Part 7

"_City and County of New York_, _ss_.--Mary Conway, being duly sworn, doth depose and say: I have lived with Mr. and Mrs. Haggerty, in the County Court-House, for over fourteen months, as cook; for about three or four months I did general housework; on Sunday morning, September 10th, I got out of bed with the child that slept with me, wanting to get up; I don't know whether it was half-past six or seven o'clock; Mrs. Haggerty came into the room in her night-dress; and said to me, 'it is too early to get up yet;' I said to her, 'being as I am up I guess I will dress myself;' as I was dressed I went out into the hall; I heard a knocking down stairs; I said to Mrs. Haggerty, 'it sounds as if it was at the Comptroller's door;' I went over to the kitchen, unlocked the kitchen door, and went down stairs to the head of the stairs that leads to the Comptroller's hall; I saw Charley Baulch knocking at the Comptroller's door, and calling, 'Murphy, are you there?' Murphy is a watchman; I came up stairs and went back to the kitchen; shortly after I went down stairs again and saw Charley Baulch with the door of the Comptroller's office open, he holding it back on the outside, and I saw Mr. Haggerty come out of the door with bundles of papers in his arms and bring them up to his bedroom; the door where he came out is at the foot of the stairs, where the glass is broken, going into the County Bureau; I came back, and did not go down any more; each bundle of papers was tied with either a pink tape or a pink ribbon round them; the next thing, I went over from the kitchen out into the hall for a scuttle of coal; in this hall Mr. Haggerty's bedroom door faced me; I saw a man with gray clothes going in there with another bundle of papers like what Mr. Haggerty had; then I brought back the coal to the kitchen, and put it on the fire; the next I saw was this man with the gray clothes going down with a pillow-case on his back, full, that looked as though filled with papers, shaped like the bundles Mr. Haggerty had; at the same time he went down the stairs Charley Baulch said to him, 'This way;' I kind of judged there was something up, and I went to look in the drawer where the pillow-cases were, and I missed one of the linen pillow-cases; I did this soon afterward; soon after the man went down with the pillow-case, Mrs. Haggerty came into the kitchen, giving me a key, and telling me to go over to the drying-room; that is a room separate from the bedrooms; there was a chest there full of linen, table linen and bed linen, and silver right down in the bottom; she told me to get a nut-picker and bring it over, as Mr. Haggerty wanted one; I took all the clothes out of the trunk, and got the nut-picker and brought it back to her, and before I got into the kitchen I said to Mrs. Haggerty, 'What is the matter? The kitchen's all black with smoke, and the dining room's all black with smoke.' She said, 'Mr. Haggerty wanted these papers burned, I told him not to put them in, but he wants them burned;' I went over to the range to cook some eggs for breakfast; it was full of burned papers on the top and in the bottom; there lay a bundle of papers on the top that were about half burned, with a piece of pink tape around them; I put on the cover again; they were partly smothered, going out; Mrs. Haggerty had a poker stirring up the papers on the top and underneath, where the ashes were; the bottom of the range was full of burning papers, and Mrs. Haggerty had the poker stirring them up so that they would burn faster; from underneath the range and the top she took three or four pailfuls of burned papers and emptied them up stairs on the attic floor, in a heap of ashes.

