FARMERS-GENERAL OF THE WAGES OF SIN.
If the Police Captain was the Pantata of the Gambler, he was the
Farmer-General of the Houses of Ill-fame in his Precinct. His duty, as
defined by the law which he had sworn to enforce, was clear. He was bound
to close every disorderly house in his jurisdiction. His practice was to
let them all run--for a consideration. The Strange Woman, that pathetic
and tragic figure in the streets of all great cities, whose house from of
old was said to be the Way of Hell, going down into the Chambers of Death,
excited in the Police Captain only the sentiment of rapacity. In his eyes
she was merely an asset in his farm, and one of the most valuable.
It was when the Lexow Committee approached this part of the investigation
that they found the greatest difficulties placed in their way.
During the whole of the inquiry the Police Department preserved an
attitude of animosity to the Lexow Committee. This was only natural,
considering that the Committee was engaged in bringing to light all the
misdeeds of the Department for the last three or four years. The Committee
was protected by law, and supported by public opinion; nevertheless, the
police eagerly seized every opportunity that was offered them in order to
embarrass the Committee’s investigations, by intimidating witnesses, and
sometimes by spiriting them away altogether. It was proved that policemen
had gone round to the keepers of disorderly houses, and had begged them to
refuse to appear, or to refuse to testify, promising as an inducement
that, if they would hold their tongues, they should be allowed to run
their houses freely without interference from any one. The tune which all
the policemen sang was “Wait till the clouds roll by.” The Lexow Committee
was but a creature of to-day, while the Police Department was one of the
permanent institutions of the city.
“These fellows have got no pull,” said the police. “You lie low for a
time, and we will protect you.”
When this argument failed, they resorted to menace, threatening to close
up the house, to fling the keepers into gaol, and occasionally, when these
threats failed, they resorted to personal violence.
The Committee, speaking of the terrorism which was employed by the police
in order to prevent witnesses testifying, said:--
In the course of the inquiry, a man rushed into the session of your
Committee, fresh from an assault made upon him by a notorious
politician and two policemen, and with fear depicted upon his
countenance, threw himself upon the mercy of the Committee and asked
its protection, insisting that he knew of no court and of no place
where he could in safety go and obtain protection from his
persecutors.--Vol. i., pp. 25, 26.
The most distinguished exploit of the police, however, during the whole of
the inquiry was the spiriting away of the French Madam, Matilda Hermann,
one of the most notable keepers of disorderly houses in the City of New
York. When it was known that the Committee was after her, and that Madam,
who had been plundered to the bone by the police, was by no means
indisposed to “squeal”--to quote the expressive vernacular of the
Department--there was a consultation among the police authorities as to
what measures should be taken to close her mouth. A considerable number of
people in the same way of business had been induced to migrate to Chicago,
where they remained waiting until such time as the Committee adjourned,
but Madam Hermann was too dangerous a witness. She required special
treatment. A purse was made up for her by the police, which, when the
subscription closed, amounted to 1,700 dollars. She was then under
subpœna, and was expected before the Committee the next day.
At midnight, a police officer in plain clothes came to her house, bundled
her into a carriage in such hot haste that she had not time to complete
her toilet, and whisked her off no one knew where. For some weeks the
police appeared to have triumphed, but after a time the Committee were
able to get upon her track. She had been taken first to New Jersey, and
then from New Jersey had been railroaded through to Canada. From thence,
after moving about from place to place, she had been taken to a Western
city, where at last she was run to ground.
When the agents of the Committee found her she expressed no disinclination
to return to New York and testify. She had fulfilled her part of the
bargain in keeping out of the way as long as she could. Now that she was
discovered she was willing to return. In great triumph she was escorted
back to the city. In order to prevent any attempt at rescue, an additional
staff of men were sent to Philadelphia to meet her. The precaution was
timely, for as soon as they arrived at Jersey City a last desperate
attempt was made by the police to prevent her evidence being taken.
