
other serious offenses, and his enemies took the pains to
publish a pamphlet detailing a long variety of wicked
acts attributed to him. But none of these accusations
clung to him.

In his domestic life Mr. Stanley was a
model of tenderness and consideration. He
married Miss Grivet, of this city, twenty-eight
years ago, and she was his constant
companion upon his rambles over the world. She
survives him. They have two children living. One is married
to a German merchant and lives abroad. The other,
William Edward Stanley, is a lad of fifteen
and has lived with his parents. Mr. Stanley
was a man of fine mental attainments
and noteworthy appearance. He was a scholar
and facile writer. He was associated with George
Wilkes when The Spirit of the Times was founded. He
leaves a handsome fortune.

----end

According to this article, Stanley played a part in introducing parimutuel betting to the U.S.

Evening Star (Washington, DC), October 24, 1885, Page 6, Column 5

George Wilkes Fear

The Importation of Paris Mutuals Intended for Wall Street

George Wilkes died the other day, and the
reputation that he left was not such as to give
the idea that he cared much for what people
thought of him. Nevertheless, he was sensitive
on one point. He was afraid that he would be
remembered as a professional gambler instead
of a sportsman of the creditable sort. One of
the few injunctions that he impressed on his
visitors just before his death was a charge to
deny, on every possible occasion and as publicly
as possible, that he had brought the Paris mutual
system of betting to America intending to
devote it to gaming on sports. The facts are
curious. Wilkes was in France in 1862, and
there he saw one of the now familiar
machines for registering bets. He conceived
the idea that it could be used in Wall street for
facilitating speculation in stocks, and for that
purpose alone he bought one to bring home.
On arriving in New York he showed it to several
big operators, endeavoring to form a company
to purchase the American franchise, but
consultation with lawyers convinced him that
the contrivance would surely come under the
law against gambling. Discouraged with the
venture, he let the late Marcus Cicero Stanley
take it off his hands, though he retained a passive
interest. Stanley had no compunctions
such as Wilkes claimed to feel, and the betting
machine was at once introduced on the turf, to
the speedy enrichment of its managers.
Wilkes' conscience was not so tender as to prevent
him from taking his full share of the proceeds,
and it was astonishing to his acquaintances
after his decease to learn that he was ashamed.

----end

[TradeName]

In NYC in 1848, Horace Wells, a dentist, who came to be celebrated by Hartford, Connecticut, as a pioneer in the use of anesthetics, was arrested for throwing acid on the "frail sisters" of Broadway.

An account of Wells work with anesthetics.

The Discovery of Modern Anĉsthesia: By Whom was it Made? (New York: George W. Nevius, 1894), Pages 29-38
by Laird W. Nevius

Dr. Horace Wells was born in Hartford, Windsor County, Vermont, Jan. 21, 1815. He was the eldest of three children. Soon after the birth of Horace, his father bought a valuable farm at Westminster, Vt., where the early days of young Wells were spent. Wells' parents were intelligent, and, for that day and neighborhood, were considered wealthy. They gave their son every advantage for moral and mental culture. During the year 1834, young Wells began the study of dentistry at Boston. The College of Dentistry was not then established, but Wells acquired the best professional education possible at that time, and after completing his studies opened an office in Hartford, Conn. He early manifested great mechanical talent, and constructed and patented several machines. His ingenuity led him to invent and construct most of his dental instruments.

In August, 1840, L. P. Brockett, of Brooklyn, New York, then a medical student at Hartford, went to Dr. Wells to have a large molar tooth extracted. The operation was so difficult and so painful that Dr. Wells said there ought to be some method of mitigating such suffering.

The first operation ever performed without pain by the use of nitrous oxide gas (of which we have any record) was performed upon Dr. Horace Wells, and occurred as related below.

On the 10th of Dec, 1844, Dr. G. Q. Colton delivered a lecture in Hartford, taking for his subject nitrous oxide gas. In order to demonstrate to his audience the amusing effects of "laughing gas," (as it was then called) Dr. Colton invited a number of those present to come upon the platform to inhale the gas. Among those who inhaled it was Dr. Wells and a young man by the name of Cooley. Cooley, while under its influence, ran against some benches which were upon the stage, bruising his legs badly. After the effects of the gas had passed off, Dr. Wells asked young Cooley if he had not hurt himself. Cooley said "No." Dr. Wells replied, "you must have been hurt, for you struck your legs against the benches." Young Cooley pulled up his trousers, and was greatly surprised to find the blood running down his legs. He assured Dr. Wells he did not realize that he had wounded himself.

Dr. Wells then said to a friend near by, and who had been an eye witness to all that had happened, "I believe a person, by inhaling a sufficient quantity of that gas, could have a tooth extracted, or a leg amputated, and not feel pain." On their way home from the lecture that evening, Dr. Wells told his wife that he was so thoroughly convinced of the fact that a tooth could be extracted without pain while under the influence of laughing gas, that he was going to take the gas the following day and have a tooth extracted.

Upon arriving home and before retiring, he went to see his friend and former student, Dr. Riggs, who was a neighboring dentist, to tell him of his intention to take the gas and have a troublesome tooth extracted the following morning

Dr. Riggs tried to dissuade him from taking the gas. Wells' mind was made up. He determined to test the anaesthetic effects of the gas upon his own person. Early next morning, Dec. 11, 1844, Dr. Wells called upon Dr. Colton and engaged him to go to his office at 10 o'clock A.M. and give him the gas. He also called upon Dr. Riggs, and requested him to be present to extract the tooth and be a witness to the operation. At the appointed hour all were at Wells' office. Dr. Wells seated himself in his own operating chair and Dr. Colton proceeded to administer the gas. At the proper moment Riggs extracted a large upper molar tooth.

Dr. Wells showed no evidence of having suffered any pain. He remained unconscious for a few moments, and on coming to he exclaimed, "A new era in tooth pulling! It did not hurt me as much as the prick of a pin ; it is the greatest discovery ever made."

[...]

On January 12, 1848, just twelve days after the death of Dr. Wells, the Paris Medical Society, still ignorant of the fact of his death, voted "that to Dr. Horace Wells, of Hartford, Conn., United States of America, is due all the honor of having first discovered and successfully applied the use of vapors or gases whereby surgical operations could be performed without pain," and also elected him an honorary member of their society. In 1847, the General Assembly of Connecticut passed resolutions in favor of Dr. Wells as the discoverer of modern anaesthesia; resolutions to the same effect were passed by the Court of Common Council, of the city of Hartford. All the physicians, surgeons and dentists of the city of Hartford united in a testimonial that it was their belief that to Dr. Horace Wells belonged the honor of having discovered anaesthesia. On Bushnell Park, in Hartford, there stands a monument erected by the State of Connecticut and the city of Hartford, upon which is a portrait statue of Dr. Wells and the following inscription:

HORACE WELLS
WHO DISCOVERED
ANESTHESIA
NOVEMBER, 1844.


Page 39



An account of Wells's arrest.

The New York Herald, January 23, 1848, Page 2, Column 6

Police Intelligence

Outrageous Assault on Females with Vitriol

The police office at the Tombs was thrown into quite a state
of excitement yesterday by the appearance of some ten
or twelve good looking, well dressed females, some
accompanied with black servants, carrying hat boxes and
bundles containing elegant wearing apparel, burnt into
large holes from the effects of vitriol. It appears that
on last Thursday night, and every night since, complaints
have been made by the different well-dressed
girls who promenade Broadway in the evening,
to the police of the third ward, setting forth
that some malicious individuals were in the habit
of throwing vitriol upon their cloaks, shawls,
dresses, and hats, as they passed along the street,
destroying clothing valued at many hundred dollars--
Upon this information, a close watch was kept in order
to detect the malicious scoundrel who would be guilty
of an act so base. Consequently, on Friday night,
between 9 and 10 o'clock, as Jane White and Louisa Mariad,
of No. 102 Church street, were passing Broadway,
near the Museum, Jane was attracted by the noise of, as
she thought, some liquid being thrown from a bottle, and
on turning around she saw a man in a cloak close by her,
and at that moment she received a spot of vitriol
on her neck which gave her pain--when she exclaimed:
"there, that's the man that burns the girls
with vitriol." The man in the cloak walked quickly
off, and the aid of officer Beard, of the 3d ward,
was procured, who took the accused into custody, and
near the place where he threw the vitriol a glass vial
was found broken on the pavement, the cork of which
was slit on one side, so that by a jerk of the bottle the
vitriol could be sprinkled out at plessure. The cloak
that the accused wore was much burnt with vitriol, near
the pocket where it is supposed the bottle was kept. On
being questioned at the station house the reason for
such outrageous conduct and cruelty, he replied to
officers Beard and Noe that there were three others
concerned with him, and that they had been injured by the
girls but that last night was the first attempt he
made, and that through the temptation of the devil, or
the effects of a drug which he had been taking, called
chloroform or ether, and while under that influence
sallied forth into the street, as he said, to sprinkle the
girls; and upon the evaporation of this drug at the
station house, he acknowledged his guilt, and gave his
name as Jonathan Smith, but whose real name is Horace
Wells, a dentist, located at No. 120 Chambers street. The
story related by the accused, about his accomplices, is
not credited, as it is generaly believed that the crime has
been perpetrated by him alone. A young girl now lies in
the city hospital, dangerously ill from the effects of vitriol
supposed to have been thrown on her face and neck
by this monster in human shape. The following list of
females have been burnt by vitriol, and their clothing
destroyed, between Monday and Friday nights:--Jane
Montgomery, No. 104 Church street, burnt in Broadway
on Tuesday night; Julia Meadows, No 60 Reade street,
burnt on Tuesday night likewise; Louise Johnson, No.
72 Deane street, burnt on Tuesday and Friday nights;
Maria Taylor, No. 19 Thomas street, burnt ou Tuesday
and Friday nights; Jane Forrest, No. 102 Church street,
burnt on Tuesday night, and Mary Pierce, No. 71 West
Broadway, likewise. All of these young women made
their affidavits as to iho fact of haviug beeu burnt with
vitriol; and as this man was caught in the act, it goes
far to show that he is the guilty party. We never heard
before of such a wholesale distribution of vitriol. It is
frequently the case that where one party owes the other
a grudge, that vitriol is applied for that especial
purpose; but we never before heard of such a wilful,
malicious and outrageous attack on innocent parties. The
man we think must be crazy. Justice Osborne held the
accused to bail in the sum of $2000; and on the charge
of injuring the girl, now in the hospital, he was committed
without bail, in order to await the result of the injuries.

----end

The New York Herald, January 25, 1848, Page 1, Column 4

The Suicide of Horace Wells

Quite an excitement was created yesterday morning at the Tombs in
consequence of the self-destruction of Dr. Horace Wells,
dentist, No. 120 Chambers street. It appears that
Mr. Wells was detected on Friday night last, in the
act of throwing vitriol upon the dress of a young
woman, in Broadway, near the Astor House, when he
was arrested and conveyed to the 3d Ward station
house, and the next day conducted to the Police-office;
and, after the testimony in his oase had been
taken before Justice Osborne, he was committed to
prison. No suspicion was entertained by the keepers,
of any intention of self-destruction, as Mr. Wells
appeared to be rather cheerful on Sunday, conversing
freely, and, while out of his cell, on the corridor,
appeared to pay particular attention to the sermon
delivered by the Reverend gentleman who preaches
every Sunday to the unfortunate and abandoned creatures
confined in the Tombs. The principal subject of the
discourse related to the ill effects arising from the early
and constant association with disreputable females, and
seemed to throw Mr. Wells into a deep meditation, and
when it was concluded, he retired to his cell and requested
the keeper to bring him some letter paper and a candle,
which was done. Between six and seven o'clock
that evening, the last time that Mr. Wells was seen alive,
the keeper locked the cell door, and he was then occupied
in writing. On the following morning, (Monday,)
Mr. Jackson, one of the deputy keepers, opened the
cell door, between 8 and 9 o'clock, and was astonished
to find Mr. Wells, in a sitting position on his bunk, with
his head resting in one corner of the cell, his right leg
hanging over the side of the bunk, and the left lying
straight on the straw mattress. Between his legs, on the
mattress, lay an empty vial, labelled " Pure Chloroform,"
a razor, and a penknife. The razor was fixed
with a slip of wood running from the back of the
blade along the handle, made fast with a piece
of wire, and some threads drawn from the sacking
of his mattrsss. The left leg of this unfortunate man
exhibited a most horrible sight, from a desperate gash,
evidently inflicted by the razor. This wound was made
about the center of the thigh, severing the femoral
artery, penetrating nearly to the bone, and seme six
inches in length from the effects of which he bled to
death. On his mouth he had placed a silk handkerchief,
bunched up, and another passing on the outside
and tied on the top of his head, on which he
had placed his hat. This handkerchief was supposed
to have contained the chloroform, which he inhaled
just before he inflicted the fatal wound. In one corner
of the cell laid his gold watch. together with the
annexed letters, and a small piece of candle, about three
inches in length, which he had evidently extinguished
before perpetrating the awful deed.

