a new york city prosecutor for many years and also the man that eventually took down abraham hummel and force the dissolution of howe and hummel. and finally, benjamin cardozo, a great supreme court jurists. he was an infant -- he was born in the 1870s, but his father, i thought this was fascinating, he has a reputation. his father albert was a hack. howe and hummel first came to great public notice in the early 1870s when it was revealed that they had essentially bought at least 300 writs of habeas corpus from albert cardozo. cardozo was part of a group of four judges that were notorious for their corruption in new york, and affect the association of the bar of the city of new york was founded essentially to take down these judges. now, corrupt judges were not a new thing in new york by any, but one of the things i learned while writing this book was that new york will tolerate corruption -- it will sorely tolerate corruption if it feels it is serving some other end. for example, a good deal of police arrangements with criminals were tolerated because it seemed to contain criminality.

of the two partners, william howe did more criminal stuff but abraham hummel was the premier theatricalwyer of his time, and he defended her from charges of public indecency. she had toured the country before camden yards and it landed in pittsburgh. here's what willa cather thought of it. she said of the lead actress, never was olga so absolutely unique or original exception or finished or brilliant in execution. okay, here's our third name, buffalo bill cody. and how often you go to the speech we have henry ward beecher and buffalo bill cody in the first paragraph. buffalo bill cody, we all know who he was, a showman of the west. he was also a man with a heart, and he fell in love with, frankly, a nasty little piece of work named catherine. he thought she was talented. no one else did, and he dropped about $70,000 trying to make her a star. she eventually dropped him, what i refer to as the obscure actress lottery by marrying the younger son of the great railroad baron. howard coulda family was so appalled by this connection that they invoked a clause in jay gould's will in which they