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The Autobiography of a Thief · The Autobiography of a Thief

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  Introduction, Oh, happy he who can still hope to emerge from this sea
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  of error faust. There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake,
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  but thereby to purchase him self profit or pleasure, or honor, or
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  the like. Therefore, why should I be angry with a man for loving
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  himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong merely out of
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  ill nature? Why yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which
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  prick and scratch because they can do no other. Bacon Editor's note. I
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  met the ex pickpocket and burglar, whose autobiography follows, soon after his release
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  from a third term in the penitentiary. For several weeks I was not particularly
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  interested in him. He was full of a desire to publish in the newspapers
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  and expose of conditions obtained in two of our state institutions, his motive seeming
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  partly revenge and partly a very genuine feeling that he had come in contact with
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  a systematic crime against humanity. But as I continued to see more of him
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  and learned much about his life, my interest grew. For I soon perceived
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  that he not only had led a typical thief's life, but was also a
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  man of more than common natural intelligence, with a gift of vigorous expression.
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  With little schooling, he had yet educated himself mainly by means of the prison
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  libraries, until he had a good and individually expressed acquaintance with many of the
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  English classics and with some of the masterpieces of philosophy. That this ex convict,
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  when a boy on the East side of New York City, should have
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  taken to the graft seemed to me, as he talked about it, the
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  most natural thing in the world. His parents were honest, but ignorarant and
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  poor. One of his brothers, a normal and honorable man, is a
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  truck driver with a large family, and his relatives and honest friends in general,
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  belonged to the most modest class of working people. The swell among them
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  is another brother who is a policeman. But Jim, the ex convict,
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  is by far the cleverest and most intelligent of the lot. I have often
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  seen him and his family together on Saturday nights when the clan gathers in the
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  truckman's house for a good time, and he is the life of the occasion
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  and admired by the others. Jim was an unusually energetic and ambitious boy,
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  but the respectable people he knew did not appeal to his imagination. As he
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  played on the street, other boys pointed out to him the swell thief at
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  the corner saloon and told him tales of big robberies and exciting adventures, and
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  the prizes of life seemed to him to lie along the path of crime.
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  There was no one to teach him what constitutes real success, and he went
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  in for crime with energy and enthusiasm. It was only after he had become
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  a professional thief and had done time in prisons that he began to see that
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  crime does not pay. He saw that all his friends came to ruin,
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  that his own health was shattered, and that he stood on the verge of
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  the mad house. His self education in prison helped him, too, to
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  the perception that he had made a terrible mistake. He came to have intellectual
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  ambitions and no longer took an interest in his old companions. After several weeks
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  of constant association with him, I became morally certain that his reform was as
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  genuine as possible under the circumstances, and that with fair success in the way
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  of getting something to do, he would remain honest. I therefore proposed to
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  him to write an autobiography. He took up the idea with eagerness, and
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  through the entire period of our work together, has shown an unwavering interest in
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  the book and very decided acumen and common sense. The method employed in composing
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  the volume was that practically of the interview. From the middle of March to
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  the first of July, we met nearly every afternoon and many evenings at a
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  little German cafe on the East Side. There I took voluminous notes, often
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  asking questions, but taking down as literally as possible his story in his own
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  words. To such a degree is this true that the following narrative is an
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  authentic account of his life, with occasional descriptions and character sketches of his friends
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  of the underworld. Even without my explicit assurance, the autobiography bears sufficient internal
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  evidence of the fact that essentially it is a thief's own story. Many hours
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  of the daytime, when I was busy with other things, my friend,
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  for I have come to look upon him as such, was occupied with putting
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  down on paper character sketches of his pals and their careers, or recording his
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  impressions of the life they had followed. After I had left town for the
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  summer. In order to prepare this volume, I wrote to Jim repeatedly asking
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  for more material on certain points. This he always furnished in a manner which
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  showed his continued interest and a literary sense, though fragmentary of new common kind.
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  H. H. End of Introduction, Chapter one, Boyhood and Early
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  Crime. I have been a professional thief for more than twenty years. Half
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  of that time I have spent at State's prison and the other half in Grafton.
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  In one form or another, I was a good pickpocket and a fairly
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  successful burglar, and I have known many of the best crooks in the country.
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  I have left the business for good, and my reasons will appear in
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  the course of this narrative. I shall tell my story with entire frankness.
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  I shall not try to defend myself. I shall try merely to tell the
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  truth. Perhaps in so doing I shall explain myself. I was born on
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  the East side of New York City in eighteen sixty eight of poor but honest
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  parents. My father was an Englishman who had married an Irish girl and emigrated
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  to America, where he had a large family, no one of whom,
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  with the exception of myself, went wrong. For many years he was an
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  employee of Brown Brothers in Company, and was a sober, industrious man and
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  a good husband and kind father to me, who was his favorite. He
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  was perhaps too kind. I was certainly a spoiled child. I remember that
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  when I was five years old, he bought me a twenty five dollar suit
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  of clothes. I was a vigorous, handsome boy with red rosy cheeks,
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  and was not only the pet of my family, but the life of the
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  neighborhood as well. At that time, which is as far back as I
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  can remember, we were living on Monroe Street in the seventh Ward. This
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  was then a good residential neighborhood, and we were comfortable in our small wooden
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  house. The people about us were Irish and German, the large Jewish immigration
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  not having begun yet. Consequently, lew And New York did not have such
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  a strong business look as it has now, but was cleanly and respectable.
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  The gin mills were fewer in number and were comparatively decent. When the Jews
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  came, they started many basement saloons or cafes, and for the first time,
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  I believe the social evil began to be connected with the drinking places.
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  I committed my first theft at the age of six. Older heads put me
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  up to steal money from the till of my brother's grocery store. That happened
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  this way. There were several much older boys in the neighborhood who wanted money
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  for row boating in theaters. One was eighteen years old, a ship cocker,
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  and another was a roustabout of seventeen. I used to watch these boys
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  practice singing and dancing in the big marble lots in the vicinity. How they
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  fired my youthful imagination. They told me about the theaters then in Vogue twenty
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  pastors, the old Globe Woods Museum and josh Art's Theater Cormique, afterwards owned
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  by Harrigan and Hunt. One day, George the roustabout said to me,
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  Gid, do you want to go rowboating with us? When I eagerly consented,
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  he said it was too bad, but the boat cost fifty cents and
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  he only had a ten cents stamp a small paper bill. In those days
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  there was very little silver in circulation. I did not bite at once.
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  I was so young, and they treated me to one of those wooden balls
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  fastened to a rubber string that you throw out and catch on the rebound.
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  I was tickled to death. I shall never forget that day as long as
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  I live. It was a Saturday, and all day long those boys couldn't
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  do too much for me. Towards evening they explained to me how to rob
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  my brother's till. They arranged to be outside the store at a certain hour
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  and wait until I found an opportunity to pass the money to them. My
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  mother watched in the store that evening, but when she turned it back,
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  I opened the till and gave the eight to ten dollars it contained to the
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  waiting boys. We all went rowboating and had a jolly time. But they
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  were not satisfied with that. What I had done once I could do again,
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  and they held out the theater to me and pretended to teach me how
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  to dance the clog. Week in and week out. I furnished them with
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  money, and in recompense they would sometimes take me to a matinee. What
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  a joy. How I grew to love the vaudeville artists with their songs and
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  dances, and the Wild Bowery melodramas. It was a great day for Indian
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  plays, and the number of Indians I have scalped in imagination after one of
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  these shows is Legion. Some of the small boys, however, who did
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  not share in the booty, grew jealous and told my father what was doing.
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  The result was that a certain part of my body was sore for weeks
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  afterwards. My feelings were hurt too, for I did not know at the
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  time that I was doing anything very bad. My father indeed accompanied the beating
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  with a sermon, telling me that I had not only broken God's law,
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  but it robbed those that loved me. One of my brothers, who was
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  now a policeman in the city service, told me that I had taken my
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  ticket for the gallows. The brother I had robbed, who afterwards became a
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  truckman, patted me on the head and told me not to do it again.
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  He was always a good fellow, and yet they all seemed to like
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  to have me play about the streets with the other little boys, perhaps because
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  the family was so large and there was not much room in the house.
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  So I had to give up the till, but I hated to for even
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  at that age, I had begun to think that the world owed me a
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  living To get revenge, I used to hide in a charcoal shed and throw
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  pebbles at my father as he passed. I was indeed the typical bad boy
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  and the apple of my mother's eye. When I couldn't steal from the till
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  anymore, I used to take clothes for my relatives and sell them for theater
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  money or any other object I thought I could make away with. I did
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  not steal merely for theater money, but partly for excitement too. I liked
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  to run the risk of being discovered, so I was up to any scheme
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  the older boys proposed. Perhaps if I had been raised in the wild West,
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  I should have made a good trapper, a cowboy instead of a thief.
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  Or perhaps even birds, nests and fish would have satisfied me if they
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  had been accessible. One of my biggest exploits as a small boy was made
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  when I was eight years old. Tom's mother had a friend visiting her,
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  whom Tom and I thought we would rob. Tom, who was a big
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  boy, and some of his friends put me through a hall bedroom window,
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  and I made away with a box of valuable jewelry, but it did me
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  no good, for the big boys sold it to a woman who kept a
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  second hand store in Division Street, and I received no part of the proceeds.
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  My greatest youthful disappointment came about four weeks later. A boy put me
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  up to steal a box out of a wagon. I boldly made away with
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  it and ran into a hallway where he was waiting. The two of us
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  then went into his backyard, opened the box and found a beautiful sword,
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  the handle studded with little stones. But the other boy had promised me money,
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  and here was only a sword. I cried for theater money, and
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  then the other boy boxed my ears. He went to his father, who
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  was a freemason, and got a fifty cent stamp. He gave me two
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  three cent pieces and kept the rest. I shall never forget that injustice as
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  long as I live. I remember it as plainly as if it happened yesterday.
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  We put the sword under a mill in Cherry Street, and it disappeared
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  a few hours later. I thought the boy and his father had stolen it,
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  and told him so. I got another beating, but I believe my
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  suspicion was correct, for the freemason used to give me a ten cent stamp
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  whenever he saw me to square me. I suppose, when it came to
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  contests with boys of my own size, I was not so meek. However,
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  One day I was playing in Jersey in the backyard of a boy friend's
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  house. He displayed his pen knife, and it took my fancy. I
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  wanted to play with it and asked him to lend it to me. He
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  refused, and I grabbed his hand. He plunged the knife into my leg.
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  I didn't like that and told him so, not in words, but
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  in action. I remember that I took his ear nearly off with a hatchet.
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  I was then eight years old. About this time I began to go
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  to Sunday School, with what effect on my character remains to be seen.
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  One day I heard a noted priest preach. I had one dollar and eighty
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  cents in my pocket, which I had stolen from my brother. I thought
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  that each coin of my pocket was turning red hot because of my anxiety to
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  spend it. While the good Man was talking to the blessed One, I
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  was inwardly praying for him to shut up. He had two beautiful pictures which
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  he intended to give to the best listener among the boys. When he had
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  finished his talk, he called me to him, gave me the pictures,
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  and said, it's such boys as you, who, when they grow up,
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  are a pride to our holy church. A year later I went to
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  the parochial school, but did not stay for long, for they would not
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  have me. I was a skeptic at seven and an agnostic at eight,
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  and I objected to the prayers every five minutes. I had no respect for
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  ceremonies. They did not impress my imagination in the slightest, partly because I
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  learned at an early age to see the hypocrisy of many good people. One
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  day, half a dozen persons were killed in an explosion. One of them
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  I had known. Neighbors said of him, what a good man has gone,
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  And the priest and my mother said he was in heaven. But he
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  was the same man who had often told me not to take money from the
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  money drawer, for that was dangerous, but to search my father's pockets when
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  he was asleep. For this advice I had given the rascal many a dollar.
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  Ever after that, I was suspicious of those who were over virtuous.
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  I told my mother I did not believe her in the priest, and she
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  slapped my face and told me to mind my catechism. Everything mischievous that happened
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  at the parochial school was laid to my account, perhaps not entirely unjustly.
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  If a large firecracker exploded, it was James, that was my name.
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  If someone sat on a bent pin, the blame was due to James.
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  If the class tittered teaching, Nolan would rush at me with a hickory stick
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  and yell, it's you, your devil's imp, And then he'd put the
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  question he had asked a hundred times before, ooh media. I was finally
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  sent away from the parochial school because I insulted one of the teachers, a
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  Catholic brother. I persisted in disturbing and whenever he studied his Catechism, which
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  I believed he already knew by heart. This brother's favorite, by the way,
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  was a boy who used to say his prayers louder than anybody else.
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  I met him fifteen years afterwards, and stay prison. He had been settled
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  for vogel grafting, that is, taking little girls into hallways and robbing them
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  at the gold earrings. He turned out pretty well, however, in one
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  sense, for he became one of the best shoemakers in sink sing. Although
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  as one can see from the above incidents, I was not given to veneration,
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  yet in some ways I was easily impressed. I always loved old buildings.
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  For instance, I was baptized in the building which until lately was the
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  Germania Theater, and which was then a church, and that old structure always
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  had a strange fascination for me. I used to hang about old churches and
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  theaters, and preferred on such occasions to be alone. I sang and danced
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  all by myself in an old music hall, and used to pore over the
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  names marked in lead pencil on the walls. Many is the time I have
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  stood at night before some old building which has since been raised to the ground,
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  and even now I like to go around to their sites. I like
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  almost anything that is old, even old men and women. I never loved
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  my mother much until she was an old woman. All stories of the past
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  interested me, and later, when I was in prison, I was specially
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  fond of history. After I was dismissed from the parochial school, I entered
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  the public school, where I stayed somewhat longer. There I studied reading,
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  writing, arithmetic, and later grammar, and became acquainted with a few specimens
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  of literature. I remember Longfellow's Excelsior was a favorite of mine. I was
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  a bright, intelligent boy, and if it had not been for conduct in
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  which my mark was low, I should always have had the gold medal in
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  a class of seventy. I used to play truant constantly, and often went
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  home and told my mother that I knew more than the teacher. She believed
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  me for certainly, I was the most intelligent member of my family. Yes,
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  I was more intelligent than my parents or any of my brothers and sisters.
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  Much good it has done me, now that I've squared it. I
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  see a good deal in my family, and they are all happy in comparison
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  with me. On Saturday nights, I often go around to see my brother,
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  the truckman. He's come home tired from his week's work, but happy
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  with his twelve dollars salary in the prospect of a holiday with his wife and
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  children. They sit about in their humble home on a Saturday night with their
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  pine of beer, their songs, and their jovial stories. Whenever I'm there,
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  I am, in a way the life of the party. My repartee
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  is quicker than that of the others. I sing gayer songs, and I'm
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  jollier with the working girls who visit my brother's free home. But when I
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  look at my stupid brother's quiet face and calm and strong bearing, and then
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  realize my own shattered health and nerves and profound discontent, I know that my
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  my slow brother, has been wiser than I. It's taken me many years
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  on the rocky path to realize this truth. For by nature I am an
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  ishmaelite, that is, a man of impulse, and it is only lately
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  that wisdom has been knocked into me. Certainly, I did not realize my
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  fate when I was a kid of ten, filled with contempt for my virtuous
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  and obscure family. I was overflowing with spirits and arrogance, and began to
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  play hooky so often that I practically quit school. About this time. It
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  was then, too that we moved again, this time to Cherry Street,
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  to the wreck of my life. At the end of the block on which
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  we lived was a corner saloon the headquarters of a band of professional thieves.
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  They were known as the Old Border Gang, and among them were several well
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  known and successful crooks. They used to pass our way regularly, and boys
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  older than I and my boy companions always had the advantage of me in years
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  used to point the famous guns out to me. When I saw one of
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  these great men pass, my young imagination was fired with the ambition to be
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  as he was. With what eagerness we used to talk about Juggie and the
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  daring robbery committed in Brooklyn. How he went over again and again in conversation
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  the trick by which Johnny the grafter had fooled the detective in the matter of
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  the bonds. We would tell stories like these by the hour, and then
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  go round to the corner to try to get a look at some of the
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  celebrities in the saloon. A splendid sight one of these swell grafters was as
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  he stood before the bar or smoked his cigar around the corner, well dressed
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  with clean linen collar and shirt, a diamond in his tie, an air
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  of ease and leisure all about him. What a contrast he formed to the
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  respectable hard carrier a truckman or a mechanic with soiled clothes and no collar.
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  And what a contrast was his dangerous life to that of the virtuous laborer.
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  The result was that I grew to think the career of the grafter was the
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  only one worth trying for the real prizes of the world. I knew nothing
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  about all that I saw of any interest in me was crooked, and so
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  I began to pilfer right and left. There was nothing else for me to
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  do. Besides, I loved to treat those older than myself. The theater
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  was a growing passion with me, and I began to be very much interested
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  in the baseball games. I used to go to the Union Grounds in Brooklyn,
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  where after the third inning I could usually get admitted for fifteen cents to
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  see the old athletics and mutuals play. I needed money for these amusements for
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  myself and other boys, and I knew it practically only one way to get
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  it. If we could not get the money at home, either by begging
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  or stealing, we would tap tills, if possible, in the store of
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  some relative, or tear brass off the steps in the halls of flats and
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  sell it at junk shops. A little later, we used to go to
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  Grand Street and steal shoes and women's dresses from the racks in the open stores
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  and pawn them. In the old seventh Ward, there used to be a
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  good many silver plates on the doors of private houses. These we would take
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  off with chisels and sell the metal dealers. We had great fun with the
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  Dutchmen who kept the grocery store on Cherry Street. We used to steal his
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  strawberries and did not care whether he saw us or not. If he grabbed
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  one of us, the rest of the gang would pelt them with stones until
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  he let go, and then all run around the corner before the copper came
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  into sight. All this time I grew steadily bolder and more desperate, and
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  the day soon came when I took consequences very little into consideration. My father
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  and mother sometimes learned of some exploit of mine, and a beating would be
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  the result. I still got to blame for everything, as in school,
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  and was sometimes punished unjustly. I was very sensitive, and this would wrinkle
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  in my soul for weeks, so that I stole harder than ever. And
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  yet I think that there was some good in me. I was never cruel
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  to any animals except cats. For cats, I used to tie the tails
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  together and throw them over a clothes line to dry. I liked dogs,
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  horses, children, and women, and have always been gentle to them.
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  What I really was was a healthy young animal with a vivid imagination and a
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  strong body. I learned early to swim and fight and play baseball. Diamond
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  nickel novels always seemed very tame to me. I found it much more exciting
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  to hear true stories about the grafters of the corner saloon, big men with
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  whom, as yet I did not dare to speak, I could only stare
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  at them with awe. I shall never forget. The first time I ever
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  saw pickpocket a work was when I was about thirteen years old. A boy
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  in my own age, Zach, a great pal of mine, was with
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  me. Zach and I understood one another thoroughly and well. Knew how to
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  get theater money by patty pilfering, but of real graft we were as yet
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  ignorant, although we had heard many stories about the operations of actual professional thieves.
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  We used to steal rides in the cars which ran to and from the
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  Grand Street ferries and run off with overcoats and satchels when we had a chance.
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  One day, we were standing on the rear platform when a woman boarded
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  the car, and immediately behind her a gentlemanly looking man with a high hat.
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  He was well dressed and looked about thirty five years old. As the
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  lady entered the car, the man who stayed outside on the platform pulled his
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  hand away from her side, and with it came something from her pocket,
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  a silk handkerchief. I was on the point of asking the woman if she
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  had dropped something, when Zach said to me, mind your own business.
• 23:33
  The man who had taken the pocketbook along with the silk handkerchief, seeing that
• 23:37
  we were next, gave us the handkerchief and four dollars and ten and fifteen
• 23:41
  cent paper money stamps. Zach and I put our heads together. We were
• 23:48
  wiser than we had been half an hour before. We had learned our first
• 23:52
  practical lesson in the world of graft. We had seen a pickpocket at work,
• 23:56
  and there seemed to us no reason why we should not try the game
• 24:00
  ourselves. Accordingly, a day or two afterwards, we arranged to pick our
• 24:03
  first pocket We had indeed often taken money from the pockets of our relatives,
• 24:08
  but that was when the trousers hung in the closet or over a chair and
• 24:12
  the owner was absent. This was the first time we had hunted in the
• 24:17
  open, so to speak, the first time our prey was really alive.
• 24:21
  It was an exciting occasion. Zach and I, who were wise, that
• 24:26
  is, up to snuff, got several other boys to help us, though
• 24:29
  we did not tell them what was doing, for they were not buried yet,
• 24:32
  that is, dead or ignorant. We induced five or six of them
• 24:37
  to jump on and off the rear platform of a car, making it as
• 24:40
  much noise and confusion as possible, so as to distract the attention of any
• 24:44
  sucker that might board. Soon I saw a woman about to get on a
• 24:48
  car. My heart beat with excitement and a signal to Zach that I would
• 24:52
  make the touch. In those days, women wore big sacks with pockets in
• 24:56
  the back open so that one could look in and see what was the I
• 25:00
  took the silk handkerchief on the run, and with Zach following, went up
• 25:03
  a side street and gloried under a lamp post in a corner of the handkerchief.
• 25:08
  Tied up were five two dollar bills, and for weeks I was JP
• 25:14
  Morgan. For a long time, Zach and I felt we were the biggest
• 25:18
  boys on the block. We boasted about our great touch to the older boys
• 25:22
  of eighteen or nineteen years of age, who had pointed out to us the
• 25:23
  grafters at the corner saloon. They were not in it now. They even
• 25:27
  condescended to be treated to a drink by us. We spent the money recklessly,
• 25:33
  for we knew what we could get more in this date of mind.
• 25:36
  Soon after that I met the pick whom we had seen at work. He
• 25:40
  had heard of our achievement and kindly staked us and gave us a few private
• 25:42
  lessons in picking pockets. He saw that we were promising youngsters, and for
• 25:48
  the sake of the profession, gave us a little of his valuable time.
• 25:51
  We were proud enough to be taken notice of by this great man. We
• 25:55
  felt that we were rising in the world of graft, and began to wear
• 25:57
  collars and neckties. End of chapter one, Chapter two my first fall.
• 26:08
  For the next two years, until I was fifteen, I made a great
• 26:11
  deal of money at pick and pockets without getting into difficulties with the police.
• 26:18
  We operated at that time entirely upon women, and were consequently known technically as
• 26:22
  mall buzzers or flies that buzz about women. In those days and for several
• 26:29
  years later, mall buzzing, as well as picking pockets in general, was
• 26:33
  an easy and lucrative graft. Women's dresses seemed to be arranged for our especial
• 26:40
  benefit. The back pocket, with its purse and silk handkerchief, could be
• 26:42
  picked even by the rawest thief. It was in the days when every woman
• 26:48
  had to possess a fine silk handkerchief. Even the bowery cruisers street walkers carried
• 26:56
  them, and to those women we boys used to sell the handkerchiefs we had
• 26:59
  stolen ulan, receiving as much as a dollar or even two dollars in exchange.
• 27:04
  It was a time too before the great department stores and delivery wagon systems,
• 27:08
  and shoppers were compelled to carry more money with them than they do now,
• 27:12
  and to take their purchases home themselves through the streets. Very often before
• 27:18
  they reached their destination. They had unconsciously delivered some of the goods to us.
• 27:25
  At that time, too, the wearing of valuable pins and stones,
• 27:27
  both by men and women, was more general than it is now. Furthermore,
• 27:33
  the graft was younger, there were not so many in the business,
• 27:36
  and the system of police protection was not so good. Altogether, those were
• 27:41
  halcyon days for us. The fact that we were very young helped us particularly
• 27:45
  in this business. For a boy can get next to a woman in a
• 27:48
  car or on the street more easily than a man can. He's not so
• 27:52
  apt to arouse her suspicions, and if he is a handsome, innocent looking
• 27:56
  boy and clever, he can go far in this line of graft. He
• 28:00
  usually begins this business when he's about thirteen, and by the age of seventeen
• 28:04
  generally graduates into something higher. Living off women in any form does not appeal
• 28:11
  very long to the imagination of the genuine grafter. Yet I know thieves who
• 28:15
  continue to be mall buzzers all their lives, and who are low enough to
• 28:19
  make their living entirely off poor working girls. The self respecting grafter detests this
• 28:26
  kind, and indeed these buzzers never see prosperous days after their boyhood. The
• 28:30
  business grows more difficult as the thief grows older, he cannot approach his prey
• 28:34
  so readily and grows shabbier with declining returns, and shabbiness makes it difficult for
• 28:40
  him to mix up in crowds where this kind of work is generally done.
• 28:45
  For several years we youngsters made a great deal of money at this line.
• 28:48
  We made a touch almost every day, and I suppose our mob, composed
• 28:52
  of four or five lads who work together, averaged three or four hundred dollars
• 28:56
  a week. We worked mainly on streetcar the ferry, and the amount of
• 29:00
  technique required for robbing women was very slight. Two or three of us generally
• 29:06
  went together. One acted as the dip or pick, and the other two
• 29:10
  as stalls. The duty of the stalls was to distract the attention of the
• 29:14
  sucker or victim, or otherwise to hide the operations of the dip. One
• 29:18
  stall would get directly in front of the woman to be robbed, the other
• 29:22
  directly behind her. If she were in such a position in the crowd as
• 29:26
  to render it hard for the dip or wire to make a touch, one
• 29:30
  of the stalls might bump against her and beg her pardon while the dip made
• 29:34
  away with her leather or pocket book. Shortly before I was fifteen years old,
• 29:40
  I was led into another kind of graft. One day, Tim Zack
• 29:45
  and I were boasting of our earnings to an older boy twenty years of age
• 29:48
  whose name was Pete. He grinned and said he knew something better than mall
• 29:52
  buzzing. Then he told us about shove in the queer and got us next
• 29:56
  to a public truckman who supplied counterfeit bills. Our method was to carry only
• 30:02
  one bad bill among several good ones, so that if we were collared,
• 30:06
  we could maintain our innocence. We worked this as a side graft for some
• 30:10
  time. Pete and I used to go to Mass on Sunday morning and put
• 30:14
  a bad five dollar bill in the collector's box, taking out four dollars and
• 30:18
  ninety cents in change in good money. We irreverently called this proceeding Robin the
• 30:22
  daygo in Rome, we used to pick leathers at the same time from the
• 30:27
  women in the congregation. In those days, I was very liberal in my
• 30:30
  religious views. I was not narrow or bigoted. I attended Grace Church in
• 30:36
  Tenth Street regularly and was always well repaid. But after a while this lucrative
• 30:41
  graft came to an end, for the collector began to get next. One
• 30:45
  day he said to me, why don't you get your change outside? This
• 30:49
  is the fourth time you have given me a big bill. So we got
• 30:53
  leary, suspicious and quit with my big rosy cheeks and bright eyes and complexion.
• 31:00
  I suppose I looked in those days very holy and innocent, and used
• 31:03
  to work this graft for all it was worth. I remember how in church
• 31:07
  I used tracts or the Christian advocate as stalls. I would hand them to
• 31:11
  a lady as she entered the church, and while doing so pick her pocket.
• 31:18
  Even at the early age of fifteen, I began to understand that it
• 31:21
  was necessary to save money. If a thief wants to keep out of the
• 31:23
  pen or stir penitentiary, capital is necessary. The capital of a grafter is
• 31:30
  called spring money, for he may have to use it at any time,
• 31:33
  in paying the lawyer who gets him off in case of an arrest, or
• 31:36
  in bribing the policeman or some other official. To spring is to escape from
• 31:41
  the clutches of the law. If a thief has not enough money to hire
• 31:45
  a mouthpiece a criminal lawyer. He's in a bad way. He is greatly
• 31:48
  handicapped and cannot jump out steal with any boldness. But I always had great
• 31:56
  difficulty in saving fall money, and the same as spring money, that is,
• 32:00
  money to be used in case of a fall or arrest. My temperament
• 32:04
  was at fault. When I had a few hundred dollars saved up, I
• 32:07
  began to be troubled, not from a guilty conscience, but because I could
• 32:10
  not stand prosperity. The money burnt a hole in my pocket. I was
• 32:15
  fond of all sorts of amusements, of treating, and of clothes. Indeed,
• 32:21
  I was very much of a dude, and this for two reasons.
• 32:23
  In the first place, I was naturally vain and liked to make a good
• 32:27
  appearance. A still more substantial reason was that a good personal appearance is part
• 32:31
  of the capital of a grafter, particularly of a pickpocket. The world thinks
• 32:37
  that a thief is a dirty, disreputable looking object next door to a tramp
• 32:42
  in appearance, but this idea is far from being true. Every grafter of
• 32:46
  any standing in the profession is very careful about his clothes. He's always neat
• 32:52
  clean and as fashionable as his income will permit. Otherwise, he would not
• 32:58
  be permitted to attend large political gatherings to sit on the platform, for instance,
• 33:04
  and would be handicapped generally in his crooked dealings with mankind. No advice
• 33:09
  to young men is more common in respectable society than to dress well. If
• 33:14
  you look prosperous, the world will treat you with consideration. This applies with
• 33:17
  even greater force to the thief. Keep up a front is the universal law
• 33:22
  of success, applicable to all grades of society. The first thing a grafter
• 33:29
  is apt to say to a pal whom he has not seen for a long
• 33:30
  time, is you're looking good, meaning that his friend is well dressed.
• 33:37
  It is sure flattery, and if a grafter wants to make a borrow,
• 33:40
  he is practically certain of opening the negotiations with the stereotyped phrase you're looking good.
• 33:47
  For the only time you can get anything off a grafter is when you
• 33:51
  can make him think you are prosperous. But the great reason why I never
• 33:57
  saved much fall money was not booze or theaters or clothes. Look for the
• 34:02
  woman is a phrase I believe in good society and it certainly explains a great
• 34:07
  deal of a thief's misfortunes. Long before I did anything in Graftham but petty
• 34:13
  Pilfering, I had begun to go with the little girls in the neighborhood.
• 34:15
  At that time. They had no attraction for me, but I heard older
• 34:19
  boys say that it was a manly thing to lead girls astray, and I
• 34:22
  was ambitious to be not only a good thief but a hard case generally.
• 34:27
  When I was nine or ten years old, I liked to boast of the
• 34:30
  conquests I had made among the little working girls of fourteen or fifteen. We
• 34:34
  used to meet in the hallways of tenement houses or at their homes, but
• 34:37
  there was no sentiment in the relations between us, at least on my part.
• 34:42
  My only pleasure in it was the delight of telling about it to my
• 34:45
  young companions. When I was twelve years old, I met a girl for
• 34:50
  whom I had a somewhat different feeling. Nellie was a pretty, blue eyed
• 34:54
  little creature or tidbit, as we used to say, who lived near my
• 34:59
  home on Cherry Street. I used to take her over on the ferry for
• 35:02
  a ride, or treat her to ice cream and we were really chums.
• 35:07
  But when I began to make money, I lost my interest in her,
• 35:09
  partly too, because at that time I made the acquaintance of a married woman
• 35:13
  of about twenty five years old. She discovered me one day in the hallway
• 35:16
  with Nellie and threatened to tell the Holy Brother on us if I didn't fetch
• 35:21
  her a pint of beer. I took the beer to a room, and
• 35:24
  that began a relationship of perhaps a year. She used to stake me to
• 35:30
  a part of the money her husband, a working man, brought her every
• 35:32
  Saturday night. Although the girls meant very little to me until several years later,
• 35:38
  I nevertheless began, when I was about fifteen, to spend a great
• 35:40
  deal of money on them. It was the thing to do, and I
• 35:44
  did it with a good grace. I used to take all kinds of working
• 35:47
  girls to the balls in Walhalla Hall and Orchard Street, or in Pythagoras or
• 35:52
  Beethoven Hall's, where many pretty little German girls of respectable families used to dance
• 35:58
  on Saturday nights. It was my pride to buy them things, clothes,
• 36:02
  pins, and to take them on excursions. For was I not a rising
• 36:07
  gun with money? In my pocket money. However, that went as easily
• 36:12
  as it had come. Perhaps if I had been able to save money at
• 36:16
  that time, I might not have fallen that has been arrested so early.
• 36:22
  My first fall came, however, when I was fifteen years old, and
• 36:24
  if I was not a confirmed thief already, I certainly was one by the
• 36:28
  time I left the tombs, where I stayed ten days. It happened this
• 36:31
  way. Zach and I were grafting buzz and mals with a pal named Jack,
• 36:36
  who afterwards became a famous burglar. He had just escaped from the Catholic
• 36:40
  Protectory and told us his troubles. Instead of being alarmed, however, I
• 36:45
  grew bolder, For if Jack could beat the Protec in three months, I
• 36:50
  argued I could do it in twenty four hours. We three ripped things open
• 36:53
  for some time. But one day we were grafting on sixth Avenue, just
• 36:59
  below twentieth Street, when I fell for a leather the sucker. A good
• 37:04
  looking mall was coming up the avenue. Her book, which looked fat,
• 37:07
  was sticking out of her skirt. I, who was the wire, gave
• 37:13
  Jack and Zak the tip thief's cough and they stalled, one in front,
• 37:17
  one behind. The girl did not blow take alarm, and I got hold
• 37:22
  of the leather easily. It looked like a getaway, for no one on
• 37:27
  the sidewalk saw us, But as bad luck would have it, a Negro
• 37:30
  coachman standing in the street by the pavement got next and said to me,
• 37:35
  what are you doing there? I replied, shut up, and I'll give
• 37:38
  you two dollars, but he caught hold of me and shouted for the police.
• 37:44
  I passed the leather to Jack hu vaugh mused Zack hit the Negro in
• 37:47
  the face, and I ran up Seventh Avenue, but was caught by a
• 37:51
  flyman policeman and taken to the station house. On the way to the police
• 37:57
  station, I cried bitterly, for after all I was only a boy.
• 38:00
  I realized for the first time that the way of the transgressor is hard.
• 38:07
  It was in the afternoon, and I spent the time until next morning at
• 38:09
  ten, when I was to appear before the magistrate in a cell in the
• 38:13
  station house, in the company of an old grafter. In the adjoining cells
• 38:16
  were drunkards, street walkers and thieves who had been lined up for the night
• 38:22
  and I spent the long hours in crying and in listening to their indecent songs
• 38:25
  and jokes. The old grafter called to one of the tenderloin girls that he
• 38:30
  had a kid with him who was arrested for mall buzzing at this. They
• 38:34
  all expressed their sympathy with me by saying that I would either be imprisoned for
• 38:37
  life or be hanged. They got me to sing a song, and I
• 38:42
  convinced them that I was tough. In the morning, I was arranged in
• 38:45
  the police court. As there was no stolen property on me, and as
• 38:50
  the sucker was not there to make a complaint, I was settled for assault
• 38:53
  only and sent to the tombs for ten days. My experience in the tombs
• 38:59
  made fairly be called, I think, the turning point of my life.
• 39:02
  It was there that I met the mob. I learned new tricks in the
• 39:07
  tombs, and more than that, I began definitely to look upon myself as
• 39:10
  a criminal. The Tombs of twenty years ago was even less cheerful than it
• 39:15
  is at present. The boy's prison faced the women's prison, and between these
• 39:20
  two was the place where those sentenced to death were hanged. The boys knew
• 39:24
  when an execution was to take place, and we used to talk it over
• 39:28
  amongst ourselves. One man was hanged while I was there. And if anybody
• 39:32
  thinks that knowledge of such things helps to make boys seek the path of virtue,
• 39:37
  let him go forth into the world and learn something about human nature.
• 39:44
  On my arrival in the tombs Missus Hill, the matron had me searched for
• 39:46
  tobacco, knives and matches, all of which were contraband. Then I was
• 39:52
  given a bath and sent into the corridor of the cells, where there are
• 39:54
  about twenty five of the boys confined for various crimes, ranging from petty larson
• 40:00
  two offences of the gravest kind. On the second day, I met two
• 40:04
  young dips and we exchanged our experiences in the world of graft. I received
• 40:08
  my first lesson in the art of banging a souper, that is, stealing
• 40:13
  a watch by breaking the ring with the thumb and forefinger and thust detaching it
• 40:15
  from the chain. They were two of the best of the six ward pickpockets,
• 40:21
  and we made a date to meat on the outside. Indeed, it
• 40:24
  was not many weeks after my release before I could bang a souper or get
• 40:28
  a man's front watch and chain as easily as I could relieve a maul of
• 40:32
  her leather. As I look back upon the food these young boys received in
• 40:38
  the tombs, it seems to me of the worst. Breakfast consisted of a
• 40:43
  chunk of poor bread and a cup of coffee made of burnt bread crust.
• 40:47
  At dinner we had soup. They said, at least there was meat in
• 40:51
  it, bread and water, and supper was the same as breakfast. But
• 40:57
  we had one consolation. When we went to Divine so nervous, we generally
• 41:00
  returned happy, not because of what the good priests said, but because we
• 41:04
  were almost sure of getting tobacco from the women inmates. Certainly, the Gary
• 41:09
  Society has its faults, but since its organization, young boys who have gone
• 41:15
  wrong but are not yet entirely hardened have a much better show to become good
• 41:19
  citizens than they used to have. That society did not exist in my day,
• 41:23
  But I know a good deal about it, and I am convinced that
• 41:27
  it does a world of good for at least, when it takes children into
• 41:30
  its charge, it does not surround them with an atmosphere of social crime.
• 41:36
  While in the tombs, I experienced my first disillusionment as to the honor of
• 41:38
  thieves. I was an impulsive, imaginative boy, and that a pal could
• 41:44
  go back on me never seem possible. Many of my subsequent misfortunes were due
• 41:49
  to the treachery of my companions. I have learned to distrust everybody, But
• 41:53
  as a boy of fifteen, I was green, and so the treachery I
• 41:57
  shall relate left a sore spot in my soul. It happened this way on
• 42:02
  a May day, about two months before I was arrested. Two other boys
• 42:07
  and I had entered the basement of a house where the people were moving,
• 42:09
  had made away with some silverware and sold it to a Christian woman in the
• 42:13
  neighborhood for one twentieth of its value. When I had nearly served my ten
• 42:17
  days sentence for assault, my two pals were arrested and squealed on me.
• 42:22
  I was confronted with them in the tombs. At first I was mighty glad
• 42:25
  to see them, but when I found they had squealed, I set my
• 42:29
  teeth and denied all knowledge of the touch. I protested my innocence so violently
• 42:35
  that the police thought the other boys were merely seeking a scapegoat. They got
• 42:39
  twenty days, and my term expired forty eight hours afterwards. The silver way
• 42:44
  I stole that May morning is now an heirloom in the family of the Christian
• 42:47
  woman to whom I sold it so cheap. If I had always been as
• 42:52
  earnest a liar as I was on that occasion in the tombs, I might
• 42:55
  never have gone to Stir Penitentiary. But I grew more indifferent and desperate as
• 43:00
  time went on, and in a way more honest, more sincerely a criminal.
• 43:07
  I hardly felt like denying it. I know some thieves who, although
• 43:10
  they have grafted for twenty five years, have not yet done time. Some
• 43:15
  of them escaped because they knew how to throw the innocent con so well.
• 43:19
  Take Tim for instance. Tim and I grafted together as boys. He was
• 43:23
  not a very skillful pickpocket, and he often was on the point of arrest,
• 43:28
  but he had a talent for innocence, and the indignation act he would
• 43:30
  put up would melt a heart of stone. He has consequently never been in
• 43:37
  Stir, while I, a much better thief, have spent half my adult
• 43:39
  life there. That was partly because I felt when I had once made a
• 43:44
  touch that the property belonged to me. On one occasion, I had robbed
• 43:49
  the bloke of his red Souper gold watch and made away with it all right.
• 43:52
  When I carelessly dropped it on the sidewalk, A crowd had gathered about,
• 43:57
  and no man really in his right mind would have picked up that super.
• 44:00
  But I did it and was nailed dead to rights by a cop.
• 44:05
  Some time afterwards, A pal asked me why the deuce I had been so
• 44:07
  foolish. Didn't the super belong to me? I replied, indignantly, Hadn't
• 44:13
  I earned it? I was too honest a thief. That was one of
• 44:17
  my weaknesses. End of chapter two. Chapter three mixedale life in the fourth
• 44:27
  and seventh wards. For a time, a short time after I left the
• 44:32
  tombs, I was quiet. My relatives threw the gallows Khan into me hard,
• 44:37
  but at that time I was proof against any arguments they could muster.
• 44:42
  They were not able to show me anything that was worth while. They could
• 44:45
  not deliver the goods, so what was the use of talking. Although I
• 44:50
  was a disgrace at home, I was high cock alorum among the boys in
• 44:52
  the neighborhood. They began to look up to me as I had looked up
• 44:55
  to the grafters at the corner saloon. They admired me becau because I was
• 45:00
  a fighter and a done time. I went up in their estimation because I
• 45:04
  had suffered in the good cause. And I began to get introductions to the
• 45:07
  older grafters in the seventh ward, grafters with diamond pins and silk hats.
• 45:13
  It was not long before I was added harder than ever uptown and downtown.
• 45:17
  I not only continued my trade as a mall buzzer, but began to spread
• 45:21
  myself. Got to be quite an adept in touching men for vests and supers
• 45:24
  and fronts, and every now and then shoved the queer or worked a little
• 45:29
  game of swindling. Our stamping ground for supers and vests at that time was
• 45:32
  Fulton, Nassau, Lower Broadway and Wall streets, and we covered our territory
• 45:37
  well. I used to work alone considerably. I would board a car with
• 45:42
  a couple of newspapers and would say news boss to some man sitting down and
• 45:45
  would shove the paper in front of his face as a stall, and then
• 45:49
  pick a super or even his entire front. Watch an chain if you will
• 45:53
  stand for a newspaper. Under your chin, I can even get your socks.
• 45:58
  Many as the gent I have left in the car with his vest entirely
• 46:00
  unbuttoned and his front gone. When I couldn't get the chain, I would
• 46:05
  snap the ring of the watch with my thumb and forefinger, given the thief's
• 46:07
  cough to drown the slight noise made by the break and ring, and get
• 46:10
  away with the watch, leaving the chain dangling. Instead of a newspaper,
• 46:15
  I would often use an overcoat as a stall. It was only when I
• 46:19
  was on the hurry up, however, that I worked alone. It's more
• 46:22
  dangerous than working with a mob, but if I needed a dollar quick,
• 46:25
  I'd take any risk. I'd jump on a car and tackle the first sucker
• 46:30
  I saw. If I thought it was not diplomatic to try for the front,
• 46:32
  and if there was no stone in sight, I'd content myself with the
• 46:36
  clock watch. But it was safer and more sociable to work with other guys.
• 46:40
  We usually went in mobs of three or four, and our methods were
• 46:44
  much more complicated than when we were simply mall buzzing. Each deef had his
• 46:49
  special part to play, and his duty varied with the position of the sucker
• 46:52
  and the pocket the leather was in. If the sucker was standing in the
• 46:55
  car, my stall would frequently stand right in front of him, face him,
• 47:00
  while I would put my hand under the stall's arm and pick the sucker's
• 47:04
  leather or super. The other stalls would be distracting the attention of the sucker
• 47:08
  or looking out for possible interruptions. When I got possession of the leather,
• 47:13
  I would pass it quickly to the stall behind me, and he would vammuse.
• 47:17
  Sometimes I would back up to the victim, put my hand behind me,
• 47:22
  break his ring and pick the super. Or I would face his back,
• 47:27
  reach round unbutton his vest. While a pal stalled in front with a
• 47:30
  newspaper, a bunch of flowers, a fan, or an overcoat, and
• 47:35
  get away with his entire front. A dip, as I have said,
• 47:40
  pays special attention to his personal appearance. It is his stock in trade.
• 47:45
  But when I began to meet boys who had risen above the grade of mall
• 47:49
  buzzers, I found that the dip, as opposed to other grafters, had
• 47:52
  many other advantages too. He combines pleasure and instruction with business. For he
• 47:58
  goes to the football games, the New London races, to swell theaters where
• 48:01
  the graft is good, and to lectures. I have often listened to Bob
• 48:06
  Ingersoll, the greatest orator, in my opinion, that ever lived. I
• 48:09
  enjoyed his talk so much that I sometimes forgot to graft. But as a
• 48:15
  general rule I was able to combine instruction with business. I very seldom dropped
• 48:20
  a red super because of an oratorical flourish. But the supers did not come
• 48:23
  my way all the time. I had some waiting to do, and in
• 48:27
  the meantime I improved my mind. Then, a dip travels to more than
• 48:31
  other grafters. He jumps out to fares and large gatherings of all descriptions,
• 48:37
  and grows to be a man of the world. When in the city,
• 48:40
  he visits the best dance halls, and is popular because of his good clothes,
• 48:45
  his dough and his general information with men as well as women. He
• 48:51
  generally lives with a mall who has seen the world and who can add to
• 48:53
  his fund of information. I know a dip who could not read or write
• 48:58
  until he met a mall who gave him a general education and taught him to
• 49:01
  avoid things that interfered with his line of graft. She also took care of
• 49:06
  his personal appearance and equipped him generally for an a number one pickpocket. Women
• 49:12
  are much the same, I believe, in every rank of life. It
• 49:15
  was at this time, when I was a kid of fifteen, that I
• 49:17
  first met Sheeny Annie, who was a famous shoplifter. She was twenty one
• 49:22
  years old and used to give me good advice keep away from heavy workers burglars.
• 49:29
  She would say, there is a big bit in that she had lived
• 49:32
  in Grafton ever since she was a tidbit, and she knew what she was
• 49:37
  talking about. I did not work with her until several years later, but
• 49:40
  I might as well tell her sad story now. I may say, as
• 49:45
  a kind of preface that I have always liked the girl grafter who could take
• 49:47
  care of herself instead of sucking the blood out of some man. When I
• 49:51
  find a little working girl who has no other ambition than to get a little
• 49:53
  home together with a little knickknack on the wall, a little husband and a
• 49:58
  little child, I don't care for her. She is a nonentity. But
• 50:02
  such was not Sheeny Annie, who was a bright, intelligent, ambitious girl.
• 50:07
  When she liked the fellow, she would do anything for him, but
• 50:10
  otherwise she wouldn't let a man come near her. The little Jewish lassie named
• 50:15
  Annie was born in the toughest part of New York. Later on, as
• 50:20
  she advanced in years and became an expert pilferer, she was given the nickname
• 50:24
  of Sheeni. She was brought up on the street, surrounded by thieves and
• 50:29
  prostitutes. Her only education was what she received during year or two in the
• 50:32
  public school. She lived near Grand Street, then a popular shopping district.
• 50:38
  As a very little girl, she and a friend used to visit the dry
• 50:40
  goods stores and steal any little notion they could. There was a crowd of
• 50:45
  young pickpockets in her street, and she soon got onto this graft and became
• 50:49
  so skillful at it that older guns of both sexes were eager to take her
• 50:53
  under their tuition and finish her education. The first time I met her was
• 50:58
  in a well known dance hall, Billy mc glory's, and we became friends
• 51:01
  at once, for she was a good girl and full of mischief. She
• 51:06
  was not pretty exactly, but she was passable. She was small, with
• 51:09
  thick lips, plump, had good teeth and eyes as fine and piercing as
• 51:15
  any I ever saw in man or woman. She dressed well and was a
• 51:20
  good talker, as nimble witted, and as good a judge of human nature
• 51:23
  as I have ever met. In her sex, Sheenyanny's graft broadened, and
• 51:29
  from dipping and small shop lifting she rose to a position where she doubled up
• 51:32
  with a mob of clever hotel workers and made large amounts of money. Here
• 51:37
  was a girl from the lowest stratum of life, not pretty or well shaped,
• 51:42
  but whom men admired because of her wit and cleverness. A big contractor
• 51:46
  in Philadelphia was her friend for years. I've seen letters from him offering to
• 51:51
  marry her. But she had something better for She was an artist at penny
• 51:55
  waiting and hoisting. The police admitted that she was unusually clever at these two
• 52:00
  grafts, and they treated her with every consideration. Penny waiting is a very
• 52:06
  slick graft. It's generally worked in pairs by either sex or both sexes.
• 52:12
  A man, for instance, enters a jewelry store and looks at some diamond
• 52:15
  rings on a tray. He prices them and notes the costly ones. Then
• 52:20
  he goes to a fawnee shop imitation jewelry and buys a few diamonds which match
• 52:24
  the real ones he has noted. Then he and his pal, usually a
• 52:29
  woman, enter the jewelry store and asks to see the rings through some little
• 52:34
  khan they distract the jeweler's attention, and then one of them, and at
• 52:37
  this sheeny Ani was particularly good, substitutes the bogus diamonds for the good ones
• 52:44
  and leaves the store without making a purchase. I can give an example of
• 52:47
  how Sheenianni hoisted from my own experience with her. On one occasion when I
• 52:52
  was about eighteen years old, Sheeni and I were on a racket together.
• 52:57
  We've been going it for several days, and kneaded some dough. We went
• 53:00
  into a large tailoring establishment where I tried on some clothes as a stall.
• 53:05
  Nothing suited me. I took good care of that, but in the meantime
• 53:08
  Annie had taken two costly overcoats, folded them into flat bundles, and raising
• 53:14
  her skirt quickly, had hidden the overcoats between the legs. We left the
• 53:17
  store together. She walked so straight that I thought she had got nothing.
• 53:23
  But when we entered a saloon a block away, and the swag was produced.
• 53:27
  I was forced alive. We fenced the overcoats and with the proceeds continued
• 53:30
  us free. Once Sheeny fell at this linograft, she had stolen some costly
• 53:37
  seal skins from a well known furrier and had got away with them. But
• 53:40
  on her third visit to the place she came to grief. She was going
• 53:45
  out with a sealskin coat under her skirt when the office boy, who was
• 53:49
  skylarking about, ran into her and upset her. When the salesman, who
• 53:53
  had gone to her rescue, lifted her up, she lost her grip on
• 53:57
  the sealskin sack and it fell to the floor. It was a blow,
• 54:00
  of course, and she got nailed, but as she had plenty of fall
• 54:04
  money and a well known politician dead to rights, she only got nine months
• 54:07
  in the penitentiary. Sheeny Annie was such a good shoplifter that with only an
• 54:14
  umbrella as a stall, she could make more money in a week than a
• 54:16
  poor needlewoman could earn in months. But she did not care for the money.
