Island of Vice

by Richard Zacks

  Mr. and Mrs. Bradley Martin, at a time when thousands of men had recently lined up to earn fifteen cents an hour shoveling snow during a blizzard, planned to spend $100,000 on a gala historical costume ball at the Waldorf. The champagne would be 1884 Moet & Chandon Brut Imperial; courses would include Lobster Newburg, Baltimore terrapin, and canvasback duck.

  “New York is credited by outsiders with being ostentatious, luxurious and unpatriotic,” observed William S. Rainsford of St. George’s Protestant Episcopal Church at Stuyvesant Square. “I think such charges are untrue…[but] the offering of any excuse to bring them should be avoided, especially now when there is so much suffering and so great a tendency to distinguish between the masses and the classes.”

  Editorial writers pointed out that the money spent on a single costume, even stripped of jewelry, could feed a New York family for years. Unlike the Astors, Theodore and Edith turned down the invitation, although his sister Corinne and her husband, Douglas, accepted.

  Rumors floated of anarchists’ bombs, of angry riots. Around 11 p.m. on Wednesday, February 10, carriages began rolling to the manager’s entrance of the Waldorf on 33rd Street west of Fifth Avenue. As crowds gathered to gawk, the police decided to close 33rd Street from Fifth Avenue to Broadway.

  Though at least 1,200 invitations were sent, the controversy whittled the attendees down to 700, with far more females than males. A profusion of Marie Antoinettes mingled with the rare Sir Francis Drake. Men in powdered wigs and silk ruffles wore high heels with diamonds in the buckle.

  Mrs. Bradley Martin, as Mary, Queen of Scots, accompanied by John Jacob Astor, led the opening quadrille of honor at midnight, to a minuet; a Hungarian orchestra played hidden behind streaming vines of roses; the three quadrilles, of elaborate formality, preceded the two-hour dinner. The cotillion started at 3 a.m. and general dancing at 4 a.m.

  Town Topics awarded its unofficial first costume prize to James H. Beekman for his Henry VIII and to Miss Kate Brice for her Spanish infanta after a painting by Velázquez. But Town Topics couldn’t be all smiles. It slapped Otto Cushing of Boston for indecent exposure. Mr. Cushing was dressed as a sixteenth-century Italian falconer, wearing tights, a short leather vest, and a small cap. A stuffed falcon was perched on his shoulder. Despite the eye-catching bird, observers couldn’t help noticing that his dance steps set certain southerly parts in motion. “The costume, what there was of it, was a faithful copy of an old picture but it was a little too historically correct for these modern and more Puritanical days,” harrumphed the magazine.

  Reaction to the ball ran the gamut. “The working people do not read the accounts of great fetes like this with bitterness in their hearts,” wrote Munsey’s Magazine. “The Country is still young enough for any American to believe that he or his son has the possibility to achieve anything.”

  But on the negative side, the police were almost universally criticized for closing a public street to protect a private party. A burly sergeant stopped an acquaintance of Roosevelt from walking west on 33rd Street. “Dear Roosevelt,” he wrote in an open letter published in the World, “you have bitten off bear’s heads and slung Indians forty feet by the scalp lock. What would you do if a man stopped you and forbade your passing through a public street in an orderly manner?” The fellow reckoned that Roosevelt “would make a fuss beautiful to behold.”

  TR found the issue irritating. “The complaint is such nonsense that it hardly deserves an answer,” he told reporters, and added, not entirely convincingly: “Precisely the same course is followed when there is a clambake or a picnic on the East side, a fire or any gathering of any kind.” This led pundits to envision the police protecting a ball in Hogan’s Alley.

  Roosevelt later delivered a bit more candid opinion of the whole event to his sister. He and Edith attended a dinner party at the Bronsons’ that included the Bradley Martins. (Mr. Martin himself escorted Edith into the dining room.) “We were immensely amused by the intense seriousness with which they regard themselves and their ball.”

  Citing an excessive caseload, Commissioner Andrews rescheduled Devery’s trial for the middle of March. This would also give prosecutor Moss more time to prepare.

