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HOWE & HUMMEL The True and Scandalous History of Howe & Hummel
Howe and Hummel: Their True and Scandalous History [Nov 01, 1985] Rovere, Richard H.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1947
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June 30, 2015The most famous lawyers of an era are often forgotten a generation later. Howe & Hummel are two perfect examples. In 1891, they were as famous as anyone in New York City; by 1947 (when this book was published) their celebrity had vanished. For what were they known?
“They were the attorneys for all the major brothel owners. When seventy-four madams were rounded up during a purity drive in 1884, every one of them named Howe & Hummel as counsel. Mother Mandelbaum, the leading fence of the age, paid Howe & Hummel a retainer of five thousand dollars a year to defend her and her army of thieves. The firm had the legal business of General Abe Greenthal’s Sheeny Mob, a nationwide syndicate of pickpockets; of Chester McLaughlin’s Valentine Gang of forgers; and of the Whyos, an organization of thugs and killers that was perhaps the toughest of all the nineteenth-century gangs. William Mosher, the professional thief, and his partner, Joe Douglas, who confessed, as he lay dying, that he and Mosher were the kidnappers of Charlie Ross, were Howe & Hummel clients. Howe & Hummel represented the Pool Sellers Association, the trade agency of the city’s policy-shop owners and bookmakers. Charles O. Brockway, a counterfeiter so adroit that the United States Treasury once had to withdraw an issue of its own hundred-dollar bills because they were indistinguishable from his, found it expedient to pay Howe & Hummel in genuine coin of the realm.”
(The New Yorker is no longer written with such adroit confidence, but some of the references – Charlie Ross, “policy-shop owners” – are mystifying to 21st-century readers.) It is a paradox – or isn’t it? – to be rich and famous for defending the lowly and the profane.
Men of this era were like characters in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, to which they were contemporary: dressing in tweed coats and bedecked with diamonds.
Howe & Hummel disprove Bob Dylan’s deathless dictum: “To live outside the law you must be honest.” After reading Rovere’s book, one must amend it to: “To live outside the law you must be honest, or have a talented lawyer.”
The shocking dénouement is their politics. When they weren’t defending prostitutes and crooked politicians, they focused their immense intelligence on anarchists and freethinkers:
“In 1873, they were counsel to Mrs. Victoria Woodhall, the great spiritualist, feminist, lady broker, and candidate for President on the Equal Rights ticket, who, along with her sister, Tennie C. Claflin, and been indicted for allegedly sanity is in their weekly paper, Woodhall & Claflin’s Weekly. The eccentric sisters, children of some snake-oil vendors in Ohio, protégés of Commodore Vanderbilt on Wall Street, believe that marriage was an obsolescent institution, and to expose it as such they had published in the November 12, 1872 issue of their newspaper a rather meaty account of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher’s supposed affair with Mrs. Theodore Tilton, the wife of a prominent journalist, and a description of the even more suppositious seduction of two underage young ladies at the French Ball, by Luther V. Challis, a married and well-known dealer in stocks and bonds. For reasons best known to themselves, neither Beecher nor Challis would sue for slander, so Comstock had Mrs. Woodhall and Mrs. Claflin indicted for obscenity, specifying in his complaint that the indecent words were “token” and “virginity.” Sale of the Weekly was stopped, and the sisters hired hope Howe & Hummel as their attorneys. Howe handled the case in a manner that has a genuinely contemporary flavor. He made it into a free-press campaign and introduced the familiar camel’s-nose-under-the-tent argument. ’Intolerance is on the march,’ he said. ’If we lose this battle, who knows but what the Holy Bible, Shakespeare, and Lord Byron will share the fate of this suppressed journal.’” [He won.]
“They were the attorneys for all the major brothel owners. When seventy-four madams were rounded up during a purity drive in 1884, every one of them named Howe & Hummel as counsel. Mother Mandelbaum, the leading fence of the age, paid Howe & Hummel a retainer of five thousand dollars a year to defend her and her army of thieves. The firm had the legal business of General Abe Greenthal’s Sheeny Mob, a nationwide syndicate of pickpockets; of Chester McLaughlin’s Valentine Gang of forgers; and of the Whyos, an organization of thugs and killers that was perhaps the toughest of all the nineteenth-century gangs. William Mosher, the professional thief, and his partner, Joe Douglas, who confessed, as he lay dying, that he and Mosher were the kidnappers of Charlie Ross, were Howe & Hummel clients. Howe & Hummel represented the Pool Sellers Association, the trade agency of the city’s policy-shop owners and bookmakers. Charles O. Brockway, a counterfeiter so adroit that the United States Treasury once had to withdraw an issue of its own hundred-dollar bills because they were indistinguishable from his, found it expedient to pay Howe & Hummel in genuine coin of the realm.”
(The New Yorker is no longer written with such adroit confidence, but some of the references – Charlie Ross, “policy-shop owners” – are mystifying to 21st-century readers.) It is a paradox – or isn’t it? – to be rich and famous for defending the lowly and the profane.
Men of this era were like characters in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, to which they were contemporary: dressing in tweed coats and bedecked with diamonds.
Howe & Hummel disprove Bob Dylan’s deathless dictum: “To live outside the law you must be honest.” After reading Rovere’s book, one must amend it to: “To live outside the law you must be honest, or have a talented lawyer.”
