“Too bad we got to lose Commissioner Woods,” Williams said, shaking his head. “I’ve been in the department twenty-one years and I haven’t seen any like him. Surely the new administration can’t afford to fall behind the pace he has set.”
Sara Douglass then took the stage in all her glory. She told of the girls she had scolded and sent home when she found them on the streets with strange soldiers. “I’m just crazy about uniforms,” some of the girls would confess to her. Sometimes, she had to rescue youthful soldiers from women. Everyone laughed at her stories. She announced with pride that the mayor’s committee was trying to add ten policewomen to the role. Everyone clapped at the historic announcement. The very next day, as police power for women was being expanded throughout the city, Commissioner Woods revoked the police commission he had given to Grace Humiston. Woods also took away the authority given to her chief detective, Julius Kron.
“Mrs. Humiston has done a great deal of good work,” Woods admitted. “But I have not felt that I could take any responsibility for the Federal investigations which she has been carrying on.” Woods announced that all of the New York City detectives working under Grace would be reassigned. The police records in her office would be removed. Woods revealed that an internal investigation, conducted by Inspector “Honest Dan” Costigan, had been completed ten days ago. The report concluded that Grace had done fine work “so long as she confined her activities to New York.” According to the report, Grace’s caseload was repeating, even overlapping, the work already being done by other detectives. It recommended that Grace be replaced by Lieutenant Grant Williams, who would now head the Missing Persons Bureau.
Woods refused to go into detail, saying only that this action “demonstrated the wisdom of having the work done by regular policeman acting under officers at Headquarters.” Woods would not comment if the Upton controversy had contributed to the move. He said that the police department couldn’t concern itself with that kind of thing. Woods did say that he had sent Grace a letter asking for her resignation earlier in the month and had offered to talk to her in person. But she was unreachable.
After Woods’s announcement, the committee appointed by the mayor to help Grace in white slavery cases met at the Bar Association and demanded that Grace finally give up the evidence for the charges she had made about Upton. The stormy session ended in failure. The next day, its members all resigned, and the committee disbanded. The announcement that Commissioner Woods had deprived Grace of her shield was also followed by news that the Ruth Cruger Emergency Fund and the Grace Humiston League, founded by a number of prominent society women, had parted company with Grace early in October.
On December 30, Grace was still not in her office. Izola Forrester answered the phone and told reporters that Grace was ill at a hotel in Washington and that she would make a statement later. When reporters called on Grace at home (just to see if the Washington story was a ruse), they found only a woman named Mrs. Frankel, who was living with Grace at 307 West 100th Street. She had nothing to say. Privately, her friends complained that Grace was being persecuted because of her claims about Camp Upton. Grace was still telling her friends that she had acted with full authority from the secretary of war. The Washington Post said that the Department of War “had been cooperating with the women lawyer in an investigation of moral conditions at various army camps.” The source for the story of the two murdered girls was never found, though it was confirmed that Camp Upton was populated with 142 former New York City policemen, many of whom had been there since the camp was constructed.
When the holidays came and went that year, most people had forgotten about Ruth Cruger, though she sometimes came unbidden to the thoughts of mothers and fathers as they watched their own happy children. Ruth was, of course, never far from the Cruger apartment in Harlem, once again covered with the snow that carried so many cold memories. On New Year’s Eve, on the last day of 1917, Grace Humiston wrote a final telegram to Commissioner Woods. She accused him of playing politics and challenged his right to remove her without a hearing.
Thank you for your expressions of praise made yesterday to Miss Forrester concerning my work for girls, and your statement that it is beyond criticism. I am informed, however, that you suggest my resignation because you deem my recent criticism of conditions surrounding military camps either inadvised or unfounded. As I have written you, investigations now proceeding with army officers will, when completed, establish the fact and remedy conditions which may require change I cannot believe that you or any one else will prejudge accuracy of statement.
Differing opinions may properly exist as to whether public statement of truth is inadvisable, but I submit that in any event no criticism that has arisen because of these statements has been in the least directed against you or your department, and now that the matter has dropped out of public attention I earnestly urge that it should not again be brought to public issue by you at this last moment of your administration.
Grace then told the newspapers that she was planning on resigning anyway because of the incoming mayor, but it rang a little hollow.
20
The Assassin Strikes
As 1918 began, Grace decided to keep her practice open at her main office on the third floor of 50 East Forty-second Street. There were clients, though not as many as six months ago. Whether the lower volume of clients was a result of the war, Grace’s tarnished reputation, or something else, Grace didn’t know. But people still came in looking for help, especially when they were desperate.
So it was no surprise one afternoon when a man, around seventeen years old, walked into her third-floor office. He slipped off his coat and hat and hung them on the post outside the door. The secretary was busy, so Julius Kron stepped up to greet him and take down his information. There was always room for a new client.
“I’ve come to see Mrs. Humiston,” the young man announced.
“She’s not in,” said Kron. “Why did you want to see her?”
“I’m going to kill her,” the boy said.
Kron looked at his face. He could instantly tell that the kid was serious.
“Well, if I can’t kill her,” the boy said slowly, “then might as well kill you!”
The boy picked up a chair and circled Kron with a cold look in his eyes. There were two young men from the Morality League and four other clients in the office. They ran out the door immediately. Josephine Geisinger, the operator for the office, entered the room and gave the boy a disarming smile. He put down the chair.