One of the institutions of old New York was known as “The Forum,” a first class debatin’ society, which had its headquarters in the old City Hotel, then located on Broadway, west side, near Liberty street, at which some right smart speechifyin’ was done by young men who afterwards made a big mark in the world.
Ogden Hoffman, who afterwards became such a great advocate in criminal cases, Gerard, and Wheaton and Ketchum, and lots of others who afterwards turned out to be great lawyers or politicians in New York–all were members of “The Forum” and used to spout there twice a week.
It was as good as a show–in fact, it got to be a regular show, so that there was a regular charge for admission to keep outsiders out as much as possible. At first the charge for admission was only six cents, then twelve, then twenty-five. This last price was as much as the old Park Theatre then charged for a pretty good seat, but people seemed to be as willin’ to pay for a debatin’ society as for a play.
Two or three times the debatin’ society beat the theatre all hollow. One wet night when the Park Theatre was pretty nearly empty, “The Forum” room was pretty nearly full, and Simpson, the manager of the Park, was himself among the audience at “The Forum.”
Ogden Hoffman, who was by all odds the most brilliant debater at “The Forum” was afterwards the lawyer who defended Robinson who was accused of murderin’ Helen Jewett. Almost everybody believed Robinson guilty of this murder. But somehow the jury didn’t think so, because Ogden Hoffman got talkin’ to ‘em as only he could talk.
Robinson had been seen twice and recognized as bein’ with Helen Jewett, the prettiest and fastest girl in New York, the night she was murdered, at a place kept by a Mrs. Townsend. She wore a cloak that night, and that cloak was found the next mornin’ in a yard near Mrs. Townsend’s and to the cloak was tied a piece of twine, which fitted to another piece of twine to which was fastened a hatchet, which was all bloody. Robinson’s pantaloons the next mornin’ were found to be all covered with whitewash and there had been a coat of whitewash given to the fence of the yard in which the bloody hatchet was lyin’. Helen Jewett’s beautiful body had been found all cut and hacked with a sharp instrument, and Robinson had been seen with her within a few hours of the time she was discovered dead–the last person seen with her. Puttin’ all these facts together, it seemed now the most natural thing in the world to imagine, that Robinson killed Helen Jewett with this hatchet that night, then escaped in a hurry through the yards, crossin’ over the fences and leavin’ his cloak and his hatchet in his hurry behind him, and gettin’ his pants all covered with the whitewash on the fence.
But there were three points, and only three, in Robinson’s favor. The witnesses against him were “fast” or rather “loose” people; there never had been any known quarrel between him and the girl, and no earthly reason why he should kill her; and then one of the witness testified that Helen had called the man in the cloak that night Frank, whereas Robinson’s first name was Richard. On these three slender facts Robinson escaped. But it was nothin’ and nobody but Ogden Hoffman’s eloquence that saved him. Before he got through Hoffman really made the people pity “my poor boy–my poor boy!” as he called the young Robinson, quite as much if not more than the murdered girl herself. It was these three words “My poor boy,” said as Ogden Hoffman said ‘em, that saved Richard P. Robinson.
Talkin’ about New York lawyers, it is a singular fact that most of those who have won distinction made their first hits by volunteerin’ to defend some poor person or other who hadn’t any friends or money, and workin’ as hard to get them clear as though they were goin’ to get a ten thousand dollar fee.
There was George P. Barker, for instance. In his early days he came across a poor lad called Ames, who had not a friend nor a dollar in the world, and who had been arrested for burglary, under very suspicious circumstances, and on the testimony of a man who claimed to be one of his fellow burglars, and had turned State’s evidence. A store had been found broken open, and Ames had been found with some burglars’ tools near him, lyin’ around on the ground. According to the State’s evidence, Ames had fallen to the ground on his head, while “burglarizin’, whereupon the rest of the gang had left him to his fate. But the boy denied any guilt, and told a story explainin’ everythin’, which story big Barker believed, and because he believed, and because the boy could not find anybody else to believe it, Barkerm out of pure sympathy, volunteered to defend him. The district attorney then was Edward Livingston, and he looked upon Barker as way beneath him; but before he got through Barker was way above him. Barker had only the boy Ames’s story (that he had been decoyed by some strangers to the neighborhood of the store, where they put a crow-bar in his hand and told him to force open a window, whereupon he, discovering who the strangers were, screamed and refused, when they knocked him down and ran away); he had nothing but this “thin” story, and a surgeon’s opinion that Ames’s wound on the head had not been caused by a fall, but by a blow, to depend on. But by the aid of these two points, and his own eloquence which move the spectators, the jury–even, it is said, the judge and the district attorney–to tears. He got Ames acquitted as it were by acclamation. Barker was the first man, I guess, that ever made a district attorney weep.
Years afterwards, when Barker was a big politician, a man called to see him and embraced him like a brother. Barker first thought the stranger was playin’ a “confidence game” on him, as he didn’t recognize the man at all. But he wasn’t, for he turned out to be the very Ames whom Barker had saved from State prison for life, and on going away Ames left a package in Barker’s hands not to be opened till the next day. Openin’ the package the next day Barker found two hundred dollars in it, the fee for his first case, paid after fifteen years. This Ames was a near relative of the famous Oakes Ames, of Credit Mobilier renown.
Then there was James T. Brady. He was even as big-hearted as he was big headed, and he owed his start to his heart as much to his head. The first case which brought him into public notice was one that he undertook “for the love of the Lord and the poor.”
