USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > The old court house : reminiscences and anecdotes of the courts and bar of Cincinnati > Part 12
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for action upon by, and recorded, in our Court of Common Pleas, which then also acted as a Probate Court. The request was readily granted, and then the gentleman from the South pulled out his huge wallet, and counted out a five-hundred-dollar fee to my preceptors and his lawyers, which they gladly and joyously accepted, and felt honored by the acquaintance of such a noble, philan- thropic gentleman. Whether the deeds were ever acted upon by, or recorded, in the courts, I do not remember, but I think they were. Let that be as it may, that day a gentleman of most engaging manners upon his attractive acquaintance, went into the Commercial Bank (I think) of this city, and easily procured some $11,000 on a Southern draft, which, some time afterwards, after exam- ination, and investigation and information from below, proved a most arrant forgery. The Southern gentleman swindled other banks, on forged drafts, out of large sums. He went to New York, and, on the strength of his eman- cipation of a hundred and forty negro slaves, became acquainted with, and ingratiated himself into the hearts and purses, of the brothers Tappan, the great New York abolitionists, and swindled them out of a wondrous amount of money, and then embarked with his body ser- vant for England, ho !
After a while, having sent his body boy servant, be- cause she was pregnant, back to this country, and she betraying him on that account to the Tappans, of New York, he came back very foolishly himself, and, on his arrival in the metropolitan city, he was immediately arrested, and after trial for forgery by the Tappans' prosecution, he was convicted and sentenced to the Sing Sing Penitentiary for a long term of years, and there, before the expiration of his time, he died of despair and despondency.
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This remarkable man was no less a man than the great swindler, counterfeiter and forger Monroe Edwards, famous or infamous throughout the whole country for his forging and foraging at that time ; and his body boy ser- vant, so attached to him and so devoted, that she betrayed him when he betrayed her, was a mulatto woman, whom Monroe had picked up in one of the seraglios of New Orleans. These were, respectively, the man and the woman, who so well-he by his philanthropic pretensions and generous fee, she by her clever devotion, to her mas- ter-deceived the reputable firm of my preceptors in the law. They would have sworn by him ; they had occasion afterwards to swear at him. This is a curious and inter- esting incident, I think, and shows that there were suc- cessful, adroit impostors in the early days as well as now, and teaches us to beware of pretenders and cunning fellows of large assumption, at all times, and shows, too, how ridiculously foolish a man of guilt, no matter how shrewd or adroit, or cunning soever, will sometimes be- come, so as to uncover and reveal his tracks, and jump right into toils prepared for him. Monroe Edwards with all his skill, and after all his guilty experience, was such an infernal fool as to send his coadjutor and accomplice, in her delicate situation, back to this country and all alone, adrift upon the world. Of course, she revealed him and his ways. She probably had no other possible resource to maintain herself. She was a weak woman, and he, on account of his lapsus mentis, became, first, a fool, and then, through her, too, a weak woe-man.
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A LETTER FROM COL. CRAFTS J. WRIGHT, SON OF JUDGE JOHN C. WRIGHT, AND A FORMER MEMBER OF THE BAR OF THE OLD COURT HOUSE. IN IT SOME INTERESTING REM- INISCENCES, ETC.
One of the sons of Judge Wright, Crafts J. Wright, was an early lawyer of good repute and of renown in Cincinnati. He is living now in Chicago, and being much interested in these reminiscences and anecdotes of courts and bar of Cincinnati, he wrote me an interesting letter, parts of which I will cite, especially as they refer to several of our prominent lawyers and judges and oth- ers, and are reminiscences. He says in his letter :
DEAR JUDGE-I have read with much interest your reminiscences of old-time court matters. I am glad you are putting what you know in print. Whilst my father was a whig, my uncles were democrats. Judge Benjamin Tappan, of Steubenville, afterward senator, (and with whom Stanton began the practice of the law, and under whose influence Stanton changed his politics from whig, those of his father, to those of my uncle, Judge Tappan, and so continued till the war,) was one of them. My other uncle was John M. Goodenow. I began the practice of the law in 1829 and 1830, at Steub- enville, with my father. When my father went on to the Supreme Bench, I went into partnership with Judge Goodenow, who was one of the leading lawyers of the State. He proposed to move to Cincinnati, and made a promise in that case, to devote himself to law, and swear off from politics. We moved to Cincinnati, in February 1832, and soon got into a large practice. Judge Goode- now was a jovial man, frequented coffee-houses a great deal, got in with Robert T. Lytle and finally was induced to become a candidate for Judge of the Common Pleas, and he got elected, running out Judge Torrence. This
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left me alone in 1833-I think that was the year-and Mr. Hammond took me in, and thus, then and there, I became connected with the Gazette. Our practice was not large, and chiefly in large cases.
