A Man's World

by Albert Edwards

But it was in another class of cases that I proved of greatest utility to the judges. A large proportion of the prisoners plead guilty, without demanding a trial. If the whole matter is thrashed out before a jury, the trial judge hears all the evidence and so gets some idea of the motives of the crime, of the personality and environment of the accused. But when a prisoner pleads guilty, practically no details come out in court and unless the judge has some special investigation made he must impose sentence at haphazard. Ryan, almost always asked me to look into such cases. The other judges—with the exception of O'Neil—did so frequently. I would visit the prisoner in his cell and get his story, listen to what the police had to say, and then make a personal investigation to settle disputed points.

As time went on Ryan came to rely more and more on my judgment. He felt, I think, that I was honest; that I could not be bribed and that I was more likely to err on the side of mercy than otherwise. His easy going kindliness was satisfied with this and he was only too glad to let his responsibilities slip on to my shoulders. In the last years before he was elevated to the Supreme Court, he practically let me sentence most of his men. Except in the cases where political influences intervened, my written reports determined the prisoner's fate.

Of course I had to manage his susceptibilities. If I had presumed to suggest definitely what sentence he should impose he would have taken offense. He was very sensitive about his dignity. But I worked out a formal phraseology which did not ruffle his pride and accomplished what I intended. After stating the facts of the case I would end up with a sort of code phrase. If I wanted the judge to give the man another chance under a suspended sentence, I would say: "Under the circumstances, I believe that the defendant is deserving the utmost leniency. I am convinced that the arrest and the imprisonment which he has already suffered have taught him a salutary lesson which he will never forget." From that as the circumstances warranted I could go to the other extreme: "During my investigation of this case, which has been seriously limited because of lack of time, I have been able to find very little in this man's favor."

Every time I had to present such a report as this I felt defeated. It meant that the prisoner was an old offender, hardened to a life of professional crime. And that I could see no hope of reformation. But if I had not accepted such defeats, when circumstances compelled them, the judges would very quickly have lost confidence in my pleas for mercy.

I was valuable to the judges because I relieved them from worry. Whenever anyone approached them on behalf of a prisoner, they shrugged their shoulders and referred the suppliant to me. Now-a-days we have a probation law and such work as I have been describing is legalized. But in the early days, when I had no official sanction I found my position very embarrassing. Without having been in any way elected to office I was actually exercising a power which is supposed to be the gift of the voters. However—like so many things in our haphazard government—my position, extra-legal as it was, grew out of the sheer necessity of the case. The theory is that our judges shall be jurists. And a knowledge of the law does not fit one for the responsibility of deciding how we shall treat our criminals. In the old days when the law frankly punished offenders it was a simple matter and perhaps not too much to ask of judges. But today when we are beginning the attempt to reform those individuals who endanger society, the business of imposing sentence requires not so much a knowledge of law as familiarity with psychology, medicine and sociology. Although an expert in none of these lines, I was accepted as a makeshift. The law did not provide for the employment of specially trained men to assist the judges. I was informally permitted to entirely neglect the ordinary work of a county detective and give all my time to the courts.

The danger in such happy-go-lucky arrangements is that of graft. I could have doubled or quadrupled my salary with impunity. The "shyster" lawyers, who infest the Tombs tried for several years to buy my intercession for their clients. I had to be constantly on my guard to keep them from fooling me. And when they found that they could not reach me in this manner, they tried industriously to discredit me, to trick me into some suspicious conditions so they could intimidate me. More than once they set women on my trail.

The politicians also tried to use me. I received a letter one day from the "Old Man" asking me to intercede for a friend of his. I wrote back that I would investigate carefully. A couple of days later I sent another letter containing the prisoner's record, he had been twice in state prison and many times arrested. "Under the circumstances," I wrote "I cannot recommend mercy in this case."

The next day one of the "Old Man's" lieutenants met me in the corridor and leading me into a corner, told me I was a fool. When what he called "reason" failed to shake me, he became abusive and threatened to have me "fired." I took the whole matter to Ryan. He told me not to worry, that he would talk it over with the "Old Man." I do not know what passed between them. But after that I had no more trouble from Fourteenth Street. Whenever I saw the "Old Man," he gave me a cordial nod. Frequently his runners would hand me one of his cards with a penciled note, "See what you can do for this friend of mine and oblige." But with one or two exceptions the "friend" turned out to be deserving. One day he sent word that he would like to see me personally. I called on him in Tammany Hall. He thanked me for "helping out" one of his friends and told me that the city, in some of its departments, or some of his "contracting friends" were always taking on new hands and that he would try to find a place for any man I sent him. This was an immense help to me in my work and a God-send to many a man who had lost his job because of a baseless arrest.

So I gradually found a place of usefulness in the life of the Tombs.

Another typical case happened years later. I would not have known how to handle it at first. The defendant was a Norwegian named Nora Lund. She was about seventeen and the sweetest, most beautiful young girl I have ever seen in the Tombs. She was employed in one of the smartest uptown stores. It had an established reputation as a dry goods house. The founder had died some years before, a stock company had taken it over and was developing it into a modern department store. Besides the old lines of goods they were carrying silverware, stationery, furniture and so forth. Their patrons were most of the very well to do classes.