The Jews in America Trilogy

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  When the little Nathan children were strolled by their nannies in Central Park during those pleasant decades after the Civil War, they used to hear passersby whisper, “Look—the Nathans,” and “Here come the Nathans!” The children assumed, naturally enough, that this attention was due to their celebrated birthright and social superiority. But the real reason had nothing to do with this. Scandal in the family, after all, was so rare as to be unknown, and naturally the dreadful details of it had to be kept from the Nathan children. It was a scandal that was rocking the entire Sephardic community.

  New York in 1870 was entering its most elegant phase, soon to be christened by Edith Wharton as “the Age of Innocence.” West Twenty-third Street at Madison Square was considered “uptown,” and the New York Herald referred to this neighborhood as one of the city’s “aristocratic purlieus.” Here, on broad, tree-lined streets, facing a leafy park, in tall private brownstone houses, lived the city’s rich, including Mr. Benjamin Seixas Nathan, the banker, grandson of the founding American patriarch, and one of New York’s wealthiest and most prominent men. The Nathans—Benjamin Nathan was married to the former Emily Hendricks—and their nine children lived at number 12 West Twenty-third. On an opposite corner, the old Fifth Avenue Hotel had gone up a few years earlier—up to the astonishing height of six stories, and equipped with something called an elevator, which was said actually to lift persons with courage to try it to the topmost level. The Nathans, good parents that they were, had severely cautioned their children never to enter this unlikely contraption.

  New Yorkers that summer, when not discussing the elevator, were talking about the weather. It was hot. New York summers were no less stifling and humid a hundred years ago than they are today. New Yorkers also talked about a new war in Europe, which the Prussians had maneuvered France into declaring against them. American sentiment favored the Germans, due to the unhelpful behavior of Napoleon III during the Civil War. There was talk, too, of Jefferson Davis, now a private citizen from Mississippi, who passed through New York—surely feeling very much amid alien corn—on his way to board a Cunarder to England. It had been a slow season for the theater. Fritz, Our Cousin German, was playing at Wallack’s, and the Booth was preparing to open with its first offering, Rip Van Winkle, with Joseph Jefferson in the title role. At the Grand Opera House, three blocks west of Madison Square, something called the “Viennoise Ballet and Pantomime Troupe” was being offered. It was an age of flounces and ruffles on women’s dresses, when men wore bowled hats and braid-trimmed overcoats, and every gentleman of fashion had whiskers. People complained of an infestation of “measuring worms” in the city; they dropped from trees on to women’s hats and parasols, and there was a plan afoot to import the English sparrow to consume the worms. By late July, all the “best” people had left the city for lake shores or sea breezes, including the Nathans, who had removed to their summer place in Morristown, New Jersey—or so everyone thought. Then, all at once, at the end of July, all of New York’s attention—and much of the country’s—was riveted on Benjamin Nathan and his family.

  Benjamin Nathan was a quiet, kindly-faced man with mutton chop sideburns and thick spectacles without which he could barely see. Despite this handicap, Ben Nathan had had a distinguished career and, in 1870, he was a vice-president of the New York Stock Exchange, president of Mount Sinai Hospital, a member of the Union Club, the Union League Club, and the Saint Nicholas Society, and a colonel on the governor’s honorary staff. He was, in short, the model of a proper nineteenth-century New York gentleman, and there were even some in the family who had the temerity to call Ben a “Jewish Episcopalian.”

  On Thursday, July 28, Mr. Nathan and two of his sons—Frederick, twenty-six, and Washington, twenty-one—had come unexpectedly to New York from Morristown on business, and had arrived at 12 West Twenty-third Street to spend the night. The men’s arrival was quite a surprise to the housekeeper, a Mrs. Kelly, and her son William, who worked for the Nathans as a general chore boy. The house was being redecorated, and most of the furniture had gone out to the upholsterer’s. But Mr. Nathan explained that he wanted to stay in New York because he planned, the next day, to go to the synagogue to say prayers in memory of his mother, the former Sarah Seixas, the anniversary of whose death it was. Mrs. Kelly improvised a bed for her employer by placing several mattresses on top of each other on the floor in a second-floor room, and she did the same for the two boys in rooms above. Mr. Nathan spent the early part of the evening with his sons. Then both young men dressed and left, in separate directions, for gayer surroundings than the half-empty brownstone. Both returned—again separately, young Wash Nathan much the later—well after midnight. Each son looked in on his father, saw him sleeping peacefully in his makeshift bed, then mounted the stairs to his own room.

