Island of Vice

by Richard Zacks

  But so far, the police continued to stonewall. They answered Goff’s subpoenas but denied or explained away the accusations.

  In the meantime, Goff served up more horror stories.

  On October 2, 1894, Goff delivered—in one single day’s session—ninety police officers accused of brutality. The officers, a sea of blue coats, filled the gallery. The New York Times reporter observed that “some of the clubbers ‘looked the part’ but there were many mild-mannered appearing policemen among them.” Goff said it took months of planning to synchronize this cattle call of malefactors. He complained that the Police Board rarely meted out harsh punishment to policemen guilty of brutality; he said that the board had dismissed only four officers in the past three years for brutality, and three of those cases involved violence against fellow policemen.

  The Republican–Reform “Fusion” ticket defeated Tammany Hall, 154,000 to 109,000, in the mayor’s race. William L. Strong was elected. Lexow lightning rod John Goff was elected to the post of Recorder by a slightly wider margin, defeating Tammany’s Frederick Smyth, who had spent $3,500 of his own money on the campaign. Not since the Tweed scandal in 1872 had Tammany fared so miserably.

  “The city is redeemed,” proclaimed the New York World. “The wildest hopes of Republicans and Anti-Tammany men have been realized,” announced the Republican paper, the New York Tribune. “It proved to be a landslide, a tidal wave, a cyclone, a political revolution of the most gigantic and far-reaching proportions.”

  John Goff and the reformers were not done with Lexow. The commission mandate allowed it nine more weeks, near perfect timing since Goff would begin his term as the city’s highest-ranking judge in the New Year.

  In the meantime, Goff was determined to crack the blue wall of silence, which was fortified by what he called the “cohesion of public plunder.”

  He still needed to build cases strong enough that the police captains would prefer to admit to the crimes in the hearing room and gain immunity rather than risk criminal prosecution. In most years, the captains had little to fear from a Tammany district attorney but this year was different. On the evening of December 12, Goff caught a break, as a jury convicted the dismissed captain John Stephenson of accepting four baskets of peaches and $38 in exchange for allowing a Duane Street fruit merchant to obstruct the sidewalk. Stephenson now resided in Cell No. 3 at the Tombs and was awaiting a sentence that could be as harsh as a $5,000 fine and ten years in prison.

  Goff put Captain Timothy Creeden on the stand. Creeden, fifty-five, was a distinguished Civil War veteran, with classic Irish good looks, pale blue eyes, ruddy complexion, trimmed white mustache. Fellow officers deemed him a classy, fair commander; he had sworn off drinking and tobacco twenty-five years ago, soon after joining the force.

  GOFF: I am sorry, almost, that my duty compels me to ask you, Captain, knowing you to be an honorable man as a soldier and citizen, how much money did you pay to be made captain?

  CREEDEN: (after a long pause) I have not paid any money for my appointment.

  Goff expressed his disappointment in Creeden, then began calling witnesses who painted a picture of how a sergeant bought a promotion to captain circa 1887. Creeden’s friend Barney O’Rourke, a saloon keeper at 35 Forsythe, organized for him a collection of “loans” of $250 to $1,000 each from fellow saloon keepers and lodging-house men tallying $15,000; he had a middleman hand over the money to a hunchbacked, green-eyed petty politician named J. W. Reppenhegen, who would in turn hand money to another petty politician who could influence (or hand money to) Police Commissioner Voorhis, the anti-Tammany Democrat on the board. (Creeden, despite a captain’s salary of $2,750, would be expected to reimburse his backers with money from shakedowns and favors.)

  The following morning, Goff called Creeden back to the stand. The hearing room was so packed that onlookers camped on windowsills. Goff reiterated that none of Creeden’s testimony could be used against him in a court or a Police Board trial. Goff began slowly by asking Creeden why he had denied paying for his captaincy. Creeden, in a deep voice, with a bit of a brogue, answered that he wanted to protect the men who had helped him. Goff brought out that Creeden had scored 97.82 on his captain’s exam but was passed over repeatedly; Goff implied that Creeden was the victim of a shakedown.

