The Murder of Jim Fisk

for the Love of Josie Mansfield

american portraits

H . W. B R A N DS

Anchor Books
A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC. NEW YORK

A gray blanket cloaks the trees of Montparnasse on a late autumn morning. Smoke from the coal fires that heat the homes and shops along the narrow streets swirls upward to join the fog that congeals intermittently into drizzle. This part of Paris hides the signs of the Great Depression better than the Left Bank and the industrial suburbs, but the tattered storefronts, the shabby dress of men with nowhere to go and the age of the few cars that ply the streets betray a community struggling to keep its soul together. An old, oddly configured vehicle lumbers slowly along the cobbles. The dispirited pedestrians pay it no mind. Nor do they heed the two women and one man who walk behind it. The women appear to be locals; the shawls around their shoulders and the scarves upon their head could have been taken from the woman selling apples on one of the corners they pass, or the grandmother dividing a thin baguette among her four little ones (or could she be their mother? Hard times play evil tricks on youth and beauty).
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This isnt good enough for the coroner. Have you any hopes of recovery? he asks. I hope so. This fails the test, too. Perhaps the coroner appreciates the irony of asking Fisk to abandon hope for life in order to identify the man who has brought about his imminent death. Perhaps, inured to death, he is inured to irony as well. In any event, he proceeds. Are you willing to make a true statement of the manner in which you received the injuries? I am. Fisk is sworn and gives his statement. With considerable effort he retraces the events since arriving at the hotel. He says he recognized Stokes at the head of the stairs and saw something in his hand. He says he saw the flash from the pistol muzzle and heard the report of the powder about the same time he felt the first bullet pierce his abdomen. He describes being hit the second time and falling. He remembers being helped to the room and identifying Stokes. The statement requires less than two minutes. It is shortly transcribed, and Fisk signs it in a shaking hand. The coroners jury delivers a succinct report: That James Fisk, Jr., came to his injuries by pistol-shot wounds, at the hands of Edward S. Stokes, at the Grand Central Hotel, Jan. 6, 1872.

Jim Fisk
Picture History

Josie Mansfield
Picture History

Ned Stokes

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Picture History

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Stokes isnt constituted for prison life. Sing Sing makes the Tombs look like a health spa, and within months he suffers respiratory ailments that cause the authorities to fear for his survival. They move him to a medical facility at Auburn, where he revives sufficiently to boast to visitors that he is speculating in stocks. He claims to have cleared thirty thousand dollars in recent transactions. He applies for a pardon to Governor Tilden, hoping the anti-Tammany chief executive will look mercifully on his case. But Tilden, whose ambitions have moved beyond breaking Bill Tweed and the Tammany ring to running for president, has no desire to dredge up old scandals. Yet Stokes still manages to exit prison early. His physical condition declines again, and in October 1876, three years into his four-year sentence, he is granted a medical discharge. Bill Tweed has no such luck. The Tammany boss manages to get his twelve-year criminal sentence reduced to one year, but he is quickly brought up on a civil suit and reconfined, for debt. He posts bail and then jumps it,
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fleeing the country to Cuba. By the time he is traced there, he has shipped out for Spain. Spanish authorities discover and arrest himusing, reportedly, a Thomas Nast cartoon for identificationand extradite him back to America. Returned to the Ludlow Street jail, in the heart of the city he once ruled, mere blocks from the courthouse that remains his monument to corruption, forgotten by Tammany Hall, which has moved on without him, Bill Tweed contracts pneumonia and in 1878 breathes his last. Jay Gould exhibits greater staying power. After the death of Fisk and the fall of Tweed, Gould gradually regains his financial touch, building a railroad empire in the West and adjoining it to the Western Union telegraph network. His accomplishments win him applause from many of those his enterprises employ, but the old enmities die hard, and his 1892 passing inspires reflection on his days at Erie. The example he set is a dangerous one to follow, the New York Herald warns. The World calls Gould one of the most sinister figures that ever flitted bat-like across the vision of the American people. Stokes reaches the new century but is largely forgotten. He never recaptures the insouciance of his youth, and even the affected nonchalance of certain moments of his post-Fisk phase is more than he can sustain. Friends find him fearful, often paranoid; he seems to think the ghost of Fisk is on his trail. He tries his hand at the hotel trade, purchasing the Hoffman House, his residence at the time of the shooting, but he has to sell it a few years
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T h e M u r d er of J im F is k for the Lo ve of Josi e Ma ns fie ld

Josies entry produces the most visible stir of the trial so far. She has remained in seclusion since the shooting, and today she wears a veil. But as the woman at the center of the case, she is the person everyone wants to see. Her veil imparts not mourning but mystery. She walks slowly to her place, aware of the hundreds of eyes that follow her every move. She seems, beneath the veil, to relish the attention. Stokes, by contrast, obviously wishes he were somewhere else. He is tense, and when he takes the stand as the first witness for the defense, he can hardly speak. He fidgets in his chair and repeatedly asks for water. Defense counsel Lyman Tremain tries to calm him with easy questions. You are the prisoner in this case? Yes, sir. What is your age? Thirty-one years. Where were you born? In Philadelphia. How long did you reside there? Twenty years. Where did you go from there? I came to this city from the Philadelphia College, and went to live with my uncle, Peyton Gilbert, in Tenth Avenue. How long did you live with him? I think two years. What business were you engaged in? I went into the produce business, and continued in it
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till 1865. I then went into the oil refinery business over at Hunters Point. How long did you continue there? Up to the time Mr. Fisk turned me out of it. The district attorney objects, and Judge Ingraham tells the jury to disregard the last statement. McKeon hasnt explicitly introduced insanity as a defense, in part because such defenses are comparatively novel in American jurisprudence and remain highly controversial. But his colleague Tremain essentially does so for him. In all cases where a defense of insanity has been interposed, Tremain says, addressing Judge Ingraham, the prisoner has been allowed to show the transactions between himself and the deceased in connection with other evidence to prove what effect they would be likely to produce. He cites the case of a woman who murdered her fianc; her defense counsel showed the wrongs he had done her. When we wanted to show that the prisoner was under apprehension of his life, and gave notice to his friends that if he should be found killed at any time, he wanted the burden of his death thrown upon the deceased, we were met by the assertion that we hadnt laid the foundation for it. Now we want to show that the doings of the deceased were such as to operate upon an excitable temperament, and how can we show their effect upon the mind of the prisoner, without proving all the circumstances that bore upon their relations? We want to show the power of Mr. Fisk with his Erie Railroad, with the judiciary, and that in consequence the
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