The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism

The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism

by James McGrath Morris
The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism

The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism

by James McGrath Morris

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Overview

This biography of the early 20th-century newspaper giant who became news after killing his wife “has the pace and detail of an engrossing historical novel” (Boston Herald).
 
As city editor of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York Evening World, Charles E. Chapin was the quintessential newsroom tyrant: he drove reporters relentlessly, setting the pace for evening press journalism with blockbuster stories from the Harry K. Thaw trial to the sinking of the Titanic.
 
At the pinnacle of his fame in 1918, Chapin was deeply depressed and facing financial ruin. He decided to kill himself and his wife Nellie. But after shooting Nellie in her sleep, he failed to take his own life. The trial made one hell of a story for the Evening World’s competitors, and Chapin was sentenced to life in Ossining, New York’s, infamous Sing Sing Prison.
 
In The Rose Man of Sing Sing, James McGrath Morris tracks Chapin’s journey from Chicago street reporter to celebrity New York powerbroker to infamous murderer. But Chapin’s story is not without redemption: in prison, he started a newspaper fighting for prisoner rights, wrote a best-selling autobiography, had two long-distance love affairs, and transformed barren prison plots into world-famous rose gardens.
 
The first biography of one of the founding figures of modern American journalism, and a vibrant chronicle of the cutthroat culture of scoops and scandals, The Rose Man of Sing Sing is also a hidden history of New York at its most colorful and passionate.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780823222667
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Publication date: 08/08/2019
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 470
File size: 4 MB

About the Author

James McGrath Morris is a former journalist, author of Jailhouse Journalism: The Fourth Estate Behind Bars , and a historian. He lives in Falls Church, Virginia, and teaches at West Springfield High School.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Gardens

On Tuesday, October 28, 1924, while eating breakfast in his Park Avenue apartment, writer Irvin S. Cobb discovered an annoyance that accompanied fame. There in the New York Times, for all to see, was the amount he had paid the federal government for its relatively new income tax. At least Cobb could take some comfort in the fact that he was not the only one whose tax payment had become public. In fact, for the past three days newspapers had entertained their readers by listing the tax payments made by the nation's best-known citizens. That he was among those the New York Times selected to publish probably confirmed his own sense of his literary importance.

The blame for this fiduciary unmasking of the rich and famous fell to a poorly written section of a new federal tax law passed by Congress in June. Befuddled tax officials interpreted the passage to mean they had to disclose the payment portion of an individual's tax return to any inquiring reporter or citizen. Thus, for a brief moment before Treasury Department officials regained their wits and resealed the records, the veil of tax secrecy was lifted. Wall Street financiers buzzed with the revelations. A garment industry businessman discovered his partner had lied about the poverty of their shared enterprise and was actually flush with cash. Even romantic matters were not immune from the disclosures. Along with the reporters who flocked to the tax offices in the New York Customs House, a number of women came seeking to compute the true income of their fiancés and husbands. "I am finally going to find out how much my husband makes," said an excited woman while another woman calculated how much alimony she should seek in her divorce.

Although it paled in comparison to John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s incredible $7,435,189.41 payment — the only one above $1 million — Cobb's $5,762.20 payment listed in the New York Times gave authenticity to the rumor that he was the best-paid writer of the 1920s. It was, for instance, twenty-five times the amount paid by his neighbor, writer Fannie Hurst, described by critics as a female O'Henry. Money making aside, Cobb was certainly one of the United States' best-read writers. In 1923, ten of New York's leading editors, critics, and writers supping in an elegant restaurant erupted into an argument as to who were the best living U.S. writers. It was decided that each would mark his first and second choice in various genres on an anonymous slip of paper. "The outcome of the ballot," reported the magazine Current Opinion, "was such as to give Irvin S. Cobb a kind of primacy in contemporary letters." He appeared on eight of the ten lists.

Cobb's fame was so extensive that he had even licensed his name to a line of cigars with his likeness on the box. The rendering was highly flattering. In life, Cobb's looks were a favorite of caricaturists. He was a huge man whose drooping cheeks, large jowls, and protruding eyes gave him an undeniable toadlike appearance. Over time, Cobb, a perpetual showman, came to regard his apparent homeliness as an asset. While covering World War I, he was the most easily recognized correspondent and was continuously mobbed by U.S. troops everywhere he traveled. As a result, he did nothing to diminish his distinctiveness; quite the opposite. He favored knickers, boots, and long jackets with numerous buttons worn closed, accentuating his barrel-like physique. In his hand, if not between his teeth, he always held a smoking cigar.

