Island of Vice

by Richard Zacks

  The Sphinx knocked on the door of a brothel at 28 Bayard Street run by Charles Prien, a middle-aged Civil War veteran with short gray hair and a clipped mustache. Prien, who had been in business long enough to pay several “new” captains, was quite taken aback by the $500, especially since—to pay it—he had to sell a show dog that had won first prize at Madison Square Garden. Prien found Glennon aptly nicknamed. “We had very little conversation,” he later explained, “it was only do the act.” Prien slipped a tightly folded $50 bill to Glennon in a police handshake.

  Rhoda Sanford, a stout fifty-five-year-old bottle-blond widow with four grown‑up children, ran a brothel two doors down from Prien. She had gotten into the business late, when she had no other means and answered an ad to be a housekeeper; she discovered the place to be filled with women in short skirts. (When a prosecutor later asked her why she didn’t leave, she answered: “I guess if you hadn’t a dollar in your pocket, you would do anything, too.”)

  Sanford—clearly an intelligent woman—expressed shock to Glennon at having to pay a massive $500 initiation fee and $50 a month, especially since business was slow. (The stock market panic of 1893 was imminent.) Glennon, however, with little sympathy, told her the drill: he would appear like clockwork on the seventh of the month to collect. Sanford kept a tattered ledger of her fees, which revealed such entries as “$4 for shoes,” “$2 for gin,” and “$1.50 for Man Shark,” which she explained meant any man, politician or beat cop, and finally the largest: “$500 for C,” that is, Captain Devery.

  Devery was looking at $500 from each of fifty houses, or $25,000. He was also charging the gambling games $50 a month and he raised the fee for numbers joints from $10 to $20 a month. Devery would have to share his newfound wealth, giving 10 to 20 percent to bagman Sphinx for taking the bigger risk of collecting the cash, and he was obligated to give a slice to his superior officer, Inspector Alexander “Clubber” Williams, for looking the other way.

  On a hot early-summer night at Harry Hoffman’s brothel at 180 Allen Street some of the eight women fanned themselves, waiting for dollar-a-roll customers, as the door stood invitingly ajar. Kate McCarthy, who’d worked in several brothels, leaned out of an upper window and called down to a portly man with a big brush mustache and a derby hat. She had downed a few beers and slurringly hollered, “Come up, darling, for a good time!” He turned for a second, looked at the building, and kept on walking.

  At 9 a.m. the following morning, after Harry Hoffman had slept for three hours—his house always remained open till 6 a.m.—a policeman came to his door and ordered him to go down to the Eldridge Street precinct station house. They walked the five blocks together, past Rivington, Delancey, and Broome to Grand. A pair of green globes marked the entrance on Eldridge. Harry walked in and was escorted to the captain’s office.

  Harry Hoffman was a lanky thirty-four-year-old ex-con with a handlebar mustache who had served five years in Sing Sing on a burglary rap. He was renting from a former Tammany assemblyman, Phil Wissig, who owned the building and ran a rowdy lager beer saloon. Hoffman had agreed to pay Wissig $70 a month, and Wissig had written “Glennon” on the back of his business card. He told Hoffman to get right by the captain. Because he was the tenant of a Tammany big shot, he was being charged only $40 a month.

  Bill Devery kidded around with Hoffman for a while—Devery was a funny man when he wanted to be. “So who exactly are you?” Devery eventually asked and Hoffman told him about his brothel over Wissig’s saloon. “You son of a bitch, that is you, is it?” Devery said. “Well, if one of them women cows of yours calls me up again, I will take you by the neck and throw you out of the house.”

  Kate McCarthy had accidentally propositioned the captain the night before.

  Devery didn’t threaten to shut down the brothel; he merely informed him of a $10-a-month surcharge. Kate McCarthy had broken the cardinal rule of keeping it low key during the Parkhurst crusade. Devery said it was hard for him to look the other way when he was being shouted at.

  As swiftly as Devery and Glennon started collecting dues, just as swiftly did Parkhurst start investigating. Gardner was locked in at Sing Sing but the Parkhurst Society sent other detectives, such as thirty-five-year-old John Lemmon and beardless Edgar Whitney. The pair found a struggling Jewish eyeglass peddler, who gave his name as “Franks” but was really Benjamin Ettenberger, to guide them to dozens of brothels.

