It may not be generally known in other parts of the country, but it is
very well understood in the city, that New York is the headquarters of a
powerful Ring of corrupt and unscrupulous lawyers, whose business is to
violate the law of the land, and procure by fraud divorces which will not
be granted by any court after a fair and full hearing of the case. It
may be asserted at the outset, that those who are fairly and justly
entitled to such a separation, never seek it through the Divorce Ring.
In any issue of certain city newspapers, you will see such advertisements
as the following:
ABSOLUTE DIVORCES LEGALLY OBTAINED, in New York, and States, where
desertion, drunkenness, etc., etc., are sufficient cause. No
publicity; no charge until divorce obtained; advice free. M--- B---,
attorney, 56 --- street.
The all-sufficient cause with these lawyers is the desire for a
separation on the part of the husband or wife, and they never trouble
themselves with questions of law or morality. The law of New York allows
a divorce with the right to marry again, upon one ground only--that of
adultery.
"The lawyers of the Divorce Ring are the pariahs of their profession--men
who have been debarred in other States (sometimes in other countries) for
detected malpractice; men who began life fairly, but sank into ignominy
through dissipation, political failure, or natural vicious tendencies;
men, even, who never opened a law-book before entering upon their present
avocation, but gleaned a practical knowledge of the legal alternative of
'wedded woe' by a course of training in the private detective's trade.
These latter worthies often hire the use of practising lawyers' names.
Occasionally they hire the said lawyers themselves to go through the
mummeries of the courts for them; and we could name one of our most
eloquent and respectable criminal pleaders who, on a certain occasion at
least, permitted himself to be nominally associated with one of the
boldest operators of the Ring.
"The dens of the divorcers are situated chiefly on the thoroughfares most
affected by lawyers of the highest caste, though even Broadway is not
wholly exempt from them; and Wall street, Pine street, and especially
Nassau street, contain a goodly number each. Without any ostentatious
display of signs or identifications, they are generally furnished in the
common law-office style, with substantial desks and chairs, shelves of
law-books, and usually a shady private apartment for consultations.
Sometimes the name upon the 'directory' of the building and name over the
'office' itself will be spelled differently, though conveying the same
sound; as though the proprietor thereof might have occasional use for a
confusion of personalities. Along the stairs and hallways leading to
these dens, at almost any hour of the day, from 10 A.M. to 3 P.M., may be
met women in flashy finery and men with hats drawn down over their
eyes--all manifestly gravitating, with more or less shamefacedness,
towards the places in question. They may be dissolute actresses, seeking
a spurious appearance of law to end an old alliance and prepare for a new
one. They may be the frivolous, extravagant, reckless wives of poor
clerks or hard-working mechanics, infatuatedly following out the first
consequences of a matinee at the theatre and a 'Personal' in the
_Herald_. They may be the worthless husbands of unsuspecting, faithful
wives, who, by sickness, or some other unwitting provocation, have turned
the unstable husbandly mind to thoughts of connubial pastures new and the
advertising divorcers. They may be the 'lovers' of married women, who
come to engage fabricated testimony and surreptitious unmarriage for the
frail creatures whose virtue is still too cowardly to dare the more
honest sin. They are not the wronged partners of marriage, who, by the
mysterious chastising providence of outraged hearths and homes, are
compelled, in bitterest agony of soul, to invoke justice of the law for
the honor based upon right and religion.
"The manufacture of 'a case' by the contrabandists of divorce is often
such a marvel of unscrupulous audacity, that its very lawlessness
constitutes in itself a kind of legal security. So wholly does it ignore
all the conventionalities of mere legal evasion, as to virtually lapse
into a barbarism, knowing neither law nor civilization. A young woman in
flaunting jockey hat, extravagant 'chignon,' and gaudy dress, flirts into
the den, and turns a bold, half-defiant face upon the rakish masculine
figure at the principal desk. The figure looks up, a glance between the
two tells the story, and the woman is invited to step into the
consulting-room (if there be one), and give her husband's name and
offence. A divorce will cost her say twenty-five, or fifty, or
seventy-five dollars--in fact, whatever sum she can afford to pay for
such a trifle. She can have it obtained for her in New York, or at the
West, just as her husband's likelihood to pry into things, or her own
taste in the matter, may render advisable. Not a word of the case can
possibly get into the papers in either locality. She can charge
'intemperance,' or 'desertion,' or 'failure to support,' or whatever else
she chooses; but, perhaps, it would be better to make it adultery, as
that can be just as easily proved, and 'holds good in any State.' This
point being decided, the young woman can go home, and there keep her
luckless wretch of a husband properly in the dark until her 'decree' is
ready for her. If the applicant is a man, the work is all the easier;
for then even less art will be required to keep the unconscious 'party of
the second part' in ignorance of the proceedings. The case is now
quietly put on record in the proper court (if the 'suit' is to be 'tried'
in New York), and a 'summons' prepared for service upon the 'defendant.'
