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Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations

by William F. Howe · English · Gutenberg #24717 · 468,005 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations

Author: William F. Howe
        Abraham H. Hummel


        
Release date: February 29, 2008 [eBook #24717]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24717


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANGER! A TRUE HISTORY OF A GREAT CITY'S WILES AND TEMPTATIONS ***









DANGER!

_A TRUE HISTORY OF A GREAT CITY'S_

WILES AND TEMPTATIONS

_THE VEIL LIFTED, AND LIGHT THROWN ON_

CRIME AND ITS CAUSES,

_AND_

CRIMINALS AND THEIR HAUNTS.

_FACTS AND DISCLOSURES_

BY

HOWE & HUMMEL.

BUFFALO:
THE COURIER COMPANY, PRINTERS.
1886


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PREFACE.

It may not be amiss to remark, in explanation of the startling and
sensational title chosen for this production, that logic has not yet
succeeded in framing a title-page which shall clearly indicate the
nature of a book. The greatest adepts have frequently taken refuge in
some fortuitous word, which has served their purpose better than the
best results of their analysis. So it was in the present case. "DANGER!"
is a thrilling and warning word, suggestive of the locomotive headlight,
and especially applicable to the subject matter of the following pages,
in which the crimes of a great city are dissected and exposed from the
arcanum or confessional of what we may be pardoned for designating the
best-known criminal law offices in America.

So much for the title. A few words as to the _motif_ of the publication.
Despite the efficiency of our police and the activity of our many
admirable reforming and reclaiming systems, crime still abounds, while
the great tide of social impurity continues to roll on with unabated
velocity. Optimists and philanthropic dreamers in every age have
pictured in glowing colors the gradual but sure approach of the
millennium, yet we are, apparently, still as far from that elysium of
purity and unselfishness as ever. Whenever the wolf and the lamb lie
down together, the innocent bleater is invariably inside the other's
ravenous maw. There may be--and we have reason to know that there is--a
marked diminution in certain forms of crime, but there are others in
which surprising fertility of resource and ingenuity of method but too
plainly evince that the latest developments of science and skill are
being successfully pressed into the service of the modern criminal.
Increase of education and scientific skill not only confers superior
facilities for the successful perpetration of crime, but also for its
concealment. The revelations of the newspapers, from week to week, but
too plainly indicate an undercurrent of vice and iniquity, whose depth
and foulness defy all computation.

We are not in accord with those pessimists who speak of New York as a
boiling caldron of crime, without any redeeming features or hopeful
elements. But our practice in the courts and our association with
criminals of every kind, and the knowledge consequently gained of their
history and antecedents, have demonstrated that, in a great city like
New York, the germs of evil in human life are developed into the rankest
maturity. As the eloquent Dr. Guthrie, in his great work, "The City, its
Sins and its Sorrows," remarks: "Great cities many have found to be
great curses. It had been well for many an honest lad and unsuspecting
country girl that hopes of higher wages and opportunities of fortune,
that the gay attire and gilded story of some acquaintance, had never
turned their steps cityward, nor turned them from the simplicity and
safety of their country home. Many a foot that once lightly pressed the
heather or brushed the dewy grass has wearily trodden in darkness, guilt
and remorse, on these city pavements. Happy had it been for many had
they never exchanged the starry skies for the lamps of the town, nor had
left their quiet villages for the throng and roar of the big city's
streets. Weil for them had they heard no roar but the river's, whose
winter flood it had been safer to breast; no roar but ocean's, whose
stormiest waves it had been safer to ride, than encounter the flood of
city temptations, which has wrecked their virtue and swept them into
ruin."

By hoisting the DANGER signal at the mast-head, as it were, we have
attempted to warn young men and young women--the future fathers and
mothers of America--against the snares and pitfalls of the crime and the
vice that await the unwary in New York. Our own long and extensive
practice at the bar has furnished most of the facts; some, again, are on
file in our criminal courts of record; and some, as has already been
hinted, have been derived from the confidential revelations of our
private office. With the desire that this book shall prove a useful
warning and potent monitor to those for whose benefit and instruction it
has been designed, and in the earnest hope that, by its influence, some
few may be saved from prison, penitentiary, lunatic asylum, or suicides'
purgatory, it is now submitted to the intelligent readers of America,

By the public's obedient servants,
HOWE & HUMMEL.



CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
Ancient and Modern Prisons--Some of the City's Ancient Prisons--How
Malefactors were Formerly Housed--Ancient Bridewells and Modern Jails,

CHAPTER II.
Criminals and their Haunts--The Past and Present Gangs of the City--How
and Where they Herd--Prominent Characters that have passed into
History,

CHAPTER III.
Street Arabs of Both Sexes--The Pretty Flower and News Girls--The Young
Wharf Rats and their eventful Lives--How they all Live, where they Come
From, and where they finally Finish their Career,

CHAPTER IV.
Store Girls--Their Fascinations, Foibles and Temptations,

CHAPTER V.
The Pretty Waiter Girl--Concert Saloons and how they are Managed--How
the Pretty Waitresses Live and upon Whom, and how the Unwary are Fleeced
and Beguiled--A Midnight Visit to one of the Dives,

CHAPTER VI.
Shoplifters--Who they are and how they are made--Their Methods of
Operating and upon whom--The Fashionable Kleptomaniac and her
Opposite--The Modern Devices of Female Thieves,

CHAPTER VII.
Kleptomania--Extraordinary Revelations--A Wealthy Kleptomaniac in the
Toils of a Black-mailing Detective,

CHAPTER VIII.
Panel Houses and Panel Thieves--The Inmates--The Victims--The
Gains--Complete Exposure of the Manner of Operation, and how
Unsuspecting Persons are Robbed,

CHAPTER IX.
A Theatrical Romance--Kate Fisher, the Famous Mazeppa, involved--Manager
Hemmings charged by Fast paced Mrs. Bethune with Larceny,

CHAPTER X.
A Mariner's Wooing--Captain Hazard's Gushing Letters--Breakers on a
Matrimonial Lee Shore--He is Grounded on Divorce Shoals,

CHAPTER XI.
The Baron and "Baroness"--The Romance of Baron Henry Arnous de Reviere,
and "The Buckeye Baroness," Helene Stille,

CHAPTER XII.
The Demi-monde,

CHAPTER XIII.
Passion's Slaves and Victims--A Matter of Untold History--The Terrible
Machinery of the Law as a Means of Persecution--Edwin James's Rascality,

CHAPTER XIV.
Procuresses and their Victims--Clandestine Meetings at Seemingly
Respectable Resorts--The "Introduction House,"

CHAPTER XV.
Quacks and Quackery--Specimen Advertisements--The Bait Held Out, and the
Fish who are Expected to Bite,

CHAPTER XVI.
Abortion and the Abortionists--The Career of Madame
Restell--Rosenzweig's Good Luck,

CHAPTER XVII.
Divorce--The Chicanery of Divorce Specialists--How Divorce Laws Vary in
Certain Slates--Sweeping Amendments Necessary--Illustrative Cases,

CHAPTER XVIII.
Black-mail--Who Practice it, How it is Perpetrated, and Upon Whom--The
Birds who are Caught, and the Fowlers who Ensnare them--With other
Interesting Matters on the same Subject,

CHAPTER XIX.
About Detectives--The "Javerts," "Old Sleuths" and "Buckets" of Fiction
as Contrasted with the Genuine Article--Popular Notions of Detective
Work Altogether Erroneous--An Ex-detective's Views--The Divorce
Detective,

CHAPTER XX.
Gambling and Gamblers--The Delusions that Control the Devotees of
Policy--What the Mathematical Chances are Against the Players--Tricks in
French Pools--"Bucking the Tiger"--"Ropers-in"--How Strangers are
Victimized,

CHAPTER XXI.
Gambling made Easy--The Last Ingenious Scheme to Fool the
Police--Flat-houses Turned into Gambling Houses--"Stud-horse Poker" and
"Hide the Heart,"

CHAPTER XXII.
Slumming--Depravity of Life in Billy McGlory's--A Three-hours' Visit to
the Place--Degraded Men and Lost Women who are Nightly in this Criminal
Whirlpool,

CHAPTER XXIII.
Our Waste Basket--Contemporaneous Records and Memoranda of Interesting
Cases,
        Miss Ruff's Tribulations,
        Astounding Degradation,
        Fall of a Youthful, Beautiful and Accomplished Wife,
        A French Beauty's Troubles,
        Life on the Boston Boats,
        An Eighty-year-old "Fence,"
        Shoppers' Perils,



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

It is to be presumed that the readers of this book will expect a few
words on a subject "on which," as Lord Byron somewhere remarks, "all men
are supposed to be fluent and none agreeable--self." However much the
inclination and, I might add, temptation may run in the direction of
fluency and diffuseness in this case, my utterance shall be as brief as
possible. I, William F. Howe, founder of the law firm of Howe & Hummel,
was born in Shawmut street, in Boston, Mass., on the seventh day of
July, 1828. My father was the Rev. Samuel Howe, M. A., a rather
well-known and popular Episcopal clergyman at the Hub in those days. Our
family removed to England when I was yet very young, and consequently my
earliest recollections are of London. I remember going to school, where
I speedily developed a genius for mischief and for getting into scrapes.
I received a liberal allowance of the floggings then fashionable, and I
can recall the _hwhish_ of the implement of torture to this day. We are
all young but once, and when memory calls up the lively pitched battles,
and the pummelings I got and gave at school, I am young again--only my
waist is a good deal more expansive, my step is not so elastic or my
sight so clear. I could recall the names of some of those boys with whom
I fought in those happy school days, and tell how one now adorns the
British bench, how another holds a cabinet portfolio, how another fell
bravely fighting in Africa, and how several, striving neither for name
or fame,

        "Along the cool, sequestered vale of life
        Pursue the noiseless tenor of their way";

but it would be useless, as would also my experiences at church,
listening to my good father's sermons, and falling constantly asleep.

