FOOTNOTES
[1] Wood’s was an attractive personality. He was a handsome man, six feet high, slender and straight, with keen blue eyes, and regular features. His manner was kindly and engaging.
[2] Wood was charged with having obtained about $8,000 on false representations from his partner, Edward E. Marvine, in a transaction. Marvine brought suit against Wood in the Superior Court, and three referees gave a unanimous decision in the plaintiff’s favor. The Grand Jury, on November 7, 1851, indicted Wood for obtaining money under false pretenses, but he pleaded the Statute of Limitations. A friendly Recorder decided that as his offense had been committed three years previously (on November 7, 1848), the period required by the statute had been fully covered. The indictment, therefore, was quashed, and Wood escaped by one day.
[3] New York Tribune, May 5, 1852. (This admission on the part of a Whig journal caused a great stir.)
[4] There was another “Forty Thieves” Council five or six years later, which must not be confounded with the earlier and more notorious one.
[5] The Herald, which, as usual, supported Tammany this year, described (August 24, 1852) these violences in detail.
[6] The political lawbreaker had a final immunity from punishment in the fact that Aldermen sat as Justices in the Mayor’s Court, which tried such culprits, if ever they happened to be arrested.
[7] See Report of Chief of Police Matsell, Documents of the Board of Aldermen, Vol. XXX, part 1, No. 17. The extreme turbulence of the city at this time may be judged from the fact that, despite the comparative immunity of political lawbreakers, during the eight years 1846-54, 200,083 arrests were made, an average of 25,010 a year.
[8] The vote on Mayor stood: Westervelt, 33,251; Morgan Morgans, 23,719; Henry M. Western, 861; blank and scattering, 227; total, 58,058.