  The Parkhurst detectives posed as out-of-town rubes. Since they needed evidence but couldn’t “co-habitate,” they flirted, paid for illegal drinks, and ordered up a lot of striptease and high-kicking. One prostitute, who thought the agent was avoiding intercourse from fear of venereal disease, offered to go find a “condom” or to use a “syringe,” a plunger-like device to give a thorough antiseptic douche. He pled a stomachache.

  The agents—solo, in pairs, in groups of three—made repeated visits to Grace Walsh’s brothel at 81 Eldridge Street and to Elizabeth Hartell’s at 70 Eldridge Street about 150 feet or so from the police precinct house at 105 Eldridge. They wanted to build an ironclad case against these brothels that Devery passed every day.

  Reverend Parkhurst sent a set of irate letters to Tammany mayor Gilroy, to Superintendent Byrnes, to the police commissioners, and to Devery complaining that the Tammany captain had failed to close fifty-three brothels and eleven gambling houses in the 11th Precinct despite offers of help—and precise street addresses—from the Society.

  Parkhurst’s missives were dismissed. Inspector Williams even issued a report confirming the absence of vice at those locations.

  So on October 29, Parkhurst investigators, armed with stacks of eyewitness accounts, approached Judge Voorhis and received arrest warrants for four brothel owners.

  After hauling in the defendants, longtime private eye John Lemmon testified to Judge Voorhis that on each of his three visits to 81 Eldridge Street he saw women in “sleeveless short dresses” and that “high-kicking” occurred. This provoked a gruff mocking cross-examination by the brothel madam’s lawyer, Manny Friend:

  FRIEND: You did some high kicking?

  LEMMON: I cannot kick high.

  FRIEND: How high can you kick?

  LEMMON: I can kick high enough to reach you.

  FRIEND: If any kicking is done, you will be the one to get it.

  This vaudeville banter didn’t amuse the judge, who threatened both men with contempt of court. Frank Moss, counsel for the Parkhurst Society, informed the judge that a man in the courtroom was attempting to intimidate the Parkhurst witnesses. Judge Voorhis requested the man be brought to the bench.

  Slowly walking forward with a smirk was Max Hochstim, a notorious Tammany Hall saloon owner who along with a fellow owner, Silver Dollar Smith (aka Charles Solomon), and Democratic district leader Martin Engel ran the underworld of the Jewish ghetto. Hochstim helped recruit new Jewish girls for the brothels; he strong-armed residents to pay dues to his neighborhood association. He was feared throughout the 11th Precinct, almost as much as Devery.

  Judge Voorhis questioned him; Hochstim denied all, especially tipping off the brothels about the raid. He said he was in Newark. The judge gave him a stern, demeaning lecture and ordered him removed from the courtroom. Hochstim, as he was passing lawyer Friend, stage-whispered, gesturing toward dandified bald Frank Moss: “Do you think it’d cost me a $100 [fine] to smash him in the face?”

  The Parkhurst agents left the building and Hochstim’s gang, reinforced by local bruisers, crowded in on them; the agents race-walked west along Broome Street. Members of the crowd jostled them and tried to punch them while—according to Frank Moss—police officers of the 11th Precinct stood by and watched and laughed. The Parkhurst agents at the Bowery jumped onto a passing Fourth Avenue streetcar but the mob—now 500 strong—grabbed the reins of the horses and surrounded the vehicle; a couple dozen men climbed aboard and began trampling the vice investigators. Police from the neighboring precinct, not having any order to ignore the action, eventual
ly broke up the mob and freed the men.

  That night Parkhurst rushed a typewritten complaint to newspapermen about the incident, singling out Devery and Hochstim.

  Superintendent Byrnes read the minister’s account of the thuggery in the morning papers; he told reporters he was “disgusted” and ordered an immediate investigation. Byrnes’s doorman, Dan Strauss, seeing his boss arriving in such a sour mood, hid a lit cigar in his pocket to avoid detection and accidentally set himself on fire.

