Scoundrels in Law: The Trials of Howe & Hummel, Lawyers to the Gangsters, Cops, Starlets, and Rakes Who Made the Gilded Age

by Cait Murphy

Book Overview

"A delightful romp through the theatrical courtrooms, seedy back alleys, and elegant parlors of Gilded Age New York." --James McGrath Morris, author of Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power "Only Dickens could have done more with this fabulously rich material. Terrific stuff." --Eric Homberger, author of Mrs. Astor's New York Cait Murphy, author of Crazy '08 , is back with Scoundrels in Law : a witty, irreverent book that details the life...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061714283
• ISBN13: 9780061714283
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books (DC)
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Criminal Lawyers-literally

I graduated from law school in 1975 just before the Bates decision by the US Supreme Court legalized lawyer advertising. One of the examples of methods used to circumvent the prohibition of professional advertising was the "shingle" of Howe & Hummel which was twenty five feet high and could be seen all over the lower east side of New York from whence came many of the firm's clients. Neither Howe nor Hummel had any formal legal education. However Howe & Hummel grew into a formidable powerhouse in the period from the end of the Civil War until the early twentieth century. Howe was a skilled trial lawyer or as the great Francis Wellman described him "verdict-getter". Howe was not so talented in court except when it came to finding willing perjurers or bribing court officials. Actually neither was above such shenanigans, leading to several disbarments of Hummel. Howe himself possessed an English conviction for fraud and did time in one of Her Majesty's (Queen Victoria) Prisons. But what a pair they were! Their offices were filled daily with petty thieves, political power-brokers and serious celebrities. Murder was Howe's speciality, although it was Hummel who found a loophole in the law which freed most of convicted murderers in the state. Howe was known to possess the ability to cry at will, although some argued that he rubbed a fresh onion in his handkerchief on the days scheduled for closing argument. Chock full of stories involving the partner's triumphs and defeats, Scoundrels in Law is a delight

Sensational Book

This is the story of a couple of attorneys who were in partnership with one another and became (for lack of better words) the media darlings of the gilded age/the first celebrity lawyers. Author Cait Murphy paints a broad picture of William Howe and Abraham Hummel. Characters in their own right and a study of flashy contrasts in physical appearance, they managed to defend some of the oddest collection of clients which ranged from the members of the 'Gangs of New York' to abortionists, policemen, public officials, cat killers, wife murderers, etc. No crime was too lurid for the two to take on. Their grimey office saw any number of oddball characters walk through their door. As for their methods, Howe and Hummel knew no boundaries when it came to mounting a flashy defense and getting their clients off the hook. They can be likened to O.J. Simpson's dream team except far less ethical. They rubbed elbows not only with their odd lot of clients, but with the celebrities and luminaries of the day and became celebrities in the process of getting a lot of media coverage. Howe and Hummel, as the book's title states, were real scoundrels. They pulled out all their estimable tricks to defend their clients and agressively found many legal loopholes and constitutional twisting to achieve their goals. As I read this book, I kept thinking these two really would translate well as characters in a movie. For me, this book was completely engaging from start to finish. Highly descriptive, the author Cait Murphy painted an indelible picture of the 'gilded age', New York City, and the judicial system of time and merged it with emerging modern journalism/reporting. It was an extremely satisfying read.

Got a Good Lawyer Joke!

If you're wondering when lawyer jokes became a sensation, maybe you should read this entertaining, informing, and well-documented book on two New York City lawyers during the Victorian age. The law firm of Howe and Hummel provided representation for abortionists, celebrities, gangsters in the Irish mob in Five Points, etc. basically anybody who had the money to hire them. Howe & Hummel broke laws that they swore to upheld in order to get their clients free. Of course, the author does paint a different life in New York City at the time with the corruption at Tammany Hall and city corruption was alive, well, and thriving. Life was different in New York City during the Howe and Hummel years as lawyers. There was plenty of poverty, corruption, crimes, and moral indignation during this time period to allow lawyers like Howe and Hummel to thrive in the city. They were not only tolerated but celebrated as the attorneys to go too if you had the financial means to hire them. Of course, they were just about as criminal as their clients. The author does an excellent job in explaining the history of the city, the men's lives, their client's histories and cases, and explaining how Howe and Hummel thrived during the Gilded Age in New York City. Each chapter explains specific cases and the circumstances around them. This is a great book for reading if you are interesting in true crime, New York City's history, and legal history.

