RELATED BIOFILES

Hall, Abraham Oakley (1826-1898), lawyer, lecturer, journalist, and Tammany Hall politician. Part of the notorious Tweed Ring (the corrupt Democratic political machine that controlled New York under William Marcy "Boss" Tweed) during the 1860s, he served as district attorney and then mayor of New York (1868-1872). After nine years in London, practicing law and representing the New York Herald there, Hall returned to New York at the end of 1892. EG's 1893 trial marked his return to the courtroom as an attorney. In her autobiography, EG remembered him as far "too humane and democratic for the politicians."

Martine, Randolph B. (1844-1895), American judge. A graduate of Columbia University Law School and a prominent figure in Tammany Hall, the corrupt Democratic political machine in New York City. He was elected Democratic district attorney in 1884 and a judge of the Court of General Sessions in 1887. Presided over EG's 1893 trial.

Michel, Louise (1830-1905), prominent French anarchist, teacher, writer, Communard. After moving in 1856 to Paris, she combined teaching, literary work, and politics, becoming first a republican, then a socialist. A frontline fighter on the barricades during the Paris Commune, she was banished in 1873 to New Caledonia, where she taught, became a supporter of the colony's movement for independence from France, and converted to anarchism. Pardoned with her fellow Communards in 1880, she returned to France and joined the circle around the anarchist journal La Révolution Sociale (Paris, 1880-1881). In 1883 she was arrested with Emile Pouget after a Paris bread riot and imprisoned until January 1886. In 1890, to avoid another prison term, she fled to London, there founding and operating the libertarian International Sunday School. For the remainder of her life, she traveled frequently between England and France, propagandizing while evading arrest. In 1892, she joined Malatesta and Kropotkin, among others, in an informal group calling on anarchists to work more closely with trade unions. EG met Michel in London in 1895 and invited her to the US, but the projected trip never materialized. During the Dreyfus affair, Michel argued that anarchists should refrain from supporting Alfred Dreyfus, because of his identity as a bourgeois career officer. A contributor to both Les Temps Nouveaux and, at its founding, to Le Libertaire (Paris, 1895-1956), she wrote essays, novels, poetry, history, her memoirs, and an opera. Revered for her legendary kindness as well as for her devotion to anarchism, she died while on a lecture tour in France in 1905.

Schwab, Justus H. (1847-1900), German-born anarchist, immigrated to the United States in 1868. His Lower East Side saloon at 50 East First Street was a popular gathering place for radicals and writers. EG used it as her return address for many years; it was also the address of Sturmvogel. Arrested for unfurling a red flag during the Tompkins Square Riot, an unemployed demonstration interrupted by the police, on 13 January 1874, he evoked the Paris Commune and sang the "Marseillaise" as he was dragged away. Initially a socialist, (he was expelled from the Socialist Labor Party for his opposition to the Greenback alliance in the 1880 election) by the early 1880s Schwab embraced anarchism and became a founder of the New York Social Revolutionary Club. Played a leading role in the October 1881 Chicago Congress of Social Revolutionaries as the representative of the Social Revolutionary Club of New York. The Congress attended by anarchists and others, denounced wage slavery and private property, and endorsed the resolutions of the earlier July 1881 London Social Revolutionary Congress, including propaganda by the deed and other methods of armed insurrection. Instrumental in bringing Johann Most, through the Social Revolutionary Club, to New York in December 1882, when he formally introduced Most at his first appearance before an American audience. A member of the International Working People’s Association from its inception in 1883. Correspondent of Albert Parsons in Cook County Jail. One-time business manager of Freiheit. Schwab was for many years an agent of Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty. As reported in Liberty, Schwab broke away from Most in 1886, in a scandal which allegedly involved some anarchist communists setting house fires as part of an insurance fraud scheme. Not directly involved in the activities, Most refused to condemn them, after which Schwab distanced himself from Most and Freiheit, but did not speak out publically against Most. The affair prompted a Freiheit warning against Schwab to all anarchists, despite which Most still delivered a glowing eulogy for Schwab at his funeral. Schwab was also a leader of the German anarchist singing group the Arbeiter Liedertafel. Schwab was a close friend and supporter of EG, and she often used his saloon as her mailing address. In LML (320) she describes him as having a "surprising capacity for friendship, a veritable genius for responding generously and beautifully."