In the criminal justice system during America’s Gilded Age in New York City, two men defended the city's criminal underworld. Their names were William Howe and Abraham Hummel. This is their story. What is up, Footnoters? Happy New Year! Josh here to tell you about two criminal attorneys in Gilded Age New York. These two men defended the most notorious of criminals, all the way from petty crooks to crime bosses to hardened murderers.
I would be willing to bet that some of you Footnoters are fans of the TV shows Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. I certainly am – Albuquerque is only a 3-4 hour drive away from me, for one, and two, both are among the best shows that the 21st century have had to offer so far.
I bring up Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul because when I first read about Howe and Hummel, I was immediately reminded of the character Saul Goodman, nee James McGill, who gives into his unscrupulous tendencies and becomes the very caricature of what most of us imagine as the scummy lawyer stereotype. Plus, I don’t know about you all, but I’m always captivated by billboards and other advertisements for lawyers and/or their law firms that specialize
in things that, as the kids say, are sus. I see these ads around my town for “easy divorce, $150” or for lawyers with silly nicknames, like “The Strong Arm.” Shout out to Frankie A. People from Denver know who I’m talkin’ about. So when I first read about Howe and Hummel, I immediately thought that I needed to do an episode on this real gem of a duo. Not only do we get a little bit of true crime and talk about the seedy underbelly of Gilded Age New York City,
but we get some admittedly hilarious lawyer antics. And also Anthony Comstock gets embarrassed, and I am always 100% here for that! William Howe and Abraham Hummel, while partners, were near-exact opposites. Howe was a large and round man. He had a flashy sense of style – he often wore green and pink suits into the courtroom and was usually over-endowed with jewelry. He had
a flare for the dramatic and often openly wept in court. It was rumored that the man kept an onion-scented handkerchief in his pocket to pull out and to “get himself in the mood.” The man even delivered a two-hour long closing argument while on his knees in front of a jury. Abraham Hummel, on the other hand, was a tall and skinny man. And while he did not share Howe’s theatricality, Hummel made up for it in terms of his ability to find
and exploit loopholes in the law. Hummel’s specialty was “breach of contract suits,” which, in Hummel’s case, at least were elaborate blackmail schemes. OK, maybe “elaborate” is overselling it just a little bit. Basically, the scheme involved blackmailing married men who had been, let’s say not very discretionate in their marriages. If Hummel had learned that a young woman had enjoyed the company of a rich and married man, he would convince her to file an affidavit testifying that a promise
of marriage had been made to the young woman. Hummel would then contact the lawyer of the rich man and say something along the lines of “hey, so I have a signed affidavit that says your client promised my client marriage. We can take this to court and publicly embarrass you or we can settle this quietly for a sum of say, 10,000 dollars.” Hummel would get half of the settlement. So these two aren’t exactly the most noble of individuals to say the least.
But let’s back up a bit here and talk a little biography. William F Howe was born in London, where he learned the law and began his legal career as a clerk in that city. In 1854, Howe along with a few associates were convicted in the England and Wales Criminal Court, affectionately known as “The Old Bailey” for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. They tried to get an acquittal for a client by swearing
and representing themselves falsely in court. Howe was sentenced to a short prison term. Howe came to the United States shortly thereafter and set up a practice in New York. Wanting to ditch his past, Howe claimed to have been from Boston and to be the son of a minister. When he arrived in New York, he set up a law practice of his own. Back in those days, one didn’t need to have attended law school and hold a juris doctorate to practice the law.
Howe’s early career mostly involved dealings with the Union Army during the Civil War in some curious ways. In 1862, he is listed as the Judge Advocate of the New York State Calvary Brigade – a position within the military itself. But by 1863, Howe was working to get Union Soldiers out of their service. To do this, he would secure writs of Habeus Corpus, which allows someone imprisoned to make the argument that they had been detained
wrongfully. Sorry, legal eagle friends, if that’s far too simplistic an explanation! Once the client showed up for his Habeus hearing, Howe would claim things like the man had signed onto the Army while drunk or that some family business or family business circumstance had made his enlistment illegal. One historian wildly claims that Howe’s record of using Habeus Corpus inspired Abraham Lincoln to suspend Habeus in 1863. This of course, is ridiculous, but I think the point that Howe used
Habeus THAT effectively resonates a little bit. Once his practice got going, Howe hired Abraham Hummel as a clerk when Hummel was just thirteen years old. Six years later, Hummel had impressed Howe so much that Howe made Hummel a full partner. At that same time, Howe and Hummel open their new office right across the street from The Tombs, a notorious Manhattan prison. The Tombs existed in various forms all the way to 2023, when it was condemned, and then it was demolished in mid-2024.
Of course, the buildings evolved a few times over the nearly 200 years it was in operation, but the complex was a detention center in some form for its entire existence. Honestly, a whole series of episodes could be done on The Tombs. And since 3 out of the 5 Footnoting History hosts live in or around New York City, maybe one of them could do a field trip. Samantha does do a lot of legal history, too! No pressure at all, Sam. None!