My youthful reminiscences of events which happened, and of which I heard
or read in my youth, are mostly chaotic and incongruous; but it is
otherwise with the murders. I remember with what thrilling interest I
read the story of Greenacre, who cut up the body of his victim, carrying
the head wrapped up in a handkerchief, on his knees in the omnibus, and
who was supposed to have nearly fainted with fright when, on asking the
conductor the fare, received the answer, "Sixpence a _head!_" Then there
was the horrible Daniel Good, the coachman at Roehampton, and the
monster Courvoisier, the Swiss valet, who murdered his master, Lord
William Russell. These atrocities and the trials at Old Bailey, no
doubt, gave my mind the bent for the criminal law, not that I was in any
sense conscious of the possession of superior powers. It was merely the
selective tendency of a fresh and buoyant mind, rather vigorous than
contemplative, and in which the desire for a special field of action is
but the symptom of health.

At the age of twenty, I entered King's College, London, with the son of
the great American statesman and historian, Edward Everett, and
succeeded in graduating with some distinction. Soon after, I entered the
office of Mr. George Waugh, a noted barrister. 1 had the good fortune to
meet the commendation of Mr. Waugh, and I was consequently placed at the
head of his corps of assistants, and frequently appeared in the English
courts in place of my employer. My connection with this office lasted
about eight years, and then, in pursuance of an intention long prior
formed and never relinquished, I returned to the country of my birth. My
earliest essays at the American bar have been fairly and impartially
told by another pen, and, as the autobiographical form of narrative has
its limitations as well as its advantages, the reader will pardon me if
in this place I drop the "ego" and quote:


"On arriving here, Mr. Howe entered the office of E. H. Seeley, Esq.,
one of our oldest legal practitioners. Here he remained one year,
studying American law and practice with persistent assiduity, and
frequently appearing in our courts, 'by grace,' until he was fully
licensed. And it may be here stated that out of a list of over one
hundred candidates for admission to the bar only eighteen passed, and in
that number was included the young lawyer from London.

"His first case of importance in this city was one of extreme delicacy,
being a test question as to whether Col. Walter W. Price, a wealthy
brewer, was entitled to the position of Colonel of the First Cavalry
Regiment, N. G. S. N. Y., he having received the _second_ highest number
of votes. Mr. Howe took the ground that his client was entitled to the
office, being a resident of this city, while his competitor, Smith, the
founder of the great umbrella house, who had received the largest number
of ballots, resided in Brooklyn. This question was argued before the
Brigade Court, and, its decision being adverse, Mr. Howe carried the
case to the Court of Appeals, where a favorable decision was rendered,
and Mr. Price duly installed in the position. This was the young
lawyer's first technical victory of note, and it brought him almost at
once into considerable prominence.

"He soon after opened an office at the corner of Chambers and Centre
streets, devoted his entire time and energy to civil matters, was highly
successful, and soon achieved a considerable share of popularity. In
1859, finding himself crowded with business, he removed to his present
large suite of offices on the corner of Centre and Leonard streets,
which had formerly been occupied by the late Judge Russell, and from
that time down to the present he has made criminal matters a specialty.

"Mr. Howe's first appearance in the New York courts as a criminal lawyer
was in 1859. A man, by the name of Devine, had been tried and convicted
in the Court of Special Sessions on a charge of larceny. He took
Devine's case to the General Term of the Supreme Court, contending that
the conviction was illegal, inasmuch as the statute provides that
_three_ justices should sit, whereas at the trial of Devine but _two_
had attended. Many members of the bar laughed at him, declaring his
position untenable. In this he was opposed by Assistant District
Attorney, the present Chief Justice, Sedgwick. The Court decided the
point well taken and ordered the discharge of the prisoner, Devine.

"In defending a German named Jacob Weiler, indicted for the murder of
his wife, by shooting, in 1862, Mr. Howe took the ground that the
deceased shot herself, a discharged pistol being found by her side. This
case was very thoroughly canvassed by the entire press of the city, and
occasioned the greatest excitement among the German population. The
trial lasted eight days, and resulted in a disagreement of the jury. At
this stage of the proceedings, owing to a misunderstanding (which it
would hardly be in good taste to explain at this late day), Mr. Howe
withdrew from the defense. Other counsel were substituted, when the case
was re-tried, and the prisoner was convicted and sentenced to state
prison for life.

"Mr. Howe has tried more capital cases than any six lawyers in America
combined. There has not been a murder case of note for the past
twenty-five years in which he has not appeared as counsel. The records
of the Courts of Oyer and Terminer and General Sessions show that he has
tried more than three hundred homicide cases since the year 1860. Mr.
Howe, as a specialist in diseases of the brain, is regarded by
physicians as the peer of the most eminent alienists in practice."


The circumstances under which Mr. A. H. Hummel became associated with
me, first as an office boy, in 1863, at a salary of two dollars per
week, and subsequently, in May, 1869, as my partner, have been told more
than once in the public press. Mr. Hummel was born in Boston, July 27,
1849; came, with his parents, to this city at an early age; attended
Public School No. 15, on East Fifth street, and made my acquaintance on
a January morning before he was fourteen years old. I have at hand a
newspaper clipping, taken from the Rochester, N. Y., _Democrat and
Chronicle_ of March 25, 1877, in which is printed an elaborate notice of
the law firm of Howe & Hummel, in which the junior partner is thus
characterized:


"Soon after Mr. Howe opened his office, a bright lad, conversant with
foreign languages, applied on a cold January morning, in the year 1863,
for employment, and was accepted. His duties as office boy were to
answer questions, make fires, do errands, and do copying
andtranslations. Such was his winning address, his ready tact, his quick
perceptions, his prudence and discretion, that he not only performed his
duties to perfection but, in his few spare moments, learned law. While
he grew but little in stature, he made great progress in his chosen
profession. As he had fluent command of the German language--a useful
adjunct to the practice of a criminal lawyer in New York--and gave
promise of attaining a high rank as an advocate, Mr. Howe made him his
partner before he was admitted to the bar. To-day, in stature, he is
probably the smallest professional man in America; but size is not 'the
standard of the man,' and if Abe's stature were in proportion to his
merit he would be a veritable giant indeed."


With this sentiment I most cordially coincide, and at the same time
bring these somewhat rambling and discursive reminiscences to an end.

WILLIAM F. HOWE.



DANGER!



CHAPTER I.

ANCIENT AND MODERN PRISONS.

_Some of the City's Ancient Prisons--How Malefactors were Formerly
Housed--Ancient Bridewells and Modern Jails._

From old Dutch and Knickerbocker records it appears that as far back as
the year 1600 there existed a place for the confinement of malefactors
in the City of New York. At that early date in its history the town must
certainly have been restricted to a half dozen or so of narrow, crooked
streets, in the immediate vicinity of what is now known as the Bowling
Green. The population did not, probably, number more than a few
thousands; but, nevertheless, we find from these same records that, even
in that small community, criminals were so numerous and crime so rife
that a jail or Bridewell had already been established for the
safe-keeping and punishment of evildoers, and a system of citizen-police
inaugurated for the preservation of the local peace.

It was not, however, until some years later, 1642, that the "Staat Huys"
was built, a municipal building, with a portion of it erected especially
for the housing of dangerous criminals. Thus it would seem that for
upwards of two centuries crime and criminals have had their haunts in
this city, and, it is safe to say, while the more ancient cities of
Europe have, unquestionably, originated more felons of every grade,
there are few places that can rival New York in the number of actual
crimes committed during its comparatively brief existence on the earth's
map.

During the earlier history of the embryo city, the nature of the
offenses perpetrated on the then small community, and the type of men
who boldly executed the crimes, were undoubtedly of the same pattern as
those which obtain among us to-day, but with this difference, that with
the onward march of Improvement, hand-in-hand with the progress of
Science and Civilization, have also grimly stalked fashionably-clothed
and modernly-equipped Crime and the scientifically-perfected
law-breaker, with his modern and improved methods. Man's villainies,
like his other passions, remain the same to-day as when the murderous
club of Cain crushed the skull of his brother Abel, and the maiden earth
was crimsoned with the first blood that appealed for vengeance. They
differ only in the manner of commission, and the commission would appear
to be assisted by modern invention and appliances.

To expect large civilized communities dwelling together to be free from
crime would be to imagine an elysium on earth, for where poverty exists
crime will assuredly be found, and poverty will never be divorced from
civilization. It would also appear that, in accordance with the growth
and expansion of the young city in other respects, vice and crime kept
pace, while youthful depravity early began to trouble the good people
then as it worries the same class of persons to-day, for in 1824 we find
that a House of Refuge, for the reformation of juvenile delinquents, was
built, ostensibly superseding the old "Society for the Prevention of
Pauperism." To follow in detail the history of crime in this city, from
so early a date, would be of very little service here, but a simple
chronicle, referring to the periods at which prisons were found to be
necessary, may be briefly touched upon as tending to show how crime
increased and criminals multiplied, as the city grew in wealth and
population.

The new "Staat Huys," before alluded to, was erected on the corner of
Pearl street and Coenties Slip, a locality then considered the most
central in the infant town, and as offering the best facilities for
securely keeping prisoners. It served its double purposes of jail and
city hall until 1698, when it was decided by the authorities to build
another--a larger and more commodious structure; while, in the meantime,
the old military block-house in the immediate neighborhood of the
Governor's residence was conscripted and made use of, additionally to
the "Staat Huys," for the accommodation of the constantly-increasing
number of culprits.

The new building--City Hall--was erected on Broad street, on the ground
now covered by the sub-treasury building, and was finished in 1699, but
was not used as a jail until five years subsequent. In the winter of
1704 the sheriff was required to have the city jail prepared for the
reception of felons. Crime, however, would appear to have become a
monster of terrible mien in those days, far exceeding all the efforts of
the authorities to restrict or even to limit the number of malefactors,
aside from the apparent impossibility of diminishing them, for again, in
1758, another new jail was found absolutely necessary to the needs of
the inhabitants, and was erected on what was then known as "The Fields,"
now City Hall Park, and where, tradition has it, the prisoners were most
barbarously treated. This new place of confinement, together with those
previously in use, served their purpose very well until 1775, when the
new Bridewell was erected, when all were converted into military prisons
during the occupancy of the city by the British. The frightful cruelties
that were then practiced upon the patriot soldiers, unfortunate enough
to be inmates of those prisons, are too familiar to every one to need
mention here.

