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#Post#: 7537--------------------------------------------------
Being Locked In The Tombs: A NY Herald Reporter 1892
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: October 4, 2026, 8:03 am
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New York Herald
June 12, 1892
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LOCKED IN THE TOMBS. HOW ABE HUMMEL CAME TO THE RELIEF OF A
BELATED REPORTER.
I think that perhaps the funniest sensation that I ever had in
my life was one day when I found myself in the Tombs and
couldn't get out.
Of course there were a lot of people inside those gray stone
walls in the same predicament, but then they were all accused of
having
committed crimes of greater or lesser degree.
My case was different. I had simply called at the gloomy
prison to get an interview with "Frenchy," or Ben Ali, the man
accused of murdering
the woman Shakespeare, and afterward convicted of the crime and
imprisoned for life. I had known the poor Arab from the time he
had been first arrested,
and he seemed to trust me. At any rate he talked freely with me
in his dreadful patois, half French and half Arabic, of which I
understood about one-third.
This particular day the poor Arab seemed loth to let me go,
and he jabbered on until it was long after four o'clock, the
hour after which visitors cannot see prisoners.
No one disturbed us, however, and it was nearly dark when I
finally left him and saw him led away to his cell. I noticed
there were tears in his eyes when he bade me good night.
I had no difficulty in getting out of the old prison, where I
had been sitting in front of "Murderers' Row," and in the
conduct of a keeper I passed under
the "Bridge of Sighs" and back to the last gate which leads to
the warden's office. There the keeper left me, saying, "I
guess you know your way out, sir; good night."
I did know my way out perfectly and was soon at the Leonard
Street entrance, where a stern old turn-key sat in front of the
ponderous iron gate, with his keys in his hand.
"I'll have to trouble you to open the gate," I said politely.
"Not by a d——n sight," said the keeper gruffly. "Who are you?
You didn't come by me."
That was very true. The watch had been changed since I had
entered the prison. Still I explained that I was a Herald
reporter, and had been
having an interview with Frenchy in the old prison. "You may
be Frenchy yourself dressed up; I never seen him," said the
turnkey sententiously.
In vain I explained and argued with that old turnkey. I argued
for the Warden, but he was gone out, and of the men in the outer
office had come on since I came in
. I had just made up my mind that I was a fixture for some
hours, or at least till the Warden's return, when the door of
the room where prisoners see their
counsel opened and out stepped little Abe Hummel. I was never
so glad to see a friend in my life, and after the man at the
gate had seen the well-known
criminal lawyer greet me as a friend and had received his
assurances that I was not a criminal trying to escape, he let us
go out together, and I breathed
more freely when I heard the clang of the iron gate behind me.
Still, the old man was right. His orders were to let no one out
whom he did not know, unless he had let them in.
Abe Hummel was an attorney affiliated with William Howe.
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