The Lord of Vice

John R. Livingston. If you were looking for a soundtrack for this post I would suggest "Big Pimpin"

John R. Livingston was an unrepentant businessman. During the Revolutionary War he had made quite a bit of money selling supplies to the continental army. Anything from gunpowder to rum. After the birth of the new nation John moved into a more tantalizing trade. As one historian put it John became the “Lord of Vice” in New York City. Another, less generous historian has called him a “whoremaster”.

John had cut his teeth as a merchant during the Revolutionary War. After a brief stint in the army during the Canadian campaign of 1775 he returned to his family’s land in 1776 to rebuild his father’s gun powder mill. He went on to buy and sell rum and other supplies for the army. John joined Benedict Arnold in a scheme to buy property from New York City loyalists which left him scrambling to prove his patriotism after Arnold turned his coat. He also bought up large quantities of depreciated Continental currency and encouraged his brother Robert R. Livingston to get Congress to buy it back for its full value.

To put it as simply as possible John R. Livingston was a businessman who placed profit above almost everything else once saying “Poverty is a curse I can’t bear.” So it should come as no surprise that when he saw an opportunity for profit in New York City after the war he jumped in with both feet.  

Edward Livingston mayor of NYC, brother of pimp

He began buying up property by 1802 and continued for years at every opportunity. He bought some of his brother Edward’s properties at auction when Edward fled the city following a scandal while he was mayor of the city. He later converted some of his older brother, Robert’s, city property into brothels after the Chancellor’s death in 1813. He even turned one property he bought from his mother, Margaret Beekman Livingston, into a den of iniquity. Most of John’s properties were on Thomas, Chapel, Anthony and Orange Streets making him the “most prolific entrepreneur of five points vice.” By the time John died in 1851 he owned at least 30 houses of ill repute. From a purely business perspective renting property to ladies of the night makes very good sense. There is little chance they would not have money on hand to make the rent, which is what John was mainly concerned with.

Five Points 1831

Some of the most famous courtesans of the day worked in John’s brothels including Abby Mead, Rosina Townsend, Mary Wall and Elizabeth Brown. Despite this John was still powerful enough that most people left his name out of condemnations of the trade. An 1836 publication described one of his houses as “so genteel in its exterior” but when on to say it was “one of the gateways to death and hell.” The houses, they claimed, were “knowingly let out for such purposes by one of our most respectable and pious citizens”, yet John was never mentioned by name.

Five Points in 1827, some of the women in this painting probably worked in John's houses

Only one time was John really called out for his activity. In 1830 a group of neighbors filed a complaint against some of his houses on Thomas Street. The complaint was not that the houses were being used as brothels but that the girls were displaying themselves in the windows of the houses nude. The complaint was against the madams who ran the houses but listed John as their “agent”.

John’s brothels also garnered the wrong type of attention in 1836 when a prostitute was found

The murder of Helen Jewett

murdered in her room. Helen Jewett had been struck in the head three times by a sharp object, most likely a hatchet, and set on fire. A suspect, Richard P. Robinson was quickly apprehended. During his trial most of the witnesses against him were other prostitutes. The Judge in the case ordered the jury to disregard their testimony. Robinson was soon found not guilty setting the dangerous precedent that it was fine to murder a hooker as long as you paid her first.

John R. Livingston lived in a golden time in American history when being associated with less than ethical business practices did not necessarily preclude a person from being a leading citizen. Despite having been known to have been involved in the prostitution trade in some form or another and being peripherally involved in several scandals John is remembered, when he is remembered, as a businessman and little more.

Sources and more information:

The Murder of Helen Jewett by Patricia Cline Cohen

City of Eros by Timothy J. Gilfoyle

The Livingston's Gunpowder Mill

      April 19, 1775 was a Wednesday.  Nothing ever happens on a Wednesday.  Of course that morning British regulars marched out of Boston, through Lexington and on to Concord to seize gunpowder and weapons from the colonists.  As you may be aware, the expedition did not go well for the regulars, resulting in hundreds of casualties and the entire city of Boston being out under siege.

            The expedition does highlight the importance of gunpowder in the colonies at this time.  Prior to The French and Indian War there were several mills producing gunpowder in British North America but after the war most were closed or abandoned until there was only one mill producing gunpowder in the colonies.  In 1774 King George III made it illegal to import gunpowder to his troublesome colonies.  So gunpowder became even more valuable as the colonists were looking to stock up at the same time the British were trying to keep it out of their hands.

             Within a few weeks of Lexington and Concord Judge Robert R. Livingston had decided he would provide gunpowder for the defense of the colonies himself.  On May 5, 1775 he wrote to his son (the future) Chancellor Robert. R. Livingston who was then on his way to Philadelphia to take a seat in the Continental Congress.  The Judge had heard a rumor that there was salt peter, the most difficult of the three ingredients of gunpowder to obtain, in Philadelphia.  As a side note, the fact that he was looking for gunpowder ingredients 17 days after Lexington and Concord says he was probably building his powder mill before the first shots were fired.  Two more letters to the Chancellor on June 19 and June 26 show the gun powder mill beginning operation.

            Livingston’s powder mill was the first mill built in New York though it would be joined by a second a few months later.  It was most likely built along the Saw Mill creek in Red Hook, Dutchess County, approximately 6 miles from Clermont.  The Judge wrote to the New York Congress, on October 9, 1775, of stopping a messenger from going back six miles to the mill before he knew if any powder was ready.