  GOFF: And you are willing to take great risks even to your own danger in order to save your friends?

  CREEDEN: Well, that was it.

  GOFF: That is your nature, Captain?

  CREEDEN: Yes, sir.

  GOFF: And a distinguishing feature of your race?

  CREEDEN: With my family, particularly so.

  GOFF: For what reasons?

  CREEDEN: Being revolutionists.

  GOFF: Revolutionists in Ireland?

  CREEDEN: Yes, sir.

  GOFF: So that word “informer” carries with it a terrible significance there?

  CREEDEN: It does, sir.

  Goff had achieved a crack in the blue wall of silence with Creeden’s admissions; he would now try to sledgehammer a major breach. Captain Max Schmittberger stood under indictment for extorting a $500 bribe for dock privileges from an agent of a French steamship line. Schmittberger’s name was also mentioned in shakedown testimony by dozens of merchants, brothel keepers, and various criminals.

  If he testified to these corrupt acts, he could make himself immune from prosecution. He started testifying late in the morning of December 21, then the committee broke for lunch recess. The Tribune would call his confessions “the Crowning Exposures.” Word spread quickly. “Before the afternoon session was called to order, a battering ram could not have lodged another unshattered human being inside the room,” stated the New York Sun.

  Schmittberger—a tall, “handsome,” imposing, forty-two-year-old officer, with black hair and large black mustache, sometimes called the “Big Captain”—sat stolidly in the witness box; he wrung his hands occasionally but he spoke in a loud clear voice.

  He gave listeners a guided tour, precinct by precinct, through his two-decade career of vice and police corruption. His first assignment as a beat cop in 1874 was the Tenderloin. He recalled the disorderly dance palaces that flourished there: Haymarket, Tom Gould’s, Star and Garter, Newport, Buckingham, Empire, Cremorne, Fashion, Arion, Lawrence Hall, Shang Draper’s … places that stayed open all night with police permission. “These dives were resorts for the criminals of the whole country, who came there to meet women prostitutes.”

  GOFF: And who was the captain to whom the money for protection went directly?

  SCHMITTBERGER: Captain Williams.

  Schmittberger was implicating one of the highest-profile officers in the city, Inspector Alexander “Clubber” Williams.

  GOFF: Was it a matter of common understanding among the captains of the various precincts that they were to take advantage of any opportunity that presented itself to make money out of their respective precincts?

  SCHMITTBERGER: Certainly.

  He later called it “a custom of the department.”

  The big German officer explained that the plainclothes detectives, called wardmen, would receive about 20 percent and the inspectors ranking above captain would receive 40 percent, leaving about 40 percent for the captain.

  After sixteen years on the force, Schmittberger was promoted to captain. He said he didn’t pay a penny but used the influence of a leading German newspaper publisher.

  Schmittberger soon replaced a Captain Gunner in the 25th Precinct, and he asked him how much a month he should give to Inspector Williams. Gunner said he had been giving about $50 or $75. Schmittberger then went every month to central headquarters and slipped an unmarked envelope of cash to Williams. Goff asked why he needed to pay his superior officer. Schmittberger replied that the inspectors had the power to send central office detectives to raid gambling joints or Sunday saloons in any precinct and had to receive a cut not to do so.

  The big German captain soon moved to the more lucrative 27th Precinct, which, tha
nks to three “pool rooms” (offtrack betting parlors) paying $200 a month each, delivered $900 a month before wardman and inspector shares.

  At first Schmittberger didn’t suppress or charge the saloons for Sunday liquor sales because word had spread through the department that Tammany had struck a citywide deal. But Thomas Byrnes, after he was named superintendent in the wake of the initial Parkhurst crusade in 1892, had gathered the captains and told them to crack down. He told them to stop making “show” arrests for Sunday liquor selling that rarely led to convictions and merely bulked up arrest statistics to impress the naive general public and press. Byrnes demanded legitimate arrests. Schmittberger followed orders and had two of his most trusted men arrest twenty-six saloon owners on the first weekend.