To serve this summons, any idle boy is called in from the street, and
directed to take the paper to defendant's residence or place of business,
and there serve it upon him. Away goes the boy, willing enough to earn
fifty cents by this easy task, and is met upon the stoop of the
residence, or before the door of the place of business, by a confederate
of the divorce-lawyer, who sharply asks what he wants. 'I want to see
Mr. ---,' says the boy. 'I am Mr. ---,' returns the confederate, who is
thereupon served with the summons. Back hurries the boy to the
law-office, signs an affidavit that he has served the paper upon
defendant in person, is paid for the job, and goes about his business.
The time selected for the manoeuvre is, of course, adapted to what the
'plaintiff' has revealed of her husband's hours for home or for business;
and, after the improvised server of the 'summons' has once sworn to his
affidavit and disappeared, there is no such thing as ever finding him
again! A 'copy of the complaint' is 'served' in the same way; or, the
'summons' is published once a week for a month in the smallest type of
the smallest obscure weekly paper to be found. This latter device,
however, is adopted only when the plaintiff (having some moral scruples
about too much perjury at once) charges 'desertion,' and desires to
appear quite ignorant of unnatural defendant's present place of abode.
If, for any particular reason, the party seeking a divorce prefers a
Western decree, the 'lawyer,' or a clerk of his, starts at once for
Indiana, or some quiet county of Illinois; and, after hiring a room in
some tavern or farm-house in the name of his client (to establish the
requisite fact of residence!), gives the case into the hands of a local
attorney with whom he has a business partnership. This Western branch of
the trade has reached such licence that, not long ago, a notorious
practitioner of the Ring actually issued an advertisement in a paper of
New York, to the effect that he had just returned to this city from the
West with a fresh stock of blank divorces! The wording was not literally
thus, but such was its obvious and only signification. Whether the
'trial' is to take place in New York or Indiana, however, there is but
one system commonly adopted in offering proof of the truth of the
complaint upon which a divorce is demanded. Plaintiff's villainous
attorney, after waiting a due length of time for some response from the
defendant in the case(!), asks of the Court, as privately as possible,
the appointment of a referee.
"His Honor the Court, upon learning that 'defendant' does not oppose (of
course not!), names a referee, who shall hear the testimony in the case,
and submit a copy thereof, together with his decision thereon, to the
Court for confirmation. Then, before the referee--who is to be properly
feed for his officiation--go the divorce-lawyer and two or three
shabby-genteel-looking 'witnesses,' who from thenceforth shall never be
findable by mortal man again. The 'witnesses' swear to any thing and
every thing--that they have seen and recognized defendant in highly
improper houses with improper persons; that they know plaintiff to be
pure, faithful, and shamefully misused in the marriage relation, etc.,
etc. As 'defendant,' not even aware that he or she _is_ a 'defendant,'
makes no appearance, either in person or by counsel, to combat this
dreadful evidence, the referee must, of course, render decision for
plaintiff--'the law awards it, and the Court doth give it.' The judge
subsequently confirms this decision; a decree of full divorce is granted,
_in due and full legal form_, to the triumphant plaintiff; and the
'defendant' is likely to become aware of the suit for the first time on
that night."
The acts of the divorce Ring are no secrets in New York. Yet neither the
judges nor the Bar Association make any efforts to rid the courts of such
wretches. "A citizen of New York, whose misguided wife had secretly
obtained a fraudulent divorce from him through such practice as we have
described, and who, in turn, had successfully sued in the legitimate way
for the dissolution of marriage thus forced upon him, sought to induce
his legal adviser, a veteran metropolitan lawyer of the highest standing,
to expose the infamous divorce 'Ring' before the courts, and demand, in
behalf of his profession, that its practitioners should be at least
disbarred. The response was, that the courts were presumed to be
entirely ignorant of the fraudulent parts of the proceedings referred to;
that the offenders could be 'cornered' only through a specific case in
point against them, and, besides, that the referees in their cases were
nearly all connected, either consanguinely or in bonds of partnership
interest, with the judges who had appointed them, and before whom the
motion for disbarment would probably come! For this last curious reason
no lawyer could, consistently with his own best interests, inaugurate a
movement likely to involve the whole referee system in its retributive
effects. A lawyer so doing might, when arguing future cases in court,
find a certain apparent disposition of the Bench to show him less
courtesy than on former occasions--to snub him, in fact, and thereby
permanently prejudice his professional future likelihoods in that
jurisdiction!"