Island of Vice by Richard Zacks

Author:Richard Zacks [Zacks, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780385534024
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-03-12T13:00:00+00:00

The deeds and motives of Andrew Parker often fell into those hard-to-parse categories. He seemed to be a passionate advocate of reform. He shared a law office on Nassau Street with an anti-Tammany reformer whose father served on the board of the Parkhurst Society. He was born in the northern stretches of New York City, a year after Roosevelt; his father was a chemist; he studied law at Columbia with William C. Whitney and served as an assistant district attorney until a Tammany D.A. dismissed him. He was not married and lived in a boardinghouse at fashionable 20 East 29th Street. Parker was a guest at Sagamore Hill and at several Roosevelt dinners; he shared the dais with TR on numerous occasions, giving speeches mostly at churches, reform groups, temperance societies.

Roosevelt wrote of Parker back in the summer of 1895: “He is dead game and very efficient. He is absolutely free from jealousy and can do many things which I cannot. He likes to work beneath the surface.” Another time: “He has exactly the peculiar knowledge and ability and the temper of courage and ruthlessness needed for our task.” And Roosevelt confided to sister Corinne that the other two commissioners “could be replaced with advantage by two high class clerks.”

Yet, there was something off about Andrew Parker. TR once called him “queer as Dick’s hat.”

A meticulous lawyer, he could talk endlessly about the fine print of a contract while ignoring the larger issues. His stenographer noted that Parker included punctuation when he did dictation. “He detested a misplaced comma as though it were an infectious microbe,” recalled Louis Posner. A friend of his wrote that though Parker was a nominal Democrat “his mind was so independent and logical that … he [reserved] his efforts for the men and measures that were to his liking.” He read several foreign languages, including French, German, Hebrew, and Latin. He developed a rapport with many high-ranking police officers, including Chief Conlin and Chief of Detectives O’Brien.

His feud with Roosevelt began in earnest in February 1896. Roosevelt—so deeply frustrated on so many fronts—would over time demonize Parker and assign to him the worst motives, branding him as deceitful, corrupt, and worse.

Fellow commissioner Andrews found a huge gulf between “the secret and evasive Parker and the open, direct emphatic Roosevelt.” Judge William Travers Jerome later commented that Roosevelt was “very much impressed by Parker” at first but that Parker eventually tied Roosevelt “in a knot.”

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