  The arrested Bohemian bartenders cursed them in Czech and threatened the two officers and the captain. And soon after, one of the Tammany police commissioners, J. J. Martin, had all three transferred.

  In order that Schmittberger not miss the point, he found himself newly installed in the Leonard Street precinct, which had almost no saloons. He complained to Superintendent Byrnes and next wound up in the 22nd Precinct, West 47th Street, where he lasted from May to December 1893. He collected about $500 a month from houses of prostitution and from “policy shops,” mostly cigar stores that sold illegal lottery tickets. He in turn handed an envelope with about $150 a month to Inspector Thomas McAvoy, but he ran into a problem. “He did ask me one time if some of that came from disorderly houses … because he didn’t want any money of that kind.”

  Goff asked Schmittberger why McAvoy didn’t want it. “He is a very religious man.”

  Schmittberger could have collected more but he was told to lay off certain special brothels, though not for any reasons of faith. “I was given the tip, so to say, if I didn’t want to burn my fingers not to have anything to do with [Georgiana Hastings], and I didn’t. I never saw the woman, and I wouldn’t know her now if she stood before me.”

  Georgiana Hastings ran a high-class establishment that attracted top politicians and judges. Goff couldn’t resist informing the audience that the committee was having difficulty serving her with a subpoena, because last time a judge and another government official in the parlor had prevented the warrant from being executed. Goff announced that he knew the men’s names. “Unless an absolute emergency arises where it is absolutely necessary,” interjected chairman Lexow, “we should not smirch any private character.”

  Another protected house was Lillie Clifton’s. Captain Devery “told me to take care of her … on account of the services she rendered in the [Gardner] case.” Schmittberger complied even though Lillie was having her house on West 53rd Street run by a woman named Freeman.

  Captain Schmittberger also recounted how one day he had sent a detective to the house of Mrs. Sadie West at 234 West 51st Street. She screamed at the detective “that Commissioner Martin was a friend of hers.” When Schmittberger went to HQ to inquire, Tammany’s Martin was furious. “Send that man back there and make him apologize, say he made a mistake.” And he did.

  Schmittberger again felt the cross-pulls of the superintendent battling a commissioner. A man with ties to Tammany commissioner Sheehy wanted to open a gambling palace off 42nd Street but Superintendent Byrnes threatened to “break” Schmittberger if he allowed it. He refused to let the gambler open up.

  The commissioners transferred Schmittberger for the fifth time in three years. He was surprised to discover his destination: the Tenderloin. Then he was even more surprised to find that the Tenderloin yielded only about $200 a month. The Parkhurst crusade had inspired Byrnes to order captains to close down the brothels. “What is the world coming to: only $200 a month in the Tenderloin?” said Goff, sarcastically. “The golden days have passed.”

  Toward the close of the session, Goff asked why the captain had agreed to testify. Schmittberger replied: “I feel that the pillars of the church are falling and have fallen and I feel in justice to my wife and my children that I should do this.”

  When asked if he had any last comments, Schmittberger said that he thought Superintendent Byrnes was “an honest and fair man” who would do the right thing “if not hampered.”

  The New York Tribune summed it up: “Few well-posted citizens were really taken by surprise by Schmittberger’s testimony” but the newspaper said there was “keenest gratification” that Goff “had gone up higher and bagged such large and heretofore elusive game.”

  Goff was seeking even higher game. On the very last day of testimony, Goff called Superintendent Byrnes. The papers had heretofore treated him with kid gloves. “Byrnes Alone in Favorable Light” ran a typical subhead.

  Finally, the culmination: on December 29, around 5:30 p.m., Goff called out the name of Thomas Byrnes, and Byrnes, in a black cutaway coat, with gray pants, walked to the witness chair in the packed hearing room. Pinched for time, Goff racewalked Byrnes through the police promotions of his thirty-two-year career, then immediately asked about Byrnes’s real estate holdings.

  BYRNES: I own my residence at 58th Street.

  GOFF: And it is worth?

  BYRNES: $40,000.

  GOFF: Free and clear?

  BYRNES: Free and clear.

