a minor political operative and neighborhood fixer, begun when he opened an office at 31 Second Avenue in 1888, activities in which he engaged as an informally elected community "little mayor" for over a quarter of a century, for which he was referred to as the "Mayor of Second Avenue." Irwin Steingut's obituary says that he "moved to Brooklyn as a young man and was educated in the public schools there." The move was in fact away from his father and involved the turbulent relations between his parents, which resulted in their eventual divorce amid much ridicule in the press. Simon Steingut had been married earlier to a woman named Mary. The divorce decree in 1881 prohibited Simon (although not Mary) from remarrying until she died. After Lena Woldach gave birth to Irwin, Simon obtained a modification of the decree from Judge Miles Beach. He then married Lena on April 10, 1894. Within two years Lena Steingut had engaged a lawyer to seek support from Simon pending divorce. Steingut agreed but objected to the allegations of cruelty, telling all that his wife (at six feet, almost 14 inches taller than him) regularly beat him. A reconciliation occurred and the couple had another son, Edward (born April 20, 1900; he went to Commercial High School in Brooklyn). But at a high society ball in 1901, Simon had a jealous outburst. Lena retaliated by hiring detectives who eventually discovered Simon's relations with a singer ("Blond Cora" Brown) who Lena sued for $100,000 and then instituted divorce proceedings on May 22, 1902. Testimony was taken in the beginning of 1903, before Justice Hall. The Sun claimed that the action was a "shock" to the East Side, which looked on their marriage as a "model." The divorce decree became absolute on April 16. Like the earlier one, it also prohibited Steingut from remarrying, but he claimed he could remarry in New Jersey. Four months later, just as he was about to fulfill his promise by marrying an "actress" with "a position at the Metropolitan Opera," he learned that a divorced wife still had a dower interest in any real estate he purchased. He vowed to have this law changed. Divorce reform was a legislative goal for his son Irwin as well. After Simon's death, the fact that Irwin's parents divorced was almost never mentioned, not even in the obituary of his mother, who was