Brady was sittin’ in his office one day, when he was just beginnin’ law, hopin’ some big banker would take a fancy to him and give him a chance to earn a fat fee. Just then in rushed a poor young man into his office (at least Brady judged he was poor, for his clothes were seedy) and wanted to know if he was a lawyer.
“I am tryin’ to be,” said Brady.
“Will you help a poor boy in distress? Not with your money,” seeing Brady putting his hand in his pocket, “but with your law.”
“That’s lucky for him,” thought Brady, “as I have more law than money.” Then, kind of smilin’ to himself as he looked at his visitor and thought how different he was from the big banker with the fat fee he had just been hopin’ for, he said, kindly, “What can I do for you, young man?”
“I want you to save my sister,” said the poor young man.
Brady got instantly interested. Although always a bachelor, he had a great admiration for women. In fact, I have noticed that bachelors always have a greater admiration for women than married men have, probably from knowin’ less about ‘em. Besides, Brady had two excellent sisters himself to whom he was devotedly attached. So he pressed the poor young man to tell his story about his sister, and the poor young man didn’t require much pressin’.
“She is a slave over in a place they call Williamsburg,” said the poor young man.
Brady jumped. “There are no slaves in Williamsburg,” he said.
But they poor young man persisted in his assertion, and then explained the position of affairs.
His name was Coffin, and he was an Englishman. His parents and his sister had come over to this country as emigrants; his parents had died on the voyage, and his sister, with quite a little sum of money, had been left to the care of a family who, havin’ got hold of her money, had turned her into the streets.
There Sarah Coffin, then thirteen, had been found by an official of Brooklyn, who, not wishin’ to burden the authorities with the care of the child, had bound her out that very day, till eighteen years of age, to a family by the name of Gateswood.
This Gateswood family put Sarah through a course of sprouts, and made her earn her board and lodgin’ at the rate of a week’s work for a day’s board.
For a while the Gateswoods moved from Williamsburg over to New York, where they stayed at the old Howard House, on Broadway, near Maiden lane. Young Coffin, who had come from England to find his sister, had been lookin’ for her high and low in vain, happened one mornin’ to see a servant girl walkin’ out of this hotel with a child, and in this servant girl he recognized his own sister.
After embracing her he went up into the Gateswoods’ rooms with Sarah and told them he was come to take his sister back to Old England. “No, you don’t,” said old Gateswood, cross as a bear. “This girl, whether she’s your sister or not, belongs to us for several years yet–bound to us by law,” and then they had the brother put out of the hotel. The next day Coffin traced the Gateswoods back to their place in Williamsburg, and tried to get at his sister in vain. So, in despair, he came to see what the law and the lawyers could do for him. He had hardly any money to speak of, outside of just barely enough to get himself and sister back to the old country. “But if the blessin’ of God and an honest girl and a poor boy can do any good for you, Mr. Brady, they will be yours, if you save my sister,” said young Coffin as he wound up his story.
“Your sister shall be sailin’ with you to old England within a month,” said Brady.
The poor young brother took the poor young lawyer’s hand and kissed it. That kiss was James T. Brady’s first retainer.
The lawyer went to work with a will, and found out one fact. It was a little fact. But James T. Brady made it the very foundation of his case. This fact was that he found that the girl, Sarah Coffin, had never been an inmate of any public charitable institution, had never received any food, shelter or help from the Brooklyn authorities in any way. For on the very day that she was turned out of the house by those to whom she had been first entrusted she had been at once passed over by the official who found her to the Gatewoods.
The matter came to trial, and as the main features of the case were a novel, the papers generally took hold of it, there was a good deal of interest manifested, and everybody wondered who this James T. Brady was. They didn’t wonder long. Before the case was over, the public was pretty generally convinced that Brady wasn’t a poor lawyer, and wouldn’t be a poor man much longer.
He examined, among other witnesses, the people to whom Sarah Coffin had been first entrusted, and although he didn’t say so, he implied all through their examination that they had really stolen all the money from the poor girl and then had driven her out into the street. One would have thought that it was those people who were on trial. Brady asked ‘em questions and made ‘em give answers which made ‘em squirm, and made the jury and the people despise ‘em. Then he went for the Gateswoods and showed how they had overworked and underfed a poor child; and then he “turned on” his eloquence, and made judge, jury, lawyers and listeners feel for the poor brother and sister, who were all to each other in this world, but whom the world was trying to keep separated for years, perhaps forever. In all his after life Brady never surpassed his own eloquence on this occasion. He roused his hearers to anger or brought ‘em to tears. And then he wound up by showin’ that, after all, not only as a matter of feelin’, but as a matter of law, he was right. For he proved by the very Brooklyn official who had come across the Coffin girl in the street that she had never been legally for one minute under the official control of the guardians of the poor. Her name had never been registered as such. She had never received a cent’s worth of supplies from the county, consequently the bindin’ of this girl to the Gateswoods had no legal force at all.
Even if it had not been legally bindin’, the chances are the court would not have regarded it under the circumstances, and under the spell of Brady’s eloquence. But as it was, the jury decided that the Gateswoods had no power to hold Sarah Coffin, and she was declared free.
Ere a month had passed the sister and brother, havin’ kissed and blessed Brady, were sailing over to Old England. James T. Brady had won his first case and kept his word.
