Brooklyn History -- 88 Decatur Street
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Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6 of this story.

Mrs. Harriet N. Kilmer was furious. The year was 1908. She, her daughter and son-in-law had just lost thousands of dollars in stocks at the brokerage firm of E. F. Hutton, on Wall Street. They had entrusted a great deal of the recently deceased Mr. Charles Kilmer’s family legacy to a man who was an employee of Hutton, for the purpose of liquidity. But when they went to collect on their stock dividends, they found that the stocks were gone.

A part-time “outside man” at the firm, the affable young man who greets potential clients in the lobby and is at a desk to explain stocks and bonds and tell people where the rest rooms were, had taken their money. Charles A. Bliven was that young man, and all fingers pointed at him as the thief. This theft had happened right under their noses. Was E. F. Hutton even listening, or better yet watching? Was this really making money the old fashioned way? The inevitable law suit was filed, and here’s when it got interesting.

Charles E. Kilmer, a prominent attorney and former NY State Comptroller had died in 1906. He lived in Troy, but also kept an office in lower Manhattan, and split his time between the two locations. After his death, his wife and her daughter came to NYC to go through his papers. Kilmer may have been a top lawyer, but he forgot to write a will, and the family was trying to get his estate in order. His widow had been appointed executrix, and in the course of their search, the women had found Kilmer’s stock certificates. He had left behind a tidy portfolio of prime stocks from three very reputable and profitable companies.

As related in our last chapter, Mrs. Kilmer wanted to cash out some of the stock. She knew she needed the help of someone on Wall Street, and in her husband’s papers, she found the name of Charles A. Bliven, an employee of E. Hutton, at the time a small, but well-regarded brokerage and banking house. Mr. Kilmer’s former secretary, Miss Forshay, was helping them sort things out. She told Mrs. Kilmer that Mr. Bliven had come to the office on several occasions, and Mr. Kilmer had liked and trusted the young man.

Long story short, Mrs. Kilmer had young Bliven come to the office, and she too was taken by the earnest and affable young man. She arranged a stock transfer that Mr. Bliven would take care of for her. She had him deposit one group of stock into a new account in Mrs. Kilmer and her daughter, Mrs. Swinnerton’s names. She wrote a note of authorization permitted Bliven to transfer some of her husband’s stock. He wrote out a receipt which stated that he was receiving the stock on behalf of the brokerage, and promised that an official receipt would come from E.F. Hutton. A few days later, a receipt on Hutton letterhead came in the mail.

All was well, so the Kilmer’s thought, except that Charles Bliven had misrepresented his importance in the firm, and also had seen an opportunity to cash in on the ignorance of a grieving widow. Bliven WAS authorized to receive the stocks and turn them over to the firm. But that was it. He was not a member of the Exchange, was not a broker, or even a full-time employee. He was a glorified messenger. He had been hired by Hutton because of his glib tongue and affable nature. He was great with people, and was enthusiastic about stocks and trading. But he had very limited authority.

He also liked to trade and gamble in the market, and had been a Hutton customer, which was how they knew him. But now that he was an employee, he was forbidden to trade under his own name, so he had opened an account in his brother’s name, and traded from there. When Mrs. Kilmer gave him over two hundred shares of prime stock, it was too much for him to resist. He wrote out a receipt on E.F. Hutton stationery, but he deposited the stock in his brother’s account. The names listed as owners of the certificates were Kilmer and Swinnerton, it was right there on the face of each certificate, but he told the Hutton people that old man Kilmer had given him the stocks as payment for a debt. No one checked this story; they simply credited the stocks to the Bliven account.

Hutton, in its usual course of business, transferred the account to another bank, and received payment for that transfer. Then Mrs. Kilmer came looking for some cash. Bliven, about to get caught, turned on the charm, and told Mrs. Kilmer that it would take some time to transfer the stock, and then sold her on the idea of liquidating more of her stock in the meantime. She gave him 100 shares of a railroad stock with the instructions to sell if the price hit $30 a share. Bliven told her that Hutton would do this, and would also pay her a percentage for the use of her stock until it sold.