There was a clerk of the court to be elected, and as. Judge Goodenow had broken his word and left me, Mr. Hammond put me up as a candidate for the clerkship, and I was sustained, through him, by most of the mem- bers of the bar. Judge Goodenow's candidate was that politician, Sam Goodin, who, I think was appointed. Judge Goodenow was forced to resign. I finally was requested by Mr. Hammond, to withdraw my candidacy in favor of General W. H. Harrison, and I did so, and Harrison got it. Mr. Hammond died, and on his death- bed made Mr. L'Hommedieu promise that my father should take his place as editor. Mr. Hammond had one- third the income as salary, but my father was afraid that in some way he might quarrel, and, as mere editor, be turned out. My father preferred to buy a one-third inter- est, for which he paid $15,000. The queer thing is, that his one-third of the profits of the Gazette at that time and for years, was only about ten per cent. on the $15,000, and after fifteen years he only got $23,000 for one-fourth, I having become possessed of the same and being presi- dent. The income, it is said, now reaches one-fourth of the purchase value of the whole in 1853, viz: $100,000. What changes !
Your man " Fales," was a great friend of Mrs. John G. Worthington-that splendid woman, Miss Phillips, of Dayton. Fales' partner was Frazer. When I left Mr. Hammond, in 1836, I went in with Fox, and then to the Gazette. Tim Lincoln took my place with Fox.
Yours, CRAFTS J. WRIGHT.
Mr. Wright adds, by way of postscript: "Going into the army after the peace conference, as colonel of the Thirteenth Missouri Volunteer Infantry, I came out an invalid, with a constitution shattered, and unable to do
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anything. In '65, I moved to Glendale, and then in '75, here. I was burnt up in the great Chicago fire. Thus I have lost the trace of most old citizens alive in '62, and those grown up since, and I am unknown to most, where, in times past, I knew every man, woman, and child, and they knew me. I traveled with Harrison when a candi- date in '36, and again in '40, and thus knew him well."
This is an excellent letter from my old friend, Col. Crafts J. Wright, and it so well suits these writings that I give the most of it, the rest being of a kind and friendly reference to myself .- I trust that the colonel will find a welcome for himself in print among his former old friends. I am in receipt of other letters of congratulation from old lawyers, editors, and others, and when they present points of fact, I shall present them in print in due time. Au revoir.
LAWYER BENJAMIN TAPPAN WRIGHT, ANOTHER SON OF JUDGE WRIGHT.
Another son of Judge Wright, and a good lawyer of the days of the old court house, was Benjamin Tappan Wright, named after his uncle, Senator Tappan. He came to this city with his father, about the year 1834, and entered upon the practice of the law as a young lawyer, and was making quite a success when death claimed him as a victim. He was able and talented, and without doubt would have made his mark in the old court house, if he had remained with us. He is well-remembered by the few survivors of the earliest lawyers of our bar, as a learned lawyer and a gentleman.
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LAWYER GRAMES AND HIS CELEBRATED SPEECH ON THE "BOY."
We had a lawyer at an early day at our bar by the euphonious name of Grames. It must have been a print- ter's mistake or a corruption of " Grimes," and thus he was a descendant namesake of old Grimes ; for he looked and acted much after the manner and style of his famous an- cestor-
"That good old man, We ne'er shall see him more."
And he dressed a good deal like him, for-
" He used to wear a long black coat, All buttoned down before."
And-
" His coat had pocket holes behind His pantaloons were blue."
