T H E   S I N S   O F   N E W   Y O R K

                     As  "Exposed" by the Police Gazette
                            By:   Edward  Van  Emery

                                       P A R T   I
             THE ORIGINAL POLICE GAZETTE  (1845)


                                      Chapter  9
           The Most Revolting Unsolved Murder Mystery
(The Case of Many Clues That Led Nowhere and the $50,000 Reward That Was
Never Claimed.)

      Barely had the McFarland trial ceased to intrude itself into the daily
papers and the general conversation, when the city of New York found a new
and appalling murder, this time an exceedingly mysterious one, to chain its
interest. "Love, illicit or otherwise, but that had the redeeming quality of
flowing deep from at least two hearts," thus points out the Gazette, "lent
the virtue of romance to the Richardson tragedy. The murder that happened
sometime in the early hours of the morning of July 29, 1870, in 12 West
Twenty-third Street, this was as utterly an abhorrent business as murder can
be. That a citizen so respected and benevolent as Benjamin Nathan, one who
should have had not an enemy in all the world, that he should have had his
life-spark extinguished with such shocking brutality made for a revolting
and horrible affair."
      Years were to place it in the fore of the most puzzling of the
unsolved New York murder mysteries. Of the great cases of slaying within the
confines of Manhattan Island that have ever defied unravelment, none has
left trails so apparently distinct and yet so confusing. In no other
instance where justice had finally conceded its utter bewilderment, has even
the public mind been so far at sea. Even the Gazette, which has usually
arrived, sooner or later, at what might be accepted as the lost key that
could have unlocked these mystery doors of death, is forced in the end in
the Nathan murder to advance conjecture that can at best only be accepted as
fantastic.

1)   UNSOLVED  NEW  YORK  MURDER  MYSTERIES

          A)   Murder of Helen Jewett

         The murder of Helen Jewett, one of the first of the big crime
mysteries of the last century, was after all merely just one more instance
where justice had grossly miscarried. For the killing of this beautiful
courtesan on the night of April 11, 1836, in the house on Thomas Street of
which she was then an inmate, her quondam lover, Richard P. Robinson, there
is almost conclusive evidence, escaped the gallows through the bribery of
one of the jurors.

          B)   Mary Rogers Case

           As for the Mary Rogers case the guilt could probably have
been pinned on the right person if her obscure sailor lover had been
compelled to reveal himself, as shown in the chapter devoted to Madame
Restell.

          C)   Murder of Dr. Harvey Burdell

      The murder of Dr. Harvey Burdell, famed as the "Bond Street Mystery,"
which took place in the house numbered 31 on that street in January, 1857,
was pretty well fixed in the public mind as the outcome of black collusion
between Mrs. Cunningham and John J. Eckell, a boarder, who was alleged to be
her lover. While the Gazette gave it plenty of space at the time of its
happening, on the occasion of a review a quarter of a century later it was
conceded that the case had been made more of than it merited. The curiosity
of an ingenuous public helped to make this more than the nine-day wonder
that it was, and the introdution in the case of the "phantom baby" gave it a
bizarre angle. Mrs. Cunningham, who claimed to have been mysteriously
married to the murdered man before his killing, was the only one tried for
the death of Burdell. The trial lasted no more than three days, and as a
result she was pronounced "Not Guilty." While in prison she pretended she
was about to become the mother of an heir to the considerable property of
the murdered man.

          "Once back in the Bond Street house Mrs. Cunningham continued her
deception. She went about it systematically, and in her "make-up," showed
herself a true artist. Her form became gradually more in accordance with the
Hogarth lines of beauty. Unfortunately for Mrs. Cunningham, she had to have
a doctor to assist her in her deceit, and the practitioner she made a
confidant of was Dr. Uhl, a friend, it so happened, of the District
Attorney. Uhl, with the connivance of the authorities, secured a new-born
baby from Bellevue Hospital, which was brought in the care of a nurse who
turned out to be a police woman. So Mrs. Cunningham was forced to come away
from playing at confinement to endure real confinement once more and in the
Tombs.

      The scheming woman, as mother of a posthumous child of the deceased,
would legally have come into control of the bulk of the property left behind
by Dr. Burdell. However, no more of this particular murder, other than to
add that little Justitia Anderson, the baby used in the attempted hoax, was
secured along with her mother as one of the attractions for Mr. Barnum's
Museum, and there exhibited at "twenty-five cents a head, half price for
children."