It seemed like a win-win. The stock would be making money while at Hutton, and then when it reached her selling price, she’d get the proceeds of that sale, as well. The only problem was that Bliven took her 100 shares and deposited it in his brother’s account, not Mrs. Kilmer’s account. In reality, Mrs. Kilmer didn’t even have an account. And by this time, Bliven had left the employ of E. F. Hutton, and was out there acting as a free agent. But like many good con men, he didn’t know when to quit when he was ahead. Mrs. Kilmer was not seeing any money from this. Bliven had to know that sooner, rather than later, she was going to go straight to E.F. Hutton, and find out she had been royally ripped off.

And sure enough, she did. Kathleen Kilmer and her son-in-law descended on E. F. Hutton and wanted to see their account. There was no account. And there was no Charles Bliven now in their employ. They sued. When the case was heard, in the last months of 1908, E. F. Hutton was being sued for the loss of $45,000 in stock and dividends. That sum would be millions in today’s money. Charles Bliven was called to testify, and he got on the stand and lied his face off.’

The greatest piece of evidence against E. F. Hutton was the company receipt that had arrived in the mail after the first stock transfer had been made. This proved that the company had indeed been in receipt of the stock. Hutton’s people denied writing that receipt, or knowing anything about the account. Charles Bliven had stolen from both of them, they said, and he had written the receipt.

When Bliven took the stand, he categorically denied having done so. He had signed his own handwritten receipt, which they showed as evidence, and the writing was the same on the Hutton receipt, but Bliven swore that the Hutton receipt was a forgery. He had already been charged and acquitted of that charge. He also repeated the lie that now dead Charles Kilmer had given him the stock. The jury bought it. Unbelievably, the case was lost.

But the District Attorney’s office had taken an interest, while the case was in civil court, and a Grand Jury was called. They found enough evidence to have Bliven arrested, and not a day after the civil trial was over, police found Bliven at his home at 88 Decatur Street in Stuyvesant Heights and arrested him. He was charged with grand larceny, forgery and perjury. As he stood at his arraignment, the D.A’s office asked for a high bail, due to the seriousness of the charge, and the chances that Bliven would skip town. Bail was set at $25,000, a huge amount for the day, and Bliven found himself in the Tombs.

This time, justice was swift. There was just too much evidence against Bliven, and not enough against the carelessness of E.F. Hutton. There was also no money. Bliven had lost all of it all in stock speculation. A jury found him guilty on all three charges. It was May of 1909. At the sentencing, his wife sat in the courtroom. His mother, a woman of seventy years was especially tearful, and would not sit in the courtroom, but kept watch for the judge in the anteroom. When she saw the judge coming through the room, she got up to implore with him, but he ducked her and made it to the bench.

The defense attorney begged for mercy, saying that the Bliven wife and parents were as much a victim as the Kilmer’s. The judge didn’t buy it. He laid into Bliven, calling him a thief who had stolen from a widow and her child, the only family of a man who had called him friend. He had also lied and forged documents to trick his employers, and had ruined his family. He was absolutely despicable. And even though the judge had received many letters from Bliven’s high society friends, he was going to send him to prison. He then sentenced Charles Bliven to at least three years at Sing Sing. The officers took him away.

In 1911, the Kilmer’s went to the Appellate Court to appeal their loss in their first effort to sue E. F. Hutton. Mrs. Kilmer had remarried and the case was now in her new name, “Reichard.” This time they had the evidence from the criminal case against Charles Bliven, as well as other evidence. In a long, and fascinating brief, which can be found on line as Reichard v Hutton, in the NYS Court of Appeals, the court found that Charles Bliven had been masterfully slick in his dealings between the Kilmer’s and the brokerage. There was ambiguity for days, but in the long run, Hutton should have checked the veracity of Bliven’s claims that the stocks, which were all printed with other people’s names on them, were his. The court found in favor of the plaintiffs and they were at last rewarded with the payment of their $45,000, plus costs and fees.

As for Charles A. Bliven? He served his term of three years, and was released from Sing Sing, and disappeared into history. I could find no further definitive mention of him. It looked like he might have gone back upstate, where his parents lived, which probably would have been best. He had burned a lot of bridges in New York City. As for his old home in Brooklyn? 88 Decatur Street would have many more tenants over the years, but none were as memorable, or as larcenous, as D. Edgar Anthony, Benjamin F. Chadsey or Charles A. Bliven. GMAP


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