entertaining vintage courtroom tales

If I have one complaint about "Scoundrels in Law" it is that it ended too soon. Cait Murphy's tales of courtroom derring-do in Gilded Age New York City are fascinating. William Howe and Abraham Hummel were a sort of Laurel-and-Hardy pair who built a huge practice in the gaslight era (the late Nineteenth Century) by defending criminals including murderers as well as representing stars in the literary and stage worlds. The pair spent most of their time doing exactly what any other lawyer would do: researching precedents, making arguments, bargaining, negotiating, seeking leverage. The rest of the time, however, they were engaged in less savory behavior, like blackmail, perjury, hiding witnesses, and producing fake ones. The grossly-overweight Howe died first, before he could be called to account for his illegal and immoral behavior. Hummel was not so lucky. The best part of this book was the author's rendition of the cases Howe and Hummel handled. These make the book less a dual biography than an account of courtroom antics. (The author admits that biographical information for some of the time period is simply unavailable.) Cait Murphy describes the crimes with morbid relish, from the botched abortion that resulted in a blackened putrid cadaver found in a suitcase, to the strange woman who went around killing cats, allegedly out of love for them. Howe & Hummel did not always win--nor did they deserve to--but they were known for their willingness to push their tactics to the limit. They took on as clients both the dregs of society and the rich and famous, and even worked in favor of causes like free speech. Their unjust behavior was occasionally nauseating. It is interesting to note that the case that finally snared Hummel was not a murder case; it was a bizarre divorce case involving a perjured witness and a chase around Texas. "Scoundrels in Law" provides an interesting look at an era when courtroom decorum and ethics were much less developed than they are today. Howe and Hummel thrived on bending (and more often breaking) the rules.

Fascinating and Funny

Between the Civil War and the turn of the century, William Howe and Abraham Hummel were the most famous lawyers in New York City, and, as author Cait Murphy reminds us, perhaps the first celebrity lawyers anywhere. Howe, a vast and bombastic litigator who decked himself in spectacular clothing and constellations of jewelry, was the perfect mouthpiece - the man every crook wanted to represent him in court. Hummel, minuscule and black-clad, was the backroom operator whose research armed Howe for court and whose quiet matrimonial practice was as much about blackmail and/or paying off unwanted mistresses as it was about legal issues. Between their talent, their connections, and their near-complete lack of scruples, Howe and Hummel had the right tools for any legal job, and would deploy them for anyone who could afford the fee, be they notorious gangsters, millionaire playboys, anarchists, or cat-killing street lunatics. Nothing happened in Gilded Age New York that Howe and Hummel didn't have a finger in. Cait Murphy's book on Howe and Hummel follows Richard Rovere's 1947 classic on the same subject, The magnificent shysters: The true and scandalous history of Howe & Hummel. Rovere's version holds itself less to journalistic standards and more to literary ones; Murphy attempts to improve on the journalism without sacrificing the liveliness of the subject. In the end, however, from the reader's point of view, there's little to choose between them. Both are chock-a-block with juicy anecdotes about the various incidents in which Howe and Hummel were involved. Both are written with the sharp, cynical humor that Gilded Age New York seems to inspire in its chroniclers. (It says something that Murphy's clever and frequently hilarious writing style does not suffer when compared with the work of the justly renowned Rovere.) Both are edifying and fascinating. And both suffer from the problem that, while Howe and Hummel's public exploits are well known, each one was incredibly successful at masking his private life and his past. Howe and Hummel appeared to spring into existence nearly full-formed; nobody knows where either one came from or even if they went to law school. And nobody knows anything about their private lives other than what the two chose to reveal for their own purposes. One reason we get so many juicy anecdotes is that we know nothing else about their lives, and if neither Rovere nor Murphy, each one a talented journalist, can find anything else about them, I doubt a real biography of either Howe or Hummel will ever be written. The biggest difference between Rovere's book and this one seems to be in their depictions of the quiet shyster, Hummel, whose specialty was the backroom deal. Rovere, as noted, was less dedicated to journalistic tenets in The Magnificent Shysters, and was therefore able to include rumors about Hummel's behavior and his role in the firm that Murphy was apparently not able to confirm to modern journalistic