  A word should be injected here about Washington Nathan. He was considered one of New York’s most dashing young men. Tall, thin, always exquisitely groomed, he possessed good looks that were described by one lady as “agonizing beauty,” and it was said that the touch of his slender, perfectly manicured hand caused the strongest-hearted woman to swoon. Women fussed over him wherever he went, exclaiming over his “large candid blue eyes,” and by the time he had reached his twenties he was thoroughly spoiled. It was widely said in the family—and out of it, for that matter—that the reason why Wash’s cousin Emma Lazarus, the poetess, never married was that all her life she harbored a “violent passion” for him while he paid not the slightest attention to her. Poor Emma. She doubtless possessed intellectual charms and vociferous opinions (on Zionism, for instance) which attracted to her male friends like Emerson and Browning, but she was at best a plain-looking woman, with features that always seemed too large for her face, and unfortunate skin. It was also said that Washington Nathan spent thirty thousand dollars a year—a huge sum in 1870—pursuing the pleasures of his rakish life. And it was known that his father disapproved of his “habits,” and that the two had quarreled often about the young man’s spending.

  After his sons left the house, Benjamin Nathan had rung for his housekeeper and asked for a glass of ice water. This was at around ten o’clock. Mrs. Kelly then locked and bolted both front and back doors of the house, closed and locked all the windows, as was her nightly custom, said good night to her employer, and proceeded to her own room. Around eleven she was awakened by a brief thunderstorm, which subsided well before midnight. This is all that is known for sure of events that night at 12 West Twenty-third Street. Early the following morning, a guest at the Fifth Avenue Hotel looked out his window and saw two young men come running down the steps of the house shouting for help—the Nathan boys, one half dressed, the other dripping with blood.

  Upstairs, Benjamin Nathan lay dead, murdered in the most deliberate and brutal fashion. This kindly and gentle man, who no one could believe had a single enemy, had been repeatedly beaten by a heavy weapon and clearly by someone intent upon his total destruction. Ghastly wounds covered the body, bones had been broken, and there was a particularly savage wound in the center of the forehead. He had apparently been dragged from the room where he had been sleeping, and his body lay in a doorway between that and an adjacent room, used as a study, in a pool of blood. There were clear signs of a terrible struggle. Furniture was overturned, and blood was spattered on the floor, walls, and frame of the door. In the study, a small safe had been forced open and on top of the pile of mattresses was an open cashbox. A large and heavy object, covered with blood, was found in another room—a “carpenter’s dog,” a J-shaped instrument used for gripping and hooking—clearly the murder weapon. Since the family had been away, and the house was being redecorated, nothing of value had been in the safe. A quick inventory of the items stolen was pitifully small: three diamond shirt studs, two watches, and a gold medal. Of course no one could say what might have been removed from the cashbox, but Mr. Nathan surely would not have kept much cash in his empty house. Immediately a telegram was dispatched to Morristown: FATHER IN A
N ACCIDENT. COME AT ONCE.

  There ensued one of the most bizarre murder cases in the history of New York crime, and before it was over it had received worldwide attention, even in Russia, where the Jewish press commented on “the murder of a wealthy and influential New York Jew.” It was a traumatic experience for a family that had always studiously avoided publicity of any sort whatever.

