Every city department was corrupt. It was found that one hundred and sixty-three conveyances were deeded to the Chief of Police, George W. Matsell, and his partner, Capt. Norris, in about a year.[19] Matsell was mentioned also as receiving money from about one hundred men who patronized the odious Madame Restell’s establishment in Greenwich street.[20] Both the police and Aldermen collected money from saloons, though the Aldermen obtained the larger share, as they had the power of granting licenses. Within three or four years William B. Reynolds received over $200,000 from the city, under a five-years’ contract for removing dead animals, offal and bones, though at the time the contract was made other persons had offered to remove them free of expense, and one had even offered to pay the city $50,000 a year for the exclusive privilege.[21] It was owing to Controller Flagg’s action that a contract to index certain city records at a cost of between $200,000 and $300,000, despite the offer of a well-known publisher to do it for $59,000, was canceled.[22] Flimsy tenement houses, causing later much fatality and disaster, were built in haste, there being no supervisory authority over their erection.[23] The lighting of the city was insufficient, thousands of oil lamps still being used, and these, according to an old custom, not being lighted on moonlit nights.[24] Both Tammany and Whig Aldermen and officials were implicated in these disclosures. Such was the system of city government that, though twenty-nine Aldermen were at one time under judgment of contempt of court, and a part of the same number under indictment for bribery, yet under the law they continued acting as Judges in the criminal courts. According to Judge Vanderpoel, bribery was considered a joke.