Shortly after the Revolution, the Penitentiary was established at
Bellevue. In 1816, a portion of the almshouse was set apart for the
punishment of felons, by the institution of the treadmill. This was on
Twenty-sixth street, near First avenue, the present site of Bellevue
Hospital, and its part occupancy as a prison somewhat relieved the
overcrowded condition of the jail. The city jail still continued in City
Hall Park, and was used as a debtors' prison, remaining so until 1832,
when it was entirely converted into the Register's Office, the present
Hall of Records, and is such to this day. It stands opposite the _Staats
Zeitung_ building in old Tryon Row.

The Penitentiary was soon found to be too small for the keeping of the
greatly-increased number of prisoners, and so, in 1836, the buildings on
Blackwell's Island were constructed, and two years later, again, the
Tombs, the sombre, miasmatic, Egyptian edifice on Centre street, was
completed; which latter had been in course of construction for some
years.

In addition to the prisons previously alluded to, there was begun, in
1796, a state prison, which was erected in the Village of Greenwich,
about West Tenth street, near the North River, and which is still in
existence to-day (1886), being occupied by, and known as, the Empire
Brewery. It was used as a state prison until the completion of the
present extensive buildings at Sing Sing, on the Hudson.

Such is, briefly, a history of the establishment of the prisons of this
city, but of the unfortunate class of criminals that have, from time to
time, occupied them, much remains to be said, and will be found in the
succeeding pages.



CHAPTER II.

CRIMINALS AND THEIR HAUNTS.

_The Past and Present Gangs of the City--How and Where They
Herd--Prominent Characters that Have Passed into History._

New York, from being the largest city on the western hemisphere; in
almost hourly communication with every part of the known world; the vast
wealth of its merchants; elegant storehouses crowded with the choicest
and most costly goods, manufactured fabrics, and every kind of valuable
representing money; with its great banks, whose vaults and safes contain
more bullion than could be transported by the largest ship afloat; its
colossal establishments teeming with diamonds, jewelry and precious
stones gathered from all parts of the known and uncivilized portions of
the globe; with all this countless wealth, these boundless riches, in
some cases insecurely guarded, in all temptingly displayed, is it any
wonder, then, that this city should always have proved the paradise of
thieves? The fact of its being the chief city of the New World, alone
caused it to be the principal magnet of attraction for all the expert
criminals of the Old World, in addition to those who were "to the manner
born."

What trouble they proved to the police of some years ago, and the
frequency with which crimes of every kind were committed, is best
evidenced by referring to the records of that time, when jails and
prisons were crowded and courts and judges were kept busy trying
offenders against the laws, while the entire police and detective force
was unable and inadequate to successfully reduce the occurrence of the
one or diminish the number of the other. It was at that time
appropriately styled the "Thieves' Paradise," for even after some daring
and expert felon had been captured by the authorities and securely
lodged in jail, the meshes of the law, as it then existed, were so
large, and the manner of administering justice (?) so loose, that the
higher class of criminal, possessed of political influence, or, better
still, of money, invariably escaped the punishment his crime deserved.
The very police themselves were, in many cases, in league with the
thieves and shared in the "swag" of the successful burglar, expert
counterfeiter, adroit pickpocket, villainous sneak and panel thief, or
daring and accomplished forger; hence crime, from being in a measure
"protected," increased, criminals multiplied and prisons were made
necessarily larger.

But this was years ago, and under a far different police system than
that now in vogue, the merits and efficacy of which it will be both a
duty and a pleasure hereafter to fully mention. The collusion between
the police and the criminals, at the times of which we speak, became a
very serious matter, in which the public early began to exhibit its
temper. So late as the year 1850 it was an anxious question whether the
authorities or the lawless classes should secure the upper hand and
possess the city, and this condition of affairs, this triangular strife
of supposed law and order on one side, protection to law-breakers on the
other, and the protests of an indignant, outraged and long-suffering
people on the third, prevailed until the year that Bill Poole was
murdered by Lew Baker on Broadway, which notable event marked an epoch
in the city's history, and to some extent improved the then existing
state of affairs, as it occasioned the dispersal of a notorious gang of
swell roughs, whose power was felt in local politics, and directed the
attention of every lover of peace and justice to the enactment of better
laws and a sterner method of executing them.

About the year 1855, two classes of "toughs," or, as they were dubbed in
those days, "rowdies," appear to have had and maintained some control of
the city, overawing the regularly constituted authorities, intimidating
the police by their numbers, and carrying things with a high hand
generally. One class consisted of the individuals comprehended in the
title of "Bowery Boy"--a term which included that certain, or rather
uncertain, element of New Yorker residing in the streets running into
the Bowery and adjacent to it, below Canal street, and the other, a
rival gang, called "Dead Rabbits," which unsavory distinction was
adopted by an equally questionable portion of humanity dwelling in the
Fourth and Sixth wards and streets in the vicinity of Catherine and
Roosevelt. There were among these two gangs of the city's representative
"toughs," materials of a far different kind from the actual felon, but
who were none the less dangerous, and among them may be classed many
leaders of ward politics and volunteer fire companies, and from which
Lew Baker and his victim, Bill Poole, "The Paudeen," "Reddy, the
Blacksmith," and numerous others were afterwards developed; but they
were oftener far more guilty than the real criminals, for they aided and
abetted, and in cases of arrest befriended them, causing their
subsequent escape from the penalties justly due for their crimes.

As a type of the veritable "Bowery Boy" may be taken the leader of that
gang of notorious "toughs," one who, from his well-earned reputation as
a bar-room and street rough-and-tumble fighter, has become a historical
personage, under the sobriquet of "Mose." His faithful lieutenant,
"Syksey," of "hold de butt" fame, will not soon be forgotten either, as
both figured prominently in the terrible pitched battles the two rival
gangs frequently indulged in, to the terror and consternation of all New
York. Of the rival mob, known as "Dead Rabbits," Kit Burns, Tommy Hedden
and "Shang" Allen are names long to be remembered by the terror-stricken
citizens who lived in the days when the fights between these notorious
aspirants for pugilistic and bloody honors were often of the deadliest
and most sanguinary character, lasting for days at a time; when entire
streets were blockaded and barricaded, and the mobs were armed with
pistols and rifles. Even cannons were sometimes used, and the police,
even when aided by the military, were powerless to suppress these
battles until many were killed and wounded on both sides. In these
desperate conflicts it was no unusual sight to see women, side by side
with men, fighting as valiantly as their husbands, sons or fathers, and
the records of the courts and prisons of those days tell dreadful
stories of murders, robberies and other crimes done under cover of these
periodical street fights.

At this time the locality known as the "Five Points" was probably the
worst spot on the face of the civilized globe. In and around it
centered, perhaps, the most villainous and desperate set of savage human
beings ever known to the criminal annals of a great city. To pass
through it in daylight was attended by considerable danger, even when
accompanied by several officers of the law. Woe to the unfortunate
individual who chanced to stray into this neighborhood after dark. A
knock on the head, a quick rifling of pockets, a stab if the victim
breathed, a push down some dark cellar, were frequently the skeleton
outlines of many a dreadful tragedy, of which the victim was never
afterwards heard. The name "Five Points," was given to that particular
spot formed by the junction or crossing of Worth, Baxter and Park
streets, but nearly embraced all the neighborhood comprised in the
locality bounded by Centre, Chatham, Pearl and Canal streets in the
Sixth ward, and was frequently afterwards mentioned as the "Bloody
Sixth," from the many daily conflicts eventuating there.

The "Five Points," from being the hiding-place and residence of the most
bloodthirsty set of criminals, vagabonds and cut-throats, has, through
the influence of the Five Points Mission House and the gradual
encroachments of business houses, become quite respectable, and while
now sheltering a large number of the foreign element, has ceased, to a
great extent, to longer excite terror in the community. Still, it has
not entirely lost its former well-merited title of "Thieves' Nest." It
is comparatively a safe thoroughfare in daylight, and after dark, if one
is on constant guard, he may safely pass unharmed.

In the Fourth ward, just beyond the locality written about, was another
terrible rendezvous for an equally desperate set of men. It was known as
Slaughter-house Point, and a criminal here was, for a time, safe from
the police, as its many intricate streets and tumble-down houses offered
a safe hiding-place for every kind of outlaw, even up to very recent
years. Here the terrible garroter dwelt for a long time; aye, and
throve, too, until our criminal judges began sentencing every one of
them convicted before them to the extreme penalty of twenty years in
Sing Sing, which largely suppressed that class of criminals in this
city.

The methods of the garroter were quick, sure and silent. At
Slaughter-house Point and its environs many a returned East India sea
captain, whose vessel was moored to one of the docks at the foot of a
contiguous street, has either strayed or been beguiled into this
neighborhood, drugged and robbed. Others, whose business or chance
brought them within the reach of this set of desperadoes, have fared
similarly. Sad has been the fate of many an individual unfortunately
falling into the clutches of these murderous villains. A stealthy step,
an arm thrown under the chin of the unsuspecting victim, a bear-like
clasp, and total unconsciousness. To rifle the pockets of the unlucky
man--sometimes stripping him and throwing him off the dock--and escape
into one of the many dark and dismal passages abounding in the
neighborhood, was but a few minutes' work, and nothing remained to tell
how the drama, perhaps tragedy, was enacted.

Another class of dangerous criminals haunted the precincts of Water and
Cherry streets, and that immediate locality. They were all frequenters
of the well-known establishments presided over by such eminent lights of
the profession as Kit Burns, Jerry McAuley, Johnny Allen, etc., but all
three of whom afterwards forswore their evil ways and died in the odor
of piety.

These various gangs inhabiting the portions of the city already
indicated were eventually succeeded by others in widely separated
localities. The succeeding gangs were quite as numerous, but not quite
as ferocious or formidable, so far as numbers were concerned, but more
dangerous and daring individually; for while the former type lived in
communities by themselves, and dwelt in certain well-known streets and
houses, using their bloodthirsty propensities occasionally against
themselves in their street fights, the latter at all times waged an
indiscriminate and perpetual war on the respectable element of society.
To the latter and more modern gangs, which were really worse, so far as
the higher classes of crimes were concerned, belonged such men as
"Reddy, the Blacksmith," "Dutch Heinrich." Chauncey Johnson, "Johnny,
the Mick," and their favorite places were "Murderers' Row," and other
notorious localities on Broadway, Houston, Crosby and adjacent streets.