  Immediately—awful though it sounded—the prime suspect became Washington Nathan, with his dissolute nature, who was suspected of having murdered, in Lizzie Borden fashion (though that case was still more than twenty years away), his own father. Frederick, the “good son,” known to have worshiped his father, was never for a moment under suspicion. What must have happened, it was argued, was this: Wash Nathan had come home from his evening on the town, had stepped into his father’s room to ask for money, and had been refused. The two had argued. Finally, in a rage, Wash had grabbed the odd instrument—carpenters working in the house might have left it lying about—and attacked his father. He had then rifled the safe and cashbox. New York newspapers were soon hinting that “someone from inside” must be the guilty party. How could a murderer have entered a locked and bolted house? Wash Nathan’s guilt seemed terribly likely.

  At the inquest that followed, a long series of contradictory and confusing facts began to emerge. The doctor who first examined the body testified that he did so at 6:05 A.M., and that in his opinion Mr. Nathan had been dead for three to four hours, no longer. This would place the time of death at between 2 and 3 A.M. The policeman on the block, John Mangam, testified that he checked the front door of the Nathan house at 1:30 and 4:30 A.M., as a matter of routine, and on both occasions found the door securely locked, and saw no signs of any disturbances within the house. Other residents of the neighborhood, however, stepped forth to say that Officer Mangam was not as diligent as he claimed to be, and that they had never known him to check the door of any house.

  Then there was the testimony of the guest at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and the matter of which Nathan brother had been partly dressed and which had been covered with blood. This was important because the brothers had told the police that Washington had been the first to come downstairs that morning, dressed and ready for the early visit to the synagogue. He had seen his father and immediately cried out to Frederick, who then came running down the stairs, partly dressed. Frederick told the police that he knelt briefly beside his father, and touched him, thus becoming covered with blood, and then both brothers had run shouting down another flight of stairs to the street—through a front door that, both claimed, was standing wide open. At first, the hotel guest—a Major General Blair—identified Frederick as the bloodied and undressed one, and Washington as the clothed one, thus corroborating both brothers’ story. But then he changed his mind, and insisted that it was the other way around, making liars out of both Mr. Nathan’s sons. Frederick Nathan had a heavy beard. Washington Nathan had a small moustache. There was little family resemblance, and it would be difficult to mix them up. On the other hand, General Blair had viewed the scene from diagonally across the street, through trees and from an upper story, in the early morning light and through sleepy eyes. His testimony could not be weighted too heavily.

  Then there was the altogether baffling fact that although four other people were sleeping in the house at the time, no one had heard a sound of what must have been a terrible and screaming ordeal—furniture overturned, a body bludgeoned again and again, dragged across a room. The two sons, just one floor above, claimed to have heard nothing. Mrs. Kelly had heard the storm earlier, but nothing after that. Her son William had heard nothing. The Walton Peckhams, who owned the house nearest to the Nathans’—separated from it by eighty feet—said yes, they thought they had heard noises, thumping, a bang or two, a door slammed. At first, they thought it was the storm, then perhaps a burglar in their own house, and finally conjectured that it might be coming from next door. Mr. Peckham said he was positive the hour of the noises was 2:30 A.M., though he had not consulted his watch. He knew because he had had “a good sound sleep” before being awakened, and that meant it had to be two-thirty. His bumps and slams had to be discounted.

  Though it was a stifling city night, all windows in the Nathans’ neighborhood appeared to have been firmly shut against the slightest breeze. This seemed strange to some people, but of course there had been that storm and there was also, in 1870, a belief some householders shared that night air was injurious to health, even deadly. From across the street, meanwhile, General Blair’s hotel window had been open all night long, but he had heard nothing until the brothers came running into the street.

  Then there was the problem of the murder weapon. Where had it come from? One of the workmen at the Nathan house said yes, he thought he had seen something of the sort lying about in the days previous to the murder. But another said no, there had definitely never been a “dog” of that sort in the house. Though it was described as a carpenter’s dog, the Nathan carpenters said it was not theirs; it was not, in fact, a tool used in their sort of work but was used primarily in logging operations. Logging operations! The killer had carried his weapon a long way to a fashionable address in Manhattan. It was also not a tool customarily employed by safecrackers, although it was quite possible that it could be used that way. Another expert on “dogs” came forth to say that this was not a logging implement at all, but was used “to lay the flooring of yachts and other small vessels.” The inquiry appeared to be leading nowhere.