Sir:--I wish through the medium of your journal, to
make a plain statement respecting the unhappy
circumstances in whioh I am at present placed. My real name
is now before the public as a miscreant, guilty of a most
despicable act, that of wantonly destroying the property
of those girls of the town who nightly promenade
Broadway. The facts, so far as I am concerned, are briefly
these. On Tuesday evening last, a young man with
whom I had recently formed an acquaintance, went with
me to my office in Chambers street; while there he said
that a woman of bad character had spoiled a garment
for him while walking in the streets, by thowing
something like vitriol upon him; that he knew who
it was, and would pay her back in the same coin. As I
had some sulphuric acid in my office, which I was using
in some chemical experiments, he requested the liberty
of taking some of it for this purpose; he accordingly
cut a groove in the cork of a phial, so that a small quantity
only might escape when it was suddenly thrust forward.
He then said that he might get it upon his own
clothes. I told him that I had an old cloak, which could
not be much injured by the acid, as it was good for nothing.
By his request, I walked into the street with him,
he wearing my old cloak, and I having on my ordinary
overcoat. We proceeded up Broadway, and when about
opposite the theatre he said that he saw the girl he
was in pursuit of, and he soon gave her shawl a
sprinkling; we then turned down Broadway, when my
friend proposed to sprinkle some of the other girls. I
immediately objected, and told him that what he had
already done waa not in accordance with my own feelings
although it was done in revenge; and when we arrived
at Chambers street, I took my phial and my cloak--at the
same time two of his friends came up--and I left him,
supposing that I had dissuaded him from doing the mischief
he proposed, which is as foreign to my nature as light
is opposed to darkness. I then regretted exceedingly
that I had countenanced, in any manner, the first
act. On getting home, I found that my cloak had
apparently received the principal part of the acid which
had escaped from my phial, as the wind was blowing
towards us when the act was done. On meeting with my
acquaintance the next day, he said that himself and his
two friends, whom I met the previous evening, had
resolved to drive all the bad girls out of Broadway, by
sprinkling them with acid. I in vain reasoned with him
against committing so much injury, where he had not
been harmed. This was the last interview which I have
had with him to the present time. I wish now to state,
as well as I am able, what influenced me to do this act,
on Friday evening, which I confess was done with my
own hands; and this was the only one of which I am
guilty, and which resulted in my arrest. I had, during
the week, been in the constant practice of inhaling chloroform,
for the exhilarating effect produced by it; and on
Friday evening last, I lost all consciousness before I
removed the inhaler from my month; how long it
remained there I do not know, but on coming out of the
stupor I was exhilirated beyond measure, exceeding any
thing which I had ever before experienced; and seeing
the phial of acid (which had been used a few evenings
previous as, before described) standing on the mantel,
in my delirium I seized it and rushed into the street and
threw it at two females--I may have thrust it at others;
but I have no recollection further than this.
The effects of this inhalation continued very
much longer than ever before, and did not
entirely pass off until some time after my arrest. I do not
make this statement expecting to free myself from all
blame in this matter; yet I have been induced to make
a minute statement of facts, that the public may better
judge of this misdemeanor, so far as I am concerned. I
state unhesitatingly that I would no sooner deliberately,
in cold blood, go into the street and commit the gross
acts of wantonness which have been committed for the
last few evenings, than I would cut my right hand from
my body. No; I am not prone to do mischief, as
all can testify who have ever known me. But now I
am placed in circumstances where I am obliged to
bear the reproaches of the world for the most
comtemptible acts, in which I have not participated.
Because I did this one act in a moment of delirium. I
must bear the brunt of the whole. Some of the papers
disbelieve my statement about others being concerned
in this business; but I am informed to-day that while I
was in close confinement last evening, the same acts
were being committed in Broadway--several were sprinkled
with acid. However, my character, which I have
ever prized above every thing elae, is gone, irrevocably
gone, and I am now in the most miserable condition in
which it is possible for man to be placed. One of those
abandoned females who were examined yesterday,
stated that I had often addressed her in Broadway.
Now I do most solemnly assert that the statement
of this girl is utterly false; I have never on
any occasion, had anything to say to these miserable
creatures. If myself alone were the only one
who is to suffer by all the false statements which
may or have been made respecting me, it would
be nothing compared to the injury to my dear, dear
wife and child. Oh, may God protect them! I cannot
proceed; my hand is too unsteady, and my whole frame
is convulsed in agony. My brain is on fire.

Sunday evening, 7 o'clock--I again take up my pen, to
finish what I have to say. Great God! has it come
to this? Is it not all a dream ? Before twelve
o'clock this night I am to pay the debt of
nature. Yea, if I were to go free to-morrow, I could not
live and be called a villain. God knows I am not one.
0, my dear mother, brother, and sister, wbat can I say
to you? My anguish will only allow me to bid you farewell.
I die this night, believing that God, who knoweth
all hearts, will forgive the dreadful act. I shall spend
my remaining time in prayer. Oh, what misery I shall
bring on all my near relations; and, what still more
distresses me, is the fact that my name is familiar
to the whole scientific world, as being connected
with an important discovery; and now, while
I am scarcely able to hold my pen. i must bid
all farewell. May God forgive me. Oh my dear
wife and child, whom 1 leave destitute of the means of
support. I would still live and work for you, but I cannot
for were I to live on, I should become a maniac. I
feel that I am but little better than one already. The
instrument of my destruction was obtained wben the
officer who had me in charge kindly permitted me to go
to my room yesterday. HORACE WELLS.

To Editors:--
My last request to Editors is, that they will, while
commenting on this unhappy affair, think of my poor
wife and child. also my mother, brother and sister, all
of whom are numbered among the most respectable
members of society. H. WELLS.

To My Dear Wife:--
I feel that I am fast becoming a deranged man, or I
would desist from this act I cannot live aad keep my
reason, and on this account God will forgive the deed. I
can say no more. Farewell. H.

To Mr. Dwyer:
Dear Sir--When your receive this, I shall be no more.
I wish you would take my watch, and present it to my
dear wife, together with the trifle I have already given
you. Please to see to my burial--let me be interred here
in the most secret manner possible. I wish you or Mr.
Barber would go immediately to Hartford, and reveal
this misfortune to my wife in the most unobjectionable
manner possible, and attend to the business which we
spoke of this morning, when you little thought of this
occurrence. Yours, H. WELLS.

Messrs. Dwyer and Barber, Western Hotel
N.B.-- .Please tell Mr James to write to Mr.T.W. Storrow,
No. 19 Rue du Faubourg, Piossonniere [sic: Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière], Paris, and
tell him of my death.

The prison was visited during the day by many of our
eminent doctors and dentists, and from remarks made
by Drs. Hosack and Smith, founded on interviews with
Mr. Wells, prior to his arrest, they were decidedly of
opinion that the deceased was perfectly insane on the
chloroform practice. We are informed that this
chloroform is nothing more than an extract from alcohol and
chloride of lime, which, upon application, is inhaled
from a sponge. Dr. Walters, the coroner, was called to
hold an inquest. and the jury rendered a verdict. "that
the deceased came to his death by suicide, by inflicting
a wound in the left thigh with a razor, while laboring
under an aberration of mind."

The effects of this unfortunate man were placed in the
hands of Mr. Dwyer. of the Western Hotel, and the body,
after the inquest, was deposited in a handsome coffin,
placed in a pine box, and laĞt night conveyed on board
the Hartford steamboat, for that city, where the
deceased has a wife and child awaiting the dreadful news.

We received a telegraphic dispatch last evening from
Hartford, sent by three highly respectable medical men,
Drs.. John M. Riggs, E. E. Mersey and H. W. Ellsworth,
setting forth that Mr. Welle, the deceased, was a man of
irreproachable character, and a member in good standing
in Dr. Hawe's Church.

----end

In an editorial, the elder James Gordon Bennett mentions that he met Wells in Paris.

The New York Herald, January 25, 1848, Page 2, Column 2

Singular Suicide--Horace Wells, the Discoverer of Ether

We give, in our "City Intelligence,"
an account of the most singular suicide
which probably ever took place in this city
--that of Dr. Horace Wells, formerly of
Hartford, Connecticut--the same individual who
made the original discovery of ether, or chloroform,
and of its successful application in surgery
or dentistry. The history of this singular
affair, as given in our columns, with the particulars
heretofore related, will strike everybody as
being more strange even than fiction, while, at
the same time, it will strike every one with and
astonishment and sorrow. The whole affair is
almost incomprehensible.

The ingenious discoverer of the powers of this
extraordinary substance, in its application to
surgery, has himself fallen a victim to his
own discovery, [t]he only rational conclusion,
after reading the account of this suicide, and
of the steps which led to it, seems to be that Dr.
Wells has been in [t]he habit of producing intoxication
in himself by the habitual use of ether, or
chloroform. Under one of the paroxyms
produced by the intemperate use of this powerful
agent, it seems he sallied forth into Broadway
where he committed the pranks upon some
unfortunate females at night, which led to his
arrest by the police, causing a great noise to be
made in the public prints. For the purpose of
drowning the consequences of this exposure, and
not being able to meet the issue of his strange
acts, Dr. Wells deliberately goes to work and
commits suicide, using his own medicine to
destroy the sensation of pain in the act.

What a melancholy termination to a singularly
eventful and interesting life! Last winter we
saw Dr. Wells in Paris, in high spirits, full of
gaiety and delight, and in the midst of gay society.
He went there in order to prosecute his
claims before the French Institute for the
reward publicly offered to the discoverer of any
new and important fact or agent in medical practice.
Mr. or Dr. Wells, as he was indifferently
called, was a native of Hartford, Conn , or
its neighborhood, where he has left a wife
and child, to mourn his loss and sympathise
over his misfortune. Accident led him to
the discovery of the virtues of this liquid, when
applied to surgical cases: and it is said he first
made the discovery on his own person. Proceeding
to Boston, he made the revelation there
of his discovery to individuals who repudiated
and laughed at his mystery, of a thing of no
moment. In about a year afterwards, however, the
persons who had received the first intimation of
the mysterious power of ether, happened to change
their opinions; and bringing it out as a great and
valuable agent in surgery, they sent missions to
Europe, for the purpose of claiming the rewards
given by certain scientific bodies there to such
discoveries. The publicity of these steps led Dr.
Wells to visit Paris and London last winter, for
the purpose of establishing his claim to the
original discovery. It seems he was not very
sccessful in his pursuit, owing to the superior
influence of those persons who had taken the discovery
out of his hands, and had arrived in Paris
before him. Foiled in his object in Europe, he
returned to this city, and pursued here his
ordinary avocations, until this unhappy event occurred,
which caused him to figure in our police reports,
and now to be the subject of the melancholy
history related in our paper this day.

Thus has he fallen a victim to his own medicine,
like Phalaris of old, who perished in the way
he had invented for others to die, and like Dr.
Guillotin, the inventor of an instrument of death
which put a period to his own life. This singular
tragedy will make the public pause in relation
to the virtues and utility of these dangerous
substances, in their application to the human
system.

----end



The New York Herald, January 27, 1848, Page 3, Column 4



Link to a pamphlet by Wells on his work that seems incomplete.

A History of the Discovery of the Application of Nitrous Oxide Gas, Ether and Other Vapors in Surgical Operations (Hartford: J. Gaylord Wells, 1847), link
By Horace Wells

A pamphlet by friends of Wells,

Discovery by the Late Dr. Horace Wells: of the Applicability of Nitrous Oxyd Gas, Ether and Other Vapors in Medical Operations (Hartford: Elihu Geer, 1852), link
By J. Wales


Link to a 1945 article about Wells.

Ludington Daily News (Michigan), January 3, 1945, Page 4

A Painless Process

[Mayerling]

Catching Up - Sorry

Where do I begin? First, believe it or not, when I attended New York Law School in the late 1970s there was a complete set of all the published editions (bound) of "The Green Bag". It was a magazine for lawyers, most of the articles being written about various doctrines of the law (such as "res judicata") but many dealing with prominent lawyers in America or the British Isles (mostly) many of whom had died. I probably saw that picture of Graham that you put up. It also had series of articles relating to famous trials - which at one point I Xeroxed and kept in a folder (but currently I do not know where it is).

In my personal library of criminal history and trial books is one regarding that 1869 McFarlane - Richardson tragedy that Graham handled for Daniel McFarlane. A book has been written about the shooting of reporter and war hero Albert Richardson by McFarlane, because of Richardson's love affair with Abby McFarlane, the defendant's wife (and mother of his children). It is, "Lost Love: A True Story of Passion, Murder, and Justice in Old New York by George Cooper (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994). The story is more complex than those Victorian (self-righteous) newspapers make it out to be. McFarlane was a scoundrel, a drunkard who depended on his wife Abby to support his drinking and spending habits while she worked as a reader (of plays and manuscripts), while also upraising their kids, and while taking of the house. Apparently he felt that women were slaves (don't forget the Civil War we just fought gave African-American men so-called equality, not their wives). The only smart thing he ever did was to join the Democratic Party, and more important "Tammany Hall". Thus he has a connection with good-old Graham.

Richardson was one of American's first really interesting newspaper reporters and war correspondents. He was also a Northern spy during the war, was caught, faced execution, but escaped. He wrote several books. When the Civil War began he was married, but his wife and child died of natural causes by 1866. THEN he met Abby, and rapidly the two fell into love with each other.

Did McFarlane show anger? Not really. He showed his normal mercenary side, and kept shaking down Richardson for money to keep quiet (McFarlane's behavior here is similar to his contemporary in Ireland, twenty years later, Captain O'Shea, who did not mind if Charles Parnell and Kitty had their affair as long as Parnell and the Liberal Party gave him good paying, unimportant jobs to shut up). When Richardson told him to go to hell, McFarlane suddenly discovered he was defending America's hearth and home!! Sort of like Harry K. Thaw regarding Evelyn Nesbit Thaw and Stanford White. This crap would be swallowed up in New York in 1869 as it was in New York in 1906. It did not help that Richardson worked for the New York Tribune (Horace Greeley's newspaper) which was the leading Republican newspaper in the U.S., and in New York City. But with Tammany Hall being a Democratic organization at the time, and the City normally run by the Democrats - well public opinion was to twist unfairly for McFarlane.

Richardson already had been attacked at one point by McFarlane, but wasn't injured. But at the tail end of 1869, while entering the Tribune Building to do his daily work (something McFarlane never thought of doing anywhere) Richardson was confronted and shot by McFarlane. The wounded man was taken home, and his wounds (in that period) were found to be mortal. Abby McFarlane had recently gotten divorced (a point that would be used against her, believe it or not) so before he died Richardson married Abby. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher performed the ceremony. One of the witnesses was newly elected Vice President (and former Speaker of the House) Schuyler Colfax of California. Note Beecher was an outspoken abolitionist (whose sister Harriet Stowe authored "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and Colfax had been a leading Congressional supporter of the late President Abraham Lincoln.
However, even these credential blew up in later years.

In the 1920s, racist historian Claude G. Bowers wrote "The Tragic Era", which condemned the Radical Republicans for their "criminal" activities against the defeated South regarding "Reconstruction". Bowers did not say much about this tragedy, but he noted it, and showed his own venom by approving the disapproval of "nice people" towards Beecher and Colfax, whom he felt were publicity seekers. It also did not help that Colfax was later one of the many Republican congressional leaders implicated in the 1872-73 "Credit Mobilier" scandal of accepting bribes to help pass laws to finance the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. When this came out in 1873, Colfax was no longer more than a lame-duck Vice President, having been replaced on the ticket for Grant's 1872 re-election by Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. Colfax was never impeached or tried for anything. Beecher was later involved in a complex adultery scandal concerning several prominent figures in the social life of the then city of Brooklyn (4th largest city in the U.S. in the 1870s). Beecher won acquittal in his 1875 adultery trial. It has only been recently that a balance has been re-established regarding their later behavior and their support for their dying friend Richardson and his wife in 1869.

McFarlane was acquitted, apparently because of the manipulations of Tammany with the selection of the Jury and Judge, and the smearing of Richardson, and his employer Greeley and the "Tribune" (which had once discussed the doctrine of "Free Love" in it's newspaper, and that was supposed to suggest the atmosphere in the pressroom). I am sure Mr. Graham, that heartfeld defender of the doctrine of marriage (who could not bring himself to marry for some reason....one wonders what was the real reason) did a first rate cut-throat job for his pig of a client. Actually very few people outside of Tammany hacks and the idiot jurors were fooled. Mark Twain wrote several cutting humor pieces "supporting" the theory that McFarlane's sad loss of his beloved Abby to the scoundrel Richardson had unhinged him into belatedly attacking the monster. In one, the Tammany people actually are celebrating with McFarlane, when he has another attack, and kills about one hundred of them - and Twain saying how sad that he was still suffering this mental problem.

Of course it never reoccurred. Instead McFarlane went out west. In the 1930s the leading American criminal historian was Edmund L. Pearson, and in his last published book, "More Studies in Murder", he wrote an essay on the McFarlane-Richardson tragedy. Pearson normally was quite a moralist, but here he realized that the formal defenders of McFarlane as a defender of hearth and home by his actions were idiots or liars who refused to see what happened before them. Instead, McFarlane was a total scoundrel who spoiled the last chance for happiness his mistreated wife would get. Pearson noted that McFarlane went out west, and returned to drinking. He eventually drank himself to death.

Abby lived to 1900, raising her children. When Richardson was shot, there was witness: a young Jewish messenger boy named Daniel Frohman. The name means little today, but he was (with his older brother Charles and a younger brother Gustave) the 19th Century equivalents of the Schubert Brothers regarding Broadway productions. The Frohmans befriended Abby (as did many literary and theatrical people, like Mark Twain) and she helped make a career as a play reader and recommender to many theater owners. As Pearson would say, she only had the friendship of the intelligent to help her for the rest of her life.

I'm glad to add a personal note. In my autograph collection I have on letter signed by Daniel Frohman. Daniel's older brother Charles was responsible for the staging (in London and New York) of many of the plays of James Barrie, including "Peter Pan", and helped the early musical career of Jerome Kern. Charles died on May 7, 1915 in the sinking of the Lusitania.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Additional tid-bits

This is a shorter set of remarks regarding the quoted discussion of the "Astor Place" Riots of 1849.

1) Who is Edwin Forrest? - Prior to 1863 the two leading actors in the U.S. (in terms of Shakespearean roles, for the most part) were Junius Brutus Booth Sr. and Edwin Forrest. Booth Sr. (born in England) was a bigamist - his family in the U.S. were illegitimate, until his English born wife and son came to the U.S., and the wife died, after which Junius had a second "legalizing" marriage. He also had a serious drinking problem. But, on his travels as an actor, Junius was accompanied by his son Edwin, who did his best to keep dad under control (mostly he did, but there were slipups, like Junius once arranging with a ship steward to get him alcohol which he sipped with a straw through the lock of his ship's locked door). Junius also showed "eccentricities", like when he jumped off a ship off the South Carolina coast to visit an old friend, who had committed suicide in that same area a year earlier. These eccentricities may have been part of a family mental history that would sadly end with John Wilkes' act of April 14, 1865, and with a grandson's murder and suicide (with his wife) in 1912.*

[*The grandson, an actor named Junius Brutus Booth III, tried to make a theatrical career as a producer but failed, and committed suicide with opium, after similarly drugging his unfortunate wife. By the way, interestingly John Wilkes was not the first Booth to somehow run afoul of a notable President. Junius Brutus was an avid supporter of Andrew Jackson, but in his cups, for some reason, he could get wild and say that if Jackson wasn't careful he'd cane him or beat him up. One of Jackson's advisors was concerned and asked "Old Hickory" about this. Jackson dismissed it, saying,"You know how Junius is...he'll forget the whole thing by tomorrow, and we'll be drinking next time I see him again."]

Forrest was an impressive figure, with commanding voice (in one of Don Marquis' "Archy and Mehitabel" poems, an old cat recalls how booming was Forrest's voice when he landed in Manhattan from a ferry boat!). He was also a moody son-of-a-bitch, and could be a mean drunk (usually Junius Booth wasn't). His antagonism towards Macready was due not only to his own unrealistic "territorial" rights, but to a badly timed season for the British actor's season of Shakespeare in New York City in 1849 (it clashed with Forrest's!). Nativism was a besetting sin in 1849. Normally it was directed against foreign Catholic of Irish ancestry, but the revolutions of 1848 in Europe sent many Germans and Italians to American shores, exacerbating the situation. On top of that, in our history, we had fought two wars with Britain (the Revolution and the War of 1812) and one with Catholic Mexico (recently: 1846-1848). Our victory over Mexico made us a bit bumptious, and that Polk had successfully steered us to an agreement with Britain over the Oregon Territory was considered further proof of our greatness. The mobs were as willing to spill British blood as they were to spill Irish blood or German blood.**

[**Curiously enough, not Jewish blood. Anti-Semitism existed in America, but it was socially snobbish and small. That's because there weren't more than may 300,000 Jews in the United States in the 1850s (this is a guess, but probably a correct one). There had never been a major Jewish immigration wave yet, like the "Potato Famine" wave with the Irish in the late 1840s or the 1848 Revolution wave for Germany and Italy. Most of the Jews were of Sephardic descent (Spanish, Mediterranean, some British and Dutch. German Jews would start coming in during the 1830s, but the bulk from Eastern Europe and Russia came after the American Civil War (from roughly 1876 to 1921). As a result, while there is an occasional sneering comment it is not pressing on the bigots to turn attention towards the Jews.

Put another way. This is the heyday of the so-called "blood libel" about Jews using Christian blood in making matzos and such. It causes a lot of problems in Eastern (and even Western) Europe up to 1911 with Russia's infamous Mendel Beilis' case. But in the U.S. it was Roman Catholic convents that were attacked and burned. Here the big best seller with bigots was the so-called memoirs or revelations of a prostitute, "Maria Monk" who claimed she was a former nun, and who said that there were abortions, satanic rituals, and baby skeletons (from the babies of priests and nuns) in the basements of convents. Nothing like that was published about Jews in the U.S. in 1849 (one would have to wait until the notorious "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" was published by Henry Ford in 1920 before something like that popped up to hit at the Jews).

Actually it was a period of great suspicions. The Mormons were pushed out of three states, their leader Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum murdered by a mob in Carthage, Illinois in 1844, and the rest fled to "Deseret" (Utah) under Brigham Young, where they finally settled and prospered. The Masons (of all things) were suspected of killing one William Morgan, who published a book revealing their "secrets" in 1826, was seized from a street by men in a carriage, and never seen again. There were plenty of crazy targets in those days.]

