A New York boss fled to Spain, but his cartoon face gave him away
The courthouse at the center of the scandal cost more than twice what America paid for Alaska.
Peter Santenello · New York City’s Hidden Corruption 🇺🇸When William M. Tweed reached Spain, he had put an ocean between himself and New York. He had sailed to Cuba accompanied by his mistress before continuing onward to Spain, after facing 204 criminal charges for conspiracy, embezzlement, and diverting public funds to private use.
Tweed was the political boss who ran New York in the 1860s and early 1870s through Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine that controlled city jobs and contracts. The rule was simple. Whenever anyone did business with the city, his crew took at least 15 percent back.
The scale of the theft is still hard to grasp. The Tweed Courthouse, just beside City Hall, had first been priced at roughly $250,000 in 1860s dollars. It ended up costing more than $14 million, more than twice what the United States had paid for Alaska. In today's dollars, that is about $250 million to $300 million. Carpenters billed more than $100,000, in the money of the day, for carpentry inside chambers built without timber. Everything was padded, or never done at all. The gang pocketed somewhere between $1 billion and $5 billion.
Tweed seemed to have escaped all that. But New York had something he could not outrun, its newspapers.
The New York Times wrote about him from an intellectual side. Harper's, the illustrated weekly paper, went after him another way, with weekly cartoons. The drawings were made for immigrants who were not yet comfortable reading English, and they made Tweed's round face, beard, and bulk instantly familiar all over the city.
That fame followed him across the ocean. Harper's was also published in Spain, and that was likely how he was recognized. Spanish authorities recognized him immediately when he arrived. They arrested him and returned him to Manhattan for trial, where he was found guilty.
Questions people ask
What was Tammany Hall?
Tammany Hall began as a social club in the 1780s and grew into the Democratic political machine that dominated New York City politics for nearly a century. It traded jobs, housing, and help with new immigrants for votes, and then took a cut of city contracts and favors. Its name became shorthand for big city corruption.
Who drew the cartoons that exposed Tweed?
They were drawn by Thomas Nast, a German-born illustrator for Harper's Weekly. Nast created the elephant as a symbol for Republicans, the donkey for Democrats, and the modern image of Santa Claus. His relentless Tweed drawings, including the famous Tammany tiger devouring liberty, made Nast one of America's first celebrity cartoonists.
What happened to Tweed after he was brought back?
He was convicted, served time, escaped once, was recaptured, and was then held in the Ludlow Street Jail in Manhattan on civil charges tied to city debts. He died there in April 1878 at age 55. His fall helped spur civil service exams and budget transparency rules.