"On Tuesday next, when Mrs. Haggerty came home from the market, she asked me if there was anything new about this robbery in the Comptroller's office; I told her I did not know; I didn't hear nothing, no more than a man came up stairs to-day, and asked me if I let anybody in on Sunday, or if I knew anybody to come into the building on Sunday; I told him I did not know who came in; I didn't attend to the front door; I was cooking, and had nothing to do with the front door; and I asked the man who sent him up stairs; and he said a man down in the hall sent him up stairs to inquire; next, I told Mrs. Haggerty that if I had known it was Charley Baulch sent him up stairs to find any information from me, I should have told the man to go down stairs, that Charley Baulch knew as much about it as I did, and more, for he was one of the men that helped to rob it; she said to me, 'Christ! If Charley Baulch knowed that, he'd run into the East River and drown himself--if he knowed you saw him;' this was on Tuesday night I told her this; Mr. Haggerty left town on Tuesday, saying he was going to Saratoga with Hank Smith, and he would be home on Thursday or Friday, and on Wednesday night he got home from Saratoga; Mrs. Haggerty told him the remarks that I made to her on Tuesday night about the robbery; that I saw all that passed; she told me on Thursday morning that she told Mr. Haggerty about it all, last night; that he was going to wash his feet, but he felt so bad over it; they sat up for two hours in the room talking, and he didn't wash his feet; on Thursday morning when Mr. Haggerty came into the kitchen, he came to me, running in, and said, 'Mary!' I said, 'Sir!' Said he, 'I don't want you to speak of what you saw passed here on Sunday morning; I don't want you to tell these old women or old men in the building; Charley Baulch done it for me, and I done it for another man;' I said, 'I haven't told it to anyone;' He said, 'You did tell it to Kitty' (his wife); I said, 'She knew as much about it as I did; she saw the papers burning;' on next Friday of that same week I saw Mark Haggerty, Mr. Haggerty's brother, who is a detective in the Mayor's office, I think; I called him up stairs and asked him to come in; he said, 'No, I am afraid to come in; I am afraid of Ed.,' that is, Mr. Haggerty; they have not been on speaking terms in a year; I then told him the occurrences that happened in the Court-House on Sunday morning; I told him I didn't feel like staying there; that I was almost crazy about it; he told me to keep it still; that if anybody would hear about it outside they would be collared; I asked him would it be prison; he said certainly.

"On Saturday night I went down to the market where Mrs. Haggerty keeps a stand, and told her that I was going to leave for a few days until this mess would be settled, for fear there would be any arrest, and I should be a witness; she told me all I had to say was that I knew nothing about it; I told her a false oath I would not give; what I saw with my eyes I would swear to; she told me I could do as I chose about it; that I might go against Mr. Haggerty if I chose; she said, 'It's foolish of you to think so; you ought to go to headquarters and consult Mr. Kelso about it;' I told her no, it was none of my business to go and consult him about Mr. Haggerty's robbery; then she and I came together to the Court-House; I got a couple of dresses and a night dress; I went down stairs; she went with me; I met a policeman at the door, and he asked me where I was going; I told him I was going to see my uncle's wife; she was sick; I then went down to Washington street; I came up for my clothes yesterday (Tuesday); the rooms were locked; I went down to the market to where Mrs. Haggerty does business, and the first thing she said to me was, 'By Christ Almighty, Mr. Haggerty will take your life!' I says to her, 'What for?' she said, 'What you told Mark;' I said, 'I've told him the truth about the robbery;' she says, 'Your life will be taken, by Christ Almighty!' I said, 'I want my clothes;' She said, 'You can get your clothes any time, what belongs to you;' she did not come up, and did not open the door; I left my trunk in the hall of the Court-House, that I brought to put my clothes in; they are over there yet; on that day, before I saw Mrs. Haggerty, Mr. Murphy came to me and asked me if I knowed anything about the robbery; if I did, please to tell the Comptroller; I kind of smiled, and said I knew nothing about it; 'Well,' said he, 'I know you know something about it;' I was making the bed in Mr. Haggerty's room when Mr. Murphy came up and asked me if I knew anything about it; I kind of smiled, and said 'No;' Mr. Murphy says, 'I know better, you do;' I says, 'Why?' says he, 'Suppose you should be arrested, then you'd have to prove about it whether you knew anything about it or not;' that was in the hall; said I, 'When I'm arrested, it's time enough to prove it then;' I then promised to see him on the stoop on Saturday night, but I did not; I came up on Sunday morning, and left word at the Hook and Ladder House to have Mr. Murphy come and see me on Sunday night at No. 95 Washington street; Murphy came to me, and I told him I would go up to the Comptroller's house with him and tell the Comptroller all I knew about it, and that I was not doing it for any reward or money; I was doing it to clear the Comptroller in the eyes of the people; I went on Tuesday morning with Murphy to the Comptroller's house, and made the above statement; this morning there was a policeman came into the house where I was staying at No. 95 Washington street; the woman in the house told me he would give me advice about the clothes I had left in the Court-House; he asked me if I had any charge against Haggerty; I told him no, no more than what happened there and what I saw on Sunday morning week, and I explained it to him; he asked me, 'Have you been speaking to Mr. Connolly?' I said, 'Yes, certainly;' the policeman went out of the house; the captain (as the woman called him) came to the door and knocked, and asked the woman about me; she said I had stepped out; he brought her out on the sidewalk, and was talking to her a little while, and as I was in the room I heard him speak Hank Smith's name to her once; when she came in she said he told her that he would like to see me and have a talk with me, because they would do as much for me as Mr. Connolly would in this business.