  Devery quickly stitched together a report, citing twenty-seven shopkeepers who saw no mass harassment, merely a gaggle of boys trailing the Parkhurst men; Devery quoted a train conductor who said he had to restrain a Society agent from pulling his gun on the boys.

  Parkhurst refused to allow the police to paper over Devery’s profitable misdeeds. His agents testified before a grand jury, which on November 29, 1893, returned four indictments against Captain Devery for neglecting to close the brothels. (Judge Voorhis had found all four madams guilty.) The police commissioners, under pressure, shifted Devery from the juicy 11th Precinct to the graft-light 1st Precinct, Old Slip, near the southern tip of Manhattan. About the only shakedowns possible were excess construction site debris, maybe some sidewalk displays or overnight wagon parking. Straight-arrow Captain Moses Cortwright arrived in the 11th Precinct, and made 1,300 arrests in the next four weeks.

  Devery’s trial in April was front-page news. “For the first time in the history of the police department,” the New York World announced, “one of its officials will be tried on a criminal charge of neglect of duty.”

  The stakes were high. As the small-circulation pro-reform paper the New York Times pointed out: If a police captain were actually convicted of neglect of duty, then all captains would be at risk, and then they’d have to shut down all the brothels and gambling joints. It was an astounding concept.

  Dozens of blue-uniformed police officers packed the courtroom on April 3 to show support for this extremely popular captain. Devery had hired the fifty-two-year-old celebrity lawyer Colonel E. C. James, one of the nation’s most heralded trial lawyers.

  James rarely lost. Obviously, his services did not come cheap. Devery’s legal fees would approach $5,000, an enormous sum when day laborers worked for a dime an hour.

  Before the trial started, the defense caught (or created) a break: none of the four madams or any of the prostitutes working for them could be found. Many speculated the police had acted as fine travel agents, giving the women a choice of Europe or the East River.

  James was a specialist in cross-examination, and his trial strategy for Devery grew quickly clear: discredit the Parkhurst agents.

  Colonel James asked endless questions for the jury about the agents’ experiences of “drinks,” “merry-making,” and “high-kicking” at 81 Eldridge Street. James asked twenty-eight-year-old Edgar Whitney very precise questions about garments worn. Hems above the knee? Plunging necklines? Had he not seen equally short, low-cut dresses at the opera? “Yes, but those women wore tights underneath,” parried Whitney. Then James carefully explored the character of each investigator. He brought out that Whitney had been accused of stealing money as a traveling pants salesman in Vermont, skipping out on a hotel bill. He explored Whitney’s stint in New York as an undercover investigator for the street railroads. Whitney would don a conductor’s uniform and wander through the cars to make sure other conductors were ringing up every fare. Whitney was fired. “Was it not for appropriating nickels?” James asked.

  The New York police detectives clearly did their homework for their captain. Whitney was forced to confirm that he had been arrested in an illegal gambling joint in Devery’s former uptown precinct. Whitney denied vowing to get even.

  All the Parkhurst agents admitted using numerous false names in their current and former detective jobs. Marcus Wishart, slack-jawed and laconic, stated he once worked for the Law and Order League of Pittsburgh collecting bounties for finding saloons open on Sunday, and that he was later arrested for attacking a constable in Pittsburgh.

  Thirty-five-year-old John Lemmon, “most flippant” at first, had been using aliases for fourteen years as a detective in the West. He recounted how he had injured his hand during a recent investigation. “I had a fight somewhere on Fourth Street … in one of those coffee houses where they have the girl waiters. One of the girls came over and kissed me.” Colonel James, shaking his bald head, interrupted: “Kissed you? Did you resist?” Lemmon: “I did not. Then a man came in and struck the girl. I hit him and we had a fight.”

  The lawyer made much of the agents kissing the prostitutes, then returning home to kiss their wives with that same polluted mouth.

  Called to testify, Superintendent Byrnes explained that he had sent a pair of “fly” detectives from Central Headquarters to the 11th Precinct. Byrnes ordered the men not to inform Devery and to linger from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. on several nights at the alleged brothel sites; the detectives returned with a report that 81 Eldridge was closed. Byrnes said he had known Captain Devery for a decade and his reputation on the force was “good.”