• 54:21
  She was a good fella and was in for fun. She was wise
• 54:24
  too, and I like to talk to her for she understood what I said
• 54:28
  and was up to snuff, which was very piquant to me. She had
• 54:31
  done most of the grafts that I had done myself, and her tips were
• 54:34
  always valuable to show what a good fellow she was. Her sweetheart Jack and
• 54:39
  another burglar named Jerry, were doing night work. Once when they were unlucky
• 54:43
  enough to be nailed. Sheeny Annie went on the stand and swore perjury in
• 54:47
  order to save Jack. He got a year, but Jerry, who had
• 54:52
  committed the same crime, got six. While he was in prison, Annie
• 54:57
  visited him and put up a plan by which he escaped, but he would
• 55:00
  not leave New York with her and was caught and returned to stir. Annie
• 55:05
  herself fell in half a dozen cities, but never received more than a few
• 55:07
  months after I was released from serving my second bit in the pen, I
• 55:13
  heard Annie had died insane. An old girl pal of hers told me that
• 55:16
  she had died a horrible death, and that her last words were about her
• 55:21
  old friends and companions. Her disease was that which attacks only people with brains.
• 55:27
  She died of Parisis. Two other girls whom I knew when I was
• 55:31
  fifteen, turned out to be famous shoplifters, Big Lena and blonde Mamie,
• 55:36
  who afterwards married Tommy, the famous cracksman. They begin to graft when they
• 55:39
  were about fourteen, and Mamie and I used to work together. I was
• 55:44
  Mamie's first fella and we had royal good times together. Lena, poor girl,
• 55:49
  is now doing five years in London, but she was one of the
• 55:52
  most cheerful males I ever knew. I met her and Mamie for the first
• 55:55
  time one day as they were coming out of an oyster house on Grand Street.
• 56:00
  I thought they were good looking tidbits and took them to a picnic.
• 56:04
  We were so late that instead of going home, Mamie and I spent the
• 56:07
  night at the house of Lina's sister, whose husband was a receiver of stolen
• 56:09
  goods or fence as it is popularly called. In the morning, Lena,
• 56:15
  Mamie and I made our first touch together. We got a few books up
• 56:17
  town and Mamie banged a satchel at Stearns. After that we often jumped out
• 56:22
  together and took in the excursions. Sometimes Mamie or Lena would dip and I
• 56:28
  would stall, but more frequently I was the pick. We used to turn
• 56:31
  our swag over Lena's sister's husband, Max, who would give us about one
• 56:36
  sixth of its value. These three girls certainly were a crackajack trio. You
• 56:40
  couldn't find their likes nowadays. Even in my time, most of the girls
• 56:45
  I knew did not amount to anything. They generally married or did worse,
• 56:50
  there were few legitimate grafters among them. Since I've been back this time,
• 56:53
  I've seen so many of the old picks and night workers I used to know.
• 56:58
  They tell the same story. There are no malls now who can compare
• 57:00
  with Big Lena, Blonde Mamie and Sheeny Annie. Times are bad anyway.
• 57:07
  After my experience in the tombs, I rose very rapidly in the world of
• 57:10
  graft and distanced my old companions. Zach, the lad with whom I had
• 57:16
  touched my first maul, soon seemed very tame to me. I fell away
• 57:21
  from him because he continued to eat Bolivar's cookies, patronized the free baths,
• 57:25
  and stole horse blankets and other trivial things. When he could not get leathers.
• 57:30
  He was not fast enough for me. Zack got there, nevertheless,
• 57:34
  and for little and nothing for several years. Later, I met him in
• 57:37
  state's prison. He told me he was going to Colorado on his release.
• 57:40
  I again met him in prison on my second bit. He was then going
• 57:44
  to Chicago. On my third head, I ran up against the same old
• 57:47
  jail bird, but this time his destination was Boston. To day, he's
• 57:52
  still in prison. As I fell away from the softies, I had naturally
• 57:57
  joined hands with more ambitious grafters and with those with bigs and with good connections
• 58:00
  in the upper world. As a lad of from fifteen to eighteen, I
• 58:05
  associated with several boys who are now famous politicians in this city and on the
• 58:08
  level as that phrase is usually meant. Jack Lawrence was a well educated boy
• 58:14
  and high up as far as his family was concerned. His father and brothers
• 58:17
  held good political positions, and it was only a taste for booze and for
• 58:22
  less genteel grafton that held Jack back. As a boy of sixteen seventeen,
• 58:27
  he was the trusted messenger of a well known Republican politician named J. I.
• 58:31
  D. One of Jack's pals became a federal judge, and another mister
• 58:37
  D, who was never a grafter, is at present a city magistrate in
• 58:42
  New York. While Jack was working for j I. D. The politician,
• 58:46
  he was arrested several times. Once he abstracted a large amount of money
• 58:51
  from the vest pocket of a broker as he was standing by the Old Herald
• 58:53
  building. He was nailed and sent word to his employer, the politician,
• 58:59
  who went to police headquarters highly indignant at the arrest of his trusted messenger.
• 59:05
  He easily convinced the broker and the magistrate that Jack was innocent and as far
• 59:08
  as the Republican politician's business was concerned, Jack was honest. For j I.
• 59:12
  D. Trusted him and Jack never deceived him. There are some thieves
• 59:15
  who will not touch those who place confidence in them, and Jack was one
• 59:20
  of them. After he was released, the following conversation, which Jack related
• 59:24
  to me, took place between him and the politician in the latter's office.
• 59:29
  How was it? The big one said that you happen to get your fingers
• 59:31
  into that man's pocket. Jack gave the innocent con None of that, said
• 59:37
  j I. D, who was a wise guy. I know you have
• 59:40
  a habit of taking small change from strangers pockets. Jack then came off his
• 59:45
  perch and gave the patron a lesson and the art of throw in the mit
• 59:49
  dipping. At this, the politician grinned and remarked, you will either become
• 59:53
  a reputable politician, for you have the requisite character, or you will die.
• 59:59
  Young Jack was feared, hated, and envied by the other young fellows
• 1:00:04
  in j. I. D's office, for as he was such a thorough
• 1:00:07
  rascal, he was a great favorite with those high up. But he never
• 1:00:09
  got j. I. D's full confidence until after he was tested in the
• 1:00:13
  following way. One day, the politician put his gold watch on a table
• 1:00:16
  in his office. Jack saw it, picked it up, and put it
• 1:00:21
  in the big one's drawer. The latter entered the room, saw that the
• 1:00:24
  watch was gone and said, I've forgot my watch. I must have left
• 1:00:30
  it at home. Now, said Jack, you left it on the table
• 1:00:34
  and I put it in your desk. A smile spread over the patron's face.
• 1:00:37
  Jack, I can trust you. I put it there just to test
• 1:00:42
  your honesty. The boy hesitated a moment, then, looking into the man's
• 1:00:46
  face, replied, I know right well you did, for you're a wise
• 1:00:51
  guy. After that, j I. D. Trusted Jack, even with
• 1:00:54
  his love affairs. As Jack advanced in life, he became an expert gun
• 1:01:00
  and was often nailed and frequently brought before magistrate. D his old friend,
• 1:01:05
  he always got the benefit of the doubt. One day he was arraigned before
• 1:01:08
  the magistrate, who asked the flyman the nature of the complaint. It was
• 1:01:13
  the same as usual, thipping. Jack, of course, was indignant at
• 1:01:16
  such an awful accusation, but the magistrate told him to keep still, and,
• 1:01:21
  turning to the policeman, asked the culprit's name. When the copper told
• 1:01:24
  him, the magistrate exclaimed, why that's not his name. I knew him
• 1:01:28
  twenty years ago, and he was a damned rascal then, but that was
• 1:01:30
  not his name. Jack was shocked at such language from the bench and swore
• 1:01:36
  with such vehemence that he was innocent. That he once again got the benefit
• 1:01:39
  of the doubt and was discharged, and this time justly, for he had
• 1:01:43
  not made this particular touch. He was hounded by a copper looking for a
• 1:01:46
  reputation. Jack, when he was set free, turned to the magistrate and
• 1:01:51
  said, your honor, I thank you, but you only did your duty
• 1:01:52
  to an innocent man. The magistrate had a good laugh and remarked, Jack,
• 1:01:58
  I wouldn't believe you if you swore on a stack of Bibles. A
• 1:02:00
  curious trait in a professional grafter is that if he is pinched for something he
• 1:02:05
  did not do, although he has done a hundred other things for which he
• 1:02:07
  has never been pinched, he will put up such a wail against the abominable
• 1:02:12
  injustice that an honest man accused of the same offense would seem guilty. In
• 1:02:15
  comparison. The honest man, even if he has the ability of a Philadelphia
• 1:02:20
  lawyer, could not do the strong indignation act that is characteristic of the unjustly
• 1:02:24
  accused grafter. Old thieves guilty of a thousand crimes will nourish revenge for years
• 1:02:30
  against the copper or judge who sends them up to stir on a false accusation.
• 1:02:37
  When I was from fifteen to seventeen years old, I met the man
• 1:02:38
  who some think is now practically leader of Tammany Hall. I will call him
• 1:02:44
  Senator Wett Cooin. At that time he was a boy eighteen or nineteen and
• 1:02:49
  strictly on the level. He knew all the graft as well, but kept
• 1:02:52
  off the rocky path himself. In those days, he hung out in a
• 1:02:57
  noise to shanty and ran a paper stand. It said he materially assisted mister
• 1:03:01
  Pulletzer and making a success of the world when that paper was started. He
• 1:03:06
  never drank in spite of the name I have given him. In fact,
• 1:03:08
  he derived his real nickname from his habit of abstinence. He was the friend
• 1:03:14
  of a Bowery girl who is now a well known actress. She too,
• 1:03:17
  was always on the level in every way, although her brother was a grafter.
• 1:03:22
  This case, and that of Senator wet Coin, proved that even in
• 1:03:25
  an environment of thieves, it is possible to tread the path of virtue.
• 1:03:30
  Wet Coin would not even buy a stolen article, and his reward was great.
• 1:03:35
  He became captain of his election district, ran for assemblyman, was elected,
• 1:03:38
  and got as high a position with the exception of that a governor,
• 1:03:43
  as is possible in the state, while in the city probably no man is
• 1:03:46
  more powerful. Senator wet Coin made no pretensions to virtue. He never claimed
• 1:03:52
  to be better than others. But in spite of the accusations against him,
• 1:03:55
  he has done far more for the public good than all the profe reformers,
• 1:04:00
  religious and other He took many noted and professional criminals in the prime of their
• 1:04:04
  success, gave them positions, and by his influence, kept them honest ever
• 1:04:09
  since. Some of them are high up, even run gin mills. Today.
• 1:04:14
  I met one of them after my second bit, who used to make
• 1:04:15
  his thousands. Now he has a salary of eighteen dollars a week and is
• 1:04:19
  contented. I had known him in the old days, and he asks,
• 1:04:24
  what are you doing the same old thing? I admitted, what are you
• 1:04:28
  up to? I've squared at Jim. He replied earnestly, there's nothing in
• 1:04:32
  the graft. Why don't you go to sea, I'd his leaf, go
• 1:04:35
  to stir. I replied. We had a couple of beers and a long
• 1:04:40
  talk, and this is the way he gave it to me. I never
• 1:04:44
  thought I could live on eighteen dollars a week. I have to work hard,
• 1:04:46
  but I saved more money than I did when I was making hundreds a
• 1:04:49
  week. But when it comes hard, it does not go so easy.
• 1:04:53
  I looked twice at my ownings before I part with them. I live quietly
• 1:04:56
  with my sister and am happy. There's nothing in the other thing. Jim,
• 1:05:00
  look at hope, look at Dan Noble. Look at all the other
• 1:05:03
  noted grafters who stole millions and now are willing to throw the brotherly hand for
• 1:05:08
  a small borrow. If I had the chance to make thousands tomorrow in the
• 1:05:11
  underworld, I would not chance it. I'm happy. Better still, I'm
• 1:05:15
  contented only for mister Wetcoin. I'd be split in matches in a stir.
• 1:05:19
  These many years show me the reformer who has done as much for friends and
• 1:05:24
  the public as wet Coin. A touch that pleased me mightily as a kid
• 1:05:30
  was made just before my second fall. Superintendent Walling had returned from a summer
• 1:05:35
  resort and found that a mob of knucks another name for pickpockets, had been
• 1:05:40
  tearing open the Third Avenue cars outside of the post office. About fifty complaints
• 1:05:45
  had been coming in every day for several weeks, and the superintendent thought he
• 1:05:47
  would make a personal investigation and get one of the thieves dead to rights.
• 1:05:53
  He made a front that he was easy and went down the line. He
• 1:05:57
  did not catch any dips, but when he reached police headquarters he was Minus's
• 1:06:00
  gold watch at two hundred and fifty dollars in money. The story leaked out
• 1:06:03
  and Superintendent Walling was unhappy. There would never have been a comeback for this
• 1:06:09
  touch if an old gun who had just been nailed had not squealed as to
• 1:06:13
  who touched the boss. Little Mick had done it, and the result was
• 1:06:16
  that he got his first experience in the House of Refuge. It was only
• 1:06:21
  a short time after Little Mixed Fall that it came my turn to go to
• 1:06:25
  the House of Refuge. I had grown tougher and much stuck on myself and
• 1:06:29
  was taken bigger risks. I certainly had a swelled head in those days.
• 1:06:32
  I was seventeen years old at the time and was grafting with Jack t who
• 1:06:36
  is now in Burns's book and one of the swellest pedamen safe blowers in the
• 1:06:41
  profession. Jack and I, along with another pal Joe, quickly got a
• 1:06:45
  duffer, an Englishman, for his front on Grand Street near Broadway. It
• 1:06:49
  was a blow, and I, who was the wire, got nailed.
• 1:06:54
  If I had not given my ages fifteen, I should have been sent to
• 1:06:57
  the penitentiary. As it was, I went to the House of Refuge for
• 1:07:00
  a year. Joe quickly slipped up on the same game. He was twenty,
• 1:07:04
  but gave his ages fifteen, he'd had a good shave by the Tombs
• 1:07:09
  barber. There was a false date of birth written in his aunt's bible,
• 1:07:11
  which was produced in court by his lawyer, and he would probably have gone
• 1:07:15
  with me to the House of Refuge had not a central office man who knew
• 1:07:18
  him happened in Joe was settled four years and sinsing. When I arrived at
• 1:07:24
  the House of Refuge, my pedigree was taken in my hair clipped. Then
• 1:07:27
  I went into the yard, looked down the line of boys on parade,
• 1:07:30
  and saw about forty young rafters whom I knew. One of them is now
• 1:07:33
  a policeman in New York City, and moreover on the level some others too,
• 1:07:38
  but not many who were then in the House of Refuge are now honest.
• 1:07:41
  Several are running big saloons and are captains of their election districts or even
• 1:07:45
  higher up. These men are exceptions, however, For certainly the House of
• 1:07:48
  Refuge was a school for crime. Unspeakably bad habits were contracted there. The
• 1:07:55
  older boys wrecked, the younger ones, who comparatively innocent confined for the crime
• 1:07:59
  of being orphans, came in contact with others entirely hardened. The daytime was
• 1:08:04
  spent in the school and the shop, but there was an hour or two
• 1:08:08
  for play, and the boys would arrange to meet for mischief in the basement.
• 1:08:11
  Severe punishments were given to lads of fifteen, and their tasks were harder
• 1:08:15
  than those inflicted in states prison. We had to make twenty four pairs of
• 1:08:19
  overalls every day, and if we did not do our work, we were
• 1:08:24
  beaten on an unprotected and tender spot until we promised to do our task.
• 1:08:29
  One morning, I was made to cross my hands and was given fifteen blows
• 1:08:32
  on the palms with a heavy ratann stick. The crime I had committed was
• 1:08:36
  in attention. The principal had been preaching about the prodigal sun. I,
• 1:08:41
  having heard it before, paid little heed, particularly as I was a Catholic
• 1:08:45
  and his teachings did not count for me. They called me a papist and
• 1:08:47
  beat me as I described. I say without hesitation that lads sent to an
• 1:08:55
  institution like the house of refuge, the Catholic protectory, or the juvenile asylum
• 1:08:59
  might better be taken out and shot. They learned things there they could not
• 1:09:02
  learn even in the streets. A newsboy's life is pure in comparison. As
• 1:09:09
  for me, I grew far more desperate there than I had been before,
• 1:09:13
  and I was far from being one of the most innocent boys. Many the
• 1:09:15
  others had more to learn than I had, and they learned it, but
• 1:09:19
  even I hard as I already was acquired much fresh information about vice and crime,
• 1:09:26
  and gathered in more pointers about the technique of graft. End of chapter
• 1:09:32
  three, Chapter four. When the graft was good, I stayed in the
• 1:09:40
  house of refuge until I was eighteen, and when released, went through a
• 1:09:43
  short period of reform. I lasted I think nearly three weeks, and then
• 1:09:47
  started into graft again harder than ever. The old ditch for excitement for theaters,
• 1:09:53
  balls and gambling made reform impossible. I had already formed strong habits and
• 1:09:58
  desires which could not be satisfied in my life environment without stealing. I was
• 1:10:01
  rapidly becoming a confirmed criminal. I began to do housework, which was mainly
• 1:10:06
  sneak work. Up town. We would catch a basement open in the daytime
• 1:10:11
  in rummage for silverware, money, or jewels. There's only a step from
• 1:10:14
  this to the business of the genuine burglar, who operates in the night time
• 1:10:17
  and whose occupation is far more dangerous than that of the sneak beef. However,
• 1:10:23
  at this intermediate kind of graft, our swag for eighteen months was considerable.
• 1:10:28
  One of our methods was to take servant girls to balls and picnics,
• 1:10:31
  and to get them to tip us off to where the goods were and the
• 1:10:34
  best way to get them. Sometimes they were guilty, more often merely suckers.
• 1:10:42
  During the next three years, at the expiration of which I made my
• 1:10:45
  first trip to Sing Sing, I stole a great deal of money and lived
• 1:10:48
  very high. I contracted more bad habits, practically ceased to see my family
• 1:10:54
  at all, lived in a furnished room, and hung out in the evening
• 1:10:58
  at some dance hall such as Billy mc Gloree's Old Armory, George Doze or
• 1:11:01
  Thie Allen's. Sheeney. Annie was my sweetheart at this period, and after
• 1:11:06
  we had made a good touch, what times we would have at Coney Island
• 1:11:10
  or at Billy mc glory's. Saturday nights in the summertime, a mob of
• 1:11:14
  three or four of us grafters and girls would go to the island and stop
• 1:11:17
  at a hotel run by a next gun At two or three o'clock in the
• 1:11:20
  morning, we'd all leave the hotel with nothing on but a quilt and go
• 1:11:25
  in swimming together. Sheeney, Annie, Blond Mamy and Big Lena often went
• 1:11:30
  with us. At other times we took respectable shop girls, or even women
• 1:11:33
  who belonged to a still lower class. What boy will announce a thick blood
• 1:11:39
  in his body could refuse to go with a girl to the island and Billy
• 1:11:44
  mc glory's what times we had there on dear old Saturday nights at this place,
• 1:11:48
  which contained a bar room, dance room, pool room and a piano,
• 1:11:53
  congregated downtown guns, housemen and thieves of both sexes. No ragtime was
• 1:11:59
  danced in those days, but early in the morning we had plenty of the
• 1:12:01
  cancn The riots that took place there would put to shame anything that goes on
• 1:12:06
  now footnote Summer of nineteen o two. I never knew the town so tight
• 1:12:14
  shut as it is at present. It's far better from a moral point of
• 1:12:16
  view than it has ever been before, at least in my recollection. Thee
• 1:12:21
  Allen's was in those days a grade more decent than mc glory's. For at
• 1:12:26
  these nobody who did not wear a collar and coat was emitted. I remember
• 1:12:30
  a palamne who met a society lady on a slum and expedition with a reporter.
• 1:12:34
  It was at mc glory's. The lady looked upon the grafter she had
• 1:12:39
  met as a novelty. The grafter looked upon the lady in the same way,
• 1:12:43
  but consented to write her an article on the Bowery. He sent her
• 1:12:45
  the following composition, which he showed to me first and allowed me to copy
• 1:12:50
  it. I always did like freaks. I won't put in the bad grammar
• 1:12:55
  and spelling, but the rest is quote. While strolling after the midnight along
• 1:13:00
  the lane and that historic thoroughfare sometimes called the Bowery, I dropped into a
• 1:13:05
  concert hall. At a glance, I saw men who worked hard during the
• 1:13:10
  week and needed a little recreation. Near of them were their sisters, that
• 1:13:15
  is, if we all belonged to the same human family who had fallen by
• 1:13:18
  the wayside. A man was trying to play a popular song on a squeaky
• 1:13:23
  piano, while another gent tried to sing the first part of the song.
• 1:13:27
  When the whole place joined in the chorus with a zest, I think the
• 1:13:30
  song was most appropriate. It was a ditty of the slums entitled dear Old
• 1:13:35
  Saturday Night End. When I was about nineteen, I took another and important
• 1:13:43
  step in the world of graft One night I met a couple of swell grafters,
• 1:13:46
  one of whom is at the present time a Pinkerton detective. They took
• 1:13:50
  me to the Haymarket, where I met a crowd of guns who were making
• 1:13:54
  barrels of money. Two of them, Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, became
• 1:13:59
  my friends and introduced me to mister R, who has often kept me out
• 1:14:02
  of prison. He was a go between, a lawyer and well known to
• 1:14:08
  all good crooks. If we fell, we had to notify him and he
• 1:14:12
  would set the underground wires working, with the result that our fall money would
• 1:14:15
  need replenishing badly, but that we'd escape. The stir that I was not
• 1:14:19
  convicted again for three years was entirely due to my fall money and to the
• 1:14:25
  cleverness of mister R. Besides these expenses, which I considered legitimate, I
• 1:14:30
  used to get shaken down regularly by the police and detectives. The following is
• 1:14:33
  a typical case. I was standing one day on the corner of Grand Street
• 1:14:38
  and the Bowery. When a copper who knew me came up and said,
• 1:14:41
  there's a lot of knocking complaining going on about the Grand Street Cosby and torn
• 1:14:45
  open the old man. The chief won't stand for it much longer. It
• 1:14:50
  wasn't me, I said, Well, it was one of the gang,
• 1:14:54
  he replied, and I'll have to make an arrest soon or take someone to
• 1:14:58
  headquarters for his mug, that is, to have his picture taken for the
• 1:15:01
  rogues gallery. I knew what that meant, and so I gave him a
• 1:15:05
  twenty dollar bill. But I was young and often objected to these exorbitant demands
• 1:15:12
  more than anybody else. A thief hates to be touched, for he despises
• 1:15:16
  the sucker on whom he lives, and we were certainly touched with great regularity
• 1:15:20
  by the coppers. Still, we really had nothing to complain of in those
• 1:15:25
  days, for we made plenty of money and had a good time. We
• 1:15:29
  even used to buy our collars, cuffs and gloves cheap from grafters who made
• 1:15:32
  it their business to steal those articles. They were cheap guns, pipe fiends,
• 1:15:38
  petty larceny thieves, and shoplifters, but they helped to make our path
• 1:15:42
  smoother. After I met the Haymarket grafter, I used to jump out to
• 1:15:46
  neighboring cities on very profitable business. A good graft was to work the fairs
• 1:15:51
  at Danbury, Waverley, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, and the football games at
• 1:15:56
  Princeton. I always traveled with three or four others and went for gatherings where
• 1:16:00
  we knew we would find roofers or country gentlemen. On my very first jump
• 1:16:05
  out, I got a fall, but the copper was open to reason.
• 1:16:10
  Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, splendid pickpockets. I always went with good thieves,
• 1:16:15
  for I had become a first class dip and had a good personal appearance.
• 1:16:18
  Were working with me in Newark, where Vice President Hendrix was to speak.
• 1:16:24
  I picked a watch in the crowd and was nailed. But dutch Lonzo,
• 1:16:28
  who had to gift a gab better than any man I ever met,
• 1:16:30
  took the copper into a saloon. We all had a drink, and for
• 1:16:33
  twenty five dollars I escaped even the station house. Unfortunately, however, I
• 1:16:39
  was compelled to return the watch, for the copper had to square the sucker.
• 1:16:43
  Then the Copper said to Dutch Lonzo, whom he knew, go back
• 1:16:46
  and graft if you want, but be sure to look me up in an
• 1:16:50
  hour or two. We got enough touches to do us for two weeks.
• 1:16:55
  Senator wet Coin was at this speech with about two hundred Tammany braves, and
• 1:16:59
  we picked so many pockets that a newspaper the next day said there must have
• 1:17:02
  been at least one hundred and ninety nine pickpockets in the Tammany delegation. We
• 1:17:08
  fell quite often on these trips, but we were always willing to help the
• 1:17:11
  coppers pay for their lower flats. I sometimes objected because of their exorbitant demands,
• 1:17:17
  but I was still young. I knew that longshoremen did harder work for
• 1:17:21
  less pay than the coppers, and I thought, therefore that the latter were
• 1:17:25
  too eager to make money on a sure thing graft. And I always hated
• 1:17:29
  a sure thing graft. But didn't we strike it rich in Connecticut. Whether
• 1:17:35
  the people of that state suffer from partial paralysis or not, I don't know,
• 1:17:40
  but certainly if all states were as easy as Connecticut, the guns would
• 1:17:44
  set up as Vanderbilts. I never even got a tumble in Connecticut. I
• 1:17:47
  ripped up the fares in every direction and took every chance. The inhabitants were
• 1:17:54
  so easy that we treated them with contempt. After a long trip in Connecticut,
• 1:17:59
  I nearly fell on my return. I was that raw. We were
• 1:18:02
  breech getting picking men's pockets in the Brooklyn cars. I was stolen in front,
• 1:18:08
  Lonzo was behind, and Charlie was the pick. Lonzo telephoned to me
• 1:18:12
  by gestures that Charlie had got hold of the leather, but it wouldn't come.
• 1:18:15
  I was hanging on a strap and pretending to slip, brought my hand
• 1:18:18
  down heavily on the sucker's hat, which went over his ears. The leather
• 1:18:24
  came was slipped to me. Lonzo apologized for spoiling the hat, and offered
• 1:18:28
  the sucker a five dollar bill, which he politely refused. Now that was
• 1:18:31
  rough work, and we would not have done it had we not been traveling
• 1:18:35
  so long among the rubes in Connecticut. We could have made our gets all
• 1:18:40
  right. But we were so confident and delayed so long that the sucker blew
• 1:18:44
  before we left the car, and Lonzo and Charlie were nailed. And the
• 1:18:46
  next morning arraigned. In the meantime, however, we had started the wires
• 1:18:51
  working and notified mister R and Lonzo's wife to fix things in Brooklyn. The
• 1:18:57
  reliable attorney got a bondsman and two friends of his fixed the cops, who
• 1:19:00
  made no complaint. Lonzo's wife, an irishwoman and a handsome grafter, had
• 1:19:05
  just finished a five year bit in London. It cost us six hundred dollars
• 1:19:10
  to fix that case, and there were only two hundred fifty dollars in the
• 1:19:13
  leather. That made Lonzo's wife exceedingly angry. Good lord, she said,
• 1:19:19
  there's panthers for you in New York. There's blokes that shakes you down too
• 1:19:24
  heavy. I'd want an unlimited check on the Bank of England if you ever
• 1:19:27
  fell again. A little philosophy on the same subject was given me one day
• 1:19:31
  by an English mall who had fallen up state and had to give up heavily.
• 1:19:35
  I've been in a good many cities and amelets in this country, said
• 1:19:39
  she, But cat blind me if I ever want to fall on an omelet
• 1:19:43
  in this bloomin's state again. The New York police are at least a little
• 1:19:45
  sensible at times, but when these rufuses up the state, get a yok
• 1:19:49
  or a wise guy, they'll strip him down to his socks. One of
• 1:19:54
  these voracious country coppers who sing sweet IMBs in jail is a most successful gun
• 1:19:59
  than ever hit the rocky path and take brash to get the long green.
• 1:20:02
  It's only the grafta is supposed to protect the people who makes the success of
• 1:20:06
  it. The hypocritical mouthings of these people just suit the size of their bibles.
• 1:20:14
  Lonzo and I and Patsy, a grafter I had picked up about this
• 1:20:17
  time, made several fat trips to Philadelphia. At first, we were leery
• 1:20:21
  of the apartment stores there have been so many hollers, and worked the rattlers
• 1:20:26
  cars only. We were told by some local guns that we could not last
• 1:20:30
  twenty four hours in Philadelphia without protection, but that was not our experience.
• 1:20:35
  We went easy for a time, but the chances were too good, and
• 1:20:39
  we began voraciously to tear open the department stores, the churches, and the
• 1:20:42
  theaters, and without a fall. Whenever anybody mentioned the fly cops detectives of
• 1:20:48
  Philadelphia, it reminded us of the inhabitants of Connecticut. They were not dead.
• 1:20:54
  Such a word is sacred. Their proper place was not on the police
• 1:20:57
  force, but on the shelf in the dutchman's groceries or labeled the cayann article.
• 1:21:01
  Philadelphia was always my town, but I never stayed very long, partly
• 1:21:05
  because I did not want to become known in such a fat place, and
• 1:21:09
  partly because I could not bear to be away from New York very long,
• 1:21:12
  for although there is better graft than other cities, there is no such place
• 1:21:15
  to live in as Manhattan. I had no fear of being known in Philadelphia
• 1:21:19
  to the police, but to local guns who had become jealous of our grafton
• 1:21:24
  and tip us off. On one of my trips to the city of brotherly
• 1:21:27
  Love, I had a poetical experience. The graft had been good, and
• 1:21:31
  one Sunday morning, I left Dan and Patsy asleep and went for a walk
• 1:21:34
  in the country, intending for a change to observe the day of rest.
• 1:21:40
  I walked for several hours through a beautiful, quiet country, and about ten
• 1:21:43
  o'clock past the country church. They were singing inside, and for some reason,
• 1:21:47
  probably because I had had a good walk in the country, the music
• 1:21:50
  affected me strangely. I entered and saw a blind evangelist and his sister.
• 1:21:58
  I bowed my head, and my whole past life came over me. Although
• 1:22:01
  everything had been come in my way, I felt uneasy and thought of home
• 1:22:05
  for the first time in many weeks. I went back to the hotel in
• 1:22:10
  Philadelphia, feeling very gloomy, and shut myself up in my room. I
• 1:22:15
  took up my pen and began a letter to a Tommy girl in New York.
• 1:22:21
  But I cannot forget the country church, And instead of writing to the
• 1:22:24
  little Tommy, I wrote the following jingles. When a child by my mother's
• 1:22:29
  knee, I would watch Watch, Watch by the deep blue sea, and
• 1:22:32
  the moonbeams played merrily on our home beside the sea course. The evening star
• 1:22:41
  shines brightly above our home beside the sea, and the moonbeams danced beamingly on
• 1:22:47
  our home beside the sea. But now I am old, in firm and
• 1:22:53
  gray, I shall never see those happy days. I would give my life,
• 1:22:58
  all my wealth and fame to hear my mother gently call my name.
• 1:23:04
  Towards evening, Patsy and Dan returned from a good day's work. Patsy noticed
• 1:23:10
  I was quiet and unusually gloomy, and asked, what's the matter. Didn't
• 1:23:14
  you get anything? No, I replied, I'm going back to New York
• 1:23:19
  where you been. Asked Dan, to church, I replied, in the
• 1:23:24
  city, he asked, No, I replied, in the country. I
• 1:23:29
  cautioned you, said, Dan, against taking such chances. There's no doe
• 1:23:31
  in those country churches. If you want to try alone ones on a Sunday,
• 1:23:34
  take in some swell church in the city. The following Sunday I went
• 1:23:40
  to a fashionable church and got a few leathers, and afterwards went to all
• 1:23:44
  the swell churches in the city. I touched them, but they could not
• 1:23:46
  touch me. I heard all the ministers in Philadelphia, but they could not
• 1:23:50
  move me the way that country of Angelis did. They were all artificial in
• 1:23:55
  comparison. Shortly after my poetical experience in Philadelphia, I made a trip up
• 1:24:00
  in New York State with Patsy, Dan and Joe and grafted in a dozen
• 1:24:03
  towns. One day, when we were on the cars going from Albany to
• 1:24:08
  Amsterdam, we saw a fat, sleepy looking Dutchman and I nicked him for
• 1:24:12
  a clock as he was passing along the aisle to the end of the car.
• 1:24:15
  It took the Dutchman about ten minutes after he had returned to his seat
• 1:24:17
  to blow that his super was gone and his chain hanging down. A look
• 1:24:21
  of stupid surprise spread over his innocent countenance. He looked all around, picked
• 1:24:27
  up the end of his chain, saw it was twisted, put his hand
• 1:24:30
  in his vest pocket, and then looked again at the end of the chain,
• 1:24:32
  tried his pocket again, and then went through all of his pockets,
• 1:24:35
  and repeated each of these actions a dozen times. The passengers all got next
• 1:24:41
  and began to grin. Get on to the hiker. Countryman, said Patsy
• 1:24:46
  to Joe, and they both laughed. I told the Dutchman that the clock
• 1:24:51
  must have fallen down the leg of his underwear. Whereupon the Reuben retired to
• 1:24:56
  investigate, searched himself thoroughly, and returned only to go through the emotions,
• 1:25:00
  and then retired to investigate once more. It was as good as a comedy,
• 1:25:05
  but it was well. There were no country coppers on that train.
• 1:25:09
  They would not have cared to rap about the Dutchman's loss of his property,
• 1:25:12
  but we four probably should have been compelled to divide with them. Grafters are
• 1:25:16
  a superstitious loot. Before we reached Buffalo, a feeling came over me that
• 1:25:21
  I had better not work in that town. So Joe Dan and an English
• 1:25:26
  grafter we had picked up named Scotty, stopped at Buffalo, and Patsy and
• 1:25:29
  I went on. Sure enough, in a couple of days, Joe wired
• 1:25:33
  me that Scotty had fallen for a breech kick and was held for trial.
• 1:25:38
  I wired to mister R, who got into communication with mister j a Canadian
• 1:25:42
  Jew living in Buffalo, who set the wires going. The sucker proved a
• 1:25:45
  very hard man to square, but a politician who was a friend of mister
• 1:25:49
  Jay showed him the airs of his way, and before very long Scotty returned
• 1:25:53
  to New York. An English small buzzer. A girl got hold of him
• 1:25:57
  and took him back to London. It was just as well, for it
• 1:26:00
  was time for our bunch to break up. We were getting too well known
• 1:26:03
  and falls were coming too frequent, so we had a general split. Joe
• 1:26:09
  went to Washington, Patsy down East, Scotty to stir in London, and
• 1:26:13
  I stayed in Manhattan, where I shortly afterwards met Big Jack and other burglars
• 1:26:16
  and started in on that dangerous craft. But before I tell about my work
• 1:26:21
  in that line, I'll narrate the story of Mamie and Johnny, a famous
• 1:26:25
  cracksman whom I met at this time. It's a true love story the underworld.
• 1:26:30
  Johnny and Mamie, who by the way, is not the same as
• 1:26:33
  Blonde Mamie, are still living together in New York City after many trials and
• 1:26:36
  tribulations, one of the greatest of which was Mamie's enforced relation with the New
• 1:26:41
  York Detective. But I won't anticipate on the story which follows in the next
• 1:26:46
  chapter. End of chapter four, Chapter five, Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds.
• 1:26:58
  Johnny met Mamie when he was sixteen. At that time he was looked
• 1:27:01
  up to in the neighborhood as one of the most promising of the younger thieves.
• 1:27:05
  He was an intelligent, enterprising boy and had moreover received an excellent education
• 1:27:11
  in a school of crime. His parents had died before he was twelve years
• 1:27:15
  old, and after that the lad lived at the Newsboys Lodging House in Rivington
• 1:27:18
  Street, which at that time and until it ceased to exist, was the
• 1:27:23
  home of boys some of whom afterwards become the swellest of crooks, and some
• 1:27:27
  very reputable citizens and prominent politicians. A meal in a bed there cost six
• 1:27:31
  cents apiece, and even the youngest and stupidest waif could earn or steal enough
• 1:27:35
  for that. Johnny became an adept at hooking things from grocery stores and at
• 1:27:41
  tap in Till's. When he was thirteen years old, he was arrested for
• 1:27:45
  petty theft, passed the night in the police station, and was sent to
• 1:27:47
  the Catholic Protectory, where he was the associated boys, much older and wiser
• 1:27:51
  in crime than he. At that place were all kinds of incurables, from
• 1:27:57
  those arrested for serious felonies to those who had merely come the crime of being
• 1:28:00
  homeless. From them, Johnny learned the ways of the underworld very rapidly.
• 1:28:06
  After a year confinement, he was clever enough to make a key and escape.
• 1:28:11
  He safely passed old Copp o'hagen, whose duty it was to watch the
• 1:28:15
  Harlem Bridge, and returned to the familiar streets in Lower New York, where
• 1:28:18
  the boys and rising pickpockets hid him from the police until they forgot about his
• 1:28:23
  escape. From that time, Johnny's rise in the wilder graft was rapid.
• 1:28:29
  He was so successful in stealing rope and copper from the dry docks that the
• 1:28:31
  older heads took him in hand and used to put him through the fan light
• 1:28:34
  windows of some store, where his haull was sometimes considerable. He began to
• 1:28:40
  grow rich, purchased some shoes and stockings, and assumed a tough appearance with
• 1:28:44
  great pride. He rose a step higher boarded tugboats and ships anchored at the
• 1:28:49
  docks, and constantly increased his income. The boys looked upon him as a
• 1:28:54
  winner in his line of graft, and as he gave hoddle lodging house money
• 1:28:59
  to those boys to add none, he was popular. So Johnny became chesty,
• 1:29:03
  began to spread himself to play pool, to wear good linen collars,
• 1:29:08
  and to associate with the best young thieves in the ward. Was at this
• 1:29:12
  time that he met Mamie, who was a year or two younger than he.
• 1:29:15
  She was a small, dark, pale faced little girl, and as
• 1:29:19
  neat and quick witted as Johnny. She lived with her parents near the newsboy's
• 1:29:24
  lodging house, where Johnny still hung out. Mamie's father and mother were poor,
• 1:29:29
  respectable people who were born and bred in the old thirteenth Ward, a
• 1:29:32
  section famous for the many shop girls who were fine speelers dancers. Mamie's mother
• 1:29:39
  was one of the most skillful of these dancers, and therefore Mamie came by
• 1:29:42
  her passion for the waltz very naturally, and the light footed little girl was
• 1:29:45
  an early favorite with the mixed, crowded dancers who used to gather at the
• 1:29:48
  old Concordia assembly rooms on the Bowery. It was a case of mutual admiration,
• 1:29:54
  and the boy and girl started in to keep company. Johnny became more
• 1:29:59
  ambitious in his line. He had a girl he needed money to buy her
• 1:30:02
  presents to take it to balls, theaters and picnics, and he began to
• 1:30:05
  gun, which means to pick pockets, an occupation which he found far more
• 1:30:11
  lucrative than swagging copper from the docks or going through fan like windows. He
• 1:30:15
  did not remain content, however, with dipping, and with several much older
• 1:30:18
  grafters, he started in to do drag work. Drag work is a rather
• 1:30:24
  complicated kind of stealing, and success at it requires considerable skill, usually a
• 1:30:30
  mob before grafters work together they get tipped off to some store where there is
• 1:30:33
  a line of valuable goods, perhaps a large silk or clothing house. One
• 1:30:39
  of the four called the watcher. Times the last employee that leaves the place
• 1:30:43
  to be touched, the watcher is at his post again early in the morning
• 1:30:46
  to find out at what time the first employee arrives. He may even hire
• 1:30:50
  a furnished room opposite the store in order to secure himself against identification by some
• 1:30:56
  central office detective who might stroll by. When he has learned the hours of
• 1:31:00
  the employees, he reports to his pals at a late hour at night.
• 1:31:03
  The four go to the store, put a spindle in the yale lock and
• 1:31:06
  break it with a blow from a hammer. They go inside, take another
• 1:31:11
  yale lock, which they have brought with them, lock themselves in, go
• 1:31:15
  upstairs, carry the most valuable goods downstairs, and pile them near the door.
• 1:31:19
  Then they go away, and in the morning, before the employees are
• 1:31:23
  due, they drive up boldly to the store with a truck representing a driver
• 1:31:27
  to laborers and shipping clerk. They load the wagon with the goods, lock
• 1:31:30
  the door, and drive away. They've been known to do this work in
• 1:31:34
  full view of the unsuspecting policemen on the beat. While Johnny had advanced to
• 1:31:40
  this distinguished work, Maimie too had become a bread earner of a more modest
• 1:31:44
  and a more respectable kind. She went to work in a factory and made
• 1:31:46
  paper boxes for two and one half dollars a week. So the two dressed
• 1:31:50
  very well and had plenty of spending money unless Johnny had some work to do.
• 1:31:55
  They always met in the evening and soon were seriously in love with one
• 1:31:58
  another. Maimie he knew what Johnny's line of business was and admired his cleverness.
• 1:32:02
  The most progressive people in her set believed in getting on in any way,
• 1:32:06
  and how could Mamie be expected to form a social morality for herself.
• 1:32:11
  She thought Johnny was the nicest boy in the world, and Johnny returned her
• 1:32:14
  love to the full. So Johnny finally asked her if she would hitch up
• 1:32:17
  with him for life, and she gladly consented. They were married and set
• 1:32:21
  up a nice home in Allen Street, who was before the time when Jews
• 1:32:26
  acquired an exclusive right to that part of the town, and in this neighborhood,
• 1:32:29
  Mamie and Johnny had many friends who used to visit them in the evening.
• 1:32:32
  For the loving couple were exceedingly domestic, and when Johnny had no business
• 1:32:35
  on hand, seldom went out in the evening. Johnny was a model husband.
• 1:32:40
  He had no bad habits, never drank or gambled, spent as much
• 1:32:44
  time as he could with his wife, and made a great deal of money.
• 1:32:46
  Mamie gave up her work in the shop and devoted all her attention to
• 1:32:49
  making Johnny happy and his home pleasant. For about four years, Johnny and
• 1:32:55
  Mamie lived very happily together. Things came their way, and Johnny and his
• 1:32:59
  pals lay made by a considerable amount of money against a rainy day to be
• 1:33:03
  sure. They had their little troubles. Johnny fell, that is to say,
• 1:33:08
  was arrested a score of times, but succeeded in getting off. It
• 1:33:12
  was partly due to good luck and partly to the large amount of fall money.
• 1:33:15
  He and his pals are gathered together. On one occasion, it was
• 1:33:18
  only Maimie's cleverness and devotion that saved Johnny for a time from the penitentiary.
• 1:33:25
  One dark knight, Johnny in three Pals, after a long conversation in the
• 1:33:28
  saloon of a ward politician visited a large jewelry store on Fulton Street. Brooklyn
• 1:33:32
  artistically opened the safe and made away with fifteen thousand dollars. It was a
• 1:33:39
  bold and famous robbery, and the search for the thieves was long and earnest.
• 1:33:44
  Johnny and his friends were not suspected at first, but an old saying
• 1:33:46
  among thieves is wherever there are three or four, there is always a leak,
• 1:33:51
  a truth similar to that announced by Benjamin Franklin. Three can keep a
• 1:33:56
  secret when two are dead. One of Johnny's pals, Patsy, told his
• 1:34:01
  girl in confidence how the daring touch was made. That was the first link
• 1:34:05
  in the long chain of gossip which finally reached the ears of the watching detectives,
• 1:34:10
  and the result was that Patsy and Johnny were arrested. It was impossible
• 1:34:14
  to settle this case, no matter how much fall money they had at their
• 1:34:16
  disposal, for the jeweler belonged to the Jewelers Protective Association, which will prosecute
• 1:34:20
  those who rob anyone belonging to their organization, as bribery was out of the
• 1:34:26
  question. Johnny and Patsy, who were what is called in the underworld slick
• 1:34:30
  articles, put their heads together and worked out a scheme. The day of
• 1:34:34
  their trial in the Brooklyn Court came around. They were waiting their turn in
• 1:34:39
  the prisoner's pen adjoining the court when Mamie came to see them. The meeting
• 1:34:43
  between her and Johnny was very affecting. After a few words, Mamie noticed
• 1:34:46
  that her swell Johnny wore no necktie. Johnny, seemingly embarrassed, turned to
• 1:34:51
  her court policeman and asked him to lend him his tie for a short time.
• 1:34:56
  The policeman declined, but remarked that Mamie had a tie that would match
• 1:35:00
  Johnny's complexion very well. Maimie impulsively took off her tie, put it on
• 1:35:04
  Johnny, kissed him, and left the courthouse. Johnny was to be tried
• 1:35:10
  in ten minutes, but he induced his lawyer to have the trial put off
• 1:35:13
  for half an hour and another case was tried instead. Then he took off
• 1:35:17
  Mamie's neck tie, tore the back out of it, and removed two fine
• 1:35:21
  steel saws. He gave one to Patsy, and in a few minutes they
• 1:35:26
  had penetrated a small iron bar which closed the little window leading to an alley.
• 1:35:30
  Patsy was too large to squeeze himself through the opening, but stalled for
• 1:35:32
  Johnny while the latter made his gets. When they game to put these two
• 1:35:36
  on trial, there was a sensation in the court. No Johnny Patsy knew
• 1:35:41
  nothing about it, he said, and he received six years for his crime.
• 1:35:45
  But Johnny's day for a time in the stir soon came around. He
• 1:35:48
  made a good touch and got away with the goods, but was betrayed by
• 1:35:51
  a pal, a professional thief who was in the pay of the police,
• 1:35:55
  technically called a stool pigeon. Mamie visited Johnny in the tombs, and when
• 1:36:00
  she found the case was hopeless, she wanted to go and steal something herself
• 1:36:02
  so that she might accompany her boy to prison, but when Johnny told her
• 1:36:05
  there were no women at Sing Sing, she gave up the idea. Johnny
• 1:36:10
  went to prison for four years, and Mamie went to a tattooer and as
• 1:36:13
  proof of her devotion, had Johnny's name indelibly stamped upon her arm. Maimi,
• 1:36:18
  in consequence of her fidelity to Johnny, whom she regularly visited at Sing
• 1:36:21
  Sing, was a heroine and martyr in the eyes of the grafters of both
• 1:36:26
  sexes. The money she and Johnny had saved began to dwindle, and soon
• 1:36:30
  she was compelled to work again at box making. She remained faithful to Johnny,
• 1:36:34
  although many a good grafter tried to make up to the pretty girl.
• 1:36:38
  When Johnny was released from Sing Sing, Mamie was even happier than he.
• 1:36:42
  They had no money now, but some politicians and saloon keepers who knew that
• 1:36:45
  Johnny was a good money getter, set them up in a little house and
• 1:36:48
  they resumed their quiet domestic life together. The happiness did not last long,
• 1:36:54
  however, Johnny needed more money than ever now and resumed his dangerous business.
• 1:36:59
  He got out with the courtet of the Cleverest safe crackers in the country and
• 1:37:01
  made a tour of the eastern cities. They made many important touches, but
• 1:37:06
  finally Johnny was again under suspicion for a daring robbery in Union Square and was
• 1:37:11
  compelled to become a solitary fugitive. He sent word through an old time burglar
• 1:37:15
  to Mamie, exhorted her to keep up the home and promised to send money
• 1:37:18
  regularly. He was forced, however, to stay away from New York for
• 1:37:23
  several years and did not dare to communicate with Mamie. At first, Mamie
• 1:37:28
  tried to resume her work at box making, but she had had so much
• 1:37:31
  leisure and had lived so well that she found the work irksome and the pay
• 1:37:34
  inadequate. Maimie knew many women pickpockets and shoplifters, friends of her husband.
• 1:37:41
  When some of these adventurous girls saw that Mamie was discontented with her lot,
• 1:37:45
  they induced her to go out and work with them. So Mamie became a
• 1:37:48
  very clever shoplifter and for a time made considerable money. Then many of the
• 1:37:54
  best guns in the city again tried to make up to Mamie and marry her.
• 1:37:58
  Johnny was not on the spot, and that, in the eyes of
• 1:38:00
  a thief, constitutes a divorce. But Manie still loved her wayward boy and
• 1:38:05
  held the others back. In the meantime, Johnny had become a great traveler.
• 1:38:12
  He knew that the detectives were so hot on his track that he dared
• 1:38:15
  to stay nowhere very long, nor dared to trust any one, so he
• 1:38:17
  worked alone. He made a number of daring robberies all along the line from
• 1:38:23
  Montreal to Detroit, but they all paled in comparison with a touch he made
• 1:38:26
  at Philadelphia, a robbery which is famous in criminal annals. He had returned
• 1:38:31
  to Philadelphia hoping to get a chance to send word to Mamie, whom he
• 1:38:34
  had not seen for years, and for whom he pined. While in the
• 1:38:39
  city of brotherly love, he was tipped off to a good thing. He
• 1:38:43
  boldly entered a large mercantile house, and in thirteen minutes he opened a timelock
• 1:38:47
  vault and abstracted three hundred thousand dollars worth of negotiable bonds and escaped. The
• 1:38:56
  bold deed made a sensation all over the country. The mercantile houses and the
• 1:39:00
  safe manufacturers were so hot for the thief that the detectives everywhere worked hard and
• 1:39:06
  on the level. Johnny was not suspected then, and never did time for
• 1:39:11
  this touch. For a while he hid in Philadelphia, boarded there with a
• 1:39:15
  poor respectable family, representing himself as a laborer out of work. He spent
• 1:39:19
  the daytime in a little German beer saloon, playing peinuncle with the proprietor,
• 1:39:23
  and was perfectly safe. But his longing for Mamie had grown so strong that
• 1:39:28
  he could not bear it. He knew that the detectives were still looking for
• 1:39:31
  him because of the old crime, and that they were hot to discover the
• 1:39:34
  thief of the negotiable bonds. He sent word to Mamie nevertheless through an old
• 1:39:39
  palley found at Philadelphia, and arranged to see her at Mount Vernon, near
• 1:39:43
  New York. The two met in the side room of a little saloon near
• 1:39:46
  the railway station, and the greeting was affectionate in the extreme. They had
• 1:39:51
  not seen one another for years, and hardly a message had been exchanged.
• 1:39:57
  After a little, Johnny told Mamie proudly that it was he who had stolen
• 1:40:00
  the negotiable bonds. Now, he added, we are rich after a little.
• 1:40:05
  I can sell these bonds for thirty cents on the dollar, and then
• 1:40:09
  you and I will go away and give up this life. I'm getting older
• 1:40:13
  and my nerve is not what it was. Once we'll settle down quietly in
• 1:40:16
  London or some town where we are not known and be happy, won't we.