The riots were one of many that occurred in the history of New York City (then really only Manhattan Island) in the 19th Century up to 1871. It is mentioned that the next riot occurred in 1857. That was a shoot-out (for three days) between political gangs on the Bowery. In 1863 the worst of all our riots occurred, the infamous "Draft Riots" where gangs of the urban poor ran around the city, burning an orphan asylum housing African-American children, lynching African-Americans, beating to death white people (including a prominent police officer), and attacking Horace Greeley's "Tribune" Building. An early gatling gun saved the "Tribune" offices.
Soldiers from Gettysburg (the battle had ended a week earlier) restored order in the City. The Mayor (Opdyke) tried but failed to get order before that, and Governor Horatio Seymour did try to calm the mob (unfortunately beginning his words with the typical politician's easy speak words, "My friends", which Thomas Nast never let him forget). Interestingly, one of the most effective individuals (before the soldiers) in getting the rioters to break up was William Tweed, who recognized some of the mob leaders and convinced them people would be better off at home not getting hurt. It used to be said that 1,300 were lost, but in recent years the number of dead has been recalculated as between 150 to 300, still far too many, but not like a typical Civil War battlefield count.

In 1871 the last really major 19th Century riot occurred when the Irish Protestants declared (despite attempts by Tweed and Tammany to limit it) that they were going to celebrate "Orange Day" (the anniversary of the Protestant victory in the "battle of the Boyne" in 1690) with a large parade. The Irish Catholics were not to tolerate this, and confronted and fought them. There were deaths, and Tweed had to insist that the state militia and troops assist in putting down the Catholics - an act that may have done him more harm with his normal supporters than Thomas Nast's cartoons or the New York Times reporting.

Forrest, after the 1849 riots, continued his career into the 1860s, with diminished popularity (the public blamed him in large measure for the deaths in the riots). By 1863 his chief rival as best American Shakespearean was Edwin Booth, Junius having died in 1852. Two years later Forrest heard of the assassination and John Wilkes' commission of it. "Doesn't surprise me," he sneered", "it sounds crazy, but all those Booths are crazy!" Forrest died in 1873.

2) That same year Macready died in England. In his day William Macready was highly regarded (among his friends was Charles Dickens), and it was said he helped bring back a balance and thoughtfulness to Shakespeare's plays. In particular he created the "Macready pause" which he would use to effect - to suggest his character's mind was considering what to do or say next. However, Lord Laurence Olivier, in one of his books on acting, considered this accomplished this invention and felt it wasn't really that much. Macready's descendant General Neville Macready was (I believe) Superintendent of Scotland Yard. Another descendant was the famous movie "villain" actor, George Macready (the ambitious French General in "Paths of Glory", Rita Hayworth's husband "Balin" in [/B] "Gilda"[/B], and "Martin Peyton" on television's "Peyton Place".

The riots (oddly enough) never spurred any film - and one wonders why. There was an off-Broadway play about Forrest and Macready about fifteen years ago, but it only had a limited run. Oddly enough it missed being used in a classic "gothic" movie, "Dragonwyk". If you read the original novel by Anne Seton, the character of Nicholas (the last of the patroon family, played in the film by Vincent Price) is a real sociopath, determined that no-matter what, his family line will continue. That is the reason he gets rid of his first wife to marry the one played by Gene Tierney. But in the novel, he is so determined to cover tracks and avoid capture or revelation of his actions, that he is the one who fires the shot that sets off the militia's fusillade at Astor Place (so he is actually the murderer of the people killed there). He also is involved in a second tragedy, the 1852 burning of the steamer "Henry Clay" which costs many lives (including a former Mayor of New York, and one of Nathaniel Hawthorne's sisters). My guess is the film producers decided it was too expensive to include that.

3) Captain Rynders - More properly Captain Isaiah Rynders, who was a major "Tammany Hall" figure for at least three decades to the early 1860s. He was also a ranking member of New York City's police force. Buntline and company were lucky to have him on their side in this dispute. He was corrupt, but colorful. One of his last actions in his official police duties was in 1860, when Albert Hicks, a seaman who had slaughtered his fellow sailors and captain on a small ship before robbing it, was tried and convicted of these crimes and another - although this happened off Brooklyn it was determined looking at charts that the sloop was over three miles off the coast of Brooklyn. Hicks was tried for piracy (the last man I know of in the history of New York City - possibly of the U.S. - tried for piracy on the high seas!). This meant his execution was special: he could not be simply executed in Brooklyn or in Manhattan proper, but on an island visible from the harbor. That would be what was called "Bedloe's Island", which we now call "Liberty Island". But the Statue of Liberty was not given to us by France for another quarter century. So, aside from one or two farm houses, the island was empty. A large gallows was erected to hang Hicks from. But Rynders discovered, due to the novelty of the idiot's mistake of not killing his victims closer to land fall, everyone and their brother wanted to see the execution. Lucky people got seats on the island to watch it, but Rynders arranged to delay the hanging until hundreds of boats (including the world's largest ocean liner, the "Great Eastern") got close enough safely to see the end of Mr. Hicks. He must have been amazed at how much time and effort went into the last hours of his life - it probably almost made up for ending it.

4) Mike Walsh: Totally forgotten today, but called by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. one of the first political representatives of the urban proletariat in the U.S (in the book "The Age of Jackson"), Mike Walsh eventually was elected to one or two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Congressman from Manhattan. He spoke out for the rights of labor (in the 1850s that is something), but his Tammany connections probably did not help him (nor did his vocal opposition to abolitionist sentiments, as Walsh's constituents did not favor a large number of free slaves becoming a rival work force to themselves). Walsh, being Irish, and being allied in the riots with Buntline, Forrest, and Rynders, suggests that part of the anti-English nature of the rioters was spurred by sentiments of long standing grudging by Irish Catholic immigrants, here temporarily allied with their normal nativist foes, against the British. Walsh left Congress in 1855. He died under odd circumstances two years later - apparently he was killed by a mugger on his way to his home.

5) Dr. Horace Wells: One of at least five or six gentlemen who laid claim to being the founder of anesthesia in the U.S. Normally the baton for the discovery is given to Dr. William Morton of Boston, a dentist, who actually used it successfully in an operation. Morton's story was the subject of the 1942 film directed by comedy director Preston Sturgis (his only serious film),
"The Great Moment", which starred Joel McCrae as Morton, and had William Demerest in it as well. Wells is a character in the films, as are some of the other claimants in what became a ridiculous kind of donnybrook regarding the claims of discovery. Most of these gentleman did not prosper by this mess.

Morton did (although not mentioned in the film) appear as a witness in a murder case of note: the 1850 trial of Dr. John White Webster for the murder of Dr. George Parkman in Boston. Parkman, Webster's demanding creditor, disappeared, and only reappeared as bones that were apparently left that way by Webster using his science lab at Harvard University. A jaw bone was found, and Morton (who had done work on Dr. Parkman) identified the jaw as Parkman from recognizing his work. Webster was convicted and hanged for the killing, although many still believe he did not plan the murder but struck Parkman in anger.

Interestingly while Morton, Wells, and the others fought and argued for credit, making each other's lives miserable (besides Morton dying penniless, Wells an accidental (?) suicide, another one died insane), in Georgia a gentleman doctor, Crawford W. Long, discovered the powers of ether and applied it to some of his more seriously ill patients. He found it worked, wrote about it in several journals, and concentrated on his practice and his farm. In 1940 a series of stamps called "The Great American" series included Doctors, and Dr. Long was one (for the discovery of anesthesia). I always marvel that this quiet country doctor shows up all these jokers from Boston and other cities as to proper etiquette and behavior over a wonderful discovery, and ends up with the credit. Congratulations Dr. Long!!

Jeff

[TradeName]

Thanks, Jeff.

Horace Wells' story reminds me a bit of a 1958 Boris Karloff film, Corridors of Blood. A trailer.

[Mayerling]

There is a similarity between Wells' fate and that of Karloff's character.

Many scientists have died due to their curiosity and experimentation. Sir Francis Bacon died of a very serious cold he caught while experimenting with snow as a refrigerant!

Jeff

[TradeName]

When John Graham ran for district attorney of NYC, James Gordon Bennett railed against him in the NY Herald, alleging that Graham was associated with a "stool-pigeon gang" run by George Wilkes of the National Police Gazette. This grew out of an incident of a bomb delivered to the home of Thomas Warner, a lawyer.

Edgefield Advertiser (S.C.), May 16, 1849, Page 2, Column 5

Diabolical Attempt to Destroy a Family

About 10 o'clock on Thursday
night, a man disguised as a negro, called
at the house of lawyer Warner, and handed
a package to the servant, at same time
stating that it was for Massa Warner, addressed
to T. Warner, Esq. (confidenial.)
Mr. W. being absent from the City at the
time, the package remained untouched
by the members of the family until yesterday
when Mr. Warner returned from
Philadelphia, and while the family were
at dinner in the basement, he ordered his
son to bring the package to him. Mrs.
Warner having described the appearance
of the man and his manner, to her husband,
led Mr. Warner to open the package,
which was wrapped in a copy of the
N. York Herald of March 29, with some
care. The newspaper contained a strong
mahogany box with a slide lid. Mr.
Warner proceeded to draw off the lid with
great caution and very slowly and
discovered a faint blue light and immediately
warned his family to fly for their lives. All
instantly left the room and closed the door,
and they had but just passed into the hall
leading into the rear yard when a tremendous
explosion took place, after which they
passed around the house and discovered
the front basement to be on fire and the
window shattered to pieces and blown out
of place. Mr. Warner with some persons
who had stopped at the house, then entered
the room and extinguished the flames,
and as soon as the smoke had subsided it
was discovered that the basement door
was completely shattered, the partition
wall broken and very much displaced, the
dining-table at which they were a few
minutes before sitting very much broken,
and a picture of Gen. Washington and the
door perforated with slug-shots. The box
in question was about the size of a small
cigar-box, and contained a cannister filled
with powder and slugs, and several bundles
of friction matches, which were so
placed that on withdrawing the lid, on the
inside of which a piece of sand paper was
glued, they would instantly take fire and
cause an immediate explosion. Mr. Warner's
caution in withdrawing the lid is the
cause of the wonderful escape he and his
famIly experienced.--N. Y. Tribune, of
Saturday.

---end

This article is the closest thing to a summary of the alleged attempt to frame a Samuel Drury and his son for sending the bomb to Warner's home. Drury was a client of Warner's who was involved in a dispute over fees charged by Warner. One-Eyed Thompson was employed by Warner to help suppress counterfeit labels for a medicine made by a Dr. Moffatt.

The New York Herald, July 16, 1850, Page 1, Column 5

Biography of Bristol Bill and Christian Meadows

Christian Meadows, alias Fields, is an Englishman by
birth and has served out a term of years in the
Massachusetts State Prison for a crime committed in that
State; but before going to prison he understood a little
of copperplate engraving, and while in prison he was
placed at the same business and there became quite
an expert bank note engraver: which, on his liberation
from prison. made him a very formidable and dangerous
manufacturer of counterfeit bank plates, as well as
an utterer of the bank bills, themselves, to a large
denomination.

After his release from prison. we understand he was
engaged by an engraver in Boston. with whom he
worked for some time, until an opportunity offered to
rob his employer, which be did, taking with him a lot
of very valuable dies.

In Boston Meadows became acquainted with Bill
Warburton alias Darlington, or more commonly known
as Bristol Bill. This man Darlington. is an Englishman,
and we understand has been in this country between
eight aud nine years; he is a genteel looking
man of good address. about forty years of age, and of a
very determined and resolute cast of countenance.
The first time Bill was suspected in this city of crime,
was in connection with Jack Sullivan. about seven
years ago in the burglary of Mr. Scott's lace store,
situated in Broadway, from which many thousand
dollars of property was stolen. The chief of police,
Mr Matsell, who was then a police magistrate, succeeded
in capturing Sullivan and one of his accomplices,
but Bristol Bill escaped by leaving the city.
Sullivan was sentenced to Sing Sing State Prison for
fifteen years, and the accomplice for a shorter period.
Subsequently, on one of the visits of Henry Clay to
this city, Bill was, on his return, arrested by officer
Bowyer, taken before the chief of police, and was
committed to prison on charges of several burglaries; but
on looking into the case, the district attorney discovered
that the statute of limitation had expired in those
cases, and Bill was again unavoidably let loose on the
community.