She was in the custody of the Deputy Serjeant-at-Arms of the Senate, who
had a party of resolute men in his train. But notwithstanding this, no
sooner had the party arrived in Jersey City than they were set upon by the
Jersey police, who treated them with the greatest roughness. They
threatened to break their faces, hustled them about, and endeavoured in
the _mêlée_ to get Madam Hermann away. The Deputy Serjeant, however,
stuck to his witness, and finally he, Madam Hermann, and all his men were
arrested, run into the station-house, and locked up.
The sensation which this occasioned can be imagined. Fortunately, the
Committee was in session, otherwise there is no knowing whether the daring
attempt to seize and remove the witness might not have succeeded. The
immediate publicity, however, that was given to the case convinced the
police that the game was up. The Chief of the Police and the Police
Magistrate refused to lend their aid in thwarting the ends of justice, and
the conspirators, led by a lawyer, who was also a senator of the State of
New Jersey, drew off their gang, and reluctantly allowed Madam Hermann to
be brought to New York. The story reads more like an episode from the
Middle Ages than an excerpt from the proceedings of a senatorial
investigation in New York State in the last decade of the nineteenth
century.
The French Madam, as she was called in the precinct, was evidently
regarded by the police as a gold mine. She had three or four houses, with
some twenty-four or twenty-five girls, and was doing a flourishing
business. She paid the police altogether in the seven years that she was
running the sum of over 30,000 dollars, or more than £6,000; _i.e._, this
woman alone yielded the police a revenue of nearly £1,000 a year. Part of
this money, it should be said, went to the lawyers, who shared it with the
police. Every time she was raided the policeman insisted upon her taking a
lawyer, and told her that if she would take the lawyer of his choice, he
would not swear against her. He would swear that he was not sure of her
identity. This she did, and she was discharged. Every time she took a
lawyer she had to pay from £35 to £80, and the lawyer always told her that
he only got part of the money, as the rest of it went to fix her
detectives. Her evidence on this point was very emphatic. Whether she paid
200 dollars or 100 dollars, the lawyer only got 50 dollars; the rest went
up to the police.
Q. Were you told by the lawyers that that must go up?
A. From the smallest lawyer to the biggest lawyer: every lawyer was
the same.
Q. And every lawyer whose name you have mentioned told you that they
had to give up to the police part of their fees they got from you?
A. Every one of them.--Vol. iv., p. 4,179.
Mrs. Hermann first went into the business from being employed as a
dressmaker for the inmates of disorderly houses. She gradually added house
to house, until she had four houses and twenty-five girls. She had to pay
the police sometimes as much as £200 initiation fee before opening a
house, and then from £60 to £100 per annum as protection money.
In addition to these payments, every policeman in the street received a
dollar or two whenever he chose to ask for it. The method of exacting
this payment was very simple. The policeman said nothing, but simply stood
in front of the door. Of course, no one entered the house as long as he
was there; therefore, as counsel put it, “in order to induce him to take a
little exercise round the block, he was presented with a two-dollar bill.”
This little episode used to occur about twice or thrice a week.
Notwithstanding these payments, she made too much money to be left alone.
She was raided twice in 1890, and on the first occasion the police
extracted the sum of £200 before she was allowed to reopen her premises.
The next year she was prosecuted, and had to forfeit £200 bail in order to
avoid a threatened imprisonment. Immediately after her return she was
again arrested, and had to pay £200 to the detective, who shared it with a
high official at the Central Police Headquarters.
Her business was so profitable that she admitted in Court that she had
been making between £2,000 and £3,000 a year, of which sum the police and
the police lawyers seem to have had a good half. On one occasion, when she
had paid £100 to her lawyer to get off with a fine of £20, she was
liberated on the Friday and re-opened her house on the Saturday.
Notwithstanding the way in which they fleeced their unfortunate victim,
she was still subjected, like all her class, to occasional outbursts of
brutality on the part of members of the force.
When Dr. Parkhurst was making his tour of investigation through “the
avenues of our municipal Inferno,” the wardman was sent round the district
to the keepers of all the disorderly houses to describe Dr. Parkhurst, and
to tell them to look out for him in case he appeared at their house.
