Nov 18, 2008 - Sale 2163

Sale 2163 - Lot 35

Price Realized: $ 4,560
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
JUDGE OF THE WOMEN'S NIGHT COURT (BARLOW FAMILY.) Archive of the papers of Peter T. Barlow. More than 1000 items, 2.5 linear feet in 3 boxes, various sizes and conditions. Vp, mostly 1884-1917
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Anyone with an interest in the seamier side of turn-of-the-century Manhattan will find this collection to be riveting reading. Judge Peter Townsend "Pierre" Barlow (1857-1921) was best known as a flamboyant magistrate of the women's night court in Manhattan. This collection includes hundreds of letters and documents relating to his tenure there, most from the 1910-1912 period. A series of letters relates to his efforts to have hot water and clean towels available to prostitutes at the court, to prevent the spread of syphilis. The collection also includes typed stenographer's transcripts of defendants' testimony in a variety of prostitution and other cases, and correspondence. A woman named Celia Busnach expresses outrage at Barlow for fining her daughter Dolores $2.00 for sitting on the grass in a public park: "You ought to be a judge in Russia, they do such things there." Another 1912 letter from an immigrant named Simon Simmonds explains in broken English that his mail-order bride had run off with an accomplice just days after she passed through immigration, and adds "I am not responsible for her, perhaps she go now in a daprave way (prostitution), I wish you shall give me warranty to arrest my wife's seducer, and also my wife."
Also includes: Personal correspondence with Thomas F. Bayard, August Belmont, Roscoe Conkling, and many New York society figures An 1894 personal Typed Letter Signed from Theodore Roosevelt A folder of papers regarding Barlow's work on a Sioux scrip case in 1889, including correspondence, bills, lists of evidence, and 3 printed plat maps of Montana land along the Yellowstone River A folder of correspondence relating to the Florence Crittenden League, which ran a home for troubled women, 1915-17 A folder of bawdy poems and humor 6 photographs and much more on New York business and social life.
Judge Barlow was the father of Samuel L.M. Barlow II (see lot 36 below).