The Rival Female Detectives

Early in 1884, a Brooklyn saloon keeper named Michael Murphy hired detective Elizabeth Bingham to find out if his bartender Fitzharris was stealing money from him.

Bingham decided to send the bartender a decoy letter, addressed to his boss, to ascertain whether Fitzharris was opening Murphy's mail. Fitzharris opened it. It isn't clear from the newspaper coverage how Bingham found this out (perhaps she was hiding behind a beer barrel) - but in any case, Fitzharris was arrested for dipping into the bar's profits. However, the case was dismissed by the judge because somehow it was proven that Fitzharris was authorized to open the boss' mail.

Fitzharris then discovered that Elizabeth Bingham was behind his arrest and began to send her threatening letters. A wealthy saloon-keeper named James Whitlock started to send threatening letters to an agent named Anthony Comstock; Whitlock and Fitzharris seemed to be, as they say, in cahoots. Fitzharris may have been doing a little spying for Whitlock, his present boss' competition. Comstock appears to have had some sort of professional alliance with Elizabeth Bingham.

As a matter of fact, I am going to need another post to tell you about Anthony Comstock. He was the Secretary of the Society For the Suppression of Vice - and a controversial public figure, known for getting into violent disagreements. He figures in the papers of the time quite a bit. One man was quoted as saying that "Anthony Comstock was a general nuisance and had always been a nuisance around Brooklyn."

(Naturally I want to find out all about this. And when I do, I will come back and tell you, too!)

The two letter-writers were then sued by Bingham and Comstock and they all ended up in court again. The charge was "sending obscene literature through the mails." Comstock testified that one letter said that "if he did not keep away from Brooklyn he would die with his boots on" and that Mrs. Bingham should keep away from the Court House.

Both prisoners - Fitzharris and Whitlock - were released on $500 bonds, and Whitlock was made the bondsman.

This is where Margaret Jane Thomas comes into the picture. She was working for Fitzharris and/or Whitlock - was involved in the case on the side against Bingham, at any rate.

The case of the obscene letter-writers was sent on to a Grand Jury. It met on February 28, 1884. In the courtroom Bingham noticed a tall, broad-shouldered and stout woman staring at her. Later the tall woman, and a female friend, went off to the saloon across the street. It was Margaret Jane Thomas, of course, and she was waiting for Bingham to emerge. As soon as Bingham came outside, Thomas popped up and began to hiss in her ear that she, Margaret Jane, would be avenged. She used "every expletive known in the vernacular." She also called Bingham "Comstock's blackmailer" and a "perjurer."

One of Elizabeth's friends ran to get a policeman. He - clearly wanting to be elsewhere - told the women to move along. But Margaret Jane followed Elizabeth, who ended up having to hide out in a building in order to lose her.

Bingham promptly had Thomas arrested on a charge of "outraging public decency" and "alleged abuse outside of Justice Bergen's Courtroom on the 28th of last February." Bingham added that it wasn't the first time that Margaret Jane Thomas had threatened her. She said that Thomas had "shadowed her" for the past few months.

And so another trial followed in March 1884. The papers called it "the Female Detective Case." Bingham's lawyer made it known that Bingham belonged to an old wealthy Baltimore family, the Whytes (I did a little research and found such a family, but was unable to link Elizabeth to it). Thomas, on the other hand, was an Irish immigrant and the wife of a shirt manufacturer (who later ended up in the Flatbush Insane Asylum, according to some reports).

One of the witnesses in the Female Detective Case is worth mentioning, a Mrs. Ellen Bruce. She was probably the friend lurking about with Margaret Jane on the 28th of February.

Ellen Bruce stated first that she had not been thrown out of the courtroom on that day. And she didn't drink either. Well, she had gone to a saloon that morning, yes. But only for a glass of beer. And she definitely did not recall "being in a place in Atlantic avenue where there was a drunken row and Mrs. Thomas had had her hair pulled out." (Although she seemed to know all about it).

The judge, exhausted, no doubt, by trying to keep track of who had done what to whom (as you must be too) sent the case on to a Grand Jury, where it probably fizzled out, as had the earlier cases.

And after all of that, he probably repaired to the nearest saloon himself.

SOURCES

"Obscene Literature in the Mails," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb. 15, 1884, p. 4.
"A Lively Time Expected," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb. 17, 1884, p. 1.
"Lively Scene," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb. 29, 1884, p. 4.
"The Rival Female Detectives," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mar. 21, 1884, p. 4.
"The Female Detective Case," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Apr. 3, 1884, p. 4.
"Between Lawyer Parsons and the District Attorney," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mar. 21, 1887, p. 6.

Image from NYPL Digital Gallery. The text on the right reads "When New York Was Really Wicked."