  The reform board, with the legislature back in session and possibly sharpening an ax, rushed to institute more innovations. Commissioner Andrews—fresh from his bicycle squad’s success—wanted to follow the lead of Europe and adopt the Bertillon system of identification. In the 1880s, Alphonse Bertillon, working in the Paris Prefecture of Police, had pioneered an exhaustively thorough system of anthropometric measurements, as many as 243 per criminal, although as few as two dozen would suffice.

  For instance, the technician used special calipers to do several skull measurements as well as gauging the length of each ear. Arm spread was recorded and trunk height while sitting; eye color was minutely described. The recording process could take forty-five minutes for each criminal, especially with uncooperative ones. (An experiment at Sing Sing prison, taking the Bertillon statistics of 1,500 prisoners, had found no two exactly alike.) The system, though time-consuming, was considered foolproof.

  The board authorized Andrews to build a Bertillon measurement room and combine it with the police force’s first in-house photo studio. Currently, detectives marched handcuffed prisoners two blocks through the streets to the public Norman Coe photo studio at Broadway and Bleecker. There, hardened criminals waited their turn among women and frightened children. Several copies were made; one was placed in the Rogues’ Gallery, along with an accompanying card detailing height, weight, hair color, eye color, scars, tattoos.

  Andrews ordered the equipment and oversaw the construction, and on Monday, February 15—after all the requisite gee-whiz articles on Bertillon in newspapers—Commissioner Andrews ordered Chief Conlin to begin sending criminals to the top-floor studio and measurement room.

  Chief Conlin refused.

  Andrews was furious. “The chief has not felt inclined to regard my instructions,” he told reporters, “and as a result, the outside expenditures for photographing criminals, which amount to $15 or $20 a day, continue to go on, and the gallery with three or four men detailed there, is idle.” He added ominously: “If Chief Conlin continues to disobey orders, something may drop on him.”

  Conlin said he took orders from the entire board and not from one individual police commissioner. His refusal wasn’t cavalier. Andrews had staffed the studio with four men reporting to him, including a police surgeon who was very friendly to TR and Andrews. The head of the detectives, Stephen O’Brien, found it intolerable to have to bring criminals to get their photos taken by a unit controlled by two commissioners; he also regarded Bertillon as a big waste of time. (Veteran cops of that era, such as Thomas Byrnes and Detective Sergeant O’Brien, believed that the current system worked fine and that repeat criminals rarely fooled them with dyed beards or massive weight gain.) O’Brien had written two notes to Parker, who in turn had advised Conlin, who found himself yet again in the middle. “Roosevelt and I instantly recognized Parker’s fine Italian hand,” Andrews later surmised.

  The story—with all its innuendo and backbiting—raced through the department on Tuesday, February 16. Sometime that day, the normally mild-mannered Chief Conlin snapped. He was already accused of being Parker’s puppet, which he hotly denied.

  “I dislike to be made use of as a missile to be thrown from one Commissioner to the other, or to interfere in any shape with their petty quarrels,” he told a reporter for an evening newspaper. “I am expected to look after the rank and file and to protect life and property. The constant bickerings between men who know better, not only demoralize the force but interfere with me in the discharge of my duty.”

  At the regular Wednesday board meeting, Parker blandly asked Andrews for a report on the status of introducing Bertillon. Andrews refused. TR asked Andrews whether the board had not already voted to adopt the system. Andrews replied, “A year ago.” Parker pointed out that the resolution au
thorized Andrews only to purchase equipment.

  PARKER: We ought to know what has been done.

  ANDREWS: I will not get into a discussion.

  PARKER: No discussion is necessary.

  ANDREWS: I would not get into a discussion with you, anyhow.

  PARKER: Then you may continue in a state of semi-barbarism.

  The board president reluctantly agreed to allow Parker a brief time to review the new Bertillon system before the board voted on whether to adopt it.

  That night, Roosevelt—in limbo over his own job prospects—stewed over Chief Conlin’s harsh comments and over his insulting refusal to follow Andrews’s request. The next day, Thursday, which happened to be Roosevelt’s turn as trial judge, he arrived early from his sister’s house at 62nd Street. He reached Mulberry Street and barked out a command to a messenger to request Chief Conlin to come immediately to his office.