The war did much to bring these latter into prominence. They made money
when money was in the hands of every one, when bounty-jumpers were as
thick as berries on the bushes, and the leading streets of the city were
a blaze of light at night, from the myriads of colored lamps displayed
by the pretty waiter-girl saloons and other notorious and questionable
dives. When the war ceased these and kindred gangs of "toughs" were
again superseded by those at present to be found in various parts of the
metropolis, but which, thanks to an excellent system of police, are all
or nearly all under complete espionage of the local authorities.

It now becomes our duty, as faithful chroniclers, to point out the
localities at present occupied by that class of the population, and tell
the secret of their lives and how they exist. The region which most
engrosses the attention of the police is that conspicuously known as
"Mackerelville," which for some years past has borne rather an unsavory
reputation. While there are many deserving and worthy persons dwelling
in the locality, quite a different type of humanity also makes its home
there. The neighborhood in question is comprised in Eleventh, Twelfth
and Thirteenth streets, and First avenue, and Avenues A, B and C. It
harbors a wild gang of lawbreakers, ready and willing to commit any kind
of lawless act, in which the chances of escape are many and detection
slight. Notwithstanding the decimation of its ranks by frequent and
well-deserved trips to the penitentiary of its members, for every crime
from murder down, it appears to survive, to the terror of the
respectable poor living in the neighborhood and the constant dread of
the police officer. It is a locality and a gang much dreaded at night,
but not nearly so much now as formerly, for when a member commits a
crime of any importance now he is invariably ferreted out, arrested and
punished.

The Tenth Avenue gang is a chance affair, owing its existence to the
successful and bold express robbery occurring some years ago, but which
is still fresh in the minds of most people from the skillful manner in
which it was executed, and from the number of prominent rascals
participating in it. The robbery referred to, at the time of its
occurrence, was current talk, and continued a subject of conversation
for many weeks afterwards. A number of ingenious, daring and
highly-cultured train robbers, under the leadership of the notorious Ike
Marsh, among whom was one who has since attained celebrity as an actor,
boarded a train on the Hudson River Railroad, near Spuyten Duyvil, the
spot immortalized by Washington Irving, and, entering the express car,
bound and gagged the messenger in charge, threw the safe off and jumped
after it. The iron box contained a large amount of greenbacks and
government bonds, which the thieves succeeded in appropriating. Some of
these daring robbers were subsequently arrested and lodged in the White
Plains jail, but on the day set for the trial, the sheriff discovered
that his prisoners of the night before, whom he imagined quite secure,
had left, without waiting to say good-bye. Some friends and confederates
came to their assistance, released them and drove them down to the city,
from whence they finally reached our sister Kingdom, recently made
famous as the abode of the fashionable defaulter.

The successful perpetration of this bold robbery suggested to a number
of idle men the idea of robbing the freight cars as they remained
apparently unguarded on the tracks in the vicinity of the West Thirtieth
street station, and led to the formation of the notorious Tenth Avenue
gang. The cars arriving from the west and other points loaded with
valuable goods and merchandise, offered facilities of a most tempting
kind to the members of this gang, and large quantities nightly
disappeared until, week after week, the goods stolen aggregated
thousands of dollars loss to the railroad company. The proximity of the
river aided the operations of this gang very materially, for much of the
goods were spirited away with the assistance of the river thieves and
their boats, both sets of thieves acting, of course, in collusion.

It is a very difficult thing to map out just the precise localities
where criminals reside now, owing, in a great measure, to the efficiency
of the present police, who keep evil-doers under constant surveillance,
preventing them remaining long in any one place. Of course, such streets
as are contained in wards of the city where the poorest people dwell
will invariably have their quota of questionable characters; but the
days when gangs of roughs, "toughs" or thieves can flourish in one
particular section, it is to be hoped, are matters of the past.

It is a matter of surprise to other nations, and of congratulation to
ourselves, that at the present such crimes against persons and property
as burglary, pocket-picking and highway robbery are much rarer in
proportion than in any other cosmopolitan city in the world.



CHAPTER III.

STREET ARABS OF BOTH SEXES.

_The Pretty Flower and News Girls--The Young Wharf Rats and their
Eventful Lives--How they all Live, where they Come From, and where they
finally Finish their Career._

To the wealthy resident of Fifth avenue and other noted fashionable
thoroughfares, the incidents of actual every-day life that are here
revealed will read like a revelation. To the merchant and the business
man they may probably read like romance. To the thrifty mechanic,
however, who occupies a vastly different social sphere, who hurries to
his work in the morning, and with equal haste seeks to reach his home at
night, this chapter may, perhaps, cause a tear to glisten in his manly
eye when the facts, here written for the first time, meet his gaze, and,
may be, are associated with some young male or female relation or friend
who has "gone wrong." But to the officers of the Society for the
Suppression of Vice, and other kindred useful societies, newspaper men,
the police, and others whose daily vocations happen to keep them out
late o' nights, the truths here unfolded are of too frequent occurrence
and are too familiar sights to need any other corroborative evidence
than is supplied by their own experience and the exercise of their own
observation.

Youthful vice and depravity, of all grades, is, unfortunately, the
natural result of that civilization which finds its outgrowth in large
and necessarily closely-packed communities. Where ground is dear, poor
people must seek rooms in dwellings where the rent is cheap, and these
dwellings are, for the most part, erected in cheap neighborhoods--and
cheap neighborhoods mean questionable companionships and associations,
and bad associations beget a familiarity with immorality of all kinds.
No one can question the truth of this. For instance, the honest and
industrious mechanic, receiving fair wages for his work, must hire
lodgings or rooms in some tenement; he goes to work during the day,
leaving his wife, if he happens to have one, at home to perform those
hard household duties which fall to the lot of her class; the
children--and there are generally several, for one of the chief luxuries
within the reach of the poor is children--are allowed to take care of
themselves as best they can between times; they naturally go to the
streets to play; they have no gardens, with shady graveled walks running
between beds of bright flowers; no nursery, no governesses, no nurses
with French caps, and, shame be it said, hardly any public parks; there
are not even trees in this great city to cast a shade for these little
creatures in summer nor to help break the force of the wind in
winter--but they play in the streets just the same, and are under no
restraint whatever, and therein lies their temptation. What wonder that
they afterwards people the gilded palaces of vice "up-town," or fill the
prisons of the city and state?

They may be approached by any one, and they are led away by many.
Sometimes the ever-watchful and lynx-eyed Chinaman singles out some
pretty little girl, on the pretense that he has some curious things to
show her in his laundry. Sometimes an old, eminently respectable
gentleman (?) has a package of candy for the little girls. Sometimes,
again, bright-eyed young girls are attracted, like butterflies to bright
flowers, to the gaudy signs of the Bowery museums. Sometimes there are
other inducements, in the way of store windows, or a chance acquaintance
(and they are always around, too, these obliging acquaintances), and the
purchase of some trinkets, then a hotel, a room, and our little friend
has eaten of the apple. But this is premature.

The unconstrained freedom of the street, therefore, is undoubtedly one
great source of danger to the young but there are many others which, in
varying degrees, conspire to ensnare and corrupt them. So that the
wonder is that so many escape rather than that so many are
contaminated.

The manner in which poor people--the very poor--live in this city is, of
itself, fearfully demoralizing in its effects upon their children.
Oftener than otherwise, a family, in some cases six or seven in number,
will occupy but _two_ rooms; one, a kitchen, the other, a _sleeping_
apartment. In the latter room are sometimes the father, mother, one or
two daughters, say ten, twelve or fifteen years of age, and as many
sons, younger or older, as the case may be. Just think of it! think of
the tender age at which these children are familiarized with what should
be as a sealed book. Think of--what frequently happens--a drunken father
reeling to the marriage bed in such a room! Think of brothers and
sisters of such ages lying side by side, and think of the mistakes that
might occur when--which is possible--the whole family may have taken
liquor and the floor is one common bed. There are hundreds of families
living in this big, charitable city in this degrading manner. Is it any
surprise that children here are bad and criminally vicious at five years
of age and upwards?

It not infrequently happens that the parents of families so
circumstanced are sent to the "Island," in which case the children are
then, indeed, upon the streets. Yet they are so precocious and
resourceful that they generally are able to take care of themselves, and
so become flower girls, news girls, wharf rats, etc.

There are yet other causes which go to affect the lives of the children
of the poor. It sometimes happens that the happy and virtuous home of a
comparatively well-to-do mechanic is broken up by unforeseen
circumstances, against which no provident provision, except a life
insurance policy, could guard. The head of the family meets with some
serious accident, incapacitating him for labor, and straightway, instead
of being the breadwinner and family support, he becomes a care and a
burden. The poor wife is thrown upon her resources, and she naturally
invokes the assistance of her children in the desperate endeavor of
maintaining a roof over their heads. In this way the ranks of the flower
and news girls are frequently recruited.

Through the cursed effects of drink, the heads of many families are
frequently sent to the "Island" for from ten days to six months, and
when the sheltering arms of some beneficent society, or the kindly
offices of some good Samaritan, are not directed to the forlorn and
destitute condition of the children, the unfortunate young creatures are
forced upon the streets to beg, steal, sell papers, flowers, etc., and
also visit the offices of bankers and brokers, doing anything, in short,
to get the means to live. They live in the streets, sleep in hallways,
alleyways, anywhere, a prey to the first evil-disposed man that meets
them. It is a common sight to see children on the streets in all parts
of the metropolis--boys and girls--aged from five to fifteen years,
selling papers, shoplifting, stealing, and,--worse. Have they parents?
Who knows, who inquires, who cares? Some of them are very pretty girls,
too. All the worse for them.

The same causes which conspire to throw girls upon their own resources
to gain a livelihood, operate with the brothers; but the latter are more
fertile in means of accomplishing that end. Girls can only sell papers,
flowers or themselves, but boys can black boots, sell papers, run
errands, carry bundles, sweep out saloons, steal what is left around
loose everywhere, and gradually perfect themselves for a more advanced
stage and higher grade of crimes, finally developing into fully-fledged
and first-class criminals.

