CHAPTER XI.

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!