Horatius at the bridge
William Travers Jerome, District Attorney for the State of New York, defends a bridge that leads to “Honest Government” against a group of men led by Benjamin B. Odell, with “Big Tim, Little Tim, Abe Gruber, [and Charles F.] Murphy” among his followers. Caption: “Now, who will stand at my right hand and keep the bridge with me?”
Comments and Context
Timothy Daniel “Big Tim” Sullivan, the “Boss of the Bowery,” controlled everything — voters and voting, the police, dives, opium dens, and prostitution — in lower Manhattan below Union Square. He was killed when run over by a train (and his body unidentified for weeks) at only 52 years old. Ge might have risen to be the next boss of Tammany Hall but for his death and an apparent case of advanced syphilis.