Famous and recognized whenever in public, Cobb could hardly blame the newspaper reporters for having a field day with his income-tax records. Before the money, the Park Avenue apartment, the country house, and the Algonquin lunches, Cobb would have been the first to write up such a story for his city editor when he — in his own words — "sweated between the decks" of a Park Row "slave ship"; he would have had no choice in the matter. Before he won his manumission from the tyrants who ruled the newsrooms in the heyday of yellow journalism, Cobb had toiled for Charles Chapin, the most accomplished, notorious, and feared city editor of them all. "Chapin," recalled Alexander Woolcott, a fellow Park Row escapee and one of New York's leading drama critics of the 1920s, "was the acrid martinet who used to issue falsetto and sadistic orders from a swivel chair at the Evening World in that now haze-hung era when Irvin Cobb was the best rewrite man on Park Row and I was a Christian slave in the galleys of the New York Times."

For two decades, until his abrupt and dramatic departure from the scene in 1918, Chapin had set the pace for the city's vibrant evening press as city editor of Joseph Pulitzer's Evening World. Beginning in the morning and sometimes stretching late into the night, the buildings on Park Row shook as massive presses rolled out hundreds of thousands of copies of evening editions. On any street corner, New Yorkers heading home could buy one of a dozen papers filled with news as fresh as the ink, for as little as a penny, hawked by the young peddlers known as newsies. When the events warranted it, such as during the Harry Thaw trial or the sinking of the Titanic, evening papers would publish hourly editions that were consumed immediately by a news-hungry public. More than 2,600 newspapers battled daily for the hearts and minds of the nation's readers. This was the golden age of the newspaper. They were indispensable reading and definers of reality. As never before, the features of city life were mirrored in a daily pageantry of print.

In the guerrilla warfare of yellow journalism, any editor who valued his job got a copy of the Evening World within minutes of its publication. He could order a rewrite of an Evening World exclusive for his paper, then sit at his desk and await the descent of the publisher from upstairs while constructing an explanation as to why only Chapin's paper had the story, "Tiny Tot With Penny Clutched in Chubby Hand Dies Under Tram Before Mother's Eyes." Editors were saved from being fired only because all publishers knew that Chapin was unbeatable. A kind of journalistic equivalent to the Civil War's renowned Bedford Forrest, Chapin knew where hell was going to break out and got there before it broke. The only strategy to beating Chapin would be to hire him, and Pulitzer continually feared that his nemesis William Randolph Hearst, whose checkbook seemed bottomless, would do just that.

Chapin's professional life spanned the birth and adolescence of the modern mass media. In the 1880s, Chapin's sensational crime reporting in the legendary world of Chicago journalism made him one of the best known apostles of what was then known as "new journalism." In the 1890s, he arrived in New York just when the revolution Pulitzer had sparked was transforming Park Row into the epicenter of American journalism. And, as the city editor of Pulitzer's Evening World for two decades, Chapin became the model for all city editors, real and fictional. "Chapin walked alone, a tremendously competent, sometimes an almost inspired tyrant," said Cobb. "His idol, and the only one he worshiped, except his own conceitful image, was the inky-nosed, nine- eyed, clay-footed god called News." His faith afforded little comfort to others who did not share in his creed. Chapin was said to have fired 108 men during his tenure. Even Pulitzer's son was a victim. The fact that the father, who kept watch over his dominion with spies in the newsroom, remained mute when the ax fell on his son only served to elevate Chapin's fearful reputation. The smallest infraction could send one packing — and create another barroom tale. Among those told regarding Chapin's relish for giving a man the boot was one about a reporter who claimed his lateness was caused by having scalded his foot in the bathtub. When Chapin fired him several days later, he was said to have exclaimed, "I would have fired you earlier but I wanted to see how long you could keep on faking that limp." Tales of this sort were so frequently told that one witty repartee about Chapin was included in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.6

"In him was combined something of Caligula, something of Don Juan, a touch of the Barnum, a dash of Narcissus, a spicing of Machiavelli," said Cobb. Chapin's harsh management style was, however, not entirely unique. Stanley Walker, city editor of the Herald Tribune and one of the few tenderhearted editors of that era, described the prototypical city editor as a brutal curmudgeon who would make one's blood run cold. "He invents strange devices for the torture of reporters, this mythical agate-eyed Torquemada with the paste-pots and scissors. Even his laugh, usually directed at something sacred, is part sneer. His terrible curses cause flowers to wither, as grass died under the hoof beats of the horse of Attila the Hun. A chilly, monstrous figure, sleepless, nerveless, and facing with ribald mockery the certain hell which awaits him."