So much for the causes which help to create this class of street Arabs,
whom it is almost a labor of supererogation to describe, especially to
those who daily hear the familiar cries, "Telegram!" "News!" "Telegram!"
"New-es!" "Mail 'n' Express!" uttered chiefly by young girls, all over
the town. Pretty girls they are, too, many of them, with large, lustrous
eyes, long, well-oiled hair, nice shoes upon their feet, short dresses,
disclosing evidences of graceful forms, ruddy complexions, and armed
with many winsome little actions calculated to conciliate patronage.
They are to be seen on Park Row, the Bowery, Chatham street, around the
post-office, hotels, elevated railroad stations, the ferries leading to
Brooklyn, Jersey City and Staten Island--everywhere, in fact, where
there is a chance of disposing of the afternoon newspaper.

The larger number of these little girls emerge from their hiding-places
about eleven o'clock in the morning. Their hiding-places may have been a
hotel, an assignation house, their parents' homes, some hallway, the
News Girls' Lodging House, resorts in North William, Bayard, Hester, New
Bowery, or any other street in which cheap rooms can be obtained. It is
not to be presumed that all news-girls are bad; on the contrary, many
are very good, respectable little things, but a few only remain so, for
their associations are bad, and many men who purchase papers from them
are constantly tempting them, so that it is very difficult for any of
them to remain good for any length of time.

Be that as it may, however, the news girl in this case arrives down-town
about noon. She strolls down among the brokers and bankers, and in many
cases is winked at, conversed with and asked to visit different offices,
which invitation is generally accepted, for a little money is to be made
by the call, with which the afternoon papers are purchased. Sometimes
the selling of papers is merely a pretext under which a better
opportunity is afforded of conversing with men. The papers are hawked in
saloons, upon the streets, in cars, and other places. If any one should
chance to buy a paper and offers a nickel, the girl invariably has no
change; when the purchaser, nine times out of ten, tells her to keep the
change. They are extremely shrewd, smart, intelligent and wide awake.

Their papers all sold, about nine or ten o'clock at night they saunter
up Chatham street, the Bowery and other thoroughfares; or, if it is the
summer season, they will be found in the City Hall park, playing,
sitting on the benches, or accosting passing pedestrians. The Battery,
too, has its frequenters, and the piers and docks at night are crowded
with them. This life they pursue until they engage regularly in a life
of shame, by becoming regular boarders in some one of the many dives in
the cellars of Chatham street, the houses of prostitution in Forsyth,
Hester, Canal, Bayard and other streets. Or, again, they may be found
in the various pretty-waiter-girl saloons of the Bowery, or such
notorious resorts as Hilly McGlory's, Owney Geoghegan's, and so on. The
public parks, however, are favorite places, and they may be found even
in Union Square and Madison Square, and sometimes in Central Park. They
enjoy themselves, too, for they are often seen on picnics in summer and
at balls during the winter. They have their favorites among the opposite
sex, too, just as have more favored and aristocratic females. For the
love of one of these little girls--Mary Maguire--a member of the
notorious Mackerelville gang met a tragic end, at the hands of a jealous
rival in City Hall park, by being stabbed to death. Little Mary was only
fourteen years of age. She was afterwards sent to the House of the Good
Shepherd.

Newsboys are largely responsible for leading girls of this class into
the tempting paths of vice. In purchasing their papers at the newspaper
offices, generally in cellars, they are subjected to many indignities
and familiarities, which, at first resented, are gradually accepted as a
matter of course. Once the descent is begun, the journey is completed by
outsiders, until the girls become corrupt and unscrupulous, with a
knowledge of the ways of the world that would surprise many a matronly
head.

In many cases, girls of five and six years are sent out as decoys by the
larger ones to "rope in" customers; for detectives and agents of the
various societies, on the lookout for depraved girls, teach those young
Messalinas caution. When one of these smaller girls has secured a
customer she pilots the way to the place where the larger ones are to be
found. In one instance this was a cellar, under ground, not fifty feet
from the corner of Chatham and William streets; outwardly an oyster
saloon, but a door opened in a wooden partition, through which one
entered another room, and in which, at one time, there were actually no
less than nine small girls, ranging in age from ten to sixteen years.

There are a few places where these girls resort in the day-time and
remain all day, and where they are visited by regular frequenters of the
houses. Here, also, may be found those young girls who, leaving home in
the morning and telling their parents they are going to work, remain all
day; returning home again in the evening with, perhaps, a couple of
dollars in their pockets, and at the end of the week hand their parents
what the old people innocently suppose is the week's wages of their
daughters, honestly obtained.

There are old-time procuresses, who, having once been news-girls
themselves, know just how to proceed to capture recruits for Hester
street boarding-houses, and they obtain them, too, from the ranks
mentioned. Parents that drive their children in the streets to get
money, and beat them if they fail to fetch it home, are generally sure
to either make prostitutes of their little ones or have them run away
entirely, particularly when a tempting offer is made them by male or
female. There are thousands of men in this city, as well as there are in
London, who employ procuresses, whose efforts and operations,
unfortunately, are not confined to news-girls, but include the pretty
daughters of well-to-do mechanics and trades people.

Many of these girls become closely identified with the lives of
Chinamen, and it is astonishing how fond some of these girls become of
their almond-eyed protectors.

Should any observant individual pass through Elizabeth, Bleecker, Canal,
Hester, Bayard, Dover, Pell, Mott, Baxter, Rose, Chambers streets, and
the other localities mentioned, at night, he will see what becomes of
the pretty news-girls. But there are instances in which they have
obtained work in various factories and wholesale houses and remained
respectable.

Thus far, the news-girl. Of the pretty flower girl--she with the
engaging manner, and interesting face above a tray of flowers--not much
remains to be said, for she has almost become an institution of the
past. Thrown upon her own resources, from like causes affecting others
of her sex, she was once to be met with in the lobby of every theatre in
town, every resort where gentlemen were supposed to frequent,
club-houses, drinking saloons, omnibuses, cars, and the streets. Even
houses of ill fame found her gently and firmly looking for trade.
Wherever there was a chance to intercept a gentleman, there was she, and
her importunities to purchase were redoubled when a lady accompanied a
gentleman. They did a thriving business in the pretty-waiter-girl
saloons, for men could hardly escape them, and nearly all bought
bouquets for their favorites in those places.

It is safe to say that very few of the flower girls were virtuous. They
remained out until all hours of the night and plied a double trade,
selling both their flowers and themselves. There was one well-known
house in Thirteenth street which these little girls made a headquarters.
It was between Broadway and University place. The proprietress had no
other "ladies" but flower girls, as she found them more profitable,
charged them higher prices for accommodations, whether by the day or
week, and as but few places would assume the risk of harboring the
waifs, they were compelled to pay her extortionate rates.

Some time since a man could hardly pass along Fourteenth street or Union
Square, at night, without his being accosted by one of these girls, who,
instead of asking him to purchase flowers, would invariably remark,
"Give me a penny, mister?" by which term, afterwards, all these girls of
loose character were known to ply their trade. Many of these girls were
so exceedingly handsome as to be taken by gentlemen of means and well
cared for, and one instance is known where a flower girl married a very
wealthy man of middle age.

As a class, they were excessively immoral. They purchased their flowers,
out and out, from the florists and made handsome profits, amounting to
as much as two and three dollars a night when the weather was fine; but
their habits and immoralities became so patent that the societies put a
stop to their selling, by sending some to the House of the Good
Shepherd, and arresting others for soliciting and other unlawful acts;
so that to-day it is very much to be doubted if there are more than half
a dozen in the city.

"Wharf rats," street gamins, Arabs, and other euphonious terms are
applied to that class of boys, who, having no homes, make one for
themselves in the streets. They black boots--some of them--in the
day-time, sell newspapers in the afternoons, lie in wait for incoming
travelers from the trains to carry satchels, etc., and make a little
money from all sources to supply themselves with food and raiment. The
balance, if any is left, they spend in going to the gallery of some
theatre, visiting some museum, or adjourning to their favorite haunt--
which frequently is a low beer-dive in some obscure street, play pool or
cards or dice for drinks, and otherwise contrive to kill time, until
their "business" of the next day begins.

It used to be a familiar sight to see the saloons of Baxter, Mott and
Mulberry streets filled with these boys. It was only a few years ago
that they had their own theatre, yclept "The Grand Duke's Theatre," at
21 Baxter street, in the cellar under a stale beer dive, where really
clever performances were given of an imitative character, by a company
of boys; and which, by the way, was the only theatre which for years
defied the efforts of the authorities to collect the license. The
admission fee was ten cents, and curiosity seekers came from all parts
of the city to witness the really laughable and, in many cases,
meritorious character-sketches given within its damp walls. It was
subsequently broken up by the police.

Boys and girls appear to be alike in one respect--the streets of the
city are full of them at all hours of the day and night. The water,
however, would appear to act like a magnet upon the needle, having
peculiar attractions for them at all times, and to which vicinity, at
night in summer, they naturally gravitate. On the piers which jut out
into the rivers on all sides of the city, any one can see troupes of
gamins every warm, pleasant day. Some are fishing, others are pitching
pennies, others, again, playing various apparently harmless games, but
all with eyes for the main chance--an opportunity to steal anything
come-at-able. To the policeman who, from curiosity or to get a sniff of
sea breeze, chances to stroll upon the pier, he finds them all engaged
as described. Ships are unloading cargoes of assorted merchandise, which
is being placed upon the dock. Bags of coffee are in one place, chests
of tea in another, hogsheads of molasses and sugar, and various other
kinds of goods are distributed all over the place. Some boys are playing
"tag," and they run around and over the bags of coffee, behind the
hogsheads of sugar, ostensibly in play, but all the while keeping a
sharp eye on the watchmen, police and people employed there. A favorable
chance occurring, a boy drops behind one of the bags of coffee and
quickly and expeditiously rips it open with a sharp knife and bounds
away. The coffee thus loosened freely discharges itself upon the dock in
a little heap. In like manner a knot in the wood forming a head in a
barrel of sugar is knocked out, leaving a round hole, into which the
Arab thrusts a long, thin stick and, dexterously withdrawing it,
contrives to pull out considerable sugar. The bung of a molasses barrel
is burst in, a stick inserted, which, when pulled out, has some of the
contents thickly adhering to it. Thus much accomplished, every boy
provides himself with an old tomato or other can, and it would surprise
anyone not familiar with these things, to see how rapidly and
ingeniously these dock rats will fill those cans to overflowing with all
kinds of goods, from the openings thus made in the vessel containing
them.