• 1:40:19
  Dear Mamie said yes, but she appeared confused. When Johnny asked her
• 1:40:26
  what was the matter. She burst into tears and choked and sobbed for some
• 1:40:29
  time before she could say a word. She ordered a glass of whiskey,
• 1:40:32
  which she never used to drink any old days, and when the bartender had
• 1:40:35
  left, she turned to the worried Johnny, embraced him tenderly and said,
• 1:40:39
  in a voice which still trembled, Johnny, will you forgive me if I
• 1:40:43
  tell you something? It's pretty bad, but not so bad as it might
• 1:40:46
  be, for I love only you. Johnny encouraged her with a kiss,
• 1:40:51
  and she continued, in a broken voice, when you were gone again,
• 1:40:56
  Johnny. I tried to make my living at the old box, making work,
• 1:41:00
  but the pay wasn't big enough for me then, so I began to
• 1:41:03
  graft dipping and shop lifting and made money. But a central office man you
• 1:41:09
  used to know, Jim Lennon, got on to me. Jim Lennon,
• 1:41:15
  said, Johnny, Sure I knew him. He used to be sweet on
• 1:41:16
  you, Mamie. He treated you right, I hope. Mamie blushed and
• 1:41:20
  looked down, well, said Johnny. Jim came to me one day,
• 1:41:28
  she continued, and told me he wouldn't stand for what I was doing.
• 1:41:31
  He said, the dry goods people were hollerin like mad and that he'd have
• 1:41:35
  to arrest me if I didn't quit. I tried to square him with a
• 1:41:39
  little dough, but I soon saw that wasn't what he was after. Look
• 1:41:44
  here, Mamie, he finally said, it's just this way. Johnny is
• 1:41:48
  a good fellow, but he's dead to you and dead to me. He's
• 1:41:53
  done time, and that breaks all marriage ties. Now I want you to
• 1:41:57
  hitch up with me and lead an honest life. I'll give you a good
• 1:42:00
  home and you won't run any more risk of the pen. Johnny grew very
• 1:42:04
  pale as Mamie said the last words, and when she stopped speaking, he
• 1:42:09
  said quietly, and you did it. Mamie again burst into tears. Oh
• 1:42:14
  Johnny, she cried, what else could I do? He wouldn't let me
• 1:42:17
  go on Grafton, and I had to live, And so you married him,
• 1:42:21
  Johnny insisted. The reply was in a whisper. Yes, she said.
• 1:42:32
  For the next thirty seconds, Johnny thought very rapidly, this woman had
• 1:42:38
  his liberty in her hands. He had told her about the negotiable bonds.
• 1:42:42
  Besides, he loved Mamie and understood the difficulty of her position. His life
• 1:42:46
  as a thief had made him very tolerant in some respects. He therefore swallowed
• 1:42:50
  his emotion and turned a kind face to Mamie. You still love me,
• 1:42:56
  he asked, better than the copper, Sure, said Mamie warmly. Now
• 1:43:02
  listen, said Johnny, the old business like expression coming back into his face.
• 1:43:08
  I'm hounded for the old trick, and the detectives are looking everywhere for
• 1:43:11
  these negotiable bonds which I have here in this satchel. Can I trust you
• 1:43:15
  with them? Will you mind them for me until things is quiet down?
• 1:43:19
  Of course I will, said Mamie gladly. So they parted once more.
• 1:43:27
  Johnny went into hiding again, and Mamie went to the detective's house with the
• 1:43:30
  negotiable bonds. She had no intention of betraying Johnny, for she might be
• 1:43:34
  arrested for receiving stolen goods, and besides, she still loved her first husband,
• 1:43:40
  so she planted the bonds in the bottom of the detective's trunk. Here
• 1:43:45
  was a pretty situation. Her husband, the detectives, and many other fly
• 1:43:48
  cops all over the country were looking for these negotiable bonds. At the very
• 1:43:53
  moment when they were safely stowed away in the detective's trunk. Mamie and Johnny,
• 1:43:59
  who continued to meet occasionally, often smiled at the humor of the situation.
• 1:44:03
  Soon, however, suspicion for the Philadelphia touch began to attach to Johnny.
• 1:44:09
  Mamie's detective asked her one evening if she had heard anything about Johnny of
• 1:44:12
  late. Not for years, said Mamie calmly. But one night several Central
• 1:44:18
  officemen followed Mamie as she went to Mount Vernon to meet Johnny, and when
• 1:44:23
  the two old lovers parted, Johnny was arrested on account of the fifteen thousand
• 1:44:27
  dollar robbery in Brooklyn, from the penalty of which he had escaped by means
• 1:44:30
  of Mamie's necktie many years before. The detectives suspected Johnny of having stolen the
• 1:44:38
  bonds, but of this they could get no evidence, so he was sent
• 1:44:42
  to Sing Sing for six years on the old charge. When he was safely
• 1:44:45
  in prison, the detectives induced him to return the bonds on the promise that
• 1:44:48
  he would not be prosecuted at his release and would be paid a certain sum
• 1:44:53
  of money. The mercantile house agreed, and Johnny sent word to Mamie to
• 1:44:57
  give up the bonds then, And of course the detective knew about the trick
• 1:45:01
  that Mamie had played him, but he, like Johnny, was a philosopher
• 1:45:05
  and forgave the clever woman. When he first heard of it, however,
• 1:45:09
  he said to her indignantly, you cow, If you had given the bonds
• 1:45:14
  to me, I would have been made a police captain, and you my
• 1:45:15
  queen. As soon as Johnny got out of stir, Madie quit. The
• 1:45:20
  detective and the couple are now living again together in a quiet, domestic manner
• 1:45:25
  in Manhattan. End of chapter five, Chapter six, What the Burglar faces
• 1:45:34
  for a long time. I took sheeny Andy's advice and did not do any
• 1:45:38
  night work. It's too dangerous. The comeback is too sure. You have
• 1:45:42
  to depend too much on the nerve of your pals. The bits are too
• 1:45:45
  long, and it's very difficult to square it. But as time went on
• 1:45:49
  I grew bolder. I wanted to do something new and get more dough.
• 1:45:55
  My new departure was not, however, entirely due to ambition and the boldness
• 1:45:58
  acquired by habitualis success. After a gun has grafted for a long time,
• 1:46:02
  his nervous system becomes affected, for it's certainly an exciting life. He's then
• 1:46:08
  very apt to need a stimulant. He's usually addicted to either opium or chloral
• 1:46:13
  morphine or whisky. Even at this early period, I began to take a
• 1:46:17
  little opium, which afterward was one of the main causes of my constant residence
• 1:46:21
  in stir and was really the wreck of my life. For when a grafter
• 1:46:25
  is doped, he's inclined to be very reckless. Perhaps if I had never
• 1:46:29
  hit the hop, I would not have engaged in dangerous occupation of a burglar.
• 1:46:33
  I will say one thing for opium, However, that drug never makes
• 1:46:36
  a man careless of his personal appearance. He'll go to prison frequently, but
• 1:46:42
  he will always have a good front and will remain a self respecting thief.
• 1:46:45
  The whisky dip, on the other hand, is apt to dress carelessly,
• 1:46:48
  lose his ambition, and eventually to go down and out as a common bum.
• 1:46:54
  I began night work when I was about twenty years old, and at
• 1:46:57
  first I did not go in for it very heavily. Big Jack Jerry ed
• 1:47:00
  and I made several good touches in Mount Vernon and in hotels at summer resorts,
• 1:47:04
  and got sums ranging from two hundred to twenty seven hundred dollars. We
• 1:47:10
  worked together for nearly a year, with much success and only an occasional fall,
• 1:47:14
  and these we succeeded in squaring. Once we had a shooting match,
• 1:47:17
  which made me a little leery. I was getting out the window with my
• 1:47:21
  swag when a shot just grazed my eye. I nearly decided to quit then,
• 1:47:27
  but I suppose because it was about that time I was beginning to take
• 1:47:30
  opium. I continued with more boldness than ever. One night, Ed,
• 1:47:34
  a close palo mine, was operating with me out in Jersey. We were
• 1:47:39
  working in the rear of a house and Ed was just shitting up the back
• 1:47:42
  porch to climb in the second story window when a shutter above was thrown open,
• 1:47:45
  and without warning, a pistol shot rang out. Down came Ed,
• 1:47:48
  fallen like a log at my feet. Are you hurt? Said I done?
• 1:47:55
  Said he? And I saw it was so. Now. A man
• 1:48:00
  may be nervy enough, but self preservation is the first rule of life.
• 1:48:03
  I turned and ran, at the top of my speed across two back yards,
• 1:48:06
  then through a field, then over a fence into what seemed a plowed
• 1:48:10
  field. Beyond the ground was rough and covered with hummocks, and as I
• 1:48:14
  stumbled along, I suddenly tripped and fell ten feet down into an open grave.
• 1:48:18
  The place was a cemetery, though I had not recognized it in the
• 1:48:21
  darkness. For hours, I lay there trembling, but nobody came and I
• 1:48:26
  was safe. It was not long after that, however, that something did
• 1:48:30
  happen to shake my nerve, which was pretty good. It came about in
• 1:48:33
  the following way. A jeweler who was a well known fence put us on
• 1:48:38
  to a place where we could get thousands. He was one of the most
• 1:48:42
  successful feelers out in the business. The man who was my pal on this
• 1:48:45
  occasion, Dal, looked the place over with me, and though we thought
• 1:48:48
  it a bit risky, the size of the graft attracted us. We had
• 1:48:51
  to climb up on the front porch with an electric light streaming right down on
• 1:48:56
  us. I had reached the porch when I got the well well known signal
• 1:49:00
  of danger. I hurriedly descended and asked Dal what was the matter, Jim?
• 1:49:04
  He said, there's somebody off there a block away. We investigated,
• 1:49:10
  and you can imagine how I felt when we found nothing but an old goat.
• 1:49:13
  It was a case of Dal's nerves. But the best of us get
• 1:49:15
  nervous at times. I went to the porch again and opened the window with
• 1:49:19
  a putty knife made of the rib of a woman's corset. When I got
• 1:49:24
  the cluck again and hastily descended, but again found it was Dal's imagination.
• 1:49:29
  Then I grew hot and said, you have knocked all the nerve out of
• 1:49:31
  me, for sure, Jim, He replied, I ain't feeling good.
• 1:49:36
  Was it a premonition? He wanted to quit the job, but I wouldn't
• 1:49:41
  let him. I opened up on him what I said, You're willing to
• 1:49:45
  steal one piece of jewelry and take a chance to go in a stir,
• 1:49:47
  But when we get a good thing that would land us an easy street the
• 1:49:49
  rest of our lives, you weaken. Dal was quiet and in his face
• 1:49:54
  unusually pale. He was a good fella, but his nerve was gone.
• 1:49:59
  I braced him up, however, and told him we'd get the aclat the
• 1:50:01
  third time. Sure. Then climbing the porch the third time, I removed
• 1:50:06
  my shoes, raised the window again, and had just struck a light.
• 1:50:11
  When a revolver was pressed on my head. I knocked the man's hand up
• 1:50:15
  quick and jumped. As they did so, I heard a cry and then
• 1:50:17
  the beating of a policeman stick on the sidewalk. I ran with two men
• 1:50:23
  after me and came to the gateway of a yard where I saw a big
• 1:50:26
  bloodhound chain to his kennel. He growled savagely, but it was neck or
• 1:50:30
  nothing, So I patted his head just as though I were not shaking with
• 1:50:32
  fear, slipped down on my hands and knees and crept into his doghouse.
• 1:50:36
  Why didn't he bite me? Was it sympathy? When my pursuers came up,
• 1:50:41
  the owner of the house, who had been aroused by the cries,
• 1:50:44
  said he's not here. This dog would eat him up. When the police
• 1:50:46
  saw the animal, they were convinced of it too. A little while later
• 1:50:51
  I left my friend's kennel. Was four o'clock in the morning. I had
• 1:50:55
  no shoes and only one dollar and sixty cents in my pocket. I sneaked
• 1:50:58
  through the back window of the first else I saw stole a pair of shoes
• 1:51:00
  and eighty dollars from a room where a man and his wife were sleeping.
• 1:51:03
  Then I took a car, knowing that I was still being looked for.
• 1:51:08
  I wanted to get rid of my hat as a partial disguise. On the
• 1:51:11
  seat with me was a working man asleep. I took his old soft hat,
• 1:51:15
  leaving my new derby by his side, and also took his dinner pail.
• 1:51:18
  Then when I left the car, it threw away my collar and necktie
• 1:51:21
  and reached New York disguised as a working man. The next day the papers
• 1:51:26
  told how poor old Dal had been arrested. Everything that had happened for weeks
• 1:51:30
  was put on him. A week later, Dal was found dead in his
• 1:51:33
  cell, and I believe he did the Dutch act suicide. For I remember
• 1:51:38
  one day, months before that fatal night, Dal and I were sitting in
• 1:51:42
  a politician's saloon when he said to me, Jim, do you believe in
• 1:51:45
  heaven? No? Said I Do you believe in hell? He asked,
• 1:51:51
  No, said I I got a mind to find out, he said quickly,
• 1:51:57
  and pointed a big revolver in his teeth. One of the guns in
• 1:52:00
  the saloon said let him try it, but I knocked the pistol away for
• 1:52:03
  something in his manner made me think seriously he would shoot you, poor brute.
• 1:52:09
  I said to him, I'll put your ashes on an urn some day
• 1:52:12
  and write dear Old Saturday Night for an epitaph for you. But it isn't
• 1:52:15
  time yet. It did not take many experiences like the above to make me
• 1:52:19
  very leary at night work, and I went more slowly for some time.
• 1:52:25
  I continued to dip, however, more boldly than ever, and to do
• 1:52:28
  a good deal of day work, in which comparatively humble graft of the servant
• 1:52:30
  girls, as I have already said, used to help us out considerably.
• 1:52:34
  This class of women never interested me as much as the sporting characters, but
• 1:52:39
  we used to make good use of them, and sometimes they amused us.
• 1:52:43
  I remember an entertaining episode which took place while Harry, a Palomine at the
• 1:52:47
  time, and I were going with a couple of these hard working malls.
• 1:52:50
  Harry was rather inclined to be a sure thing grafter of which class the thieves
• 1:52:56
  I shall say more in another chapter. And after my recent dangerous adventures,
• 1:53:00
  I tolerated that class more than was customary with me. Indeed, if Harry
• 1:53:04
  had been the real thing, I would have cut him dead. As it
• 1:53:08
  was, he came near enough to the genuine article to make me despise him
• 1:53:11
  in my ordinary mood. But as I say, I was uncommonly leary.
• 1:53:15
  Just at that time. He and I were walking to Stuyvesant Square when we
• 1:53:18
  met a couple of these domestic slaves with a hello. We rang in on
• 1:53:24
  them, walked him down Second Avenue and had a few drinks all round.
• 1:53:28
  My girl told me whom she was working with. Thinking there might be something
• 1:53:31
  doing, I felt her out further with a view to find him where in
• 1:53:34
  the house the stuff lay. Knowing the Celtic character thoroughly, I easily got
• 1:53:40
  the desired information. We took the girls into Bonnell's Museum at Eighth Street and
• 1:53:45
  Broadway and saw a Howl and Border melodrama in which wild Indians were as thick
• 1:53:49
  as mall buzzers. In eighteen eighty four, Mary Anne, who was my
• 1:53:54
  girl, said she should tell her mistress about the beautiful play and asked for
• 1:53:57
  a program. They were all out, and so I gave her an old
• 1:54:00
  one of another play, which I had in my pocket. We had a
• 1:54:02
  good time and made a date with them for another meeting in two weeks from
• 1:54:05
  that night, but before the appointed hour, we had beat Marianne's mistress out
• 1:54:10
  of two hundred dollars worth of silverware, easily obtained thanks to the information I
• 1:54:14
  had received from Marianne. When we met the girls again, I found Marianne
• 1:54:18
  in a great state of indignation. I was afraid she was next to our
• 1:54:21
  being the burglars, and came near fallen through the floor. But her rage,
• 1:54:27
  it seemed, was about the play. She had told her mistress about
• 1:54:30
  the wild Indian melodrama she had seen, and then had shown her the program
• 1:54:34
  of the Banker's Daughter. But there's no such thing as an Indian in the
• 1:54:39
  Banker's Daughter. Her mistress had said, I fear you are deceiving me,
• 1:54:43
  Marianne, and that you have been to some low place on the bowery.
• 1:54:46
  The other servants in the house got next and kitted Marianne almost to death about
• 1:54:50
  Indians and the banker's daughter. After I had quieted her somewhat, she told
• 1:54:55
  me about the burglary that had taken place at her house, and Harry and
• 1:54:58
  I were much interested. She was sure the touch had been made by two
• 1:55:01
  quote naggers who lived in the vicinity. It was shortly after this incident that
• 1:55:09
  I beat Blackwell's Island out of three months. A certain heeler put me on
• 1:55:13
  to a disorderly house where we could get some stones. I had everything fixed.
• 1:55:17
  The heeler had arranged it with a copper on the beat, and it
• 1:55:20
  seemed like a sure thing. Although the Matam, I understood, was a
• 1:55:24
  good shot and had plenty of nerve. My accomplice, the heeler, was
• 1:55:28
  a sure thing grafter who had selected me because I had the requisite nerve and
• 1:55:31
  was no squealer. At two o'clock in the morning, a trusted palin,
• 1:55:35
  I ascended from the back porch to the Madam's bedroom. I had just struck
• 1:55:39
  a match when I heard a female voice say what are you doing there?
• 1:55:43
  And a bottle fired at my head banged up against the wall with a crash.
• 1:55:46
  I did not like to alarm women, and so I made my gets
• 1:55:49
  out the window, over the fence and into another street, where I was
• 1:55:54
  picked up by a copper on general principles. The madam told him that the
• 1:55:58
  thief was over six feet tall and I had a fierce black mustache, as
• 1:56:01
  I am only five feet seven inches and was smoothly shaven, it did not
• 1:56:04
  seem like an identification, although when she saw me, she changed a note
• 1:56:09
  and swore I was the man. The copper, who knew I was a
• 1:56:12
  grafter, though he did not think I did that kind of work, nevertheless,
• 1:56:15
  took me to the station house, where I convinced two wardmen that I
• 1:56:18
  had been arrested unjustly. When I was led before the magistrate in the morning,
• 1:56:24
  the copper said the lady's description did not tally with the short, red
• 1:56:27
  haired and freckled thief before his honor. The policeman all agreed, however,
• 1:56:30
  that I was a notorious grafter, and the magistrate, who was not much
• 1:56:32
  of a lawyer, sent me to the island for three months on general principles.
• 1:56:39
  I was terribly sore, for I knew I had been illegally treated.
• 1:56:42
  I felt as much a martyr as if I had not been guilty in the
• 1:56:45
  least, and I determined to escape at all hazards, although my friends told
• 1:56:49
  me I would be released any day, for certainly the evidence against me had
• 1:56:53
  been insufficient. After I had been on the islands ten days, I went
• 1:56:58
  to a friend who had been confer find there several months and said Eddie,
• 1:57:01
  I have been unjustly convicted for a crime I committed. Such was my way
• 1:57:06
  of putting it, and I am determined to make my elegant escape. Come.
• 1:57:12
  What will do you know the weak spots of this dump? He put
• 1:57:16
  me next, and I saw there was a chance, a slim one.
• 1:57:19
  If a man could swim and didn't mind drowning. I found another pal,
• 1:57:24
  Jack Donovan, who like me, could swim like a fish. He was
• 1:57:28
  desperate too, and willing to take any chance to see New York. Five
• 1:57:31
  or six of us slept together in one large cell, and on the night
• 1:57:34
  selected for our attempt, Jack and I slipped into a compartment where about twenty
• 1:57:38
  short term prisoners were kept. Our departure from the other cell, from which
• 1:57:43
  it was very difficult to escape after once being locked in for the night,
• 1:57:45
  was not noticed by the night guard and his trusty. Because our pals in
• 1:57:48
  the cell answered to our names when they were called, it was comparatively easy
• 1:57:53
  to escape from the large room where the short term men were confined. Into
• 1:57:57
  this room too, Jack and I had taken two from the quarry during the
• 1:58:00
  daytime. It was twelve o'clock on a November night when we made our escape.
• 1:58:05
  We took ropes from the canvas cot, tied them together, and lowered
• 1:58:09
  ourselves to the ground on the outside, where we found bad weather, rain
• 1:58:13
  and hail. We were unable to obtain a boat, but secured a telegraph
• 1:58:16
  pole, rolled it into the water, and set off with it for New
• 1:58:19
  York. The terrific tide at Hellgate soon carried us well into the middle a
• 1:58:25
  long island sound, and when we had been in the water half an hour,
• 1:58:28
  we were very cold and numb, and began to think all was over.
• 1:58:31
  But neither of us feared death. All I wanted was to save enough
• 1:58:34
  money to be cremated, and I was confident my friends would see to that.
• 1:58:40
  I don't think fear of death is a common trait among grafters. Perhaps
• 1:58:44
  it is lack of imagination. More likely, however, it's because they think
• 1:58:46
  they won't be any the worse off after death. Still, I was not
• 1:58:51
  sorry when oreckon boat suddenly popped our way. The tug did not see us
• 1:58:56
  and hit Jack's under the pole, a hard blow that must have shaken him
• 1:58:59
  off. I heard him holler save me, and I yelled too. I
• 1:59:02
  didn't think anything about capture. Just then all my desire to live came back
• 1:59:06
  to me. I was pulled into the boat. The captain was a good
• 1:59:12
  fellow. He was next and only smiled at my lies. What was more
• 1:59:15
  to the purpose. He gave me some good whiskey and set me ashore in
• 1:59:19
  Jersey City, Jack was drowned. All through life, I had been used
• 1:59:25
  to losing a friend suddenly by the wayside, but I've always felt sad when
• 1:59:28
  it happened. And yet it would have been far better for me if I
• 1:59:31
  had been picked out for an early death. I guess poor Jack was lucky.
• 1:59:38
  Certainly there are worse things than death. Through these years, as continual
• 1:59:42
  and for the most part successful graft, I had known a man named Henry
• 1:59:45
  Frye, whose story is one of the saddest. If he had been called
• 1:59:49
  off suddenly as Jack was, he would certainly been deemed lucky by those who
• 1:59:53
  knew, for he was married to a bad woman. He was one of
• 1:59:57
  the most successful boxmen safe blowers in the city and made thousands, but nothing
• 2:00:02
  was enough for his wife. She used to say when he would put twelve
• 2:00:05
  hundred dollars in her lap, this won't meet expenses. I need one thousand
• 2:00:10
  dollars more. She was unfaithful to him too, and with his friends.
• 2:00:16
  When I go to a matinee and see a lot of sleek, fat,
• 2:00:18
  inane looking women, I wonder who the poor devils are who are having their
• 2:00:23
  life blood sucked out of them. Certainly it was so with Henry, or
• 2:00:27
  Henny as we used to call him. One day, I remember we went
• 2:00:30
  down the Sounds with a well known politician's chowder party, and Henny was with
• 2:00:34
  us. Two weeks earlier, New York had been startled by a daring burglary.
• 2:00:39
  A large silk importer's place of business was entered, and is safe supposed
• 2:00:43
  to be burglar proof, was opened. He was about to be married,
• 2:00:45
  and his valuable wedding presents, which were in the safe and six thousand dollars
• 2:00:49
  worth of silk, were stolen. It was Henny and his pals who had
• 2:00:54
  made the touch. But on this beautiful night on the Sound, Henny was
• 2:00:57
  sad. We were sitting on deck as it was a hot summer night,
• 2:01:01
  when Henny jumped off his campstool and asked me to sing a song. I
• 2:01:05
  sang a sentimental ditty in my tenti voice, and then Henny took me off
• 2:01:10
  to the side of the boat, away from the others. Kid, he
• 2:01:14
  said, I feel trouble coming over me. Cheer up. I replied,
• 2:01:19
  you're a little downhearted. That's all I wish to God, He said,
• 2:01:25
  I was like you. I pulled out a five dollar bill and a two
• 2:01:30
  dollar bill and remarked, I've got just seven dollars to my name. He
• 2:01:34
  turned to me and said, but you are happy. You don't let anything
• 2:01:39
  bother you. Henny did not drink as a rule. That was one reason
• 2:01:44
  he was such a good box man. But on this occasion we had a
• 2:01:46
  couple of drinks and I sang, I love but one. Then Henny ordered
• 2:01:50
  champagne, grew confidential and told me his troubles. Kid. He said,
• 2:01:58
  I've got thirty five hundred dollars. I had been given my wife a good
• 2:02:01
  deal of money, but don't know what she does with it. In sixty
• 2:02:05
  days, I have given her three thousand dollars, and she complains about poverty
• 2:02:11
  all the time. Henny had a nice flat at seven or eight rooms.
• 2:02:15
  He owed nothing and had no children. He said he was unable to find
• 2:02:19
  any bank books in his wife's trunk. And was confident she was not laying
• 2:02:23
  the money by. She did not give it to her people, but even
• 2:02:26
  borrowed money from her father, a well to do builder. Two days after
• 2:02:30
  the night of the excursion, one of Henny's pals and the silk robbery went
• 2:02:32
  into a gin mill, treated everybody, and threw a one thousand dollar bill
• 2:02:38
  down on the bar. Grafters probably more than others, like this kind of
• 2:02:42
  display. It's the only way to rise in their society. A Central Office
• 2:02:45
  detective saw this little exhibition, got into the grafter's confidence and weeded him out
• 2:02:50
  a bit. A night or two afterwards, Henny was in bed at home
• 2:02:55
  when the servant girl, who was in love with Henny and detested his wife
• 2:02:58
  because she treated her husband so badly. She used to say to me,
• 2:03:01
  she ain't worthy to tie his shoe string, came to the door and told
• 2:03:05
  Henny and his wife that a couple of men and a policeman in uniform were
• 2:03:09
  inquiring for him. Henny replied sleepily that they were friends of his who had
• 2:03:15
  come to buy some stones. But the girl was alarmed. She knew that
• 2:03:17
  Henny was crooked and feared that those below meant him no good. She took
• 2:03:21
  the canvas turn about containing Burglar's tools, which hung on a wall near the
• 2:03:26
  bed, and pinned it around her waist under her skirt, and then admitted
• 2:03:29
  the three visitors. The sergeant said to Henny, who had dressed himself,
• 2:03:33
  you are under suspicion for the silk robbery. Yet there was, as is
• 2:03:39
  not uncommon, a butt, which is as a rule, a monetary consideration.
• 2:03:44
  Henny knew that the crime was old, and as he thought his fence
• 2:03:46
  was safe, he did not see how there could be a comeback, so
• 2:03:50
  he did not take the hint to shell out and work the innocent con But
• 2:03:56
  those whose business it is to watch the world of prey put two and two
• 2:03:59
  together and were next that Henny and his mob had pulled off the trick.
• 2:04:02
  So they searched the house, expecting to find, if not a clot,
• 2:04:05
  at least Burglar's tools, for they knew that Henny was at the top of
• 2:04:09
  the ladder and that he must have something to work with. While the sergeant
• 2:04:13
  was going through Henny's trunk, one of the flymen fooled with the pretty servant
• 2:04:15
  girl. She jumped and a pair of turners fell on the floor. It
• 2:04:20
  did not take the flyman long to find the whole kid tools. Henny was
• 2:04:25
  arrested, convicted, and sent to sing sings for five years. While in
• 2:04:29
  prison, he became insane, his delusion being that he was a funny man
• 2:04:32
  on the Detroit Free Press, which he thought was owned by his wife.
• 2:04:38
  I never discovered what Henny's wife did with the money she got from him.
• 2:04:41
  When at last heard of her, she was married to another successful grafter,
• 2:04:44
  whom she was making unhappy. Also in a grafter's life, a woman often
• 2:04:48
  takes the part of the avenger of society. She turns against the grafters their
• 2:04:53
  own weapons and uses them with more skill, For no man can graft like
• 2:04:57
  a woman. I had now been grafted in for three years in the full
• 2:05:01
  tide of success. Since the age of eighteen, I had had no serious
• 2:05:05
  fall. I had made much money and lived high. I had risen in
• 2:05:10
  the world of graft, and I had become not only a skillful pickpocket,
• 2:05:13
  but a good swindler and drag worker, and had done some good things as
• 2:05:15
  a burglar. I was approaching my twenty first year when, as you will
• 2:05:20
  see, I was to go to the penitentiary for the first time. This
• 2:05:25
  is a good place, perhaps to describe my general manner of life, my
• 2:05:29
  daily menus, so to speak, during these three fat years. For after
• 2:05:31
  my first term in state's prison, things went from bad to worse. I
• 2:05:35
  lived in a furnished room or at a hotel. If there was nothing doing
• 2:05:40
  in the line of graft, I'd lie abed late and read the newspapers to
• 2:05:44
  see if any large gathering where we might make some touches was on hand.
• 2:05:47
  One of my girls, of whom there was a long succession, was usually
• 2:05:51
  with me. We would breakfast if the day was an idle one about one
• 2:05:56
  or two o'clock in the afternoon, then we'd send to the restauran and have
• 2:06:00
  a beefsteak or chops in our rooms, and perhaps a whisky sour. If
• 2:06:03
  it was another grafters girl i'd won, I'd be greatly pleased, for that
• 2:06:08
  kind of thing is a game with us. In the afternoon, i'd take
• 2:06:12
  in some variety show or by the tommy a present. If it was summer,
• 2:06:15
  we might go to a picnic or to the island. If I was
• 2:06:18
  alone, I would meet a pal, play billiards of pool, bet on
• 2:06:21
  the races, baseball, and prize fights, jump out to the polo grounds,
• 2:06:26
  or go to Patsy's house and have a game of poker. Patsy's wife
• 2:06:30
  was a handsome grafter, and Patsy was jealous. Every gun is sensitive about
• 2:06:34
  his wife, for he doesn't know how long you will have her with him.
• 2:06:38
  In the evening, I would go to a dance hall or to Coney
• 2:06:40
  Island if the weather was good, if it was a busy day, that
• 2:06:45
  is, if there was a touch to be pulled off. We would get
• 2:06:46
  up in the morning or in the afternoon, according to the best time for
• 2:06:49
  the particular job in hand. In the afternoon we would often graft at the
• 2:06:55
  polo grounds, where we had a copper right. We did not have the
• 2:06:58
  same privileges of the race track because it was protected by the Pinkerton men.
• 2:07:02
  We'd console ourselves of the polo grounds, which we used to tear wide open
• 2:07:05
  and where I never got even a hint of a fall. The coppers got
• 2:07:11
  their percentage of the touches. In the morning, we would meet at one
• 2:07:14
  of the grafters' homes or rooms and talk over our scheme for the day or
• 2:07:17
  night. If we were going outside the city, we would have to rise
• 2:07:20
  very early. Sometimes we were sorry we had lost our sleep, particularly the
• 2:07:25
  time we tried to tear open the town of sing Sing, near which the
• 2:07:28
  famous prison is. We found nothing to steal there but pig iron, and
• 2:07:32
  there were only two pretty girls in the whole village. We used to jump
• 2:07:35
  out to neighboring towns, not always to grafts, but sometimes to see our
• 2:07:40
  girls. For like sailors, the well dressed dapper pickpocket as a girl in
• 2:07:44
  every port. If we made a good touch in the afternoon, we'd go
• 2:07:47
  on a spree in the evening with sheeny, any blonde Maimie, big Lena,
• 2:07:50
  or some other good natured glasses. Or we'd go over and inspect the
• 2:07:54
  jersey maidens. After a good touch, we would put some of the dough
• 2:07:58
  away for fall money or for our sick relatives, or guns in stir or
• 2:08:01
  in the hospital. We'd all chip in to help out a woman grafter in
• 2:08:05
  trouble and pool a piece of jewelry sometimes for the purpose. Then our duty
• 2:08:11
  done, we would put on our best front and visit our friends in sporting
• 2:08:15
  places. Among others, we used to jump over to a hotel kept by
• 2:08:18
  an ex gun one of the best of the spud men green goods men,
• 2:08:22
  who is now on the level and a bit of a politician. He owns
• 2:08:26
  six fast horses, is married and has two beautiful children. A few months
• 2:08:31
  before I was sent to the penitentiary for the first time, I had my
• 2:08:35
  only true love affair. I have liked many girls, but the sentiment of
• 2:08:39
  the kind I felt for Ethel has played little part in my life. For
• 2:08:43
  Ethel, I felt the real thing, and she for me. She was
• 2:08:48
  a good, sensible girl and came from a respectable family. She lived with
• 2:08:52
  her father, who was a drummer, and took care of the house for
• 2:08:54
  him. She was a good deal of a musician, and like most other
• 2:08:58
  girls, she was fond of ancing. I first met her at Beethoven Hall
• 2:09:03
  and was introduced to her by a man, an honest laborer, who was
• 2:09:05
  in love with her. I liked her at first sight, but did not
• 2:09:09
  love her until I had talked with her. In two weeks, we were
• 2:09:13
  lovers and went everywhere together. The working man, who loved her too,
• 2:09:16
  was jealous and began to knock me. He told her I was a grafter,
• 2:09:20
  but she would not believe him and said nothing to me about it.
• 2:09:22
  But it came to my ears through an intimate girl pal of hers. Shortly
• 2:09:28
  after that, I fell for a breech kick. It was arrested for picking
• 2:09:31
  a man's trousers pocket, but I had a good lawyer and the copper was
• 2:09:35
  one of those who are open to reason. I lay a month in the
• 2:09:37
  tombs. However, before I got off, and Ethel learned all about it.
• 2:09:41
  She came to the tombs to see me, but instead of reproaches,
• 2:09:45
  I got sympathy from her. After I was released, I gave her some
• 2:09:50
  of my confidence. She asked me if I wouldn't be honest and go to
• 2:09:52
  work, and said she would ask her father to get me a job.
• 2:09:56
  Her father came to me and painted what my life would be if I kept
• 2:10:00
  on. I thought the matter over. Sincerely, I had formed expensive habits
• 2:10:05
  which I could not keep up on any salary. I could honestly make a
• 2:10:09
  way down in my mind. I suppose you would call it soul. I
• 2:10:13
  knew I was not ready for reform. I talked with Ethel and told her
• 2:10:18
  that I loved her, but that I could not quit my life. She
• 2:10:22
  said she would marry me anyway, but I thought the world of her and
• 2:10:24
  told her that though I had blasted my own life, I would not blast
• 2:10:28
  hers. I would not marry her. She was so good and affectionate.
• 2:10:33
  When we parted, I said to myself, Man proposes, habit disposes.
• 2:10:39
  It was certainly lucky that I did not marry that sweet girl. For a
• 2:10:41
  month after I had split with her, I fell for a long term in
• 2:10:45
  state's prison. It was for a breech kick which I could not square.
• 2:10:50
  I had gone out of my hotel one morning for a bottle of whiskey when
• 2:10:52
  I met two grafters, Johnny and Alec, who would toe in a sucker
• 2:10:56
  along with them. They gave me the tip that it was worth trying.
• 2:11:00
  Indeed, I gathered that the man must have his bank with him, and
• 2:11:03
  I nicked him in a car for his breech leather. A spectator saw the
• 2:11:05
  deed and tipped off a copper. I was nailed, but had nothing on
• 2:11:09
  me, for I had passed the leather to Alec. I was not in
• 2:11:13
  the mood for the police station, and with Alec's help, I licked the
• 2:11:16
  copper, who pulled his gun and fired at us as we ran up a
• 2:11:18
  side street. Alec blazed back and escaped, but I was arrested. I
• 2:11:24
  could not square it, as I have said, for I have been wanted
• 2:11:26
  at headquarters for some time past. Because I did not like to give up
• 2:11:30
  and was no stool pigeon. I notified mister r who was told to keep
• 2:11:35
  his hands off. I had been tearing the cars open for so long that
• 2:11:39
  the company wanted to do me. They got brassymouthed and yelled murder. I
• 2:11:43
  saw I had a corporation against me and hadn't a living chance to beat it.
• 2:11:46
  So I pleaded guilty and received five years and seven months. At sing
• 2:11:50
  sing a boy of twenty one, I was handcuffed with two old jail birds,
• 2:11:56
  and as we rode up on a fourth avenue car to the Grand Central
• 2:11:58
  station, I felt deeply humiliated for the first time of my life. When
• 2:12:03
  the passenger stared at me, I hung my head with shame. End of
• 2:12:09
  chapter six, Chapter seven in Stir I hung my head with shame, but
• 2:12:20
  not because of contrition. I was ashamed of being caught and made a spectacle
• 2:12:24
  of all the way to sing Singh station. People stared at us as if
• 2:12:28
  we were wild animals. We walked from the town to the prison and close
• 2:12:31
  company with two deputy sheriffs. I observed considerably, knowing that I should not
• 2:12:37
  see the outside world again for a number of years. I looked with envy
• 2:12:41
  at the people we passed who seemed honest and thought of home, and the
• 2:12:45
  chances I had thrown away. When I reached the stir, I was put
• 2:12:48
  through the usual ceremonies. My pedigree was taken, but I told the examiners
• 2:12:54
  nothing. I gave them a false name and a false pedigree. Then at
• 2:12:58
  bath was given to my c and I was taken at the tailor's shop.
• 2:13:01
  When my hair had been cropped close and a suit of stripes given me.
• 2:13:05
  I felt what it was to be the convicted criminal. It was not a
• 2:13:07
  pleasant feeling, I can tell you. And when I was taken to my
• 2:13:11
  cell my heart sank. Indeed, a narrow room seven feet four inches long,
• 2:13:16
  dark damp, with moisture on the walls, and an old iron cot,
• 2:13:20
  with plenty of company. As I afterwards discovered this was to be my
• 2:13:24
  home for years, and I, as full of life as a young goat,
• 2:13:28
  how could I bear it? After I had been examined by the doctor
• 2:13:31
  and questioned about my religion by the chaplain. I was left to reflect in
• 2:13:35
  my cell. I was interrupted in my melancholy train of thought by two convicts
• 2:13:39
  who were at work in the hall just outside my cell. I had known
• 2:13:43
  him on the outside, and they taken good care not to be seen by
• 2:13:46
  the screws. Keepers tipped me off through my prison door to everything in stir,
• 2:13:50
  which was necessary for a first time at a know. They told me
• 2:13:54
  to keep my mouth shut, to take everything from the screws in silence,
• 2:13:58
  and if assigned to a shop to do my work. They told me who
• 2:14:01
  the stool pigeons were, that is to say, the convicts who, in
• 2:14:03
  order to curry favor and have an easy time, put the keepers next to
• 2:14:07
  what other convicts are doing, and so helped to prevent escapes. They tipped
• 2:14:11
  me off to those keepers who were hard to get along with, and put
• 2:14:15
  me next to the underground tunnel and who were running it sing sing. They
• 2:14:20
  said, is the best of the three New York penitentiaries, for the grub
• 2:14:22
  is better than at the others. There are more privileges, and above all,
• 2:14:26
  it is nearer New York, so that your friends can visit you more
• 2:14:30
  frequently. They gave me a good deal of prison gossip, and told me
• 2:14:33
  whom my friends were there and what their condition of health was. So and
• 2:14:37
  so had died or gone home. They said such and such had been drafted
• 2:14:41
  to Auburn or Clinton prisons. If I wanted to communicate with my friends and
• 2:14:45
  stir, all that was necessary for me to do was to write a few
• 2:14:46
  stiffs letters, and they would be sent by the underground tunnel. They asked
• 2:14:52
  me about their old pals, hangouts, and girls in New York, and
• 2:14:56
  I in turn gave them a lot in New York gossip. Like all all
• 2:15:00
  convicts, they shed a part of the things they had received from home,
• 2:15:03
  gave me can goods, tobacco, and a pipe. It did not take
• 2:15:05
  me long to get on to the workings of the prison. I was particularly
• 2:15:09
  interested in the underground tunnel, for I saw at once its great usefulness.
• 2:15:15
  This is the secret system by which contraband articles such as whiskey, opium,
• 2:15:18
  and morphine are brought into the prison. When a rogue is persuasive with the
• 2:15:22
  coin of the realm, he can always find a keeper too to bring him
• 2:15:26
  what he considers the necessities of life, among which are opium, whiskey,
• 2:15:30
  and tobacco. If you have a screw right, you can be well supplied
• 2:15:33
  with these little things. To get him right, it is often necessary to
• 2:15:37
  give him a share about twenty percent of the money sent you from home.
• 2:15:41
  This system has worked in all the state prisons in New York, and during
• 2:15:45
  my first term, or any of the other terms for that matter, I
• 2:15:48
  had no difficulty in supplying my growing need for opium. I did not want
• 2:15:52
  people to get the idea that it is always necessary to bribe a keeper in
• 2:15:56
  order to obtain these little luxuries. For many a screw has brought me whiskey
• 2:16:00
  and hop and contraband letters from other inmates without demanding a penny. A keeper
• 2:16:05
  is a human being like the rest of us, and he is sometimes moved
• 2:16:07
  by considerations other than of pelf no matter how good and conscientious he may be.
• 2:16:13
  A keeper is but a man after all, and having very little to
• 2:16:16
  do, especially if he is in charge of an idle gang of cons he
• 2:16:20
  is apt to enter into conversations with them, particularly if they are better educated
• 2:16:24
  or more interesting than he, which is often the case. They tell him
• 2:16:28
  about their escapades on the outside, and often get his sympathy and friendship it's
• 2:16:33
  only natural that those keepers who are good fellows should do small favors for certain
• 2:16:35
  convicts. They may begin by bringing the convict's newspapers to read, but they
• 2:16:41
  will end by providing them with almost everything. Some of them, however,
• 2:16:46
  are so lacking in human sympathy, that their kindness is aroused only by a
• 2:16:48
  glimpse of the coin of the realm, or by the prospect of getting some
• 2:16:52
  convict to do their dirty work for them, that is, to spy upon
• 2:16:54
  their fellow prisoners. At Auburn Penitentiary, I was drafted after nine months at
• 2:17:01
  Sinxing, a few of the convicts pedaled opium and whiskey, with of course
• 2:17:05
  the connivans of the keepers. There are always some persons in prison as well
• 2:17:09
  as out, who want to make capital out of the misfortunes of others.
• 2:17:13
  These peddlers were despised by the rest of the convicts, for they were invariably
• 2:17:16
  stool pigeons, and young convicts who never before knew the power of the drug
• 2:17:20
  became opium fiends all on account of the business propensities of these detestable rats,
• 2:17:26
  stool pigeons who, because they had money and kept the screws next to those
• 2:17:31
  conds who tried to escape lived in easy Street while in stir. While on
• 2:17:35
  this subject, I will tell about a certain famous fence at one of these
• 2:17:39
  prisons, although he did not operate until my second term. At that time
• 2:17:45
  things were booming on the outside. The graft was so good that certain convicts
• 2:17:48
  in my cliq were getting good dough sent them by the pals who were at
• 2:17:52
  Liberty, and many luxuries came in therefore by the underground tunnel. Now,
• 2:17:56
  those keepers who are next to the underground developed through their association with convicts a
• 2:18:01
  propensity to graft, but usually have not the nerve to hustle for the goods,
• 2:18:05
  so they are willing to accept stolen property, not having the courage and
• 2:18:09
  skilled to steal from the inhabitants of the underworld. A convict whom I knew
• 2:18:13
  when at Liberty, named Mike, thought he saw an opportunity to do a
• 2:18:18
  good fencing business in prison. He gave a red front gold watch and chain,
• 2:18:24
  which he had stolen in his good days, to a keeper who was
• 2:18:26
  run in the underground, and thus got him right. Then Mike made arrangements
• 2:18:31
  with two grafters on the outside to supply the keeper and his friends with what
• 2:18:35
  they wanted. If the keeper said his girl wanted a stone, Mike would
• 2:18:39
  send word to one of the thieves on the outside to supply a good diamond
• 2:18:41
  as quickly as possible. The keeper would give Mike a fair price for these
• 2:18:46
  valuable articles and then sell the stones or watches, or make his girl a
• 2:18:48
  present. Other keepers followed suit, for they couldn't see how there was any
• 2:18:52
  comeback possible, and soon Mike was doing a thrive in business. It lasted
• 2:18:58
  for five or six months when Mike stopped it as a regular graft because of
• 2:19:01
  the growing cupidity of the keepers. One of them ordered a woman's watch and
• 2:19:05
  chain and a pair of diamond earrings to the underground tunnel. Mike obtained the
• 2:19:09
  required articles, but the keeper paid only half of what he promised, and
• 2:19:13
  Mike thereupon shut up shop. Occasionally, however, he continued to sell goods
• 2:19:18
  stolen by his pals who were at liberty, but only for cash on the
• 2:19:20
  spot and refused all credit. The keepers gradually got a great feeling of respect
• 2:19:26
  for this convict Fence, who was so clever and who stood up for his
• 2:19:28
  rights, and the business went on smoothly again for a while, but finally
• 2:19:33
  it was broken up for good. A grafter on the outside, Tommy,
• 2:19:37
  sent through the underground a pawn ticket for some valuable goods, among them a
• 2:19:41
  sealskin sack worth three hundred dollars, which he had stolen and hogged in Philadelphia.
• 2:19:46
  Mike sold the pawn ticket to a screw. Soon after that, Tommy
• 2:19:50
  or one of his pals got a fall and squealed. The police got next
• 2:19:56
  to where the goods were, and when the keeper sent the ticket and the
• 2:19:58
  money to redeem the articles, they allowed them to be forwarded to the prison,
• 2:20:01
  but arrested the keeper for receiving stolen goods. He was convicted and sentenced
• 2:20:07
  to ten years, but got off through influence. That however, finished the
• 2:20:11
  fence at the institution to resume the threat of my narrative. The day after
• 2:20:16
  I reached Sing Sing, I was put through the routine that lasted all the
• 2:20:20
  time I was there. At six thirty in the morning, we were awakened
• 2:20:22
  by the bell and marched in lockstep, from which many of us were to
• 2:20:26
  acquire a peculiar gait that was to mark us through life and help prevent us
• 2:20:31
  from leading decent lives to the bucket shop, where we washed, marched to
• 2:20:35
  the mess for breakfast at seven thirty, then to the various shops to work
• 2:20:39
  until eleven thirty, when at the whistle we would form again into squads and
• 2:20:43
  march again in the lock step fraternally but silently to our solemn dinner, which
• 2:20:48
  we ate in dead silence. Silence, indeed, except on the sly,
• 2:20:52
  was the general rule of our day until work was over, when we could
• 2:20:56
  whisper together until five o'clock, the hour to return to our cells, into
• 2:21:00
  which we would carry bread for supper, coffee being conveyed to us through a
• 2:21:03
  spout in the wall. The food at Sing Sing was pretty good. Breakfast
• 2:21:09
  consisted of hash or molasses, black coffee, and bread, and at dinner
• 2:21:13
  we had pork and beans, potatoes, hot coffee, and bread. Pork
• 2:21:18
  and beans gave place to four eggs on Friday, and sometimes stews were given
• 2:21:22
  us. It was true what I had heard that Sing Sing has the best
• 2:21:24
  food of any institution I have known. After five o'clock I would read in
• 2:21:28
  my cell by an oil lamp. Since my time, electricity has been put
• 2:21:33
  in the prison until nine o'clock, when I had to put out my light
• 2:21:35
  and go to bed. I had a great deal more time for reading and
• 2:21:39
  meditation in my lonely seldom one would think by the above routine. I was
• 2:21:43
  put to work in the shop making chairs. It was the first time I
• 2:21:46
  had ever worked in my life, and I took my time about it.
• 2:21:50
  I felt no strong desire to work for the state. I was expected to
• 2:21:54
  cane a hundred chairs a day, but I usually caned about two. I
• 2:22:00
  did not believe in work. I felt at that time that New York State
• 2:22:03
  owed me a living. I was getting a living, all right, but
• 2:22:05
  I was ungrateful. I did not thank them a wee bit. I must
• 2:22:09
  have been a bad example to other cons for they began to get as tired
• 2:22:13
  as myself. At any rate, I lost my job and was sent back
• 2:22:18
  to my cell, where I stayed most of the time while at Sing Sing.
• 2:22:22
  I worked indeed very little at any time during my three bits in the
• 2:22:24
  penitentiary. The prison at Sing Sing during the nine months I was there on
• 2:22:28
  my first term, was very crowded and there was not enough work to go
• 2:22:31
  round, and I was absolutely idle most of the time. When I had
• 2:22:35
  been drafted to Auburn, I found more work to do, but still very
• 2:22:39
  little, for it was just then that the legislature had shut down on contract
• 2:22:41
  labor in the prisons. The outside merchants squealed because they could not compete with
• 2:22:46
  unpaid convict labor, and so the prison authorities had to shut down many of
• 2:22:50
  their shops, running only enough to supply the inside demand, which was slight.
• 2:22:54
  For eighteen months at Auburn, I did not work a day. I
• 2:22:58
  think it was so very bad thing for the health of the convicts when this
• 2:23:01
  law was passed. For certainly, idleness is a very bad thing for most
• 2:23:05
  of them, and to be shut up nearly all the time in damp,
• 2:23:07
  unhealthy cells like those that sing sing is a terrible strain on the human system.
• 2:23:13
  Personally, however, I like to be in my cell, especially during
• 2:23:16
  my first year of solitary confinement, before my health began to give way,
• 2:23:20
  for I had my books from the good prison libraries, my pipe or cigarettes,
• 2:23:24
  and last but not least, I had a certain portion of opium that
• 2:23:28
  I used every day. For me, prison life had one great advantage.
• 2:23:33
  It broke down my health and confined me for many years in the opium habit,
• 2:23:37
  as we shall see. But I educated myself well in Stir. Previous
• 2:23:41
  to go into sing sing, my education had been almost entirely in the linograph.
• 2:23:45
  But in Stir I read the English classics and became familiar with philosophy and
• 2:23:48
  the science of medicine, and learned something about chemistry. One of my favorite
• 2:23:54
  authors was Voltaire, whom I read, of course, in a translation.
• 2:23:58
  His dictionary was Command in Prison, but I read it with prophet. Voltaire
• 2:24:03
  was certainly one of the shrewdest of men, and as up to snuff as
• 2:24:05
  any cynical graft I know, And yet he had a great love for humanity.