Another experience was when she took a house in West Twenty-third Street
to start it as an ordinary boarding-house. She had furnished it, and was
trying to let it. Promptly the wardman of the precinct came to her and
asked her “whether she did not know the law of the precinct.” “You know
very well,” he said, “that you cannot move in here until you see the
Captain.” And then this estimable officer did all he could to convince her
that it was idle trying to run a decent boarding-house, and she had much
better open the house in the regular way. The initiation fee would be
£400, £200 down and the rest to stand over until business was good. There
was to be a further payment of protection money, amounting to £240 a year.
She had not much ready money, whereupon the wardman suggested that she
might pawn her diamonds, for, said he, “the Captain is very bad off for
money.”
Another very amusing thing which came out in her evidence was the argument
used by a detective named Zimmerman to induce her to give him £10. He got
a couple of pounds one day, and came back the next, asking for another £2.
She objected, but he said, “I will be a good friend to you. I have lots
of pull, and my brother has shaved the Superintendent for twenty years,
and I get a great deal; I have a pull on that account.” It is an
interesting illustration of the way in which everything was turned to
account for the levying of blackmail. But we could hardly get lower than
this. The origin of pulls is mysterious; but to have a pull because your
brother shaves the Superintendent is a very mysterious foundation for
political influence. It is, however, but one among the many things in the
evidence that remind us of Turkey. The barber of the Grand Vizier is no
doubt a much more influential person than many a Pasha; and detective
Zimmerman was probably right in believing that his pull was good.
Everywhere, and at every turn, we are confronted by the omnipresent
“pull.” It confirms in the strongest way what Mr. Godkin said long ago as
to the city governments in America being a system of government by
pulls:--
In the ward in which he lives, the foreign immigrant never comes
across any sign of moral right or moral wrong, human or divine
justice. He then perceives very soon that, as far as he is concerned,
ours is not a government of laws, but a government of “pulls.” When he
goes into the only court of justice of which he has any knowledge, he
is told he must have a “pull” on the magistrate or he will fare badly.
When he opens a liquor-store, he is told he must have a “pull” on the
police in order not to be “raided” or arrested for violation of a
mysterious something which he hears called “law.” He learns from those
of his countrymen who have been here longer than he that, in order to
come into possession of this “pull,” he must secure the friendship of
the district leader.--_North American Review_, 1890.
Mrs. Hermann was only one among a number of other Madams who appeared
before the Committee, but none succeeded in exciting so much sympathy on
the part of the senators. The scandalous way in which the poor woman had
been fleeced, and bullied, and ultimately reduced to penury by the very
officials to whom she was paying protection money, roused the indignation
of the Committee. If the police had protected her in return for their fee,
it would have been a different matter, but, as Senator O’Connor remarked,
indignantly, in addition to paying the monthly tax, and the initiation
fees, raids were got up as an excuse to enable a policeman or a class of
criminal lawyers to extort money out of her. Senator Pound remarked that
it was the practice to protect such women until they became wealthy, and
then squeeze it out of them and leave them destitute. They say that there
is “honour among thieves,” but there seems to be none with the policemen
who handled Mrs. Hermann.
Another Madam, whose case attracted considerable attention, was one
Augusta Thurow, whose misfortunes brought her into intimate relations with
Senator Roesch, and led to the appearance of that redoubtable politician
in the witness-box. The relations between her and the Captain of the
Precinct seem to have been on straight business lines. About a dollar a
month for each girl in the house was the regular tariff. When beginning
business she went round to see the Captain and told him that she was
willing to do the right thing, but she had not much money, and could not
pay a very heavy initiation fee. He met her fairly, and said that he would
send the wardman round, and she was to do what he told her. When the
wardman came he said, “You wait until after the election, and, after the
election is over, you start right in and do business.” After the election
day he returned and said, “Now we will come to terms. Give me twenty-five
dollars a month and there will be no trouble either for you or for me.”