These same tactics are employed by the street gamins in front of those
grocery stores where barrels, boxes and cases are placed upon the
sidewalk, and it is almost an impossibility for any one but the sharpest
to catch them thus stealing, so clever and adroit are they. One of their
very neat tricks is for a boy to place himself in view of the proprietor
of a store, who, knowing the youth is after some of the goods outside,
keeps a sharp eye on him. Suddenly, the boy makes a dash for some
oranges and flies up the street, the proprietor in full chase. At the
distance of, perhaps, half a block, the boy stops, allowing himself to
be caught, when the irate shopkeeper roughly clutches him and, looking
for the oranges stolen, is considerably chopfallen to find the boy has
taken nothing. Upon being asked why he run away, the boy says he
"thought he saw his brother and ran after him to speak to him." It seems
plain enough, and the grocery man returns to find that, in his absence,
twenty boys have plenteously helped themselves to everything within
reach. It is now too late to re-catch the boy that he first ran after.
It is a piece of strategic cleverness that rarely fails to succeed; and
if any one underrates the _finesse_ of the street Arabs of New York, he
will stand a very good chance some day of being a sufferer from them.

The operations of these embryo professionals are not confined to any one
kind of theft. They are adepts in all the ways of petty thieving.
Sometimes, a drunken sailor or 'longshoreman will stagger out of a
saloon and, unsteadily navigating along, will fall, or seat himself on a
door-step and, either falling asleep or into a semi-conscious condition,
will be surrounded by a gang of these playful boys, while one, the
leader, probably, will sneak up to the unlucky man and relieve him of
all he has about him, when they will scamper off.

These boys are often taken in hand by professional burglars, who use
them to keep watch, posting one of them as a sentry, perhaps employing
another to squeeze through some small aperture and open the doors of the
place to be burglarized, for the fact of their whole lives being passed
upon the streets their education is of that character which tends to
make them quick, bright, smart and skillful in all things, and, when
added to natural gifts of intelligence, render them very dangerous as
thieves or thieves' assistants. Readers of Charles Dickens will recall,
in this connection, the use to which burglar Bill Sykes applied little
Oliver Twist.

Many of these gamins have houses under the docks. The floor is laid just
above high-water mark. It is boarded in on all sides with lumber stolen,
day by day, from adjoining yards. Here they pass their leisure time in
comparative safety and quiet, and considerable comfort, as the whole
gang contribute to furnishing up the club-rooms. Stoves, chairs, tables,
benches, and other evidences of taste, are to be found there, and an
occasional cheap picture, circus bill or flash theatrical poster
ornaments the sides of this not uncomfortable place. Here the members
play cards, dice and other games, drink beer, smoke and otherwise enjoy
themselves. These houses sometimes exist for years unknown to the
police, and many a boy, detected in the commission of some petty theft,
has run along the pier, pursued by the policeman, when, suddenly
scrambling over the pier, he has disappeared, leaving the wondering
officer to guess what had become of him.

In some portions of the town, garrets are made use of as club-rooms and
places of rendezvous, and are exceedingly well arranged. These places
are used as storehouses, too, for the safe-keeping of stolen articles of
all kinds.

An instance of the daring and ingenuity of these "wharf rats," as well
as an illustration of some of their methods, is furnished in the
following: Procuring a boat--loaned frequently with the owner's
knowledge of what it is to be used for--these boys will row, with
muffled oars, under some dock having valuable goods upon it. The only
sound that disturbs the silence of the night is the dull splash, splash
and swish of the waters against the dock or some vessel moored there.
Everything is quiet, while the night watchman slowly paces along his
narrow beat, at the one end of which are the dancing, moonlit waters and
at the other the sleeping city. A favorable chance offering, the heads
of the boys appear above the string-piece, and a bag or sack is
hurriedly lowered into the boat. Other goods follow until, sufficient
having been taken, the boat moves off as silently as it appeared.
Sometimes, a boat is rowed under the pier where barrels of whisky or
other spirits lie, and, by inserting an auger between the planks of the
dock, a hole is bored in the barrel, when the liquor which escapes is
guided into a barrel. In this way many goods are stolen right under the
noses, apparently, of the watchmen and guardians.

Sometimes these wharf rats are captured in the act, when fierce fights
ensue. They know there is no escaping punishment, and they fight
desperately. Having no homes or parents there is no escape for them,
for, even if not convicted of the theft, they must go to the House of
Refuge.

After all, but little blame can be attached to these unfortunate boys
and girls, for they are just precisely what their associations have made
them. They learn to swear, smoke, chew, steal, before they can walk, and
grow up to be what they are. The House of Refuge only serves to confirm
them in their viciousness and evil propensities by herding them with
other criminals; so that, by the time they are released they are ready
and willing to take greater chances in securing larger results, when the
end invariably is the State prison--probably for life.



CHAPTER IV.

STORE GIRLS.

_Their Fascinations, Foibles and Temptations._

Since the time when Mary Rogers, the beautiful cigar girl of Broadway,
met her sad fate over in Hoboken, the pretty shop girls of New York have
contributed more than their full quota to the city's contemporaneous
history. They have figured in connection with many of its social
romances and domestic infelicities, as well as with its scandals and its
crimes--secret and revealed. In Gotham's grave and gay aspects--in its
comedy, its tragedy, and its melo-drama, we are perpetually running
across the charming face, graceful form, and easy, gay demeanor of the
pretty shop girl.

As a rule, the temptress of the store is pretty--frequently quite
beautiful, and almost invariably handsomer than those fortunate
daughters of Mammon whom she is called upon to serve, and who often
treat her with such top-lofty hauteur. And how stylish she frequently
is, and how difficult it is to describe this incommunicable quality of
_style_, which those artful setters of baits--the dealers in ready-made
fabrics--understand so well! Who has not noticed how the tall,
slender-framed girls, with their graceful movements and flexible spines,
their long, smooth throats and curved waists, are drafted off to stand
as veritable decoy-ducks? Who has not observed the grace and ease with
which they wear risky patterns and unusual _facons_, and so delude the
arrogant but ungraceful customer into buying, in the belief that she
will look just as well as the pretty model? The average well-to-do
woman, with some pretensions to good looks, sees a beautiful young
creature with Junoesque air parading before her in bold
color-combinations and doubtful harmonies, and she imagines she can
venture the same thing with like effect. But alas! what a travesty the
experiment frequently is!

Many of the New Yorkers who read this page will recall the Original
Dollar Store on Broadway and its fascinating young salesladies. Some of
these were perfect sirens with their loveliness of feature and delicacy
of color; their luxuriant hair, made amenable to the discipline of the
prevailing fashion; the gown stylish and perfect, and frequently not at
all reticent in its revelations of form; the countenance calm, watchful
and intelligent--frequently mischievous; the walk something akin to the
serene consciousness of power which we are told that Phryne exemplified
before her judges, and accompanied with that grace which is the
birthright of beauty in every age and under any circumstances.

For many reasons the tone of morality, in some instances, among store
girls in this city is not high. A variety of obvious causes contribute
to this result, among which may be mentioned their generally poor
salaries: their natural levity, and the example of their companions;
their love of dress and display, coupled with a natural desire for
masculine attentions; long hours in close, impure air; sensational
literature; frequent absence of healthy or adequate home influence; and
the many temptations which beset an attractive girl in such a position.

Many of them enter stores as mere children in the capacity of cash
girls. They are the children of poor parents, and as they grow up to
young maidenhood, they acquire a sort of superficial polish in the
store, and are brightened without being educated. Some grow up and take
their places as full-blown salesladies, and begin to sigh for the gayety
of the streets, for freedom from restraint, and for amusements that are
not within their reach. Naturally _au fait_ in style, with taste and
clever fingers, they dress in an attractive manner, with the hope of
beguiling the ideal hero they have constructed from the pages of the
trashy story paper. It is a sort of voluntary species of sacrifice on
their part--a kind of suicidal decking with flowers, and making
preparation for immolation. Full of pernicious sentimentality, they are
open to the first promising flirtation. They see elegantly-dressed and
diamonded ladies, and their imagination is fed from the fountains of
vulgar literature until they dream that they, too, are destined to be
won by some splendid cavalier of fabulous wealth. Learning from the
wishy-washy literature that their face is their fortune, and so, reading
what happened to others, and how perfectly lovely and romantic it all
was, they are ready for the wiles of the first gay deceiver. Waiting in
vain for their god-like ideal, they are finally content to look a little
lower, and favorably receive the immodest addresses of some clerk in
their own store, or succeed in making a street "mash."

Sometimes the pretty girl rushes impetuously into marriage, repents and
separates from her husband. She is still good looking, and her marital
experience has given her an air of easy assurance, and she readily finds
employment as a saleslady. Her influence afterwards, among girls
comparatively innocent and without her experience, cannot but be
pernicious, and at the same time must exert a certain formative and
shaping process in determing the peculiar character of the whole class
of girls in the store.

Very frequently she does not attain even to the questionable dignity of
a marriage ceremony. Flattered by the attentions of some swell, the
pretty shop girl will be induced to accompany him to the theatre and to
supper in a concert saloon. Her vanity is kindled by his appearance. She
rejoices in the style of his clothes, in the magnificence of his
jewelry, and she thinks her mission in life is to walk beside the
splendid swell, amid rose gardens, theatres and supper rooms, for the
remainder of her life. Finally she yields to his soft solicitations, and
her prospects are forever blighted. She becomes an incorrigible flirt,
meets her "fellows" on the corner of the street near the store, spends a
certain number of evenings and nights with them at hotels where no
course of catechism takes place at the clerk's desk. She goes to Coney
Island or local beer gardens on Sundays, manifesting a vivid animal
pleasure in her enjoyment, with little manifestation of gratitude
towards her escort who is supplying the money.

