BELIAL ON THE JUDGMENT SEAT.
The effect of law, not law written in the Statute Book, but law
practically enforced among the people, is to evolve a conscience. Not
without deep true meaning was it said of old time “the law is a
schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” For it is the law, by its pains and
penalties, which educates the individual as to the obligations of morality
and the duty of well-doing. But in New York the universal practice of
permitting all manner of abominations to run, provided the regular fee was
paid to the police, acted as a direct depravation of public morals in
familiarising the worst people in the city with a moral standard which was
in itself a negation of morality. A woman of the name of Flora Waters, who
kept a café with waitresses in a disreputable quarter, formulated with the
utmost precision her belief that she was doing right because her money was
taken by the police:--
Q. You thought the business you were doing was not wrong?
A. I thought it was all right when I paid, because they all said the
money was going to----
Q. I only want to get her moral idea?
A. Because they told me the wardman did not keep the money and it goes
up higher, and it had to be that way, because it was not old in this
country, that people that sold liquors could keep waiters; but I
thought it was nothing wrong, and everybody told me the money went all
through, and everybody knew how it was worked.--Vol. ii., p. 1,363.
Here we have plainly and simply set out the inevitable consequence of any
system of regulation. When the police sanction anything, it is no longer
wrong to practise it. The police-court is the only Sinai of the Slum.
Bad as the police were proved to be in many instances, they were gentlemen
compared with some of the Justices. The fact that such foul creatures were
permitted to sit on the judgment seat and deal out sentences to men and
women, the worst of whom were better than their judge, is the most
melancholy feature of the whole black, bad business. This is the innermost
centre of the New York Inferno.
Among the magistrates or police-court justices who figure conspicuously in
this hideous drama, one Justice Koch appears pre-eminent. I prefer not to
attempt to express the sentiments which are aroused by the spectacle of
such a Justice dispensing justice. Miss Rebecca Fream, a mission-worker
who had in vain endeavoured to secure some redress for the wrongs
inflicted upon her poorer neighbours, was on one occasion ordered out of
his court. She told the Lexow Committee:--
I turned to him, and I said, “Don’t worry yourself; is this what you
call justice?” then I said, “May God pity the poor on the east side,
for with half-drunken judges on the bench whom shall they look to for
justice if God forsakes them; you were half-drunk yesterday when I
applied for a summons, and to-day you are so drunk you can’t see out
of your eyes.”
Q. He made no effort to punish you for contempt of court?
A. No; there was one of the officers, and he turned and said, “By jee,
I wouldn’t take that from anybody.” I said, “If you were in the same
boat with him you would have to take it.”
Chairman Lexow: Fine commentary upon the police-court procedure!
The Witness: That is nothing; that is only a drop in the bucket.--Vol.
iv., p. 4,484-5.
The police-court judge seems in many cases to have been the pivot on which
the whole horrible system of oppression revolved. It would need the pen of
a Zola to describe adequately these shambles of the poor. There was the
headquarters of the foul crew that flourished on perjury and grew fat upon
using the forms of the law to frustrate its aims. It was the paradise of
the professional bondsman, the blackmailer, and all the human vermin that
thrive upon the misfortunes of their fellows. The worst lawbreakers of the
precinct stood inside the rail beside the judge, browbeat and bullied the
unfortunate accused, and practised every kind of extortion with impunity.
The blackguard lawyer, hand-and-glove with the bandit policeman, found an
even more detestable scoundrel than themselves upon the bench. The
fiercest invectives of Juvenal would be too weak to do justice to these
sinks of iniquity, in which honesty was a byword, innocence a
laughing-stock, and the law merely a convenient pretext for levying
blackmail.
The Committee was constantly hearing of the abuses connected with these
courts, but the inquiry closed before they could be taken seriously in
hand. The infamy of the system of bail, which was worked to fill the
pockets of the bondsmen, led to frequent comments. On one occasion the
Chairman remarked--
That seems to me to be a point that has never been properly
accentuated; the commission of the police justice and the general
activity of that character of man is a very great item going to show
their inefficiency. Blumenthal and Hochstein’s reputation was well
known, and their insolvency was an established fact, and yet they went
on bonds to the extent of thousands and thousands of dollars, and
those bonds were even forfeited and not paid, and the men accepted
again.--Vol. v., p. 4,490.
In the Report they say:--
While it was impossible for your Committee to spend much time in
considering police courts, enough is shown upon the record to justify
the conclusion that a very important reason why the police have been
able to carry on and successfully perpetrate their reprehensible
practices, is that at least some of the police justices have
apparently worked in sympathy and collusion with them.--Vol. i., p.
27.
In the examination of a witness named John Collins, Mr. Moss said--
I think that the evils perpetrated by these judges, some of them, are
even worse in their results than the evil practised by the police.
Chairman Lexow: It seems to me that any evil of that kind permitted by
a judge is ten times worse than that committed by any other
individual.
Mr. Moss: Of course, I myself have been before some of these judges
for the society which I represent, and know what it was to be sat down
upon, and outraged and browbeaten.
Senator Bradley: The witness says to me that the judges eat and drink
with these people, and know the character of the people well.--Vol.
v., p. 4,897.
The best way of bringing out this aspect of the administration of justice
in New York is to set forth, without a word of comment, the substance of
the evidence taken concerning the abortionists.
