VOL. IX.
No. 4.
BOSTON.
APRIL, 1897.
DANIEL DOUGHERTY AND THE PHILADELPHIA BAR. BY A. OAKEY HALL. WHY, it would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer," has been from Colonial times a colloquial expression, that originated primarily in the State of William Penn, but gradually extended far and wide and even crept into tales and sketches. The writer has even heard the phrase used in far away western settlements. But whenever used, the utterance in its reference was, and re mains, complimentary; and it evidences that at an early period the Philadelphia law yer had a fame for shrewdness, and perhaps for the hair-splitting ingenuity of the old race of special pleaders, whom statutes, codes, and a march of simplicity in the affairs of modern life have driven into his toric caste. Nor in the progress of time has the Philadelphia lawyer lost any significance in his profession, although compared with his illustrious brethren in other cities. Recently the writer interviewed a retired counselor of the Philadelphia bar who was encountered at the recent funeral of Charles W. Brooke in New York City, where the latter had practiced his profession, with the appro bation of clients and the bench, for a quartercentury after graduating from the Philadel phia bar. "Brooke's departure for New York in his younger days," said the Philadelphian, "was the result of a longing for broader honors; for a mingling with more extended litiga tions, and an attainment of proverbially higher fees. Indeed, Philadelphia has often contributed great lawyers to that city, as, for instance, George Wood, John W. Ashmead, Edmon Blankman, William B. Reed and
Daniel Dougherty — each of whom have joined the majority. All of these, except Wood, had a fancy for criminal jurispru dence, and in that specialty won their best honors in their adopted city. Ashmead and Blankman made their mark in procuring, on a third trial, the conviction, for a low degree of manslaughter, of an Italian named Michael Cancemi, who had been once found guilty of murder in the first degree and sen tenced to death. Reed came to the New York bar after having been district-attorney in Philadelphia; and Dougherty took to his new home oratorical honors before jurors which had already made him renowned in the city of his birth." "I came to the Philadelphia Bar," con tinued the octogenarian lawyer-^— who sturd ily bore his years by reason of the " superior strength " that the Biblical authority said was necessary for the mortal who exceeded nature's span of three score and ten; and who happily had escaped the attendant "labor and sorrow " which the Biblical au thor imposed upon the long-lived mortal — "I came to the bar when the memories of those, now dead and gone, great lawyers, Chief-Justice M'Kean, Judges Shippen and Bushrod Washington, William Tilghman, Jared Ingersoll, Alexander James Dallas and William Rawle, were yet fervid to younger attorneys; and while the afterwards Judge Grier of the Federal Supreme Court, Jere miah S. Black, Horace Binney, David Paul Brown, William M. Meredith, George Sharswood and John Sergeant, were in the plenitude of their legal activity before the 141