Sometimes, again, an exceptionally pretty girl will fall a victim to the
proprietor, the manager or some of the superintendents of the store; and
there have been cases of this kind heard in the courts, in one of which
the proprietor not only seduced the girl, but married her, afterwards
obtaining a divorce because of her incontinence. Sometimes the lapse of
these girls from the paths of virtue is accompanied with exceptional
hardships. The young lady is beautiful as well as good perhaps, and the
pride of her idolizing parents, who have taught her that she is fit to
be the wife of a duke. She attracts the eye of a man about town, and the
process of courting and flattery--of sapping and mining--begins, with
the result that he has had in view since the inception of the
acquaintance. He is not a bad fellow as the world goes; but providence
and society have made it very hard for single men to show kindness to
single women in any way but one. He is sorry at her situation; but she
is hardly the person for him to marry, even with her blooming,
flower-like face. In such a situation--and such situations are far too
common with the class--Byron's lines, slightly altered, seem peculiarly
applicable to the pretty shop girl:


"'Twas thine own beauty gave the fatal blow,
And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low."


Sometimes it happens that the pretty girl, wearied of waiting for her
knightly deliverer, comes across the advertisement of a gifted
seeress--the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, perchance, or "the
only English prophetess who has the genuine Roman and Arabian talismans
for love, good luck, and all business affairs;" or the wonderful
clairvoyant who can be "consulted on absent friends, love, courtship and
marriage." Not infrequently she falls into the toils of those
advertising frauds, who frequently combine the vile trade of procuress
with the ostensible trade of fortune-telling. When the girl is drawn to
this den, the trump card offered her is, of course, the young gentleman,
rich as Croesus and handsome as Adonis, with whom she is to fall in
love. He is generally described with considerable minuteness, and the
time and place of meeting foretold. This may be fictitious, and it is
fortunate for her if it is so. Rut the seeress too frequently needs no
powers of clairvoyance or ratiocination to make these disclosures, for
some _roue_; who has exhausted the ordinary rounds of dissipation, or
some fast young fellow seeking a change, has made a bargain with the
prophetess for a new and innocent victim--the amount of the fee to
depend on the means and liberality of the libertine and the
attractiveness of the victim. The vain, silly girl is dazzled with the
wily woman's story, and readily promises to call again. At her next
visit the man inspects her from some place of concealment, and if she
meets his views, either an introduction takes place or a rendezvous is
perfected. Thus the acquaintance begins, with the result which every
intelligent reader can see for himself. Sometimes the picture of the
scamp is shown, but in every case there is but one end in view on the
part of the seeress, and that end is almost invariably achieved. The
girl thus becomes clandestinely "gay," and spreads the influence of her
evil example and impure associations among her shopmates. Pope has told
us in four immortal lines the effects of a constant contact with vice.
In the second epistle of his Essay on Man, he writes:


"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."


In the case of the class of young girls under consideration this truth
is peculiarly applicable. In consequence of their associations they hear
and see things whose influence is almost wholly bad and pernicious.
Those disguised advertisements in the newspapers called "Personals" are
of this evil character. To young girls, with minds imperfectly
disciplined, there is a fatal fascination in the mystery of
surreptitious appointments and meetings. Mystery is so suggestive and
romantic, and the young girl who, from piqued curiosity, is tempted to
dally with a "Matrimonial" or a "Personal," is an object of
commiseration. From dallying and reading and wondering, the step is easy
to answer such notices. She believes that she has a chance of getting a
rich and handsome husband, who will take her to Europe, and, in other
respects, make her life a sort of earthly paradise. The men who write
such advertisements know this besetting female weakness and bait their
trap accordingly. And so a young girl, too frequently, walks alone and
unadvised into the meshes of an acquaintanceship which leads to her
ruin. It is perhaps as useless to ask the men who are base enough to
conceive these things to refrain from publishing them, as it is to urge
the mercenary proprietors of certain newspapers to refrain from printing
them in their columns. Yet it must be perfectly clear to all
right-thinking minds, that it is in vain for parents to warn, parsons to
preach, friends to advise, for the good to deplore, and the ignorant to
wonder, at the increasing deterioration of our metropolitan morals,
while these tempting lures to feminine destruction are so alluringly
displayed.

It would be doing very imperfect justice to this theme did we fail to
record our conviction that some of the salesladies and shop girls of the
city are thoroughly good, virtuous, honest and respectable. Many of
them, amid unhealthy influences and corroding associations, preserve the
white flower of a blameless life, and become the honored wives of
respectable citizens. But these are a small minority. At the same time
it is useless to disguise the fact that there are others whose character
needs stronger colors for proper delineation than have hitherto been
employed. There are those among pretty shop girls who simply give up
their leisure time to surreptitious appointments. This is the worst and
most dangerous form in which this prevalent vice stalks abroad, and it
more clearly stamps the character of a community than does its more open
and brazen manifestations. Many causes may lead to a woman's becoming a
professional harlot, but if a girl "goes wrong" without any very cogent
reason for so doing, there must be something radically unsound in her
composition and inherently bad in her nature to lead her to abandon her
person to the other sex, who are at all times ready to take advantage of
a woman's weakness and a woman's love. Seduction and clandestine
prostitution have made enormous strides in New York, and especially
among the young women and girls connected with stores, within the last
decade.

Not long ago a woman, who then occupied a prominent position in a Sixth
avenue store, was met up-town in the evening. She is very good
looking--strong and lithe and tall, with a cloud of handsome hair that
glistens like bronze; large dreamy eyes that flash and scintillate
witchingly; a handsome, pouting, ruddy mouth; while her neck, white and
statuesque, crowns the full bosom of a goddess. She said that she came
out evenings occasionally to make money, not for the purpose of
subsistence, but to meet debts that her extravagance had caused her to
contract. She said in substance: "You see my appetite is fastidious, and
I like good eating and drinking. I have the most expensive suppers
sometimes. I am engaged to be married to a young fellow who works on a
daily newspaper and who is busy at night. We shall be married some day,
I suppose. He does, not suspect me to be 'fast,' and you don't suppose I
am going to take the trouble to undeceive him. This is not a frequent
practice of mine; I only come out when I want money, and I always have
an appointment before I come out. I always dress well of course, and can
pick up a gentleman anywhere when I like. Yes, I know I have good feet,
and I know how to use them. I have hooked many a fifty dollars by
showing a couple of inches of my ankle. Of course, I hate being in the
store, but my fellow is rather jealous, and I keep going there as a
blind. Will I reform when I am married? Perhaps so--if he gives me heaps
of money. I am no worse than thousands of girls, single and married, who
put on airs of purity and church-going. I know plenty of ladies who pay
five hundred dollars at the store for silks and finery, which they
persuade their husbands they bought for one-fourth of the price. And,
for my part, I am going to eat well, dress well, and enjoy myself as
long as ever I can get the money, by hook or by crook."


CHAPTER V.

THE PRETTY WAITER GIRL.

_Concert Saloons and how they are Managed--How the Pretty Waitresses
Live and upon Whom, and how the Unwary are Fleeced and Beguiled--A
Midnight Visit to one of the Dives._

Readers of the works of Le Sage will recall the polite devil which the
ingenious novelist releases from his captivity in a vial, for the
purpose of disclosing to the world the true inwardness of society in
Spain. Something of the role of this communicative imp we purpose to
enact in this chapter, the subject matter of which, we may safely
venture to assert, is new to at least nine-tenths of the residents of
this great city. And if people, to the manner born, are unacquainted
with the form and manifestations of this particular phase of crime, how
much more ignorant must be those casual visitors, who only, at long
intervals, are called by business, or impelled by anticipations of
pleasure, to visit the Empire City?

The mode of life of the merchant or business man does not bring him in
contact with crime or the haunts of criminals. He may pass down Sixth
avenue, or Third avenue and the Bowery, on the Elevated railroad; or
through Greene, Wooster, and Bleecker streets, the Bowery, Fourth
avenue, Forsythe, Canal, Thirty-fourth, Houston, Twenty-third and
Chatham streets, and other thoroughfares, in a street car, knowing
nothing about the inmates of the houses lining either side of those same
streets, or their manner of life, or anything about those inhabiting the
basement beneath. It is only when the startling head-lines in his
favorite morning paper call his attention to some frightful crime
committed, that he learns either of its character, or location, or the
causes which produced it. To this lack of knowledge on the part of the
respectable portion of the community of the location of questionable
places and the haunts of felons, is to be attributed many of the
robberies which, from time to time, are chronicled in the newspapers. In
the case of "the stranger within our gates" the danger of straying into
the sloughs of vice and consequent victimization, is of course greatly
increased. And just here it is worthy of remark that there appears to be
some mysterious fatality by which strangers, greenhorns and "innocents,"
generally, contrive to wander by unerring though devious ways, straight
into the talons of vigilant night-hawks.

Concert saloons and pretty waiter girls are treacherous things to meddle
with. Neither can be depended upon and generally both have unsavory
reputations. The only thing pretty about the girls is a pretty bad
record.

During the war for the Union, when enlistments for the army were lively,
and bounty jumpers flourished, and money was nearly as plentiful as
salt, concert saloon proprietors made enormous fortunes. They were then
a new sensation in this country; indeed, it may be said the war brought
them into being. Broadway, from Fourteenth street to the Battery was
literally lined on both sides with them, and when at night the lamps in
front of these places were lighted, it rendered the street almost as
bright as day. Then, as now, they were principally confined to the
basements or cellars of buildings, but while some of them were known to
be the rendezvous of thieves and other criminals, there were a few which
enjoyed a better reputation, and were frequented by people of
comparative respectability.

The pretty waiter girl, of course, was the principal magnet used to draw
customers to these saloons. She was and is to-day, in fact, the only
attraction. Music of a coarse description is used to attract the
passer-by, who, glancing at the place from whence it proceeds, sees
flaring lights, gaudy and brilliant signs--generally the figure of some
female in tights--and is allured in by the unusual appearance, and the
picture his imagination forms of a jolly time to be had within. Still,
the girl is the feature. It is a safe conclusion, that no waiter girl in
a concert saloon is virtuous, nor was there ever a really good girl
engaged in any such saloon. They are there to be bought by any one
fancying them, and therein lies the charm--if charm it can be called--of
these places. A stranger has nothing to do but walk down the steps,
enter the saloon, seat himself at a table, and he will immediately be
besieged by a crowd of girls--if that be what he is seeking. As the
stranger knows not the locality of other places of entertainment, he
accommodates himself to circumstances and takes what he sees before him.
Hence concert saloons thrive--but chiefly upon out-of-town
people--countrymen, in fact.