• 2:24:11
  He was the philosopher of humanity. Gotha said that Luther threw the world
• 2:24:16
  back two hundred years, but I deny it, for Luther, like Voltaire,
• 2:24:18
  pointed out the ignorance and wickedness of the priests of their day. These
• 2:24:22
  churchmen did not understand the teachings of Christ. Was Voltaire delusional? The priest
• 2:24:28
  must have thought so. But they were no judges, for they were far
• 2:24:31
  worse and less humane than the French revolutionists. The latter killed outright, but
• 2:24:37
  the priest tortured in the name of the most humane. I never approved of
• 2:24:41
  the methods of the French revolutionists, but certainly they were gentle in comparison with
• 2:24:45
  the priests of the Spanish Inquisition. I think that in variety of subjects Voltaire
• 2:24:50
  has no equal among writers. Trude as he was, he had a soul,
• 2:24:54
  and his more courage was grand. His defense of young Barry, who
• 2:24:58
  was arrested for using the language against the Church, showed his kindness and bred
• 2:25:01
  the mind. On his arrival in Paris, when he was only a stripling,
• 2:25:05
  he denounced the cowardly, fawning, sick offense who surrounded Louis the fourteenth
• 2:25:11
  footnote sick editor's note, and wrote a sarcastic poem on his nibs and was
• 2:25:16
  confined in the bastille for two years. His courage, his wit, his
• 2:25:22
  sarcasms, his hatred of his persecutors, and his love and kindness stamped him
• 2:25:26
  as one of the great healthy intellects of mankind. What a clever book is
• 2:25:31
  Candide? What satire? What wit? As I lay in my cot how
• 2:25:35
  often I laughed at his cost to comments on humanity, and how he could
• 2:25:39
  hate I never yet met a man of any account who was not a good
• 2:25:43
  hater. I own that Voltaire was ungallant toward the fair Sex, but that
• 2:25:48
  was his only fault. I enjoyed Victor Hugo because he could create a great
• 2:25:54
  character and was capable of writing a story with a plot. I rank him
• 2:25:58
  as a master of fiction, although I preferred his experience as a traveler to
• 2:26:03
  his novels, which are not real enough. Ernest Rannon was a bracing and
• 2:26:07
  clever writer, but I was sadly disappointed in reading his Life of Jesus.
• 2:26:11
  I expected to get a true outline of Christ's time and a character sketch of
• 2:26:16
  the man himself, but I didn't. I went to the fountain for a
• 2:26:20
  glass of good wine, but only got red lemonade. I liked Dumas and
• 2:26:24
  reveled in the series beginning with The Three Musketeers. I could not read Dumas
• 2:26:30
  now. However, I also enjoyed Geborio and du Bois Goobert, for they
• 2:26:35
  are very sensational, but that was during my first term in stir. I
• 2:26:39
  could not turn a page of their books now, for they would seem idiotic
• 2:26:41
  to me. Balzac is a bird of another feather. In my opinion,
• 2:26:46
  he was one of the best dissectors of human nature that the world ever produced.
• 2:26:52
  Not even Shakespeare was his equal. His depth in searching for motives,
• 2:26:56
  his discernment in detecting a hypocrite, His skill and sh showing up women with
• 2:27:00
  their follies, their loves, their little hypocrisies, their endearments, their malice,
• 2:27:03
  and their envy is unrivaled. It is right that Balzac should show woman
• 2:27:09
  with all her faults and follies and virtues, for if she did not possess
• 2:27:13
  all these characteristics, how could man adore her? In his line? I
• 2:27:18
  think dach Array is as great as Balzac. When I had read Vanity Fair,
• 2:27:22
  Pendennis, The Newcoms, and Barry Lyndon, I was so much interested
• 2:27:28
  that I read anything of his. I could lay my hands on over and
• 2:27:31
  over again. With a novel of dac Rays in my hand, I would
• 2:27:35
  become oblivious to my surroundings and long to know something of this writer's personality.
• 2:27:39
  I think I formed his mental make up correctly, for I imagine him to
• 2:27:43
  be gentle and humane. Any man with ability and brains equal to his could
• 2:27:48
  not be otherwise. What a character is? Becky sharp in her way,
• 2:27:52
  she was as clever a grafter Hashini Annie. She did not love Rawdon as
• 2:27:56
  good as a wife should. If she had, she would not be the
• 2:28:00
  interest in Becky that she is. She was grateful to Rawdon for three reasons.
• 2:28:05
  First, he married her. Second, he gave her a glimpse into
• 2:28:07
  a station of life her soul longed for. Third, he came from a
• 2:28:11
  good family and was a soldier and tall. And it is well known that
• 2:28:15
  little women like big men. Then Rawdon amused Becky. She often grinned at
• 2:28:20
  his lack of brains. She grinned at everything. And when we learned that
• 2:28:24
  Becky got religion at the end of the book, instead of saying God bless
• 2:28:28
  her, we only grinned too. Pandenis is a healthy book. I always
• 2:28:33
  sympathize with pen and Laura in their struggles to get on. And when the
• 2:28:37
  baby was born, I was willing to become God Papa just for its mama's
• 2:28:39
  sake. The Newcombs I call Thackaray's masterpiece. It is true to life than
• 2:28:45
  any other book I ever read. Take the scene where young Clive throws the
• 2:28:48
  glass of wine in his cousin's face, the honest horror of the father,
• 2:28:54
  his indignation when old Captain Costigan uses bad language, his exit when he hears
• 2:28:58
  a song in a music hall. All this is true realism. But the
• 2:29:03
  scene that makes this book Dacaraise masterpiece is that where the old colonel is dying,
• 2:29:09
  the touching devotion of Madame and Ethel, the love for old Tom his
• 2:29:13
  last word adds some the quiet weeping of his nurse, and the last duties
• 2:29:18
  to the dead, the beautiful tenderness of the two women of a kind that
• 2:29:22
  makes the fair sex respected by all men. I can never forget this scene
• 2:29:28
  till my dying day. When I was sick and stir a better tonic than
• 2:29:33
  the quack could prescribe with Stackeray's Book of Snobs, many as the night I
• 2:29:37
  could not sleep until I have read this book with a relish. It acted
• 2:29:41
  on me like a bottle of good wine, leaving me peaceful after a time
• 2:29:43
  of pleasure. In this book are shown up the little egotisms of the goslings
• 2:29:48
  and the foibles of the sucklings in a masterly manner. I read every word
• 2:29:54
  Dickens ever wrote, and I often ruminated in my mind as to which of
• 2:29:58
  his works was a masterpiece. Our mutual friend is weak in the love scenes,
• 2:30:03
  but the book is made readable by two characters, naughty Boffin and Silas
• 2:30:07
  Wegg. Where Wegg reads as he thinks the last of the Russians, when
• 2:30:11
  the book was the decline and fall the Roman Empire, there is the quintessence
• 2:30:16
  of humor. Silas's wooden leg and his occupation of selling eggs would make anybody
• 2:30:20
  smile. Even a dip would fallen and had no money to square it.
• 2:30:26
  The greatest character in David Copperfield is Uriah Heap. The prison scene where this
• 2:30:31
  humble hypocrite showed he knew his Bible thoroughly and knew the advantage of having some
• 2:30:35
  holy quotations pat reminded me often of men I have known in Auburn and sing
• 2:30:41
  sing prisons. Some hypocritical jailboard would dream that he could succeed on the outside
• 2:30:46
  by becoming a Sunday school superintendent, And four of the meanest thieves I ever
• 2:30:50
  knew got their start in that way. Who has not enjoyed Micawber, with
• 2:30:54
  his frothy personality and straightened circumstances, and the unctuous Barchus Poor Emily, who
• 2:31:00
  could blame her what woman could help liking Steerforth. It is strange and true
• 2:31:05
  that good women are won by men they know to be rascals. Is it
• 2:31:09
  the contrast between good and evil? Or is it because the ne'er do well
• 2:31:13
  has a stronger character and more magnetic force. Agnes was one of the best
• 2:31:18
  women in the world. Contrast her with David's first wife. Agnes was like
• 2:31:22
  a fine violin, while Dora was like a wailing Herdy Gurdy. Oliver Twist
• 2:31:30
  is Dickon's strongest book. He goes deeper into human nature than in any other
• 2:31:35
  of his writings. Fagin the Jew is a very strong character, but overdrawn.
• 2:31:41
  The picture of Fagin's dens and of the people in them, is true
• 2:31:45
  to life. I have seen similar gatherings many a time. The ramblings of
• 2:31:50
  the artful dodger are drawn from the real thing. But I never met in
• 2:31:52
  real life such a brutal character as Bill Sykes, and I met some tough
• 2:31:56
  grafters, as the course of this book will show. Nancy Sykes, however,
• 2:32:01
  is true to life. In her degradation, she was still a woman.
• 2:32:05
  I contend that a woman is never so low, but a man was
• 2:32:09
  the cause. One passage in the book has often touched me, as it
• 2:32:13
  showed that Nancy has not lost her sex. When she and Bill were passing
• 2:32:18
  the prison, she turned towards it and said, Bill, they were fine
• 2:32:22
  fellows that died to day. Shut your mouths, said Bill. Now,
• 2:32:26
  I don't think there is a thief in the United States who would have answered
• 2:32:30
  Nancy's remark that way. Strong arm workers who would beat your brains out for
• 2:32:33
  a few dollars would be moved by that touch of pity in Nancy's voice.
• 2:32:39
  But Oliver himself is the great character, and his story reminds me of my
• 2:32:43
  own. The touching incident in the workhouse where his poor stomach is not full
• 2:32:48
  and he asked for a second platter of mush to the horror of the teachers.
• 2:32:52
  Is not overdrawn. When I was in one of our penal institutions at
• 2:32:56
  a later time in my life, I was ill and asked for extra food,
• 2:33:00
  but my request was looked upon as the audacity of a hardened villain.
• 2:33:03
  I had many such opportunities to think of Oliver. I always liked those authors
• 2:33:09
  who wrote as near life as decency would permit. Stearn's tryst from Shandy has
• 2:33:15
  often amused me and Tom Jones, Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle I have read
• 2:33:18
  over and over again. I don't see why good people object to such books.
• 2:33:24
  Such people are forever looking after the affairs of others in neglecting their own,
• 2:33:28
  especially a man whom I will call common socks, who has put himself
• 2:33:31
  up as a mentor for over seventy millions of people. Let me tell the
• 2:33:35
  busy ladies who are afraid that such books will harm the morals of young persons,
• 2:33:39
  that the more they are cried down, the more they will be read.
• 2:33:43
  For that matter, they ought to be read. Why object to the
• 2:33:46
  girl of sixteen reading such books and not to the woman at thirty five?
• 2:33:50
  I think their mental strength is about equal. Both are romantic, and the
• 2:33:54
  woman to thirty five will fall in love as quickly as the girl of sixteen.
• 2:33:58
  I think a woman is always a girl, at least it has been
• 2:34:01
  so in my experience. One day I was grafted in Philadelphia. It was
• 2:34:05
  raining, and a woman was walking along Walnut Street. She slipped on the
• 2:34:09
  wet sidewalk and fell. I ran to her assistance and saw that her figure
• 2:34:13
  was slim and girlish, and that she had around rosy face, but that
• 2:34:16
  her hair was pure white. When I asked her if she was hurt,
• 2:34:20
  she said yes. But when I said, let me be your grandson and
• 2:34:24
  support you on my way, I put my foot into it. For horrors
• 2:34:26
  the look she gave me, as she said in an icy voice, I
• 2:34:31
  was never married. I wondered what manner of men there were in Philadelphia,
• 2:34:35
  And to square myself, I said, never married, and with a pair
• 2:34:39
  of such pretty ankles. Then she gave me a look, thanked me,
• 2:34:43
  and walked away as jauntily as she ever did in a life, though she
• 2:34:46
  must have been suffering agonies from a sprained ankle. Since that time, I
• 2:34:50
  have been convinced that they of the gentle sex are girls. From fifteen to
• 2:34:54
  eighty I read much of Lever too while I was in st His pictures of
• 2:35:01
  Ireland and the noisy strife in Parliament, and the description of Dublin, with
• 2:35:05
  its spendthrifts and excited populace, The gamblers and the ruined but gay young gentlemen,
• 2:35:09
  all mixed up with the grandeur of Ireland, are the work of a
• 2:35:13
  master. I could only compare this epoch of worn out regalia with the Saint
• 2:35:16
  Patrick's date parade twenty years ago in the fourth Warter, Manhattan. Other books
• 2:35:22
  I read in Stir were Gibbons, were of an Empire, Carlile's, Frederick
• 2:35:26
  the Great, and many of the English poets. I read Wordsworth, Gray
• 2:35:30
  and Goldsmith, but I like Tom Moore and Robert Burns better. The greatest
• 2:35:35
  of all the poets, however, in my estimation, is Byron. His
• 2:35:39
  loves were many, his adventures daring, and his language was as broad and
• 2:35:43
  independent as his mind. End of chapter seven. Chapter eight in Stir continued
• 2:35:58
  sing sing was overflowing with k vis, and after I had been there nine
• 2:36:01
  months, I and a number of others were transferred to Auburn Penitentiary. There
• 2:36:05
  I found the cells drier and better than its singsing, but the food not
• 2:36:09
  so good. The warden was not liked by the majority of the men,
• 2:36:13
  but I admired him for two things. He believed in giving us good bread,
• 2:36:18
  and he did not give a continental what came into the prison, whether
• 2:36:20
  it was a needle or a canister, as long as it was kept in
• 2:36:24
  the cell and not used. It was in Auburn Stir that opium grew to
• 2:36:30
  be a habit with me. I used to give the keepers who were running
• 2:36:33
  the underground one dollar of every five that were sent me, and they appreciated
• 2:36:35
  my kindness and kept me supplied with the drug. What part the hop began
• 2:36:39
  to play in my life may be seen from the routine of my days at
• 2:36:43
  Auburn, particularly at those periods when there was no work to be done.
• 2:36:48
  After rising in the morning, I would clean out my cell and turn up
• 2:36:50
  my bed and blankets. Then I went to breakfast. Then, if there
• 2:36:54
  was no work to do, back to my cell, where I ate a
• 2:36:56
  small portion of opium and sometimes read the daily paper, which also contraband.
• 2:37:01
  It is only the stool pigeons those convicts who have money were the cleverest among
• 2:37:05
  the rascals who get many of these privileges. After I had had my opium
• 2:37:11
  and the newspaper, I would exercise with dumbbells and think or read in my
• 2:37:13
  cell. Then I would have a plunge bath in a nap which would take
• 2:37:18
  me up to dinner time. After dinner, I would read in my cell
• 2:37:20
  again until three o'clock, when I would go to the bucket shop or exercise
• 2:37:24
  for half an hour in the yard and lock step with the others, then
• 2:37:26
  back to the cell, taken with me bread and a cup of coffee made
• 2:37:30
  out of burnt bread crust for my supper. In the evening, I would
• 2:37:33
  read and smoke until my light went out, and would wind up the day
• 2:37:37
  with a large piece of opium, which grew larger as time passed. For
• 2:37:41
  a long time, I was fairly content with what was practically solitary confinement.
• 2:37:46
  I had my books, my pipe, cigarettes, and my regular supply of
• 2:37:50
  hop. Whether I worked in the daytime or not, I would usually spend
• 2:37:52
  my evenings in the same way. I would lie on my cot and sometimes
• 2:37:56
  a thought like the following would come to me. Yes, I have stripes
• 2:38:00
  on, but I am released. Perhaps some one will pity me, particularly
• 2:38:03
  the women. They may despise and avoid me. Most likely they will,
• 2:38:07
  but I don't care. All I want is to get their watt of money.
• 2:38:11
  In the meantime, I have my opium and my thoughts, and am
• 2:38:13
  just as happy as the millionaire unless he has an arcotic. After the drug
• 2:38:20
  had begun to work, I would frequently fall into a deep sleep and not
• 2:38:22
  wake until one or two o'clock. The following morning. Then I would turn
• 2:38:26
  on my light, peer through my cell door, and try to see through
• 2:38:28
  the little window out in the corridor. A peculiar nervousness often came over me
• 2:38:33
  at this hour, particularly if the weather had been rainy, and my imagination
• 2:38:37
  would run on a shipwreck very often, or on some other painful subject,
• 2:38:41
  and I might tell the story to myself in jingles or jot it down on
• 2:38:45
  a piece of paper. Then my whole being would be quiet, A gentle,
• 2:38:50
  soothing melancholy would steal upon me. Often my imagination was so powerfully affected
• 2:38:54
  that I could really see the events of my dream. I could see the
• 2:38:58
  ship tossing about on waves mountain high. Then, and only then, I
• 2:39:03
  was positive I had a soul. I was in such a state of peace
• 2:39:09
  that I could not bear that any human beings should suffer. At first,
• 2:39:13
  the scenes before my imagination would be harrowing, with great loss of life.
• 2:39:16
  But when one of the gentle sects appeared vividly before me, a shudder passed
• 2:39:20
  over me, and I would seek consolation in jingles, such as the following.
• 2:39:28
  A gallant bark set sail one day for a port beyond the sea.
• 2:39:31
  The captain had taken his fair young bride to bear him company. This little
• 2:39:37
  brown lass was of Puritan stock. Her eyes were the brightest air seen.
• 2:39:41
  They never came back the ship. It was wrecked in a storm in the
• 2:39:46
  Old Gulf Stream. Two years had passed. Then a letter came to a
• 2:39:52
  maid in a New England town. It began, Darling, Kate. It
• 2:39:56
  ended your Jack. I am alive in a foreign land. The captain,
• 2:40:01
  his gentle young wife, and your own were saved by that hand unseen.
• 2:40:07
  But the rest they went down in that terrible storm that night in the old
• 2:40:11
  Gulf Stream. But these pleasures would soon leave me, and I would grow
• 2:40:20
  very restless. My only resource was another piece of opium. Sometimes I awoke
• 2:40:26
  much excited, paced mysel rapidly, and felt like tearing down the door.
• 2:40:30
  Sometimes a book would quiet me. The best soothering I had was the most
• 2:40:33
  beautiful poem in the English language, Walt Whitman's Owed to Death. When I
• 2:40:39
  read this poem, I often imagined I was at the North Pole, and
• 2:40:41
  that strange shapes in the clouds beckoned me to come to them. I used
• 2:40:46
  to forget myself and read aloud, and was entirely oblivious to my surroundings until
• 2:40:50
  I was brought to myself by the night guard, shouting, what in hell
• 2:40:52
  is the matter with you? After getting excited in this way, I usually
• 2:40:58
  needed another dose of hop. I've noticed that the difference between opium and alcohol
• 2:41:03
  is that the latter is a disintegrator and tears apart, while the opium is
• 2:41:05
  a subtile underminer. Opium for a long time anyway stimulates the intelligence, while
• 2:41:11
  the reverse is true of alcohol. It was under the influence of opium that
• 2:41:16
  I began to read philosophy. I read Hume and Locke and partly understood them,
• 2:41:20
  I think, though I did not know that Locke is pronounced in only
• 2:41:24
  one syllable till many years after I had read and re read parts of The
• 2:41:28
  Human Understanding. It was not only the opium, but my experience on the
• 2:41:33
  outside that made me eager for philosophy and the deeper poetry. For a grafter's
• 2:41:37
  wits, if they don't get away from him altogether, become keen to his
• 2:41:41
  business, since he lives by them. It was philosophy and the spectacle of
• 2:41:46
  men going suddenly and violently insane all about me that led me first to think
• 2:41:50
  of self control, though it did not muster enough to throw off the opium
• 2:41:52
  habit till many years afterwards. I began to think of will power about this
• 2:41:56
  time, and I knew it was an acquired virtue, like truth and honesty.
• 2:42:01
  I think from a moral standpoint that I lived as good a life in
• 2:42:05
  prison as anybody on the outside, For at least I tried to overcome myself.
• 2:42:09
  It was life or death, or a thousand times worse, an insane
• 2:42:11
  asylum. Opium led me to books besides those on philosophy, which eventually helped
• 2:42:16
  to cure me. At this time I was reading Balzac, Shakespeare, Huxley,
• 2:42:22
  Tyndall, and Lavater. One poem of Shakespeare's touched me more than any
• 2:42:26
  poem I ever read, The Rape of Lucrease. It was reading such as
• 2:42:31
  this that gave me a broader view, and I began to think this was
• 2:42:33
  a terrible life I was leading. But as the reader will see, I
• 2:42:37
  did not know what hell was until several years later. I had been in
• 2:42:41
  stir about four years on my first bed, when I began to appreciate how
• 2:42:45
  terrible a master I had come under. Of course, to a certain extent,
• 2:42:48
  the habit had been forced upon me. After a man has had for
• 2:42:52
  several years bad food, little air and exercise, no natural companionship, particularly
• 2:42:56
  with the other sex, from whom he is entirely cut off, he really
• 2:43:01
  needs a stimulant. Many men fall into the vilest of habits. I found,
• 2:43:07
  for my part, that only opium would call me. It takes only
• 2:43:09
  a certain length of time for almost all convicts to become broken in health,
• 2:43:13
  addicted to one form or another of stimulant, which in the long run pulls
• 2:43:16
  them down completely. Diseases of various kinds, insanity, and death are the
• 2:43:22
  result. But before the criminal is thus released, he grows desperate in the
• 2:43:28
  extreme, particularly if he resorts to opium, For that drug makes one reckless.
• 2:43:33
  The hop fiend never takes consequences into consideration. Under its influence, I
• 2:43:37
  became very irritable and unruly and would take no back talk from the keepers.
• 2:43:43
  They and the stool pigeons began to be afraid of me. I would not
• 2:43:46
  let them pound me in any way, and I often got into a violent
• 2:43:48
  fight. As long as I had my regular allowance of opium, which in
• 2:43:52
  the fourth year of my term was about twenty grains a day I was peaceable
• 2:43:56
  enough. It was when it began to lessen the him mount with the desire
• 2:44:01
  to give it up, that it became so irritable and violent. The strain
• 2:44:05
  of reform, even in this early and unsuccessful attempt, was terrible. At
• 2:44:09
  times I used to go without the full amount for several days, but then
• 2:44:13
  I would relapse and go on at debauch until I was almost unconscious. After
• 2:44:18
  recovery, I would make another resolution, only to fall again. But my
• 2:44:22
  life and stir was not all that of the solitary. There were means,
• 2:44:26
  even when I was in the shop, of communicating with my fellow convicts,
• 2:44:28
  generally by notes, as talking was forbidden. Notes too were contraband, but
• 2:44:33
  we found means of sending them through the cohns working in the hall. Sometimes
• 2:44:37
  good natured our avaricious keepers would carry them, but as a rule, a
• 2:44:41
  convict did not like to trust a note to the keeper. He was afraid
• 2:44:43
  that the screw would read it, whereas it was a point of honor with
• 2:44:46
  a convict to deliver the note unread. The contents of these notes were usually
• 2:44:50
  news about our girls or pals, which we'd received through visitors were here indeed
• 2:44:56
  or letters. By the same means, there was much betting done on the
• 2:44:58
  races, baseball games and prize fights. We could send money, too,
• 2:45:03
  or opium in the same way to a friend in need, and we never
• 2:45:07
  required an iow you. We were allowed to receive visitors from the outside once
• 2:45:11
  every two months. Also, a box could be delivered to us at the
• 2:45:15
  same intervals of time. My friends, especially my mother and Ethel, sent
• 2:45:20
  me things regularly and came to see me. They used to send me soap,
• 2:45:24
  tooth brushes, and many other delicacies, for even a tooth brush is
• 2:45:28
  a delicacy in prison. Ethel stuck to me for three years and visited me
• 2:45:31
  regularly during that period. Then her visits ceased and I heard that she had
• 2:45:37
  married. I couldn't blame her, but I felt bad about it all the
• 2:45:39
  same. But my mother came as often as the two months rolled by,
• 2:45:43
  not only during this first term but during all my bits since stir. Certainly
• 2:45:48
  she has stuck to me through thick and thin. She has been my only
• 2:45:52
  true friend. If she had fallen away from me, I couldn't have blamed
• 2:45:54
  her. She would only have gone with the rest of the world. But
• 2:45:58
  she didn't. She was not only good to me, but to my friends,
• 2:46:01
  and she had pity for everybody in Stir. I remember how she used
• 2:46:05
  to talk about the rut worn in the stone pavement at sing Sing, where
• 2:46:09
  the men paced up and down. Talk about the bridge of size, she
• 2:46:13
  used to say. When a man is in Stir, he begins to see
• 2:46:18
  what an ungrateful bruti has been, and he begins to separate true friends from
• 2:46:20
  false ones. He thinks of the mother he neglected, for supposed friends of
• 2:46:26
  both sexes, who are perhaps friendly at the beginning of his sentence, but
• 2:46:28
  soon desert him. If he has a number of years to serve, long
• 2:46:33
  after all others have ceased, come and to see him. His old mother,
• 2:46:35
  bowed and sad, will trudge up the walk from the station to visit
• 2:46:39
  her thoughtless and erring son. She carries on her arm a heavy basket of
• 2:46:43
  delicacies for the son who is detested by all good citizens. And in her
• 2:46:46
  heart there is still hope for her boy. She has waited many years,
• 2:46:52
  and she will continue to wait. What memories come to the mother as she
• 2:46:56
  sees the mansion of woes on the Hudson looming up before her her son is
• 2:47:00
  again a baby in her imagination, or a young fellow before he began to
• 2:47:03
  tread the rocky path. They soon part for half an hour as all it
• 2:47:07
  is given, but they will remember forever the mother's kiss, the sons good
• 2:47:11
  bye, the last choking words of love and familiar advice, as she says,
• 2:47:16
  trust in God, my lad After one of my mother's visits, I
• 2:47:20
  used to have more sympathy for my fellow convicts. I was always a keen
• 2:47:24
  observer, and in the shops or at mess time, and when we were
• 2:47:28
  exercising together in lockstep, or working about the yard or in the halls,
• 2:47:31
  I used to feel out my brother Khan's, often with a kindly motive.
• 2:47:37
  I grew very expert in telling when a friend was becoming insane, for imprisonment
• 2:47:41
  leads to insanity, as everybody knows. Many a time a man I knew
• 2:47:45
  in stir would grow nervous or absent minded, then suspicious, and finally would
• 2:47:50
  be sent to the madhouse at Danamora or Mattawan. For instance, take a
• 2:47:54
  friend of mine named Billy. He was doing a bit of ten years.
• 2:47:58
  In the fifth year of sentence, I noticed that he was brooding and I
• 2:48:01
  asked him, what was the matter. I am afraid, He said that
• 2:48:05
  my wife is going outside of me. You are not positive, are you,
• 2:48:09
  I asked, Well, he answered, she visited me the other day
• 2:48:13
  and she was looking good, prosperous. My son was with her, and
• 2:48:16
  he looked good too. She gave me five dollars and some delicacies, but
• 2:48:20
  she never had five dollars when I was on the outside. She's working,
• 2:48:26
  said I, trying to calm him. No, she has got a father
• 2:48:30
  and mother, he replied, and she is living with them. Billy,
• 2:48:35
  I continued, how long have you been in stir growing on six years?
• 2:48:39
  He said, Billy, I proceeded, what would you do if you were
• 2:48:43
  on the outside and she was in prison for six years? Well, he
• 2:48:46
  replied, I'd have to give myself some rope. Philosophers claim that it is
• 2:48:52
  just as hard for a woman to live alone as for a man. I
• 2:48:56
  said, you're unreasonable, Billy. Surely you can't blame her. Billy's case
• 2:49:01
  is and instance of how when a convict has had bad food, bad air,
• 2:49:05
  and an unnatural routine for some time, he begins to borrow trouble.
• 2:49:09
  He grows anemic, and then is on the road to insanity. If he
• 2:49:13
  has a wife, he almost always grows suspicious of her, though he does
• 2:49:16
  not speak about it until he has been a certain number of years in prison.
• 2:49:20
  It was not long after the above conversation took place that Billy was sent
• 2:49:24
  to the insane asylum at Mattawan. Sometimes after a man has begun to grow
• 2:49:30
  insane, he will show it by reticence rather than by talkativeness, according to
• 2:49:33
  his disposition. One of my intimate friends in Stir much longer than I was
• 2:49:39
  like a ray of sunshine, witty and a good story teller. His laugh
• 2:49:43
  was contagious, and we all like to see him. He was one of
• 2:49:46
  the best night prowlers burglars in the profession, and had many other gifts.
• 2:49:52
  After he had been in Stir, However, for a few years he grew
• 2:49:54
  reticent and suspicious, thought that everybody was a stool pigeon, and died a
• 2:50:00
  or even maniac a few years later. At Mattawan, sometimes a convict will
• 2:50:05
  grow so nervous that he will attempt to escape even when there is no chance,
• 2:50:07
  or will shame insanity. An acquaintance of mine, Lewis, who had
• 2:50:13
  often grafted with me, and when we were on the outside, told me
• 2:50:16
  one day he did not expect to live out his bit. When confined,
• 2:50:20
  a man generally thinks a lot about his condition, reads a book on medicine,
• 2:50:24
  and imagines he has every disease the book describes. Louis was in this
• 2:50:28
  state, and he consulted me in two others as to whether he ought not
• 2:50:31
  to shoot a bug shame insanity and so get transferred to the hospital. One
• 2:50:35
  advised him to attack a keeper and demand his baby back. But as Lewis
• 2:50:41
  had big black eyes and a cadaverous face, I told him he'd better shoot
• 2:50:45
  the melancholy bug, for he could do that better. Accordingly, in the
• 2:50:48
  morning, when the men were to go to work in the stone yard,
• 2:50:52
  Lewis appeared in the natural naked. He had been stalled off by two friends
• 2:50:56
  until he reached the yard. There the keepers saw him, and as they
• 2:51:00
  liked him, they gently took him to the hospital. He was pronounced incurably
• 2:51:03
  insane by two experts and transferred to the bath house. The change of air
• 2:51:09
  was so beneficial that Louis speedily recovered his senses, at least the doctors thought
• 2:51:13
  so. When he was discovered trying to make his elegant escape, and he
• 2:51:16
  was sent back to stir. As a rule, however, those who attempted
• 2:51:22
  to sham insanity failed they were usually lacking in originality. At any hour of
• 2:51:26
  the day or night, the whole prison might be aroused by some convict breaking
• 2:51:30
  a house, as it was called when a man tried to shoot the bug.
• 2:51:33
  He might break everything in his cell and yell so loud that the other
• 2:51:37
  convicts in the cells nearby would join in and make a horrible din Some would
• 2:51:41
  curse and some laugh. Or howel, if it was at night and they
• 2:51:45
  had been awakened out of an opium sleep, they would damn him a thousand
• 2:51:48
  miles deep. His friends, however, who knew that he was acting,
• 2:51:52
  would plug his game along by talking about his insanity in the presence of stool
• 2:51:56
  pigeons. These latter would tell the keepers that he was buggy, and if
• 2:52:01
  there was not a blow, he might be sent to the hospital. Before
• 2:52:03
  that happened, however, he had generally demolished all his furniture, the guards
• 2:52:07
  would go to his cell and chain him up in the Catholic chapel until he
• 2:52:11
  could be examined by the doctor Warden Sage was a humane man and used to
• 2:52:16
  go to the chapel himself and try to quiet the fake lunatic and give him
• 2:52:18
  dainties from his own table during the night. The fake had historic company,
• 2:52:24
  for painted on the walls were on one side of him Jesus, and on
• 2:52:26
  the other Judas and Mary Magdalene. A favorite method of shooting the bug,
• 2:52:33
  and a rather difficult one for the doctors to detect, was that of hearing
• 2:52:35
  voices in one's cell. This is more dangerous for the convict than for anybody
• 2:52:41
  else, for when a fake tries to imagine he hears voices, he usually
• 2:52:45
  begins to really believe he does, and then from a fake he becomes a
• 2:52:48
  genuine freak. Another common fake is to tell the keeper that you have a
• 2:52:52
  snake in your arm, and then take a knife and try to cut it
• 2:52:56
  out, but it requires nerve to carry this fake through. Sometimes the man
• 2:53:01
  who wants to make the prison hospital merely fakes ordinary illness. If he has
• 2:53:05
  a screw or a doctor wright, he may stay for months in a comparatively
• 2:53:07
  healthy hospital at Sing Sing, where he can loaf all day and get better
• 2:53:11
  food than at the public mess It is, as a rule, only the
• 2:53:16
  experienced guns who are clever enough to work these little games. For faking conversing,
• 2:53:22
  loafing in the shop, and for many other forbidden things, we were
• 2:53:26
  often punished, though the screws as often winked at small misdemeanors. At Sing
• 2:53:31
  Sing, they used to hang us up by the wrist, sometimes until we
• 2:53:33
  find it. Auburn had a jail now used as the Condemned cells, where
• 2:53:39
  there was no bed and no light. In this place, the man to
• 2:53:41
  be punished would remain from four to ten days and live on ten ounces of
• 2:53:46
  bread and a half a jug of water a day. In addition, the
• 2:53:50
  jail was very damp, worse even than the cells at Sing Sing, where
• 2:53:52
  I knew many convicts who contracted consumption of the lungs and various kidney complaints.
• 2:53:58
  Indeed, a great deal of dying goes on in States prison. During my
• 2:54:03
  first term, it seems as if three niggers died to every white man.
• 2:54:07
  A dozen of us working around the front would comment on the stiffs when they
• 2:54:09
  were carried out. One would ask who's dead? The reply might be only
• 2:54:15
  a nigger. One day I was talking in the front with a hall room
• 2:54:18
  man when a stiff was put in the wagon, Who's dead? I asked
• 2:54:22
  the hall man wanted to bet it was a nigger? I bet him a
• 2:54:26
  dollar I was a white man, and then asked the hospital nurse, who
• 2:54:28
  said it was not a nigger but an old pal of mine named Jerry Donovan.
• 2:54:33
  I felt sore and would not accept the money I had won. Poor
• 2:54:35
  Jerry and I did housework together for three months, some of which I have
• 2:54:39
  told of. And he was a good fellow and a sure and reliable grafter.
• 2:54:43
  And now he had gone up the escape and was being carried to the
• 2:54:46
  little graveyard on the side of the hill, where only an iron tag would
• 2:54:50
  mark his place of repose. My intelligence was naturally good, and when it
• 2:54:56
  began to get some education, I felt myself superior to many of my companions
• 2:54:58
  and stirs. I was not alone in this feeling, for in prison there
• 2:55:03
  are many social cliques, though fewer than on the outside. Men who have
• 2:55:07
  been high up and have held responsible positions when at liberty make friends in stir
• 2:55:11
  with men they formerly would not have trusted as their bootblacks. The professional thieves
• 2:55:16
  usually keep together as much as possible in prison, or communicate together by means
• 2:55:20
  of notes, though sometimes they associate with men who not professional grafters, have
• 2:55:24
  been sent up for committing some big forgery or other big swindle. The reason
• 2:55:30
  for this is business, for the gun generally has friends among the politicians,
• 2:55:33
  and he wants to associate while in stare only with others who have influence.
• 2:55:37
  It is the guns who are usually trusted by the screws in charge of the
• 2:55:41
  underground tunnel, for the professional thief is less likely to squeal than the novice.
• 2:55:46
  Therefore, the big forger, who has stolen thousands and may be a
• 2:55:48
  man of ability and education, appreciates the friendship of the professional pickpocket, who
• 2:55:52
  can do him little favors, such as railroading is mail through the underground and
• 2:55:56
  providing him with newspapers or a bottle of booze. The pull of the professional
• 2:56:01
  thief with outside politicians often procures him the respect and consideration of the keepers.
• 2:56:07
  One day, a convict named Ed White was chinning with an Irish screw,
• 2:56:11
  an old man who had a family to support. Jokes in sturredly to friendship,
• 2:56:16
  and when the keeper told Ed that he was looking for a job for
• 2:56:18
  his daughter, who was a stenographer. Ed said he thought he could place
• 2:56:22
  her in a good position. The old screw laughed and said, you loafer,
• 2:56:26
  if you were made to carry a hod, you wouldn't be a split
• 2:56:28
  in matches and stir but Ed meant what he had said and wrote to the
• 2:56:33
  famous Tammany politician, mister Wetcoin, who gave the girl a position as stenographer
• 2:56:37
  at a salary of fourteen dollars a week. The old screw took his daughter
• 2:56:41
  to New York, and when he returned to Auburn, he began to miss
• 2:56:45
  her. Ed, I clare to god, He said, I don't know
• 2:56:48
  what to make out of you. Here you are eating rotten hash, cooped
• 2:56:52
  up like a wild animal with stripes, when you might be making twelve to
• 2:56:54
  fifteen dollars a week. Ed replied, sarcastically, that would bow keep me
• 2:57:00
  in cigar money. One of the biggest men I knew in stir was Jim
• 2:57:03
  A. Mc blank, at one time chief of police and mayor of Coney
• 2:57:07
  Island. He was sent to sing sing for his repeating methods at election,
• 2:57:11
  at which game he was a number one. He got so many repeaters down
• 2:57:16
  to the island that they were compelled to register as living under fences in dog
• 2:57:18
  kennel's tents or any old place. There was much excitement in the prison when
• 2:57:22
  the Lord of Coney Island was shown around the stir by principal keeper Connaughton.
• 2:57:26
  He was a good mechanic and soon had a gang of men working under him,
• 2:57:31
  though he was the hardest worker of them all. After he had been
• 2:57:33
  there a while, the riff raft of the prison, though they had never
• 2:57:37
  heard the saying that familiarity breeds contempt, dropped calling him mister Blank and saluted
• 2:57:41
  him as Plain Jimmy. He was never in touch, however, with the
• 2:57:45
  majority of the convicts, for he was too close to the authorities, and
• 2:57:48
  the men believed that convicts cannot be on friendly terms with the powers that be
• 2:57:52
  unless they are stool pigeons. Another thing that made the cons dislike the mayor
• 2:57:56
  was the fact that when he was chief of police, he had settled the
• 2:57:58
  pop Bula dip named Pheey for ten years and a half. The very worst
• 2:58:03
  thing against him, however, was his private refrigerator in which he kept butter,
• 2:58:07
  condensed milk, and other luxuries which he did not share with the other
• 2:58:11
  convicts. One day, a young convict named Sammy tried to beat Singh Sing.
• 2:58:16
  He bricked himself up in the wall, leaving a movable opening at the
• 2:58:20
  bottom. While waiting a chance to escape, Sammy used to sally forth from
• 2:58:24
  his hiding place and steal something good from mc blank's box. One night,
• 2:58:28
  while helping himself to the mayor's delicacies, he thought he heard a keeper,
• 2:58:31
  and hastily plunging his arm into the refrigerator, he made away with a large
• 2:58:35
  piece of butter. What did the ex Chief of police do but report the
• 2:58:39
  loss of his butter to the screws, which put them next to the fact
• 2:58:41
  that the convict they had been looking for for nine nights was still in the
• 2:58:46
  stir The next night they would have rung the all right bell and given up
• 2:58:50
  the search. And indeed they rang the bell, but watched, and when
• 2:58:52
  Sammy, thinking he could now go to New York, came out of his
• 2:58:56
  hiding place, he was caught. When the story circulated in the prison,
• 2:59:00
  all kinds of vengeance were vowed against mc blank, who was much frightened.
• 2:59:03
  I heard him say that he would rather have lost his right arm than see
• 2:59:07
  the boy caught. What a colm down for a man who could throw his
• 2:59:11
  whole city for any state or national candidate at election time to be compelled to
• 2:59:15
  apologize as mc blank was to the lowest element in prison. Here, indeed
• 2:59:20
  was truth of that old saying pride goeth before a fall. One of the
• 2:59:26
  best liked of the convicts I met during my first bit was Ferdinand Ward,
• 2:59:31
  who got two years for reckon the firm in which General Grant and his son
• 2:59:33
  were partners. He did many a kindness in stir to those who were tough
• 2:59:39
  and had few friends. Another great favorite was Johnny Hope, son of Jimmy
• 2:59:43
  Hope, who stole three millions from the Manhattan Bank. The father got away,
• 2:59:48
  and Johnny, who was innocent, was nailed by a copper looking for
• 2:59:50
  a reputation and settled for twenty years in sing Sing because he was his father's
• 2:59:56
  son and had the misfortune to meet an ambitious copper. When john and he
• 3:00:00
  had been in prison about ten years, the inspector, who was the former
• 3:00:03
  copper, went to the governor and said he was convinced that the boy was
• 3:00:07
  innocent, but how about young Hope's wrecked life. Johnny's father, indeed,
• 3:00:11
  was a well known grafter whom I met in Auburn, where we worked together
• 3:00:13
  for a while in the broom shop. He was much older than I and
• 3:00:16
  used to give me advice. Don't ever do a day's work in your life,
• 3:00:20
  my boy, he would say, unless you can't help it. You
• 3:00:24
  are too intelligent to be a drudge. Another common remark of his was trust
• 3:00:30
  no convict, and a third was it is as easy to steal five thousand
• 3:00:33
  dollars as it is to steal five dollars. Old man Hope had stolen millions
• 3:00:39
  and ought to know what he was talking about. In personal appearance, he
• 3:00:43
  was below the medium height, had light gray hair, and as mild a
• 3:00:46
  pair of eyes as I ever saw in man or woman. I ranked him
• 3:00:48
  as a manly old fellow, and he was an idol among the small crooks,
• 3:00:52
  though he did not have much to do with them. He seemed to
• 3:00:56
  like to talk to me, partly because I never talked graft, and he
• 3:00:58
  detests did such talk, particularly among prison acquaintances. He referred one day to
• 3:01:03
  a pickpocket and stir who was always erring what he knew about the graft.
• 3:01:07
  He's tiresome, said old Hope. He's always talking shop One of the worst
• 3:01:13
  hated men at Auburn was Weeks, a well known clubman and banker who once
• 3:01:16
  stole over a million dollars. He was despised by the other convicts for he
• 3:01:22
  was a squealer. One of the screws in charge of the underground tunnel was
• 3:01:24
  doing things for Weeks, who had a snap the position of bookkeeper in the
• 3:01:28
  clothing department. In his desk, he kept whiskey, beer and cigars and
• 3:01:33
  lived well. One day a big bug paid him a visit, and Weeks
• 3:01:37
  belched how he had to give up his watch and chain in order to secure
• 3:01:41
  luxuries. His friend, the big bug reported to the prison authorities, and
• 3:01:45
  the principal keeper went to Weeks and made the coward squeal on the keeper who
• 3:01:48
  had his front. The screw lost his job, and when the convicts heard
• 3:01:52
  of it, they made weeks life miserable for years. But the man who
• 3:01:58
  was hated worst of all in prison was Biff Ellerson. I never understood why
• 3:02:03
  the other cons hated him, unless it was that he always wore a necktie.
• 3:02:09
  This is not etiquette and stir which, in the convict's opinion, ought
• 3:02:11
  to be a place of mourning. He had been a broker and a clubman,
• 3:02:16
  and was high up in the world. Ellison was a conscientious man,
• 3:02:18
  and once when a mere boy who had stolen a ten dollar watch was given
• 3:02:22
  fifteen years, had publicly criticized the judge and raised a storm in the newspapers.
• 3:02:28
  Ellison compared this lad's punishment with that of a man like Weeks, who
• 3:02:31
  had robbed orphans out of there all and only received ten years. For many
• 3:02:35
  is the time that this man, Biff Ellerson, has been kind to men
• 3:02:39
  and stir who hated him. He had charge of the dungeon at Auburn,
• 3:02:43
  where convicts who had broken the rules were confined. I have known him to
• 3:02:46
  open my door and give me water on the quiet many a time, and
• 3:02:50
  he did it for others who were ungrateful, and at the risk too,
• 3:02:52
  of never being trusted again by the screws, and of getting a dose of
• 3:02:54
  the cutting hole himself. By far the greater umber are these swell grafters who
• 3:03:01
  steal millions, die poor. For it is not what a man steals,
• 3:03:05
  but what he saves that counts. I have often noticed that the bank burglar
• 3:03:09
  who is high up in his profession is not the one who has the most
• 3:03:11
  money when he gets to be forty five or fifty years of age. The
• 3:03:15
  second or third class gun is more likely to lay by something. His general
• 3:03:20
  expenses are not so large, and he does not need so much fall money,
• 3:03:22
  and in a few years he can usually show more money than the big
• 3:03:24
  gun, who has a dozen living on him. I knew a big one
• 3:03:28
  who told me that every time he met a certain police official, his watch,
• 3:03:31
  a piece of jewelry, a diamond stud, or even his cuff buttons
• 3:03:35
  were much admired. The policeman always had some relative or friend who desired just
• 3:03:39
  the kind of ornament the big one happened to be wearing at the time.
• 3:03:43
  I cannot help comparing those swell guys whom I knew at Sing Sing with the
• 3:03:48
  third class pickpocket I met on the same bit. The big ones are dead
• 3:03:52
  or worse. But the other day I met in New York my old pickpocket
• 3:03:54
  friend and stir mister Aught. I am positive that the handshake he gave me
• 3:04:00
  was only a muscular action. For mister Ought has squared it. And the
• 3:04:03
  gun, who has reformed and has become prosperous, does not like to meet
• 3:04:07
  an old acquaintance who knows too much about his past life. When I ran
• 3:04:11
  across him in the city, I started in to talk about old times in
• 3:04:13
  Stir and of pals we knew in the long ago. But he answered me
• 3:04:16
  by saying nicks, which meant drop it. To get him to talk,
• 3:04:20
  I was forced to throw a few larries into him, such as, well,
• 3:04:24
  old man, only for your few mistakes of the past, you might
• 3:04:26
  be leader of Tammany Hall. Gradually he expanded and told me how much he
• 3:04:31
  had gained in weight since he left Stir, and what he had done for
• 3:04:33
  certain ungrateful grafters. He boasted that he could get bailed for anyone to the
• 3:04:37
  sum of fifty thousand dollars. And he told the truth. For this man,
• 3:04:41
  who had been a third class dip, owns at the present time three
• 3:04:45
  gin mills and is something of a politician. He has three beautiful children and
• 3:04:50
  is well up in the world. His daughter was educated at a convent,
• 3:04:52
  and his son is at a well known college. Yet I remember the time
• 3:04:56
  when this ex gun mister Ought and I locked in near one another and sing,
• 3:05:01
  sing and consoled one another with what little luxuries we could get together.
• 3:05:05
  Our letters booze and troubles were shared between us and many as the time,
• 3:05:09
  I have felt for him, for he had married a little shop girl and
• 3:05:11
  had two children at that time. When he got out of stir, he
• 3:05:13
  started and to square it, that is, not to go to prison anymore.
• 3:05:18
  He was wise, and no one can blame him. He is a
• 3:05:20
  good father and successful man. If he had been a better grafter, it
• 3:05:24
  would not have been so easy for him to reform. I wish him all
• 3:05:28
  kinds of prosperity, but I don't like him as well as I did when
• 3:05:31
  we wore the striped garb and whispered good luck to one another in that mansion
• 3:05:33
  of woes on the Hudson. One of mister Aught's possessions makes me smile whenever
• 3:05:39
  I think of it. In his swell parlor, over a brand new piano,
• 3:05:43
  hangs an oil painting of himself in which he takes great pride. I
• 3:05:48
  could not help thinking that that picture showed a far more prosperous man, and
• 3:05:52
  one in better surroundings than a certain photograph of his, which is quite as
• 3:05:56
  highly treasured as the more costly painting, although it is only a tin type
• 3:06:00
  number two thousand and odd in the rogues gallery end of chapter eight. Chapter
• 3:06:07
  nine in Stir and Out. Some of the most disagreeable days I ever spent
• 3:06:16
  in prison were the holidays, only three of which during the year, however,
• 3:06:20
  were kept for the July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In Sinxing. There
• 3:06:24
  was no work on those days and we could lie a bed longer. In
• 3:06:28
  the morning, the food was somewhat better than usual. Breakfast consisted of boiled
• 3:06:33
  ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a cup of coffee with milk.
• 3:06:37
  After mess we went as usual to chapel and then gave a kind of vaudeville
• 3:06:41
  show, all with local talent. We sang ragtime and sentimental songs. Some
• 3:06:46
  of us played on an instrument such as the violin, mandolin, a coronet,
• 3:06:50
  and the band gave the latest pieces from comic opera. After the show
• 3:06:54
  was over, we went to the mess room again, where we received a
• 3:06:56
  pan containing a piece of pie, some cheese, a few apples, as
• 3:07:01
  much bread as we desired, and a real luxury in stir two cigars with
• 3:07:05
  our booty. We then returned to our cells at about eleven o'clock in the
• 3:07:09
  morning, and after the guards had made the rounds to see that none of
• 3:07:11
  the birds had gone astray. We were locked up until the next morning,
• 3:07:15
  without anything more to eat. We were permitted to talk to one another from
• 3:07:18
  ourselves until five o'clock, when the night guards went on duty. Such is
• 3:07:24
  just imagine it a great day in sinksing the gun. No matter how big
• 3:07:28
  a guy he is, even if he has robbed a bank and stolen millions,
• 3:07:31
  is far worse off than the meanest laborer. Be he ever so poor.
• 3:07:37
  He may only have a crust, but he has that priceless boon his
• 3:07:41
  liberty. At Auburn, the routine on holidays is much the same as that
• 3:07:46
  of sinsing, but one is not compelled to go to chapel, which is
• 3:07:48
  a real kindness. I don't think a man ought to be forced to go
• 3:07:52
  to church, even in stir against his will. On holidays in Auburn,
• 3:07:56
  a man may stay in his cell instead of attending divine service if he so
• 3:08:00
  desires, and not be punished for it. Many a con prefers not to
• 3:08:03
  go even to the vaudeville show, which at Auburn is given by outside talent,
• 3:08:07
  but remains quietly all day in his cell. There is one other great
• 3:08:11
  holiday, privilege at Auburn, which some of the convicts appreciate more than I
• 3:08:16
  did. When the clock strikes twelve o'clock, the convicts locked in their cells
• 3:08:20
  start in to make the rest of the night hideous by pounding on the doors,
• 3:08:24
  playing all sorts of instruments, blowing whistles, and doing everything else that
• 3:08:26
  would make a noise. There is no more sleep that night, for everything
• 3:08:31
  is given over to bedlam until five thirty in the morning, when discipline again
• 3:08:33
  rains, and the nervous man who detests these holidays size with pleasure and says
• 3:08:37
  to himself, I am so glad that at last everything is quiet in this
• 3:08:41
  cursed Stir. What with poor food, little air and exercise, no female
• 3:08:48
  society, bad habits and holidays. It is no wonder that there are many
• 3:08:52
  attempts, in spite of the danger, to escape from Stir. Most of
• 3:08:56
  these attempts are unsuccessful, but a few succeed. One of the cleverest escapes
• 3:09:00
  I know have happened during my term at Auburn. B was the most feared
• 3:09:05
  convict in the prison. He was so intelligent, so reckless, and so
• 3:09:09
  good a mechanic that the guards were afraid he would make his elegant any day.