"MARY CONWAY.

"Sworn to before me, Sept. 20th, 1871.

"THOS. A. LEDWITH, Police Justice."

In consequence of this disclosure, Baulch and Haggerty were arrested on the charge of stealing the vouchers. Search was made in the Court-House, and the half-charred fragments of the vouchers were found in a room used for the storage of old lumber. Naturally, the Ring endeavored to treat this discovery as a trick of the Comptroller's, and they furnished the men charged with the theft with able counsel to defend them.

The citizens on their part endeavored to bring matters to a satisfactory termination and secure the punishment of the Ring; but the members of that body met them at every step with defiance and effrontery. They used every means in their power to prevent an investigation of the public accounts, and to defeat the efforts that were made to recover the money they had stolen from the city. Meanwhile the Citizens' Committee labored faithfully, and, through the efforts of Mr. Tilden, evidence was obtained sufficient to cause the arrest of Mr. Tweed. Garvey, Woodward, and Ingersoll sought safety in flight. Mayor Hall was arrested on the charge of sharing the plunder obtained by the Ring, but the examining magistrate declined to hold him on the charge for lack of evidence against him, and the Grand Jury refused to indict him, for the same reason. Mr. Tweed had been nominated for the State Senate by a constituency composed of the most worthless part of the population, and, in spite of the charges against him, he continued to present himself for the suffrages of these people, by whom he was elected at the November election. In due time the various committees appointed by the citizens made their reports, presenting the facts we have embodied in this chapter. The guilt of the members of the Ring was proven so clearly that no reasonable person could doubt it; but still grave fears were expressed that it would be impossible to bring these men to justice, in consequence of the arts of shrewd counsel and legal quibbles. The determination of the citizens grew with the approach of the elections. Their last great victory over the Ring was achieved at the polls on the 7th of November, when the entire Ring ticket in the city, with but one or two exceptions, was overwhelmingly defeated.

Whether the guilty parties will be punished as they deserve, or whether the citizens will allow the prosecutions they have instituted to flag, the future alone can decide. At the present there is reason to fear that the guilty will escape. Should this fear be realized, the citizens of New York will have abundant cause to regret it. The Ring is badly beaten, but it is not destroyed. Many of its members are still in office, and there are still numbers of its followers ready to do its bidding. Until the last man tainted with the infamy of an alliance with the Ring is removed from office, the people of New York may be sure that the danger is not at an end.

II. PERSONNEL OF THE RING.

Generally speaking, the Ring may be said to include every office-holder in the city, and it is very certain that of late every official has come in for a share of the suspicion with which the people regard the transactions of the Ring. It would be impossible to give an accurate and complete list of the members of that body, for many of them are not yet known to the public; but the recent investigations have shown that it is not composed exclusively of Democrats. A number of Republicans, while openly acting with their party, have been found to be allied with and in the pay of the Ring.

The men who are supposed to have played the most conspicuous parts in the doings of the Ring, and who are believed by the public to be chiefly responsible for its acts, are Mayor A. O. Hall, Richard B. Connolly, William M. Tweed, Peter B. Sweeny, J. H. Ingersoll, Andrew J. Garvey, and E. A. Woodward.

A. OAKEY HALL, Mayor of the city, was born in New York, is of American parentage, and is about forty-six years old. He received a good education, and at an early age began the study of the law. He removed to New Orleans soon after, and was for a while in the office of the Hon. John Slidell. He subsequently returned to New York, where he became associated with the late Mr. Nathaniel Blunt, as Assistant District-Attorney. Upon the death of Mr. Blunt, he was elected District-Attorney by the Whig party, and held that position for about twelve years. At the end of that time, he was elected Mayor of New York, to succeed John T. Hoffman, now Governor of the State. For some years he has been a member of the law firm of Brown, Hall & Vanderpoel, which firm enjoys a large and lucrative practice. He is said to be a lawyer of considerable ability, and has undoubtedly had great experience in criminal practice. As a politician, his experience has also been extensive and varied. He began life as a Whig, but became a prominent Know-Nothing in the palmy days of that party. Finding Know-Nothingism a failure, however, he became a Republican, from which party, about nine or ten years ago, he passed over to the Democrats.