Business went on smoothly until one day she received a summons to go and
see the Captain. When she got there she found a number of other ladies and
gentlemen of her own profession at the station-house. On being admitted
into the Captain’s presence she thought he wanted money. He replied, “I am
not supposed to take money, but you can give me the money;” whereupon she
handed him twenty-five dollars. He then told her that he had sent for her,
not in order to collect the protection fee, which was the duty of the
wardman, but to give her a friendly warning that he had received orders
from the Central Office to close all the disorderly houses in the
precinct. He hoped, therefore, that she would do her business very
carefully, otherwise they might raid her from the Central Office. This was
an incident which was constantly occurring. The Central Office, stirred up
by newspaper reports, or by the representations of decent citizens, issues
orders for enforcing the law. The police captains, instead of executing
the orders of the Central Office in the spirit as well as in the letter,
send word round to all those concerned warning them to be on the alert. By
this means the Captain of the Precinct effectually nullifies the orders
issued from the Central Office, and, even if the Central Office make a
raid on their own account, they find nothing to seize.
It was shortly after this visit that Mrs. Thurow made her first
acquaintance with a redoubtable policeman of the name of Hoch. Of all the
collectors or wardmen who figure in the evidence, Hoch enjoys the most
conspicuous notoriety. He was no sooner entrusted with the collections in
that district than he insisted upon raising the fees for protection. “A
ranch like that,” he said, “is worth seventy-five dollars a month, and
here you are only paying twenty-five dollars, and give me only five
dollars, although you promised me ten dollars.”
“Hoch,” she replied, “I cannot afford it.”
Q. What did he say when you said you could not afford it?
A. He says, “You have got the house, and why don’t you make money? It
is your own fault; and that house is situated in the right spot, and
you can do all the business you want and we won’t interfere with you,
but you must do better than this.”
Q. Did he make any threats then to pull you, if you did not pay a
higher rate?
A. He said, certainly, if I could not do better than that, he would
raid the house.--Vol. i., p. 1,055.
This alarmed the Madam, and off she went to her husband, who was sent in
quest of Judge Roesch, the leader of the Seventh Assembly District, an
ex-senator. “I will go and see somebody, and fix the thing up,” said
Roesch. “But it will cost about one hundred dollars.” The money was paid,
and she did business right away.
Some time after this she was pulled by another detective. She expostulated
against the injustice of being run in, although she was paying protection
money, whereupon the detective remarked sententiously, “Somehow or other
you did not hitch with the Boss.” She went round to the station-house, to
find out what was wrong. The Captain told her that she had to find another
house in the precinct, and he would protect her, but he would not stand
the house in which she was any longer. The cause of this she discovered
when she was told that she could not open the new house until she paid an
initiation fee of £200 for the Captain, and £50 for Hoch.
It is not quite clear how it was that she got at cross purposes with the
police, but one remark made by Hoch would seem to indicate the existence
of an incipient jealousy between the police and Tammany Hall.
Augusta Thurow told the Committee that she said to Hoch:--
“I cannot afford to pay more than I am paying; you people treat me so
terribly, and I had to go to Roesch, and I had to pay him for his
trouble.” He said, “What did you pay him?” I said “Never mind what I
paid him.” He says, “That is how it is with you; you people get us
angry; you give money to the politicians that belong to the
police.”--Vol. i., p. 1,080.
The Chairman asked her to repeat exactly what he said; and she answered,
“He said, ‘You give the money to the politicians that ought to go to the
police. Are the politicians doing for you, or are we doing for you?’”