The shocking dénouement is their politics. When they weren’t defending prostitutes and crooked politicians, they focused their immense intelligence on anarchists and freethinkers:
“In 1873, they were counsel to Mrs. Victoria Woodhall, the great spiritualist, feminist, lady broker, and candidate for President on the Equal Rights ticket, who, along with her sister, Tennie C. Claflin, and been indicted for allegedly sanity is in their weekly paper, Woodhall & Claflin’s Weekly. The eccentric sisters, children of some snake-oil vendors in Ohio, protégés of Commodore Vanderbilt on Wall Street, believe that marriage was an obsolescent institution, and to expose it as such they had published in the November 12, 1872 issue of their newspaper a rather meaty account of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher’s supposed affair with Mrs. Theodore Tilton, the wife of a prominent journalist, and a description of the even more suppositious seduction of two underage young ladies at the French Ball, by Luther V. Challis, a married and well-known dealer in stocks and bonds. For reasons best known to themselves, neither Beecher nor Challis would sue for slander, so Comstock had Mrs. Woodhall and Mrs. Claflin indicted for obscenity, specifying in his complaint that the indecent words were “token” and “virginity.” Sale of the Weekly was stopped, and the sisters hired hope Howe & Hummel as their attorneys. Howe handled the case in a manner that has a genuinely contemporary flavor. He made it into a free-press campaign and introduced the familiar camel’s-nose-under-the-tent argument. ’Intolerance is on the march,’ he said. ’If we lose this battle, who knows but what the Holy Bible, Shakespeare, and Lord Byron will share the fate of this suppressed journal.’” [He won.]
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May 5, 2010Criminal barrister Alex McBride has chosen to discuss
Howe & Hummel: Their True and Scandalous History
by Richard H. Rovere, on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject - Trial By Jury, saying that:
“…This is a fun book and everyone should get it. It’s about two of the most shyster lawyers you can imagine in New York in the second half of the 19th century. In those days you didn’t need a degree or anything to be a lawyer. Howe was an English guy on the run for murder and he pitched up in New York and started a law firm on Center Street in downtown Manhattan. He fell in with the much smarter but equally impecunious Hummel, a ratbag from the Lower East Side. Hummel was a brilliant lawyer but Howe was a brilliant trial advocate and Howe did over 600 capital cases and hardly ever lost. He never lost because of underhand practices like bribing judges and jurors. He also designed his own clothes and he would change his outfits as the trial grew closer to the verdict…”
The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/alex-...
“…This is a fun book and everyone should get it. It’s about two of the most shyster lawyers you can imagine in New York in the second half of the 19th century. In those days you didn’t need a degree or anything to be a lawyer. Howe was an English guy on the run for murder and he pitched up in New York and started a law firm on Center Street in downtown Manhattan. He fell in with the much smarter but equally impecunious Hummel, a ratbag from the Lower East Side. Hummel was a brilliant lawyer but Howe was a brilliant trial advocate and Howe did over 600 capital cases and hardly ever lost. He never lost because of underhand practices like bribing judges and jurors. He also designed his own clothes and he would change his outfits as the trial grew closer to the verdict…”
The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/alex-...
June 15, 2015
Very entertaining account of Howe & Hummel, crooked law firm extrordinaire which thrived in the latter half of the 19th c. in New York City. These two lawyers deserve a place amongst the greatest rascals and charlatans in New York City history, up there with P.T. Barnum himself. Rich in anecdotes of courtroom shenanigans and thinly-disguised blackmail on the duo's part that almost defy belief, this will thrill fans of the seamier side of New York City history who lap up titles like Herbert Asbury's "Gangs Of New York" and Luc Sante's "Low Life". Besides their preeminent position as defense counsel for NY's most famous criminals of the period, both William Howe and Abe Hummel were really colorful 'characters' in themselves, and their mannerisms, dress, and other eccentricities only add a piquant sauce to the feast of iniquity here.
Unfortunately currently out-of-print, editions are available second-hand in the Amazon Marketplace, where I found mine. This 1985 trade paperback is a reprint of the original 1947 edition, compiling Rovere's four-part feature on the pair which appeared in the New Yorker a year previously. Bonus: illustrations by Reginald Marsh.
Unfortunately currently out-of-print, editions are available second-hand in the Amazon Marketplace, where I found mine. This 1985 trade paperback is a reprint of the original 1947 edition, compiling Rovere's four-part feature on the pair which appeared in the New Yorker a year previously. Bonus: illustrations by Reginald Marsh.
March 5, 2009
One of the classic books about lawyers. Rovere paints an almost loving portrait of these two 19th Century scoundrels and, in the process, shows us something of life in 19th Century New York City.
November 6, 2025
Difficult to find but well worth expending the effort in the hunt . Crisp prose reveals the amusing and criminal antics of the late 19 th century’s most famous and successful NYC criminal defense lawyers who also turned show girls suits against prosperous stage door Johnnie’s for breach of promise into a cash cow . Their rise and fall provides a primer into the city’s history at that time and much entertainment . It is a particular delight for lawyers. It was first serialized in The Nee Yorker in the 1940s
August 30, 2020
One of the most interesting books I've ever read about two of the most interesting characters I'd never heard of
August 2, 2011
Decent book about outrageious legal malpractice of a firm in late 1800s in New York
September 18, 2007
Too pimp.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews