The Abbott at Calvary Cemetery

You never know what you might find at First Calvary Cemetery in Queens.

While wandering through Calvary Cemetery, I came upon a curious monument whose sculptural elements included a life sized portrait with a dedication honoring a man named Florence Scannell.

The stone additionally bore a curious screed- “The Abbot.”

“Dedicated to the memory of Florence Scannell by his brother John J.” is displayed prominently on the monument’s face. This name stirred a sleeping memory, and I tried to remember why the name Scannell is so important. That’s when it began to dawn… I said it out loud- John J. Scannell? HOLY SMOKES, COMMISSIONER JOHN J. SCANNELL.

John J. Scannell was the first New York City Fire Commissioner, grand sachem of Tammany Hall, and a notorious turn of the century raconteur who became “king of the hill” in the often violent political world of 19th century New York City.

Bare knuckled, the electoral system in the 19th century resembled modern gang wars. Bearded men were paid to vote, taken to a barber shop for a shave and a shot of whiskey, and then paid to vote again. Paid armies of volunteers rousted saloons and bars that supported their political enemies. With political bosses paying the tab, taverns became organizing points for local “get out the vote” efforts which offered free drinks and hot meals for men willing to vote.

The working masses didn’t care who they voted for. On election day they could drink enough to forget their troubles and even eat a real meal- with actual meat in it, and all they had to do was vote the way they were told. The bosses were the bosses, and your place in “the line” could be revoked at any time if you fell out of favor with them. There was no “safety net”, so you had to just “go along.” Sometimes the other party would send gangs of street toughs into their opponents establishments-  a practice called “bar busting”. This was the era of Jacob Riis’s “How the Other Half Lives,” just for context.

The Scannell brothers are described as having been engaged in such “bar busting” activities in 1869, with brother Florence running for Alderman from the 18th ward against a Tammany candidate.

At 23rd Street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan, on the third of December, a Tammany man named Thomas Donaghue ran afoul of the Scannell brothers- who were employed to “clean out” and “bust” a saloon he owned and operated which was loyal to Tammany.

The Scannells and a dozen of their men produced weapons and engaged in a fierce battle with Donaghue’s own crew of toughs inside the bar. Gunfire erupted and Florence Scannel was shot in the back, the bullet embedding itself in his spinal column. Rushed to the nearby Bellevue Hospital, Florence suffered a lingering death, finally passing on July 10, 1870 with his brother John at his side. John J. Scannell swore an oath to avenge his brother, and kill the man who shot him in the back– the Tammany man, Thomas Donaghue.

Donaghue’s political handlers fixed things up with the courts, and he returned to his familiar Saloon on 23rd Street and 2nd Avenue.

On Sept. 19th in 1869, at the corner of 17th Street and 3rd Avenue, an odd looking man wearing a slouched hat and fake beard stepped out of the shadows and blasted a hole in Donaghue’s chest with a derringer pistol. Donaghue ultimately survived this attempt on his life, and the assassin discarded his disguise while escaping the police, who lost his trail in crowded Union Square. Witnesses, including the pursuing police officer, identified the assassin as John J. Scannell.

John J. later surrendered to a police sergeant after taking refuge on Long Island, and was indicted by a Grand Jury for the crime, but he was never charged and released on $10,000 bail.

That’s $10,000 in 1870…

In November of 1872, Donaghue was attending an auction at the Apollo Theatre on 28th street, and a man wearing a cloak and slouched hat approached him. A large caliber pistol was produced and the middle of Donaghue’s face disappeared. Four more shots, three in the face, were pumped into the now prostrate Donaghue. The killer fled and was apprehended by a police captain named McElwain, who immediately identified the assassin as John J. Scannell. Such quick identification of Scannell was possible only because the arresting officer had been the one who arrested him for the the earlier attempt on Donaghue, when he was a sergeant.

The event was seminal, for as John J. Scannell sat in a gaol called “The Tombs,” another man sat beside him. That night, John J. Scannell met Richard Croker.

Someday, they would become “The Big Two” at Tammany Hall, rule over New York City, and lead the successful effort to consolidate the Greater City of New York in 1898.

John J. Scannell was born on the lower East Side of Manhattan and found early work as a horse dealer- moving on to Saloon Keeper and then Professional Gambler.

Charged with the murder of Donaghue, he pled insanity, and after a 3 month stint in an asylum in Utica, returned to local politics.

He owned horses and raced them on the national circuit, as did Richard Croker. Rising in Tammany with his partner Croker, Scannell ran the 25th electoral district in Manhattan for many years, and desired the post of fire department commissioner in that newly unified pile of gold called “the City of Greater New York”. Protests were recorded citywide, but Mayor Van Wyck appointed him chief of the newly unified citywide firefighting brigades. He served in that capacity until 1901, and fought corruption charges associated with his appointment until 1906 in court. At 67, in 1907, Scannell was sued for $15,000 for kissing the daughter of his housekeeper 3 times without consent.

Scannell died at 78 in Jamaica, Queens- far from his retirement estate in Freeport, L.I.

The Abbot, as it turns out, is a Horse.

Scannell paid the scandalous amount of $26,500 at a Madison Square auction, the highest ever paid for a single horse to that time, to purchase the Abbott.

That’s $26,500 in 1900…

The obituary for the horse is actually longer than the one for the owner. The fact that Scannell engraved a Horse’s name on the monument to his dead brother, and his own eventual grave marker, shows the esteem felt by Scannell himself for the animal. Oddly enough, and this is a rare thing for Calvary Cemetery, The NYTimes once did an article on the raising of this monument which happened in 1914.

Hey, you never know what you’re going to find at Calvary Cemetery.

These portraits of Mr.’s Scannell and Croker are found in Moses King’s “Notable New Yorkers of 1896-1899, courtesy Google Books.

Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman blogs at Newtown Pentacle.