Whipped Cream Difficulties

Leo Hershkowitz is another one of those people I hadn’t heard of until the NYT published his obituary. And he’s also another one of those people I would have liked to have coffee with, though our politics might not have been in alignment.

Mr. Hershkowitz was a historian and an archivist. Over the years, he rescued a lot of municipal documents that were just going to be thrown away:

Among the treasures he discovered were the city’s financial records for the funeral of Abraham Lincoln — held at City Hall on April 19, 1865 — including the undertaker’s bill for $1,000 and another bill, for $20, from James Ayliffe of Trinity Church for composing a funeral dirge and playing the church’s chimes…
And, from bundles of papers earmarked for disposal by the city comptroller’s office, he saved coroner’s records from the late 18th and early 19th centuries that recorded infanticides, suicides, drownings — and the killing of Alexander Hamilton by Aaron Burr in a duel across the Hudson in Weehawken, N.J.

He also wrote a book called Tweed’s New York: Another Look in which he argued:

Rather than portraying him as corrupt, Professor Hershkowitz determined that Tweed had been the victim of illicit machinations at his embezzlement trial; that he had shown more vision about the city’s growth than some reformers; and that he had been prosecuted to deflect attention from Republican corruption in Washington. Indeed, he said, the trial prosecutors arranged with Gov. Samuel J. Tilden of New York to handpick a judge who was prejudiced against Tweed.

(As the Times notes, the thesis that Boss Tweed was framed by evil Republicans trying to cover up their own corruption was not met with universal approval by other historians.)

He was 92.

And by the way, paper of record, where’s your damn Brian Aldiss obit?