A writer in _Every Saturday_ thus speaks of him:

"His Honor has some facility as a writer, and for twenty years has maintained a quasi or direct connection with the press. He is not lacking in the culture of desultory reading, and when he chooses to do so can bear himself like a gentleman. Of such a thing as dignity of character, he appears to have but a faint conception. Pedantry is more to him than profundity, and to tickle the ear of the town with a cheap witticism, he deems a greater thing than to command it with a forcible presentation of grave issues. The essential type of the man was presented to public gaze about two years ago, when he stood on the City Hall steps dressed from head to foot in a suit of green to review a St. Patrick's procession. He is a harlequin with the literary ambition of a Richelieu. He affects an intimacy with the stage, and has done something in the way of producing plays. He can write clearly and concisely when he will, but prefers to provoke with odd quips and far-fetched conceits. He patronizes journalists and magazine writers with a sort of grotesque familiarity, and readily makes himself at home among the Bohemians of Literature."

Since his union with the Democracy, Mr. Hall has been the constant and intimate associate of the men who have brought disgrace and loss upon the city, and of late years he has been regarded as one of the leading members of the Ring. It is said openly in New York that he owes his election to the Mayoralty entirely to William M. Tweed. As Mayor of the city, he has been officially connected with many of the transactions by which the city has been defrauded of large sums of money. Some of the most prominent newspapers of the city have denounced him as a thief and a sharer of the stolen money. His friends, on the other hand, have declared their belief that his worst fault was his official approval of the fraudulent warrants. They state that he has never in his manner of living, or in any other way, given evidence of possessing large sums of money, and his legal partner made oath before the Grand Jury that Mr. Hall was not worth over $60,000 or $70,000. It is certain that when the proprietor of the _New York Times_, which journal had been loud in denouncing Hall as a thief, was called on by the Grand Jury to furnish them with the evidence upon which this charge was based, he was unable to do so, and the Grand Jury was unable to obtain any evidence criminating Mr. Hall personally. His friends declare that his signing the fraudulent warrants was a purely ministerial act, and that having many thousands of them to sign in a year, he was compelled to rely upon the endorsements of the Comptroller and auditing officers.

In the present state of affairs, there is no evidence showing that Mr. Hall derived any personal pecuniary benefit from the frauds upon the treasury. Public sentiment is divided respecting him; many persons believing that he is a sharer in the plunder of the Ring, and others holding the opposite opinion. The most serious charges that have been made against him, have been brought by Mr. John Foley, and Mr. Samuel J. Tilden. The former is the President of the Nineteenth Ward Citizens' Association, and the latter the leader of the Reform Democracy. Mr. Tilden, in his speech at the Cooper Institute, November 2d, 1871, thus spoke of Mayor Hall:

"These three Auditors met but once. They then passed a resolution which now stands on the records of the city in the handwriting of Mayor Hall. It was passed on his motion, and what was its effect? Did it audit anything? Did it perform the functions? Did it fulfil the trust committed to the Board? Not a bit of it. It provided that all claims certified by Mr. Tweed and Mr. Young, Secretary of the old Board of Supervisors, should be received, and, on sufficient evidence, paid. Mayor Hall is the responsible man for all this. He knew it was a fraudulent violation of duty on the part of every member of that Board of Audit to pass claims in the way they did.

* * * * *

"Fellow-citizens, let me call your attention for a moment to the after-piece of these transactions. Our friend, Mayor Hall, is a very distinguished dramatist, and he would consider it a very serious offence to the drama to have the after-piece left out. Now, what was that after-piece? When the statements were published in regard to these frauds, Mayor Hall published a card, wherein he said that these accounts were audited by the old Board of Supervisors, and that neither he nor Mr. Connolly was at all responsible for them. A little later--about August 16th--Mayor Hall said it was true they were audited by the Board of Audit, and, in doing so, they performed a ministerial function, and would have been compelled by mandamus to do it, if they hadn't done it willingly. I do not deem it necessary in the presence of an intelligent audience and the lawyers sitting around me on this stage, to present any observations upon the idea that 'to audit and to pay the amount found due' was a ministerial function. . . . . . .