• 3:09:13
  Indeed, if ever a man threw away gifts for not even the proverbial
• 3:09:16
  mess of pottage, it was this man b. He was the cleverest man
• 3:09:20
  I ever met in stir or Out. It was after one of the delightful
• 3:09:24
  holidays at Auburn, that Bee, who was a nervous man, decided to
• 3:09:28
  make his gets. He picked a quarrel with another convict and was so rough
• 3:09:33
  that the principal keeper almost decided to let him off, But when b spat
• 3:09:37
  in his face, he changed his mind and put him in the dungeon.
• 3:09:39
  I have already mentioned this ramshackle building at Auburn. It was the worst yet.
• 3:09:45
  All Bee's clothing was taken off and an old coat, shirt and trousers
• 3:09:48
  without buttons were given him. An old piece of bay rope was handed him
• 3:09:52
  to tie around his waist, and he was left in the darkness. This
• 3:09:56
  was what he wanted for although they had stripped him naked and searched him,
• 3:10:00
  he managed to conceal a saw, which he used to such good purpose that
• 3:10:03
  on the second night he had sought himself into the yard instead of trying to
• 3:10:07
  go over the wall as most cons would have done. B placed the ladder,
• 3:10:11
  which he had found in the repair shop against the wall, and when
• 3:10:13
  the guards discovered the next morning that Bee was not in the dungeon and saw
• 3:10:16
  the ladder on the wall, they thought he had escaped and did not search
• 3:10:20
  the Stir, but notified the towns to look after him. He was not
• 3:10:24
  found, of course, for he was hiding in the cellar of the prison.
• 3:10:28
  A night or two afterwards, he went to the tailor shop, selected
• 3:10:31
  the best suit of clothes in the place, opened the safe which contained the
• 3:10:33
  valuables of the convicts, with a piece of steel and a hammer, thus
• 3:10:37
  robbing his fellow sufferers, and escaped by the ladder. After several months of
• 3:10:41
  freedom, he was caught, sent back to Stir and forfeited half his commutation
• 3:10:46
  time. A more tragic attempt was made by the convicts Big Benson and Little
• 3:10:50
  Kick. They got tools from friends in the machine shop and started in to
• 3:10:54
  saw around the locks of their doors. They worked quietly and were not discovered.
• 3:11:00
  The reason is that there is sometimes honor among thieves. Two of their
• 3:11:05
  friends in their own gallery, two on the gallery above and two on that
• 3:11:07
  underneath, tipped them off by a cough or some other noise whenever the night
• 3:11:11
  guard was coming, and they would cease their work with the saws. Convicts
• 3:11:16
  grow very keen in detecting the screw by the creaking of his boots on the
• 3:11:18
  wooden gallery floor. If they are not quite sure it is he, they
• 3:11:22
  often put a small piece of looking glass underneath the door and can thus see
• 3:11:24
  down the gallery near the direction a certain distance. Whenever Benson and Kick were
• 3:11:30
  at work, they would accompany the noise of the saw with some other noise
• 3:11:33
  so as to drown the former. For they knew that although they had some
• 3:11:35
  friends among the convicts, there were others who, if they got next,
• 3:11:39
  would tip off the keepers that an escape was to be made. In the
• 3:11:41
  morning, they would putty up the cuts made in the door during the night.
• 3:11:46
  One night, when everything was ready, they slipped from their cells,
• 3:11:48
  put the mug on the guard, took away his canister, and tied him
• 3:11:52
  to the bottom of one of their cells. They did the same to another
• 3:11:54
  guard who was on the watch in the gallery below, went to the outside
• 3:11:58
  window on the Hudson side of sing saying and putting a jack which they had
• 3:12:01
  concealed in the cell between the bars of the window spread them far apart so
• 3:12:05
  that they could make their exit. At this point, however, they were
• 3:12:07
  discovered by a third guard, who fired at them, hitting a little Kick
• 3:12:11
  in the leg. The shot aroused the sergeant of the guards, and he
• 3:12:15
  gave the alarm. Big Benson was just getting through the window when the whole
• 3:12:18
  pack of guards fired at him, killing him as dead as a door nail.
• 3:12:22
  Little Kick lost his nerve and surrendered and was taken to the dungeon.
• 3:12:26
  Big Benson, who had been serving a term for highway robbery, was one
• 3:12:30
  of the best like men in stir and when rumors reached the convicts that he
• 3:12:33
  had been shot, pandemonium broke loose in the cells. They yelled and beat
• 3:12:37
  their coffee cups against the iron doors, and the officials were powerless to quiet
• 3:12:41
  them. There was more noise even than on a holiday at Auburn. Soon
• 3:12:46
  after I was transferred from sing Sing Auburn, a friend came to me and
• 3:12:48
  said, Jimmy, are you on either of the shoe shop galleries? No,
• 3:12:54
  Well, if you can get on Keeper Riley's gallery, I think you
• 3:12:56
  can spring escape. Then he let me in on one of the cleverest beats
• 3:13:01
  I ever knew. If I could have succeeded in being put on that gallery,
• 3:13:03
  I should not have finished my first term in State's prison. At that
• 3:13:07
  time, work was slack, and the men were locked in their cells most
• 3:13:09
  of the time. Lay he started in to dig out the bricks from the
• 3:13:13
  ceiling of his cell. Each day, when taking his turn for an hour
• 3:13:16
  in the yard, he would give the cement, which he had done up
• 3:13:18
  in small packages, to friends, who would dump it in their buckets,
• 3:13:22
  the contents of which they would then throw into the large cesspool. While exercising
• 3:13:28
  in the yard, the cons would throw the bricks Lay he had removed on
• 3:13:31
  an old brick pile under the archway. After he had removed sufficient stuff to
• 3:13:35
  make a hole big enough to crawl through, all he had left to do
• 3:13:37
  was to saw a few boards and remove a few tiles, and then he
• 3:13:41
  was on the roof. It is the habit of the guard when he goes
• 3:13:45
  the rounds to wrap the ceiling of every cell with his stick, to see
• 3:13:48
  if there is an excavation. Lay he had guarded against this by filling a
• 3:13:52
  small box with sand and placing it in the opening. Then he pasted a
• 3:13:56
  piece of linen over the box and whitewashed it. Even when the screw came
• 3:14:01
  around a glance in his selk lay, he would continue to work, for
• 3:14:03
  he had rigged up a dummy of himself in bed. When he reached the
• 3:14:07
  roof, he dropped to a lower building, reached the wall which surrounds the
• 3:14:11
  prison, and with a rope, lowered himself to the ground. With a
• 3:14:15
  brand new suit of clothes which a friend had stolen from the shop lay,
• 3:14:18
  he went forth into the open and was never caught. At sing Sing.
• 3:14:20
  An old chum of mind named Tom escaped and would never have been caught if
• 3:14:24
  he had not been so sentimental. Indeed, he was improvident in every way.
• 3:14:30
  He had been a well known houseworker and made lots of money at this
• 3:14:31
  craft. But he lived well and blew what he stole, and consequently did
• 3:14:35
  many years in prison. He was nailed for a house that was touched of
• 3:14:39
  a clotworth thousands, and convicted, though of this particular crime he was I
• 3:14:43
  am convinced innocent. Of course, he howled like a stuck pig about the
• 3:14:48
  injustice of it all his life. While he was in Raymond Street jail,
• 3:14:52
  he got wind of the men who really did the job. They were pals,
• 3:14:56
  and he asked them to try to turn him out. His girl Tessy
• 3:15:01
  heard of it and wanted to go to police headquarters and squeal on the others
• 3:15:03
  to save her sweetheart. But Tom was frantic, for there was no squeal
• 3:15:07
  in it. You find grafters like that sometimes, and Tom was always sentiment.
• 3:15:13
  He certainly preferred to go to Stir rather than have the name of being
• 3:15:16
  a belcher, so he went to sing sing for seven and a half years.
• 3:15:20
  He was a good mechanic and was assigned to a brick laying job on
• 3:15:22
  the wall. He had an easy time in Stir, for he had a
• 3:15:26
  screwwright and got many luxuries to the underground, and was not watched very closely.
• 3:15:31
  One day he put a suit of clothes under his stripes. Vaugh moosed
• 3:15:33
  into a wood nearby and removed his stripes. He kept on walking till he
• 3:15:37
  reached Connecticut, which, as I have said, is the softest state in
• 3:15:41
  the Union. Tom would never have finished that bitten Stir if, as I
• 3:15:46
  have also said, he had not been so sentimental when in prison. A
• 3:15:50
  grafter continually thinks about his old pals, and hangouts, and the last scenes
• 3:15:54
  familiar to him before he went to Stir. Tom was a well known gun
• 3:15:58
  with his picture in the Hall of Fame. And yet after beating prison and
• 3:16:01
  leaving years behind, and knowing that if caught he would have to do additional
• 3:16:05
  time, would have the authority sore against him and be confined in the dark
• 3:16:09
  cell. He yet, in spite of all that, after a short time,
• 3:16:13
  made for his old haunts on the Bowery, where he was nailed by
• 3:16:16
  a fly cop and sent back to Sing. Sing So much for the force
• 3:16:20
  of habit and of environment, especially when a grafter is a good fellow and
• 3:16:22
  loves his old pals. On one occasion, Tom was well paid for being
• 3:16:28
  a good fellow. Jack was a well known pugilist who had become grafter.
• 3:16:33
  His wife's sister had married a millionaire, and Jack stole the millions, which
• 3:16:35
  amounted in this case to only one hundred thousand dollars. For this, he
• 3:16:41
  was put in prison for four years. While in Stir Tom, who had
• 3:16:43
  a screwwright, did in many favors which Jack remembered years afterwards. They were
• 3:16:48
  both on the outside again. Tom was still a grafter, but Jack had
• 3:16:52
  gone to work for a police official as a general utilityman and gained the confidence
• 3:16:56
  of his employer, who was chief of the detective force. I got Jack
• 3:17:00
  a position as a private detective in one of the swellest hotels in Florida.
• 3:17:03
  Now Tom happened to be grafting in that state and met his old friend Jack
• 3:17:07
  at the hotel. Instead of tipping off the chief that Tom was a grafter,
• 3:17:11
  Jack staked his old pal for he remembered the favors he had received in
• 3:17:16
  stir Tom was at liberty for four years, and then was brought to police
• 3:17:20
  headquarters, where the chief said to him, I know that you met Jack
• 3:17:22
  and Florida, and I am sore because he did not tape me off.
• 3:17:26
  Tom replied indignantly, He's not a hyena like your ilk. He's not capable
• 3:17:31
  of the basest of all crimes, in gratitude. I can forgive a man
• 3:17:33
  who puts his hand in my pocket and steals my money. I can forgive
• 3:17:37
  him for it may do him good. He may invest the money and become
• 3:17:39
  an honored member of the community. But the crime no man can forgive is
• 3:17:43
  ingratitude. It is the most inhuman crimes and only your ilk is capable of
• 3:17:48
  it. The chief smiled at Tom's sentiment that was always his weak point,
• 3:17:52
  poor Tom, and said, well, you're a clever thief, and I'm
• 3:17:56
  glad I was wise enough to catch you. Whereupon, when Tom sneered and
• 3:18:00
  remarked, I could die of old age in this city for all of you
• 3:18:03
  and your detectives, I was tipped off to you by a dicky bird stool
• 3:18:07
  pigeon. Damn him. I have known few grafters who had as much feeling
• 3:18:11
  as Tom. More than five years passed, and the time for my release
• 3:18:18
  from Auburn drew near. The last weeks dragged terribly. They seemed almost as
• 3:18:24
  long as the years that had gone before. Sometimes I thought the time would
• 3:18:26
  never come. The day before I was discharged, I bade goodbye to my
• 3:18:31
  old friends, who said to me, smiling, she has come at last,
• 3:18:35
  or it's near at hand, or it was a long time a coming.
• 3:18:41
  That night, I built many castles in the air with the help of
• 3:18:45
  the large piece of opium, and continued to make the good resolutions I had
• 3:18:48
  begun some time before. I had permission from the nightguard to keep my light
• 3:18:52
  burning after the usual hour, and The last book I read on my first
• 3:18:54
  term and Stir was Tristram Shandy. Just before I went to bed, I
• 3:19:00
  sang for the last time a popular prison song which had been running in my
• 3:19:03
  head for months, Roll round eighty nine, ninety ninety one, Sweet ninety
• 3:19:09
  two, Roll round, How happy I shall be the morning I go free?
• 3:19:13
  Sweet ninety two? Roll Round? Before I fell asleep, I resolved
• 3:19:18
  to be good, to quit opium and not the graft anymore. The resolution
• 3:19:22
  was easily made, and I went to bed happy. I was up at
• 3:19:26
  daybreak and penned a few last words to my friends and acquaintances remaining in Stir.
• 3:19:31
  I promised some of them that I would see their friends on the outside
• 3:19:33
  and send them delicacies in a little money. They knew that I would keep
• 3:19:37
  my promise, for I have always been a man of my word, as
• 3:19:41
  many of the most successful grafters are. It's only the vogel grafter, the
• 3:19:45
  petty larceny thief, for the sure thing article, who habitually breaks his word.
• 3:19:50
  Many people think that a thief cannot be trusted, and it certainly is
• 3:19:52
  true that the profession does not help to make a man virtuous in his personal
• 3:19:56
  relations. But it is also true that a man may be, and sometimes
• 3:20:01
  is honorable in his dealings with his own world, and at the same time
• 3:20:03
  a desperate criminal in the other. It is not, of course common to
• 3:20:09
  find a thief who is an honest man. But is there very often an
• 3:20:13
  honest man anywhere in the world of graft or out of it? If it
• 3:20:16
  is often so, much the better. But that has not been my experience.
• 3:20:20
  Does not everyone know that the men who do society the greatest injury have
• 3:20:24
  never done time, In fact, may never have broken any laws. I'm
• 3:20:28
  not trying to excuse myself or my companions in crime, but I think the
• 3:20:33
  world is a little twisted in its ideas as to right and wrong and who
• 3:20:35
  are the greatest sinners. When six o'clock on the final day came round,
• 3:20:41
  it was a great relief. I went through the regular routine, and at
• 3:20:46
  eight o'clock was called to the front office, received a new suit of clothes,
• 3:20:48
  as well as my fair home and ten dollars with which to begin life
• 3:20:52
  afresh. Hold On, I said to the warden. I worked eighteen months
• 3:20:58
  under the new peace price plan. I ought to be allowed a certain percentage
• 3:21:01
  of my earnings the warden, who was a good fellow and permitted almost anything
• 3:21:05
  to come in by the underground tunnel, asked the clerk if there was any
• 3:21:09
  more money for me. The clerk consulted with the keepers, and then reported
• 3:21:13
  to the warden that I was the most tired man that ever entered the prison,
• 3:21:16
  adding that it was very nervy of me to want more money after they
• 3:21:18
  had treated me far better than the parent of the prodigal treated as sun.
• 3:21:22
  The warden thereupon remarked to me that if I went pilfering again and were not
• 3:21:26
  more energetic than I had been in prison, I would never eat. Good
• 3:21:30
  Bye, he concluded, well, I said, I hope we'll never meet
• 3:21:35
  again. With my discharge papers in my hand and in my mind a resolution
• 3:21:41
  never to go back to the Stir, where so many of my friends strong
• 3:21:43
  fellows too, had lost their lives or had become physical or mental wrecks.
• 3:21:48
  I left Auburn penitentiary and went forth into the free world. I had gone
• 3:21:52
  to Stir a boy of twenty one, and left it a man of twenty
• 3:21:56
  six. I entered healthy and left broken down in health, with the marks
• 3:22:01
  of the jail bird upon me, marks mental and physical that would never leave
• 3:22:05
  me, and habits that I knew would stick closer than a brother. I
• 3:22:09
  knew that there was nothing in a life of crime. I had tested that
• 3:22:13
  well enough. But there were times during the last months I spent in my
• 3:22:16
  cell when in spite of my good resolutions, I hated the outside world,
• 3:22:20
  which had forced me into a place that took away from my manhood and strength.
• 3:22:24
  I knew I had sinned against my fellow men. But I knew too
• 3:22:26
  that there had been something good in me. I was half Irish, and
• 3:22:31
  about that race there is naturally something roguish, and that was part of my
• 3:22:33
  wickedness. When I left stir I knew I was not capable after five years
• 3:22:39
  and some months of unnatural routine of what I should have been by nature.
• 3:22:45
  A man is like an electric plant. Use poor fuel and you will have
• 3:22:48
  poor electricity. The food is bad. In prison, the cells that sing
• 3:22:52
  saying are a crime against the criminal. And in these damp and narrow cells
• 3:22:56
  he spends on the average eighteen hours out of the twenty four in the name
• 3:23:01
  of humanity and science. What can society expect from a man who has spent
• 3:23:05
  a number of years in such surroundings. He will come out of stir as
• 3:23:09
  a rule, a burden on the taxpayers, unable to work and confirmed in
• 3:23:11
  a life of crime, desperate and willing to take any chance. The low
• 3:23:16
  down, petty, canting thief who works all the charitable societies and will rob
• 3:23:20
  only those who are as benefactors or a doorman, is utterly useless in prison
• 3:23:26
  are out. The healthy, intelligent, ambitious grafter is capable of reform and
• 3:23:31
  usefulness if shown the error of his ways, or taken hold of before his
• 3:23:33
  physical and mental health is ruined by prison life, you can appeal to his
• 3:23:39
  manhood. At that early time, after he has spent a certain number of
• 3:23:41
  years in stir, his teeth become decayed, he cannot chew his food,
• 3:23:45
  which is coarse and ill cooked. His stomach gets bad, and once his
• 3:23:48
  stomach becomes deranged, it is only a short time afore his head is in
• 3:23:52
  a like condition. Eventually he may be transferred to the mad house. I
• 3:23:56
  left Aubinster a happy man for the time, for I thought everything would be
• 3:24:01
  smooth sailing. As a matter of fact, I could not know the actual
• 3:24:05
  realities I had to face inside and outside of me, and so all my
• 3:24:09
  good resolutions were nothing but a dream. It was a fine May morning that
• 3:24:13
  I left Auburn, and I was greatly excited and bewildered by the brightness and
• 3:24:18
  joy of everything about me. I took my hat off, gazed up at
• 3:24:22
  the clear sky, looked up and down the street, and at passers by.
• 3:24:24
  With a feeling of pleasure and confusion. I turned to the man who
• 3:24:28
  had been released with me and said, let's go and get something to eat.
• 3:24:33
  On the way to the restaurant, however, the jangling of the trolleys
• 3:24:35
  upset my nerves. I could not eat and drank a couple of whiskies.
• 3:24:41
  They didn't taste right. Everything seemed tame compared with the air, which I
• 3:24:45
  breathed like a drunken man. I bought a few pounds of tea, canned
• 3:24:50
  goods, cheese, and fruit, which I sent by a keeper to my
• 3:24:54
  friends and stir. I also bought for my friends a few dollars worth a
• 3:24:58
  morphine and some pulverized gum opium. How could I send it to them,
• 3:25:01
  for the keeper was not next to the underground. Suddenly I had an idea.
• 3:25:07
  I bought ten cents worth of walnuts, split them, took the meat
• 3:25:09
  out, put the morphine and opium in, closed them with mucilage, put
• 3:25:13
  them in a bag, and sent them to the convicts with the basket of
• 3:25:16
  other things I had left with the innocent keeper. I got aboard my train,
• 3:25:20
  and as I pulled out of the town of Auburn, gave a great
• 3:25:24
  sigh of relief. I longed to go directly to New York, for I
• 3:25:26
  always did like big cities, particularly Manhattan, and I was dying to see
• 3:25:31
  some of my old girls. But I stopped off at Syracuse according to promises
• 3:25:35
  to deliver some messages to the relatives of convicts, and so reached New York
• 3:25:39
  a few hours later than my family and friends had expected. They had gone
• 3:25:43
  to meet an earlier train and had not waited, so that when I reached
• 3:25:46
  my native city after this long absence, I found nobody at the station to
• 3:25:48
  welcome me back. It made me sad for a moment, but when I
• 3:25:52
  passed out into the streets of the big town, I felt excited and joyous,
• 3:25:56
  and so confused that I thought I knew almost everybody on the street.
• 3:26:01
  I nearly spoke to a stranger, a woman, thinking she was blond Maimie.
• 3:26:05
  I soon reached the Bowery, and there met semi old pals, but
• 3:26:09
  was much surprised to find them changed and older. For years and years,
• 3:26:15
  a convict lives in a dream. He is isolated from the realities of the
• 3:26:18
  outside world. In Stir, he is a machine, and his mind is
• 3:26:22
  continually dwelling on the last time he was at liberty. He thinks of his
• 3:26:26
  family and friends as they were then. They may have become old, sickly,
• 3:26:30
  and wrinkled, but he does not realize this. When set free,
• 3:26:35
  he tries to find them. He expects that they will be unchanged. But
• 3:26:37
  if he finds them at all, what a shock. An old timer I
• 3:26:41
  knew a man named Packy, who had served fifteen years out of a life
• 3:26:46
  sentence and had been twice declared insane, told me that he had reached a
• 3:26:50
  state of mind in which he imagined himself to be still a young fellow of
• 3:26:54
  the age he was when he first went to Stir. End of chapter nine,
• 3:27:01
  Chapter ten at the graft again, I spent my first day in New
• 3:27:09
  York looking at my old POWs and girls, especially the latter. How I
• 3:27:13
  longed to exchange friendly words with a woman, But the girls I knew were
• 3:27:18
  all gone, and I was forced to make new acquaintances on the spot.
• 3:27:22
  I spent all the afternoon and most of the evening with a girl I picked
• 3:27:24
  up on the bowery. I thought she was the most beautiful creature in the
• 3:27:28
  world. But when I saw her again weeks afterwards, when women were not
• 3:27:31
  so novel to me, I found her almost hideous. I must have longed
• 3:27:35
  for a young woman's society, for I did not go to see my poor
• 3:27:39
  old mother until I had left my bowery acquaintance. And yet my mother had
• 3:27:43
  often proved herself my only friend. But I had a long talk with her
• 3:27:48
  before I slept, and when I left her for a stroll in the wonderful
• 3:27:50
  city before going to bed, my resolution to be good was keener than ever.
• 3:27:56
  As I sauntered along the bowery that night, the desire to talk to
• 3:27:58
  an old pal was strong. But where was I to find a friend?
• 3:28:01
  Only in places where thieves hung out. Well, I said to myself,
• 3:28:07
  there is no harm in talking to my old pals. I will tell them
• 3:28:09
  there is nothing in the graft, and that I have squared it. I
• 3:28:13
  dropped into a music hall, a resort for pickpockets kept by an old gun,
• 3:28:16
  and there I met Teddy, whom I had not seen for years.
• 3:28:20
  Hello Jim, he said, giving me the glad hand. I thought you
• 3:28:24
  were dead. Not quite so bad as that, Teddy, I replied,
• 3:28:28
  I am still in evidence. We had a couple of beers. I could
• 3:28:33
  not quite make up my mind to tell him I had squared it, and
• 3:28:35
  he put me next to things in town. Take my advice, he said,
• 3:28:39
  and keep away from blank blank, naming certain clubs and saloons where thieves
• 3:28:43
  congregated. The proprietors of those places and the guns that hang out there,
• 3:28:48
  many of them, anyway, are not on the level. Some of the
• 3:28:50
  grafters who go there of the reputation of being clever dips. But they have
• 3:28:54
  protection from the front office men because they are rats and so can tear things
• 3:28:58
  open without danger. By giving up a certain amount of stuff and dropping a
• 3:29:01
  stall or two occasionally to keep the flyman's reputation. They are able to have
• 3:29:05
  a bank account and never go to stir. The flymen hang out in these
• 3:29:09
  joints waiting for a tip, and they have bad places for a graft who
• 3:29:13
  is on the level. I listened with attention and said, by force of
• 3:29:16
  habit, put me next to the stool pigeons. Teddy, you know I
• 3:29:20
  am just back from stir well, he answered, outside of so and so,
• 3:29:26
  and he mentioned a half dozen mean my name. None of them will
• 3:29:28
  hang out in those joints, can be trusted. Come to my house,
• 3:29:31
  Jim, and we'll have a long talk about old times, and I'll introduce
• 3:29:33
  you to some good people, mean thieves. I went with him to his
• 3:29:39
  home, which was in a tenement house on the lower part of the first
• 3:29:41
  ward. He introduced me to his wife and children, and a number of
• 3:29:45
  dips burglars and strong armed men who had made his place a kind of rendezvous.
• 3:29:50
  We talked old times and graft, and the wife and little boy of
• 3:29:52
  eight years old listened attentively. The boy had a much better chance to learn
• 3:29:56
  the graft than I had when a kid, for my father as an honest
• 3:30:00
  man. The three strong armed men highwaymen, were a study to me,
• 3:30:05
  for they were Westerners with any amount of nerve. One of them, Denver
• 3:30:09
  Read, a big powerful fellow, mentioned a few bits he had done in
• 3:30:13
  Western prisons, explained a few of his grafts, and seemed to despise New
• 3:30:16
  York guns, whom he considered cowardly. He said, the Easterners feared the
• 3:30:20
  police too much and always wanted to fix things before they dared to graft.
• 3:30:26
  I told them a little about New York State penitentiaries, and then ted said
• 3:30:30
  to Denver Red, what do you think of the big fellow. Denver grinned,
• 3:30:33
  and the others followed suit. And I heard the latest story. A
• 3:30:37
  well known politician, leader of his district, a cousin of Senator wet Coin,
• 3:30:41
  a man of gigantic stature with a pleasing name. I will say of
• 3:30:46
  Flower, had an adventure. He is even better developed physically than mentally,
• 3:30:52
  and virtually king of his district. And whenever he passes by, the girls
• 3:30:56
  bow to him. The petty thief calls him mister, and men and women
• 3:30:58
  alike call him Big Flower. Well, one night, not long before the
• 3:31:03
  gathering took place in Teddy's house, Big Flower was passing through the toughest portion
• 3:31:07
  of his bailiwick, humming rag time, when my new acquaintances, the three
• 3:31:11
  strong arm workers from the West, stuck him up with canisters and relieved him
• 3:31:16
  of a five carrot diamond stud, a gold watch and chain, and a
• 3:31:18
  considerable amount of cash. The next day there was consternation among the clan of
• 3:31:24
  the wet Coins, for Big Flower, who had been thus nipped, was
• 3:31:28
  their idol. We all laughed heartily at the story, and I went home
• 3:31:31
  and to sleep. The next day I found it a very easy thing to
• 3:31:35
  drift back to my old haunts. In the evening, I went to a
• 3:31:39
  sporting house on twenty seventh Street, where a number of guns hang out.
• 3:31:43
  I got the glad hand and an invitation to join in some good graft.
• 3:31:46
  I said I was done with the rocky path. They smiled and gently said,
• 3:31:50
  we've been there to Jim. One of them added, by the way,
• 3:31:54
  I hear you're going up against the hop Jim. It was Billy,
• 3:31:58
  and he invited me home with him. There I met Ida, as pretty
• 3:32:03
  a little shop girl as one wants to see. Billy said there was always
• 3:32:07
  an opening for me, and that times were pretty good. He and Ida
• 3:32:09
  had an opium layout, and they asked me to take a smoke. I
• 3:32:13
  told that my nerves were not right and that I had quit. Poor fellow,
• 3:32:18
  said Billy. Perhaps it was the sight or smell of the hop but
• 3:32:22
  anyway, I got the yen yen and shook as in an egg you.
• 3:32:26
  My eyes watered and I grew as pale as a sheet. I thought my
• 3:32:30
  bones were unjointing and took a pint of whiskey. It had no effect.
• 3:32:33
  Then Billy acted as my physician and prepared a pill for me. So vanished
• 3:32:39
  one good resolution. My only excuse to myself was human nature is weak,
• 3:32:43
  ain't it. No. Sooner as I'd taken the first pill than a feeling
• 3:32:46
  of ecstasy came over me. I became talkative, and Billy, noticing the
• 3:32:50
  effect, said Jim, before you try to knock off the hop you had
• 3:32:54
  better wait till you reach the next world. The opium brought peace to my
• 3:32:58
  nerves, dulled my conscience, and I had a long talk with Billy and
• 3:33:01
  Ida about old pals. They told me who was dead, who were in
• 3:33:05
  stir, and who were good prosperous. Not many days after my opium fall,
• 3:33:11
  I got a note from Ethel, who had heard that I had come
• 3:33:13
  home. In the letter, she said that she was not happy with her
• 3:33:18
  husband, that she married to please a father and to get a comfortable home.
• 3:33:22
  She wanted to make an appointment to meet me, whom she said she
• 3:33:24
  had always loved. I knew what her letter meant, and I did not
• 3:33:28
  answer it, and I did not keep the appointment. My relation to her
• 3:33:31
  was the only decent thing in my life, and I thought it might as
• 3:33:35
  well keep it right. I have never seen her since the last time she
• 3:33:37
  visited me at Auburn. For some time after getting back from stir I tried
• 3:33:43
  for a job, but the effort was only half hearted on my part,
• 3:33:46
  and people do not fall over themselves in their eagerness to find something for the
• 3:33:48
  ex convict to do. Even if I had had the best intentions in the
• 3:33:52
  world, the path of the ex convict is a difficult one, as I
• 3:33:56
  have since found, I was run down physically and could not carry a hod
• 3:34:01
  or do any heavy labor, even if I had desired to. I knew
• 3:34:05
  no trade and should have been forever distrusted by the upper world. The only
• 3:34:09
  thing I could do well was the graft, and the only society that would
• 3:34:13
  welcome me was that of the underworld. My old pals knew I had the
• 3:34:16
  requisite nerve and was capable of take my place in any good mob. My
• 3:34:20
  resolutions began to ooze away, especially as at that time my father was alive
• 3:34:24
  and making enough money to support the rest of the family. So I had
• 3:34:28
  only myself to look out for, and that was a lot for I had
• 3:34:31
  my old habits and new ones I had formed in prison to satisfy. When
• 3:34:37
  I stayed quietly at home, I grew intensely nervous, and soon I felt
• 3:34:41
  that I was bound to slip back into the world of graft. I am
• 3:34:45
  convinced that I would never have returned to star or to my old trade.
• 3:34:48
  However, if my environment had been different on my release from what it had
• 3:34:50
  been formally, and if I could have found a job. I don't say
• 3:34:56
  this in the way of complaint. I now know that a man can reform,
• 3:34:58
  even among them old associates. It is impossible, as the reader will
• 3:35:01
  see, I believe before he finishes this book, for me, ever,
• 3:35:05
  to fall back again. Some men acquire wisdom at twenty one, some not
• 3:35:09
  till they are thirty five, and some never. Wisdom came to me when
• 3:35:13
  I was thirty five. If I had had my present experience, I should
• 3:35:18
  not have fallen after my first bit. But I might not have fallen anyway
• 3:35:20
  if I had been placed in a better environment after my first term in prison.
• 3:35:24
  A man can stand alone if he is strong enough and has sufficient reasons,
• 3:35:28
  but if he is tottering, he needs outside help. I was tottering
• 3:35:33
  and did not get the help, and so I speedily began to graft again.
• 3:35:37
  I started in on easy game, on picking pockets and simple swindling.
• 3:35:41
  I made my first touch after my return on Broadway. One day. I
• 3:35:45
  met the kid there looking for a dollar as hard as a financier. He
• 3:35:48
  asked me if I was not about ready to begin again, and pointed out
• 3:35:50
  a swell mall, big breezy and blonde, coming down the street with a
• 3:35:54
  large wallet sticking out of her pocket. It seemed easy, with no comeback
• 3:36:00
  in sight, and I agreed to stall for the kid. Just as she
• 3:36:03
  went into Dennings which is now Wannamaker's. I went in ahead of her,
• 3:36:07
  turned and met her. She stopped, and at that moment the kid nicked
• 3:36:09
  her. We got away all right, and found in the wallet over one
• 3:36:13
  hundred dollars and a small knife. In the knife were three rivets, which
• 3:36:18
  we discovered on inspection to be magnifying glasses. We applied our eyes to the
• 3:36:24
  same, and saw some pictures which would have made mister Anthony Comstock howell.
• 3:36:28
  If he had found this knife on the aristocratic lady, he surely would have
• 3:36:31
  sent her to the penitentiary. It was a beautiful pearl knife, gold tipped,
• 3:36:35
  and must have been a loss. And yet I felt I was justified
• 3:36:39
  and taken that wallet. I thought I had done the lady a good turn.
• 3:36:43
  She might have been fined, and why shouldn't I have the money rather
• 3:36:45
  than the magistrate. The kid was one of the cleverest dips I ever knew.
• 3:36:50
  He was delicate and cunning and the best stone getter in the city.
• 3:36:54
  But he had one weakness that made him almost a devil. He fell in
• 3:36:58
  love with every pretty face he saw and cared no more for leading a girl
• 3:37:03
  astray than I minded kick and a cat. I felt sorry for many a
• 3:37:07
  little working girl he had shaken after a couple of weeks, and I used
• 3:37:09
  to jolly them to cheer them up. I once met Kate, one of
• 3:37:13
  them, and said, with a smile, did you hear about the kid's
• 3:37:16
  latest? Why don't you have him arrested for bigamy? She did not smile
• 3:37:20
  at first, but said he'll never have any luck. My mother is a
• 3:37:24
  widow, and she praised to God to afflict him with a widow's curse.
• 3:37:28
  One of the Ten Commandments, I replied, says thou shalt not take the
• 3:37:33
  name of the Lord, thy God in vain, and between you and me,
• 3:37:35
  Kate, the commandment does not say that widows have the monopoly on cursing.
• 3:37:39
  It is a sin anyway, whether it is a man, a girl,
• 3:37:41
  or a widow. This was too deep for Kate. Stop preaching,
• 3:37:46
  Jim, she said, and give me a drink. And I did.
• 3:37:50
  After she had drunk half a dozen glasses of beer, she felt better.
• 3:37:54
  Women are queer anyway. No matter how bad they are, they are always
• 3:37:56
  good. All women are thieves, or rather petty pilfers, bless them.
• 3:38:01
  When I was just beginning to graft again and it was going easy, I
• 3:38:05
  used to work a game which well showed the natural graft im propensities of women.
• 3:38:09
  I would buy a lot of Confederate bills for a few cents and put
• 3:38:13
  them in a good leather. When I saw a swell looking mall evidently out
• 3:38:16
  shopping, walking along the street, I would drop the purse in her path,
• 3:38:20
  and just as she saw it, I would pick it up as if
• 3:38:22
  I had just found it. Nine women out of ten would say it's mine.
• 3:38:26
  I dropped it. I would open the leather and let her get a
• 3:38:28
  peep of the bills, and that would set her pilfer and propensities going it's
• 3:38:33
  mine. She would repeat, what's in it? I would hold the leather
• 3:38:35
  carefully away from her, look into it cautiously, and say, I can
• 3:38:39
  see a twenty dollar bill, a thirty dollar bill, and a one hundred
• 3:38:41
  dollar bill, but how do I know you dropped it? Then she'd get
• 3:38:46
  excited and exclaim, if you don't give it to me quick, I'll call
• 3:38:48
  a policeman. Madam, I will reply, I am an honest workingman,
• 3:38:52
  and if you will give me ten dollars for a reward, I will give
• 3:38:56
  you this valuable purse. Perhaps she would then say, give me the pocket
• 3:39:00
  book and I'll give you the money out of it. To that, I
• 3:39:03
  would reply, no, madam, I wish you to receive the pocketbook just
• 3:39:07
  as it was. I would then handle the book and she would give me
• 3:39:09
  a good ten dollar bill. There's a woman down the street. I would
• 3:39:13
  continue looking for something that would alarm her, and away she would go without
• 3:39:18
  even opening the leather to see if her money was all right. She wouldn't
• 3:39:22
  shop any more that day, but would hasten home to examine her treasure worth.
• 3:39:26
  As she would discover to her sorrow about thirty cents. Then no doubt
• 3:39:30
  her conscience would trouble her. At least she would weep. I am sure
• 3:39:33
  of that. When I got my hand in again, I began to go
• 3:39:39
  for stone getting, which was a fat graft. In those days, when
• 3:39:41
  the Lexo Committee was beginning their reform, everybody wore a diamond. Even mechanics
• 3:39:46
  and farmers were not satisfied unless they had pins to stick in their ties.
• 3:39:50
  They bought them on the installment plan, and I suppose they do. Yet
• 3:39:54
  I could always find a laborer or a hod carrier that had a stone.
• 3:39:58
  They usually called attention to it by keeping their hands carefully on it, and
• 3:40:01
  very often it found its way into my pocket, for carelessness is bound to
• 3:40:05
  come as soon as a man thinks he is safe. They probably thought of
• 3:40:09
  their treasure for months afterwards, at least whenever the collector came around for the
• 3:40:11
  weekly installments of pay for stones they no longer possessed. It was about this
• 3:40:18
  time that I met General Brace and the Professor. One was a Harvard graduate
• 3:40:22
  and the other came from good old Yale, and both were grafters. When
• 3:40:26
  I knew them, they used to hang out and a joint on Seventh Street,
• 3:40:28
  waiting to be treated. They had been good grafters, but through hop
• 3:40:33
  and booze, had come down from forging and queer shoving to common shoplifting and
• 3:40:35
  petty lossonny business. General Brace was very reticent in regard to his family and
• 3:40:41
  his own past. But as I often invited him to smoke opium with me,
• 3:40:46
  he sometimes gave me little confidences. I learned that he came from a
• 3:40:48
  well known Southern family and had held a good position in his native city.
• 3:40:54
  But he was a blood and to satisfy his habits, he began to forge
• 3:40:56
  checks. His relatives saved him from prison, but he left home and started
• 3:41:01
  on the downward career of graftam. We called him General Brace because he looked
• 3:41:05
  like a soldier and was continually on the borrow. But a good story always
• 3:41:09
  accompanied his asking for a loan, and he was seldom refused. I've often
• 3:41:13
  listened to this man after he had smoked a quantity of opium, and his
• 3:41:16
  conversational powers were something remarkable. Many a gun and politician would listen to him
• 3:41:22
  with wonder. I used to call him General Brace. Coleridge, the Professor
• 3:41:26
  was almost as good a talker. We used to treat them both in order
• 3:41:31
  to get them to converse together. It was a liberal education to hear them
• 3:41:33
  hold forth in that low down saloon where some of the finest talks on literature
• 3:41:37
  and politics were listened to with interest by men born and bred on the East
• 3:41:41
  Side, with no more education than a turnip, but with keen wits.
• 3:41:46
  The graduates had good manners, and we liked them and staked them regularly.
• 3:41:50
  They used to write letters for politicians and guns who could not read or write.
• 3:41:52
  They stuck together like brothers. If one of them had five cents,
• 3:41:56
  he would go into a morgue Gin mill where a rocket whisks he could be
• 3:42:00
  obtained for that sum, and pour out almost a full tumbler booze. Just
• 3:42:05
  as he sipped a little of the rock gut, his pal would come in,
• 3:42:07
  as though by accident. If it was the general who had made the
• 3:42:11
  purchase, he would say, hello, old pal, just taste this fine
• 3:42:13
  whisky. It tastes like ten cents stuff. The Professor would take a sip
• 3:42:18
  and become enthusiastic. They would sip and exclaim in turn, until the booze
• 3:42:22
  was all gone and no further expense incurred. This little trick grew into a
• 3:42:26
  habit, and the bartender got onto it. But he liked Colonel Brace and
• 3:42:28
  the Professor so much that he used to wink at it. I was in
• 3:42:33
  this rockcut saloon one day when I met Jesse Rr, with whom I had
• 3:42:37
  spent several years in prison. I have often wondered how this man happened to
• 3:42:41
  join the underworld, for he not only came of a good family and was
• 3:42:43
  well educated, but was also of a good quiet disposition. A prime favorite
• 3:42:48
  in Stir and Out. He was tactful enough never to roast convicts who were
• 3:42:52
  very sensitive, and was so sympathetic that many a heartache was poured into his
• 3:42:56
  ear. He never betrayed a friend's confidence. I was glad to meet Jesse
• 3:43:00
  again, and we exchanged greetings in the little saloon. When he asked me
• 3:43:03
  what I was doing, I replied that I had a mortgage on the world,
• 3:43:05
  and that I was trying to draw my interest from the same I still
• 3:43:09
  had that old dream that the world owed me a living. I confined in
• 3:43:13
  him that I regarded the world as my oyster, more decidedly than I had
• 3:43:16
  done before I met him. In stir I found that Jesse, however,
• 3:43:20
  had squared it for good and was absolutely on the level. He had a
• 3:43:24
  good job as a shipping clerk in a large mercantal house. When I asked
• 3:43:28
  him if he was not afraid of being tipped off by some central office man
• 3:43:31
  or by some stool pigeon, he admitted that it was the terror of his
• 3:43:33
  life, but that he had been at work for eighteen months and hoped that
• 3:43:37
  none of his enemies would turn up. I asked him who had recommended him
• 3:43:41
  for the job, and I smiled when he answered General Brace, that clever
• 3:43:46
  Harvard graduate often wrote letters which were of assistance to guns who had squared it,
• 3:43:50
  though the poor fellow could not take care of himself. Jesse had a
• 3:43:54
  story to tell, which seemed to me one of the saddest I have heard,
• 3:43:56
  And as he grew older, I found that most all stories about people
• 3:44:00
  in the underworld, no matter how cheerfully they begin, ended sadly. It
• 3:44:03
  was about his brother Harry. The story that Jesse told Harry was married,
• 3:44:09
  and there is where the trouble often begins. When Jesse was in prison,
• 3:44:13
  Harry, who was on the level and occupied a good position as a bookkeeper,
• 3:44:16
  used to send him money, always against his wife's wishes. She also
• 3:44:22
  complained because Harry supported his old father. Harry toiled like a slave for this
• 3:44:26
  woman, who scolded him and who spent his money recklessly. He made a
• 3:44:30
  good salary, but he could not keep up with her extravagance. One time,
• 3:44:33
  while in the country, she met a sporting man, mister O B.
• 3:44:37
  In a few weeks. It was the old old story of a foolish
• 3:44:39
  woman and a pretty good fellow. While she was in the country, her
• 3:44:43
  young son was drowned, and she sent Harry a telegram announcing it. But
• 3:44:48
  she kept on living high, and her name and that of O. B
• 3:44:50
  were often coupled. Harry tried to stifle his sorrow and kept on sending money
• 3:44:54
  to the B. Latter he called wife, who appeared in a fresh new
• 3:44:58
  dress wherever she went out with me ob One day Harry received a letter calling
• 3:45:03
  him to the office to explain his accounts. He replied that he had been
• 3:45:07
  sick but would straighten everything out. The next day. When his father went
• 3:45:11
  to awaken him in the morning, Harry was dead. A file of morphine
• 3:45:15
  on the floor told the story. Jesse reached his brother's room in time to
• 3:45:18
  hear his old father's cry of anguish and to read a letter from Harry explaining
• 3:45:22
  that he had robbed the firm of thousands and asking his brother to be kind
• 3:45:26
  to Helene, his wife. Then Jesse went to see the woman to tell
• 3:45:31
  her about her husband's death. He found her at a summer hotel with mister
• 3:45:35
  Ob and heard the servants talk about them. Jim said Jesse to me,
• 3:45:39
  at this point in the story, here is wise counsel. Wherever thou goest,
• 3:45:46
  keep the portals of thy lugs open. As you wander on through life,
• 3:45:50
  you are apt to hear slander about your women. Folks. What is
• 3:45:54
  more entertaining than a little scandal, especially when it doesn't hit home. But
• 3:45:58
  don't look into it too deep, for it generally turns out true or worse.
• 3:46:03
  I laid a trap for my poor brother's wife, and one of her
• 3:46:07
  letters making clear her guilt, fell into my hands. A telegram in reply
• 3:46:11
  from mister O B. Likewise came to me, and in a murderous frame
• 3:46:15
  of mind, I read its contents and then laughed like a hyena. I
• 3:46:18
  am sorry I cannot meet you, but I was married this morning and am
• 3:46:22
  going on my wedding tour au revoir. You asked me what became of my
• 3:46:28
  sister in law, Jim. She is young and pretty and will get along
• 3:46:31
  in this world, but truly the wages of sin is to her living ashes.
• 3:46:39
  It was not very long after my return home that I was at work
• 3:46:41
  again, not only its safe dipping and swindling, but gradually at all my
• 3:46:46
  old grafts, including more or less housework. There was a difference, however,
• 3:46:50
  I grew far more reckless than I had been before I went to prison.
• 3:46:54
  I now smoked opium regularly and had to lay out in my furnished room
• 3:46:58
  and a girl to run it. The drug made me take chances I never
• 3:47:01
  used to take, and I became dead to almost everything that was good.
• 3:47:05
  I went home very seldom. I liked my family in a curious way,
• 3:47:09
  but I did not have enough vitality or much feeling about anything. I began
• 3:47:13
  to go out to graft always in a dazed condition, so much so that
• 3:47:18
  on one occasion a pal tried to take advantage of my state of mind.
• 3:47:20
  It was while I was doing a bit of housework with Sandy and Hacks,
• 3:47:24
  two clever grafters. We inserted into the lock the front door key which we
• 3:47:28
  had made, threw off the tumblers and opened the door. Hacks and I
• 3:47:31
  stalled, while Sandy went in and got six hundred dollars and many valuable jewels.
• 3:47:37
  He did not show us much of the money. However, the next
• 3:47:39
  day the newspapers described the touch and told the amount of money which had been
• 3:47:43
  stolen. Then I knew I had been done by Sandy and Hacks, who
• 3:47:46
  stood in with him. But Sandy said the papers were wrong. The mean
• 3:47:50
  thief, however, could not keep his mouth shut, and I got him.
• 3:47:54
  I'm glad I was not arrested for murder. It was a close shave,
• 3:47:58
  for I cut him unmercifully. With any in this I had the approval
• 3:48:01
  of my friends, for they all believed the worst thing a graft could do
• 3:48:05
  was to sink a pal. Sansey did not squeal, but he swore he
• 3:48:09
  would get even with me even if I had not been so reckless as I
• 3:48:13
  was, then I would not have feared him, for I knew there was
• 3:48:16
  no comeback in him. Another thing the dope did was to make me laugh
• 3:48:22
  at everything. It was fun for me to graft, and I saw the
• 3:48:24
  humor of life. I remember I used to say that this world is the
• 3:48:28
  best possible, that the fine line of cranks and fools in it gives it
• 3:48:31
  variety. One day I had a good laugh in a Brooklyn car Tim George
• 3:48:37
  and I got next to a Dutchman who had a large prop in his tie.
• 3:48:41
  He stood for a newspaper under his chin, and his stone came as
• 3:48:45
  slick as grease. A minute afterwards, he missed his property, and we
• 3:48:48
  did not dare to move. He told his wife, who was with him,
• 3:48:52
  that his stone was gone. She called him a fool and said that
• 3:48:54
  he had left it at home in the bureau drawer, that she remembered it
• 3:48:58
  well. Then he looked down and saw that his front was gone too.
• 3:49:01
  He said to his wife, I'm sure I had my watch and chain with
• 3:49:03
  me. But his wife was so superior that she easily convinced him he had
• 3:49:07
  left at her home. The wisdom of women is beyond finding out, but
• 3:49:11
  I enjoyed that incident. I shall never forget the look that came over the
• 3:49:16
  Dutchman's face when he missed his front. I was too sleepy those days to
• 3:49:20
  go out of town much on the graft, and was losing my ambition generally.
• 3:49:24
  I even cared very little for the girls and gave up many of my
• 3:49:28
  amusements. I used to stay most of the time in my furnished room smoking
• 3:49:31
  hop. When I went out, it was to get some dough quick,
• 3:49:35
  and to that end I embraced almost any means. At night, I often
• 3:49:39
  drifted into some concert hall, but it was not like the old days when
• 3:49:43
  I was a kid. The bowery is far more respectable now than it ever
• 3:49:46
  was before. Twenty years ago. There was no worse place possible for ruining
• 3:49:50
  girls and making thieves than Billy mc glory's joined on Hester Street. About ten
• 3:49:54
  o'clock in the morning, slumming parties would chuckle with glee when the doors at
• 3:49:58
  mc glories would be closed, and young girls in scanty clothing would dance the
• 3:50:01
  cancan. These girls would often fight together and frequently were beaten unmercifully by the
• 3:50:07
  men who lived on them. In their trade. Often men were forcibly robbed
• 3:50:11
  in these joints. There was little danger of an arrest, for if the
• 3:50:15
  sucker squealed, the policemen on the beat would club him off to the beat
• 3:50:18
  of another copper, who would either continue the process or arrest him for disorderly
• 3:50:22
  conduct. At this time, which was just before the Lexo Committee began its
• 3:50:26
  work, there were at least a few honest coppers I knew one, however,
• 3:50:30
  that did not remain honest. It happened this way. The guns had
• 3:50:33
  been tearing open the cars so hard that the street car companies, as they
• 3:50:37
  had once before, got after the officials, who stirred up headquarters. The
• 3:50:41
  Riot Act was read to the dips. This meant that on the second offense,
• 3:50:46
  every thief would be settled for his full time, and that there would
• 3:50:48
  be no square in it. The guns lay low for a while, but
• 3:50:52
  two very venturesome grafters, Mac and Jerry, put their heads together and reasoned,
• 3:50:56
  thus, now that the other guns are alarmed, it is a good
• 3:51:00
  chance for us to get in our fine work. Complaints continued to come in
• 3:51:05
  the police grew hot and sent mister f at Flyman to get the rascals mister
• 3:51:11
  F had the reputation of being the most honest detective on the force. He
• 3:51:15
  often declared that he wanted promotion only on his merits. Whenever he was overheard
• 3:51:20
  in making this remark, there was a quiet smile on the faces of the
• 3:51:22
  other coppers. F caught Mac dead to rights and not being a diplomat,
• 3:51:26
  did not understand when the gun tried to talk reason to him. Even a
• 3:51:31
  large piece of dough did not help his intellect, and Mac was taken to
• 3:51:33
  the station house. When a high official heard about it, he swore by
• 3:51:37
  all gods that he would make an example of that notorious pickpocket Mac. But
• 3:51:41
  human nature is weak, especially if it wears buttons. Max sent for F
• 3:51:46
  superior the captain, and the following dialogue took place. Captain, what do
• 3:51:50
  you want Mac? I'm copped, Captain, Yes, and you're dead to
• 3:51:56
  rights. Mac. I tried to do business with F. What's the matter
• 3:52:01
  with him, Captain? He is a policeman. He wants his promotion by
• 3:52:05
  merit. Even the Captain smiled. Mac. I'd give five centuries and five
• 3:52:11
  hundred dollars if i could get to my summer residence in Asbury Park. Captain
• 3:52:16
  how long would it take you to get it? Mac? He too was
• 3:52:20
  laconic. I got it on me, Captain, give it here, Mac.
