Samuel J. Tilden as a Lawyer. tions, eighty-four in number, so as to com pletely reproduce the purloined tallies. In summing up to the jury, he claimed to have given a mathematical demonstration that the relator's case was constructed upon forgery. The jury within a quarter-hour of retiring gave verdict for Mr. Flagg. Popular sym pathy and the press were on his side, and Mr. Tilden's professional victory remained for a long time a ruling topic* Clients renewedly besieged his office. Two years later he was retained in an ad ministration probate case by the heirs of a Dr. Burdell, who had been murdered, as was afterwards clearly demonstrated, by a physi cian employed for that purpose by Dr. Burdell's landlady, a Mrs. Cunningham, on a promise to divide the slain doctor's estate with the principal felon. She, as accessory to the crime, confessed, as a fact for the first time known, while a coroner' inquest pro ceeded, that she was the widow of Burdell through a secret marriage, and was then enceinte by him. She was tried and acquitted mainly upon the testimony of the physician who did the deed; for at that time the lat ter was unsuspected. As claimant widow she endeavored to administrate upon the estate of Dr. Burdell. Affirmative testi mony of the officiating minister, the mar riage certificate, and evidence of Mrs. Cun ningham's daughter — of light character by the way — and the clergyman's servants, seemed at first invincible. Mr. Tilden's idea was, " Yes, there was a ceremony, but Dr. Burdell was personated, the clergyman and he being strangers, and the latter had not even seen the former in his coffin; nor was a photograph of the alleged bridegroom in existence to exhibit for identification to the clergyman. Mr. Tilden, in contesting the claims of the alleged widow, made what can be best described as a concordance of every fact which her counsel brought for ward; he relied upon the affinity of what seemed truth, and traced other lines of testi mony back into the complicated and per
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plexed phases of fabrication, fairly ravelling the threads of falsehood and pretences. With great patience he traced the alleged bride groom into a town two hundred miles from New York (the place of alleged marriage), on the day before the ceremony, and showed him in still another place at the very time it was being performed. Mr. Tilden won deci sion for his clients from the probate judge, whose findings, with a full detail of all the romantic facts, can be found by the "curious in the third volume of Bradford's Surro gate reports — that of themselves abound throughout in legal romance. The result was intensified in public interest when in the following year Mrs. Cunningham-Burdell went through the farce of childbirth with a two-day-old baby borrowed from a mater nity hospital. The trick of thus producing an heir was however exposed by the treach ery of her accomplice doctor, who discovered that his share of estate had gone through her probate failure. He subsequently committed suicide after flight to South America. The attorney-general who had beaten Mr. Tilden at the polls shamefully mismanaged the case of murder against the woman who instigated the crime. Had Mr. Tilden been elected, he would have prosecuted instead, and doubtless by his legal acumen have procured conviction. Mr. Tilden's legal fame brought to him as clientage large corporate interests, and especially those connected with railway en terprises. He had in the opinion of Wall Street clients shown skill as a financier. Corporations detected his capacity for con centrated labor, and his faith in the mathe matical consistency of truths; and this de tection made him sought after as standing counsel to these. From 1858 to 1875, at least half of the great railway corporations operating north of the Ohio and between the Hudson and Missouri Rivers at some time employed his professional acumen and activity. He mastered all questions which could arise in the organization, administra
