A CHAPTER OF DISCLOSURES
1853-1854
Now came an appalling series of disclosures regarding public officials.
Acting on the affidavit of James E. Coulter, a lobbyist, charging that
there was a private organization[1] in the Board of Aldermen formed to
receive and distribute bribes, the Grand Jury, after investigation,
handed down a presentment, on February 26, 1853, together with a vast
mass of testimony.
“It was clearly shown,” stated the presentment, “that enormous sums of
money have been expended for and towards the procurement of railroad
grants in the city, and that towards the decision and procurement of
the Eighth Avenue Railroad grant a sum so large that would startle
the most credulous was expended; but in consequence of the voluntary
absence of important witnesses, the Grand Jury was left without direct
testimony of the particular recipients of the different amounts.”[2]
Solomon Kipp, one of the grantees of the Eighth and Ninth Avenue
Railroad franchises, admitted frequently to a member of the Grand Jury
that he had expended, in 1851, upwards of $50,000 in getting them. Five
grantees of the Third Avenue Railroad franchise swore that upwards of
$30,000 was paid for it in 1852 in bribes to both boards.[3] Of this
sum Alderman Tweed received $3,000. Chief among those who bribed the
Aldermen were Elijah F. Purdy (one of the line of Grand Sachems) and
Myndert Van Schaick, who only a few years before had been the Tammany
candidate for Mayor. A franchise for a surface railroad on Broadway,
with scarcely any provision for compensation and with permission to
charge a five-cent fare, was given to Jacob Sharp, over five profitable
bids from responsible persons. One applicant, Thomas E. Davies, had
offered to give the city one cent for every fare charged. In another
application, Davies, D. H. Haight and others had offered $100,000
a year and the payment of a license fee of $1,000 on each car (the
prevailing fee being $20) for a ten-years’ grant, on the agreement
to charge a five-cent fare. There were two other offers equally
favorable.[4] When Mayor Kingsland had vetoed the bill[5] the Aldermen
had repassed it, notwithstanding an injunction forbidding them to do
so.[6]
Dr. William Cockroft had to pay, among other sums, $500 to Assistant
Alderman Wesley Smith to get favorable action on his application for a
lease of the Catherine Street Ferry. After the passage of the grant,
Smith demanded $3,000 more, which Cockroft refused to pay.[7] Burtis
Skidmore, a coal dealer, testified that in the Fall of 1851 James B.
Taylor informed him that he had been an applicant for a ferry across
the East River to Greenpoint, and that “he bribed members of the
Common Council for the purpose of obtaining said grant, and that other
applicants for the same ferry gave a larger bribe than he did, and
obtained the grant, and that all members of the Common Council whom
he had bribed returned to him the money he had paid them, with the
exception of Alderman Wood, who kept the money from both parties.”[8]
John Morrell swore that one of the applicants for the lease of the
ferry to Williamsburg applied to some of the Aldermen and was told that
it would cost about $5,000 “to get the grant through.” But a Mr. Hicks,
another applicant, was so eager to “get it through” that he gave more
than $20,000.[9]
The lease of the Wall Street Ferry was similarly disposed of. Silas C.