          D)   Polly Bodine

          As for the crime for which Polly Bodine went on trial, and which
made one of the early features of the National Police Gazette, there has
never been much doubt as to her having been the guilty party. A study of the
famous American crime cases makes one wonder why this case in particular has
chanced to be so generally overlooked by students of these phenomena. But
from out of the Bodine and the Nathan cases, no Edgar Allan Poe, Conan Doyle
or S.S. Van Dine ever strove to fictionize a mystery that led up so many
blind alleys and yet arrived nowhere, and this despite the strong monetary
incentive in the way of reward in the Nathan affair.

2)   A. OAKEY  HALL

      It might be added that A. Oakey Hall happened to play a prominent part
in both the Burdell and the Nathan mysteries. He was the District Attorney
who conducted the Cunningham prosecution and was also the author of a dreary
farce with the unseemly title of "The Coroner's Inquest," which had to do
with the trial and its curious outgrowths. He was the same A. Oakey Hall
later to be referred to by Thomas Nast during the Tweed ring exposure in the
famous Harper's Weekly cartoons as O.K. Haul and who happened to be mayor of
New York at the time of the Nathan tragedy. Of the reward amounting to
almost $50,000, that was offered for the detection of the murderers of
Benjamin Nathan, $5,000. was from out of the Hall pocket.

3)   BENJAMIN  NATHAN

     Benjamin Nathan, around whose foul and mysterious murder this chapter
centers, was one of the first citizens of the community. For three
generations the Nathans had a high place in New York business circles; his
father, Samuel Nathan, had helped to found the New York Stock Exchange, of
which the murdered man was a member. Benjamin Nathan was bound by ties of
blood and marriage with several of the distinguished Jewish families. Judge
Cardozo and Rabbi Julius J. Lyon, were brothers-in-law. His fifty-seven
years had been well lived and bespoke the man who was devout and benevolent
in inclination and honorable in his business dealings.
      In appearance he was of good  medium build and with a kind and even
strong and distinguished face framed in white side-whiskers and with a still
thick thatch of gray-white hair; metal-rimmed spectacles were necessitated
by his imperfect vision. He was in business as broker and private banker on
Wall Street, where his repute was of the highest, and he played a pronounced
part in laying the cornerstone for the Mount Sinai Hospital, to which he had
given generously of his fortune, and of which he had been the president for
a number of years. And this was the man who was found horribly dead on a
sultry July morning, and why and how he came to his end in this way, no one,
it seems, will ever really know. The basic facts which the various sources
examined seem to make out as fairly correct, were summarized in the Gazette
as follows:

4)    BASIC  FACTS  ON  THE  BENJAMIN  NATHAN'S  MURDER  WERE  SUMMARIZED
IN  THE  GAZETTE

           Sometime during May, 1870, the Nathan family had moved for the
summer to their country seat at Morristown, N.J. Once or twice a week it was
the habit of Mr. Nathan to come to his office and consult with his
confidential clerk, and occasionally he would stay overnight in his
luxuriously furnished city home at 12 West Twenty-third Street. He came to
New York on Thursday, July 28 and made what was to be his last appearance
at his Wall Street headquarters. As the following day was to be the
anniversary
of his mother's death and he desired to commemorate this event at the
Nineteenth Street
Synagogue he decided to sleep overnight at home. He found the house in the
hands of carpenters and temporarily upset. At his request four mattresss
were heaped into a makeshift bed in the front parlor on the second floor by
Mrs. Anne Kelly, the housekeeper.

          A)   Four People Were Known To Have Been In The House During The
Hours Of The Killing.