Our Grames was about six feet high, with his long and much rough-lined head set grimly on his pair of shoulders, by the interposition of a gaunt, rugged neck, which was much distinguished by the emphatic promi- nence of its Adam's apple bulging out like it was going to shoot. His arms and his legs were long and lubberly ; the trunk of his figure much resembled any other trunk that belongs to the baggage of travelers, and he moved about much like one of Maelzel's automatons, as if there were wires attached to him somewhere, which somebody had to touch or spring. He was gaunt, lean, and raw- boned, and his figure generally had a most portentous aspect and prospect, and upon it his coat and pantaloons and vest and neck-cloth hung as they would if suspended from a nail in a wardrobe. He wore a hat, not a shining one, though a black silk one, having, however, on account of accumulated dust on it, no longer the polished proper- ties of silk. His face, under his rimmed hat, was dis-
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tinguished principally by a nose, which, not altogether aquiline, was, nevertheless, vulturine, and looked very rapacious, and, underneath this, was a broad, thick- rimmed mouth, from which, when he spoke, issued low, sepulchral tones, as if from the doleful tombs. He was, evidently, not cut out for a lawyer, but certainly was for a solemn deacon, or an exhorter, or a preacher. One day, when he was speaking at the bar in a case, the dep- uty sheriff, Stalee, was asked by a stranger what lawyer was that addressing the jury and the court, and the dep- uty sheriff replied that he believed he was a reformed preacher. "How is that? " asked the stranger. "Oh," replied the deputy, "he was formed for a preacher and re-formed for a lawyer." But Grames was Grames ; there was no mistake about that; he was Grames and always Grames, and whatever might have been adventi- tious changes or additions in regard to him, nothing could be made out of Grames but Grames. He knew law, was well read, but did not know much how to use it. He was peculiarly Grames-on the law.
On one occasion he was defending a small boy in- dicted for grand larceny, and found guilty, notwithstand- ing the serious, sombre, and solemn eloquence of Grames. There was no " house of refuge" or other reformatory, punitive establishment for juveniles, in those days, and the punishment for grand larceny for a boy was nothing less than the penitentiary. Grames could not for a mo- ment give tolerance to the idea of his juvenile delinquent client going to the penitentiary, and as a last resort he resolved to make a solemn, and of course, effective appeal to the mercy of the court, to give the boy a new trial. Sentence day of the prisoners came on, and the boy was in the long-benched prisoners' box, with six or
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eight grown-up fellows convicted of various crimes and ready for sentence. At last John Curtis was called and bid to stand up for sentence, when, in most majestic majesty and solemn solemnity, Grames arose in his place at bar, and delivered himself of the following nearly, in measured, deliberate, considered, meditated, solemn, ser- ious, somber, bass-viol and trombone tones :
" May it please this honorable court, I appear in be- half of that boy, and desire the court to take pity and have mercy upon the boy, and give the boy a new trial. It will not do for the boy to go to the penitentiary. No ! it won't do for the boy-one so young and tender-hearted as the boy must not be the companion of felons in the penitentiary ; it will ruin the boy, it will utterly destroy the boy, it will annihilate the boy-the boy will have nothing then to buoy up the boy, and the boyhood of the boy will be totally lost to the boy. Look at the boy as he sits in the virtue and innocence of the boy, in the pris- oner's box, already amidst the corrupting and contamina- ting influences of older offenders than the boy. Shall the boy go amongst worse offenders than these, to the cells of the penitentiary? Forbid it, justice ; forbid it, fathers of boys; forbid it, mothers of boys; forbid it, sisters and brothers of boys; forbid it, this court of b- judges, who would temper justice with mercy in the case of the boy. May it please this honorable court, I sol- emnly invite you to look at the bland and smiling face and features of the boy. His placid and comely face is the dial-plate of his mind and soul, and indicates that the boy is an honest boy, and about twelve hours-years of age."
Grames seriously and solemnly and majestically sat down after this great climax, but the court was not moved
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to tears, or to mercy, for they had been informed by the prosecuting attorney that the boy "whose face was the dial-plate of his mind and his soul," was the captain of a gang of young rascals, who engaged nightly in all man- ner of thieving in the city, and were called the "forty thieves," and the boy "whose face, etc.," rejoiced in all sorts of ways in being their captain. So the boy was sent to the penitentiary for three years, that the forty thieves might by that time be broken up and scattered to the four winds, or elsewhere.
LAWYER RILEY AND HIS CELEBRATED DEFENCE.
