ARCHIVES OF SIN (Opening the Library Doors) Post #3

Tags

Albany, Archive Priests, Archives, Criminal Justice, Forgotten People, John Jay College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, John Jay Sealy Library, Jorge Luis Borges, Library hours, Library Records, Lloyd Sealy Library, Manhattan, Me, Monk Eastman, NY Sate Archives, Purveyor of Inequities, Snowblower, Southern Comfort Mahhattan

I placed the SoCo Manhattan on a coaster right next to my lounge chair. My tablet and pen were also on the same end table. I was now prepared for some serious work.

These are the Sealy highlights that I came up with:

 

140 Abductions

556 Assaults of both degrees

164 Third degree burglaries

957 Grand Larcenies of both degrees

445 Murders of the first degree

247 Rapes of both degrees

265 Robberies of the first degree (With several other variations)

 

There were myriads of other crimes; way too many to list by quantity; however, not too many to mention, this time in reverse alphabetical order:

 

Wrongful act

Weapon carrying

Voting offense

Seduction

Sodomy

Receiving

Public Officers; Misappropriation, Corruption, Neglect, Taking  (See Note 1 below)

Liquor

Forgery

Compounding a felony

Bribery

Arson

Note 1:  These are now “Ethics Violations”, not crimes, exercised by the NY State legislature.

I first took a peek at the summary data on Monk Eastman’s trial.

***********************************

TRIAL #421 Date: 1904/4/12; Reels(s): 73.

Defendant(s): William Delaney, Sex: M; Monk Eastman, Sex: M;

Charge(s): Assault (1st degree); Assault (2nd degree); Murder (1st degree), attempted;

 Judge: John W. Goff;

Defense Attorney(s): Cantwell; George W. Hurlbut; Moore;

Prosecuting Attorney(s): William Rand Jr.; Nathan A. Smythe;

Note(s): Alias Monk Eastman.

Stenographer Number: 514;

Page(s): 289 p.

Full-Text Transcript available: 421.pdf 

Court: Court of General Sessions

 ***********************************

 

And then I perused the top page of the legal document.

Finally I studied some of the testimony:

 Soon I realized that I had accidentally found a hot link that pointed to Monk’s trial record.

 You are more than welcome to peruse the entire record yourself:

A link to Eastman’s trial record

I was happy to realize that I was using a platform that allows me to hot-key to these documents. I now had the ability to sit through Monk Eastman’s trial.

But this was just the beginning.

ARCHIVES OF SIN – Post #2

Tags

Albany, Archive Priests, Archives, Criminal Justice, Forgotten People, John Jay College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, John Jay Sealy Library, Jorge Luis Borges, Library hours, Lloyd Sealy Library, Manhattan, Me, Monk Eastman, NY Sate Archives, Purveyor of Inequities, Snowblower, Southern Comfort Mahhattan

There I sat, my attention drifting between the snow outside and the crimes inside. How I wanted to read about that purveyor of inequities! So I abandoned my original goal and searched on “names.”

Right there in front of me were the details of what the Sealy was offering about good old Monk Eastman. The Sealy also told me that his real name was William Delaney. I bet the Eastman family, of photography fame, was mortified when they heard about Delaney calling his self an Eastman.

But then an interesting thing occurred.

Right there, on Monk Eastman’s data blurb was a highlighted PDF hot link. Could this be true? That particular Eastman trial transcript had been copied and PDF’ed. Was I so lucky as to have all the Sealy records right at my fingertips? I started scrolling up and down the data.

Nope; I was not so lucky. However, there were several crimes whose court transcripts had been microfilmed and PDF’ed. Maybe a trip to Manhattan would not be necessary.

I hoped.

Right then and there I realized my afternoon had been laid out for me. Oh sure, I would have to go out and shovel snow at some point. It soon became a procrastination. After all, I could still shovel in the dark. I gently lifted my PC from my lap and placed it on the floor; I had preparation work to do.

I retrieved a fresh notebook from my stash and grabbed my favorite pen. These I needed to record some items from the Sealy warehouse of information.

