John Goff

John William Goff, Sr.
Portrait of John W. Goff
Born	(1848-01-01)January 1, 1848 County Wexford, Ireland
Died	November 9, 1924(1924-11-09) (aged 76)

John William Goff, Sr. (January 1, 1848 – November 9, 1924) was an American lawyer and politician from New York.

Born in County Wexford, Goff emigrated with his family to the United States while still a child. The family settled in New York City, where Goff worked for ten years as a clerk in a dry goods store while attending night classes at Cooper Union. In 1865, he took a job as a junior clerk in an attorney's office and eventually was admitted to the bar.

Goff was a committed Irish nationalist and in 1875 he played a prominent part in arranging for the rescue of six Fenian rebels imprisoned in a British penal colony in Western Australia. The seaborne expedition, which successfully evaded Royal Navy patrols, involving the New Bedford whaler Catalpa, was popularly known as 'Goff's Irish Rescue Party'.

In 1888, Goff was appointed as Assistant New York County District Attorney by D.A. John R. Fellows. In November 1890, Goff ran on the County Democracy (the Anti-Tammany Democrats at the time) ticket to succeed Fellows, but was defeated by Tammany man De Lancey Nicoll.

Goff became involved with work for the Society for the Prevention of Crime. There he made the acquaintance of the reforming clergyman Charles Henry Parkhurst, and as a result became prominent among the ranks of those critical of vice and police corruption in Manhattan. When Republican boss Thomas Platt, seeking political advantage over his enemies at Tammany Hall, arranged for the establishment of the Lexow Committee to investigate corruption in the Police Department (NYPD), Goff was appointed Chief Counsel to the committee. He interrogated corrupt police Commissioner John McClave, the notoriously brutal Inspector Alexander S. Williams and Superintendent Thomas F. Byrnes, the former head of the New York City Detective Bureau noted for giving his prisoners the "Third Degree."