Abraham H. Hummel

Born in 1849, Abraham H. Hummel became a prominent New York lawyer and the quieter half of the firm Howe and Hummel, partnering with the flamboyant trial attorney William F. Howe. While Howe drew attention in criminal court, Hummel was known for managing much of the firm's civil work and business dealings.

Howe and Hummel became famous in late 19th-century New York for representing an extraordinary mix of clients, from people accused of serious crimes to figures from the city's nightlife and scandal sheets. The firm developed a reputation not just for legal skill, but for operating in the murky world where celebrity, vice, gossip, and the law often overlapped.

Hummel died in 1926, but his name has endured because Howe and Hummel became one of the most storied law partnerships of old New York. He remains a striking example of how lawyers in that era could become public characters in their own right, especially when they worked at the center of the city's most notorious cases.