Herring testified that he with others was told he could secure it by
paying a certain Alderman $5,000. Herring declined. James B. Taylor
was another applicant, in 1852. He was informed that it would cost him
$15,000. He offered $10,000, but on the same night “Jake” Sharp offered
$20,000 and got the grant. Taylor also testified that he additionally
applied for the Grand Street Ferry lease. Other parties, however, paid
more bribe money and obtained it, whereat one Alderman said that “it
was the damnedest fight that was ever had in the Common Council; it
cost them [Taylor’s rivals] from $20,000 to $25,000.”[10]
The Aldermen extorted money in every possible way. In defiance of
the Mayor’s veto they gave a $600,000 contract for the “Russ” street
pavement, afterward found to be worthless, and which had to be replaced
at additional cost. Russ had offered one Assistant Alderman $1,000
to help carry his election the next Fall if he voted favorably.[11]
Exorbitant prices were paid for land on Ward’s Island, several Aldermen
and officials receiving for their influence and votes bribes of
$10,000, and others even larger sums.[12] The Common Council sold to
Reuben Lovejoy the Gansevoort Market property for $160,000 in the face
of other bids of $225,000 and $300,000. Lovejoy, who, it was disclosed,
was merely a dummy for James B. Taylor and others, testified “that it
would cost from $40,000 to $75,000 to get this operation--the purchase
of the Gansevoort property--through the city government.”[13]
A coal merchant had to pay money for a favorable vote on his
application for a lease of the Jefferson Market property, and another
merchant testified to having paid one Assistant Alderman about $1,700
to get a pier lease.[14] The Aldermen demanded and received bribes not
only for passing measures but for suppressing them, and even invented
many “strikes,” as instanced by the case of Alderman Smith, who agreed
for $250 to silence a resolution to reduce the Coroners’ fees.[15]
They demanded a share of every contract made by any city official,
threatening, if it were not given, to stop his supplies and have his
accounts investigated.[16] If a contractor or lessee refused to meet
a “request,” the Aldermen retaliated by imposing burdens upon him and
reporting hostile resolutions.[17]
Applicants for the police force paid the Police Captains $40, and more
to the Aldermen who appointed them. One man was reappointed Police
Captain by Alderman Thomas J. Barr for $200, and another, assistant
Captain for $100.[18]
Every city department was corrupt. It was found that one hundred and
sixty-three conveyances were deeded to the Chief of Police, George W.
Matsell, and his partner, Capt. Norris, in about a year.[19] Matsell
was mentioned also as receiving money from about one hundred men who
patronized the odious Madame Restell’s establishment in Greenwich
street.[20] Both the police and Aldermen collected money from saloons,
though the Aldermen obtained the larger share, as they had the power of
granting licenses.
Within three or four years William B. Reynolds received over $200,000
from the city, under a five-years’ contract for removing dead animals,
offal and bones, though at the time the contract was made other persons
had offered to remove them free of expense, and one had even offered
to pay the city $50,000 a year for the exclusive privilege.[21] It was
owing to Controller Flagg’s action that a contract to index certain
city records at a cost of between $200,000 and $300,000, despite the
offer of a well-known publisher to do it for $59,000, was canceled.[22]
Flimsy tenement houses, causing later much fatality and disaster,
were built in haste, there being no supervisory authority over their
erection.[23] The lighting of the city was insufficient, thousands of
oil lamps still being used, and these, according to an old custom, not
being lighted on moonlit nights.[24]
Both Tammany and Whig Aldermen and officials were implicated in these
disclosures. Such was the system of city government that, though
twenty-nine Aldermen were at one time under judgment of contempt of
court, and a part of the same number under indictment for bribery, yet
under the law they continued acting as Judges in the criminal courts.
According to Judge Vanderpoel, bribery was considered a joke.
A new reform movement sprang up, which quickly developed into the
City Reform party. The reformers proposed, as a first step, to amend
the charter. The granting of leases for more than ten years was to be
prohibited, and the highest bidder was to get them. A two-thirds vote
was to be required to pass a bill over the Mayor’s veto. Work to be
done and supplies furnished costing more than $250 were to be arranged
for on contract to the lowest bidder. Any person guilty of bribery,
directly or indirectly, was to be sentenced, upon conviction, to not
above ten years in prison and fined not over $5,000, or both. The right
to sit as Judges of the criminal courts was to be taken away from the
Aldermen, as was also the power of appointing policemen. The Board of
Assistant Aldermen was to be abolished, and a Board of Councilmen,
consisting of sixty members, was to be instituted in its place, the
collective title of the two boards to be “the Common Council.” The
Aldermen were to be elected for two years (as determined in the charter
of 1849) and the Councilmen for one year. An efficient auditing of
accounts and claims against the city was called for, and only the more
popular branch of the Common Council was to originate appropriations of
money.
Tammany had grown suddenly virtuous again, and responding to the
public clamor over the disclosures, had declared its devotion to pure
government. At a “reform” meeting of the Young Men’s Union Club, John
Cochrane, one of Wood’s lieutenants, who later announced that he would
vote “for the devil incarnate if nominated by Tammany Hall,” declared:
“Reform is at home in Tammany Hall. Its birthplace is Tammany Hall.”