• 3:52:28
  It's a short turnout, Captain. Was I ever known to go back
• 3:52:31
  on my word? Mac handed the money over and went over to the court
• 3:52:37
  in the afternoon with F. The captain was there and whispered to F throw
• 3:52:41
  him out. That nearly knocked F down, But he and Mac took a
• 3:52:45
  car, and he said to the latter, in the name of everything,
• 3:52:48
  how did you hypnotize the old man? Mac replied with a laugh. I
• 3:52:52
  tried to mesmerize you in the same way, but you're working on your merits.
• 3:52:56
  Mac was discharged, and F decided to be a diplomat. Hence,
• 3:53:00
  fourth from an honest copper, he became as clever a panther as ever shook
• 3:53:03
  coin from a gun. Isn't it likely that if a man had a large
• 3:53:07
  income, he would never go to prison? Indeed, do you think that
• 3:53:11
  well known guns could graft with impunity unless they had someone right? Nay,
• 3:53:16
  nay, Hannah. They often hear the song of split half or no graft.
• 3:53:20
  But at that time I was so careless that I did not even have
• 3:53:24
  enough sense to save fall money, and after about nine months of freedom,
• 3:53:26
  I fell again. One day, three of us bordered a car in Brooklyn
• 3:53:31
  and I saw Mark, whom I immediately nicked for his red Super, which
• 3:53:33
  I passed quickly to one of my stalls, Eddie. We got off the
• 3:53:37
  car and walked about three blocks. When Eddie flashed the super to look at
• 3:53:41
  it. The sucker who had been tailing blue and Eddie threw the watch to
• 3:53:46
  the ground, fearing that he would be nailed. A crowd gathered around the
• 3:53:48
  super. I among them, the other stall, Eddie having vaumussed, and
• 3:53:52
  the sucker. No man in his senses would have picked up that gold watch,
• 3:53:56
  but I did it and was nailed dead to right. I felt that
• 3:54:01
  the super belonged to me. I had nicked it cleverly, and I thought
• 3:54:03
  I had earned it. I was sentenced to four years in Sing Sing,
• 3:54:07
  but I did not hang my head with shame this time. As I was
• 3:54:09
  taken to the station. It was the way of life and of those I
• 3:54:13
  associated with, and I was more fatalist than ever. I hated all mankind
• 3:54:18
  and cared nothing for the consequences of my acts. End of chapter ten.
• 3:54:26
  Chapter eleven back to prison. I was not recognized by the authorities at Sing
• 3:54:33
  Sing, as haven't been there before. I gave a different name in pedigree,
• 3:54:37
  of course, But the reason I was not known as a second timer
• 3:54:41
  was that I had spent only nine months at Sing Sing on my first term,
• 3:54:43
  the remainder having been passed at Auburn. There was a new warden at
• 3:54:48
  Sing Sing two, and some of the other officials had changed. And besides,
• 3:54:52
  I must have been lucky anyway. None of the keepers knew me,
• 3:54:56
  and this meant a great deal to me, for if I had been recognized
• 3:55:00
  as a second timer, I should have had a great deal of extra time
• 3:55:03
  to serve. On my first term, I had received commutation time for good
• 3:55:07
  behavior amount into over a year, and there is a rule that if a
• 3:55:11
  released convict is sent back to prison, he must serve not only the time
• 3:55:16
  given him on his second sentence, but the commutation time on his first bit.
• 3:55:22
  Somebody must have been very careless, for I beat the state out of
• 3:55:24
  more than a year. Some of the convicts indeed knew that I had served
• 3:55:28
  before, but they did not squeal. Even some of those who did not
• 3:55:33
  know me had an inkling of it, but would not tell. It was
• 3:55:37
  still another instance of honor among thieves. If they had reported me to the
• 3:55:41
  authorities, they might have had an easier time in stir and had many privileges,
• 3:55:46
  such as better jobs and better things to eat. There were many stool
• 3:55:48
  pigeons there, of course, but somehow these rats did not get wind to
• 3:55:52
  me. It did not take me long to get the underground tunnel and work
• 3:55:58
  in order again, and I received contrabary letters booze, opium and morphine as
• 3:56:01
  regularly as on my first bit. One of the screws run in the tunnel
• 3:56:05
  at the time, Jack R, was a little heavier in his demands than
• 3:56:09
  I thought fair. He wanted a third instead of a fifth, of the
• 3:56:13
  money sent the convicts from home. But he was a good fellow and always
• 3:56:16
  brought in the hop as soon as it arrived. Like the New York police.
• 3:56:20
  He was hot after the stuff, but who can blame it. He
• 3:56:22
  wanted to rise in the world and was more ambitious than other screws. I
• 3:56:28
  continued my pipe dreams and my reading. Indeed they were often connected. I
• 3:56:33
  frequently used to imagine that I was a character in one of the books,
• 3:56:35
  and often choked the detestable talk when into insensibility. On one occasion, I
• 3:56:43
  dreamed that I was arraigned before my maker and charged with murder. I cried
• 3:56:48
  with fear and sorrow, for I felt that even before the Just God,
• 3:56:50
  there was no justice. But a voice silenced me and said that to be
• 3:56:54
  guilty of the crime of murder, it was not necessary to use weapons or
• 3:56:58
  poison. Suddenly I seemed to see the sad faces of my father and mother,
• 3:57:05
  and then I knew what the voice meant. Indeed, I was guilty.
• 3:57:09
  I heard the word be gone, and sank into the abyss. After
• 3:57:15
  many thousand years of misery, I was led into the chamber of contentment,
• 3:57:18
  where I saw some of the great men whose books I had read. Voltaire,
• 3:57:22
  Tom Payne, and Galileo sat on the throne. But when I approached
• 3:57:26
  them with awe, the angel, who had the face of a keeper,
• 3:57:28
  told me to leave. I appealed to Voltaire and begged him not to permit
• 3:57:33
  them to send me among the hymn singers. He said he pitied me,
• 3:57:37
  but that I was not fit to be with the great elect. I asked
• 3:57:41
  him where doctor Parkhurst was, and he answered that the doctor was hot stuff
• 3:57:43
  and had evaporated long ago. I was led away sorrowing and awoke in misery
• 3:57:50
  and tears in my dark and damp cell. On this bid, I was
• 3:57:56
  assigned to the clothing department, where I stayed six months, but did very
• 3:57:58
  little work. Warden Sage replaced Warden Darson and organized the system of stool pigeons
• 3:58:05
  and stir more carefully than ever before. So it was more difficult than it
• 3:58:07
  was before to neglect our work. I said to Sage one day, you're
• 3:58:11
  a cheap guy. You ought to be president of a woman, so in
• 3:58:15
  society you can do nothing but make an aristocracy of stool pigeons. I gave
• 3:58:20
  up work after six months because of my health, which had been bad for
• 3:58:24
  a long time but now grew worse. My rapid life on the outside,
• 3:58:28
  my bad habits, and my experience in prison were beginning to tell on me
• 3:58:31
  badly. There was a general breaking down in my system. I was so
• 3:58:35
  weak and coughed so badly that they thought I was dying. The doctor said
• 3:58:39
  I had consumption and transferred me to the prison hospital, where I had better
• 3:58:43
  air and food, and was far more comfortable in body, but terribly low
• 3:58:46
  in my mind. I was so despondent that I did not even fan my
• 3:58:50
  face, turned my head away to avoid having the outside world become familiar with
• 3:58:56
  my features when visitors went through the hospital. This was an unusual degree of
• 3:59:01
  carelessness for a professional gun. One reason I was so gloomy was that I
• 3:59:05
  was now unable to get hold of my darling hop. I was so despondent
• 3:59:11
  in the hospital that I really thought I should become an angel. And my
• 3:59:13
  environment was not very cheerful. For several convicts died on beds near me.
• 3:59:18
  Whenever anybody was going to die, every convict in the prison knew about it,
• 3:59:22
  for the attendants would put three screens around the dying man's bed. There
• 3:59:26
  were about twenty beds in the long room, and near me was an old
• 3:59:30
  boyhood pal, Tommy Ward. In the last stages of consumption. Tommy and
• 3:59:35
  I often talked together about death, and neither of us was afraid of it.
• 3:59:39
  I saw a dozen men die during my experience in state prisons, and
• 3:59:41
  I never heard one of them clamor for a clergyman, Tommy was doing life
• 3:59:46
  for murder and ought to have been afraid of death if anyone was. But
• 3:59:50
  when he was about to die, He sent word to me to come to
• 3:59:54
  his bedside, and after a word or two of goodbye, he went into
• 3:59:56
  his agony. The last words he ever set said were, ah, give
• 4:00:01
  me a big Peter narcotic. He did not receive the last rites of the
• 4:00:07
  Catholic Church, and his ignorant family refused to bury it. So Tommy's cell
• 4:00:11
  number was put on the tombstone, if it could be called such, which
• 4:00:15
  marked his grave in the little burying ground outside the prison walls. Indeed,
• 4:00:20
  it is not easy to throw the religious confidence game into a convict. Often
• 4:00:26
  while we were in Chapel, the Dominie would tell us that life was short.
• 4:00:30
  But hardly one of the six or seven hundred criminals who were listening believe
• 4:00:33
  the assertion. They felt that the few years they were doing for the good
• 4:00:37
  of their country were as long as centuries. If there were a few Khans
• 4:00:41
  who tried the cheerful dodge, they did not deceive anybody. For their brother
• 4:00:45
  guns knew that they were sore in their hearts because they had been caught without
• 4:00:48
  fall money, and so had to serve a few million years in stir After
• 4:00:52
  I got temporarily better in health and had left the hospital. I began to
• 4:00:56
  read lavater on Physiognomy more industriously than ever. With his help, I became
• 4:01:01
  a close student of faces, and I learned to tell the thoughts and emotions
• 4:01:05
  of my fellow convicts. I watched them at work, and when their faces
• 4:01:09
  flushed, I knew they were thinking of her. Sometimes I would ask a
• 4:01:11
  man how she was, and he would look confused and perhaps angry because his
• 4:01:16
  daydream was disturbed. And how the men used to look at women visitors who
• 4:01:20
  went through the shops. It was against the rules to look at the inhabitants
• 4:01:24
  of the upper world who visited Stir, But I noticed that after women visitors
• 4:01:28
  had been there, the convicts were generally more cheerful. Even a momentary glimpse
• 4:01:33
  of those who lived within the palest civilization warmed their hearts. After the ladies
• 4:01:39
  had gone, the convicts would talk about them for hours. Many of their
• 4:01:43
  remarks were vulgar and licentious, but some of the men were broken down with
• 4:01:46
  feeling and would say soft things. They would talk about their mothers and sweethearts,
• 4:01:50
  and eventually drift back on their ill spent lives. How often I thought
• 4:01:54
  of the life behind me. Then I would look at the men about me,
• 4:01:58
  some of whom had stolen and millions and had international reputations, but all
• 4:02:03
  discouraged, now broken down in health, penniless and friendless. If a man
• 4:02:07
  died in stir, he was just a cadaver for the dissecting table, nothing
• 4:02:11
  more. The inn fitted him well with his misspent life. These reflections would
• 4:02:16
  bring us around again to good resolutions. People who have never broken the law
• 4:02:22
  I beg pardon, who were never caught, cannot understand how a man who
• 4:02:26
  has once served in stir will take another chance and go back and suffer the
• 4:02:30
  same tortures. A society lady I once met said she thought criminals who go
• 4:02:35
  on grafting when they know what the result will be must be lacking in imagination.
• 4:02:39
  I replied to her, Madam, why do you lace tight and indulgent
• 4:02:43
  social dissipation even after you know it's bad for the health. You know it
• 4:02:46
  is a strain on your nerves, but you do it. Is it because
• 4:02:50
  you have no imagination? That which we all dread most death, we all
• 4:02:54
  defy. The Good Book says that all men men shall earn their bread by
• 4:03:01
  the sweat of their brow. But we grafters make of ourselves an exception,
• 4:03:03
  with that overweening egotism and brash desire to do others with no return, which
• 4:03:09
  is natural to everybody. Only when the round up comes, either in the
• 4:03:13
  sick bed or in the toils. We often cannot bear our burdens and look
• 4:03:16
  around to put the blame on someone else. If a man is religious,
• 4:03:20
  why should he not drop it on Jesus man, how despicable at times,
• 4:03:26
  how ungallant to his ancestor of the softer sex. From time immemorial he is
• 4:03:31
  exclaimed only for her, the deceiving one, my better have. I should
• 4:03:35
  be perfect. Convicts, particularly if they are broken in health, often become
• 4:03:41
  like little children. It's not unusual for them to grow dependent on dumb pets,
• 4:03:46
  which they smuggle into prison by means of the underground tunnel. The man
• 4:03:50
  at stir who has a white mouse or robin, is envied by the other
• 4:03:54
  convicts, for he has something to love. If an artist could only witness
• 4:03:58
  the affection that is scentered on a mouse or dog, if he could only
• 4:04:03
  depict the emotions in the hard face of the criminal, what a story I
• 4:04:07
  had a white rat, which I had obtained with difficulty through the underground.
• 4:04:11
  I used to put him up my sleeve and he would run all over my
• 4:04:13
  body. He was so tame he would stand on his hind legs or lie
• 4:04:18
  down in my command sometimes when I was lonely and melancholy. I loved this
• 4:04:22
  rat like a human being. In May eighteen ninety six, when I still
• 4:04:30
  had about a year to serve on my second term, a rumor circulated through
• 4:04:33
  the prison that some of the Salvation Army were going to visit the stir.
• 4:04:37
  The men were greatly excited at the prospect of a break in the dreary routine.
• 4:04:43
  I imagine that a big, burly Salvationist beating a drum with a very
• 4:04:46
  few thin Salvation lasses would march through the prison yard. I was dumbfounded by
• 4:04:52
  the reality, for I saw enter the Protestant chapel, which was crowded with
• 4:04:56
  eager convicts two delicate pretty women. No actor or actress ever got a warmer
• 4:05:01
  welcome than that given to Missus Booth and her secretary, Captain Jennie Hughes.
• 4:05:07
  After the clapping of hands and cheering had ceased, Missus Booth arose and made
• 4:05:11
  a speech which was listened to in deep silence. Certainly she was eloquent,
• 4:05:16
  and what she said impressed many an old gun. She was the first visitor
• 4:05:20
  who ever promised practical Christianity and eventually carried out the promise. She promised to
• 4:05:26
  build homes for us after our release, and in many cases she did,
• 4:05:31
  and we respect her. She spoke for an hour and afterwards granted private interviews,
• 4:05:35
  and many of the convicts told her all their troubles, and she promised
• 4:05:39
  to take care of their old mother's daughters and wives. Before leaving the chapel,
• 4:05:43
  she sang, O, Lord, let the waves of thy crimson sea
• 4:05:46
  roll over me. I did not see how such a pretty intelligent, refined
• 4:05:50
  and educated woman should say such a bloody thing, but she probably had forgotten
• 4:05:54
  what the words really meant. At any rate, she is a good woman,
• 4:05:58
  for she tried hard to have the parole bill passed. That bill has
• 4:06:03
  recently become law, and it is a good one in my opinion. But
• 4:06:05
  it has one fault. It only affects first timers. The second and third
• 4:06:11
  timers who went to sing sing years ago when there was contract labor, and
• 4:06:13
  who worked harder than any laborer in New York City ought to have a chance
• 4:06:18
  too. Show little confidence in any man, even though he be a third
• 4:06:22
  timer as I have been, and he will be a better man for it.
• 4:06:26
  After the singing, on that first morning in Missus Booth's visit, she
• 4:06:31
  asked those convicts who wanted to lead a better life to stand up. About
• 4:06:35
  seventy men out of the five or six hundred a rows, and the others
• 4:06:37
  remained seated. I was not among those who stood up. I never met
• 4:06:41
  anybody who could touch me in that way. I don't believe in instantaneous Christianity.
• 4:06:48
  I knew half a dozen of the men who stood up, and they
• 4:06:50
  were not very strong mentally. I often wondered what the motives were that moved
• 4:06:54
  the men in that manner. Man is a social animal, and Missus Booth
• 4:06:58
  was a magnetic woman. After I had heard her speak once, I knew
• 4:07:03
  that she had a good personal appearance, and one other requisite that appealed strongly
• 4:07:07
  to those who were in our predicament her sex, who could entirely resist the
• 4:07:11
  pleadings of a pretty woman with large black eyes. Certainly I was moved by
• 4:07:18
  this sincere and attractive woman, but my own early religious training had made me
• 4:07:22
  suspicious of the whole business. Whenever anybody tried to reform me through Christianity,
• 4:07:26
  I always thought of that powerful celt who used to rush at me at Sunday
• 4:07:30
  School with a hickory stick and shout hoo. Major. And I don't think
• 4:07:33
  that most of the men who professed religion in prison are sincere. They usually
• 4:07:37
  want to curry favor with the authorities or get staked after they leave stir One
• 4:07:43
  convict whom I used to call the Great American identifier because they used to graft
• 4:07:46
  my claiming to be a relative of everybody that died from California to Maine and
• 4:07:50
  weeping over the dead body, was the worst hypocrite I ever saw, a
• 4:07:54
  regular Uriah heap. He was one of Missus Booth's converts, and stood up
• 4:08:00
  and chapel after she went away. He said to me, what a blessing
• 4:08:03
  has been poured into my soul since I heard Missus Booth. Another hypocrite said
• 4:08:09
  to me on the same occasion, I don't know what I would do only
• 4:08:11
  for Missus Booth. She has lightened my weary burdens. Now I would not
• 4:08:18
  trust either of these men with a box of matches, and so I said
• 4:08:20
  to the great American identifier, you are the meanest, most despicable thief in
• 4:08:24
  the whole stir I'd respect you if you had the nerve to rob a live
• 4:08:28
  man, but you always stole from a cadaver. He was horrified in my
• 4:08:31
  language, and began to talk of a favorite subject with him his wealthy relatives.
• 4:08:37
  Some of these converts were not hypocrites, but I don't think even they
• 4:08:41
  received any good from their conversion. Some people go to religion because they have
• 4:08:46
  nothing else to distract their thoughts, and the subject sometimes is a mania with
• 4:08:50
  them. The doctors say that there is only one incurable mental disease, religious
• 4:08:54
  insanity. In the eyes of the reformers, Missus Booth did it was a
• 4:09:00
  great thing by making some of us converts, But experts in mental diseases declare
• 4:09:05
  that it is very bad to excite convicts to such a pitch. Many of
• 4:09:09
  the weak minded among them lose their balance and become insane through these violent religious
• 4:09:15
  emotions. I did not meet so many of the big guns on my second
• 4:09:22
  term as on my first, but of course I came across many of my
• 4:09:26
  old pals and formed some new acquaintances. It was on this term that four
• 4:09:31
  of us used to have what I called a tenement house oratory talk whenever we
• 4:09:35
  worked together in the halls. Some of us were lucky enough at times to
• 4:09:39
  serve as barber's hallmen and runners to and from the shops, and we used
• 4:09:41
  to gather together in the halls and amuse ourselves with conversation. Dickie, Mull,
• 4:09:48
  Mickey and I became great pals in this way. Dickie was a desperate
• 4:09:52
  river pirate who would not stand a roast from anybody, but was well liked.
• 4:09:56
  Mull was one of the best principal convicts I ever knew in my life.
• 4:10:01
  He was quiet, delicate and manly and opposed to abusing young boys.
• 4:10:05
  Yet if you did him an injury, he would cut the liver out of
• 4:10:09
  you. He was a good fellow. Mickey was what I call the tenement
• 4:10:13
  house philosopher. He'd stick his oar into every bit of talk that was started.
• 4:10:18
  One day, the talk began on Tammany Hall and went something like this.
• 4:10:24
  All crooked officials, said Mull, including all of them, ought to
• 4:10:28
  be railroaded to sing sing Dickie. Through their methods, the county offices are
• 4:10:33
  rotten, from the judge to the policeman. M I agree with you,
• 4:10:39
  Mickey. Oh what's the matter with Tammany. My old man never voted any
• 4:10:43
  other ticket, neither of yours. When you get into stir you act like
• 4:10:46
  college professors. Why don't you practice what you spout? I always voted the
• 4:10:52
  Tammany ticket five or six times every election day. How was it? I
• 4:10:54
  never got a long bit mull. How many times Mickey have you been in
• 4:11:01
  star Mickey? This is the fourth But the highest I got was four years.
• 4:11:07
  Dicky, You've never done anything big enough to get four Mickey, I
• 4:11:11
  didn't. Eh. You've been hollering that you were innocent and get twenty years
• 4:11:15
  for piracy. I only get four, but I'm guilty every time. There's
• 4:11:18
  a big difference between that and twenty, ain't it. Mul slapped Mickey on
• 4:11:22
  the back and said, never mind, you'll get yours on the installment plan.
• 4:11:26
  Then, turning to me, Mal asked, Jim, don't you think
• 4:11:31
  that if everything was squaring on the level, we'd stand a better chance.
• 4:11:35
  No, I replied, In the first place, we have not reached the
• 4:11:37
  millennium. In the second place, they would devise some legal scheme to keep
• 4:11:41
  a third time at the rest of his natural days. I know a moccasin
• 4:11:45
  who would move heaven and earth to have such a bill passed, and he's
• 4:11:48
  one of the crookedest philanthropists in America today. I'm a grafter, and I
• 4:11:52
  believe that the president administration is all right. I know that I can stay
• 4:11:56
  out of prison as long as I save my fall money. When I blow
• 4:11:58
  that in, I ought to go to prison. Every gun who is capable
• 4:12:03
  of stealing knows that if he puts by enough money, he can not only
• 4:12:05
  keep out a stir, but can beat his way into heaven. I'm arguing
• 4:12:09
  as a professional thief. This was too much for Mickey, who said,
• 4:12:13
  why don't you talk to United States and not be springing whole leaves out of
• 4:12:16
  a dictionary. Just then Big Jim came up. He had heard what I
• 4:12:22
  said, and he joined in. You know why I got the tenth of
• 4:12:24
  a century. I had thousands in my pocket and went to buy some silk
• 4:12:28
  underwear to habit ashes in New York. But it seemed to me a waste
• 4:12:33
  of good coin to buy them, so I stole a dozen pairs of silk
• 4:12:35
  stockings they tried to arrest me. I shot and got ten years. I
• 4:12:39
  always did despise a petty thief, but I never felt like kicking him till
• 4:12:43
  then ten years for a few stockings. Can you blame the judge? I
• 4:12:48
  didn't even a judge of Maya is a good thief. If I had robbed
• 4:12:52
  a bank, I'd never have got such a long bit. The old saying
• 4:12:56
  is true. Kill one man and you'll be hanged. Kill six sixteen and
• 4:13:00
  the United States government is likely to pension you. The tenement house philosopher began
• 4:13:07
  to eject again when the guard, as usual, came along to stop our
• 4:13:09
  pleasant conversation. He thought we were abusing our privileges. It was during this
• 4:13:18
  bit that I met the man with the white teeth, as he is now
• 4:13:20
  known among his friends. I'll call him Patsy and tell his story, for
• 4:13:24
  it is an unusual one. He was a good deal older man than I,
• 4:13:28
  and was one of the old school burglars, and a good one.
• 4:13:31
  They were a systematic lot and would shoot before they stood the collar. But
• 4:13:35
  they were gentlemanly grafters and never abused anybody. The first thing Patsy's mob did
• 4:13:39
  after entering a house was to round up all the inmates and put them into
• 4:13:43
  one room. There one burglar would stick them up with a revolver while the
• 4:13:46
  others went through the house. On a fatal occasion, Patsy took the daughter
• 4:13:52
  of the house, a young girl of eighteen or nineteen, in his arms,
• 4:13:54
  and carried her down the stairs into the room where the rest of the
• 4:13:56
  family had been put by the other grafters. As he carried the girl down
• 4:14:01
  the stairs, she said, mister burglar, don't harm me. Patsy was
• 4:14:05
  masked all but his mouth, and when he said you're as safe as if
• 4:14:07
  you were in your father's arms, she saw his teeth, which were remarkably
• 4:14:11
  fine and white. Patsy afterwards said that the girl was not a bit alarmed,
• 4:14:16
  and was such a perfect coquette that she noticed his good points. The
• 4:14:20
  next morning she told the police that one of the bad men had a beautiful
• 4:14:24
  set of teeth. The flyman rounded up half a dozen grafters on suspicion,
• 4:14:28
  among them Patsy, and no sooner did he open his mouth than he was
• 4:14:33
  recognized and settled for a long bit. Poor Patsy has served altogether about nineteen
• 4:14:37
  years, but now he has squared it and is a waiter in a bowery
• 4:14:41
  saloon, more content with his twelve dollars a week than he used to be
• 4:14:43
  with his thousands. I often go around and have a glass with him.
• 4:14:48
  He is now a quiet, sober fellow, and his teeth are as fine
• 4:14:52
  as ever. One day a man named Meuore, a mean sure thing grafter,
• 4:14:58
  came to the Stir on a visit to some of his acquaintances. He
• 4:15:03
  had never done a bit himself, although he was a notorious thief, but
• 4:15:07
  he liked to look at the misfortunes of others occasionally. On this visit he
• 4:15:11
  got more than a bargain for he came to the clothing department where Mike,
• 4:15:16
  who had grafted with me on New York, and I were at work.
• 4:15:18
  Muor went up to Mike and offered him a bill. Mike threw it in
• 4:15:22
  Meure's face and called him, well, the worst thing known in graft him.
• 4:15:28
  If it wasn't for you, he said, I wouldn't be doing this
• 4:15:30
  bit. There are several kinds of short thing grafters. Some are crooked gamblers,
• 4:15:37
  some are plain stool pigeons. Some are discouraged thieves who continue to graft,
• 4:15:41
  but take no risks. Muor was one of the meanest of the rats
• 4:15:46
  that I have known, yet in a way he was handy to the professional
• 4:15:48
  gun. He had somebody right at headquarters and could generally get protection for his
• 4:15:54
  mob, but he would always throw the mob over if it was to his
• 4:15:56
  advantage. He and two O O the houseworkmen robbed a senator's home, and
• 4:16:02
  such a howl went up that the police offered all manner of protection to the
• 4:16:04
  grafter who would tip them off to who got the stuff. Grafters who worked
• 4:16:10
  with coppers don't want it known among those of their own kind, for they
• 4:16:12
  would be ostracized if they do a dirty trick. They'd try to throw it
• 4:16:15
  on someone else who would not stoop to such a thing. Mure was a
• 4:16:21
  diplomat and tipped off the Central Office and those who did the trick. All
• 4:16:23
  except Tom and Muir were nailed. A few nights after that, the whisper
• 4:16:29
  was passed among the guns of both sexes who had gathered at a resort up
• 4:16:32
  town that somebody had squealed. The muttered curses meant that some Central Office man
• 4:16:37
  had by wireless telegraphy put the underworld. Next that somebody had tipped off the
• 4:16:41
  police. But it was not Mure that the hard names were said against the
• 4:16:45
  Central Office man took care of that. With low cunning. Mure had the
• 4:16:49
  rumor circulated that it was Tom who had thrown them down, and Tommy was
• 4:16:53
  ostracized. I knew Mure and I knew Tommy, and I was sure that
• 4:16:59
  the latter was innocent. Some time after Tom had been cut by the rest
• 4:17:03
  of the gang, I saw Mure drinking with two Central Office detectives in a
• 4:17:06
  well known resort, and I was convinced that he was the rat. His
• 4:17:10
  personal appearance bore out my suspicion. He had a weak face with no fight
• 4:17:15
  in it. He was quiet a speech, always smiling, and as soft
• 4:17:18
  and noiseless as the animal called the snake. He had a narrow, hanging
• 4:17:22
  lip, small nose, large ears, and characterless protruding eyes. The squint
• 4:17:29
  looked from under the eyebrows, and the quick jerk of the hand to the
• 4:17:32
  chin showed without doubt that he possessed the low cunning two of that animal called
• 4:17:36
  the rat. Partly through my influence, Mure gradually got the reputation of being
• 4:17:41
  a sure thing grafter but he was so sleek that he could always find some
• 4:17:45
  grafter to work with him. Pals with whom he fell out always shortly afterwards
• 4:17:51
  came to harm. This was the case with Big Mike, who spat at
• 4:17:53
  Mure's face when the latter visited him at Sing Sing. When Mure did pickpocket
• 4:17:59
  work, he dipped himself, but acted as a stall. This was another
• 4:18:03
  short thing. Dodge Muor never did a bit in Stir because he was of
• 4:18:07
  more valued at headquarters than a dozen detectives. The fact that he never did
• 4:18:11
  time was another thing that gradually made the gang suspicious of him. Therefore,
• 4:18:15
  at the present time he is of comparatively little value to the police force and
• 4:18:18
  may be settled before long, I hope so. One of the meanest things
• 4:18:26
  Muor ever did was to a poor old Dago grafter, a queer maker counterfeitter.
• 4:18:30
  The Italian was putting out unusually good stuff, both paper and metal,
• 4:18:34
  and the avaricious Muir thought he saw a good chance to get a big bit
• 4:18:38
  of money from the Dago. He put up a plan with two central officemen
• 4:18:42
  to bleed the counterfeitter. Then he went to the Daego and said that he
• 4:18:45
  got hold of some big buyers from the West who would buy five thousand dollars
• 4:18:49
  worth of the queer. They met the supposed buyers, who were in reality
• 4:18:53
  the two Central officemen at a little saloon. After a talk, the detectives
• 4:18:59
  came out in their true colors, showed their shields, and demanded one thousand
• 4:19:03
  dollars. The Dago looked at Mure, who gave him the tip to pay
• 4:19:07
  the one thousand dollars. The Italian, however, thinking Mure was on the
• 4:19:11
  level, misunderstood the sign and did not pay. The outraged detectives took the
• 4:19:17
  Italian to police headquarters, but did not show up the queer. At first,
• 4:19:19
  they still wanted their one thousand dollars, so the Daego was remanded and
• 4:19:25
  remanded, getting a hearing every twenty four hours, but there was never enough
• 4:19:27
  evidence. Finally, the poor fellow got a lawyer, and then the Central
• 4:19:32
  office men gave up the game and produced the queer as evidence. The United
• 4:19:36
  States authorities prosecuted the case and the Italian was given three years and a half.
• 4:19:41
  After he was released, he met Mure on the East Side and tried
• 4:19:44
  to kill him with a knife. That is the only way Muir will ever
• 4:19:47
  get his desserts. A man like him very seldom dies in States prison or
• 4:19:51
  is buried in Potter's field. He often becomes a gmail keeper and captain of
• 4:19:55
  his election district, for he understands how to control the repeaters who give Tammany
• 4:19:57
  Hall such large majority. He's on election day in Manhattan. It was on
• 4:20:04
  this second bid in prison, as I have said in another place, that
• 4:20:07
  the famous fence operated and Stir. I knew him well. He was a
• 4:20:11
  clever fellow, and I often congratulated him on his success with the keepers,
• 4:20:15
  for he was no stool pigeon and got his pull legitimately. He was an
• 4:20:21
  older grafter than I, and remembered well. Madam Mandelbaum, the Jewess,
• 4:20:25
  one of the best fences before my time in New York City. At the
• 4:20:29
  corner of Clinton and Rivington Streets, there stood until a few years ago a
• 4:20:33
  small dry goods and notions store which was the scene of transactions which many an
• 4:20:37
  old gun likes to talk about. What plannings of great robberies took place there.
• 4:20:41
  In Madame Mandelbaum's store, she would buy any kind of stolen property from
• 4:20:45
  an ostrich feather to hundreds and thousands of dollars worth of gems. The common
• 4:20:49
  shoplifter and the great cracksmen alike did business at this famous place. Some of
• 4:20:55
  the noted grafters who patronized her store were Jimmy Hope, Shang Draper, Billy
• 4:21:00
  or Sheeny, Mike red Leary, Johnny Irving, Jack Walsh alias John the
• 4:21:03
  Mick, and a brainy planner of big jobs English George. Madam Mandelbaum had
• 4:21:10
  two country residences in Brooklyn, where she invited her friends, the most famous
• 4:21:15
  thieves in two continents. English George, who used to send money to his
• 4:21:18
  son who was being educated in England, was a frequent visitor and used to
• 4:21:22
  deposit with her all his valuables. She had two beautiful daughters, one of
• 4:21:27
  whom became infatuated with George, who did not return her love. Later,
• 4:21:32
  she and her daughters, after they became wealthy, tried to rise in the
• 4:21:34
  world and shake their old companions. The daughters were finely dressed and well educated,
• 4:21:40
  and the madam hunted around for respectable husbands for them. Once, a
• 4:21:45
  bright reporter wrote a play in which the central character was Madam Mandelbaum. She
• 4:21:49
  read about it in the newspapers and went with her two daughters to see it.
• 4:21:53
  They occupied a private box and were gorgeously dressed. The old lady was
• 4:21:57
  very indignant when she sat I saw the woman who was supposed to be herself
• 4:22:00
  appear upon the stage. The actress, badly dressed and made up with a
• 4:22:06
  hooked nose, was jeered by the audience. After the play, Madame Mandelbaum
• 4:22:11
  insisted on seeing the manager of the theater. She showed him her silks and
• 4:22:15
  her costly diamonds, and then said, look at me, I'm Madam Mandelbaum.
• 4:22:18
  Does that hussy look anything like me? Pointing to her daughters, she
• 4:22:22
  continued, what must my children think of such an impersonation? Both of them
• 4:22:26
  are better dressed and have more money in education than that strut who's only a
• 4:22:30
  moment's plaything for bankers and brokers. In most ways, of course, my
• 4:22:37
  life in prison during the second term was similar to what it was on my
• 4:22:40
  first term. Books and opium were my main pleasures. If it had not
• 4:22:44
  been for them and for the thoughts about life and about my fellow convicts which
• 4:22:48
  they led me to form, the monotony of the prison routine would have driven
• 4:22:52
  me mad. My health was by that time badly shattered. I was very
• 4:22:56
  nervous and could seldom sleep without a drug. My moral health was far worse,
• 4:23:02
  too than it had been on my first term. Then I had made
• 4:23:06
  strong efforts to overcome the opium habit and laid plans to give up grafton.
• 4:23:10
  Then I had some decent ambitions and did not look upon myself as a confirmed
• 4:23:14
  criminal, whereas on the second term I had grown to take a hopeless view
• 4:23:18
  of my case. I began to feel that I could not reform no matter
• 4:23:22
  how hard I tried. It seemed to me too that it was hardly worth
• 4:23:26
  while now to make an effort, for I thought my health was worse than
• 4:23:29
  it really was, and that I should die soon with no opportunity to live
• 4:23:33
  the intelligent life I learned to admire through my books. I still made good
• 4:23:37
  resolutions and some effort to quit the hop but they were weak in comparison with
• 4:23:41
  the efforts I had made during my first term. More and more it seemed
• 4:23:45
  to me that I belonged in the underworld for good, and that I might
• 4:23:48
  as well go through it to the end. Stealing was my profession. It
• 4:23:53
  was all I knew how to do, and I didn't believe that anybody was
• 4:23:56
  interested enough in me to teach me anything else. On the other hand,
• 4:24:00
  what I had learned on the Rocky Path would never leave me. I was
• 4:24:04
  sure of my knowledge of the technique at Graft, and I knew that a
• 4:24:07
  succor was born every minute. End of chapter eleven, Chapter twelve on the
• 4:24:15
  outside again, my time on the second bit was drawn to a close.
• 4:24:22
  I was eager to get out, of course, but I knew way down
• 4:24:26
  in my mind that it would only be to Graft again. I made a
• 4:24:30
  resolution that I would regain my health and gather a little fall money before I
• 4:24:33
  started in hard again on the Rocky Path. On the day of my release,
• 4:24:38
  Warden Sage called me into his office and talked to me like a friend.
• 4:24:42
  He did not know that I was a second timer, or he might
• 4:24:45
  not have been so kind to me. He was a humane man, and
• 4:24:48
  in spite of his belief in the stool pigeon system, he introduced good things
• 4:24:52
  into sing Sing. He improved the condition of the cells, and we were
• 4:24:56
  not confined there so much as we had been before he came on my first
• 4:25:00
  term. Many a man stayed for days in his cell without ever going out.
• 4:25:03
  One man was confined to twenty eight days on bread and water, but
• 4:25:08
  under mister Stage punishments were not so severe. He even used to send delicacies
• 4:25:12
  to men chained up in the Catholic Chapel. I should like to say a
• 4:25:17
  good word for head Keeper Canaughton too. He was not generally liked for he
• 4:25:22
  was a strict disciplinarian, but I think he was one of the best keepers
• 4:25:25
  in the country. He was stern, but not brutal, and when a
• 4:25:29
  convict was sick, mister Canaughton was very kind. He was not deceived by
• 4:25:33
  the fake lunatics and used to say, if you go to the madhouse you
• 4:25:36
  are liable to become worse. If you are all right in the morning,
• 4:25:38
  I will give you a job out in the air. Although mister Cannaughton had
• 4:25:42
  little schooling, he was an intelligent man. I believe the best thing the
• 4:25:48
  community can do to reform criminals is to have a more intelligent class of keepers.
• 4:25:52
  As a rule, they are ignorant, brutal and stupid, underpaid and
• 4:25:56
  inefficient. Yet what is more important for the state's welfare than an intelligent treatment
• 4:26:00
  of convicts? Short terms, too, are better than long ones, for
• 4:26:04
  when the criminal is broken down in health and made fearful, suspicious, and
• 4:26:07
  revengeful, what can you expect from him? However, in the mood I
• 4:26:11
  was in at the end of my second term, I did not believe that
• 4:26:15
  anything was any good as a preventive of crime. I knew that when I
• 4:26:18
  got on the outside, I wouldn't think of what might happen to me.
• 4:26:21
  I knew that I couldn't or wouldn't carry a hod. What ambition I had
• 4:26:25
  left was to become a more successful crook than I had ever been before.
• 4:26:29
  Wardensage gave me some good advice, and that I left Sing Sing for New
• 4:26:32
  York. I did not get the pleasure from going out again. That had
• 4:26:36
  been so keen after my first bit. My eyesight was failing now and I
• 4:26:40
  was sick and dull. My only thought was to get back to my old
• 4:26:44
  haunts, and I drank several large glasses of whiskey at sing Sing Town to
• 4:26:48
  help me on my way. I intended to go straight home as I felt
• 4:26:52
  very ill, to my father and mother, but I didn't see them for
• 4:26:55
  several days after my return to New York. The first thing I did in
• 4:26:59
  the city was to deliver some messages from my fellow convicts to their relatives.
• 4:27:03
  My third visit for that purpose was to the home of a fine young fellow
• 4:27:06
  I knew in Star. It was a large family and included a married sister
• 4:27:10
  and her children. They were glad to hear from Bobby, and I talked
• 4:27:12
  to them for some time about him. When the husband of the married sister
• 4:27:15
  came home and began to quarrel with his wife, he accused her of having
• 4:27:19
  strange men in the house, meaning me. The younger brother and the rest
• 4:27:23
  of the family got back at the brother in law and gave him better than
• 4:27:26
  they got. The little brother fired a lamp at him, and he yelled
• 4:27:30
  murder. The police surrounded the house and took us all to the station house
• 4:27:33
  in the patrol wagon, and so I spent the first night after my return
• 4:27:37
  in confinement. It seemed natural. However, in the morning we were taken
• 4:27:42
  up before the magistrate, and the mother and sister testified that I had taken
• 4:27:45
  them a message from their boy and had committed no offense. The brother in
• 4:27:49
  law blurted out that he had married into a family of thieves, and that
• 4:27:52
  I had just returned from Sing Sing. I was discharged, but fined five
• 4:27:56
  dollars. Blessed are the peacemakers, but not in my case. I passed
• 4:28:03
  the next day looking for old girls and pals, but I found few of
• 4:28:06
  them. Many were dead, and others were in stir or had sunk so
• 4:28:10
  far down into the underworld that even I could not find them. I was
• 4:28:14
  only about thirty two years old, but I had already a long acquaintance with
• 4:28:18
  the past. Like all grafters, I had lived rapidly crowding while at liberty
• 4:28:22
  several days into one. When I got back for my second bit, the
• 4:28:26
  greater part of my life seemed to be made up of memories of other days.
• 4:28:32
  Some of the pals I did meet again had squared it, others were
• 4:28:34
  dead out of the game, and some had degenerated into mere bums. There
• 4:28:40
  are several different classes of dead ones. One the man who has lost his
• 4:28:45
  nerve. He generally becomes a whiskey fiend. If he becomes hopelessly a soak,
• 4:28:49
  the better class of guns shun him, for he is no good to
• 4:28:52
  work with. He will not keep an engagement, or will turn up at
• 4:28:56
  the place of meeting too late or too early. A must be exactly on
• 4:29:02
  time. It is as bad to be too early as too late, for
• 4:29:04
  he must not be seen hanging around the place of meeting. Punctuality is more
• 4:29:08
  of a virtue in the underworld than it is in respectable society. The slackest
• 4:29:14
  people I know to keep their appointments are the honest ones or grafters who have
• 4:29:18
  become whiskey fiends. These latter usually wind up with rock gut booze and are
• 4:29:22
  sometimes seen selling songs on the bowery. Two the man who becomes a copper.
• 4:29:29
  He is known as the stool pigeon and is detested and feared by all
• 4:29:33
  grafters. Nobody will go with them. Sometimes he becomes a pinkerton man and
• 4:29:37
  is a useful member of society. When he loses his grip with the upper
• 4:29:41
  world, he belongs to neither, for the grafters won't look at him.
• 4:29:45
  Three the man who knows a trade. This grafter often squares it is apt
• 4:29:51
  to marry and remain honest. His former pals, who are still grafters,
• 4:29:55
  treat him kindly, for they know he's not a rat. They know too
• 4:29:59
  that he is a right an intelligent man, and that it is well to
• 4:30:02
  keep on the right side of him. Such a man has often educated himself
• 4:30:06
  in stir, and when he squares it, is apt to join a political
• 4:30:08
  club and is called in by the leader to help out in an election,
• 4:30:11
  for he possesses some brains. The gun is apt to make him an occasional
• 4:30:17
  present, for he can help the grafter in case of a fall. Because
• 4:30:19
  of his connection with the politicians, this kind of dead one often keeps his
• 4:30:23
  friends the grafters while in stir next to the news in the city four the
• 4:30:30
  gun who is supposed to square it. This grafter has got a bunch of
• 4:30:34
  money together and sees a good chance to open a gin mill or a rains
• 4:30:38
  law hotel or a gambling joint. He knows how to take care of the
• 4:30:42
  repeaters and is handy about election time. In return, he gets protection for
• 4:30:48
  his illegal business. He is a go between and is on good terms with
• 4:30:52
  coppers and grafters. He supplies the grafter, who has plenty of fall money
• 4:30:56
  with bondsmen, makes his life in the tombs easy and gets him a good
• 4:31:00
  job while in stir. This man is supposed to be dead, but he
• 4:31:04
  is really very much alive. Often a copper comes to him and asks him
• 4:31:08
  for the whereabouts of some grafter or other. He will reply, perhaps I
• 4:31:12
  hear he is in Europe or in the West. The copper looks wise and
• 4:31:17
  imagines he is clever. The dead one sneers and like a wise man,
• 4:31:21
  laughs in his sleeve, for he is generally in communication with the man looked
• 4:31:25
  for five the short thing grafter. He is a man who continues to steal,
• 4:31:30
  but wants above everything to keep out a stir where he has spent many
• 4:31:34
  years, So he goes back to the petty pilfering he did as a boy.
• 4:31:40
  General Brace and the Professor belong to this class of dead ones. The
• 4:31:44
  second night I spent on the bowery after my return for my second bit,
• 4:31:47
  I met laudanum Joe, who is another good example of this kind of dead
• 4:31:51
  one. At one time he made thousands of dollars, but now he is
• 4:31:55
  discouraged and nervous. He looked bad, poorly dressed, but was glad to
• 4:32:00
  see me. How is graft, he asked, I've left the rocky path,
• 4:32:06
  I replied, thinking I would throw a few cons into him. I'm
• 4:32:08
  walking straight, not in the religious line either, he smiled, which was
• 4:32:14
  tantamounts of saying that I lied. What are you working at he asked,
• 4:32:21
  I'm looking for a job, I replied, Jimmy, is it true that
• 4:32:26
  your pipe's crazy? I heard you got buggy crazy in your last bit.
• 4:32:33
  Joe I replied, you know I was never bothered above the ease. If
• 4:32:38
  you're going to carry the hot, he said, you might as well go
• 4:32:41
  to the pipe house and let them cure you. Have you given up smoking
• 4:32:45
  too? He continued, He meant the hop. I conned him again and
• 4:32:48
  said yes. He showed the old, peculiar, familiar grin and said,
• 4:32:55
  say I have no coin, Take me with you and give me a smoke.
• 4:32:59
  I tried to convince him that there was nothing in it, but he
• 4:33:00
  was a doubter. What are you doing, Joe, I asked, Oh,
• 4:33:06
  just getting a few shillings, he replied, meaning that he was grafting.
• 4:33:11
  Why don't you give up the booze? I asked, I had made
• 4:33:15
  a break for He said quickly, why, because I don't wear a Piccadilly
• 4:33:18
  collar. All grafters of any original caliber are super sensitive to a point very
• 4:33:23
  near insanity. Laudanum. Joe thought I had reference to his dress which was
• 4:33:27
  very bum Joe. I said, I never judge a man by his clothes,
• 4:33:33
  especially one that I know. Jimmy, he said, the truth is
• 4:33:37
  I can't stand another long bitten stir. I do a little petty pilfer in
• 4:33:41
  that satisfies my wants, a cup of tea plenty of booze, a little
• 4:33:45
  hop. If I fall, I only go to the workhouse for a couple
• 4:33:48
  of months. The screws know I have seen better days, and I can
• 4:33:49
  get a graft of my booze while there. If I ain't as prosperous as
• 4:33:52
  I was once, why not dream I'm a millionaire. Some grafters who have
• 4:33:59
  been prosperous at on time fall even lower than Laudanum Joe. When they get
• 4:34:03
  fear knocked into them and can't do without whiskey, they sink lower and lower.
• 4:34:07
  Hungry Bob is another example. I grafted with him as a boy,
• 4:34:11
  but when I met him on the Bowery after my second bit, I hardly
• 4:34:12
  knew him, and at first he failed to recognize me entirely. I got
• 4:34:18
  him into a gin mill, however, and he told how badly treated he
• 4:34:19
  had been. Just before we met. He had gone into a saloon kept
• 4:34:23
  by an old Palavis who had risen in the world, and asked him for
• 4:34:26
  fifteen cents to buy a bed in a lodging house. Go along, your
• 4:34:30
  panhandler, beggar, said his old friend. Poor Bob was badly cut up
• 4:34:36
  about it and talked about ingratitude for a long time, But he had his
• 4:34:40
  lodging money for A safe cracker who knew Hungry Bob when he was one of
• 4:34:42
  the gayest grafters in town, happened to be in the saloon, and he
• 4:34:45
  gave the bum fifteen cents for old time's sake. How is it, Bob?
• 4:34:49
  I said to him that you're not so good as you were. You
• 4:34:53
  want to know what put me on the bum? He answered, well,
• 4:34:56
  it's this way. I can't trust Noba and I have to graft alone.
• 4:35:02
  That's one thing. Then, too, I like the booze too much,
• 4:35:04
  and when I'm sitting down, I can't get up and go out and hustle
• 4:35:07
  the way I used to. Hungry Bob and I were sitting in a resort
• 4:35:11
  for sailors and hard luck grafters in the Lower Bowery when a shiny I knew
• 4:35:15
  came in. Hello Jim. He said, how's graft, Mike, I
• 4:35:19
  replied, don't mention it. What makes you look so glum? I'm only
• 4:35:26
  after being turned out a police court this morning. What was the rat,
• 4:35:30
  Mike, I'm looking too respectable. They asked me where I got the clothes.
• 4:35:37
  I told them I was working, which is true. I've been awaiter
• 4:35:40
  for three months. The flyman took me to headquarters. I was gathered in
• 4:35:44
  to make a reputation for those two shoe flies. Whenever I squared and go
• 4:35:48
  to work, I am nailed regularly because my mug is in the Hall of
• 4:35:51
  Fame. When I'm arrested, I lose my job every time. Nobody knows
• 4:35:56
  you. Now, jim, you could tear the town open. I made
• 4:36:00
  a mental resolution to follow Mike's advice very soon, as soon as my health
• 4:36:03
  was a little better. Just then, Jack, a boyhood Palamine who knew
• 4:36:07
  the old girls, Sheeny, Annie and the rest, came in. I
• 4:36:11
  was mighty glad to see him and said so to him. I guess you've
• 4:36:15
  got the advantage of me, bloke, was his reply. Don't you remember
• 4:36:19
  Jimmy the kid ten years ago in the sixth I jogged his memory with the
• 4:36:22
  names of a few pals of years ago, and when he got next,
• 4:36:26
  he said, I wouldn't have known you, jim I thought you were dead
• 4:36:29
  many years ago in stir I heard it time and time again. I thought
• 4:36:33
  you were past and gone. After a short talk, I said, where's
• 4:36:37
  sheeny Annie? Dead? He replied, Maymy? I asked dead? He
• 4:36:44
  replied Lucy and st Swedish Emmy, she's married any good mauls now, I'm
• 4:36:52
  only after getting back from stirr A. I'm not next, I said,
• 4:36:56
  tain't like old times, Jimmy said, the malls won't steal me. They
• 4:37:00
  ain't got brains enough. They're not innocent, they're ignorant. All they know
• 4:37:03
  how to do is the badger. I went with Jack to his house where
• 4:37:07
  he had an opium layout. There we found several girls and grafters, some
• 4:37:11
  smoking hops, some with a subtle cigarette between their lips. I was introduced
• 4:37:15
  to an English grafter named Harry. He said he was blooming glad to see
• 4:37:19
  me. He was just back from the West, he said, but I
• 4:37:22
  thought it was the pen. He began to abuse the states, and I
• 4:37:26
  said, you, duffer, did you ever see us pretty girls? Is
• 4:37:29
  here? Did you ever wear a collar? And tie in the old country.