We had a curious and singular specimen of a lawyer in the days of the old court house, who lived up to the time of, and survived in the new court houses, and some lawyers now living may remember him. I allude to James Riley, or "Jeemes" Riley. I never knew him but when he was old and when he was "Jeemes." In my memory he was always called Jeemes Riley-he always had gray hair and a pinched-up, wrinkled face, which he made invariably much more so by his curious grimaces and unique way of turning about his blinking eyes. He was a bachelor and had all the ways of an old bachelor-in the law and out of it. He was not a ponderous man by any means, for he was sleek, thin and wiry, but he was a ponderous lawyer, so mighty, indeed, that he always weighed down the patience of the court whenever he appeared before it; even the old associate judges of the old court house, patient as they commonly were, used to get wearied with and tired of him when he had a case before the court, and presented his manifold and multifarious law points which he was in the habit of making and presenting, unlike any other lawyer, before
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or since, before them. He was peculiarly and strongly Riley sometimes, if he was at all disappointed, or balked in his tedious, prolix and very long discourse. He was great on paper-that is, he consumed a great deal of fool's-cap by his legal writing. Even his pleadings used to be as long as the moral law ; and his speeches, oh, my ! whoever heard them through, but a judge who was offi- cially compelled to? He never had lawyers or citizens for an audience during the whole course of any speech of his. His continuity, probity and perseverance out-timed all around him; and it is a wonder that the inanimate things about did not rise and go off to take a vacation or a rest. But he was great in his way, on law points, as dull as they were, and he was always so full of them, that they stuck out of his mouth and body like quills on the fretful porcupine, though not quite so sharp and acute and prickly. His eloquence, if so it could be called, like Alexandrine lines, was always long drawn out, and the stream seemed never to end or empty itself into any other water. It was never clear or pellucid, and towards the middle or near end, or anywhere, the current of his thoughts and his expression of them was always roiley- roiley clear through and through. But there is no use of further description to get an idea of him, for nobody could ever get an idea of, about or from him-guess he had no idea, and was not the subject or the object of an idea.
Well, to a sort of reminiscence of him. In his practice of the law he took any sort of a case, all sorts of cases ; was not particular, and gave one and all, his prolix, ponderous and prolonged and never-varying attention. On one occasion he was engaged in the de- fence of a prisoner in the criminal department of the old
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Court of Common Pleas. His client had been indicted for petit larceny-stealing a pocket book, containing a dollar or two in change, from the pocket of a drunken man, while he was lying in his drunken sleep in a mud- hole on the side of the road-and the riley lawyer thought he had a great legal point for his client in the case, and by presenting it to the court he was quiet sure to get his client off before the jury. The trial came on, the evidence of the State closed, having plainly disclosed that the accused had, while his victim was drunk and asleep in the mud, taken from his side breeches pocket the aforesaid pocket-book, and change in quarters and dimes. The pocket-book was exhibited on trial, and it was very muddy, all over dirt and mud, and it was just here where Riley begot, conceived, and was finally delivered of his point in his way. In his cross-examination of the wit- nesses for the State he had, in addition to the mud on the pocket-book, proven that the pocket of the victim who was robbed, laid next to the muddy ground, and there- fore, as Riley justly concluded, the pocket-book must have been sticking out of the pocket, and in the mud, when his client, the indicted, took it from the pocket, or side of the victim. Now, it is a principle of the law, which Riley sort o'knew, that real estate, however taken, cannot be the subject or object of larceny ; personal, movable property can only be stolen. You can't steal real estate and be indicted and convicted for it. It is a further principle of the criminal common law, that any- thing in, or attached firmly to real estate, can not be the subject or object of grand larceny, and this, too, Riley knew in his riley way.
The prosecuting attorney made his speech for the State, and now it came Riley's turn, and he did, turning
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and turning, turning over and around, and addressed his great legal point, which he had discovered and held on to, like grim death to a corpse, to the judges of the court, thinking if he could convince them "on the pint," they, of course would direct an immediate acquittal of his client at the hands of the jury, and he commenced : "May it please your honors of this honorable court," and went on and on, and on for quantity or quality-or rather without regard to either - talking about everything and anything from the days of Methuselah, and taking pattern after him in his speech in length of hours instead of days. At last through windings and windings, through laby- rinth and labyrinth, through maze and fog, he reached the great and chief legal point of his case. By this time some of the judges on the bench manifested signs of nid- nid nodding, and it was necessary for Riley to blow a blast to wake them up, and he did so, thus, with all his might and main : "Viewing the extensive importance of the legal point I am about to advert to, as it is a cloudy day, and threatening a storm, I would that a clap of thunder, following the effects of lightning, delivered by Jupiter, would summon your wakeful attention.
Of course the associate judges and the presiding judge instantly woke up and bestirred themselves-their ears stretched out much longer than usual, to catch every word of the great and important riley legal point, which now, no doubt, was to be made clear and pellucid, as the mud of the mire, in which Riley's client's victim was lying at the time of the unfortunate theft of the pocket- book, and quarters and dimes.
"May it please the court-may it please your Honors of this honorable court"-continued the lawyer parenthetically, or by way of exordium to his peroration.