The purification movement advanced so unmistakably that Tammany
approved the amendments, and the legislative bill embodying some of
them was supported by the Tammany delegation in the Senate and Assembly.
The bill passed, and upon being submitted to the people of the city,
in June, 1853, was adopted by the significant vote of 36,000 to 3,000.
One of the benefits due to the City Reform party was the reorganization
(1853) of the police under a separate department. The police were
compelled to wear a uniform against which there had been bitter
prejudice,[25] and the term of appointment was made dependent upon good
behavior.
Fortunately for the City Reform party, the division between the
“Hardshells” and “Softshells” extending throughout the State caused
the nomination of separate Democratic tickets in the Fall of 1853.
There seemed less than ever any vital difference between the professed
principles of the two. Under the name of “National Democrats” the
“Hardshells” met in City Hall Park on September 26, and resolved:
“We regret that the Democracy of the city are prevented from
holding this meeting in their accustomed hall.… The Democracy
of the city waged in time past a successful war against a
corporation which sought to control by money the political
destinies of the country. We now from this time forward
commence a campaign against another corporation known as the
Tammany Society--a secret, self-elected and irresponsible body
of men who have dared to usurp the right of determining who
shall and who shall not meet in Tammany Hall.… The accidental
ownership of a small equity of redemption of a small part of
the ground upon which Tammany Hall stands may continue to
enable the Sachems to prevent the Democracy from meeting within
the hall, but we can meet in the park or in the open air or
elsewhere.”
The City Reform party nominated acceptable Whigs and Democrats pledged
to reform, and obtained a decisive majority in the next Common Council.
FOOTNOTES
[1] William H. Cornell, a sometime Sachem, was, according to the
affidavit of Coulter, the head of this organization.
[2] _Documents of the Board of Aldermen_, Vol. XXI, part 2, No. 55.
[3] _Documents of the Board of Aldermen_, Vol. XXI, part 2, No. 55, pp.
1333-35, and p. 1573. See also _The History of Public Franchises in New
York City_ by Gustavus Myers in which full details are given of the
briberies attending the grants of the Eighth, Ninth and Third Avenue
Railroad franchises, and other franchises.
[4] _Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen_, Vol. XLVIII, pp. 530-37.
[5] _Ibid._, p. 532.
[6] For violating this injunction one Alderman--Oscar W. Sturtevant (a
Whig)--was sentenced to a nominal fifteen days in prison and to pay a
fine of $350, and the other offending Aldermen were merely fined. The
courts afterward annulled the Sharp franchise.
[7] _Document No. 55_, p. 1219.
[8] _Ibid._ p. 1310.
[9] _Ibid._ p. 1403.
[10] _Ibid._ pp. 1426-28.
[11] _Document No. 55_, pp. 1575-76.
[12] _Ibid._, p. 1282.
[13] _Ibid._ p. 1445. In 1862 the Council resolved to buy back this
same property for $533,437.50 and repassed the resolution over Mayor
Opdyke’s veto on January 3, 1863, thus, as the Mayor pointed out,
entailing a new loss to the city of over $499,000, though the property
had not increased in value. _Proceedings of the Board of Councilmen_,
Vol. LXXXVIII, pp. 723-25.
[14] _Document No. 55_, p. 1572.
[15] _Document No. 55_, p. 1219.
[16] _Ibid._, pp. 1395-96.
[17] _Ibid._, pp. 1397-98.
[18] _Documents of the Board of Aldermen_, Vol. XXII, No. 20, pp. 52-54.
[19] _Ibid._, No. 43, p. 79.
[20] _Ibid._
[21] _Documents of the Board of Aldermen_, Vol. XX, No. 32, and Vol.
XXII, No. 41.
[22] _Ibid._, Vol. XXX, part 1, No. 16.
[23] _Ibid._, Vol. XX, No. 5.
[24] _Ibid._, No. 6.
[25] The general extent of this prejudice may be judged from the
fact that at this time a number of suits were pending in the courts,
seeking to restrain the city from enforcing an earlier order compelling
uniforms to be worn.