South Bend News-Times, 11 December 1930: New York judge quits bench as probe continues

The South Bend News-Times of 11 December 1930 carries, at the top of the left-hand column of a page the Library of Congress numbers as image 18 (the printed folio reads “4*”), a dispatch headed “New York Judge Quits Bench as Probe Continues,” with the deck “Justice McQuade Resigns Under Fire; Follows Five Others.” It is by Sidney B. Whipple, “United Press Staff Correspondent,” datelined “NEW YORK, Dec. 10.” The page was checked against the stored scan; the quotations follow the Library’s OCR.

The story reports the resignation of Magistrate Francis X. McQuade and the progress of the inquiry under chief counsel Isidor J. Kresel. Under a subhead on the “policy racket,” it says that “Not the least picturesque development of the investigation was the appearance of “Mme. Stephanie St. Clair,”” whom it calls “the policy queen of Harlem,” and reports that “she says, she, too, was “framed” by the police and sent to the workhouse,” and that she “wants to tell of the thousands of dollars she paid over to detectives and higher police officials.” It then explains how policy betting worked.

The dispatch uses a racial epithet and makes claims about her birthplace and wealth that are the paper’s, not verified; this archive does not repeat them. It cites the page for what St. Clair was reported to have said at the inquiry, as the wire service put it.