Bill soon after, with others, made a desperate attempt
on the Seventh Ward Bank, by cutting through the
wall from the adjoining store, thus nearly obtaining
access to the money vault. Here, it seems, they must
have been disturbed and frightened off by the chief of
police, and some of his officers, who were about in that
vicinity on that night, as their work which was
nearly accomplished, was evidently abandoned in great
haste. Some months then passed over, and we next
hear of Currier & Trott's jewelry store in Boston
being robbed. Bill was, undoubtedly, one of the robbers,
although the evidence against him was not enough
to convict. Nevertheless, Charley Cooper, William
Anderson. alias, Black Bill, and another rogue were
arrested in Boston, on the charge of burglary, and, as will
be recollected, were tried and acquitted.

Bristol Bill returned to this city, and the chief's
officers succeeded in catching Charley Wheeler, who,
at that time, was called the "Old Man of the Cross."
(meaning the old man of the rogues) together with
Bristol Bill and Joe Murray. All three were arrested, on
a charge of burglariously entering the store of Mr.
Nanry, No. 1 Pine street, stealing from the iron
safe about $100 in money. This money was traced to
the possession of Wheeler, who was tried, convicted.
ana sentenced to the State Prison; the other two demanded
separate trials, aud were acquitted.

A few months more passed on, when we flnd Meadows
and Bristol Bill in this city, busily engaged together
in the business of altering bank bills,
and, at the same time, intimately associated with
One-Eyed Thompson, visiting and locating themselves
occasionally at Thompson's residence, then situated at
New Utrecht. on Long Island. The bank bills were
altered by Bristol Bill and Meadows, (although it is
well understood that Meadows was the artist and
executor of all these counterfeits, his associates aiding
and abetting, and when ready would dispose of the
spurious commodity to the best advantage.) These bills
were from ones to tens, and from tens to five hundreds;
and some three thousand dollars of this kind of money,
altered, on the Broadway Bank of this city, was conveyed
to Boston by Bristol Bill, and then sold to a
man by the name of Foster, for a little over $2000,
which good money was appropriated by Bristol Bill,
by the aid and assistance of other parties, for the relief
of Margaret O'Connor, his mistress, from prison,
who was then under conviction for passing oouuterfeit
money. The amount of bail required was $1000;
the money was posted up. and Margaret O'Connor was
brought to this city under the especial care of that
universal genius called One-Eyed Thompson, assisted
by Mr Warner. for the purpose as alleged, to be used
as a witness on the trial of Samuel Drury, on the
"torpedo" charge.

The torpedo explosion in Warner's house created
considerable noise in the community, at that time and
$1000 was offered for the conviction of the maker and
sender of said box. George Wlikes, editor ot the Police
Gazette, devised a plan for bringing the supposed
guilty parties to justice. and with a view to effect that
object, associated himself With Bristol Bill, One-Eyed
Thompson, and others. Here was an association
formed of remarkable ideas and extraordinary genius,
huddled together, acting under the direction
of George Wilkes, who, it seems, was the
charge d'affaires of the coterie of "stool pigeons," or decoy
ducks, organized for the purpose of entrapping old
Samuel Drury into some nominal or pretended confessions.
In this instance Bristol Bill was induced to
divert himself from his legitimate business of bank
robberies. burglaries, and other high crimes, to act the
part of a "stool pigeon," in the fond hope, from
inducements held out to him by Wilkes, of ultimately
obtaining the liberation of his mistress. Margaret
O'Connor. In this astounding mysterious "stool
pigeon" affair, George Wilkes, of the Police Gazette. hit
upon a plan of interesting Darlington, and sent
One-Eyed Thompson to Boston as the bearer of his views.
Those viewa were deliberated upon by Bristol Bill; and
after the lapse of a few days, Bill and his counsel came
to this city. and agreed to Wilkes' wishes. In brief. Margaret
O'Connor, the wife or mistress of Bristol Bill, was
under conviction for passing counterfeit money, there
Wilkes showed Bill and his counsel that if she could
be instrumental in convicting the villain who furnished her
with the notes, the authoritles would. doubtless,
remit her penalty. Actuated by this hope, the only
one that would have operated to his conversion, Bill
put himself in the harness of justice.and went to work
with all the ardor of an old man In love. Finding now
the matter to thicken too fast. Wilkes called in the
assistance of officer A. M. C. Smith, and also availed
himself of an ex-officer to aid in some collateral matters of
importance. It being now evident Wilkes would soon
require some formal authority to aid him. and not being
able to consult with the county District Attorney,
Wilkes went to Albany to procure the Attorney General
as the legal representative of the case. He saw the
Governor, and explained the whole matter to him and
told him the reason for desiring the substitution of
the Attorney Oeneral; that the secrets of the County
District Attorney's offlee were often accessible to that
portIon of the police which had failed in developing
the "Torpedo" business. Wilkes had a fear, therefore,
that envy might frustrate him and his secret fall
within the knowledge ef the wealthy enemy. The
Governor acceded to his views, and made the substitution.

In the meantime. Thompson returned from BoĞton
and showed himself to Drury; also exhibiting some
medallions (borrowed from Rawdon, Wright, Hatch &
Co ) as the work of a new counterfeiter. While these
maneuverings were going on, the robbery of the safe of
the Union Wharf Company at Princetown, Mass, turned
up; and after a moment's observation, Wllkes
considered it to be a good opportunity for the
introduction of Bristol Bill into the case. Thompson
was sent to see Drury, and an engagement
made to meet Bill on Brooklyn Heights with
Thompson. In this Wilkes found it necessary to
get Drury Into a house, and to prepare for its
accomplishment, Wikes, on Monday, the 12th November,
1849, had a room secured for Bristol Bill, at No. 27
Fulton street. Brooklyn; and on the same evening
Wilkes wrote an item for the Morning Star, about the
officers being in search of Bill for a large amount of
property--that would excuse Bill from not coming out,
and at the same time decoy Drury to him. Wilkes
then selected two intelligent officers, Wm. O. Jenkins
and Dominick Crassous. and told tbem that Mr. A. M.
c. Smith would take them to a place in Brooklyn on
the next day, to assist Smith and Wilkes in making
some arrests. That to accomplish these arrests Jenkins
and Crassous must be secreted in a closet adjoining
a bedroom, and be apparently fastened up by
nails, run in loose holes for their reception; that they
would see through small holes, bored through the door,
three of the greatest criminals in the United States;
that those criminals would converse. doubtless. on great
crimes recently committed; they must carefully hear
all that was said, as on the correctness of of their
information would depend Wilkes & Co.'s authority for future
action. The conversation might be long, but their
attention must not flag as the most important subject
of all might come the last. The officers. Jenkins and
Crassous. were directed to put on India-rubber shoes,
that their feet could not be heard in the closet. and to
hold handkerchiefs in their hands in case they wanted
to cough or sneeze, to stifle the sounds. Finally, the
officers were informed by Wilkes, that, at the end of an
hour, or thereabouts. a fourth man would enter the
room, who would be followed by A. M. C.Smith and
Wilkes; that then the arrest would commence. and if
resistence were made, the obstruction to the closet
door would be removed and let them in with their
clubs to Wllkes' and smith's assistance. The object of
this deception, practiced by Wilkes on the officers, was
to sharpen their sight and hearing. that on the activity
of those organs was to depend the warrant of Wilkes
and company for all they would be called on to do.--
Between 11 and 12 o'clock of that day the officers were
concealed in the closet, the bed allotted to Bristol Bill
was tumbled, his boots sprinkled with dust, and the
room otherwise disordered, to give the appearance of
occupation. Here Bristol Bill was seated by the side
of a bottle of brandy, in his shirt sleeves, smoking a
cigar, and ready to appear writing a letter to Margaret
0'connor, which lay already commenced before him.==
While things were in this condition, Thompson met
Drury on Brooklyn Heights. Thompson then proposed
to go to Bristol Bill's room. This Drury consented to
do. The conversation in the room then opened
exactly as it had been laid out by Wilkes & Co.; and
when Darlington communicated his pretended intentions
against Warner, the countenance of Drury exhibited
an expression of delight. The conversation
between Bristol Bill, One-Eyed Thompson, and Samuel
Drury, and the acknowledgements, or pretended
acknowledgements said to have been made by Drury on
that occasion, have been published heretofore, and are
not necessary for us to go into at present. Shortly
after this the party rose and adjourned, after a sitting
of nearly two hours, and the officers were let out of
the closet. They were pale with excitement and ready
for action, but on looking around found no persons to
arrest. The officers saw, however, or pretended to
see the object for which they had been brought, and
communicated the horrible revelations they said they had
heard. On the following evening the officers were
taken before Justice Lothrop, at his private room, with
the witnesses to the other branches of the case, and
on the joint testimony warrants were issued against
both Samuel Drury and his son. On the Friday following
the arrests were to be made, and to bring Drury
easily to the hands of Wilkes & Co., a meeting was
projected between Drury and Thompson at 9 o'clock in
the morning of that day on the heights. At 8 o'clock
Wilkes crossed the Catharine Ferry accompanied by
officers A. M. C. Smith, Jenkins and Crassous. Wilkes
"did not intend originally, it was alleged, to take any
action personally; but now that matters were drawing
to a close, Wilkes wished to see the climax of his work."

At 9 o'clock, Thompson and Drury met at Fulton
Ferry, and walked up the Heights together. Officer
Crassous followed in sight. Jenkins trailed Crassous,
and A. M. C. Smith and Wilkes held a post of observation
in the extreme rear. Thompson turned into an
open lot on the Heights, and Drury followed him; and
in the space of twenty minutes came out and separated;
officers Jenkins and Crassous closed on Drury,
who was taken into custody and conveyed to the
Tombs, in New York.

This "stool pigeon" confederacy, in which Bristol
Bill forms such a conspicuous part, as the associate of
George Wilkes, editor of the Police Gazette, One-Eyed
Thompson, and others, forms no ordinary history of
his career in this country.

However, before the trial of the Drurys took place,
Bristol Bill and his mistress left the city, together
with Meadows, for the quiet State of vermont, where
they settled down and entered into the extensive manufacture
of counterfeit money; and aided by the
valuable bank dies stolen in Boston, their business
was comparatively easy. But a few months only
elapsed, notwithstanding their extreme cunning, before
their nefarious Operations were known to the public
authorities of Danville, who caused the whole party
to be arrested. Immediately on tba arrival of the
news In this city of Bristol Bill's arrest, Marcus Tullius
Cicero Stanley and Thomas Warner posted off in
great haste, for Danville, Vermont. knowing full well
that Margaret O'Connor would be with Bill. On arriving
there. Mr Warner took Margaret O'Connor into
custody on the copy of the bail bond, which had been
duly made over to him. Thereupon Margaret was
brought back to this city by Warner and Staniey, and
placed in the Tombs for safety, until called upon to
testify on the trial to come. Since which time Bristol
and Meadows have been tried and convicted, and the
Court, on Friday last, pronounced judgment by giving
each 10 years imprisonment at hard labor in the State
prison. Bristol Bill, on the judgment rendered, felt
indignant at the energy exhibited by Mr. Davis, the State
Attorney, sprang upon him in court, and endeavored to
take his life on the spot, by thrusting a knife into the
neck of Mr. Davis. This last act of this desperado will
consign him to the State prison tor life, should Mr.
Davis recover [he did]; and if not, Bristol Bill will terminate
his career of crime on the gallows--unledd he shoul4
prefer self-destruction, which will probably be ihe
result.

----end

At the second trial of Drury, Margaret O'Connor recanted an earlier affidavit implicating Drury, and Drury was acquitted.

A biography of Bennett praises him of his opposition to the stool-pigoens.

Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett and his Times: By a Journalist (New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1855), Pages 431-432
By Isaac Clarke Pray

In moral fearlessness, perhaps Mr. Bennett never distinguished himself more than in the pains taken by him to break up one of the most dangerous organizations of wicked men known to New York. In unwinding the plots and counterplots of the One-eyed Thompson gang, at the hazard of his life, he persisted for many months to exert his influence for the annihilation of a power which seemed superior to the law. The Drury Trials were scrutinized by a severity never known to Journalism on this continent, and the ends of justice were secured by the bold character of Mr. Bennett in ferreting the secret intrigues which were connected with the Warner torpedo, and the other machinery connected with the diabolical plans of those who were engaged in the series of criminal acts which came under the examination of the courts of justice. In a similar case, the London Times was presented with a testimonial by the commercial men of Great Britain for its zeal in behalf of the public; but the only testimonial which Mr. Bennett received for the peril of life itself, was the approbation of his conscience in the discharge of a great, yet self-imposed, public duty. No threats intimidated him; no fears deterred him from following out the determination he made to break up a conspiracy which defied the police and even justice itself.

The importance of the investigations made by Mr. Bennett, may be estimated by the fact, that not less than a dozen of the most successful malefactors ever known in the city of New York, were forced to retire from a community where they had pillaged society and plotted against each other, and against innocent persons, without fear and with impunity. Some became tenants of state prisons, one attempted to commit murder even in an open court, and others fled to parts unknown. One terminated his own life by suicide, after having led a life of singular misdemeanors and crimes. The fear of the Herald paralysed the efforts of these criminals. It has been suspected that a loaded box, intended for explosion, which was sent to Mr. Bennett a year or two ago, was devised by one of these culprits. Luckily it was opened with great caution, and its deadly design was frustrated.

----end


Excerpt from an article about the bomb delivered to Bennett

The New York Herald, November 08, 1852, MORNING EDITION, Page 2, Column 2

Atrocious Attempt to Murder the Editor of the Herald

It is now three weeks since a most diabolical
attempt was made to destroy the life of Mr. Bennett,
the proprietor and editor of the New York Herald,
by means of a torpedo, or infernal machine. Most
providentially, however, the character of the instrument
was discovered in time to guard against an
explosion, and the villainy meditated proved abortive.
Since then we have, for several reasons refrained
from giving any publicity to the circumstance, but
kept it as private as possible. One of our reasons
for adopting this course was, that we might not,
frustrate the efforts of the officers of justice to
trace out this affair to its authors and concocters.

Up to the present time, however, their exertions
have not been wholly successful, and as there is no
longer any motive for concealing the facts in the case,
and as no injury can result from their publication, we
proceed to lay them before our readers in detail, so
that they may see how premeditated and deeply
planned was this cowardly atrocity.

About half-past 8 o'clock on Monday evening, the
18th ult , Mr Bennett, came from his hotel, the
Irving House, to the office. A few minutes after his
arrival, a parcel was brought to him by one of the
clerks of the publication office, who had just then
received it from a hackman, with the simple explanation
that a gentlemen in his coach, then opposite
the door, had desired him to leave it In the office.
The parcel was of a cylindrical form, about six inches
in length, wrapped in common brown piper, tied
with green ribbon, and securely sealed with red
wax, bearing the impression of a cent. It bore the
direction:--

FOR
JAMES GORDON BENNETT,
PROPRIETOR AND EDITOR.

OFFICE N. W. CORNER OF FULTON AND NASSAU STS.

PRIVATE AND WITH CARE

This address had been clipped from a copy of the
Herald, and pasted on a piece of white paper,
which was secured to the outer envelope by sealing
wax, impressed with an American half dime. The
"private and with care," was badly printed with a
pen. Just over the direction, and also printed with
a pen, on the brown paper, were the words

NATIVE SILVER AND COPPER ORE
FROM THE CUBA MOUNTAINS
WITH LETTER INSIDE THE BOX

Under the ribbon which tied the parcel was a
finely glazed or enamelled card, directed as follows,
in the same manuscript print:

Senor V ALCAZOR
OF CUBA
For MR BENNETT

WHO WILL CALL ON HIS
RETURN TO THE CITY

When this outside wrapper was taken off by Mr.
Bennett's hands, it disclosed a small pasteboard
box, resembling those used by shirt dealers for
putting up collars. The print with which :he top of the
box was ornamented, appeared to be the representation
of a scene in an ale house in one of the English
seaports. Six figures are enjoying themselves
in the tap room with long pipes and tankards of
ale, two of them wear three-cornered hats, and
seem to be invalid tars--one of them having a
bandage over his eye. The scene is a lively one; but
its title being somewhat cut away, we can only
make out what looks like "The Webber, (weaver)
or Golden Dream." On the side of the box was
affixed, by means ef red scaling wax, a strip of
foolscap paper, on which was printed, in the same
handwriting, but in red ink, these words

SPECIMENS AND PRIVATE DOCUMENTS
FROM THE INTERIOR OF HAVANNA
for MR BENNETT (ONLY)
SHOULD HE BE OUT OF TOWN KEEP
FOR HIM. ISLAND OF CUBA SEPR 1852

Mr. Bennett considered there was something
queer and extraordinary in this affair, but,
nevertheless, he made one or two attempts to take
the lid off the box; not succeeding, he gave
it to Mr. Hudson, who, with his penknife. made
an incision in the rim of the lid, when a
substance fell out which appeared to be a species of
black sand. Suspicion being thereby further
aroused, Mr. Hudson took a pinch of the sand and
threw it into the fire, when it exploded, and then
this suspicion as to the nature of the box was confirmed.
It was, therefore, carefully locked up till
it might be better examined next morning.

Mr. Baker, of the Herald office, having had it
placed in his hands for examination, took the
precaution of soaking it in water for a few hours, and
then, with two detective officers, explored its
construction. They found that it was a most
ingeniously contrived torpedo, or infernal machine,
and that it contained such a quantity of powder
that its explosion would have been certain death to
all who might happen to be near it. A circular
piece of pine wood, half inch thick, was supported
bv four light pegs, fastened in the bottom of the box,
and about the height of an inch and three quarters
over it. About three quarters of an inch above this
piece of wood was another similar one, but some what
less in circumference. This was fastened to the
bottom of the box by two pieces of strong cord, running
through holes in the lower wood, and was supported
by a bunch of detonating matches, resting on a
groove in the upper surface of the lower wheel, and
forming a sort of column in the centre. This groove
was covered with sandpaper, and the lid of the box
was fastened to the upper piece of wood, so that in
attempting to screw off the cover, the friction should
ignite the matches. This being all so ingeniously
constructed, the box was filled with fine rifle
powder by means of a hole made in the centre of the
bottom, the powder passing through holes and niches
cut in the lower piece of wood until the box was
entirely filled with it. About a dozen hard paper
pellets were found among the powder, which were
designed have to acted as bullets. Then the hole was
covered with a circular piece of tin, and entirely
concealed and secured by a quantity of black sealing
wax, impressed with an American cent. Altogether
it was a most diabolically constructed affair, and had
it exploded in Mr. Bennett's hands, would have
not only killed him, but Mr. Hudson and probably
another gentleman then in the office. But instead
of twisting round the cover as designed, Mr.
Bennett endeavored to pull it up and thus raised the
matches off the sand paper The escape, however,
was a most miraculous aud providential one.

[...]

----end

The article above mentions a print on the box containing the bomb. The print had a partially legible title that was like "The Webber, (weaver)
or Golden Dream."

There's a Washington Irving story, "Wolfert Webber. or Golden Dreams" which includes a scene at an inn which features a one-eyed "British half-pay officer" and a mysterious sailor.

Tales of a Traveller, Volume 2 (London: John Murray, 1824), Pages 282-394
By Washington Irving

[Mayerling]

Fascinating history TradeName about the conspiracy of Stool Pidgeons and the bomb plot. Bennett Sr. was quite a controversy magnate, and the first newspaper publisher in New York City to realize the value of sensational story reporting. In 1836 he led the way with his accounts of the murder of the prostitute Helen Jewitt (still officially unsolved) and the trial of her "lover" Richard Robertson, that ended with his acquittal under murky circumstances (two of the witnesses against Robertson died either suddenly or by violent means). Robertson was defended by one of New York City's best attorneys in the 1830s, Ogden Hoffman, whose sister Mathilda may have been the secret lover of young Washington Irving before her death as a young woman.

Bennett himself (because of his recklessness or fearlessness) was once horse-whipped in Manhattan on a street by his rival newspaper editor James Watson Webb.

Jeff

[TradeName]

Thanks, Jeff.

John Graham assaulted Bennett, too.

Another anti-Graham editorial.

The New York Herald, October 16, 1850, Page 4, Column 3

Criminal Developments in the Sessions--Curious Scenes

We refer our readers to the
scene, discussion, and decision, which took place
yesterday in the Sessions, on the motion to go on
with the trial of Marcus Tullius Cicero Stanley.
John M'Keon, the District Attorney, and John
Graham, the counsel of Stanley and the great
stool-pigeon candidate for District Attorney--let
out some interesting matters of each other, and
threw some additional light on the rich administration
of justice in New York. The pro tem.
Attorney General, David Graham, figured elsewhere,
likely at the Astor House. The trial of
Stanley was put off till December--and in December
it may be put off till January, when John
Graham may be District Attorney, if he should be
elected, and then look out for further scenes, and
curious illustrations of the new code.

The richest placers and developments of
criminal affairs--of criminal lawyers--of
stool-pigeon evidence, are only in the bud as yet. The
robbing of the District Attorney's office, and the
plans to manufacture evidence against poor, old,
innocent, simple Drury, have all to come out in
spite of the two Grahams--John and David, and
all their joint influence over the courts, juries
and parties of New York, including both the democrats
and whigs. John Graham has got the democratic
nomination of District Attorney, by stool-pigeon
influence--and David may get the whig
nomination of Mayor, or something else; but we
doubt if they can manage both parties for a single
family, as certain politicians once did of late years
in New York. The truth in politics, rascality,
law, and stool-pigeoning, will all come out at the
proper time.

----end

Bennett's own account of the assault.

The New York Herald, November 10, 1850, Page 2, Column 1

To the Public of New York

Little did the undersigned imagine, when he
opposed the recent nomination of John Graham
as District Attorney, made at Tammany Hall, and,
also, when he opposed his election before the people
of this city, on the ground of his utter unfitness
both in temper and capacity, for the office--little
did the undersigned suppose that what he said
would so soon be justified and verified by events
and acts of a character equally in keeping with the
candidate, his capacity, and his subsequent defeat.
Yesterday morning, about ten o'clock, the ninth
inst, as I was walking down Broadway in company
with my wife, on reaching the corner of Broadway
and White street, I was assailed by a gang of
rowdies and ruffians, headed by the same John
Graham, late candidate for District Attorney, and
his brother, DeWitt Graham, an employee in the
Custom House, under Hugh Maxwell.and also
Charles K. Graham, another brother, with a ferocity
and a violence that seemed to justify the belief that
murder or manslaughter had been premeditated by
the assailants. Two police officers of the Sixth
ward--whose names I do not know--witnessed the
assault, but made no effort to preserve the peace of
the city from such a gang of ruffians

The avowed object of this gross violation of the
law was stated by De Witt Graham, on the spot, to
be the opposition which was recently made by the
New York Herald, to the nornmation and election
of John Grhkum as District Attorney. I replied
to him, on the spot--"I have done nothing but my
duty in opposing the election of John Graham.
Neither you nor all the ruffians you can assemble,
shall intimidate me from pursuing a course which I
believe to he right. In opposing John Graham, 1
was right; and so the people of New York have
decided " The assault and the assailants will soon
occupy the attention of the criminal authorities;
and probably one of the first cases that will be
brought before the new District Attorney, will be
this gross violation of the law, perpetrated by his
late antagonist at the polls.

With respect to the cause of this attempt at
murder, by a band of ruffians headed by John
Graham and his two brothers--De Witt Graham
and Charles K. Graham--I have only to say, that,
in the course pursued by this journal in relation
to John Graham, from the time of his nomination
to the day of election, I was perfectly justified, in
every respect, for every statement I made, and,
moreover, had a perfect legal right to oppose his
election on the grounds as they were stated. Nothing
libelous, nothing personal, was published, but
his public aud his professional character was urged
on the voters of this city as a reason for withholding
from that man their suffrage at the recent election.