      Among these four, were two of the sons of Nathan, who were in business
in New York, Frederick and Washington, ages twenty-five and twenty-three.
The other two were Mrs. Kelly and her son, William, who acted as a sort of
general helper about the place. It was a few minutes before 6 o'clock of the
following morning, a morning that had broken bright and glorious after a
night of storms, when the first alarm of the dreadful happening was had.
Patrolman John Mangam, of the Twenty-ninth. Precinct was walking along
Twenty-third Street with his thoughts on his relief and making the last turn
of his beat, when his attention was arrested by voices vibrant with terror:
      "Officer !  Officer !  For God's sake, hurry!"
      He turned in the direction of the cries, and noted on the stoop of the
brownstone house which he had passed only a few seconds before, the figures
of two intensely agitated young men, who were still in their night-shirts.
They were recognized instantly as Washington and Frederick Nathan. The
nightshirt of the latter was stained with blood, and his white socks had
trailed unsightly stains to the stoop.
      "Father!  He's lying upstairs!  He's been murdered!" the horror struck
voices of the two young men exclaimed together in broken words. The officer
followed the two into the house and up one flight of stairs. The door to the
front room was still open. There was the ghastly spectacle.
      The fearfully battered body was stretched on its back over the
threshold of this temporary bedroom with the feet extending into a small
room that broke off to the hallway and that was used as a study and office.
On the body, later examination revealed, there were marks of no less than
twelve distinct blows. The gruesome details of the murder are essential in
connection with an important point in the case. Five wounds were about the
head, two of which could have caused immediate death; one had split the left
ear as though with a knife, another, the most frightful one, was near the
temple and crushed the skull. Two of the blows had been of such power as to
break three fingers on the right hand and to fracture the knuckles. The
other marks were on the arms, breast and back. A welter of blood had changed
most of the right side of the dead man's nightgown from white to crimson.
The implement of death was discovered within a few minutes after Officer
Mangam came into the room.
      Near to the street door Washington Nathan had noted a heavy bar about
eighteen inches long with both ends turned down at right angles. The
discovery had been made while Frederick Nathan had gone with Officer Mangam
to summon Superintendent John Jourdan and Chief Detective James J. Kelso by
telegraph. They had only to go a few steps to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where
there was a telegraph station. (Incidentally, the Gazette was conducting a
campaign at the time condemning the manner in which housetops were being
appropriated.)
      Careful note was made of the condition of the room. It revealed other
evidences of the terrific struggle that must have taken place. The walls and
frame of the door, as well as the floor, were blood smeared. Chairs and
other objects were overturned. (The finger-printing system had not been
brought into usage by the police as yet, otherwise on one of the four
persons who had been in the house during the time of the murder, guilt would
have been fastened where it belonged, or else they would have been
exonerated from a suspicion that was never lived down. Robbery had been
committed, whether as a blind or the work of a thief was a subject for vague
supposition. The keys had been taken from the dead man's body, the safe in
the private office had been unlocked and rifled, but there was nothing of
much value to be taken. The safe never contained more than a few hundred
dollars. A Jurgenson watch and three diamond studs had been secured by the
murderer; the timepiece was valued at $600. In the basin in the bathroom
were indications that bloody hands had been washed there.
      That no signs of this deed of violence had come to any of the four who
occupied the house at the time, would have been grounds for strong
suspicion, had this not been explained by the architect who had built the
house. The architect testified that the walls and passage to Nathan's room
had been specially deadened, and made soundproof at the owner's desire, so
that one could very well sleep at one end of the floor and be ignorant of a
life or death struggle at the other end.

5)  NEWSPAPERS  OVERSHADOWED  BY  THE  MURDER

      These were the facts that were brought to the attention of the world
at large through the newspapers on the morning of Saturday, July 30, 1870.
Of such import was this happening as a matter of news value that it all but
crowded the Franco-Prussian War off the front page. The World, for example,
gave more than four entire columns of its front page to the murder on
Twenty-third Street. Only the final of the six columns was devoted to "The
War on the Rhine," and to the account of the skirmishing between outposts,
the neutrality of England, the arrest of newspaper correspondents, and the
claim of a German success at Volklinge. All else in the newspapers was
overshadowed by the murder. The reader on this day probably gave but a
casual glance to the progress of Horace Greeley's proposed candidacy as a
successor to General Grant as the White House occupant. A few lovers of
sport may have taken time to read about the triumphant tour of the Red
Stockings of Cincinnati, a team that appeared unbeatable at the sport called
baseball. The new traction system for Broadway was spoken of and the passing
of the stage-coach was foreboded. There wasn't much doing in the theater,
anyway, at this time of the year, aside from J. K. Emmet, the sweet-voiced
singer, at Wallack's in his character of Fritz Vanderblinkenstoffen in his
new play "Fritz, Our German Cousin."  Joe Jefferson was not to reopen the
Booth Theatre in "Rip Van Winkle" till the middle of the coming month; and
Patti was being advertised for a new concert in the Academy of Music. One
story did get more than a column and it dealt with how Lydia Thompson, the
dashing British blonde, who set off a pair of fleshings so satisfactorily,
had been pursued by (so tells the Gazette) a Miss Griffin with an "intense,
intolerable and peculiar love," which caused the Griffin dame to follow
Lydia Thompson wherever she toured and to write her burning letters by the
hundreds.