  So began a near-surgical investigation of Byrnes’s finances that revealed the policeman’s net worth at “fully” $350,000, making him one of the wealthiest New Yorkers despite serving as a public employee earning $5,000 or less annually most of his career.

  GOFF: Since you have been on the force, have you been in any other business?

  BYRNES: No I have not.

  The superintendent denied receiving a penny from vice payoffs or any police shakedowns but said that his position had brought him in contact with wealthy men, and “those gentlemen from time to time helped me to make money.”

  He explained that after he caught Colonel Howard Wells, the extortionist, in 1881 Jay Gould, the railroad financier, “wanted to make me a present of a large sum of money, which I declined … he was much astonished.” Goff asked him what kind of reward he eventually received.

  With the hearing room so crowded, with all those reporters present, Byrnes could not resist spending almost half an hour recounting how he had foiled Wells’s blackmail plot, how he had supplied coded stock tips to the blackmailer, how he had assigned detectives to watch all mailboxes from 20th Street to 44th Street, Fifth Avenue to the North River, how he…

  “This is all very interesting,” interrupted Goff, “but please get to the point of your first investments with Mr. Gould.”

  Byrnes said that he finally agreed to let Gould invest $10,000 of Byrnes’s own money for him. A decade later, when Gould died in 1892, the sum had ballooned to $185,000.

  He also admitted that Gould’s son, George, through shrewd trading had tacked on another $43,000 in the past two years.

  What precisely did Byrnes do to warrant such stock tips from the lofty? The newspapers translated his vague answers to mean that for some families he encouraged unsavory suitors to return to Europe and leave wealthy American heiresses alone, and for others he did his usual job of protecting lives and property but did it more discreetly, keeping their names out of print.

  On the Lexow stand, with the nation watching, Byrnes denied knowing that the captains were paying off the inspectors. The New York World commented: “If he did not know what was going on right under his nose, year in and year out, then he isn’t detective enough to detect Limburger cheese without eating it.”

  But by and large, Byrnes owned up that the force was riddled with corruption at the highest ranks but he laid the blame squarely on corrupt politicians manipulating a corrupt Police Board. He said when he had tried to crack down on Sunday saloons by sending in undercover cops to make arrests, the board had passed a rule that only officers in uniform could enter saloons. He said the Police Board undermined him at every turn, promoting bad officers and transferring good ones to “Goatland” in the Bronx; it meted out punishments with a
feather duster. Byrnes told the standing-room-only crowd that he advocated making promotions based on merit. Byrnes pointed out that he had taken the thick twenty-four-inch nightstick away from the men—except for riot duty—and replaced it with a slenderer fifteen-inch billy because he thought they were clubbing too many innocent people.

  He singled out Tammany Hall, charging that Boss Croker was able to shut down the city’s “pool rooms” last year during the Parkhurst crusade by simply giving an order to the police magistrates. “I have nothing but friendly feelings for Dr. Parkhurst and his Society although he has pounded me in every possible way,” averred Byrnes, larding it on a bit thick. “He has created a public spirit in the city without which the reforms could not have been effected.”

  He defended the rank-and-file cops. “There is not anything on earth they would not do, if their commanding officers set them a good example.”

  Then, as time was running out by around 8:30 p.m., Byrnes dramatically handed to Chairman Lexow a copy of a letter dated December 13 that he had sent to mayor-elect Strong. Goff read it aloud. “I desire not to be an obstacle or an embarrassment to you in anything that you may propose to do with the police department … I, therefore, now place in your hands my request to be retired from the post of superintendent, to be used by you or not at any time after the 1st of January, as you see fit.”

  The crowded room seemed stunned. Byrnes was New York’s most famous lawman. His comments immediately led the crowd to wonder whether Byrnes truly wanted his gracious face-saving offer accepted. He said that he and his detectives had put criminals away for almost 10,000 years of prison sentences—more than “Scotland Yard, Paris or New Jersey” combined—and stated that he was ready to offer “services, advice and information” to the new administration.

  Goff dismissed him and Byrnes, a tad stooped, stepped down and took a seat.