  The cross-examination of Dr. Parkhurst marked the trial’s most dramatic moment. His “leonine” mane of now graying hair seemed to fascinate the press. He wore a black clerical frock coat buttoned up to his chin and kept on his gloves and overcoat while testfiying.

  After the district attorney walked him through the Society’s investigation and his many letters alerting the police to brothels, Colonel James asked during cross-examination: “Is the Parkhurst movement directed against the keepers of disorderly houses and gambling houses?”

  Dr. Parkhurst replied: “It’s primarily against the police department and the criminal collusion I believe to exist between it and the criminals.”

  Colonel James asked: “Do you include the District Attorneys’ office?”

  Dr. Parkhurst paused a moment. “Yes sir I do.”

  The spectators—en masse—emitted a sort of shocked simultaneous intake of breath. Then, after an awkward silence, Parkhurst looked directly at assistant district attorneys Bartow S. Weeks and John F. McIntyre sitting at the prosecution table and said with a weak smile: “Present company always excepted, sir.” Unsmiling, A.D.A. Weeks rose and filed an official “exception” to Parkhurst’s accusation.

  The prosecution wrapped up its case late on Friday, April 7. Colonel James surprised the court by musing aloud that he might not call any witnesses. Dozens of officers, and possibly as many as 150 witnesses, stood ready to testify that 81 Eldridge Street was closed as tight as a jeweler’s safe.

  On Monday morning, fourteen police officers in full blue-and-brass uniforms sat rigidly near the front; another dozen or so came in plainclothes to back Devery. (He was extremely popular: he called reformers “little tin soldiers” and wondered if some of them had “angel’s wings” under their coats; he advised beat cops who needed to go on a drinking bender to get a surgeon’s note and take a few days off.)

  Colonel James announced that he didn’t need to call witnesses; the prosecution had failed to prove its case. James, in his summation, dismissed Parkhurst as an “enthusiastic ecclesiastic” who surrounded himself with “a set of vagabond detectives.” He called the Society’s true motive against Devery transparent: “They wanted to put up their job to trap this man who had laid by the heels the pet detective of the Society.”

  The A.D.A. devoted some of his closing argument to defending his own office from Parkhurst’s accusations.

  The case went to jury. The first vote came in 10–2 for acquittal. Eight long hours later, the jurors returned. The foreman of the jury stood and announced, “Not guilty.” The New York Sun reported that the cheer by police officers could be heard blocks away; another newspaperman said he felt the “building tremble.” Such was Devery’s popularity; such was the unity of the men in blue. Devery reached into his breast pocket, extracted a cigar, and immediately lit up his victory stogie. Reporters noted his first good long drags created
a big red glowing ash.

  None of the policemen said it aloud for the press but the sentiment was clear: If New Yorkers and tourists wanted brothels, why should the police stand in the way? And why shouldn’t the police profit a bit for the favor? The New York Evening Post, then a reform paper under E. L. Godkin, observed that the police force viewed the court decision as granting “the right of captains to discriminate among disorderly houses, which to break up and which to permit.”

  This verdict seemed to validate Tammany Hall’s corrupt easygoing ways.

  Reverend Parkhurst, looking back years later, called the Devery acquittal the turning point in the battle for reform. “No event has transpired during the history of our work that has operated more directly and powerfully to define and compact popular sentiment than the acquittal of Captain Devery.” Parkhurst said intelligent citizens citywide saw transparently that Devery’s guilt was proven but that corrupt forces—police, judge, district attorney, Tammany—had freed him. “Devery was about as thoroughly developed a product of the Tammany system as we ran against in all our encounters,” assessed the reverend. “He was not lacking in a certain kind of genius but it all ran on depraved lines.”

  A New York State Senate committee was then halfheartedly probing the police force’s role in election abuses in New York City.

  Dr. Parkhurst—with the aid of some of the city’s wealthiest citizens—decided to try to transform the sleepy investigation, generously fund it and replace the political hacks asking the questions with pit-bull reform lawyers, such as John Goff, Frank Moss, and William Travers Jerome. The reverend hoped to expose the corrupt inner workings of the police department, and do so more vividly and broadly than any prior inquiry in the history of American cities.