6)   TWENTY-THIRD  STREET  IN  THE  VICINITY  OF  NO.  12.

      All day Saturday and Sunday and for many days thereafter Twenty-third
Street in the vicinity of No. 12, found its walks flooded with an awe-struck
and babbling populace. This street was then one of the most notable of the
city thoroughfares. Many fine residences stood on each side of its broad
roadway and well-kept trees edged the sidewalks. Directly opposite the
Nathan home was the quite new Fifth Avenue Hotel, which rose to the then
unusual height of six stories, and which, on account of its altitude had
been equipped with a new-fangled contrivance known  as an "elevator." No. 5
was the home of Professor S.F.B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph.  Lily
Langtry, the beauteous Jersey Lily, had her home on this street soon after.

7)   THE  CITY  BUZZING  WITH  RUMORS  THAT  CONVEYED  A  REPELLENT
SUSPICION.

      Eagerly the newspapers were devoured and their least revelations of
new development were discussed at great length. The coroner's inquest, which
proceeded the following week, was awaited with positive excitement. The city
was buzzing with rumors that conveyed a repellent suspicion. Was this a
parricide? Had it been the hand of Washington Nathan that had done his
father to such an appalling death? August 2nd was the date when the inquest
got under way. That same day one could read of the Nathan burial, which had
occurred the day previous. The  procession of carriages had proceeded to
Cypress Hills Cemetery and passed through an entrance over which was the
Hebrew inscription, "Congregation B'nai Jeshurun" and with the words "Gate
of Prayer" above. Through this the long lines of vehicles was driven and the
casket borne to its grave in a lonely little spot in the hillside. Whose was
the guilty hand in this sad taking off?  The Gazette report of the inquest
follows with but few alterations:

8)      THE  GAZETTE  REPORT  OF  THE  INQUEST

          One of the first to give testimony was Major-General Francis P.
Blair. In addition to being a veteran of the Mexican and Civil Wars he had
been the nominee in 1868 for the Vice-Presidency of the United States on the
ticket headed by Horatio Seymour, and which had given little opposition to
the one headed by General Grant. About twenty minutes before the discovery
of the murder the General had looked from the window of his room in the
Fifth Avenue Hotel into the room on the third floor of the Nathan home and
had seen Frederick Nathan in the act of getting out of bed. Blasir's
observations before returning to his own couch had made note of another
fact. The front door of the Nathan house leading to the street was open to
almost the full half distance.
          This fact was quite at variance with the statement that came out
in the examination of John Mangam, the officer on the beat. Mangam declared
he had examined the front door of the Nathan house at 1:30 and 4:30. It can
be seen where more credence can be placed on the word of Major General Blair
than of the policeman so far as this contention may be concerned. The point
can have held importance since Dr. Joseph E. Janvrin, the physician attached
to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, testified that he had examined the body of the
deceased some few minutes after 6 a.m. and that Mr. Nathan had then been
dead not less than three or four hours, in his opinion. Someone could have
been concealed in the house and escaped  after the fell deed.
          Walton H. Peckham, whose house stood at the southwest corner of
Twenty-third Street and Fifth Avenue, and which was the nearest to the east
from the Nathan residence, admitted to having heard some noise during the
night, but could not determine the significance of same. Considering that so
many windows must have been open close to the Nathan house the presumption
is that the noises of the death struggle must have attracted some attention
unless the murder happened at a time when the night storms had broken loose
again. There was heavy rain and rumblings of thunder between 2 and 3 o'clock
in the morning.

      There was other inconsequential testimony which was made much of for
the time being. A nephew of the dead man was among those sworn in, an act
that led to an odd incident, though one that had little bearing on the case.
One speaking for the witness declared to the Coroner that since said witness
was of the Holy House of Israel, the requirements were that to be sworn in
"he must have his hat on his head, his face to the east, and his hand on the
five books of Pentateuch."  The witness, however, was sworn in accordance
with the customary court procedure and his testimony was of no import.

