An 1899 guidebook describes this as “a dinner of society people at Delmonico’s.” The city’s wealthy often dined here on Sunday evening, the traditional night off for live-in servants. (photo credit 1.13)
Strutting on Easter Sunday in 1897 alongside the Croton Distributing Reservoir at 41st Street and Fifth Avenue, the current site of the New York Public Library. In New York, extreme wealth and extreme poverty were often separated by a handful of blocks. (photo credit 1.14)
Jacob Riis called this Hester Street neighborhood “Jewtown” and judged it part of the most crowded square mile in the world. The Friday “Pig Market” drew huge crowds where everything was for sale, except pork. By law, pushcart peddlers were not to remain in one place longer than ten minutes; they paid off cops to survive. (photo credit 1.15)
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), sworn in as police commissioner on May 6, 1895, soon decided to try to enforce every law on the books and every rule for police conduct. “New York has never been so shocked and surprised in all its two hundred and fifty years of existence,” commented one observer. (photo credit 1.16)
Theodore Roosevelt. (photo credit 1.17)
Theodore Roosevelt, seen here on January 12, 1895, a few months before moving to New York, with his large family: (left to right) Roosevelt, Archie, Ted, Alice, Kermit, wife Edith, and Ethel. (Portrait by C. M. Gilbert) (photo credit 1.18)
The New York City police commission, as photographed for Review of Reviews May 20, 1895. (left to right) Frederick D. Grant (plodding son of late president, Ulysses S., whom TR called a “muttonhead”), Andrew D. Parker (canny lawyer who would defy Roosevelt), Theodore Roosevelt (elected president of the Police Board), Avery D. Andrews (Roosevelt’s worshipful ally). (photo credit 1.19)
Thomas Byrnes (1842–1910), America’s most famous nineteenth-century detective, was police chief when Roosevelt arrived. TR despised him for accumulating several hundred thousand dollars by doing favors for the wealthy. (photo credit 1.20)
Police Inspector Alexander “Clubber” Williams (1839–1917) was notorious for keeping order via crushing blows of his nightstick, and for corruption. Testifying before a committee, he recommended creating a red-light district and claimed he let brothels stay open because they were “fashionable.” (photo credit 1.21)
Mayor William L. Strong (1827–1900), a wealthy Republican businessman drafted to run for office in 1894. Jacob Riis said the mayor suffered from the “intermittent delusion that he was a shrewd politician.” (photo credit 1.22)
Roosevelt quickly earned a reputation for his midnight rambles, hunting for lazy cops. Here, in the cartoonist’s imagination, a pair of tramps cheer on the commissioner. Muckraker Lincoln Steffens reported that policemen amused themselves by trying to land the perfect blow on both feet of a bench-sleeping vagrant so that the shock went right up the man’s spine and launched him up and running before he even awoke. (photo credit 1.23)
Newspapers began lampooning Roosevelt for enforcing long-ignored Sabbath laws and closing the saloons on Sundays, the workingman’s only day off. (photo credit 1.24)
A nineteenth-century New York tradition called for kids to “rush the growler,” that is, fetch a pail of fresh beer home from the saloon for the family. Roosevelt opposed allowing anyone under the legal drinking age (then sixteen, raised to eighteen on March 23, 1896) to purchase alcohol. (photo credit 1.25)
Tammany Hall politician Mike Callahan bragged about never closing up his saloon on Chatham Square. When a Roosevelt cop tried to arrest him in June 1896, Callahan punched him in the face. (Note the sign for Callahan’s “Progress Hotel” offering rooms at 25 cents a night; those temporary lodgers, otherwise known as voters, provided his political power.) (photo credit 1.26)
Brothers Theodore, then twenty-one, and Elliott, twenty, in September 1880, posing in Chicago before going on a hunting trip to celebrate Theodore’s upcoming wedding. They killed more than 400 birds and upset a rowboat in Iowa. (photo credit 1.27)
The place of last resort for a desperate homeless person in the 1890s was a “police lodging house,” i.e., a room in a precinct house basement. Women at this one on Eldridge Street in the heart of the Jewish ghetto slept on wooden planks on the floor. Making the bed meant flipping the plank, Jacob Riis wrote. Cops often fumigated the rooms by smoking cigars. Roosevelt closed the police basements midwinter 1896 to steer the homeless to more hygienic shelters that required work, such as chopping wood or shoveling snow. (photo credit 1.28)
Roosevelt’s longtime friend and mentor, fellow Harvard alumnus Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924) was then U.S. senator (Republican) from Massachusetts. TR wrote his most confessional letters to “Cabot,” sometimes wondering how he had alienated almost every newspaper and mainstream politician in the city. (photo credit 1.29)
Thomas Collier Platt (1833–1910), the most powerful Republican Party leader in New York State in the 1890s. Roosevelt privately compared him to Boss Tweed, for corrupting the political process and picking the “worst” men. (photo credit 1.30)
Police Chief Peter S. Conlin (1850–1905) leading the June 1, 1896, parade. Roosevelt had canceled the previous year’s parade out of disgust with the performance of the force. (photo credit 1.31)
Rogues’ Gallery. The New York police department, under Thomas Byrnes, pioneered a systematized collection of photos of criminals. The Roosevelt board added the Bertillon anthropometric measurement system. (photo credit 1.32)
