Howe, William C. (1828?-1902) and Abraham Hummel (1849-1926)

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William C. Howe (1828?-1902) and Abraham Hummel (1849-1926)

Criminal lawyers

Background. William F. Howe, called “the father of the criminal bar in America,” was British or American by birth. At about the age of thirty he arrived in New York, where by 1861 he was practicing law. During the Civil War he was very successful in getting men out of the Union Army. He would argue that they had enlisted when drunk, or that family circumstances exempted them from service. At one time Howe was credited with having an entire company (seventy men) discharged. In one criminal case Howe argued that his client had not received a fair trial, as only two of the three judges on the court had sat through the entire trial. Though other lawyers thought the argument a joke, a higher court sustained Howe, and his client went free. In 1863 Abraham Hummel, a fourteen-year-old son of Jewish emigrants from Germany, came to work as an office boy for the renowned lawyer. Howe took Hummel under his tutelage, and in 1869 the two formed a partnership, Howe & Hummel, one of the most successful, and notorious, law firms in the country. Until its demise in 1907, Howe & Hummel defended more than one thousand people charged with murder or manslaughter; Howe himself handled 650 of these cases. At one time all but two of the twenty-five men awaiting trial in New York’s Tombs, the prison across the street from the law office, were Howe & Hummel clients.

Drama and Brains. Howe was a big man, fond of diamonds and flashy clothes, a brilliant defense lawyer with a great flare for drama. In defending Ella Nelson, Howe tried to convince the jury that Miss Nelson had found her lover despondent and on the verge of suicide. She tried to wrestle his gun away from him, and in doing so accidentally shot him six times. At the end of his closing argument, which happened after a long day of testimony, Howe paced behind his client, who sat dressed in black, her hands over her face. He suddenly reached around her, grabbed both her arms and forced them in front of her, all the while digging his fingernails into her wrists. She screamed “as that jury and everyone else in the courtroom had never heard a human being scream before.” The prosecutor became so rattled by the scream that he could barely sum up the case against Nelson, and the jury deliberated ten minutes before acquitting her. While Howe was flashy, Hummel was a short man who gave the impression of being a hunchback. Nonetheless, he was extremely smart. When an opposing lawyer boasted that he had Hummel “in his pocket,” Hummel responded, “Then he’s got more brains in his pocket than he ever had in his head.” Hummel observed that there were two kinds of lawyers: those who knew the law, and those who knew the judge.

Technicalities and Loopholes. One lawyer said of Howe & Hummel: “The firm had a perfect setup. You might say that Hummel was the man you saw when you wanted to commit a crime without getting caught. He could tell you if the ice was thick enough to hold you up. If you went ahead on his advice and got into trouble anyway, or if you got over where the ice was too thin, Howe was there to get you out. He would see that nothing very serious happened if you did get caught.” Howe and Hummel were adept at finding technicalities and loopholes for their clients. In 1888 “Handsome Harry” Carlton murdered New York policeman Joseph Brennan. Howe defended Carlton unsuccessfully, and he was convicted. However, as the court prepared to sentence Carlton to hang, Howe objected. Under New York statutes, Howe declared, murder was no longer a crime. The legislature had passed the Electrical Death Penalty Law, which abolished hanging as of 4 June 1888 and instituted electrocution on 1 January 1889. The law did not specifically state that murderers convicted after 4 June would be electrocuted as of 1 January, although that was the intention of the legislature. Howe pointed out that execution was the only punishment for first-degree murder, and since the legislature forbade executions during a seven-month period, the state did not consider murder to be a crime. The judge agreed, and Carlton briefly was spared. However, a higher court closed the loophole, and shortly before the new year Carlton became the last man to be hanged in the Tombs.

Other Business. In 1888 the lawyers published In Danger, or Life in New York, which pretended to be a guide to the dangers of the city. Actually it advertised Howe & Hummel’s clients, their gambling houses and brothels, as well as the legal services of the firm. By the 1880s the firm took on more civil cases, which were Hummel’s particular interest, and arranged with lawyers in states where divorces were easy (Indiana, Illinois, and South Dakota) to handle those cases. When New York prosecuted heavyweight boxer John L. Sullivan and British champion Alf Greenfield for “fighting without weapons” at Madison Square Garden, Howe successfully defended the fighters. Sullivan lost all his winnings in order to pay for Howe’s legal services, but the court decision helped to establish boxing as a legitimate sport. Hummel helped establish theatrical contracts as binding business agreements. As lawyer for P. T. Barnum and the Hutchinson & Bailey Circus, Hummel handled the merger that created the Barnum Oc Bailey Circus.

Blackmail. As a theatrical lawyer Hummel also pioneered the breach-of-promise suit. If Hummel learned that a young actress had had a romantic engagement with a rich married man, he would convince the woman to file an affidavit, testifying that her former lover had promised marriage. Hummel would contact the man’s lawyer, offering to settle the matter quietly. The alternative, a breach-of-promise suit, would be a public spectacle that would ruin the man’s reputation. (No one ever opted for a public lawsuit.) Hummel would meet with the defendant’s lawyer; the two would negotiate a payment of between $5,000 and $10,000; and then they would burn the affidavit. The woman received half the settlement, though first she would swear out a new affidavit vowing that she had never had an affair with the man in question. For Hummel it was a point of honor not to let his client blackmail the same man twice. Some men did pay twice: architect Stanford White finally gave the firm a retainer so he would not be victimized again.

The End. Howe died of a heart attack in 1902. Hummel continued to run the firm for a few more years. He spent a year in prison for forging an affidavit. After his release in 1908, Hummel left the United States for England, where he died in 1926.