9)   STORIES OF THE FOUR PERSONS WHO WERE IN THE HOUSE WHEN BENJAMIN  NATHAN
WAS MURDERED.

          A)   FREDERICK  NATHAN

          Frederick Nathan, when it came his time to describe the happenings
of the fatal night and morning, gave a satisfactory account of how he had
spent the evening. He was slender-framed, and luxuriant "Burnside" whiskers
gave his face dignity. He reached home at about midnight and he exchanged a
few words with his father, who desired to know if he wished any of the
ice-water that had been placed in his room.  Frederick had slept undisturbed
during the night, not even taking note of the homecoming of his brother,
Washington. He had arisen shortly before 6 a.m. and had begun to dress, when
his attention was attracted by the calls of his brother and had rushed to
the floor below. He knelt down over the body of his father hoping to find
that life still remained. In this way his nightshirt and socks became
stained with the blood of his parent.

          B)   WASHINGTON  NATHAN
          Washington Nathan was, of course, the one on whom all waited for
his testimony. So far as was ever made known, he was the last to see his
father in life and the first to look upon his dead body. He was slender,
like his brother, but carried himself more gracefully; he had only a slight
mustache and looked much the younger of the two. Suspicion, which he was
never able during his life to altogether live down, had been directed his
way on a very strong current. He had enjoyed a rather interesting evening
the night of July 28, and admitted to having been from 9 o'clock until
midnight in the well-known and fashionable maison de joie kept by Irene
Macready, at 104 East Fourteenth Street. He reached home at 12:20, noted
that both his father and his brother were sleeping soundly and he retired
without disturbing either. A few minutes before 6 o'clock the following
morning he arose and, as he was to take part in the ceremony that had kept
his father in the city, and as his father, moreover, was a heavy sleeper, he
went down to call him. And then his eyes met with the sight that caused him
to call for his brother.

      The hearing had extended to August 11, when the Coroner produced
something of a sensation by calling the name of Miss Clara Dale. This was
the young lady who had entertained Washington from the hours of nine until
midnight in the house on Fourteenth Street.  We read that "her face was full
and fair and her physique and carriage were stately." As to how ladies of
her trade in the Seventies dressed, the following may not be a fair
criterion, since "she had divested herself of all showy ornaments, causing
her to appear as an elegant lady." However, "she wore a green and white
striped silk dress, with panier, flesh-colored kids (gloves), and the hair
was done up in waterfall and puffs. Her gaiters were the latest style worn
by fashionable ladies, with the preposterous high brass heels, and white
pearl buttons, and tassels."
      Her testimony was brief and to the point and her examination was in no
ways embarrassing. The District Attorney, we are informed, "treated her with
a manner polite enough to be called Chesterfieldian." It was much nicer
treatment than was accorded Mrs. Anne Kelly, who had appeared on the scene a
day or so earlier.

          C)   MRS.  ANNE  KELLY

       Mrs. Kelly was subjected to far more personal questioning than was
the fate of Miss Clara Dale, which brought a letter of caustic rebuke from
Dr. Mary Walker. Mrs. Kelly was even made to confess to an unhappy event in
her early life that had no bearing on the case. She had been the housekeeper
in the Nathan house for four years and according to her story her master had
reached home around 10 p.m., and after carrying ice-water to his room on the
second floor and arranging a bed for him on the floor According to his
direction, she had fastened the doors and windows, retired to her room at
the other end of the second floor and had heard nothing  thereafter until
she had been awakened by the cries of Washington in the morning.

          D)   WILLIAM  KELLY

          Her son, William Kelly, followed Miss Clara Dale on the stand, and
his was a severe grilling. His examination could not have been more severe
if he had been on trial for the murder. A pale young man of insignificant
build who gave his age as twenty-four and whose sunken cheeks and hollow
eyes made him rather sickly-looking. He had been discharged from the Union
Army in 1865 and was receiving a pension of $8. a month from the Government.
He lived on this and odd change he picked up around the Nathan house, where
he lodged and had been sleeping on the night of the murder in his room in
the attic. He had heard nothing  during the night. He had risen shortly
after 5 on the following morning and after dressing had gone to work in his
room blackening the shoes  of the Nathan men, which he had taken to his room
the previous evening. His attention to the tragedy had been first attracted
by the calls of Washington Nathan.