The evidence of the two Madams, and of a great number of other keepers of
disorderly houses, proved beyond all gainsaying that the police were in
partnership with the prostitutes, and that the firstfruits of the harvest
of shame were paid to the Captain of the Precinct. The Report of the Lexow
Committee thus sums up the result of their investigations:--
The testimony upon this subject, taken as a whole, establishes
conclusively the fact that this variety of vice was regularly and
systematically licensed by the police of the city. The system had
reached such a perfection in detail that the inmates of the several
houses were numbered and classified, and a rateable charge placed upon
each proprietor in proportion to the number of inmates, or in cases of
houses of assignation the number of rooms occupied and the prices
charged, reduced to a monthly rate, which was collected within a few
days of the first of each month during the year. This was true
apparently with reference to all disorderly houses except in the case
of a few specially favoured ones. The prices ran from twenty-five to
fifty dollars monthly, depending upon the considerations aforesaid,
besides fixed sums for the opening of new houses or the resumption of
“business” in old or temporarily abandoned houses, and for “initiation
fees” designed as an additional gratuity to captains upon their
transfer into new precincts. The established fee for opening and
initiation appears to have been five hundred dollars.
Thus it appears that transfers of captains, ostensibly made for the
purpose of reform and of enforcing the discontinuance of the practice,
the prevalence of which seems to have been generally understood,
resulted only in the extortion from these criminal places of
additional blackmail.
As an evidence of the perfect system to which this traffic has been
reduced, your Committee refers to that part of the testimony which
shows that in more than one instance the police officials refused to
allow keepers of disorderly houses to discontinue their business,
threatening them with persecution if they attempted so to do, and
substantially expounding the proposition that they were for the
purpose of making money to share with the police. As an evidence of
the extraordinary conditions to which this system had given rise, it
is proper to call your attention to the fact that in a number of cases
women, who, as keepers of disorderly houses, had paid thousands of
dollars for police protection, had become reduced to the verge of
starvation, while those who had exacted blackmail from them were
living in luxury in houses that had been furnished out of the earnings
of these women, or they were wearing ornaments of jewelry purchased by
them; and even the furniture of their houses had been paid for by
those whom they had protected in the commission of crime.
The evidence establishes, furthermore, that not only the proprietors
of disorderly houses paid for their illegal privileges, but the
outcasts of society paid patrolmen on post for permission to solicit
on the public highways, dividing their gains with them, and, often, as
appears by proof, when brought before the police magistrates and
committed to the penitentiary for disorderly conduct in default of
bail, they compounded their sentence, and secured bail by paying ten
dollars or fifteen dollars to the clerk of the court, or his agents,
and were then released again to ply their calling and to become
victimised as before.
The evidence furthermore shows that in some of the houses of the
character described, visitors were systematically robbed, and when
they made complaint at the station-house the man detailed to examine
into the charge failed to arrest the perpetrator, and frightened the
victim off by threats, and then returned and received his
compensation, an equal division of the plunder between the thief and
the officer.
The testimony taken as a whole conclusively establishes that the
social evil was, and probably still is, fostered and protected by the
police of the city, even to the extent of inducing its votaries to
continue their illegal practices, maintaining substantially a
partnership with them in the traffic, absorbing the largest part of
the resulting profit.--Vol. i., pp. 33-36.
The most startling statement in the whole Report is that which is
contained in the paragraph just quoted. From this it appears that the
police were not merely toll-keepers on the way to hell, but if by any
chance the Strange Woman wished to forsake her chamber of death, they
thrust her back into it. What was it to them that she might wish to save
her soul alive out of the pit? Her duty was to stay there and earn dollars
for the police. Were they not the Farmers-General of the Wages of Sin?
Mrs. Blood, a keeper of houses of ill-fame, was compelled by a Police
Captain to purchase the house of Madame Perot at some 10,000 dollars above
its value, to carry it on as a house of prostitution (vol. v., p. 5,414).
Another Captain smashed in the face of a man named Galingo because he had
taken a house in which the Captain wished to instal a brothel-keeper from
whom he expected to get £200 opening fee and £10 a month afterwards (vol.
iv., p. 4,487). In other cases, witnesses who had intended to leave the
business were compelled to go on running by threat of being raided and
ruined if they dared to think of ceasing to earn fees for the police. The
police had come to believe that they had a vested interest in every
brothel; and when a keeper proposed to quit the business, he felt like an
Irish tenant who is being evicted without compensation for disturbance.
[Illustration: MADAM HERMANN.]
[Illustration: GANSEVOORT MARKET, NEW YORK.]