            The gunpowder produced at the Judge’s powder mill was very important for the early war effort.  Livingston sold powder to Tryon County for the defense of the frontier.  He also sold powder to New York to be used to defend against attacks by Native Americans.  Perhaps the biggest order went to Fort Ticonderoga, where General Philip Schuyler was planning the invasion of Canada which would eventually be taken over by the Judge’s son-in-law General Richard Montgomery. 

            The powder mill also had the important task of making damaged powder usable again.  When Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen took Fort Ticonderoga from the British they found much of the fort’s powder stores had become damp.  All of this powder was sent to Livingston.  Additionally all of the damaged powder in Albany was gathered up in late 1775 and sent to Livingston to be saved if possible.

           To this end Livingston ordered a furnace room constructed to dry wet and damp powder faster.  This may have doomed his mill.  Sometime between a last letter about the mill on November 4, 1775 and his death on December 9, 1775 the mill exploded.

            The mill was so important that John Jay, Robert Treat Paine and the New York Congress all encouraged the Chancellor to rebuild the mill, as his father had planned to do, as quickly as possible in letters which also offered their condolences for his passing.  Of course the Chancellor was too busy to focus on that project, however his brother John took over and had the mill rebuilt by February 1776.

            Later that year John built a second powder mill lower in Dutchess County, near Poughkeepsie.  The last reference to the upper powder mill appears to be in 1777 when some powder was stolen from the mill by loyalists.

John R. Livingston Murderer?

  Of Judge Robert R. Livingston’s four sons John R. Livingston is perhaps the most forgotten. His oldest brother Robert helped to found this country. His next brother Henry found success as a soldier. Even his younger brother was a famous politician, serving in congress and on Andrew Jackson’s cabinet. But John is typically known merely as a merchant.

John R. Livingston

          John was born in 1754. He was the third son of Judge Robert R. Livingston and Margaret Beekman Livingston, and their seventh child overall. When the Revolutionary War broke out John served briefly under his brother-in-law, Richard Montgomery’s command during the expedition against Canada in 1775. He also served briefly at Fort Edward during the summer of 1777.

          Most of John’s time during the war was spent as a merchant. In 1776 he took over his father’s gun powder mill and soon built a second to supply gunpowder to the army. He spent a great deal of time in Boston during the war, buying and selling various war materials.

          But what if there was more to young John? What if he had a cruel streak like his brother Henry?

In 1879 a nearly century old manuscript was published by the New-York Historical Society as A History of New York during the Revolutionary War, and of Leading Events in Other Colonies at That Period. It contained the following disturbing passage:
 

When the news of the unlucky affair at Trenton arrived at New York, Erasmus Phillips, Esq., Captain of Grenadiers in the 45^th Regiment, was there. He immediately set off to join his regiment in Jersey. He was attended by a servant only. As he passed through Princeton he was observed by three persons who were concealed in a house at that place. The house stood upon the road. The Captain was to pass the door. When he came directly opposite, the three assassins fired, and lodged three bullets in his body. He instantly fell from his horse dead. The servant escaped. One of the party who committed the murder, his name shall be mentioned, was a John Livingston, one of the sons of Robert R. Livingston, late one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the province of New York. This barbarian, in public company, in Middletown, in Connecticut, boasted of this murder as an act of heroism, a noble achievement; and so little remorse had he for his cruel act in which he had taken a principal part that he declared “That Captain Phillips made one of the handsomest corpses he had ever beheld. We stripped him “says he “of all of his clothes and left him naked in the street. I thought” added he “that I should have been obliged to have cut his head off, to get at his diamond stock buckle, but I effected my purpose by breaking his neck, and turning his head topsy-turvy.” This he concluded with a broad laugh, taking off his own stock, and saying, “Behold the buckle, it was worth the pains of breaking a dead man’s neck for.”

Whoa.

Let’s look first at the dead man. Captain Phillips was a captain in the 35^th Regiment of Foot, not the 45^th. In a history of the regiment compiled in 1873 he is listed as murdered on January 2, 1777 “by some of the country people apparently” although other sources list him as having died the next day at the Battle of Princeton. His will was executed in July of that year and is in the collection of New York Historical. So he definitely existed and died although the how is still in the air.

          As for John, while he would certainly not be called scrupulous, he does not seem to have been a killer. His business deals often trended toward shady but I could not find any contemporary evidence that he was accused of murder in 1777. He traveled to Rhode Island in late 1776 on a business trip but it seems unlikely that he would have been in Princeton, a British-held town, on January 2 in order to murder Phillips. Also, as Princeton was garrisoned by the British army it seems unlikely that the three shots that killed Phillips would have gone uninvestigated long enough to strip the dead man and break his neck.

 

A pleated neck stock without its buckle

         So where does this accusation come from? Thomas Jones, the author of A History of New York during the Revolutionary War, was a loyalist who prior to the war had been a Supreme Court Judge along with Judge Robert R. Livingston. In 1779 the Act of Attainder stripped Jones of all his land on Long Island and forced him to flee to England along with his wife. His wife, by the way, was Anna DeLancey of the DeLancey family who had been bitter political opponents of the Livingston family for years. So Jones is perhaps not the most unbiased source. In the same book he referred to Chancellor Robert R. Livingston as a “violent partisan”.

          There is one more twist in the publication of the manuscript. The editor in 1873 was Edward Floyd DeLancey, a descendant of the same rival family.

          Did John R. Livingston murder a British officer for his neck stock? Probably not. The rivalry between the Livingstons and the DeLancey family was well-known, possibly even bitter enough to merit a smear campaign of this nature.  But maybe it's John R.'s somewhat shady connections, both during the war and after, make him vulnerable to a story like this.