      There you have the stories of the four persons who were actually known
to have been in the house while Benjamin Nathan was being beaten to death.
Nothing vital was ever made out of their mass of testimony. Could either of
these be the guilty one?

10)   WHO  WAS  THE   MOST  SUSPECTED?

          A)   FREDERICK  NATHAN

      Frederick Nathan, it sould be said at once, was never under suspicion,
nor was there any good reason why he should be. In fact, so utterly was he
free o suspicion that were this a narrative of fiction instead of fact,
right here we would have the guilty party.

         B)   MRS.  KELLY

      Mrs. Kelly had few fingers pointed her way, though there had been some
discrepancy in some of her statements. First she said she had heard nothing
on the fatal night, then she said she had been awakened by the storm. But on
the whole she told a straightforward story and impressed every one as a
hard-working and harmless being.

        C)   WILLIAM  KELLY

       William Kelly, there is little doubt, was the one on whom the police
tried to fasten suspicion, at least as an accomplice. It was hinted that he
might have opened a door to let in the one who had done the murder; that he
mght have committed the deed himself. One version, which the Gazette held in
derision, drew a picture of the boy slinking into the room to rifle Mr.
Nathan's pockets. Suddenly the sleeping man wakened and recognized the
sneak-thief. Before he could make an outcry Kelly struck Nathan over the
head and knocked him unconscious, then proceeded with the brutal killing so
that the danger of accusation would be forever removed. Somehow, the Gazette
seemed to take the view that William Kelly was too supine a character for
such desperate work. This was a point of view strongly taken by Edmund
Lester Pearson in his book "Studies in Murder," in which is to be found the
most able and interesting review of the Twenty-third Street murder.

          D)   WASHINGTON  NATHAN

       This leaves only Washington Nathan of the quartet to whom attention
has been turned. Suspicion, of course, pointed all the more strongly in his
direction when it was discovered that his feminine associations leaned
toward ladies of easy morals. And there was only his word for it that he,
the last known to have seen his father  breathing in life, had reached home
at the time he claimed, twenty minutes past midnight. And no living soul but
Washington Nathan could know whether he had slept undisturbed through the
hours of the murder. He died abroad practically in exile twenty-two years
after the burial of his father with the mystery unsolved. His hair was white
and his health had been broken for several years. His character  never
seemed to take on any of the strength of that of his father.  In 1879, the
same year that marked the passing of his mother, he got mixed up in an
unpleasant escapade in the Coleman House in which he was shot in the neck by
a woman named Fanny Barrett. In 1884 he married the widowed daughter of
Colonel J.H. Mapleson. Bequests of more than $100,000, of which $75,000.
came to him from his father, enabled him to round out an idle and misspent
existence. But for all the general worthlessness of his character it never
betrayed anything in the way of vicious symptoms such as could have turned
him into a parricide so fiendish as to inflict the brutal wounds that had
caused the death of his father.

      More than a week was taken up with the proceedings of the inquest and
the list of those examined was an extended one, and never got anywhere. All
sorts of leads were followed, and they were many. Chief Jourdan of the
Police received  almost five hundred letters ere the murder was ten days
old, and most of them advised him how to handle the case. Several times
there were arrests that gave hope that the murderer had been found, and then
the expectations proved to have no genuine basis.

11)   OTHER  SUSPICIONS,  CONFESSIONS, ARRESTS  BUT  NONE  PROVED  GUILTY.

          A)   THOMAS  DUNPHY

      One of the arrests, that of Thomas Dunphy, was an odd business. Mr.
Dunphy, a quite prominent lawyer, was spending an evening with some ladies
in a house  over in Brooklyn in the week after the excitement on
Twenty-third Street. Dunphy, like most barristers of the period, had a
tendency toward dramatics. He reacted the tragedy with gestures and resonant
vocal effects for the ladies in the parlor and took the part of the
imaginary murderer. His acting was so realistic that one  young lady, who
had been listening in at the keyhole, ran out of the house in her agitation
and convinced  an officer of the law that the murderer had been found.
Dunphy was collared by the policeman and carted off to the station-house and
it took him an entire evening, most of which was spent in a cell, before he
proved his innocence. Strangely enough, he had been co-author of a book on
murder  trials which had been published in 1867 under the title Remarkable
Trials of All Countries."