Sure, I know you younger people would have “copied and pasted” from Sealy to Word but I remain here with one foot in the dark ages. Sometimes I even write things like this longhand in a notebook and then copy, via typing, into Word.

I know, I know. It seems redundant to you but to me it is easier to do multiple edits on a notebook than in Word. Go figure. And yes, I had one more item of preparation to do before wandering around in Sealy’s archives. This preparation I must tell in the present tense.

Now you have to follow exactly; no fudging, no changing, no editing. First get yourself a nice wide but shallow tumbler. I would suggest two inches in diameter and three inches deep. Put exactly ten ice thingies in it.

Ice thingies are those ice forms that modern refrigerators make. You know; the half round ones. Oh hell, let’s just give them a name; Ice Arcs. If you are using those old fashioned Ice Cubes then simply fill up the tumbler.

Pour three shots of Southern Comfort over the ice. Careful now, don’t spill any.

Take the cap off a bottle of extra dry vermouth. Fill the cap half-way with some vermouth. Once again you have to be careful not to spill and to use exactly one half of a cap full.

Finally add one teaspoon of cherry juice.

Mix delicately.

I had to tell you in present tense to make sure you didn’t screw it up or think it was simply part of the story.

Now back to past tense and the continuance of the archives that contain sin.

ARCHIVES OF SIN (An Introduction) Post #1

Tags

Albany, Archive Priests, Archives, Criminal Justice, Forgotten People, John Jay College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, John Jay Sealy Library, Jorge Luis Borges, Library hours, Lloyd Sealy Library, Manhattan, Me, Monk Eastman, NY Sate Archives, Purveyor of Inequities, Snowblower

This blog has been the holder of stories about nice people who have been forgotten.

Now we must write about those who were forgotten with good reason.

This post is also a little different because it starts off about ME.

I like writing about ME.

However, that doesn’t mean that other people like to read about ME. Therefore I will keep the ME portion limited to the introduction.

The sky was full of snow that day. The local radio station had been screaming something about a buildup of fourteen inches of the white stuff. I ignored it; or rather, I put it out of my mind.

I didn’t want to think about getting all bundled up and then trying to shovel with those heavy motion-restricting clothes on. Besides, if I did not want to shovel I only had one choice; the snow blower. That method wasn’t really much easier.

The blower would toss the snow up in the air. The wind, with equal ease, would blow it back in my face. So my choices were to either shovel and lift or have a man-made blizzard blowing on my face and neck, only to have thawed (and still cold) snow drops fall inside my shirt.

There was one more choice; don’t shovel at all. Rather, look into something that had caught my attention several years ago. I had accidentally run across it on the internet; the trial records in John Jay College’s Lloyd Sealy Library. The physical library is located near the corner of 59th Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan. The Sealy possessed a very complete set of microfilm with respect to crimes committed in New York for a one hundred year period starting in 1850.

After spending some time in the NY State Archives in Albany I knew that I had to plan a trip to the Sealy with great care. I had learned that you just don’t walk in and expect everything to be immediately available. You have to know exactly what you are looking for, where it is located in the archives and which hours are good for scanning files. The prime times are hours you can actually draw documents from their sacred holding places.

I was lucky in Albany. It made me realize how fortunate I was to have visited on the correct day and hours. I don’t know why I got up at 5 A.M. and drove to Albany on my first visit but it was fortuitous.

Once again I drift. It seems to be getting more of the pattern than a rarity these days.

Being a little smarter (now that I had the NY archive experience under my belt) I thought it may be better to look at everything listed on the internet first. I wished to learn about the Sealy and visiting hours, as well as what hours the archives were open and available. So that is where I started. Or rather I should say where I meant to start.

I was looking at the Sealy “Crime in New York – 1850 to 1950” and saw the viewing options and types of searches. I started drifting again.

My focus was lost because it reminded me of how I had accidentally come across this particular internet page several years earlier. It was because my favorite author, Jorge Luis Borges, had written a story about “Monk Eastman – Purveyor of Inequities.”

Oh, there were other very interesting stories in Borges’ “Book of Infamy” but the title of that particular story caught my eye. How does someone “purvey inequities?” I will let Borges tell you that story.

This series of posts are completely different.