Mug shots. “Pretty” Sophie Levy (alias Lyons) (second from left) was arrested as a blackmailer, while the woman on the far right, singled out as the “ugliest in the Rogues’ Gallery,” is identified as a “horse thief.” (photo credit 1.33)
Roosevelt never backed down from his love of amateur boxing. Police captains then often attended fights to make sure that laws against “prize fights” were enforced or to accept bribes to look the other way. (photo credit 1.34)
Roosevelt quarreled fiercely with “secretive” fellow commissioner Andrew Parker for more than a year. Roosevelt repeatedly called him a liar, and erudite Parker never seemed to care. The press delighted in egging them on. (photo credit 1.35)
Roosevelt lost his temper at a Tammany Hall politician during a meeting at City Hall and, in the heat of the moment, agreed to a duel. The joke going around was that the mayor William L. Strong (i.e., Willie) should either arm himself for protection or put Roosevelt out of his misery. (photo credit 1.36)
To the drunk in the back row, the performer in neck-to-toe tights appeared nude (and the snake real). Theaters in the 1890s often featured “living statues” of women re-creating famous art works or mythical scenes. Roosevelt encouraged his officers to close down two skits featuring women in body tights. (photo credit 1.37)
Did Little Egypt dance naked at Sherry’s for a drunken bachelor party in December 1896? Was Roosevelt there? A belly-dancing craze swept America after Little Egypt’s performance in the midway at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. (This collectible cigarette card was aimed to boost turnof-the-century sales.) (photo credit 1.38)
Risqué stereoview cards were clandestinely offered for sale in New York. A special stereoscopic viewer made the image appear three dimensional. These cards—more often travel views and comic scenes—remained immensely popular from the 1880s to the 1920s. (photo credit 1.39)
Co-owner Big Bill Devery throwing out the opening ball at a Yankees game at American League Park, April 14, 1910. (photo credit 1.40)
Big Bill Devery struggled to survive Roosevelt’s repeated attempts to have him convicted of crimes ranging from accepting brothel bribes to aiding Tammany voter fraud. Devery advised cops to know “nuthin’ ” if they ever got caught, a bit of advice that served him quite well. (photo credit 1.41)
President Roosevelt, seen here in August 1905, still treasured the companionship of his newspaper friend and biographer, Jacob “Jake” Riis. (photo credit 1.42)
1.1 Photo courtesy Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, NH
1.2 Brown B
rothers
1.3 The New Metropolis by E. Idell Zeisloft (1899), p. 518
1.4 Municipal Archives, City of New York, Court of General Sessions, box 118, folder 1249
1.5 Municipal Archives, City of New York. Court of General Sessions, box 119, folder 1257
1.6 (Jacob Riis, Richard Hoe Lawrence, Henry G. Piffard) Museum of City of New York [90.13.2.95]
1.7 (Jacob Riis, Richard Hoe Lawrence, Henry G. Piffard) Museum of City of New York [90.13.2.198]
1.8 Jacob Riis, Museum of City of New York [90.13.4.165]
1.9 C. M. Gilbert. Library of Congress [3c17936u]
1.10 Library of Congress, 1913 [13589-u]
1.11 Tammany Hall by M. R. Werner (Doubleday, 1928), p. 494; photo c. 1900
1.12 William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1873
1.13 The New Metropolis by E. Idell Zeisloft (1899), p. 325
1.14 Museum of City of New York, Byron Co., 1897 [93.1.1.18453]
1.15 Museum of City of New York, Byron Co., 1898 [93.1.1.18122]
1.16 Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library (560.22-001)
1.17 Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library (560.22-001)
1.18 T. C. Platt album. TRC/Harvard (Roosevelt R500.P69a)
1.19 Review of Reviews, June 1895, p. 625. TRC/Harvard (Roosevelt 335.R32, p. 625)
1.20 “Professional Criminals of America” by Thomas Byrnes (1886)
1.21 Public domain. New York Public Library Digital Gallery image of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, March 1887, p. 500
1.22 Museum of City of New York, Byron Co. [93.1.1.18373]
1.23 New York Recorder, June 15, 1895
1.24 New York Commercial Advertiser, July 13, 1895
1.25 The New Metropolis by E. Idell Zeisloft (1899), p. 140
1.26 “American Metropolis” by Frank Moss, Vol. II (1897), p. 378
1.27 H. Rocher. TRC/Harvard (520.12-018)
1.28 (Jacob Riis) Museum of City of New York [90.13.1.246]
1.29 Library of Congress, 1898
1.30 Library of Congress, 1901
1.31 Museum of City of New York, Byron Co. [93.1.1.7745]
1.32 (Jacob Riis, Richard Hoe Lawrence) Museum of City of New York [90.13.1.92]
1.33 Museum of City of New York [90.13.1.2]
1.34 Museum of City of New York, Byron Co., Kid McCoy fight, 1900 [93.1.1.2713]
1.35 New York Evening Telegram, Nov. 19, 1896
1.36 New York News, May 6, 1896
1.37 L. Reutlinger, Duvernoy Casino, Paris, c. 1890
1.38 Library of Congress, c. 1900
1.39 E. Agelou, c. 1900
1.40 Bain News Service. Library of Congress
1.41 Courtesy of Bill Cleary, great-grandnephew of Big Bill Devery
1.42 TRC/Harvard (560.52 1905-129)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Zacks is the author of several nonfiction books, including The Pirate Hunter, An Underground Education, and History Laid Bare. His writing has apeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Time, Harper’s, and Sports Illustrated, among many other publications. He writes in an office in New York City overlooking Union Square.
ALSO BY RICHARD ZACKS
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The Pirate Coast
The Pirate Hunter
An Underground Education
History Laid Bare
Island of Vice Page 56