• 4:37:33
  He grew indignant and shouted, Holy cobblestones, in this bleedant country.
• 4:37:37
  I've had two hundred bucks dollars saved up every time, but I never spend
• 4:37:44
  a set of it out of hell? Am I off here? I'm only
• 4:37:48
  stealing for certain mugs, policemen, and for those II are up so they
• 4:37:52
  can buy a real estate. They enjoy their life in this country in Europe.
• 4:37:57
  Off my arda and money and the me. They die as respect as
• 4:38:02
  citizens. I die in a workhouse, as an outcast. Don't be pratting
• 4:38:06
  about your blatant country. As soon as I had picked out a good mob
• 4:38:11
  to join, I began to graft again. Two of my new pals were
• 4:38:15
  safe blowers, and we did that graft and day work, as well as
• 4:38:18
  the old reliable dipping. But I wasn't much at the graft. During the
• 4:38:21
  seven months I remained on the outside, my health continued bad, and I
• 4:38:25
  did not feel like jumping out so much as I had done formerly. I
• 4:38:29
  did not graft except when my funds were very low, and so, of
• 4:38:32
  course, contrary to my plans, I saved no fall money. I had
• 4:38:37
  a girl, an opium layout and a furnished room where I used to stay
• 4:38:40
  most of the time, smoking with pals who, like myself, had the
• 4:38:42
  keen edge of their ambition taken off. I had a strange longing for music
• 4:38:48
  at that time, I suppose because my nerves were weaker than they used to
• 4:38:51
  be. I kept a number of musical instruments in my room and used to
• 4:38:55
  sing and dance to amuse my visitors. During these seven months that I spent
• 4:39:00
  mainly in my room, I used to reflect and philosophize a lot, partly
• 4:39:03
  under the influence of opium. I would moralize with a girl or to a
• 4:39:07
  friend, or commune with my own thoughts. I often got in a state
• 4:39:11
  of mind where everything seemed to joke to me. I often thought of myself
• 4:39:15
  as a spectator watching the play life. I observed my visitors and their characteristics,
• 4:39:18
  and after they had left for the evening, loved to size them up.
• 4:39:22
  In words. For Lizzie, my eyes were so bad that I did
• 4:39:26
  not read much, but I took it out in epigrams and wise sayings.
• 4:39:30
  I will give a few specimens of the kind of philosophy I indulged in.
• 4:39:34
  You always ought to end a speech with a sneer or a laconic remark,
• 4:39:38
  it is food for thought. The listener will pause and reflect, It is
• 4:39:45
  not what you make, but what you save that counts. It isn't the
• 4:39:48
  big cracksman who gets along. It is the unknown dip who saves his earnings
• 4:39:56
  to go to Germany to learn the language is as bad as being in stir
• 4:39:59
  for t ten years. Jump out and be a man, and don't join
• 4:40:04
  the salvation army. Always say to the dip who says he wants to square
• 4:40:10
  it, well, what's your other graft. When a khan gets home,
• 4:40:15
  he is apt to find his sweetheart married and a madonna of the wash tubs.
• 4:40:21
  He made good money and was a swell grafter, but he got stuck
• 4:40:23
  on a tommy that absorbed his attention. And then he lost his punctuality and
• 4:40:27
  went down and out do a criminal a bodily injury, and he may forget
• 4:40:34
  wound his feelings, and he will never forgive. Most persons have seen a
• 4:40:41
  cow or a bull with a board put around its head in such a way
• 4:40:44
  that the animal can see nothing. It is a mode of punishment. Soon
• 4:40:48
  the poor beast will go mad if the board is not removed. What chance
• 4:40:52
  has the convict confined in a dark cell for years to keep his senses?
• 4:40:56
  He suffers from astigmatism of the mind. I am as much entitled to an
• 4:41:02
  opinion as any other quack on the face of the earth. General Grant is
• 4:41:07
  one of my heroes. He was a boy at fifteen. He was a
• 4:41:11
  boy when he died. A boy is loyalty personified. General Grant had been
• 4:41:18
  given a task to do, and like a boy, he did it.
• 4:41:21
  He was one of our greatest men and belongs with Tom Payne, Benjamin Franklin,
• 4:41:26
  and Robert Ingassol. Why don't we like the books we liked when we
• 4:41:32
  were boys. It is not because our judgment is better, but because we
• 4:41:36
  have a dream of our own now and want authors to dream along the same
• 4:41:38
  lines. The only gun with principles is the minor grafter. The weakest man
• 4:41:49
  in the universe is he who falls from a good position and respectable society into
• 4:41:55
  the world of forgers. And defaulters are generally of this class. A professional
• 4:42:00
  gun who has been a thief all his life, is entitled to more respect.
• 4:42:07
  In writing a book on crime, one ought to have in mind to
• 4:42:10
  give the public a truthful account of a thief's life, his crimes, habits,
• 4:42:15
  thoughts, emotions, vices and virtues, and how he lives in prison
• 4:42:18
  and out. I believe this ought to be done, and the man who
• 4:42:22
  does it well must season his writings with pathos, humor, sarcasm, tragedy,
• 4:42:27
  and thus give the real life of the grafter. Sympathy with a grafter
• 4:42:34
  who is trying to square it is a tonic to his better self. The
• 4:42:40
  other day I was with a reporter and society lady who was seeing the town.
• 4:42:45
  The lady asked me how I would get her diamond pin. It was
• 4:42:48
  fastened in such a way that to get it strong arm work would be necessary.
• 4:42:52
  I explained how I would put the mug on her while my husky pal
• 4:42:56
  went through her. But she said that would hurt me, as if grafters
• 4:43:02
  cared what a selfish lady to be, always thinking of herself. Life is
• 4:43:08
  the basis of philosophy. Philosophy is an emanation from our daily routine. After
• 4:43:15
  a convict has paced his cell a few thousand times, he sometimes has an
• 4:43:18
  idea. Philosophy results from life put through a mental process, just as opium
• 4:43:23
  when subjected to a chemical experiment, produces laud in them. Why therefore is
• 4:43:30
  not life far stronger than a narcotic I believe in platonic love, for it
• 4:43:37
  has been in my own life. A woman always wants love, whether she
• 4:43:41
  is eighteen or eighty, real love. Many is the time I have seen
• 4:43:45
  the wistful look in some woman's eye when she saw that it was only good
• 4:43:48
  fellowship or desire on my part. In this age of commerce, there is
• 4:43:56
  only one true friendship, the kind that comes through business. An old adage
• 4:44:03
  has it that all things come to him who waits, yes poverty, old
• 4:44:08
  age, and death. The successful man is he who goes and gets it.
• 4:44:17
  If thy brother assaults, you, do not weep, nor pray for
• 4:44:19
  him, nor turn the other cheek, but assail him with the full strength
• 4:44:23
  of your muscles. For man at his best is not lovable, nor at
• 4:44:27
  his worst detestable. There is more to be got in Germany, judging from
• 4:44:33
  what Dutch Lonzo used to say, than in England or America. Only the
• 4:44:37
  Dutchmen are too thick headed to find it out. A first class gun in
• 4:44:41
  Germany would be ranked as a ninth raider. Here grafters are like the rest
• 4:44:48
  of the world in this they always attribute bad motives to a kind act.
• 4:44:56
  From flimflam returning short change to burglary is but a step provided one has the
• 4:45:02
  nerve. Why would a woman take to him a sober, respectable man but
• 4:45:08
  lacking in temperament, unless she wanted a good home. If there is anything
• 4:45:15
  detestable, it is a grafter who will steal an overcoat in the winter time.
• 4:45:23
  Look for the woman a fly cop gets many a tip from some tidbit
• 4:45:27
  in whom a grafter has reposed confidence. I did not do, as I
• 4:45:37
  have said, any more grafton than was necessary during these seven months of liberty.
• 4:45:41
  But I observed continually living in an opium dream, and my pals were
• 4:45:45
  more and more amusing to me. When I thought about myself and my superior
• 4:45:49
  intelligence, I was sad, But I thought about myself as little as possible.
• 4:45:55
  I preferred to let my thoughts dwell on others, who I saw were
• 4:45:57
  a fine line of cranks and rogues. Somewhere in the eighties, before I
• 4:46:03
  went to Stir, there was a synagogue at what is now one O one
• 4:46:06
  Hester Street. The synagogue was on the first floor, and on the ground
• 4:46:08
  floor was a gin mill run by an ex central office man. Many pickpockets
• 4:46:14
  used to hang out there, and they wanted to drive the Jews out of
• 4:46:17
  the first floor so they could lay out a faroh game there. So they
• 4:46:19
  swore and carried on most horribly on Saturdays when the Rabbi was preaching, and
• 4:46:23
  finally got possession of the premises. Only a block away from this old building
• 4:46:27
  was a famous place for dips to get books in the old days. Nearby
• 4:46:32
  was Ridley's dry goods store, in which there were some cash girls who used
• 4:46:36
  to tip us off to who had the books and were up to the graft
• 4:46:38
  themselves. They would yell cash and bump up against the sucker while we went
• 4:46:42
  through him. The Jews were few in those days, and the Irish were
• 4:46:45
  in the majority. On the corner of Allen and Hester Street stood the saloon
• 4:46:51
  of a well known politician. Now a Jew has a shop there. Who
• 4:46:55
  would think that an Isaacs would supersede a Finnegan At the gin Mill on Hester
• 4:47:00
  Street, I used to know a boy dip named Buck. When I got
• 4:47:03
  back for my second bit, I found he had developed into a boxman and
• 4:47:07
  had a peculiar disposition which exists outside as well as inside graft him. He
• 4:47:11
  had one thousand, eight hundred dollars in the bank and a fine red front
• 4:47:15
  gold watch and chain. But he was not a good fellow. He used
• 4:47:19
  to invite three or four guns to have a drink, and would order Hennessy's
• 4:47:23
  brandy, which cost twenty cents a glass. After we had had our drinks,
• 4:47:27
  he would search himself and find perhaps twenty cents in his clothes. He
• 4:47:32
  got into me several times before I blew. One time, after he had
• 4:47:36
  ordered drinks, he began the old game and said he thought he had eighteen
• 4:47:38
  dollars with him and must have been touched. Then he took out his gold
• 4:47:42
  watch and chain and threw it on the bar, but it would take it.
• 4:47:47
  I went down, of course, and paid for the drinks. When
• 4:47:48
  we went out together, he grinned and said to me, I pity you.
• 4:47:52
  You will never have a bank account, my boy. The next time,
• 4:47:56
  Buck threw down his watch and said he would pay in the morning.
• 4:47:59
  I thought it was for I knew he had fifty dollars on him, so
• 4:48:03
  I said to the bartender, take it and hock it and get what he
• 4:48:06
  owes you. This chumps of working it all up and down the line.
• 4:48:08
  I won't be touched by the damn grafter any more. Buck was ready witted,
• 4:48:14
  and turning to the bartender, he said, my friend here is learning
• 4:48:17
  how to play poker and has just lost eighteen dollars. He is a dead,
• 4:48:21
  sore loser and is rattled. We went out with the watch without paying
• 4:48:26
  for our drinks, and he used to say to me, jim I don't
• 4:48:27
  believe in paying a gin milk keeper. If the powers that be were for
• 4:48:32
  the people instead of for themselves, they would have such drinkables free on every
• 4:48:34
  corner in Old New York. The next time Buck asked me to have a
• 4:48:38
  drink, I told him to go to a warm place in the next world.
• 4:48:42
  Buck was good to his family. He was married and had a couple
• 4:48:45
  of brats. Many a man educates himself in stir, as was my case.
• 4:48:52
  Jimmy, whom I ran up against one day on the street, is
• 4:48:56
  a good example. He had squared it and is still on the level.
• 4:49:00
  When I saw him after my second bit, he was making forty dollars a
• 4:49:03
  week as an electrical engineer, and every bit of the necessary education he got
• 4:49:07
  in prison. At one time he was an unusually desperate grafter and entirely ignorant
• 4:49:11
  of everything except the technique of graft. Many years ago, he robbed a
• 4:49:17
  jewelry store and was sent to Blackwell's Island for two years. The night of
• 4:49:21
  the day he was released, he burglarized the same store and assaulted the proprietor.
• 4:49:25
  He was arrested with the goods on him and brought to general Sessions before
• 4:49:29
  Recorder Smythe, who had sentenced him before. He got ten years at sing
• 4:49:33
  sing An, Auburn, and for a while he was one of the most
• 4:49:36
  dangerous and desperate a convicts, and made several attempts to escape. But one
• 4:49:41
  day a book on electricity fell into his hands, and from that time on
• 4:49:45
  he was a hard student. When he was released from Stir, he got
• 4:49:48
  a job in a large electrical plan of the state and worked for a while
• 4:49:52
  when he was tipped off by a country grafter who had known him in Stir.
• 4:49:56
  He lost his job and went to New York, where he met me,
• 4:49:59
  who was home after my first term. I gave him the welcome hand,
• 4:50:03
  and after he told me his story, I said, well, there's
• 4:50:06
  plenty of money in town. Jump out with us. He grafted it with
• 4:50:10
  me and my mob for a while, but got stuck on a tommy,
• 4:50:11
  so we could not depend on him to keep his appointments, and we dropped
• 4:50:15
  him. After that, he did some strong arm work with a couple of
• 4:50:18
  gorillas and fell again for five years. When he returned from Stirr, he
• 4:50:22
  got his present position as electrical engineer. He had it when I met him
• 4:50:26
  after my second bit, and he has it today. I am sure he
• 4:50:29
  is on the level and will be so long as he helds his job.
• 4:50:33
  About this time I was introduced to a peculiar character in the shape of a
• 4:50:37
  few yards of calico. It was at Carrie's place on Bleeker Street that I
• 4:50:41
  first saw this good looking youth of nineteen dressed in the latest fashion. His
• 4:50:45
  graft was to masquerade as a young girl, and for a long time,
• 4:50:48
  Shorthaired Liz, as we called him, was very successful. He sought employment
• 4:50:53
  as made in well to do families and then made away with the valuables.
• 4:50:59
  One day he was nailed with charges against him. He was convicted on the
• 4:51:03
  testimony of a chambermaid, with whom, in his character of ladies maid,
• 4:51:06
  he had had a lock mister r who was still influential, did his best
• 4:51:11
  for him for his fall money was big, and he only got a light
• 4:51:14
  sentence. I heard one day that an old Palomine Danny, had just been
• 4:51:19
  hanged. It gave me a shock, for I had often grafted with him
• 4:51:23
  when we were kids. As there were no orchards on the streets to the
• 4:51:26
  east side, Danny and I used to go to the improvised gardens that lined
• 4:51:30
  the sidewalks outside of the green grocer's shops and make away with strawberries, apples
• 4:51:34
  and other fruits. By nature, I suppose boys are no more bothered with
• 4:51:38
  consequences than our police officials. Danny rose rapidly in the world of graft and
• 4:51:42
  became very dangerous to society. As a grafter, he had one great fault.
• 4:51:48
  He had a very quick temper. He was sensitive and lacking in self
• 4:51:52
  control. But he was one of the cleverest guns that ever came from the
• 4:51:56
  sixth Ward, at place noted for good grafters of both sexes. He married
• 4:52:00
  a respectable girl and had a nice home, for he had enough money to
• 4:52:03
  keep the police from bothering him. If it had not been for his bad
• 4:52:07
  temper, he might be grafting, yet he would shoot at a moment's notice,
• 4:52:11
  and the toughest of the hard element were afraid of him. One time,
• 4:52:15
  he had it in for an old pala his named Patty. For a
• 4:52:18
  while, Patty kept away from the saloon on Pell Street where Danny hung out.
• 4:52:22
  But Patty too had nerve, and one day he turned up at his
• 4:52:25
  old resort, the Drum as it was called. He saw Danny and fired
• 4:52:30
  a canister at him. Danny hovered between life and death for months and had
• 4:52:33
  four operations performed on him without anesthetics. After he got well, Danny grafted
• 4:52:40
  on the Albany boats. One night, he and his pals tried to get
• 4:52:42
  Amal's leather, but some Western guns who were on the boat were looking for
• 4:52:45
  provider themselves and nicked them all. Danny accused him of taking his property,
• 4:52:51
  and as they would not give up, pulled his pistol. One of the
• 4:52:55
  Western guns jumped overboard and the others gave up the stuff. Danny was right,
• 4:53:00
  and that boat belonged to him and his mob. A few months after
• 4:53:03
  that event, Danny shot a mug who had called him a rat and went
• 4:53:07
  to San Antonio, Texas, where he secured a position as bartender. One
• 4:53:11
  day, a well known gambler who had the reputation of being a ten time
• 4:53:15
  killer, began to shoot around in the saloon for fun. Danny joined in
• 4:53:19
  the game, shot the gambler twice and beat the latter's two pals into insensibility.
• 4:53:25
  A few months afterwards, he came to New York with twenty seven hundred
• 4:53:29
  dollars in his pocket, and he enjoyed himself, for it is only the
• 4:53:32
  New York City born who loved the town. But he had better have stayed
• 4:53:36
  away, for in New York he met his mortal enemy, Splitty, who
• 4:53:40
  had more brains than Danny and was running a short wild house in the famous
• 4:53:44
  gas house block in Hester Street. One night, Danny was on a drunk,
• 4:53:48
  spending his twenty seven hundred dollars and riding around in a carriage with two
• 4:53:52
  girls. Beezy, one of the malls, proposed to go around to Splitty's.
• 4:53:56
  They went, and Beezy and the other girl were admitted, but Danny
• 4:54:00
  was shut out. He fired three shots through the door. One took effect
• 4:54:04
  in Beezy's breast, fatally, and Danny was arrested. While in tombs waiting
• 4:54:10
  trial, he was well treated by the warden, who was leader of the
• 4:54:12
  sixth ward and who used to permit Danny's wife to visit him every night.
• 4:54:17
  At the same time, Danny became the victim of one of the worst cases
• 4:54:19
  a treachery I ever heard of. An old pal of his, George,
• 4:54:23
  released from sing Sing, went to visit him in the tombs. Danny advised
• 4:54:27
  George not to graft again until he got his health back, suggesting that meanwhile
• 4:54:32
  he eat his meals at his Danny's mother's house. The old lady had saved
• 4:54:37
  up about two hundred and fifty dollars, which she intended to use to secure
• 4:54:41
  a new trial for her son. George heard of the money and put up
• 4:54:44
  a scheme to get it. He told the old woman that Danny was going
• 4:54:48
  to escape from the tombs that night, and that he had sent word to
• 4:54:49
  his mother to give him George the money. The villain then took the money
• 4:54:55
  and skipped the city, thus completing the dirtiest piece of work I ever heard
• 4:54:57
  of. Good Heavens, said Danny when he heard of it. A study
• 4:55:02
  in black Danny poor Fellow was convicted and after a few months hanged. Another
• 4:55:10
  tragedy in Manhattan was the end of Johnny t I had been out only a
• 4:55:14
  short time after my second bit when I met him on the Bowery. He
• 4:55:17
  was just back too, and complained that all his old pals had lost the
• 4:55:19
  nerve. Whenever he made a proposition, they seemed to see twenty years staring
• 4:55:23
  them in the face. So he had to work alone. His graft was
• 4:55:29
  burglary outside of New York. He lived in the city, and the police
• 4:55:33
  gave him protection for outside work. He was married and had two fine boys.
• 4:55:38
  One day, a copper, contrary to the agreement, tried to arrest
• 4:55:41
  him for a touch made in Mount Vernon. Johnny was indignant and wouldn't stand
• 4:55:45
  for a collar. Under the circumstances. He put four shots in the flyman's
• 4:55:51
  body. He was taken to the station house and afterwards tried for murder.
• 4:55:56
  The boys collected a lot of money and tried to save him, but he
• 4:55:59
  had the whole police force against the men. In a few months he was
• 4:56:02
  hanged. A friend of mine l had a similar fate. He was a
• 4:56:08
  prime favorite with the lasses of easy Virtue and was liked by the guns.
• 4:56:12
  One night, when I met him in a joint where grafters hung out.
• 4:56:15
  He displayed a split lip given him by the biggest bully in the ward.
• 4:56:18
  It was all about a girl named Molly, whom the bully was stuck on
• 4:56:21
  and on whose account he was jealous of L, whom all the women ran
• 4:56:25
  after a few nights later, L met the bully who had beaten him and
• 4:56:29
  said he had a present for him. Is it something good? Asked the
• 4:56:32
  gorilla, Yes, said L, and shot him dead. L tried to
• 4:56:37
  escape, but was caught in Pittsburgh and extrad added to New York, where
• 4:56:41
  he was convicted, partly on the testimony of the girl, whom I used
• 4:56:45
  to call unlimited Molly. She was lucky for instead of drifting to the bowery,
• 4:56:49
  she married a policeman who was promoted. L was sentenced to be hanged,
• 4:56:55
  but he died game. I think clpped him is not a very common
• 4:57:00
  kind of insanity, at least in my experience. Most grafters steal for professional
• 4:57:06
  reasons, but Big Sammy was surely a kleptomaniac. He had no reason to
• 4:57:11
  graft, for he was well up in the world. When I first met
• 4:57:15
  him. He was a standard bearer at a ball given in his honor and
• 4:57:18
  had a club named after him. He had been a gin mill keeper,
• 4:57:22
  hotel proprietor, and theatrical manager, and had saved money. He had too,
• 4:57:26
  a real romance in his life, for he loved one of the best
• 4:57:30
  choir singers in the city. She was beautiful and loved him, and they
• 4:57:33
  were married. She did not know that Sammy was a gun. Indeed,
• 4:57:37
  he was not a gun really, for he only used to graft for excitement,
• 4:57:41
  or at least what business there was in It was only a side issue.
• 4:57:45
  After their honeymoon, Sammy started a hotel at a seaside resort where a
• 4:57:49
  better class of guns, gamblers and vaudeville artist spent their vacation. That fall,
• 4:57:55
  he went on a tour with his wife, who sang in many of
• 4:57:56
  the churches in the state. Samue was a good boxman. He never used
• 4:58:00
  puff nitroglycerin, but with a few tools opened the safes artistically. His pal
• 4:58:07
  Mike went ahead of the touring couple, and when Sammy arrived at a town,
• 4:58:11
  he was tipped off to where the goods lay. When he heard that
• 4:58:15
  the police were putting it on to the hoboes, he thought it was a
• 4:58:18
  good joke and kept it up. He wanted the police to gather in all
• 4:58:22
  the black sheep they could, for he was sorry they were so incompetent.
• 4:58:26
  The loving couple returned to New York and were happy for a long time,
• 4:58:30
  but finally the wife fell ill and underwent an operation, from the effects of
• 4:58:33
  which she never recovered. She became despondent and jealous of Sammy, though he
• 4:58:40
  was one of the best husbands I have known. One morning, he had
• 4:58:44
  an engagement to meet an old pal who was coming home from stir He was
• 4:58:47
  late, and starting off in a hurry, neglected to kiss his wife goodbye.
• 4:58:52
  She called after him that he had forgotten something. Sammy, feeling for
• 4:58:56
  his money and canister, shouted back that everything was all right, and rushed
• 4:58:59
  off. His wife must have been in an unusually gloomy state of mind,
• 4:59:04
  for she took poison, and when Sammy returned, she was dead. It
• 4:59:08
  drove Sammy almost insane, for he loved her always. Few days afterwards,
• 4:59:15
  he jumped out for excitement and forgetfulness, and was so reckless when he tried
• 4:59:18
  to make a touch that he was shot almost to pieces. He recovered,
• 4:59:22
  however, and was sent to prison. For a long term of years.
• 4:59:26
  He's out again and is now regularly on the turf. During his bid and
• 4:59:30
  stir, all his legitimate enterprises went wrong, and when he was released there
• 4:59:34
  was nothing for it but to become a professional grafter. During the seven months
• 4:59:41
  which elapsed between the end of my second and the beginning of my third term,
• 4:59:45
  I was not a very energetic grafter. As I have said. Graft
• 4:59:48
  was good at the time, and a man with the least bit of nerve
• 4:59:51
  could make out fairly well. My nerve had not deserted me, but somehow
• 4:59:55
  I was less ambitious. Philosophy and opium and bad health do not incline a
• 5:00:00
  man to a hustling life. The excitement of stealing had left me, and
• 5:00:04
  now it was merely business. I therefore did a great deal of swindling,
• 5:00:08
  which does not stir the imagination, but can be done more easily than other
• 5:00:11
  forms of graft. I was known at headquarters as a dip, and so
• 5:00:15
  I was not likely to be suspected for occasional swindling. Just as I had
• 5:00:19
  been able to do housework now and then without a fall. I did some
• 5:00:23
  profitable swindling at this time, with an Italian named Valisa for a pal.
• 5:00:29
  It was a kind of graft which brought quick returns without much of an outlay.
• 5:00:33
  For several weeks we fleeced Valisa's countrymen. Brown I impersonated a contractor and
• 5:00:38
  Valisa was my foreman. We put advertisements in the newspapers for men to work
• 5:00:44
  on the railroads or for labor on new buildings. We hired desk room in
• 5:00:48
  a cheap office where we awaited our suckers, who came in droves, though
• 5:00:52
  only one could see us at a time. Our tools for this graft were
• 5:00:56
  pen, paper and ink, and one new shovel and pick Axevalisa did the
• 5:01:00
  talking and I took down the man's name and address. Bealisa told his countrymen
• 5:01:04
  that we could not afford to run the risk of disappointing the railroad, so
• 5:01:08
  that he would have to leave a deposit as a guarantee that he would turn
• 5:01:11
  up in the morning. If he left a deposit of a few dollars,
• 5:01:15
  we put his name on the new pick and shovel, which we told him
• 5:01:18
  he could come for in the morning. If we induced many to give us
• 5:01:22
  deposits using the same pick and shovel as a bribe. We made a lot
• 5:01:25
  of money during the day. The next morning we would change our office and
• 5:01:29
  vary our form of advertisement. Sometimes we met our victims at saloons. Balisa
• 5:01:34
  would be talking to some Italian immigrant who had money when I would turn up
• 5:01:37
  and be introduced. Treating all around and flashing a roll of bills, I
• 5:01:42
  could soon win the sucker's respect and confidence and make him ante up on any
• 5:01:47
  old Khan. One day, in a saloon in Newark, we got an
• 5:01:49
  Italian guy for one hundred and fifty dollars. Before he left the place.
• 5:01:53
  However, he suspected something. We had promised him the position of foreman on
• 5:01:59
  a gang of line, and after we got his dough, we could not
• 5:02:02
  let well enough alone and offered to give his wife the privilege of feeding the
• 5:02:04
  sixty Italians of whom he was to be the foreman. I suppose the dago
• 5:02:08
  thought that we were too good for He blew and pulled his gun. I
• 5:02:12
  caught him around the waist, and the bartender, who was with us,
• 5:02:15
  struck him over the head with a bottle of beer. The dago dropped the
• 5:02:19
  smoke wagon, and the bartender threatened to put him in prison for pulling a
• 5:02:22
  rod on respectable people. The dago left the saloon and never saw his money
• 5:02:26
  again. About this time, too, I had an opportunity to go into
• 5:02:33
  still another lucrative kind of swindling, but I didn't. It was not conscience
• 5:02:38
  either that prevented me from swindling the fair sex. For in those days,
• 5:02:41
  all touches, except those made by others off myself, seemed legitimate. I
• 5:02:48
  did not go in for it because at the time it was proposed to me,
• 5:02:52
  I had enough money for my needs, and as I have said,
• 5:02:55
  I was lazy. It was a good graft, however, and I was
• 5:02:57
  a fool for not ringing on it. The scheme was to hire a floor
• 5:03:03
  in a private house situated in any good neighborhood. One of the mob had
• 5:03:07
  to know German, and then an advertisement would be inserted into the herald to
• 5:03:11
  the effect that a young German doctor who had just come from the Old Country
• 5:03:15
  wanted to meet a German lady of some means with a view to matrimony.
• 5:03:18
  A pal of mine, who put such an advertisement in a Chicago paper,
• 5:03:22
  received no less than one hundred and forty five answers from women ranging in age
• 5:03:26
  from fifteen to fifty. The grafters would read the letters and decide as to
• 5:03:32
  which ladies they thought had some money. When these arrived at the office in
• 5:03:36
  answers to the grafters letters, they would meet two or three men impersonating the
• 5:03:41
  doctor and his friends, who had the gift of Khan to a remarkable degree.
• 5:03:45
  The doctor would suggest that if the lady would advance sufficient money to start
• 5:03:48
  him in business in the West, it would be well. If he found
• 5:03:52
  she had plenty of money, he married her immediately, one of his pals,
• 5:03:56
  acting the clergyman. She then drew all her money from the bank and
• 5:04:00
  they went to a hotel. There. The doctor, leaving her in their
• 5:04:03
  room, would go to see about the tickets for the West, and never
• 5:04:07
  return. The ladies always jumped at these offers, for all German women want
• 5:04:11
  to marry doctors or clergymen, and all women are soft, even if they
• 5:04:15
  are so apt to be natural pilferers themselves. When I was hard up,
• 5:04:22
  and if there was no good confidence game in sight, I didn't mind taking
• 5:04:26
  heavy chances in straight grafton, for I lived in a dream, and through
• 5:04:29
  opium, was not only lazy but reckless. On one occasion, a jew
• 5:04:33
  fence had put up a plan to get a big touch and picked me out
• 5:04:37
  to do the desperate part of the job. The fence was an expert in
• 5:04:40
  jewels and worked for one of the biggest firms that dealt in precious stones.
• 5:04:45
  He kept an eye on all such stores, watching for an opening to put
• 5:04:48
  his friends, the grafters, next to the place in question. He was
• 5:04:51
  tipped off by a couple of petty waiters who claimed it was a snap.
• 5:04:56
  He agreed with them, but kept his opinion to himself and came to see
• 5:04:59
  me about it. I and two other grafters watched the place for a week.
• 5:05:03
  One day, the two clerks went out together for lunch, leaving the
• 5:05:07
  proprietor alone in the store. This was the opportunity. I stationed one of
• 5:05:11
  my pals at the window outside and the other up the street to watch.
• 5:05:15
  If I had much trouble with the mark, the pal at the window was
• 5:05:18
  to come to my assistance with red pepper to throw if necessary in the sucker's
• 5:05:23
  eyes, and a good blackjack. I was to go into the store and
• 5:05:26
  buy a baby's ring for one dollar. While waiting for my change. I
• 5:05:32
  was to price a piece of costly jewelry, and while talking about the merits
• 5:05:34
  of the diamond, hit my man on the head with the blackjack. Then
• 5:05:38
  all I had to do was to go behind the counter and take the entire
• 5:05:41
  contents of the window, only a minute's work, for all the costly jewels
• 5:05:45
  were lying on an embroidered piece of velvet, and I had only to pick
• 5:05:48
  up the four corners of the velvet, bundle it into a green bag,
• 5:05:51
  and jump into the cab which was waiting for us a block away. Well,
• 5:05:56
  I had just about got the proprietor in a position to deal in the
• 5:05:59
  blow when the man at the window weakened and came in and said, vicks,
• 5:06:03
  I thought there was a copper outside, or that one of the clerks
• 5:06:07
  was returning, and told the jeweler I would send my wife for the ring.
• 5:06:11
  I went out and asked my pal what was the matter. He said
• 5:06:15
  he was afraid I would kill the old fellow, and that the a comeback
• 5:06:18
  would be too strong. My other pal, I found a block away.
• 5:06:22
  We all went back together to the fence, and then I opened on them.
• 5:06:25
  I tell you, I called them petty larsony barnacles, and came near
• 5:06:29
  club in them. I was so indignant. I have often had occasion to
• 5:06:33
  notice that most thieves who will steal a diamond or a front weaken when it
• 5:06:37
  comes to a large touch, even though there may be no more danger in
• 5:06:40
  it than in the smallest enterprises. I gave those two men a wide berth
• 5:06:45
  after that, and whenever I met them, I sneered, for I could
• 5:06:48
  not get over being sore. The touch was a beauty with very little chance
• 5:06:52
  of a comeback. For the police don't look among the pickpockets for the men
• 5:06:55
  who make this kind of touches. And I and my two companions were known
• 5:06:59
  to the as dips. Just before I fell for my third and most terrible
• 5:07:06
  term, I met Lottie and thought of marrying. I did not love her,
• 5:07:10
  but liked her pretty well, and I was beginning to feel that I
• 5:07:12
  ought to settle down and have a decent woman to look after me, for
• 5:07:15
  my health was bad and I had little ambition. Lotty seemed the right girl
• 5:07:21
  for the place. She was of German extraction and used to shave me sometimes
• 5:07:25
  at her father's barber shop, where I first met her. She seemed to
• 5:07:29
  me a good, honest girl, and I thought I could not do better,
• 5:07:32
  especially as she was very fond of me. Women liked the spruce dips.
• 5:07:36
  As I have said before, and even when my graft had broadened,
• 5:07:38
  I always retained the dress, manners, and reputation of a pickpocket. Lottie
• 5:07:44
  promised to marry me, and said that she could raise a few hundred dollars
• 5:07:47
  from her father, with which I might start another barbershop, quit graft in,
• 5:07:52
  and settle down to my books, my hop and domestic life. One
• 5:07:56
  day she gave me a pin that cost nine dollars, she said, and
• 5:08:00
  she wouldn't let me make her a present. All in all, she seemed
• 5:08:03
  like a sensible girl, and I was getting interested in the marriage idea.
• 5:08:07
  One day, however, I discovered something. I was playing poker in the
• 5:08:11
  office of a hotel kept by a friend of mine when a man and woman
• 5:08:15
  came downstairs together and passed through the office. They were my little German girl
• 5:08:19
  and the owner of a pawn shop, a sheeney of advanced years. Suddenly
• 5:08:25
  I realized where she had got the pin she gave me, and I began
• 5:08:27
  to believe stories I had heard about her. I thought I would test her
• 5:08:32
  character myself. I did, and found it weak. I did not marry
• 5:08:37
  her. What an escape. Every man, even a self respecting gun,
• 5:08:41
  wants an honest woman if it comes to hitchin up for good. Soon after
• 5:08:48
  I escaped Lottie, I got my third fall for the Star. The other
• 5:08:52
  times that I had been convicted, I was guilty, but on this occasion
• 5:08:55
  I was entirely innocent. Often, a man who has done time and his
• 5:09:00
  well known to the police is rounded up on suspicion and convicted when he is
• 5:09:03
  innocent, and I fell victim to this easy way of the officials for covering
• 5:09:07
  up their failure to find the right person. I had gone one night to
• 5:09:11
  an opium joint near Lover's Row, a section of Henry Street between Catherine and
• 5:09:15
  Oliver Street, where some guns of both sexes were to have a social meeting.
• 5:09:19
  We smoked hop and drank heavily, and told stories of our latest touches.
• 5:09:23
  While we were thus engaged, I began to have severe pains in my
• 5:09:27
  chest, which had been bothering me occasionally for some time, and suddenly I
• 5:09:30
  had hemorrhage. When I was able, I left a joint to see a
• 5:09:34
  doctor, who stopped the flow of blood but told me I would not live
• 5:09:37
  a month if I did not take good care of myself. I got aboard
• 5:09:41
  a car, went soberly home to my furnished room, and was arrested.
• 5:09:48
  I knew I had not committed any crime this time, and thought I should,
• 5:09:51
  of course be released in the morning. Instead. However, of being
• 5:09:55
  taken directly to the station house, I was conducted to a saloon and confronted
• 5:09:59
  with the suck. I had never seen him before, but he identified me
• 5:10:03
  just the same as the man who had picked his pocket. I asked him
• 5:10:07
  how long ago he had missed his valuables, and when he answered three hours,
• 5:10:11
  I drew a long sigh of relief, for I was at the joint
• 5:10:14
  at that time and thought I could prove an alibi. But though the rapper
• 5:10:18
  seemed to weaken, the copper was less trustful and read the riot Act to
• 5:10:22
  him. I was so indignant I began to call the policeman down vigorously.
• 5:10:26
  I told him he had better try to make a reputation on me some other
• 5:10:30
  time when I was really guilty, whereupon he lost his temper and jabbed me
• 5:10:33
  in the chest with his club, which brought on another flow of blood from
• 5:10:37
  my lungs. In this plight, I was taken to the station house,
• 5:10:41
  still confident I should soon be set at liberty. Although I had only about
• 5:10:45
  eighty dollars for fall money, I hardly thought I needed it, but I
• 5:10:49
  used it just the same to make sure, and employed a lawyer. For
• 5:10:53
  a while, things looked favorable to me, for I was remanded back from
• 5:10:56
  court every morning for eight days on account of lack of evidence, which is
• 5:11:00
  almost equivalent to a turnout in a loss any case. Even the copper began
• 5:11:04
  to pigot weaken, probably thinking he might as well get a share of my
• 5:11:08
  dough, since it began to look as if I should beat the case.
• 5:11:11
  But on the ninth day luck turned against me. The chief of detectives identified
• 5:11:18
  me as another man whisper in a few words to the justice, and I
• 5:11:22
  was committed under two thousand dollars bail to stand trial in general sessions. I
• 5:11:27
  was sent to the tombs to await trial, and I knew at last that
• 5:11:30
  I was lost. My character alone would convict me, and my lawyer had
• 5:11:34
  told me that I could not prove an alibi on the oaths of the thieves
• 5:11:37
  and disorderly persons who had been with me in the opium joint. No matter
• 5:11:42
  how confirmed a thief a man may be. I repeat, he hates to
• 5:11:47
  be convicted for something he has not done. He objects, indeed more than
• 5:11:51
  an honest man would do, for he believes in having the other side play
• 5:11:53
  fair, whereas the honest man simply thinks a mistake has been made. While
• 5:11:59
  in the tomb, a murderous idea formed in my mind. I felt that
• 5:12:03
  I had been horribly wronged and was hot for revenge. I was desperate,
• 5:12:07
  too, for I did not think I should live my bed out. Determined
• 5:12:11
  to make a half dozen angels, including myself. I induced a friend who
• 5:12:15
  came to see me in the tombs to get me a revolver. I told
• 5:12:19
  him I wanted to create a panic with a couple of shots and escape,
• 5:12:22
  but in reality I had no thought of escape. I was offered a light
• 5:12:26
  sentence if I would plead guilty, but I refused. I believed I was
• 5:12:30
  going to die anyway, and that things did not matter. Only I would
• 5:12:34
  have as much company as possible on the road to the other world. I
• 5:12:38
  meant to shoot the copper who had beaten me with his club. District Attorney
• 5:12:41
  Alcott, the judge, the complaintant, and myself as well, as soon
• 5:12:47
  as I should be taken into the court room for trial. The pistol,
• 5:12:51
  however, was taken away from me before I entered the court. I was
• 5:12:53
  convicted and sentenced to five years at Sing Sing. Much of the time I
• 5:13:00
  spent in stir On my third bit, I still harbored this thought of murder.
• 5:13:03
  That was one reason I did not kill myself. The determination to do
• 5:13:07
  the copper on my release was always in my mind. I planned even a
• 5:13:12
  more cunning revenge. I imagined many a scheme to get him and gloat over
• 5:13:18
  his dire misfortunes. One of my plans was to hunt him out on his
• 5:13:22
  beat, invite him to drink, and put thirty grains of hydrate of chloral
• 5:13:26
  in his glass. When he had become unconscious, I would put a bottle
• 5:13:30
  of morphine in his trouser's pocket, and then telephone to a few newspapers telling
• 5:13:33
  them that if they would send reporters to the saloon, they would have a
• 5:13:36
  good story against a dope copper who smoked too much. The result would be,
• 5:13:41
  I thought, a rap against the copper and his disgrace and dismissal from
• 5:13:44
  the force would follow. Sometimes this seemed to me better than mortar. For
• 5:13:48
  every copper who has broke immediately becomes a bum. When my copper should have
• 5:13:53
  become a bum, I imagine myself catching him dead, drunk and cutting his
• 5:13:56
  hamstrings. Certainly I was a what I reflected on my wrongs, real and
• 5:14:02
  imaginary. At other times I thought I merely killed him outright. End of
• 5:14:11
  chapter twelve, Chapter thirteen, in the Madhouse, on the road to Sing
• 5:14:18
  Sing again. The public may say I was surely and incorrigible, and ought
• 5:14:22
  to have been shut up anyway for safe keeping. But are they right if
• 5:14:26
  they say so? During my confinement I often heard the prison chaplain preach from
• 5:14:30
  the text, though thou sinnest ninety and nine times thy sins shall be forgiven.
• 5:14:37
  Thee probably Christ knew what he meant. His words do not apply to
• 5:14:41
  the police courts of Manhattan. These do not forgive, but send you up
• 5:14:45
  for the third term, which, if it is a long one, no
• 5:14:48
  man can pass through without impairment and body or in brain. It's better to
• 5:14:52
  make the convict's life as hard as health or a short term, than to
• 5:14:56
  wear out his mind and body. People need not wonder why. A man,
• 5:15:00
  and knowing what is before him, steals and steals again. The painful
• 5:15:03
  experiences of his prison life, too often renewed, leave him as water leaves
• 5:15:07
  a rubber coat. Few men are really impressionable after going through the deadening life
• 5:15:12
  and stir five months of my third durm I spent at Sing Sing, and
• 5:15:18
  then, as on my first bid, I was drafted to Auburn. At
• 5:15:22
  Sing Sing, I was classified as a second term man. I have already
• 5:15:26
  explained that during my first term I earned over a year's commutation time, and
• 5:15:30
  at that time would have been legally forfeited when I was sent up again within
• 5:15:33
  nine months for my second bit, if anyone except a few convicts had remembered
• 5:15:38
  I had served before. When on my third sentence I now returned to Sing
• 5:15:42
  Sing, I found that the authorities were next and knew that I had done
• 5:15:45
  them on the second bit. They were sore because it had been their own
• 5:15:49
  carelessness, and they were afraid of getting into trouble to protect themselves. They
• 5:15:55
  classified me as a second term man, but waited for a chance to do
• 5:15:57
  me. I suppose it was some damned dicky bird stool pigeon who got them
• 5:16:03
  next that I had done them, but I never heard who it was,
• 5:16:07
  though I tried to find out long and earnestly. When I got back to
• 5:16:11
  my cell and Sing Sing this third time, I was gloomy and desperate to
• 5:16:15
  an unusual degree, still eaten up with my desire for vengeance on those who
• 5:16:18
  had sent me to Stir for a crime I had not committed. My health
• 5:16:22
  was so bad that my friends told me I would never live my bid out
• 5:16:26
  and advised me to get the Clinton prison if possible, away from the damp
• 5:16:29
  cells at Sing Sing. But I took no interest in what they said,
• 5:16:33
  for I did not care whether I lived or died. I expected to die
• 5:16:37
  very soon, and in the meantime thought I was well enough where I was.
• 5:16:41
  I did not fear death, and I had my hop every day.
• 5:16:45
  All I wanted from the keepers was to be let alone in my cell and
• 5:16:48
  not annoyed with work. The authorities had an inkling that I was in a
• 5:16:52
  desperate state of mind, and probably believed it was healthier for them to let
• 5:16:55
  me alone. A good deal of a time before long, schemes began to
• 5:17:00
  form in my head to make my gets escape. I knew I wouldn't stop
• 5:17:03
  at murder if necessary in order to spring. For as I have said,
• 5:17:07
  I cared not whether I lived or died on the whole. However, I
• 5:17:11
  rather preferred to become an angel. At the beginning of my bit than at
• 5:17:14
  the end. I kept my schemes for escape to myself, for I was
• 5:17:18
  afraid of a leak. But the authorities must somehow have suspected something, for
• 5:17:22
  they kept me in my cell twenty three hours out of the twenty four.
• 5:17:26
  Perhaps it was just because they had it in for me for beating them on
• 5:17:27
  my second bit. As before, I consoled myself while waiting a chance to
• 5:17:33
  escape with some of my favorite authors. But my eyesight was getting bad,
• 5:17:36
  and I could not read as much as I used to. It was during
• 5:17:40
  these five months at Sing Sing that I first met doctor Mayas, of whom
• 5:17:42
  I saw much a year or two later. In the madhouse at Sing Sing.
• 5:17:48
  He had some privileges and used to work in the hall, where it
• 5:17:49
  was easy for me to talk to him through my cell door. This remarkable
• 5:17:53
  man had been a splendid physician in Chicago. He had beaten some insurance companies
• 5:17:59
  out of one hundred and sixty five thousand dollars, but was incincing because he
• 5:18:03
  had been wrongfully convicted on a charge of murder. He liked me, especially
• 5:18:07
  when later we were in the insane asylum together, because I would not stand
• 5:18:11
  for the abuse given to the poor lunatics and would do no stool pigeon or
• 5:18:15
  other dirty work for the keepers. He used to tell me that I was
• 5:18:18
  too bright a man to do any work with my hands. Jim, he
• 5:18:22
  said once, I would rather see you marry my daughter than give her to
• 5:18:26
  an ignorant business man. I know you would treat her kindly and that she
• 5:18:29
  would learn something of the world. As my wife often said, I would
• 5:18:33
  rather die at thirty eight, after seeing the world and enjoying life, than
• 5:18:36
  live in a humdrum way till ninety he explained the insurance graft to me,
• 5:18:41
  and I still think it the surest and most lucrative of all graphs for a
• 5:18:45
  man with intelligence. It is the very best kind of crooked work. About
• 5:18:49
  the only way the insurance companies can get back at the thieves is through a
• 5:18:52
  squeal. Here are a few of the schemes he told me for this graft.
• 5:18:59
  A man in his female take a small house in town or on the
• 5:19:02
  outskirts of a large city. The man insures his life for five thousand dollars.
• 5:19:07
  After they have lived there a while and passed, perhaps as music teachers,
• 5:19:11
  they take the next step, which is to get a dead body.
• 5:19:15
  Nothing is easier. The man goes to any large hospital, represents himself as
• 5:19:18
  a doctor, and for twenty five dollars can generally get a stiff, which
• 5:19:22
  he takes away in a barrel or a trunk. He goes to a furnished
• 5:19:26
  room already secured, and there dresses the cadaver in his own clothes, putting
• 5:19:30
  his watch, letters, and money in the cadaver's pockets. In the evening,
• 5:19:33
  he takes the body to some river or stream and throws it in.
• 5:19:37
  He knows from the newspapers when the body has been found, and notifies his
• 5:19:41
  woman pal, who identifies it as her husband's body. There are only two
• 5:19:45
  snags that one must guard against in this plot. The cadaver must not differ
• 5:19:49
  much in height from the person that has been insured, and its lungs must
• 5:19:53
  not show that there were those of anybody dead before thrown into the water.
• 5:19:57
  The way to prepare against this, the danger is to inject some water with
• 5:20:00
  a small medical pump into the lungs of the stiff before it is thrown overboard.
• 5:20:06
  Then it is easy for the widow to get the money and meet the
• 5:20:08
  alleged dead man in another country. A more complicated method, in which more
• 5:20:15
  money is involved, is as follows. The grafter hires an office and represents
• 5:20:18
  himself as an artist, a bric a brac dealer, a promoter, or
• 5:20:22
  an architect. Then he jumps to another city and takes out a policy under
• 5:20:26
  the tontine or endowment plan. When the game is for a very large amount,
• 5:20:30
  three or four pals are necessary. If no one of the grafters is
• 5:20:34
  a doctor, a physician must be impersonated. But this is easy. If
• 5:20:38
  there are say ten thousand physicians in Manhattan, not many of whom have an
• 5:20:44
  income of ten thousand a year, it is perhaps not difficult to get a
• 5:20:47
  diploma. After a sheepskin is secured, the grafter goes to another state,
• 5:20:52
  avoiding unless he is a genuine physician New York and Illinois, for they have
• 5:20:56
  boards of regents. The acting quack registers so that he can practice medicine and
• 5:21:00
  hangs out his shingle. The acting business man takes out a policy and pays
• 5:21:06
  the first premium. Before the first premium is paid, he is dead for
• 5:21:08
  all the insurance company knows. Often a live substitute instead of a dead one
• 5:21:14
  is secured. The grafter goes to the charity hospital and looks over the wrecks
• 5:21:18
  waiting to die. Some of these poor dying devils jump at the chance to
• 5:21:22
  go west. It is necessary, of course, to make sure that the
• 5:21:25
  patient will soon become an angel, or everything will fall through. Then the
• 5:21:30
  grafter takes a sick man to his house and keeps him out of sight.
• 5:21:33
  When he's about to die, he calls in the grafter, who is posing
• 5:21:36
  as a physician. After the death of the substitute, the doctor signs the
• 5:21:40
  death certificate. The undertaker prepares the body, which is buried. The woman
• 5:21:45
  grafter is at the funeral, and after which she sends in her claim to
• 5:21:48
  the companies. On one occasion in doctor Maya's experience, he told me the
• 5:21:52
  alleged insured man was found later with his head blown off, but when the
• 5:21:56
  wife identified the body, the claim had been paid. One afternoon, after
• 5:22:02
  I had been at Sing Sing five months, I was taken for my cell,
• 5:22:04
  shackled hand and foot, and sent with fifty other convicts to Auburn.
• 5:22:10
  When I had been at Auburn Prison about six months, I grew again exceedingly
• 5:22:12
  desperate and made several wild and ill thought out attempts to escape. I would
• 5:22:18
  take no back talk from the keepers and began to be feared by them.
• 5:22:22
  One day I had a fight with another convict. He struck me with an
• 5:22:25
  iron weapon, and I sent him to the hospital with knife thrust through several
• 5:22:27
  parts of his body. Although I had been a thief all my life and
• 5:22:32
  had done some strong arm work by nature, I was not quarrelsome and I
• 5:22:36
  have never been so quick to fight as on my third term. I was
• 5:22:38
  locked up in the dungeon for a week and fed on bread and water in
• 5:22:41
  small quantities. After my release, I was confined to myself for several days
• 5:22:47
  and used to quarrel with whoever came near me. The keepers began to regard
• 5:22:51
  me as a desperate character who would cause them a great deal of trouble,
• 5:22:53
  and feared that I might escape or commit murder at any time. One day,
• 5:22:59
  I remember a keeper threatened to club me with a heavy sticky head.
• 5:23:02
  I laughed at him and told him to make a good job of it,
• 5:23:03
  for I had some years still to serve, and if he did not kill
• 5:23:07
  me outright, I would have plenty of time to get back at him.
