I met an old rounder the other day who used to be a great Know-Nothing in politics and a red-hot Native American and a chum of Bill Poole’s. He says that politics nowadays are bitter enough, but nothin’ at all to what they used to be in the old times. And I believe he is right.
There was the bribery case of Judge Stewart, for instance. This case is almost forgotten now, but it made a tremendous stir at the time it happened, and it grew altogether out of politics–out of the affair of Bill Poole, in fact.
Judge Stewart was a great Know-Nothing and had been put into office by the Native American party and Bill Poole and his friends. Of course, Morrissey and Baker and all that crowd hated him; and the judge hated ‘em; and when Bill Poole was murdered Stewart was mad and did all he could to have Baker and the rest arrested. But Baker fled from New York. He was concealed for several days and nights at Johnny Ling’s house, at the corner of Canal street and Broadway, and then at last escaped as a sailor in a vessel. Then George Law fitted out a clipper ship to catch Baker, and, I believe, Stewart, who was something of a sailor, went out on this clipper ship. Well, all this made the judge bitterly hated by all the people opposed to the Know-Nothings, and they were only waitin’ for their chance to get even with him. Their chance came at last and they took it.
There was a robber in New York called Bristol Bill, whom I have mentioned several times already. This Bristol Bill got into trouble once, and then Judge Stewart got mixed in it, and there was the deuce to pay. Maggie, Bristol Bill’s woman, and a pretty woman she was, swore that she called to see Judge Stewart, who was presidin’ judge at Bristol Bill’s trial then, and asked him to get Bristol Bill off. Then the judge said to her, “All right, Maggie, but you know this sort of thing costs money.” Then, accordin’ to her account, she went to some bank where she had some money laid by, and got five one-hundred dollar bills and gave the whole five, one by one, to Judge Stewart. Then, according to her account, the judge went to the District Attorney and told him to enter a nolle pros, that is, not to prosecute the case, and so to get Bristol bill off.
This was the story that Bristol Bill’s woman told on the stand, and she not only told it but swore to it, and not only swore to it, but stuck to it for three days. James T. Brady was one of the lawyers for Judge Stewart and he cross-examined this woman for a long while, but she kept sayin’ the same thing over and over again, till even Brady had to remark, “Madam, you have the a most excellent memory.” The “Madam” smiled her prettiest smile, but she stuck to her story all the same. Giddons and Stoughton, who were also for the defense, tried to break down her testimony, but had to give it up as a bad job. Cutting was the lawyer for the prosecution, and he made the most of her testimony.
The judge was acquitted, but there was so much talk about the matter at the time that his friends told him he had better resign, and the judge, who was a very sensitive man, and didn’t like to have anybody talk about him, took his friends’ advice and resigned.
This was a bad move, for, of course, his enemies said that he resigned because his conscience told him he was guilty, and he didn’t deserve to be a judge, even if he had been acquitted by a jury. But the judge said he would trust to time to vindicate him, and time did vindicate him at last.
George Elder, the detective, was mixed up in the Stewart case. Elder was a great friend of the judge’s, but the judge and his friends always thought that Elder went back on him at the trial. But I guess this was a mistake, for, from what I have heard and known of George Elder, I should think that he wasn’t the kind of man to go back on anybody, especially a friend.
Oakey Hall at last vindicated the judge, and wrote him a letter which set him and his memory all right. The judge is dead now, but he has left a son who is doin’ well, and the only reason I have alluded to the Stewart trial is to show how bitter politics used to be in what they call nowadays “the good old times.”
[Editor’s notes: For such a short column, there’s a lot of misinformation in the above that needs to be corrected. To begin with, the judge’s name was Sidney H. Stuart (not Stewart). He was elected a City Judge in 1855 and resigned a year later, in 1856. During his year of service, he was accused of taking a bribe from a woman in order to get her spouse released from a charge of burglary that occurred in April, 1853.
However, the thief was not William “Bristol Bill” Warburton aka Darlington, and the woman was not Bristol Bill’s paramour, Margaret “Gookin Peg” O’Connor. In the case that Stuart intervened in, the thief’s name was William Conway, aka Connolly aka Cosgrove; and the woman’s name was Margaret “Mag” Duval, aka Connolly. In 1855, “Bristol Bill” Darlington was wasting away in the Vermont State Prison, while Margaret O’Connor had died in a Massachusetts prison in 1851.
It’s unclear whether William Conway/Connolly/Cosgrove also used the “Bristol Bill” nickname, but as seen in the clipping below, it was applied to him long before the Harry Hill column. Other news reports said his nickname was “Buffalo Bill,” which was the nickname adopted by showman William F. Cody twenty years later.
The above column implies that Stuart was the target of a smear campaign because of his Know-Nothing politics. However, contemporary accounts suggest that Stuart was far from innocent, and had a long-running relationship with Mag Duval, a brothel madam:]