Abortion is not regarded in New York with anything approaching the horror
that is excited by the same crime in the Old World. According to the
evidence given before the Lexow Committee by an expert there were about
two hundred abortionists who advertised every day in New York their
readiness to kill the unborn child. It is an irregular profession that has
regular practitioners. But, like all the other vices, it is a fertile
source of revenue to the police. Dr. Newton Whitehead, a leading
practitioner in this recognised system of antenatal infanticide, was
called before the Committee and testified as to the way in which he was at
once helped and hindered by the police. Whitehead was arrested three times
in six weeks. He was never tried on any one of these occasions. But he had
to pay in bribing the police and feeing the police lawyer the sum of £565.
The doctor was arrested by a policeman called Frink, who insisted that he
should retain for his defence a lawyer of the name of Friend. He was told
that Mr. Friend had got a telephone directly from his house to police
headquarters, so they informed him at once of all these cases, and he was
our lawyer--the police lawyer (vol. iv., p. 4,240). Somewhat reluctantly,
Whitehead sent for Friend. He had to pay him 700 dollars. Friend remarked
apologetically that he would not insist on so much; but “I don’t get this
money myself: I have to turn over 50 per cent. of it to the police.” “Our
lawyer,” indeed!
The policeman Frink then took his prisoner off into a small court-room,
and told him, “In all these cases, Doctor, we expect to have some money
off from them. Pay me 500 dollars and I will guarantee that the case will
be dismissed when it is called.” He paid 500 dollars and the case was
dismissed, the only evidence offered incriminating, not the doctor, but a
midwife, whom, however, they refused to prosecute, as “she did not have
any money, and was not worth bothering with.”
The lawyer, the doctor and the policeman dined together at a saloon in
University Place. During dinner the policeman grew confidential:--
Sergeant Frink remarked to me that that was a very nice place; he said
he knew the proprietor, and he said, “Doctor, this would be a very
nice place if you ever wanted to run a young girl in here, upstairs,
it would be all right; nothing would be said.”--Vol. iv., p. 4,235.
A month later the doctor was again arrested. This time it cost him 475
dollars, paid to the lawyer. He was again arrested in the following month,
and was held for the Grand Jury:--
Q. There was a regular raid on the abortionists at that time, was
there not?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And all the warrants were issued by Judge Koch?
A. All the warrants were issued by Judge Koch. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you know that any have been convicted?
A. No, sir. It was simply a blackmailing scheme.
Q. Blackmailing by whom?
A. I expect by the police.
Q. Who issued the warrant you were arrested on?
A. Judge Koch.
Q. He seems to have had a monopoly on the issuing of warrants of these
cases?
A. He might have been making money pretty fast out of it.--Vol. iv.,
p. 4,246.
“Judge Koch,” Whitehead said, “sat back in his chair, and he said he was
going to make an example of me,” and he held me to wait the action to the
Grand Jury. He first insisted on 7,500 dollars bail, but after various
interviews with the police lawyer and the police sergeant he reduced it to
2,500 dollars.
About a day or two after he had been held for the Grand Jury a lady came
to see Whitehead, and said she wanted to be treated for abortion.
Whitehead refused to treat her, and said that he had been so badly
blackmailed:--
I told her I thought I would not practise any more; I would leave the
City of New York if they were going to prosecute me that way for
nothing, and she said, “The gentleman who got me in the family way is
a very influential man, and he is a judge, and can do a great deal for
you, doctor.” I told her I did not think he could, because I had been
held for the grand jury. She insisted, and said, “Doctor, who is this
man that held you?” I said, “It was Judge Koch;” she said, “Judge
Koch?” She said, “My God, he seduced me and got me in the family way
five times, and Judge Koch paid the bill.”
Mr. Goff: Proceed, doctor.
A. She left my house, and she went down to Judge Koch at Essex Market,
and Judge Koch sent for me.
Q. Sent for you?
A. Yes, sir, by her. I have got lots of proof of that: there is no
need for him to wriggle out of it, for he cannot; and I went to see
Judge Koch, and he was as sweet as sugar. He told me, “Doctor,” he
says, “I am very sorry about this affair; I did not know that my girl
had ever been to you,” he said. “I will do all I can for
you--everything.” He said there would not anything come of this case.
“Don’t you be afraid;” the girl afterwards----
Q. Wait a while; was there any one present?
A. Mr. Friend here.
Q. Was present when Judge Koch said that to you?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Just follow the narrative: how did Mr. Friend come to be there in
the room?
Judge Koch waited for him until he came; I sat there about
half-an-hour, and Koch seemed to be holding a case outside, and he
waited until Mr. Friend came; he came in and saw me, and said, “I am
waiting until Friend comes here.”
Q. Judge Koch said?
A. Yes, sir; and when Friend came in he spoke this matter over, and
Friend wanted to know what it was; he said, “It was that Alexander
woman I had trouble with before.”--Vol. iv., p. 4,264.
The “Alexander woman” was an actress, apparently Koch’s mistress. Dr.
Whitehead promised to perform the operation, but put it off. She went away
to another doctor and had the abortion brought about.
“I may say, Mr. Chairman,” said Mr. Goff, in addressing the Committee at
the close of Dr. Whitehead’s evidence, “that of all the terrible exposures
that have been testified to before this Committee, and that have shocked
not only our city but the civilised world, I think the most terrible of
all is that which we have heard this afternoon. I think the Committee has
reached the climax of the horrible in this city.”
“Satan’s Invisible World Displayed,” indeed!
[Illustration: DR. WHITEHEAD.]
[Illustration: WALL STREET AND TRINITY CHURCH.]