In the vestibule of the New York County Courthouse, on the right-hand side, is a sculpture consisting of a surviving fragment of a memorial financed by public subscription (to which the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, contributed) and created in 1903 by the distinguished sculptor Karl Bitter. The memorial was installed in an important building in lower Manhattan to honor Rebecca Salome Foster, who died in 1902. Mrs. Foster was a most extraordinary human being. For almost 20 years, she assisted judges of the criminal courts as a kind of probation officer (a position that did not formally exist at the time), and, in this role, she dedicated herself to helping accused and convicted persons, especially woman and girls, to abandon crime and find new, law-abiding paths in life. Using funds she raised, she provided encouragement and financial assistance to accused and convicted persons and their families, many of them immigrants from the Lower East Side and the Five Points neighborhood, found them places to live, and helped them find employment. She arranged legal assistance at no charge for those facing serious criminal accusations. She took many defendants into her personal care. Over the course of her career, she lightened the burdens and saved the lives of thousands. She practiced, advocated for, and made practicable through her supportive efforts an innovative and far-sighted approach to punishment for criminals that sought to rehabilitate offenders while protecting society. Her role was a volunteer one and she received no compensation for her work. That work was so effective that she earned the name “the Tombs Angel,” a title given her by those whom she helped and by which she was widely known in the New York City of the Gilded Age, of which she was a highly unusual representative.
After restoration efforts by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and later by A. Ottavino Corporation of Ozone Park, the surviving portion of the Foster Monument was installed in the vestibule and re-dedicated in a public ceremony in the rotunda of the courthouse in 2019, which was attended by members of the Foster family. For more about Mrs. Foster and about the history of her monument, see the articles and podcast below, from the website of the Historical Society of the New York Courts.
Further Resources
The Tombs Angel: An Exemplary Life of Service
by John F. Werner and Robert C. Meade, Jr., Esqs. (Judicial Notice, 2021)
A Life of Service: Remembering the Tombs Angel, A Heroine of the Gilded Age
by John F. Werner and Robert C. Meade, Jr., Esqs. (2023)
A Light in the City
The Tombs Angel–A Remarkable Life in the Gilded Age
Podcast Coming Soon!