The course pursued by me, in this journal, has
been justified by the result of the recent election,
and sanctioned by the votes of the people of
New York. That result has now received even
a double sanction; and additional evidence has
been given of the truth of the statemente made
against the fitness of John Graham, by the perpetration
of the brutal event which took place yesterday morning.

As this matter will become the subject of criminal
investigation before the judicial authorities of
the city, I shall forbear making any further statements
or remarks at this time. This, however, I
shall content myself with declaring:-I know my
rights and duties as a citizen of the republic and a
member of this community; and all the assassins
and reffians that skulk from the Battery to
Highbridge [?] shall never intimidate me from the
daily performance of those duties, or the vindication
of every legal right that belongs to me.

J.G. BENNETT

----end

Graham's arrest.

The New York Herald, November 10, 1850, Page 2, Column 4

Police Intelligence

Arrest of John Graham for the Violent Assault on Mr. Bennett

Yesterday morning about 10 o clock. a violent
attack was made by John Graham the lawyer
aided and abetted by his brother DeWitt Graham,
Mike Murray, and others on the person of Mr. James
G. Bennett, while passing down Broadway with his
lady. The brutal assault was evidently premeditated.
Captain Turnbull. of the Eighth Ward police, who
interfered, in order to save Mr. Bennett from further
violence, was likewise violently assualted and knocked
down by Mike Murray.Justice Lethrop issued a warrant
for the arrest of Mike, who, subsequently, gave
bail to answer the charge. Justice Mountfort issued
a warrant for the arrest of John Graham, and during
the afternoon Captain Turnbull took him into
custody and conveyed him before the magistrate. Mr.
Graham requested a hearing in the matter, and on
Monday next, a day will be set down for that purpose.

----end

Bennett editorializes on the indictment of Graham and reviews the fates of the members of the "stool-pigeon gang."

The New York Herald, March 24, 1851, MORNING EDITION, Page 2, Column 2

Progress of Justice
Indictments of the Grand Jury
More about Wilkes & Co.

By a reference to our Sessions reports it will be
seen that the Grand Jury, last week, found several
important bills of indictment, viz.:--one against
John Graham, the late defeated candidate for the
office of District Attorney, of this city, and for years
past the counsel of George Wilkes, the recent
runaway convict; another against De Witt Graham, a
custom house officer under Hugh Maxwell; and a
third against Mike Murray, an associate of the
former two, and a well known pugilist. These indictments
have been found against those parties for
the outrage committed on the 9th of November,
last year, against the editor of this journal and
Captain Turnbull, one the [sic] captains of police. More
indictments against one of the same party are still
in progress, for an attempted outrage against Mr.
Galbraith, the counsel employed in these cases.
This was perpetrated also by De Witt Graham,
accompanied by an associate, whose name we forget.
The papers in this case have been for some time
past in the hands of Justice Osborn, and the case,
thus far, delayed from going before the Grand Jury;
but for what reason, good, bad, or indifferent, we
have not heard.

We have very little to say of those matters, now
that they are in the hands of competent conductors
of law and justice in this city. We may state simply,
that the ostensible cause for these outrages was
simply a fair and manly opposition to the nomination
of John Graham, for district attorney, by the
New York Herald--which opposition was sanctioned
and confirmed by the intelligent and respectable
people of the city, He had received the nomination
last November, through an improper influence
wielded in Tammany Hall, and set in motion by
certain disputable persons, of whom George
Wilkes and bis associates were some of the warmest
partisans. The respectable portion of the
democracy revolted at such an influence, and such a
candidate. They abandoned their own tickets, and
elected respectable men in the opposition. All these
facts will appear on the trials, as soon as they
shall have been set down for a calm hearing.

Of Wilkes and his associates, we have a word to say.
All the persons and parties connected with the recent
unjustifiable and atrocious stool-pigeon crusade
against innocent and respectable men for the last
two years, have been gradually brought to conviction
and punishment. We allude to the crusades against
Samuel Drury, Sen., and Samuel Drury, Jr., of
Astoria, and also against James Arlington Bennet,
of New Rochclle. The history of these nefarious
operations and stool-pigeon confederacies
would fill a volume of the deepest interest,
and would exhibit some of the vagaries which
existed in the administration of justice during
that period in this city. Wilkes, who has
just escaped, by taking to his heels, from a conviction
and sentence impending over him in Poughkeepsie,
has not been heard of up to this time. We
understand, however, that Mr. Bowyer, the very
excellent police officer--who has just been reinstated
by the Mayor--in conjunction with officers from
Pougbkeepsie is now on the trail of the runaway,
and may probably catch him before he gets out of
the country. The following is curious iist of some
of his agents associates, and Instruments, including
himself, with particulars of their fate aud destination:--

Britsol Bill, State prison, Yermont, ten years.

----- Meadows or Fields. do. do. do,

Joseph Ashley, State prison, five years.

Thomas Warner, runaway, now in England.

Levi Cole, escaped to partS unknown.

Tom Kanouse, eight years State prison, Rhode Island.

----- Dorsey, indicted for perjury, State prison, Rhode Island.

One-Eyed Thompson, committed suicide in prison.

George Wilkes, convicted and escaped.

Thus proceeds the power of justice and truth, with
a step as firm, as calm, and as determined as the
movements of nature under the untrammelled impress
of Omnipotent power. Verily, the administration
of justice is improving fast.

Page 4, Column 1

Indictments Against John Graham, DeWitt C. Graham, and Mike Murray

March 21--The Grand Jury yesterday brought in a
number of bills of indictment against various persons for
criminal offences to be tried at the Sessions. Amongst
them were indictments against John Graham and Dewit
C Graham, for an assault and battery upon JaMes Gordon
Bennett, and against Michael Murray fur assault
and battery on Charles Trumbull. Captain of the Eight
Ward Police; and another for a similar offence against
Stephen M. Burns.

----end

A mention that the trial was scheduled, but I can't find any reference to the actual trial.

The New York Herald, May 05, 1851, MORNING EDITION, Page 2, Column 3

May Term of the Court of Sessions

Grahams, Mike Murray

[...] The trial of John Graham and
Dewit C. Graham, for violently assaulting Mr. James G.
Bennett in Broadway, last November, is set down for the
second week of the term. Whether Mike Murray, the
accomplice of Graham. and the person who interfered
with the officer of police who arrested the assailants, will
be tried at the seme time we have not learned. [...]

----end

[TradeName]

George Wilkes, of the National Police Gazette, was accused of being involved in the forging of a will for a U.S. Senator who fell in a duel.

A bio of the Senator in question.

Biographies of Two Hundred and Fifty Distinguished National Men (New York: John T. Giles, 1871), Page 157
by Horatio Bateman

157. DAVID C. BRODERICK.

David C. Broderick was born in the District of Columbia, in December, 1818.

When a boy of five years of age, his father removed to New York City; and, in process of time, David was apprenticed to the trade of stone-cutter, which was his father's occupation. The son, like many New York boys, became a fireman, and was for many years Foreman of an Engine Company, and an active politician.

In 1849, Broderick, following the excitement of the day, went to California, and engaged in the business of smelting and assaying gold. He was a Member of the Convention which drafted the Constitution of that State, served two years in the California Senate, and was President of that body in 1851.

In 1856 he was elected a Senator to the Congress of the United States, for the long term.

He died in San Francisco, September 16, 1859, from a wound received in a duel with David S. Terry, Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of that State, on the 13th of the same month.

He was the first member of the United States Senate ever killed in a duel, and it produced a great sensation all over the country, as it was thought that his political opponents had arranged the duel, in order to put him out of the way, on account of his political proclivities—-he being opposed to the extension of Slavery, and was using his influence against tho Southern wing of the Democracy. He, also, advocated the claims of Stephen A. Douglas as a candidate for the Presidency.

The duel grew out of language used by Broderick, in the political canvass for the State, that year. Broderick and the notorious Dr. Gwin were both in the habit of using the most vituperative language in their public declamations; and when they disagreed, the rhetoric of their diatribes is described as something stronger than even stump-oratory acknowledges in its ethics.

Gwin, who appears to have been a cautious sort of warrior, subsided, while the prominent figure of one D. W. Perley appears, charging Mr. Broderick with having insulted him, by using offensive language in regard to his friend, Judge Terry, an individual who had previously made himself obnoxious to the well-remembered Vigilance Committee of San Francisco. Perley challenged Broderick, who refused to fight him; but when, after the election, Judge Terry came forward, and demanded satisfaction, he accepted the challenge, and the result was that Broderick was killed by the first fire.

The funeral oration was delivered by Colonel E. D. Baker, afterward the hero of Ball's Bluff. Father Gallagher, the priest who officiated, passed a high eulogium on his personal character, but condemned the duel.

----end

Link to a book-length account of the Broderick/Gwin contest. Wilkes and Broderick had known each other in New York and reconnected when Wilkes moved to California.

Broderick and Gwin: The Most Extraordinary Contest for a Seat in the Senate of the United States Ever Known (San Francisco: Bacon & Company, 1881), link
By James O'Meara


An account of the controversy surrounding Broderick's will from a defendant in a libel suit filed by Wilkes.

The Answer of John F. Chamberlin to the Complaint of George Wilkes (New York: 1873)
by John F. Chamberlin, George Wilkes

Pages 4-6

his defendant further answering says, that as to the supposed defamatory words in the complaint set forth, to wit: "He (George Wilkes) forged Broderick's will (meaning the will of the late Senator Broderick, of California), and is now living on the proceeds of the forgery," the same are and were not false, malicious and defamatory, but, on the contrary, the same are true of the plaintiff, George Wilkes, as follows, viz: On the 16th day of September, 1859, David C. Broderick, a Senator of the United States, and the person intended by this defendant in said supposed defamatory words, died in San Francisco, California, under peculiar and well known circumstances, leaving a large fortune of more than three hundred thousand dollars, and, as was supposed, with no one to inherit it. That, from his declarations and the circumstances preceding his death, he was supposed to have died intestate, and his estate passed into the hands of an administrator; but, on the 20th day of February, 1860, the community were startled by the production of a curious and phenomenal document, purporting to be his last will and testament, and to have been executed in the City of New York, on Sunday, the 2d day of January, 1859. By said pretended will, purporting to have been made in the presence of A. A. Phillips and John J. Huff, the testator, in two brief paragraphs, after directing the payment of his debts and bequeathing a legacy of $10,000 to John A. McGlynn, devised and bequeathed all the rest and residue of his large fortune to George Wilkes, the plaintiff herein, and said Wilkes, McGlynn and another were named as executors, with the injunction that none of them should be required to give security. The will was probated, and a portion of the property advertised for sale, when the Attorney-General of California, on the 29th day of November, 1861, in behalf of the people of the State, filed an information to arrest the sale in the District Court of the Fourth Judicial District of California, sitting as a Court of Equity. The information alleged that the said Broderick had died without heirs, that the pretended will was a fabrication and a forgery, and that Broderick being thus intestate, the State of California was entitled to his property. The case came on for trial before that Court, an immense mass of evidence was offered, eminent counsel were employed on both sides, long and able arguments were heard, and the question exhaustively investigated; and the Court, in an elaborate opinion of more than thirty pages, after reviewing the evidence, decided the will to be a fabrication and a forgery, pronouncing it to be a "phenomenal and extraordinary document on its face," and stamping the transaction as "a fraud, wicked in the eye of the law; abhorrent to every principle of justice and morality, and destructive to the social and political ties that bind us together as citizens and men." The Chancellor granted the injunction prayed for by the Attorney General; but a technical question as to the jurisdiction of the Court and its power to collaterally annul the probate of a will allowed more than a year prior, having been raised on the trial, the case was taken to an appellate Court, and the latter, without reversing the decision of the Chancellor on the question of fact as to the forgery of the will, were constrained to dissolve the injunction, on the technical ground that the injunction was not within the equity powers of the Court. That, in consequence, the Court was compelled by a technical point of law to permit the probate of the will to stand, it having been allowed for more than a year before, and the large fortune of the said Senator Broderick, through the wicked device of said pretended will, fabricated by forgery and probated by perjury, passed into the hands of George "Wilkes, the plaintiff herein, who is now living on the fortune of the friend he thus defrauded in his grave.