          B)   GEORGE  ELLIS

      Following the inquest there came a number of other suspicions and
arrests. Most of them were "confessions" by convicts who wished to get free
passage to New York. Then George Ellis, a convict in Sing Sing Prison, was
brought into the case. He had been heard to say that he could give the name
of the Nathan murderer. He was brought down to New York and he identified
the "dog" from out of a score of such implements that had been gathered from
various shops. Ellis said that before his commitment to Sing Sing he and a
burglar named George Forrester had planned to rob the Nathan house. The plan
had been to enter the house while the family was away in the country.
Forrester, in the opinion of Ellis, had undertaken the job alone and had
been surprised to find Nathan in his room. Forrester was arrested in 1872
after quite a chase and was represented by the celebrated criminal lawyers,
Howe and Hummed. The case against Forrester never got  very far. It was felt
that the testimony against the man would not stand up and he was discharged,
only to be sent to Joliet, where he was wanted on another charge.
      Ellis, who was not permitted to testify against Forrester, explained
his identification of the "dog" as an implement with which the two had often
worked. The Gazette refers to one of the "leads" noted in the "Recollections
of a New York Chief of Police," by George Walling, who was thirty-eight
years on the force. According to Walling, while Ellis was under guard in the
Sixth Precinct Station during the pursuit of Forrester, Ellis, in
conversation with Detective Patrick Dolan, said one day:
      "I'm going back to State's Prison and Superintendent Jourdan is going
to die. Isn't it too bad?"
      "How do you know that?"  Dolan inquired.
      "Well___his clothes don't fit him," was the answer.
      The implication that Walling would seem to convey is that the Police
head was burdened with some haunting secret and that Judge Cardozo had used
strong  influence to force Jourdan into shrouding with mystery certain facts
that might have reflected unfavorably on some one in the Nathan family, and
yet $30,000. of the amount of reward for detection was put up by the wife of
the murdered man. Nor does the Walling deduction coincide with Walling's
surmise that William Kelly had been a confederate in the murder. In fact,
the one-time Chief of Police of New York is very vague in some portions of
his account. Anyway, Walling has it that Jourdan failed from the day of
Benjamin Nathan's death and was dead himself a few months after.

          C)  THE  BEAUTIFUL  SPANISH  WOMAN

      More than a quarter of a century after Benjamin Nathan had been
consigned to his grave another story brought "a beautiful Spanish woman"
into the case.  Up in a small town in New Hampshire Irene Macready died. It
was in her house on  Fourteenth Street that Washington Nathan had dallied
with Miss Clara Dale on the momentous evening. The Macready woman was said
to have told her nieces  that she had knowledge of how "the beautiful
Spanish woman" had a key to the Nathan house and had been there until 2 or 3
o'clock on the morning of the murder and started to talk of certain
harrowing happenings when Irene Macready gave her the advice to keep her
mouth shut.

12)   THE  GAZETTE  HAD  A  THEORY  OF  ITS  OWN.

        Here it is:

          In business circles there is a theory on the Nathan murder
entertained to this day which we may as well give place to while we are upon
the subject. Many who know him believe that Benjamin Nathan was in
possession of papers of great value to some man of his own station with whom
he stood in business connection. He was, as we have said, a silent man in
his affairs. His own wife never knew what he had in his safe or what he
carried in his pockets, save as he chose to tell her, consequently, he may
have possessed documents of untold importance without the knowledge of any
one but those whom they concerned.
          At any rate, the theorists hold that he did own such documents,
and that he was put out of the way by the person whom they concerned, who
afterwards plundered the place in order to send suspicion on the wrong
track.

      And so the case of many clues is still, and probably will always be,
an unsolved mystery.


Sins of New York
As "Exposed" by the Police Gazette
By Edward Van Every
Publisher:  Frederick A. Stokes Company--New York
Copyright: 1930  3 Printings  October 15, October 23 and October 30.

Prepared and Transcribed by Miriam Medina
RETURN to POLICE MAIN
RETURN to MANHATTAN MAIN
Back To BROOKLYN Main