Howe and Hummel’s choice of location was perfect, because it allowed them to have quick access to many of the city’s criminals and to build a reputation with that specific clientele. And Howe was particularly interested in murder cases. Over the course of his career, Howe represented somewhere around 650 accused murderers. Perhaps his most infamous defendant, one Johnny Dolan, was
convicted for killing James Noe with eye gougers and an iron bar. Apparently, Mr. Dolan, despite his brutal attack on Noe, had the wherewithal to place a pillow under his severely lacerated head. Noe died in the hospital a few days later. Dolan was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Howe tried to prevent the execution by filing appeals and delays. Dolan was actually granted a few stays of execution, but was ultimately hanged in the Tombs in 1876.
Howe and Hummel also made a name for themselves defending an abortion provider accused of murder. Jacob Rosenzweig, a man who had immigrated from Poland, claimed he had a medical degree, and set up a clinic for “ladies in trouble” found himself accused of the murder of Alice Bowlsby. Bowlsby’s body had been found stuffed into a trunk at New York City’s Hudson River Railroad depot. It took a while, but evidence led authorities to Rosenzweig’s home,
where he had been practicing as “Dr. Ascher.” Despite Howe’s defense and Rosenzweig’s strategy of denying everything, he was eventually convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to seven years hard labor at Sing Sing prison. The duo also handled a case in which they went up against would-be moral overlord, Anthony Comstock. At issue here were two women, Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, affectionately known as Tennie. And this time I’m not making up a nickname
for her, that’s what she was actually called! These two women were, from the perspective of 19th century America, troublemakers. They spoke their minds when it came to politics and sex. They openly practiced spiritualism, mesmerism, and occultism. They even gave Cornelius Vanderbilt stock tips from beyond. Insert your finance-bro jokes here.
The two founded a newspaper called “Woodhulf and Claflin’s Weekly” in which they advocated for things like an end to traditional marriage, a repeal of the law of supply and demand, and a universal government based on reason conducted in a universal language called “Alwate,” an early version of Esperanto. They were even the first to publish Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto in the United States. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the communism that
got them in hot water with the law. Instead it was good old-fashioned gossip. The duo published that a famous Brooklyn preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, had an ongoing affair with Elizabeth Tilton, his best friend’s wife. What stand-up guy! She had heard this from none other than famous suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton and confirmed it when she slept with Tilton’s husband. The newspaper also published Tennie Claflin’s claims that she had witnessed a famous Wall
Streeter named Luther Challis get a couple of teenagers drunk and slept with them. Apparently, he bragged to his friends about it, and this is gross, by holding up a bloody finger and saying it was the “red token” of his victim’s virginity. After the paper sold 150,000 copies of that issue, Comstock took notice. He was already on a crusade to eliminate anything he deemed “sinful.” By the way, if you are a consumer of books by authors like Sarah J Maas or Rebecca Yarros,
know that you’re making the ghost of Anthony Comstock very uncomfortable. Please keep it up. Comstock found a willing federal judge to bring up Woodhull and Claflin on obscenity charges and had the two arrested. Luther Challis was also suing for libel. Howe took the lead here and argued that if Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly
was obscene than so was the poetry of Lord Byron and even the Bible. What they did was put Comstock on the stand and read the newspaper line by line, stopping at the end of each sentence to ask Comstock if it was obscene. The answer much more often than not was no. In the end, it came down to a single three-line sentence in question – the one describing Challis
bragging about his bloody finger. Howe then read Deuteronomy 22:15, which reads, “Then shall the father and mother of the young woman take and bring forth the tokens of the young woman’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate.” He asked Comstock if that was obscene. Comstock, of course, said no. Though the case went to trial, Howe and Hummel got the obscenity charge tossed out on a technicality and nobody showed up to
testify on behalf of Challis in the libel case. The duo defended so many other notorious clients, and I’m tempted to discuss some of these cases as a series in the future. I was particularly taken with the case of Fredericka “Marm” Mandelbaum, who was the most notorious fence in New York. A fence is a purveyor of stolen goods, for those not in the know. That case
even involved some international intrigue! We’ll call the series something like “From the cases of Howe and Hummel, Attorneys at Crime.” But for now, let me close with Howe and Hummel’s end. Howe died in 1902 from a heart attack, and Hummel wasn’t long for the legal profession after Howe’s death. Abraham Hummel was disbarred five years later for suborning perjury and was sentenced to a year in jail. Upon his release, Hummel left for Paris.
So what do we do with this pair of notorious criminal attorneys? A lot, actually. Howe and Hummel really get a tension in American identity. Americans tend to love people who are innovative in their manipulations of what they perceive as unjust systems, yet they absolutely abhor criminality. They can tell us a lot about the legal politics of the Gilded Age, certainly. But most important, I think they invite us
to think more deeply about criminal defense attorneys more generally. Being a defense attorney, I imagine, is to be unpopular. Many people believe that criminal cases are open and shut and that defense attorneys are there to help criminals get away with their crimes. For Howe and Hummel, that was probably true. But, at the same time, all of the criminals the duo defended were legally entitled to representation and deserved a fair trial. Howe and Hummel,
in their backwards kind of way, made sure that happened. We don’t have to like them, find them ethical, and we don’t have to agree with their actions, of course. These two men certainly weren’t heroes. But man, aren’t they fascinating? We’ll check in with them again sometime soon. Thanks for listening to this episode of Footnoting History. A reminder that we are on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky,
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