And this defendant alleges, that, with regard to said pretended will, the fact is that the same was a fabrication and a forgery, procured and executed by the said plaintiff herein and his co-conspirators and associates; and that, at the very time and hour when the said testator, David C. Broderick, is alleged by the sworn testimony and allegations of the witnesses to said pretended will to have been lying sick and disabled at the Metropolitan Hotel, in the City of New York, and to have signed and executed said will in the presence of its witnesses, to wit, between eight and ten o'clock in the evening of January 2d, 1859, he was then, and for several hours afterwards, in fact, in good health, and away from said Metropolitan Hotel, being entertained in said City of New York, in company with several distinguished politicians, by the late Senator Stephen A. Douglas, then temporarily visiting this city. And this defendant will, on the trial of this action, produce several of said companions of said Senator Broderick on that' night, as witnesses in that behalf, to prove said allegations.

----end

[Mayerling]

Hi TradeName,
Just a little bit on Senator Gwin and Judge Terry.

William Gwin was one of the leading Democrats who came to the territory of California in the days after the Mexican War ended with the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, which turned over most of the territories of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and portions of Nevada, and Texas, to the U.S. Frankly we won this in a war, but we paid (conscience money?) the Mexican Government $15 million dollars (1850 dollars - actually far more today than we would think) for the land. Gwin was born in the South, and was pro-slavery, and the initial period of California's future was given a big boost by the discovery by John Marshall on the property of John Sutter (near his mill) of gold. The great gold rush literally spilled the entire world into California - normally it would have been twenty years before it entered the Union as a state, but the gold rush gave California it's population for statehood by 1850.

Gwin fought to get California into the Union as a slave state. Problem was that (if you look at a current map) it is one of the largest of the lower 48 states, taking up about 55 % of the west coast. Unless one was willing to cut the state in half, it could not be fit into the standing Compromise of 1820 resolution of evening the boarders for new states along a particular latitude that the state of Missouri sat upon. Missouri was above the latitude, but it came into the Union in 1820 with the state of Maine, which is further North (and east) in latitude. But after 1820 states were allowed to enter the Union only if they balanced (one slave state and one free state at the same time). The Californians, despite some discussion on the matter, did not want to cut their state in half. So it would have to be entering the Union intact, and would either be swinging the balance of the U.S. Senate for slavery interests or for abolitionist interests.

[A bit of bigotry was involved in this too. There was another western territory that could have come in with California as a balance: but it was the Mormon territory known as "Deseret", now known as Utah. Mormonism was not a popular religion in the 1850s, and Utah (despite a large and prosperous colony of settlers) would not enter the Union until 1896.]

The fight for California would occupy the conclusion of the Taylor Administration and the beginning of it's successor Fillmore Administration in 1850. Taylor, although a slave owner, was a vigorous nationalist, and hated the blackmail threats of secession from the extreme slave "fire eaters" led by Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, as well as the extreme anti-slavery Northern figures led by Senator William Seward of New York. He openly said that he would lead an army to fight either of the two sides if they dared to carry out their threats. But Taylor died in July 1850. Fillmore was more accommodating. When Senators Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas hammered out a new compromise, Fillmore signed it into law. California was kept intact and admitted into the Union by itself. Two Senators were elected (by the state legislature - as was the case until 1913 throughout the country): William Gwin, representing the pro-Southern forces, and the noted explorer and soldier John Charles Fremont representing the abolitionist forces. Like all new states one was considered to hold his term for less than six years (Fremont was chosen) but Gwin held it for six. Since the state was still split in terms of being pro-North or pro-South, it's admission had less effect than critics had imagined. However to placate the South and allow them to accept a potentially bad additional state's votes against it, the Compromise included the "Fugitive Slave Act" to enable slave owners to get back runaway slaves that were in all parts of the country, and there was a promise to build a transcontinental railroad through the south towards California (this eventually led to the Pierce Administration to purchase a further portion of Northern Mexico (the "Gadsden Purchase" of 1853) that completed the southern boarders of Arizona and New Mexico as they are today. Finally (this time as a symbolic bone for the North) the slave trade was finally banned in Washington, D.C.

In the long run the Compromise did prevent the Civil War by a decade, but it also aggravated both sections of the country because of the Fugitive Slave Act and the problem of California's votes in the U.S. Senate. Fremont would serve out his four years (basically doing nothing - in truth he was an inflated public figure who time and again would prove to be unworthy of any great offices or powers). But while the four years came Broderick, originally from New York City - and with a background in Tammany Hall politics - came West and became the political boss of San Francisco. Soon he and Gwin got into a seesawing political struggle (as both were Democrats) for control of the state. Gwin, with his courtly, polished manners, was a welcome social figure in the Pierce and Buchanan Administrations in Washington, and in Buchanan's would be one of the coterie of Senate figures who hoped to be most influential with the 15th President. But time and again his projects were put off by increasing regional tensions. Gwin wanted that transcontinental railroad in the Southern states and territories built, but the Congress kept putting it off. Broderick resented not being given the respect by the Presidents and social Washington given his rival. Finally, rather late in the day, Broderick switched to being a Republican - and an outspoken foe of the slavery power. This though was in 1858, and it did not cost him his seat in the Senate, but it certainly put Gwin's nose out of joint.

That duel with Terry has been suspicious to many historians since the 19th Century. Broderick was not a duelist, and he gets challenged by one of the leading shots in California. He was not killed outright, but lingered a day or so. Many still feel Terry was told to challenge Broderick to get rid of him.

But it did not help Gwin or Terry. The struggles of Broderick and Gwin were too well known, and many felt Gwin was behind the duel taking place. Further, after 1859 and the Harper's Ferry incident, war was just a matter of time. Gwin found his position in Washington falling with the fall of the Buchanan Administration's credibility with the public in both the North and South. When the war came, Gwin resigned from the Senate. He travelled to France and discussed business ideas with members of the government of Napoleon III. The Second Empire was openly pro-Confederate, as it was hoping to crack the power of the Monroe Doctrine. Soon Napoleon III was helping to establish the Austrian Archduke Maximillian on the throne of Mexico as Emperor - depending on the preoccupation of the U.S. with the Confederates to prevent them from bringing the Monroe Doctrine to bear on his Mexican policies. Gwin was persona gratia at Napoleon's Court, discussing vast mining and railroad plans for Mexico (and a friendly Confederacy) in the future.

Of course this proved as illusory as Gwin's hope's on the inept Buchanan Administration. When the North won the American Civil War, it began sending Phil Sheridan to the Texas-Mexican boarder to confront the French. But by this time the forces of Napoleon and Maximilian were being buffeted by the forces loyal to Mexico's last legally elected President Benito Juarez. Napoleon finally called his men home to France, the whole scheme an expensive fiasco. Maximilian tried to fight on, was captured and shot. Gwin's plans were in ruins. He would return to California, and while he still had friends most people thought of him as a traitor until his death in the 1880s.

Terry found his judicial career finished in California by his "murder" of Broderick. In particular were the attacks on him by fellow Californian jurist Stephen Field, brother of New York lawyer David Dudley Field, financier (and leader in the construction of the Atlantic Cable) Cyrus Field, and travel writer Rev. Henry Martyn Field (who married Helene Delussy-Desportes, the nanny in the ill-fated household of the Duc and Duchesse de Praslin in the 1847 murder case). Stephen Field would soon be in a larger courtroom - in 1863 he was appointed to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court - the first jurist from California - by Lincoln. He would be one of the most vigorous figures in the Gilded Age Supreme Courts of the 1860s to 1890s (he would die in 1899).

In the 1860s the Comstock Lode in Nevada was found and soon made many fortunes. One was made by William Sharon, who eventually got himself made Senator Sharon of Nevada. Fine enough, but Sharon had an affair (long standing) with one Althea Rose, and she would claim they were married. When Sharon died, he left a fortune, and Althea laid claim to it as his widow. Her attorney was Judge Terry, and soon he and Althea also became man and wife.

At the time (this was in the 1880s) the U.S. Supreme Court Justices were given Federal districts that once a year they visited to hear (as trial judges) actual cases. Field had long held Terry in contempt, and Terry returned the favor. Field heard the case of Ms Rose-Terry about the Sharon estate, and made comments in it questioning the honesty of the lady and her attorney/husband.

A few days later, Field and a Federal peace officer assigned to him were waiting in a train station's restaurant. The Terrys came and after a few minutes at another table, Terry arose and walked over to Field. He then slapped Field in the face hard. the peace officer, Sheriff Nagle, jumped up and pulled his gun, and shot and killed Terry. This was in 1890.

The Supreme Court eventually decided in favor of the Sheriff in "In Re Nagle" in 1890, and laid the rule that a police officer sensing danger for his charge (here a U.S. Supreme Court Justice) has the right to use all physical force to protect that charge from the danger. Although Terry had no weapon in his hand, he was known to have killed a U.S. Senator, so Nagle was correct to assume he might plan to add a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Althea Rose-Terry lost her suit. In later years she was insane.

Jeff



6

[TradeName]

Thanks, Jeff.

George Wilkes of Police Gazette and "stool pigeon" fame decided to weigh in on the Stratfordian side of the Shakespeare/Bacon controversy in an 1877 book.

Shakespeare, from an American Point of View (London: Sampson Low, 1877), link
by George Wilkes

Page 423

Having finished my scrutiny of the Shakespearian dramas, with the view of exhibiting the writer's aristocratic inclinations, his contempt for the labouring classes, his religious predilections, and his defective knowledge of the law, in order to mark the width of distance, in the way of personality, between him and Bacon, I come now to the final test, whether the essays of the latter aud the plays of our poet could have been the productions of one and the same mind. This question I take to be susceptible of absolute demonstration, according to the laws of elocution and of musical sound. A writer's musical sense, or ear for music, governs the euphony and tread of his expression. This ear for sound, following the instincts of taste, and falling always toward one cadence and accord, insensibly forms what writers call a style. This style, when thoroughly fixed, enables us to distinguish the productions of one author from another, and is usually more reliable as a test of authorship even than handwriting, inasmuch as the latter may be counterfeited, while a style of thought, united with a form of expression consonant to that tone of thought being a gift, cannot be imitated as handwriting can. A fixed style, like that either of Bacon or of Shakespeare, is, therefore, undoubtedly, susceptible of analysis and measurement by the laws both of music and of elocution.

----end

Here's a handy annotated, chronological bibliography up to May, 1884, compiled by a Baconian.

Bibliography of the Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy: With Notes and Extracts (Cincinnati: Samuel C. Cox, 1884), link
by William Henry Wyman


A fair number of the works referenced by the bibliography are available online.

The first entry is for a chapter in this book which questions whether Shakespeare wrote the plays himself but does not name Bacon.

The Romance of Yachting: Voyage the First (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1848), link
By Joseph C. Hart

Another early article that doesn't name Bacon.

Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, August 7, 1852, Pages 87-89

Who Wrote Shakspeare?

The following relate to Delia Bacon, who was the first to suggest that Bacon was an author of the plays.

Putnam's Monthly, Volume 7, January, 1856, Pages 1-19

William Shakespeare and His Plays
An Inquiry Concerning Them
[by Delia Bacon]

The Athenĉum, January 26, 1856, Page 108, Columns 2-3

[discussion of Putnam's article]

[also ad: Kahn's Anatomical Musuem]


Delia Bacon's book:

The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded (London: Groombridge, 1857), link
by Delia Salter Bacon, preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Recollections of Seventy Years (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866), Pages 319-331
by Mrs. John Farrar

Chapter XL

Miss Delia Bacon


Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches (Boston: james R. Osgood, 1871), Pages 122-137
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Recollections of a Gifted Woman

These two are not in the bibliography.

Delia Bacon: A Biographical Sketch (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1888), link
edited by Theodore Bacon


The North American Review, Volume 148, March 1889, Page 307-318

Delia Bacon's Unhappy Story
by Hon. Ignatius Donelly

[GUT]

Now the Shakespeare controversy.

Ancestors of mine had dealings with pretty much ever suggested author, save I can find no connection to William himself.