  All sorts of unlikely people came forth now to contribute evidence leading to an explanation of what might, or might not, have happened that night at 12 West Twenty-third. A young newsboy, James Nies, said he had been delivering his papers on that street at around 5 A.M. and, when passing the Nathan mansion, saw a man “dressed like a mason” walk up the steps of the house, stoop, and pick up a strange piece of yellow paper which “looked like a check.” The alleged mason studied the piece of paper, pocketed it, and departed. Who was the mason? The murderer returned to the scene of his crime when he discovered he had dropped some incriminating document? A mere passerby curious to see what scrap of paper might be lying outside the front door of a rich man’s house? And what had the piece of paper been—something dropped from the burglar’s haul? Neither the piece of paper nor the mason ever turned up, and the investigation struck another blind alley.

  Next came a report of mysterious midnight goings-on outside the mansion of Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. The Morse house, on West Twenty-second Street, backed up to the Nathan house and, according to the Morses’ caretaker, a Mr. Devoy, he had returned home about twelve-thirty on the night in question and had seen a strange coach and pair standing in front of the Morse stables. A man was lying inside the coach, and Mr. Devoy asked him to move on. Mr. Devoy said he believed a second man was inside the coach, and that he had heard at least two men “whispering” within—but he could not be sure. Later, his wife told him that the coach had been there since at least ten-thirty, and that it remained there for at least another hour after Devoy told the occupant to go, and that around two o’clock a heavily cloaked driver mounted the box and drove rapidly away.

  Perhaps the oddest testimony of all came from a Miss Annie Keenan, a music teacher from New Jersey. Miss Keenan had been walking along Twenty-third Street on the evening of the twenty-eighth, at around 8:30 P.M., and had seen a man with “a crazy look” in his eye poking furtively about the front stoop of the Nathan house. He appeared to have “some rigid object” stuffed up the sleeve of his coat—the “dog,” of course. While Miss Keenan watched, the man entered the Nathan house through a basement window and, as he did so, there was a loud “clank” as his arm struck the window frame—proving that it was the dog. A letter, signed “A.K.H.,” arrived at police headquarters under a Washington postmark and, in return for eight hundred dollars, “to be left inside the railing of Grace Church,” the writer offered to return “the papers” that would solve the case. An attemp
t was made to draw some connection between “A.K.H.” and Annie Keenan’s initials, but this proved fruitless, as did an effort to connect these “papers” with the newsboy’s yellow slip.

  At around the same time, a lawyer named Thomas Dunphy got himself sorrily entangled with an already hopelessly entangled case. Mr. Dunphy, who had a theory of how the murder had been committed, was acting out his theory for the benefit of some women friends in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, he chose to demonstrate the murder method using the first person pronoun—“I lunged toward him,” etc.—and must have given a convincing performance, because an eavesdropping neighbor overheard the scene, was certain she was listening to a firsthand account of the Nathan murder, and called the police. Mr. Dunphy spent an uncomfortable night in jail before it was demonstrated that he could have had nothing to do with it.

  Naturally, the person the press and public were most eager to hear testify was Washington Nathan. He arrived on the witness stand looking cool, composed, and well-tailored, carrying a gold-handled stick, gray gloves, and a tall silk hat. He described himself as “commission merchant,” with offices at 25 Water Street downtown, but his account of the evening of July 28 was nowhere near so simple. After leaving his father, he said, he spent “an hour or two” simply strolling around New York. First he walked up Fifth Avenue to the Saint James Hotel, then over to Twenty-fourth and Broadway, then into Madison Square Park—very near his home—where he listened for a while to a band concert. Meeting a friend there, he walked back to the Saint James, where each had a glass of sherry. Next he walked down Broadway to the point at which it met Fifth Avenue, where he met “these two girls”—and he waved his hand, indicating that the young ladies were in the courtroom. The three then walked to Delmonico’s, and he said good-bye to them there, going into the coffee room to read the papers. For a celebrated bon vivant, he was having a singularly dull evening.