New York World, July 9th 1893:
JOHN CLAY WEPT IN COURT.
He is Held for Cheating the Management of the Hotel Monopole.
John Clay, fifty-eight years old, was a prisoner at the Jefferson Market Court yesterday, and Justice Hogan held him in $500 for trial The complainant is Manager Rufus W. Frost, of the Broadway Central Hotel,who says that Clay is a cheat and owes him for three weeks' board. The prisoner represents
himself as an agent for Watts & Co., the English mechanical engineers.
Clay does not deny owing this bill and says that he will pay it when an expected remittance of £50 arrives from London. The hotel people were disposed to be lenient untit they earned that Clay had left an account unpaid at the United States Hotel amounting to $250. Clay wept aloud in court.