• 5:23:10
  The cur pigged it weakened. They really wanted to get rid of me,
• 5:23:14
  however, and one morning the opportunity came. I was feeling especially bad that
• 5:23:19
  morning went to see the doctor, who told me I had consumption and transferred
• 5:23:22
  me to the consumptive ward in the prison. There, the doctor and four
• 5:23:26
  screws came to my bedside, and the doctor inserted a hypodermic needle into my
• 5:23:30
  arm. When I awoke, I found myself in the isolated dungeon nicknamed the
• 5:23:36
  Keeley Cure by the convicts, where I was confined again for several weeks and
• 5:23:40
  had a hypodermic injection every day. At the end of that time, I
• 5:23:44
  was taken before the doctors, who pronounced me insane. With three other convicts
• 5:23:48
  who were said to be pipes insane. I was shackled hand and foot,
• 5:23:52
  put on a train and taken to the Asylum for the criminal Insane at Mattawan.
• 5:23:56
  I had been in bad places before, But at mattawan On I first
• 5:24:00
  learned what it is to be in hell? Why was I put in the
• 5:24:03
  pipe house? Was I insane? In one way? I have been insane
• 5:24:07
  all my life until recently. There is a disease called astigmatism of the conscience,
• 5:24:12
  and I have been sorely afflicted with that. I've always had the delusion,
• 5:24:18
  until the last few months, that it is well to do others in
• 5:24:21
  that way. I certainly was pipes, and in another way too, I
• 5:24:25
  was insane. After a man has served many years in ster and has contracted
• 5:24:29
  all the vices, he's not normal. Even if he is not violently insane.
• 5:24:33
  His brain loses its equilibrium, no matter how strong mind that he may
• 5:24:37
  be, and he acquires a stigmatism of the mind as well as of the
• 5:24:41
  conscience. The more astigmatic he becomes, the more frequently he returns to stir,
• 5:24:45
  where his disease grows worse, until he is prison mad. To the
• 5:24:55
  best of my knowledge and belief, I was not insane in any definite way,
• 5:24:59
  no more so than our nine out of ten of the men who have
• 5:25:00
  served as much time in prison as I. I suppose. I was not
• 5:25:04
  sent to the criminal insane asylum because of a perverted conscience. The stir I
• 5:25:08
  believe is supposed to cure that. Why did they send me to the madhouse?
• 5:25:14
  I don't know any more than my reader, unless it was because I
• 5:25:15
  caused the keepers and doctors too much trouble, or because for some reason or
• 5:25:19
  other they wanted to do me. But whether I had a delusion or not,
• 5:25:23
  and I am convinced myself that I have always been right above the ears.
• 5:25:27
  There certainly are many perfectly sane men confined in our state asylums for the
• 5:25:32
  criminal insane. Indeed, if all the fake lunatics were sent back to prison,
• 5:25:37
  it would save the state the expense of building so many hospitals. But
• 5:25:41
  I suppose the politicians, who want patronage to distribute would object. Many men
• 5:25:47
  in prison fake insanity. As I have already explained, many of them desire
• 5:25:51
  to be sent to Mattawan or Dani Moor insane asylums, thinking they will not
• 5:25:55
  need to work there, will have better food, and can more easily escape.
• 5:26:00
  They imagine that there are no stool pigeons in the pipe house, and
• 5:26:03
  that they can therefore easily make their elegant escape When they get to the madhouse,
• 5:26:07
  they find themselves sadly mistaken. They find many sane stool pigeons there,
• 5:26:12
  and their plans for escape are piped off as well there as in Stir and
• 5:26:17
  in other ways. As I shall explain, they are disappointed. The reason
• 5:26:21
  the cons don't get onto the situation in the madhouse through friends who have been
• 5:26:23
  there is that they think those who have been in the insane asylum are really
• 5:26:26
  pipes. When I got out of the mad house and told my friends about
• 5:26:32
  it, they were apt to remark laconically, He's in a terrible state.
• 5:26:36
  When they get there themselves, God help them. I will narrate what happened
• 5:26:41
  to me and some of the horrible things I saw there. After my pedigree
• 5:26:45
  was taken, I was given the regulation clothes, which in the mad house
• 5:26:49
  consists of a blue coat, a pair of gray trousers, a calico shirt,
• 5:26:52
  socks, and a pair of slippers. I was then taken to the
• 5:26:56
  worst violent ward in the institution, where I had a good chance to observe
• 5:27:00
  the real and the fake lunatics. No man or woman, not even an
• 5:27:06
  habitual criminal, can conceive unless he has been there himself. What our state
• 5:27:10
  asylums are. My very first experience was a jar. A big lunatic,
• 5:27:15
  six feet high and giant in physique, came up to me in the ward
• 5:27:18
  and said, I'll kick your head off, you agit idiot. What the
• 5:27:23
  hell did you come here for? Why didn't you stop off at Buffalo.
• 5:27:29
  I thought that if all the lunds were the size of this one, I
• 5:27:30
  wasn't going to have much show in that violent ward, for I weighed only
• 5:27:33
  one hundred and fifteen pounds at the time. But the big lunatic changed his
• 5:27:37
  note, smiled and said, say, Charlie, have you got any marbles?
• 5:27:42
  I said no, and then quick as a flash, he exclaimed,
• 5:27:47
  big japes, you don't look as if you had enough brains to play them.
• 5:27:52
  I had been in this ward, which was under the head attendant,
• 5:27:55
  nicknamed King Kelly, for two days when I was taken away to a dark
• 5:27:59
  room in which a deme did scrofulous negro had been kept for me. Not
• 5:28:03
  even a change of bed clothing was made. In rooms on each side of
• 5:28:07
  me were epileptics, and I could hear, especially when I was in the
• 5:28:10
  ward, raving maniacs shouting all about me. I was taken back to the
• 5:28:15
  first ward, where I stayed for some time. I began to think that
• 5:28:18
  prison was heaven in comparison with the pipe house. The food was poor,
• 5:28:22
  we were not supposed to do any work, and we were allowed only an
• 5:28:25
  hour in the yard. We stayed in our ward from half past five in
• 5:28:29
  the morning until six o'clock at night, when we went to bed. It
• 5:28:33
  was then I suffered most, for there was no light and I could not
• 5:28:36
  read. In stir, I could lie on my cot and read and soothe
• 5:28:38
  my nerves. But in the madhouse I was not allowed to read, and
• 5:28:42
  lay awake continually at night, listening to the idiot's bleeding and the maniac's raving
• 5:28:48
  about me. The din was horrible, and I am convinced that in the
• 5:28:52
  course of time, even a sane man kept in an insane asylum will be
• 5:28:56
  mad. Those who are a little delusional will go violently insane. My three
• 5:29:02
  years in an insane asylum convinced me that, beyond doubt, a man contracts
• 5:29:06
  a mental ailment just as he contracts a physical disease on the outside. I
• 5:29:10
  believe in mental as well as physical contagion, for I have seen man after
• 5:29:14
  man a short time after arriving at the hospital, become a raving maniac.
• 5:29:19
  For weeks and months, I had a terrible fight with myself to keep my
• 5:29:22
  sanity. As I had no books to take up my thoughts, I got
• 5:29:26
  into the habit of solving an arithmetical problem every day. If it had not
• 5:29:30
  been for my persistence in this mental occupation, I have no doubt I should
• 5:29:33
  have gone violently insane. It is only the sensitive and intelligent man who,
• 5:29:38
  when placed in such a predicament, really knows what torture is. The cries
• 5:29:44
  of the poor, demented wretches about me were a terrible lesson. They showed
• 5:29:47
  me more than any other experience I ever passed through the error of a crooked
• 5:29:52
  life. I met many a man in the violent ward who had been a
• 5:29:56
  friend of mine and good fellow on the outside. Now the brains of all
• 5:30:00
  of them were gone. They had the most horrible and the most grotesque delusions.
• 5:30:06
  But horrible or grotesque, they were always piteous. If I were to
• 5:30:11
  point out the greatest achievement the man is accomplished to distinguish him from the brute,
• 5:30:15
  it would be the taken care of the insane a child is so helpless
• 5:30:19
  that when alms is asked for his maintenance, it is given willingly. For
• 5:30:22
  every man and woman pities and loves a child. A lunatic is as helpless
• 5:30:27
  as a child, and often not any more dangerous. The maniac is misrepresented,
• 5:30:33
  for in Matawan and Danimore are taken together, there are very few who
• 5:30:36
  are really violent. And now I come to the most terrible part of my
• 5:30:41
  narrative, which many people will not believe, and that is the cruelty of
• 5:30:45
  the doctors and attendants, cruelty practiced upon these poor, deluted wretches. With
• 5:30:51
  my own eyes, I saw scores of instances of abuse while I was at
• 5:30:53
  Matawan and later at Danimoor. It is, I believe, against the law
• 5:30:59
  to an insane man, but any man who has ever been in these asylums
• 5:31:03
  knows how habitual the practice is. I have often seen idiots in the same
• 5:31:07
  word with myself, violently attacked and beaten by several keepers at once. Indeed,
• 5:31:12
  some of us used to regard a beating as our daily Medicine. Patients
• 5:31:18
  are not supposed to do any work, but those who refuse to clean up
• 5:31:21
  the wards and do other work for the attendants were the ones most likely to
• 5:31:22
  receive little mercy. I know how difficult it is for the public to believe
• 5:31:27
  that some of their institutions are as rotten as those of the Middle Ages.
• 5:31:30
  And when a man who has been both in prison and in the pipe house
• 5:31:33
  is the only one who makes the accusation, who will believe him, of
• 5:31:37
  course his testimony on the witness stand is worthless. I will merely call attention,
• 5:31:42
  however, to the fact that the great majority of the insane are so
• 5:31:45
  only in one way. They have some delusion, but are otherwise capable of
• 5:31:51
  observation and of telling the truth. I will also add that the editor of
• 5:31:55
  this book collected an immense number of instances of brutality from several men besides myself,
• 5:32:00
  who had spent years there, and that those instances also pointed to the
• 5:32:03
  situation that I described. Moreover, I can quote the opinion of the writer
• 5:32:08
  on criminology, Josiah Flint, as corroborative of my statements. He has said
• 5:32:14
  in my presence and in that of the editor of this book, mister Hapgood,
• 5:32:18
  that his researches have led him to believe that the situation in our state
• 5:32:22
  asylums for the criminal insane is horrible in the extreme. Indeed, why shouldn't
• 5:32:26
  these attendants be brutal in the first place? There is very little chance of
• 5:32:30
  a comeback, for who will believe men who have ever been shut up in
• 5:32:33
  an insane asylum? And very often these attendants themselves are unhinged mentally. To
• 5:32:40
  begin with. They are men of low intelligence, as is shown by the
• 5:32:42
  fact that they work for eighteen dollars a month, and after they have associated
• 5:32:47
  with insane men for years, they are apt to become delusional themselves. Taking
• 5:32:52
  care of idiots and maniacs is a strain on the intelligence of the best men.
• 5:32:56
  Is it any wonder that the ordinary attendant often becomes nervous and irascible and
• 5:33:00
  will fly at a poor idiot who won't do dirty work or whose silly noises
• 5:33:03
  get on his nerves. I have noticed attendants who, after they have been
• 5:33:07
  in the asylum a few months, acquired certain insane characteristics, such as a
• 5:33:12
  jerking of the head from one side to the other, looking up at the
• 5:33:15
  sky, cursing some imaginary person, and walking with the body bent almost double.
• 5:33:22
  Early in my stay at Mattawan, I saw something that made me realize
• 5:33:26
  I was up against a hard joint. An attendant in the isolation ward had
• 5:33:30
  an incurable patient under him, whom he was in the habit of compelling to
• 5:33:33
  do his work for him, such as caning chairs and cleaning cuspidors. The
• 5:33:37
  attendant had two birds in his room and he used to make Mickey, the
• 5:33:41
  incurable idiot, clean out the cage for him. One day, Micky put
• 5:33:45
  the cages under the boiling water to clean them as usual. The attendant had
• 5:33:48
  forgot to remove the birds and they were killed by the hot water. Another
• 5:33:52
  crank who was in the bathroom with Mickey, spied the dead pets, and
• 5:33:56
  he and Micky began to eat them. They were picking the bones when the
• 5:34:00
  attendant and two others discovered them and treated them as a golfer treats as golf
• 5:34:03
  balls. Another time I saw an insane epileptic patient try to prevent four attendants
• 5:34:08
  from playing cards in the ward on Sunday. He was delusional on religious subjects
• 5:34:14
  and thought the attendants were doing wrong. The reward he received for carrying for
• 5:34:18
  the religious welfare of his keepers was a kick in the stomach by one of
• 5:34:22
  the attendants, while another hit him in the solar plexus, knocking him down,
• 5:34:25
  and the third jammed his head on the floor until the blood flowed.
• 5:34:30
  After he was unconscious, the doctor gave him a hypodermic and jackson, and
• 5:34:33
  he was put to bed. How often, indeed have I seen men knocked
• 5:34:37
  out by strong arm work or strung up to the ceiling with a pair of
• 5:34:41
  suspenders. How often have I seen them knocked unconscious for a time or for
• 5:34:45
  eternity, Yes, for eternity. For insane men sometimes do die if they
• 5:34:48
  are treated too brutally. In that case, the doctor reports the patient as
• 5:34:53
  having died of consumption or some other disease. I have seen insane men turned
• 5:34:59
  into in curable idiots by the beatings they had received from the attendants. I
• 5:35:03
  saw an idiot boy knock down with an iron pot because he insisted on chirping
• 5:35:07
  out as delusion. I heard a patient about to be beaten by four attendants
• 5:35:11
  cry out, my God, won't you murder me? And the answer was
• 5:35:15
  why not? The coroner will say he died of dysentery. The attendants tried
• 5:35:21
  often to force fear into me by making me look at the work they had
• 5:35:23
  done on some harmless lunatic. I could multiply instances of this kind. I
• 5:35:29
  could give scores of them, with names of attendants and patience, and sometimes
• 5:35:33
  even the dates on which these horrors occurred. But I must cut short this
• 5:35:37
  part of my narrative. Every word of it, as sure as I have
• 5:35:41
  a poor old mother, is true. But it is too terrible to dwell
• 5:35:45
  upon, and will probably not be believed. It will be put down as
• 5:35:48
  one of my delusions, or as a lie inspired by the desire of vengeance.
• 5:35:55
  Certainly I made myself obnoxious to the authorities in the insane asylum, for
• 5:35:59
  I object vigorously to the treatment of men really insane. It is as dangerous
• 5:36:04
  to object to the curriculum of the madhouse in the state of New York as
• 5:36:07
  it is to find fault with the running of the government of Russia. In
• 5:36:11
  stir I never saw such brutality as takes place almost every day in the Pipe
• 5:36:15
  House. I reported what I saw, and though I was plainly told to
• 5:36:18
  mind my own business, I continued to object every time I saw a chance,
• 5:36:22
  until soon the petty spite of the attendants was turned against me. I
• 5:36:29
  was reported continually for things I had not done. I had no privileges,
• 5:36:33
  not even opium or books, and was so miserable that I repeatedly tried to
• 5:36:36
  be transferred back to prison. A doctor once wrote a book called ten Years
• 5:36:41
  in a Madhouse, in which he says, God help the man who has
• 5:36:45
  the attendants against him, for these demented brutes will make his life a living
• 5:36:51
  hell. Try as I might, however, I was not transferred back to
• 5:36:56
  stir, partly because of the sane stool pigeons, who, in order to
• 5:36:59
  curry face with the attendants, invented lies about attempts on my part to escape.
• 5:37:03
  If I had not had such a poor opinion of the powers that be
• 5:37:07
  and had stopped finding fault, I should no doubt have been transferred back to
• 5:37:10
  what was beginning to seem to me by contrast a delightful place, state's prison.
• 5:37:17
  The all absorbing topic to me in the pipe house was parsis. I
• 5:37:21
  thought a great deal about it, and observed the cranks about me continually.
• 5:37:25
  I noticed that almost all insane persons are musical, that they can hum a
• 5:37:29
  tune after hearing it only once. I suppose the meanest faculty in the human
• 5:37:33
  brain is that of memory and that idiots, lunatics and madmen learn music so
• 5:37:38
  easily because that part of the brain, which is the seat of memory,
• 5:37:41
  is the only one that is active, the other intellectual qualities being dead,
• 5:37:45
  so that the memory is untroubled by thought. I was often saddened at the
• 5:37:51
  sight of poor George, who had been a good dip in an old palo
• 5:37:53
  mine. When he first saw me in the pipe house, he asked me
• 5:37:56
  about his girl. I told him she was still waiting, and he said,
• 5:38:00
  why doesn't she visit me? Then, when I replied, waite a
• 5:38:04
  while, he smiled sadly and said I know. He then put a finger
• 5:38:10
  to his head, and, hanging his head, his face suddenly became a
• 5:38:12
  blank. I was helpless to do anything for him. I was so sorry
• 5:38:18
  for him sometimes that I wanted to kill him and myself and end our misery.
• 5:38:25
  Another friend of mine thought he had a number of white blackbirds and used
• 5:38:27
  to talk to them excitedly about gold. This man had a finely shaped head.
• 5:38:33
  I have read in a book of phrenology that a man's intelligence can be
• 5:38:37
  estimated by the shape of his head. I don't think this theory amounts to
• 5:38:41
  anything. For most of the insane men I knew had good heads. I
• 5:38:45
  have formed a little theory of my own. I am as good a quack
• 5:38:48
  as anybody else about insanity. I used to compare a well shaped lunatic's head
• 5:38:53
  to a lady's beautiful jewel box from which my lady's maid had stolen the precious
• 5:38:57
  stones. The cranks had contained both quantity and quality of brains, but the
• 5:39:03
  gray matter was lacking. The jewel box and the lunatic's head were both beautiful
• 5:39:08
  receptacles, but the value had flown. Another lunatic, a man named Hogan,
• 5:39:15
  thought that girls were continually bothering him. Now go away, Liz and
• 5:39:21
  leave me alone, he would say. One day, a lady about fifty
• 5:39:25
  years old visited the hospital with Superintendent Allison and came to the violent ward where
• 5:39:29
  Hogan and I were. She was not a bit afraid and went right up
• 5:39:33
  to Hogan and questioned it. He exclaimed, excitedly, go away, Meg,
• 5:39:37
  You're disfigured enough without my giving you another sock, dolager. She stayed
• 5:39:44
  in the ward a long while and asked many questions. She had as much
• 5:39:47
  nerve as any lady I ever saw. As she and Allison were leaving the
• 5:39:51
  ward, Hogan said, Allison chain her up. She's a bad egg.
• 5:39:56
  The next day I learned that this refined, delicate and courageous woman had once
• 5:40:00
  gone to war with her husband, a German prince who had been with General
• 5:40:04
  Sherman on his memorable March to the Sea. She was born an American and
• 5:40:08
  belonged to the j family, but was now the Princess Salmsalm. The most
• 5:40:15
  amusing crank, if the word amusing can be used of an insane man in
• 5:40:19
  the ward was an Englishman named Alec. He was incurably insane, but a
• 5:40:25
  good musician and mathematician. One of his delusions was that he was the sacred
• 5:40:30
  camel in the London Zoo. His mortal enemy was a lunatic named Jimmy White,
• 5:40:34
  who thought he was a mule. Jimmy often came to me and said,
• 5:40:38
  you didn't give your mule any oats this morning. He would not be
• 5:40:42
  satisfied until I pretended to shew him. Alec had great resentment for Jimmy because
• 5:40:48
  when Alec was a camel in the London Zoo, Jimmy used to prevent the
• 5:40:52
  ladies and the kids from giving him sweets. When Jimmy said I never saw
• 5:40:56
  the man before, Alec replied indignantly, I'm no man. I'm a sacred
• 5:41:02
  camel, and I won't be interfered with by any ordinary common mule like you.
• 5:41:07
  They are diverse sorts of insanity. I had an interview with the doctor,
• 5:41:11
  a high officer in the institution, which convinced me, perhaps without reason,
• 5:41:15
  that insanity was not limited to the patience and attendants. One day,
• 5:41:21
  an insane man was struck by an attendant in the soul of Plexus. He
• 5:41:25
  threw his hands up in the air and cried, my god, I'm killed.
• 5:41:29
  I said to another man in the ward, there's murder. He said,
• 5:41:33
  how do you know, I replied, I've seen death a few times
• 5:41:38
  in an hour. Sure enough, the report came that the insane man was
• 5:41:41
  dead. A few days later, I was talking with the doctor referred to,
• 5:41:45
  and I said, I was an eye witness of the assault on d
• 5:41:49
  and I described the affair You've been reported to me repeatedly, he replied,
• 5:41:56
  by whom I asked, attendants are patience? Patience, he replied, surely.
• 5:42:03
  I remarked, you don't believe half of what insane men tell you do
• 5:42:06
  you, doctor, These same patients in reality, sane stool pigeons that have
• 5:42:11
  been reporting me, have accused you of every crime in the calendar. Oh,
• 5:42:15
  but he said, I am an old man and the father of a
• 5:42:19
  family doctor, I continued, do you believe that a man can be a
• 5:42:23
  respectable physician and still be insane? What do you mean he said, in
• 5:42:30
  California lately, I replied, a superintendent of an insane asylum has been accused
• 5:42:34
  of murder, arson, rape and peculation. This man, too, was
• 5:42:38
  more than fifty, had a mother, a wife, and children, and
• 5:42:42
  belonged to a profession which ought to be more sympathetic with a patient than the
• 5:42:45
  church with its communicants. When a man will stoop to such crimes, is
• 5:42:49
  it not possible that there is a form of mental disease called partial periodical paralysis
• 5:42:55
  of the faculty humane? And was not Robert Lewis Stevenson Wright when he wrote
• 5:42:59
  Doctor Jack and mister Hyde. The doctor grabbed me by the wrist and shouted,
• 5:43:03
  don't you dare to tell anybody about this interview. I looked into his
• 5:43:07
  eyes and smiled, For I am positive that at that moment I looked into
• 5:43:11
  the eyes of a madman. King Kelly, an attendant who had been on
• 5:43:17
  duty and insane asylums for many years, was very energetic in trying to get
• 5:43:21
  information from the stool pigeons. The patients used to pass notes around among themselves,
• 5:43:26
  and the attendants were always eager to get hold of these notes, expecting
• 5:43:29
  to find news of beats escapes about to be attempted. I knew that King
• 5:43:34
  Kelly was eager to discover beats, and as I, not being a stool
• 5:43:37
  pigeon, was in bad odor with him, I determined to give him a
• 5:43:41
  jar. So one day I wrote him the following note, Mister Kelly,
• 5:43:45
  you've been in this hospital four years. The socks and suspendeds which should go
• 5:43:51
  to the patients are divided impartially between you and the other intendants. Of the
• 5:43:55
  four razors which lately arrived for patients, two are in your trunk you sent
• 5:44:00
  to your brother in Ireland, and the fourth you kept in the ward for
• 5:44:03
  show in case the doctor should be coming around. That night, when I
• 5:44:07
  was going to bed, I slipped a note into the King's hand and whispered,
• 5:44:10
  there's going to be a beat tonight. The King turned pale and hurriedly
• 5:44:15
  ordered the man in the ward to bed so that he could read the note.
• 5:44:18
  Before reading it, he handed it to a doctor to be sure to
• 5:44:21
  get the credit of stopping the beat as soon as possible. The doctor read
• 5:44:25
  it and gave the King the laugh. In the morning, when the doctor
• 5:44:27
  made his rounds, mister Kelly said to him, we have one or two
• 5:44:30
  funny men in the ward who, instead of robing decent people, could have
• 5:44:33
  made their fortunes at Tony Pastor's. The result was that the doctor put me
• 5:44:38
  down for three or four new delusions. Knowing the Celtic character thoroughly, I
• 5:44:42
  used to crack many a joke on the King. I would say to another
• 5:44:47
  patient as the King passed, if it hadn't been for Kelly, we you
• 5:44:49
  should have escaped that time. Sure that would make him wild. My gift
• 5:44:53
  of ridicule was more than once valuable to me in the madhouse. But I
• 5:44:59
  must say that the King was pretty kind when a patient was ill. When
• 5:45:02
  I was so ill and weak that I didn't care whether I died or not,
• 5:45:04
  the old King used to give me extras milk, eggs and puddings,
• 5:45:10
  And in his heart the old man hated stool pigeons, for by nature he
• 5:45:12
  was a dynamiter, and he believed in physical force and not mental treachery.
• 5:45:18
  The last few months I served in the insane asylum was at Danamora, where
• 5:45:22
  I was transferred from Mattawan. The conditions that the two asylums are much the
• 5:45:26
  same. While at Danamora, I continued my efforts to be sent back to
• 5:45:30
  Stir to finish my sentence, and used to talk to the doctors about it
• 5:45:33
  as often as I had an opportunity. A few months before I was released,
• 5:45:37
  I had an interview with a commissioner, the first one in three years,
• 5:45:41
  although I had repeatedly demanded to talk to one. How is it,
• 5:45:45
  I said that I am not sent back to Stir. He turned to the
• 5:45:48
  war doctor and asked, what is this man's condition? Imaginary wrongs, replied
• 5:45:56
  the doctor. That made me angry, and I remarked sarcastically, it's curious
• 5:46:00
  that when a man tries to make a success at little things, he is
• 5:46:03
  a dead failure. What do you mean, asked the superintendent, trying to
• 5:46:08
  feel me out for a new delusion. I pointed to the doctor and said,
• 5:46:12
  only a few years ago this man was an interlocutor in an amateur minstrel
• 5:46:17
  troop. As a barnstormer, he was a failure. Since he has risen
• 5:46:21
  to the height of being a madhouse doctor, he is a success. Then
• 5:46:26
  I turned to the commissioner and said, do you know what constitutes a cure
• 5:46:30
  in this place and in Mattawan? I'd like to know. He replied,
• 5:46:34
  well, I said, when a man stoops to carry in tails on other
• 5:46:37
  patients and starts in to work cleaning cuspidors, then and not till then,
• 5:46:41
  he is cured. Everybody knows that, in the eyes of the attendants and
• 5:46:45
  doctors, the worst delusions in the asylum are wanting to go home, demanding
• 5:46:51
  more food, and disliking to do dirty work in bare tales. I don't
• 5:46:56
  know whether my talk with the commissioner had any effect or not, But a
• 5:47:00
  little while after that, when my term expired, I was released. I
• 5:47:03
  had been afraid I should not be, for very often a man is kept
• 5:47:07
  in the asylum long after his term expires, even though he is no more
• 5:47:10
  insane than I was. When the stool pigeons heard that I was to be
• 5:47:14
  released, they thought I must have been a rat under cover and applied every
• 5:47:17
  vile name to me. I had been in hell for several years, but
• 5:47:22
  even hell has its uses. When I was sent up for my third term,
• 5:47:26
  I thought I should not live my bid out, and that as long
• 5:47:29
  as I did live, I should remain a grafter at heart. But the
• 5:47:33
  Pipe House cured me, or helped to cure me of a vice which,
• 5:47:36
  if it had continued, would have made me incapable of reform even if I
• 5:47:38
  had lived. I mean the opium habit. Before I went to the mad
• 5:47:44
  house, there had been periods when I had little opium, either because I
• 5:47:47
  could not obtain it or because I was trying to knock it off. My
• 5:47:49
  sufferings in consequence had been violent. But the worst moral and physical torture that
• 5:47:53
  has ever fallen to my lot came to me after I had entered the pipe
• 5:47:56
  House. For I could practically get no opium. That deprivation, added to
• 5:48:02
  the horrors I saw every day, was enough to make any man crazy.
• 5:48:07
  At least I thought so at the time. I must have had a good
• 5:48:10
  nervous system to have passed through it. All. Insufficient hop is almost as
• 5:48:14
  bad as none at all. During my first months in the madhouse, the
• 5:48:17
  doctor occasionally took pity on me and gave me a little of the drug,
• 5:48:21
  but taken in such small quantities, it was worse than useless. He used
• 5:48:25
  to give me sedatives, however, which calmed me for a time. Occasionally,
• 5:48:29
  too, I would get a little hop from a trustee who was a
• 5:48:30
  friend of mine, and I had smuggled in some tablets of morphine from Stir,
• 5:48:34
  But the supply was soon exhausted, and I saw that the only thing
• 5:48:37
  to do was to knock it off entirely. This I did, and made
• 5:48:41
  no more attempts to obtain the drug. For the last two years in the
• 5:48:45
  asylum, I did not have a bit of it. I cannot describe the
• 5:48:49
  agonies I went through. Every nerve and muscle in My body was in pain
• 5:48:53
  most of the time. My stomach was constantly deranged, my eyes and mouth
• 5:48:57
  exuded water, and I could not slip. Thoughts of suicide were constant with
• 5:49:03
  me. Of course, I could never have given up this baleful habit through
• 5:49:07
  my own efforts alone. The pipe house forced me to make the attempt,
• 5:49:11
  and after I had held off for two years, I had enough strength to
• 5:49:14
  continue in the right path. Although even now the longing for it returns to
• 5:49:18
  me. It does not seem possible that I can ever go back to it.
• 5:49:22
  For that terrible experience in the madhouse made an indelible impression. I shall
• 5:49:26
  never be able to wipe out those horrors entirely from my mind. When under
• 5:49:32
  the influence of opium, I used frequently to imagine I smelled the fragrance of
• 5:49:36
  white flowers. I never smelled certain sweet perfumes. Now, without the whole
• 5:49:41
  horrible experience rushing before my mind, life in a madhouse taught me a lesson
• 5:49:45
  I shall never forget. End of Chapter thirteen, Chapter fourteen. Out of
• 5:49:53
  Hell, I left anymore asylum for the criminal insane. On a cold winter
• 5:50:03
  morning, I had my tickets to New York, but not a cent of
• 5:50:07
  money. Relatives of friends are supposed to provide that I was happy, however,
• 5:50:11
  and I made a resolution which this time I shall keep, never to
• 5:50:15
  go to Stir or to the pipe house again. I knew very well that
• 5:50:19
  I could never repeat such an experience without going mad in reality or dying.
• 5:50:25
  The first term I spent in Stir, I had my books and a new
• 5:50:27
  life of beauty, and thought to think about once and for all, I
• 5:50:30
  had had that experience. The thought of going through prison routine again, the
• 5:50:36
  damp cells, the poor food, the habits contracted with the madhouse at the
• 5:50:38
  end. No, that could never be for me again. I felt this
• 5:50:44
  as I heard the loons yelling good bye to me from the windows. I
• 5:50:48
  looked at the gloomy building and said to myself, I've left hell, and
• 5:50:51
  I'll shovel coal before I go back. All the ideas that brought me here
• 5:50:56
  I will leave behind. In the future. I will try to get all
• 5:50:59
  the good things out of life that I can, the really good things,
• 5:51:02
  a glimpse of which I got through my books. I think there is still
• 5:51:06
  sufficient gray matter in my brain for that. I took the train for New
• 5:51:11
  York, but stopped off at Plattsburgh in Albany to deliver some messages from the
• 5:51:15
  poor unfortunates to their relatives. I arrived in New York at twelve o'clock at
• 5:51:19
  night, having had nothing to eat all day. My relatives and friends had
• 5:51:23
  left the station, but were waiting up for me in my brother's house.
• 5:51:27
  This time I went straight to them. My father had died while I was
• 5:51:32
  in the pipe house, and now I determined that I would be at last
• 5:51:36
  a kind son to the mother who had never deserted me. I think she
• 5:51:41
  felt that I had changed, and the tears that flowed from her eyes were
• 5:51:44
  not all from unhappiness. She told me about my father's last illness and how
• 5:51:49
  cheerfully had been. I bought him a pair of new shoes a month before
• 5:51:53
  he died. She said he laughed when he saw them, and said,
• 5:51:56
  what extravagance to buy shoes for a d iron men living right among them.
• 5:52:03
  I met again, of course, many of my old companions in crime,
• 5:52:07
  and found that many of them had thought I was dead. It was only
• 5:52:11
  the other day that I met Al driving a pedlar's wagon. He, like
• 5:52:15
  me, had squared it. I thought you died in the pipe house,
• 5:52:18
  Jim, he said, This has happened to me a dozen times since my
• 5:52:22
  return. I had spent so much time in stir that the general impression among
• 5:52:26
  the guns at home seemed to be that I had gone up the escape.
• 5:52:32
  As a general thing. I found that guns who had squared it and become
• 5:52:36
  prosperous had never been very successful grafters. Some of the best boxmen and burglars
• 5:52:41
  in the business are now bartenders and saloons owned by former small fry among the
• 5:52:44
  dips. There are waiters now in saloons and concert halls on the Bowery who
• 5:52:48
  were far cleverer thieves than the men who employ them, and who are worth
• 5:52:52
  thousands. Hungry Joe is an instances. Once he was king of confidence men,
• 5:52:57
  and on account of his great plausibility got in on a noted person on
• 5:53:02
  one occasion for several thousand dollars. And now he will beg many a favor
• 5:53:06
  of men he would not look at in the old days. A grafter is
• 5:53:11
  jealous, suspicious, and vindictive. I had always known that, but never
• 5:53:17
  realized it so keenly as I have since my return from the madhouse. Above
• 5:53:22
  everything else, a grafter is suspicious, whether he is squared it or not,
• 5:53:26
  suspicious of his pals and of everybody else. When my old pals saw
• 5:53:30
  that I was not working with them, they wondered what my private graft was.
• 5:53:34
  When I told them I was on the level and was looking for a
• 5:53:37
  job, they either laughed or looked at me with suspicion in their eyes.
• 5:53:41
  They saw I was looking good, well dressed, and they could not understand
• 5:53:45
  it. They put me down some of them as a stool pigeon. They
• 5:53:49
  all feel instinctively that I am no longer with them, and most of them
• 5:53:53
  have given me the frosty mitt. Only the bums who used to be grafters
• 5:53:57
  sail up to me in the bowery. They've not got enough sense left even
• 5:54:02
  for suspicion. The dips who hang out in the thieves resorts are beginning to
• 5:54:06
  hate me, not because I want to injure them, for I don't,
• 5:54:08
  but because they think I do. I told one of them, an old
• 5:54:12
  friend, that I was engaged in some literary work. He was angry in
• 5:54:17
  an instant and said, you, Dora Matt thief. You couldn't get away
• 5:54:21
  with a coal scuttle. One day, I was taking the editor of this
• 5:54:25
  book through the bowery, pointing out to him some of my old resorts when
• 5:54:29
  I met an old Palomine who gave me the glad hand. We had a
• 5:54:32
  drink, and I, who was feeling good, started in to jolly him
• 5:54:34
  a little. He had told me about an old Palavar who had just fallen
• 5:54:38
  for a book and was confined in a Brooklyn jail. I took out a
• 5:54:41
  piece of copy paper and took the address, intending to pay a visit to
• 5:54:45
  him, for everybody wants sympathy. What a look went over that grafter's face.
• 5:54:52
  I saw him glance quickly at the editor and then at me, and
• 5:54:55
  I knew that he had taken alarm and probably thought we were pinkerton men or
• 5:54:57
  something as bad. I tried to carry it off with a laugh, for
• 5:55:02
  the place was full of thieves, and told him I would get him a
• 5:55:04
  job on a newspaper. He answered hastily that he had a good job in
• 5:55:08
  the pool room and was on the level. He started in to try to
• 5:55:11
  square it with my companion by saying that he adored a man who had a
• 5:55:15
  job. A little while afterwards he added that he hated anybody who would graft
• 5:55:19
  after he had got an honest job. Then, to wind up his little
• 5:55:22
  game of square in himself, he ended by declaring that he had recently obtained
• 5:55:26
  a very good position. That was one of the incidents that queered me with
• 5:55:32
  the more intelligent thieves. He spread the news, and whenever I meet one
• 5:55:36
  of that gang on the bowery, I get the cold shoulder. A gun
• 5:55:38
  is so mighty quick to grow suspicious. A grafter who follows the business for
• 5:55:42
  years. Is a study in psychology, and his two most prominent characteristics are
• 5:55:48
  fear and suspicion. If some stool pigeon tips him off to the police and
• 5:55:52
  he is sent to Stir, he invariably suspects the wrong person. He tells
• 5:55:56
  his friends and Stir that al done him, and pretty soon poor Awl,
• 5:56:00
  who may be an honest thief, is put down as a rat. If
• 5:56:03
  Owl goes to Stir, very often, the result is a cutting match between
• 5:56:06
  the two. There are many convicts in prison who lie awake at night concocting
• 5:56:11
  stories about other persons, accusing them of the vilest of actions. If the
• 5:56:15
  prisoner can get hold of a Sunday newspaper, he invariably reads the society news
• 5:56:21
  very carefully. He can tell more about the four hundred than the Swells will
• 5:56:25
  ever know about themselves, and he tells very little good of them. Such
• 5:56:29
  stories are fabricated in prison and repeated out of it. When I was in
• 5:56:33
  Auburn Stir, I knew a young fellow named Sterling, as straight a thief
• 5:56:36
  as ever did time. He had the courage of a grenadier and objected to
• 5:56:41
  everything that was mean and petty. He therefore had many enemies in prison,
• 5:56:45
  and they tried to make him unpopular by accusing him of a horrible crime.
• 5:56:49
  The story reached my ears, and I tried to put a stop to it,
• 5:56:52
  but I only did him the more harm. When Sterling heard the tale,
• 5:56:56
  he knocked one of his traducers senseless with an iron bar. Tongues wagged
• 5:57:00
  louder than ever, and one day he came to me and talked about it,
• 5:57:04
  and I saw a wild look in his eyes. His melancolia started in
• 5:57:08
  about that time, and he began to suspect everybody, including me. His
• 5:57:14
  enemies put the keepers against him, and they made his life almost unbearable.
• 5:57:18
  Generally, the men that tip off keepers to the alleged violent character of some
• 5:57:23
  convict are the worst stool pigeons in the prison. Even the Messiah could not
• 5:57:30
  pass through this world without arousing the venom of the crowd. How in the
• 5:57:33
  name of common sense, then, could Sterling or I or any other grafter
• 5:57:37
  expect otherwise than to be produced. It was the politicians who were the cause
• 5:57:41
  of Christ's trials, and the politicians are the same to day as they were
• 5:57:45
  then. They have very little brains but they have the low cunning, which
• 5:57:51
  is the first attribute of the human brute. They pretend to be the people's
• 5:57:55
  advisers, but pile up big bank accounts. Even the convicts scum that come
• 5:58:00
  from the lower wards of the city, have all the requisites of the successful
• 5:58:03
  politician. Nor can one say that these criminals are of low birth, for
• 5:58:08
  they trace their ancestors back for centuries. The fact that convicts slander one another
• 5:58:14
  with glee and here with joy of the misfortunes of their fellows is a sign
• 5:58:18
  that they come from a very old family, from the wretched human stock that
• 5:58:22
  demanded the crucifixion of Christ. This evil trait, suspiciousness, is something I
• 5:58:29
  should like to eliminate from my own character. Even now I am afflicted with
• 5:58:33
  it. Since my release, I often have the old feeling come over me
• 5:58:37
  that I am being watched, and sometimes without any reason at all. Only
• 5:58:41
  recently I was riding on a Brooklyn car when a man opposite happened to glance
• 5:58:45
  at me two or three times. I gave him an irritated look. Then
• 5:58:51
  he stared at me to see what was the matter. I suppose that was
• 5:58:55
  too much, and I asked him with my nerves on edge. If he
• 5:58:57
  had ever seen me before. He said no, with a surprised look,
• 5:59:02
  and I felt cheap, as I always do after such an incident. A
• 5:59:06
  neighbor of mine has a peculiar habit of watching me quietly whenever I visit his
• 5:59:10
  family. I know that he is ignorant of my past, but when he
• 5:59:14
  stares at me, I am rattled. I begin to suspect that he is
• 5:59:17
  studying me, wondering who I am. The other day I said to him
• 5:59:21
  irritably, mister Kay, you have a bad habit of watching people. He
• 5:59:25
  laughed carelessly, and I getting hot, said mister Kay. When I visit
• 5:59:29
  people, it is not with the intention of stealing anything. I left the
• 5:59:33
  house on a huff, and his sister, as I afterwards found, rebuked
• 5:59:37
  him for his bad manners. Indeed, I have lost many a friend by
• 5:59:41
  being oversuspicious. I am suspicious even of my family. Sometimes when I sit
• 5:59:48
  quietly at home with my mother in the evening, as has grown to be
• 5:59:49
  a habit with me, I see her look at me. I begin immediately
• 5:59:53
  to think that she is wondering whether I am grafting again. It makes me
• 5:59:57
  very nervous, and I saw sometimes put on my hat and go out for
• 6:00:00
  a walk, just to be alone. One day, when I was in
• 6:00:03
  stir my mother visited me, as she always did when they gave her a
• 6:00:07
  chance. In the course of our conversation, she told me that on my
• 6:00:11
  release, I had better leave the city and go to some place where I
• 6:00:14
  was not known for. She said, your character, my boy, is
• 6:00:18
  bad. I grabbed her by the arm and exclaimed, who is it that
• 6:00:22
  is circulating these damned stories about me? My poor mother merely meant, of
• 6:00:27
  course, that I was known as a thief, but I thought some of
• 6:00:30
  the other convicts had slandered me. To her, it was absurd, of
• 6:00:33
  course, But the outside world cannot understand how suspicious a grafter is. I
• 6:00:38
  have often seen a man who afterwards became insane begin being queer through suspiciousness.
• 6:00:47
  Well, as I have said, I found the guns suspicious of me when
• 6:00:51
  I told them I had squared it, or when I refused to say anything
• 6:00:53
  about my doings. Of course, I don't care for I hate the Bowery
• 6:00:57
  now and everything in it. Whenever I went, as I did several times
• 6:01:02
  to my editor, to a gun joint, a feeling of disgust passed over
• 6:01:06
  me. I pity my old pals, but they no longer interest me.
• 6:01:11
  I look upon them as failures. I have seen a new light, and
• 6:01:15
  I shall follow it. Whatever the public may think of this book, it
• 6:01:18
  has already been a blessing to me, for it has been honest work that
• 6:01:22
  I and my friend the editor have done together, and leads me to think
• 6:01:26
  that there may yet be a new life for me. I feel now that
• 6:01:30
  I should prefer to talk and associate with the meanest workingmen in this city than
• 6:01:33
  with the swellest thief. For a long time, I have really despised myself.
• 6:01:40
  When old friends and relatives look at me askance, I say to myself,
• 6:01:44
  how can I prove to them that I am not the same man as
• 6:01:47
  I was in the past. No wonder the authorities thought I was mad.
• 6:01:52
  I have spent the best years of my life behind the prison bars. I
• 6:01:55
  could have made out of myself almost anything I wanted, for I had the
• 6:01:57
  three requisites of sec excess, personal appearance, health, and I think some
• 6:02:03
  brains. But what have I done after ruining my life? I have not
• 6:02:07
  even received a proverbial mess of pottage. As I look back upon my life,
• 6:02:11
  both introspectively and retrospectively. I do not wonder that society at large despises
• 6:02:18
  the criminal. I am not trying to point out a moral or pose as
• 6:02:23
  a reformer. I cannot say that I quit the old life because of any
• 6:02:27
  religious feeling. I am not one of those who have reformed by finding Jesus
• 6:02:33
  at the end of a gas pipe which they were about to use as a
• 6:02:34
  blackjack on a citizen, just in order to finger his long green. I
• 6:02:40
  only saw, by painful experience that there is nothing in a life of crime.
• 6:02:45
  I ran up against society and found that I had struck something stronger and
• 6:02:48
  harder than a stone wall. But it was not that alone that made me
• 6:02:52
  reform. What was it? Was it the terrible years I spent in prison?
• 6:02:57
  Was it the confinement in madhouse where I barely saw old pals of mine
• 6:03:02
  become driveling idiots? Was it my reading of the great authors and my becoming
• 6:03:07
  acquainted with the beautiful thoughts of the great men of the world. Was it
• 6:03:10
  a combination of these things? Perhaps so, But even that does not entirely
• 6:03:15
  explain, It does not go deep enough. I have said that I am
• 6:03:18
  not religious and I am not. And yet I have experienced something indefinable,
• 6:03:26
  which I suppose some people might call an awakening of the soul. What is
• 6:03:30
  that, after all, but the realization that your way of life is ruining
• 6:03:33
  you, even to the very foundation of your nature. Perhaps, after all,
• 6:03:38
  I am not entirely lacking in religion, For certainly the character of Christ
• 6:03:42
  strongly appeals to me. I don't care for creeds, but the personality of
• 6:03:48
  the Nazarene, when stripped of the aroma of divinity, appeals to all thinking
• 6:03:53
  men. I care not whether they are atheists, agnostics, or skeptics.
• 6:04:00
  Man that has understanding revers the life of Christ, for he practiced what he
• 6:04:03
  preached and died for humanity. He was a perfect specimen of manhood and had
• 6:04:08
  developed to the highest degree that trait which is lacking in most all men,
• 6:04:14
  the faculty humane. I believe that a time comes in the lives of many
• 6:04:19
  grafters when they desire to reform. Some do reform for good and all,
• 6:04:23
  and I shall show the world that I am one of them. But the
• 6:04:26
  difficulties in the way are great, and many fall again by the wayside.
• 6:04:32
  They come out of prison marked men, Many observers can tell an ex convict
• 6:04:36
  on sight. The lockstep is one of the causes. It gives a man
• 6:04:41
  a peculiar gait which he will retain all his life. The convicts march close
• 6:04:47
  together and cannot raise their chests. They have to keep their faces turned towards
• 6:04:51
  the screw. Breathing is difficult, and most convicts suffer in consequence from catar
• 6:04:56
  and a good many from long trouble. Walking in lockstep is not good exercise
• 6:05:03
  and makes the men nervous. When the convict is confined in his cell,
• 6:05:07
  he paces up and down. The short turn is bad for his stomach and
• 6:05:11
  often gets on his mind. The short walk will always have control of me.
• 6:05:15
  I cannot sit down now to eat arte without jumping up every five minutes
• 6:05:19
  in order to take that short walk. I become so used to it that
• 6:05:22
  I do not want to leave the house, for I can pace up and
• 6:05:26
  down to my room. I can take that small stretch all day long and
• 6:05:30
  not get tired. But if I walk a long straight distance, I get
• 6:05:33
  very much fatigued. When I wait for a train, I always begin that
• 6:05:37
  short walk on the platform. I have often caught myself walking just seven feet
• 6:05:41
  one way, then turning around and walking seven feet in the opposite direction.
• 6:05:47
  Another physical mark caused by a criminal life, rather than a long sojournant's stir
• 6:05:52
  is an expressionless cast of countenance. The old grafter never expresses any emotions.
• 6:05:59
  He is he schooled himself until his face is a mask which betrays nothing.
• 6:06:06
  A much more serious difficulty in the way of reform is the ex convict's health,
• 6:06:11
  which is always bad if a long term of years has been served.
• 6:06:14
  Moreover, his brain has often lost to s equilibrium in powers of discernment.
• 6:06:18
  When he gets out of prison, his chance of being able to do any
• 6:06:22
  useful work is slight. He knows no trade, and he is not strong
• 6:06:26
  enough to do hard day labor. He has given only ten dollars when he
• 6:06:30
  leaves Stir with which to begin life afresh. A man who has served a
• 6:06:33
  long term is not steady above the years until he has been at liberty several
• 6:06:37
  months. And what can such a man do with ten dollars. It would
• 6:06:41
  be cheaper for the state in the end to give an ex convict money enough
• 6:06:45
  to keep him for several months, For then a smaller percentage would return to
• 6:06:48
  Stir. It would give the man a chance to make friends, to look
• 6:06:52
  for a job, and to show the world that he is earnest. A
• 6:06:57
  criminal who is trying to reform is generally a very helpless being. He was
• 6:07:03
  not to begin with the strongest man mentally, and after confinement is still less.
• 6:07:07
  So he is preoccupied, suspicious, and a dreamer. And when he
• 6:07:12
  gets a glimpse of himself in all his naked realities, is apt to become
• 6:07:17
  depressed and discouraged. He is easily led. And certainly no man needs a
• 6:07:22
  good friend as much as the ex convict. He's distrusted by everybody, is
• 6:07:26
  apt to be pipped off wherever he goes and finds it hard to get work,
• 6:07:30
  which he can do. There are hundreds of men in our prisons today
• 6:07:34
  who, if they could find somebody who would trust them and take a genuine
• 6:07:37
  interest in them, would reform and become respectable citizens. That is where the
• 6:07:42
  Tammany politician, whom I have called Senator wet Coin, is a better man
• 6:07:48
  than the majority of reformers. When a man goes to him and says he
• 6:07:52
  wants to square it, he takes him by the hand, trusts and helps
• 6:07:56
  him. Wet Coin does not hand them a soup ticket and a tract,
• 6:08:00
  Nor does he hold on tight to his own watch chain, fearing for his
• 6:08:03
  red super hastily bidding the ex gun to be with Jesus. End of Chapter
• 6:08:12
  fourteen. Editor's PostScript. The life of the thief is at an end,
• 6:08:19
  and the life of the man and good citizen has begun. For I am
• 6:08:25
  convinced that Jim is strictly on the level and will remain so. The only
• 6:08:30
  thing yet lacking to make his reform sure is a job. I and those
• 6:08:36
  of my friends who are interested, have as yet failed to find anything for
• 6:08:40
  him to do that is, under the circumstances desirable. The story of my
• 6:08:45
  disappointments in this respect is a long one, and I shall not tell it.
• 6:08:49
  I have learned to think that patience is the greatest of the virtues,
• 6:08:53
  and of this virtue an ex gun needs an enormous amount. If Jim and
• 6:08:59
  his friend friends prove good in this way, the job will come. But
• 6:09:03
  waiting is hard, for Jim is nervous, in bad health, with an
• 6:09:07
  old mother to look after, and with new ambitions which make keen his sense
• 6:09:12
  of time lost. One word about his character, I sometimes think of my
• 6:09:18
  friend, the ex thief as light fingered Jim, and in that name there
• 6:09:23
  lingers a note of vague apology. As he told his story to me,
• 6:09:29
  I saw everywhere the mark of the natural rogue, of the man grown with
• 6:09:33
  a roguish boy's brain. The humor of much of his tale seemed to me
• 6:09:37
  strong. I was never able to look upon him as a deliberate malefactor.
• 6:09:42
  He constantly impressed me as gentle and imaginative, impressionable and easily influenced, but
• 6:09:49
  not naturally vicious or vindictive. If I am right, his reform is nothing
• 6:09:56
  more or less than the coming to years of sober maturity. He is now
• 6:10:02
  thirty five years old, And as he himself puts it, some men acquire
• 6:10:07
  wisdom at twenty one, others at thirty five, and some never. And
• 6:10:17
  of the Autobiography of a Thief by Hutchins Hapgood