Chapin's talents, however, were legendary. "Quite possibly, viewed as a machine, he was the ablest city editor who ever lived," concluded Walker. His reputation was such that any man who developed similar traits or methods was said to be marked with the "Chapin stigmata." Journalists put up with Chapin's despotism because he was one of the most innovative and daring editors in New York. For a reporter, the journey to the Evening World always began with a letter from Chapin, delivered by personal courier, containing the request that the reporter "drop in some day and talk things over." Chapin drew together the city's best legmen, reporters, and writers with the promise of journalistic glory and sufficient money that they would abandon the comfort of their posts with rival newspapers, such as those owned by Hearst, to risk life under him. He pioneered the beat system that later became ubiquitous, and he lavishly spent Pulitzer's money to create a pool of writers who would translate the coarse facts streaming in by telephone into hard, crisp, jump-off-the-page prose that sold papers. "Such a rewrite battery as probably never has been assembled before, never has been since, and never will be again," said Donald H. Clarke, a reporter who left Harvard for Park Row in 1907.

Now in late October 1924, events converged to resurrect memories in Cobb of those bygone days. The previous week, while in Montreéal after a fishing trip on Lac La Peche, Cobb had lifted the receiver of his hotel telephone to hear the familiar, but distant voice of Ray Long, the editor of Cosmopolitan, calling from New York. Long and Cobb had been friends since working as low-paid reporters for rival Midwestern newspapers twenty-five years earlier, when they only dreamed of making it big in New York. Now as editor of one of the nation's most widely circulated general-interest magazines, Long had a budget lavish enough to afford Cobb, and he rewarded his friend with choice assignments.

"You worked under Charley Chapin," Long said. "I heard you say once that he was one of the most vivid, outstanding personalities you ever encountered. I think there is a story in the entombing, the total eclipse behind prison walls of such a man."

Indeed, the public memory of Chapin had faded in the six years since he had been sent to Sing Sing prison for murdering his wife of thirty- eight years with a pistol while she slumbered peacefully in her bed. The crime was zealously reported in all New York newspapers, whose editors relished the revenge of putting into headlines a crime committed by one who had been the ultimate composer of crime-filled front pages.

By 1924, however, Chapin, once the previously most-talked-about figure on Park Row, was rarely mentioned, even among the company of writers that Cobb kept. The old Chapin tales that used to earn the raconteur a drink were almost never told in bars where the ink-stained wretches of New York congregated. "The physical image of him as I last had seen him, humped over his desk in the Pulitzer Building on Park Row, was growing fainter in my mind," said Cobb. Coincidentally, just days before Long's call, Cobb had spotted an item in the New York Times that had also prompted him to think of his old boss. A dispatch from Ossining, New York, said that the state had published a report on what seemed to be an incongruity in conditions at the notorious Sing Sing prison. They credited, by name, the inmate who had brought about the change. It was Chapin.

He has adorned the gruesome place with flowers, trees and shrubs, and the yard which five years ago was desolate and littered with stones and rubbish is now a thing of beauty. The rose garden is an inspiration to dark and troubled souls.

From Montreal, Cobb sent word to his secretary to go to Sing Sing and make arrangements for a visit. He was not sure what reception awaited his request. A few years earlier, Chapin had refused a visit from Cobb. This time he accepted. Perhaps, Chapin wrote to a friend after the secretary departed, the visit will be "a chance for Cobb to get even for the hard knocks he had when I was his boss."

Although it was an overcast day, by the time Cobb set out in the late morning of October 28, 1924, it was already ten degrees above average, certainly pleasant enough to spend the day outside. Most who made the trip to the New York State Penitentiary at Ossining took the train from Grand Central Station a few blocks south of Cobb's apartment. For a destination as grim as it was, the trip was breathtakingly beautiful. The prison was built on the banks of the Hudson River thirty-four miles north of New York City, giving rise to the expression "being sent up the river." The train tracks follow the contours of the river for miles, offering the passenger on the left side of the compartment an unfettered view of the Hudson, a river that inspired artists and gave rise to a school of painters whose best-known works hung in New York's great Metropolitan Museum nine blocks from Cobb's apartment.