  Conlin took the elevator up. Roosevelt asked Conlin point blank if he had indeed made those remarks about “petty quarrels” and “constant bickerings” among board members.

  “I have no explanation whatever to make,” Conlin brusquely replied.

  “What!” exclaimed TR, “I insist, sir, that you make an explanation.”

  Conlin refused. “That is something that I must respectfully decline to do,” he said, adding if the board passed a resolution requiring a statement from him, he would deliver one but that he could not be called upon to make statements to individual board members.

  Agog, TR threatened to bring up Conlin’s insubordination at the next board meeting. The chief departed.

  Later that same day, Roosevelt was sitting behind the judge’s desk hearing testimony about a policeman caught napping, when a mailman arrived with a letter for the commissioner. As the federal employee in his gray uniform approached to deliver the envelope, the complaint clerk shouted: “Take off your hat.” The man ignored him and kept walking. Roosevelt echoed the command in an even sharper tone. “Take off your hat!” The man snapped off a fine salute. “Excuse me, we never remove our hats while on duty,” he said calmly. “They are part of our uniform.”

  The letter carrier handed the envelope to the commissioner and then slid a memorandum book onto the desk for a signature. “Humph, I thought you were a witness,” muttered TR, while signing. The man exited, head held high.

  TR immediately called for his secretary, Minnie Kelly, and angrily dictated a letter, in front of all the accused policemen and reporters, to local postmaster Charles W. Dayton, inquiring whether hats were required to be worn at all times. He mentioned possibly writing to the United States postmaster general. After he finished dictating, he ordered the roundsman manning the door not to allow any more postal carriers to enter until this controversy was straightened out.

  Newspapers raced to lampoon Roosevelt for his lordly ways. One cartoon revealed that the proper way for a letter carrier to approach “King Roosevelt” was to prostrate himself full length on the floor and look downward, while meekly reaching up to hand over the letter. Other panels showed policemen kneeling to him and citizens bowing deeply.

  The Washington Post picked up the item and enthused: “A fight between Teddy and the United States would be quite exciting.”

  However, before any battleships could be launched local postmaster Dayton announced that, quite the contrary, letter carriers were expected to be polite, which included doffing their caps indoors. Badge No. 1626 was identified as a “substitute carrier” named M. F. Donovan, who became a folk hero in certain unreformable wings of the police department.

  Chief Conlin, too, refused to prostrate himself. On Monday, February 22, the Bertillon room stood ready, painted white, packed with calipers, scales, cameras, equipped with wall-mounted sliding oak devices to measure arm span and trunk height. It was staffed with four men but not a single police officer brought in a single criminal to be measured. The marooned men practiced on each other.

  Roosevelt and Andrews deeply resented the waste and the slight by the police chief, and they weighed their options. They quickly and surreptitiously consulted the city’s corporation counsel, Francis Scott, and drew up three specific counts: insubordination, disrespect toward his superior officer, and conduct unbecoming an officer. The board’s feud would now undermine the one high-ranking officer functioning fairly smoothly during all their caviling, quibbling, and head-butting.

  All four commissioners attended the board meeting the next day. Commissioner Andrews slowly, with a certain gravitas, read the three pages of charges against Chief Conlin. TR and Andrews called Conlin’s conduct “highly insubordinate,” “subversive of discipline,” and “totally destructive of … respect for authority.” The typewritten charges described how Conlin “publicly” accused the board of “interfering with him in the due performance of his duties” and that Chief Conlin offered “no denial, explanation or apology” despite an “opportunity specifically given…[to him] by the President of the board.”

  The charges warned that if this conduct was condoned or overlooked, it could act as an “example for the 5,000 members of this Department” who “with equal impunity” might follow it. Conlin’s behavior “deserves severe censure and increases in gravity with the age, rank and experience of the officer concerned.”

  As soon as Andrews finished, Commissioner Grant moved that the resolution be tabled to “lie over.” Board president Roosevelt explained that the mayor’s office had approved the charges, and he asked whether Grant meant he wanted to hold them “until the next meeting” for discussion. Grant replied, “No, I want to kill it.”