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"It is a principle of the criminal common law as old as the everlasting hills of England-where we get all our law from -that you cannot predicate the crime, or offense or misdemeanor of larceny of real estate, or anything attached thereto. To take real estate, or anything attached thereto, is, in fact, no larceny at all. I have a great abundance of authorities upon this subject which I will read." And Riley began to pick from the cart-load of books, which he had gathered upon this familiar law point, and had placed upon the lawyers' table, just before the bench of judges, and was going to read every one of them, when the presiding judge interrupted.
"Mr. Riley, you are not going to read all of those books are you?"
Riley-" Not all of them, may it please the court, only in a few pages in each of them."
Presiding fudge-"Can't you dispense with reading authority upon a legal point so clear, that the text books are full of it?"
Riley-" But the text books are too brief upon the point. The cases in the reports are much more diffuse, profuse and clarified. I will read them."
Presiding fudge-"Now don't, Mr. Riley, take up the precious time of this court by reading what we all already know too well. It is useless. It is wasting time."
Riley-" What is time to principle? The waste of time is nothing when compared to principle. Time is made and executed for slaves. I will establish my legal point before your Honors, if it takes all the week. I will read the authorities." [And he picks up a book. ]
Presiding fudge-"Mr. Riley, your principle is well established in the minds of the court; there is no use of reading or reciting authority on a matter so plain."
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Riley-" But I desire to read [picking up a law book,' and turning over the pages] from the books, to strengthen and confirm the minds of the court, if possible, and prac- ticable."
Presiding fudge .- "There is no use of that, Mr. Riley ; the minds of the court are already strong and confirmed upon the point ; any reading from the books, I respectfully suggest, might only serve to make our minds riley upon the point."
Riley-" True ; if that is the case, I will throw no dirt in the stream of your Honors' thoughts. I will consider my point as made, and will now proceed to apply the evidence elicited in the case of my poor client, to this great point or principle of the common law."
Presiding fudge-" Proceed then to the jury."
Riley (turning to the jury )-"Gentlemen of the jury, I find, on due deliberation and consideration, that the honorable judges of this honorable court are with me on the law in this case, and it only remains for me to invite your attention to the facts as they have come out from the evidence in the case. In the first place, the man from whom this pocket-book, containing a few, paltry quarters and dimes, was taken, was drunk ; and being, drunk, as aforesaid, was lying in the mud of the mire, which mud and mire aforesaid was part and parcel of the earth ; and the earth, gentlemen of the jury, the aforesaid earth, is real estate, and now, gentlemen of the jury, how was the man lying? The testimony shows that he was lying in the mud of the mire-a part of the aforesaid earth-a part and parcel of the aforesaid real estate. He was lying close, close down upon the aforesaid earth, in the aforesaid mud of the aforesaid mire, the aforesaid real estate. The aforesaid drunken man, in his aforesaid
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drunken sleep, in the aforesaid mud of the aforesaid mire of the aforesaid earth-the aforesaid real estate, was thus firmly and fixedly attached to the aforesaid real estate. But, further, it is proven beyond any possibility of doubt, or contravention or contradiction, from the muddy pocket and pocket-book of the aforesaid drunken man, that the aforesaid pocket and the aforesaid pocket-book were closely attached to the aforesaid mud of the aforesaid mire of the aforesaid earth, of the aforesaid real estate, and thus was a thing, at the time it was stolen, attached to real estate, and in the celebrated language of the aforesaid books lying before me on this table, and admit- ted by this honorable court, it was not the predicate of the crime, offense or misdemeanor of larceny. You cannot, gentlemen of the jury, you cannot steal or commit larceny of anything attached to real estate. This aforesaid pocket- book, when it was taken by my aforesaid client from the aforesaid drunken man, lying in the aforesaid mud of the aforesaid mire, of the aforesaid earth, of the aforesaid real estate, was closely attached to real estate-indeed, it is covered all over with mud now, [picking up the pocket-book from the table and holding it to view,] and is even now a part and parcel of that aforesaid real estate. My client, then, gentlemen of the jury, cannot be convicted of larceny, of stealing. He was, at the time of the taking and carrying away of the pocket-book guilty only of a trespass, in the language of the aforesaid books, upon real estate. You cannot convict him of lar- ceny, as the court will instruct you, beyond all doubt. He cannot steal real estate or anything attached thereto, -no, never. Thus, having analytically disposed of the testimony of this case, I assert a profound claim for a ver- dict at your hands, gentlemen of this very enlightened and most sagacious jury."
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