Whether one took the short walk or a cab ride from the Ossining station, approaching Sing Sing was like coming to a medieval fortification. Erected in the 1820s with stone quarried on the spot, Sing Sing was America's best-known and most-feared prison. Its massive stone walls, round stone towers, and heavy doors made its line of business clear to all comers. New York's most notorious criminals were, if lucky, confined here for life or else executed on Thursdays. Only in the prior decade had the prison begun to shed the last of its nineteenth- century practices under the rule of a new warden, Lewis Lawes. Rising from the ranks of prison guards, Lawes had been appointed by Governor Al Smith four years earlier during a wave of reform that saw many modernizations in prison life. Lawes, who dressed for the role of the enlightened reformer in tailored New York suits, enjoyed immensely showing off his fiefdom. He was publicity savvy. He knew the city's literati — even had hopes of joining its set someday — and never missed a chance to increase his visibility and promote his reforms. Cobb's visit could be a boon. It also pleased Lawes that Cobb was coming to do a story about Chapin. Of all his prisoners, Chapin was one of his favorites. The two had been immediately attracted to each other when they met in 1919, and an unusual friendship had evolved. In fact, over time, Lawes had given Chapin virtual free run of the prison. On many an afternoon, the inmate could be found reading magazines in a wicker rocker on the warden's porch overlooking the river, with the warden's daughter playing at his feet.

After exchanging pleasantries with Cobb, Lawes escorted the writer down into the prison yard, where they found Chapin. "Dear Chief," said the corpulent Cobb, who immediately took his old boss in his arms. Even though Chapin had gained thirty pounds and his five-foot-eight frame now held nearly 160 pounds, he was momentarily eclipsed by Cobb's embrace. When they separated, Cobb examined his former slave master, whom he had not seen since a few days before that baleful day in September 1918. He seemed unchanged, thought Cobb. "Only he was white now when he used to be gray, with the same quick, decisive movements, the same bony, projecting chin upheld at a combative angle, the same flashes of stern and mordant humor, the same trick of chewing on a pipe stem or cigar butt, the same imperious gestures, the same air of being a creature unbendable and un-crushable." But further consideration of Chapin would have to wait because what stretched out in front of Cobb were Chapin's gardens, a certain conversation stopper.

Only a few years before, the yard — nearly as long and wide as two football fields joined end to end — had consisted of hard pack, covering decades of strewn construction debris and refuse. Only tiny patches of struggling grass and even tinier flower beds previously broke the monotony of the gray soil surrounded on all sides by gray stone edifices. Cobb knew this landscape well because he had used the setting for one of his short stories, written eight years earlier. Now what lay before him stunned Cobb. "There were spaces of lawns, soft and luxuriant, with flagged walks brocading them likes strips of gray lace laid down on green velvet," he wrote. Along the walks stood soft, puffy arborvitae trees and masses of neatly trimmed ornamental shrubs. Green vines, like veins, wove their way up the walls of heavy stone, quarried by the hands of those the state had confined here for more than a century. And everywhere Cobb looked were flowers, familiar and unfamiliar, some in full bloom and others done for the year. The array of plant life was such that the mind's eye and nose could imagine the summertime burst of color and perfume that had preceded his visit.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "The Rose Man of Sing Sing"
by .
Copyright © 2003 James McGrath Morris.
Excerpted by permission of Fordham University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Preface,
1 The Gardens,
2 Youth,
3 Traveling Thespian,
4 At Last a Reporter!,
5 Marine Reporter,
6 Death Watch,
7 At the Editor's Desk,
8 Park Row,
9 St. Louis,
10 New York to Stay,
11 A New Century,
12 A Grand Life,
13 On Senior's Desk,
14 A Titanic Scoop,
15 The Crisis,
16 The Deed,
17 A Date in Court,
18 Inside the Walls,
19 At the Editor's Desk, Again,
20 Viola,
21 The Roses,
22 Constance,
23 The End,
Epilogue,
Appendix,
Guide to Notes and Abbreviations,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,

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