  Some newspapermen thought they perceived Parker smiling behind his fingers, as he abruptly called for a vote on the motion. The tally came down: two in favor of tabling the charges (Parker and Grant); two opposed (Roosevelt and Andrews). The clerk explained that though the charges were not approved or tabled, they could still be advanced again. Roosevelt said he reserved that right, possibly at the next meeting.

  Had Grant, with his swing vote, chosen to approve the charges, Roosevelt might have had the leverage to negotiate Conlin’s retirement. Conspiracy theorists at the newspapers thought perhaps job hunter TR wanted to oust the Democratic police chief and replace him with a Republican to curry favor with the local Republican party and Boss Platt.

  But now, ironically, Conlin absolutely could not retire and still get his ample half-salary pension until these charges were resolved, one way or another. Conlin, ill frequently last year, had mentioned retirement to friends. If this was Parker’s “fine Italian hand” again, the movement was well played.

  Later that afternoon, Chief Conlin, who by law controlled transfers, not promotions, transferred the four officers in the Bertillon/photo studio into the detective bureau. Their new boss, Chief of Detectives O’Brien, ordered them to carry on their work.

  The following morning, Thursday, February 25, a detective finally brought a crook to the new Bertillon studio on the top floor. James “Red” Sullivan, a thirty-seven-year-old ex-convict charged with robbing a drunken man of twenty-five dollars on Park Row, was the first criminal to be measured on Bertillon standards and first man photographed by the “Police Photographic Bureau.” The officers took half an hour to fill in thirty-nine blanks in centimeters, from his arm span—1 meter, 65 centimeters—to his 14.2-centimeter head width, to his 6.9-centimeter right ear length. Under “eyes,” the card stated: “areola, radiating, orange, tone dark, periphery, azure blue, tone medium.” After all the minutiae was recorded, the examiner listed identifying marks, which included a tattoo—“J.S.”—on the right forearm, all of which makes one suspect that Chief of Detectives O’Brien was smirking about the challenges of ever re-identifying ginger-haired James Sullivan.

  “Red” Sullivan was already No. 3592 in the old Rogues’ Gallery, but now he was B1 in the new Bertillon system. Officers wrestled three more rogues upstairs: John McGrane, wagon thief David “Hymie” Rosenberg, and Jimmy Jordan. In about two hours, all four had Bert
illon cards. Commissioner Grant hailed the new system, saying the “custody of criminal records” would remain intact within the detective bureau, and not under the control of a single commissioner. (The cumbersome measurement system remained in use for more than a decade, until gradually replaced by fingerprinting.)

  On Friday, March 5, Commissioner Andrews scheduled Big Bill Devery’s hearing for the following week. That same night, with the blessing of embattled police chief Conlin, Captain Chapman organized what was the biggest vice raid to date in New York City history. It would also rank among the most knuckleheaded and ham-handed. Chapman was that rarity among veteran police captains, a genuine prude, and New Yorkers marveled to see him running the Tenderloin.

  Just after midnight, about 200 men and women were dancing to the strains of a lively waltz at the Newmarket club on 30th Street and Sixth Avenue. A certain timeworn decorum prevailed. No high kicking allowed; no cheek-to-cheek dancing. No robbery; no profanity. The club occupied the site of the Old Haymarket, one of the city’s best-known places for out-of-towners to come buy some cocktails, dance a few dances, and meet mercenary women of easy virtue. The dames asked the gents the eternal questions about wanting to have a good time, and the men departed with them. A reporter once tallied that among thirty-eight unescorted women who entered after 1 a.m. one night, twenty-nine left with a man within the hour. Drinks were bought but money rarely traveled from male to female hands inside the club. Thanks to securing a Raines Law hotel license, the joint didn’t stop serving until the bartenders collapsed around dawn.

  Captain Chapman had ordered his detectives to gather evidence about prostitution at the club, but a recent grand jury had refused to indict anyone. Chapman was undeterred. He approached reform magistrate Robert C. Cornell of Jefferson Market Courthouse, who decided to grant a warrant to pick up the owner on suspicion of running a disorderly house and also anyone there engaging in disorderly activities.