There are various causes which conspire to make pretty waiter girls.
They belong to three classes: First, the young girl who, but recently
fallen into sin, is placed there by "her friend," which appellation more
frequently than otherwise stands for "her seducer"; second, the young
female who naturally seeks a position as waitress, because it pays her
best, the proprietors of some saloons paying a weekly salary, in others
a percentage upon the drinks sold; and third, an older kind of female
who, having run the gauntlet of nearly all forms of feminine
degradation, and losing most of the charms belonging to her sex, sees a
chance, upon the percentages allowed by the "boss," and the overcharge
squeezed from frequenters, of making a living, with a prospect of once
in a while finding a man so drunk as not to have any choice in a
companion for the night. To this sort of individual, all females are
beautiful and the ancient and faded siren has as good a chance for
patronage as her younger and more favored rival. Hence the concert
saloon has its advantages for all kinds of women, as well as its uses
for all kinds of men. The price of drinks in these places varies
according to the tact of the pretty waiter girl, the sobriety of the
customer, or the "rules of the house." In all cases, however, drinks are
higher than at ordinary bars, for the musicians have to be paid, the
girls to receive a percentage, as well as the proprietor to reap his
harvest. Besides, the smiles of lovely women must be reckoned at
something. In the Chatham street and Bowery dives, the worst and
cheapest of liquors and beers are dispensed to customers. In many of
these concert saloons "private rooms" have been arranged, where anyone
so disposed may choose his female companion and retire to quaff a bottle
of wine (?) at five dollars a bottle--a customer who indulges in such a
luxury as wine being too important and consequential to associate with
the common visitors. Money here as elsewhere has its worshipers.

With this preface we shall now introduce the reader to the inside of one
of these concert saloons, and show him the pretty waiter girl as his
fancy pictures her, and as she really is: Chancing to walk along the
street, the ears are assailed by the clash of music emanating from some
basement, down perhaps a half a dozen steps. A number of red globes,
surrounding as many gas jets, serve to show the entrance, on either side
of which are full length paintings of women in short skirts. The door is
of green leather or oil-cloth. Pushing this open, we enter and seat
ourselves at one of the many round tables with which the place is
plentifully supplied. In a second--not longer--several girls are beside
us, and some sit down at our table. One--perhaps two at once--will
immediately ask if we are not going to treat, and, in response, drinks
are ordered. While one of the girls proceeds to supply the order, and
before the drinks are brought, we glance around the saloon. On one side
is the bar, at which several persons are standing, drinking with some of
the sweet-voiced houris. The barkeeper and proprietor, both in their
shirt sleeves, are behind it. On one side of the bar is a
slightly-raised platform, upon which is a piano-player, a violinist and
a shrill fifer. This is the music that charms and attracts. Around the
room are men of all kinds, sailors, laboring men, seedy individuals,
lovers, thieves, a few poor gamblers, fellows in hard luck and waiting
for "something to turn up." Sprinkled over the place, talking, laughing,
joking and striving to induce them to buy drinks, are a number of the
waiter girls. The floor is plentifully and generously covered with plain
sawdust, which answers the double purpose of effectually hiding the
large cracks, and of absorbing the expectorations and spilled beer. The
time is yet early and business is not very brisk, so we chat with the
prettiest and youngest of the girls for a second only, when we are again
importuned to drink by another of the fair ones, even before the first
round is brought, for it must be understood that only the girl ordering
the drinks gets any percentage. The drinks brought, the price is asked
and the amount paid, as follows: Two beers, two lemonades with a stick
in it for two girls, and two brandies for two others; total, one dollar
and forty cents. Now the girls don't drink brandy, they have a little
colored water, but they charge for brandy all the same, and pay the
proprietor in pasteboard tickets, which are supplied by him to the girls
in packages of five dollars worth and upwards. For that which she
charged one dollar and forty cents she pays in checks forty cents, thus
making a clear one dollar--five cents each for two beers, ten cents each
for lemonades, and five cents each for the colored water. The customer
pays ten cents for each glass of beer, twenty cents each for lemonade
and forty cents each for brandy. When the customer fails to call for
drinks fast enough to suit the girls, they will leave for some other
table where they may be more liberally patronized. It is getting later,
and as we are about to leave, an unsteady and heavy foot is heard
descending the steps outside, the doors are pushed violently open and a
big, burly man reels into the place. He is not entirely intoxicated, but
just enough so not to care for anything or anybody, and as he shuffles
independently along he is approached by a couple of girls, who, taking
an arm each, affectionately guide him to a chair. Being seated, he
smiles benignly upon his fair captors and asks them to drink. He is
evidently, from his dress, a successful butcher or saloon-keeper and has
plenty of money about him. The drinks brought, he takes a roll of money
from his pocket, and, thinking it is a five-dollar bill, gives a
fifty-dollar bill to the girl. She immediately leaves and in a few
seconds returns, giving him change for a five, saying quite pleasantly,
"Here's your change," and, as he is about to place it in his pocket,
asks him for "a quarter for luck." Several girls now gather around the
man, and by smiles, caresses, and other affectionate and flattering
demonstrations, finally persuade him into one of the private rooms, when
he is lost to our sight, but we distinctly hear the order, "bottle of
wine."

Soon another man enters very drunk, and, seating himself, is soon
similarly surrounded. In about a minute one of the girls leaves and
whispers to the proprietor, who, emerging from behind his rampart,
catches the unlucky visitor by the collar, and with the aid of a club
compels him to ascend the steps again to the street. The man not having
any money was an unwelcome guest, and they had no use for him.

Several others now enter, many of whom are personally known to the
girls, and mutual glances of recognition pass between them. These pass
on down to the further and privileged part of the place and are lost to
view. The den is now pretty full and business is brisk. The bartender
and proprietor are hurriedly passing out ordered drinks. The girls are
flying around, executing orders and pocketing change. The piano-player
bangs and thumps his hideously-wiry instrument. Glasses are clinking,
chairs and tables moving, and altogether there is a discordant tumult
well calculated to bewilder the coolest kind of a head.

Suddenly there is a scream--a piercing scream. Everybody starts and
looks towards the spot from whence it proceeded. One of the girls
quickly says, "Oh, it's nothing, Jimmy is only licking Hattie." The
lover has only beaten the poor creature who is supporting him, and,
strange as it may appear, she will think all the more of him for this
brutality. It is a pretty generally known fact, so far as females of
this class are concerned, that if a man occasionally severely beats his
mistress, she regards it as a proof that he entertains for her an ardent
affection. It is now getting late, and several of the girls are leaving
for home with their new-made male friends, and indications point towards
the place being closed for the night. The butcher comes forth from his
"private room," followed by a number of the girls who have been his
companions, and is led to the door and assisted out. We leave also, and
as we ascend the steps to the street we discover our butcher in the
hands of a policeman who is dragging him off to the station, where we
shall leave him for the night.

Now, most of these girls live in what are called furnished rooms, and it
is to those that they take their male friends when they leave the
saloon, stopping on the way, of course, for "supper." In some cases the
girls are panel thieves--but that is rare. In nearly all cases they have
lovers and generally provide home comforts for their masters, but in all
cases they are for hire. The nature of the business they follow demands
their attention at night, so that they sleep nearly all the day. The
great majority of them are veritable thieves. To drug a man who carries
money, or ply him with liquor until he is unconscious and then rob him
of all he has, is a very common proceeding, particularly when afterwards
he is put out on the street and left, when the chances are more than a
hundred to one that he neither recollects the place where he was nor the
girl who stole his money or his valuables. The proprietor, if he can,
divides the stolen amount with the girl--with the lover always. Many
instances are known of half-intoxicated men leaving valuables with the
bar-tender of some of these places, for supposed security, but when
requested to be returned were met with a denial that the valuables were
ever intrusted to him. With an air of insulted innocence the bartender
declares that he never saw the articles or the man before.

We shall now return to our butcher acquaintance, and follow the incident
to its ending. So we proceed to the Tombs the next morning, and there in
the pen with the other prisoners we find our man. Upon his arraignment
in court he tells the following story, which is the truth _verbatim_:


"I was wandering through Chatham street, when my attention became
attracted by a bevy of gaudily-dressed girls, who asked me to while away
my spare hours in a concert saloon. Smitten with the charms of the
tempters I was loth to part with them, and after some preliminary
conversation they enticed me to their lair. I had at this time about
five hundred dollars in my possession, and after some hours carousal,
they robbed and sent me away penniless. This is how it was done: I
entered the saloon and was taken to a private room, when I called for
some wine, of which we all partook. I may say here that the wine, so
called, was really nothing but cider. The girls sat on the sofa in this
room with me. We continued to drink and I was the recipient of more
caresses than I ever was before in my life. After the lapse of perhaps
three hours, some of the girls left me, and when I called for more wine,
I found that my money was gone. I was not so drunk at this time that I
could not understand that I had been robbed. I asked for the girls that
had left, and was told that they had gone home. I paid ninety dollars
for wine in this room, but they gave me sometimes cider and whisky
mixed, and then when I became really unconsciously intoxicated they put
me out, after having taken all my money from my clothes.

"I had made an arrangement to go home with two of the girls, but I
suppose when they saw that some of their number had taken all my money,
they left me. There was a sofa in this room and one of the girls
intimated to me that I had assaulted her and wanted some money. Another
said she could not afford to spend her time there unless she was paid.
Another induced me to give her money to buy a hat, and then when I lost
consciousness they robbed me of all I had, my watch and chain,
scarf-pin, ring and the remainder of my money. Many times during the
hours I was there, drinks and wine were brought in that I did not order,
but the girls would insist that I had ordered it. Once in a while the
'madame' of the place would call in the room, and coming up to me would
embrace me and tell me I was a jolly fellow. I could not now recognize
any of the girls and do not know which saloon I went into. I live in
this city."


As a matter of custom, detectives were placed upon the case after the
discharge of the prisoner, but that was the last ever heard of the
matter, as he was unable to identify any of the parties arrested.

The foregoing is only a sample of hundreds of similar cases constantly
taking place, in some of which the sufferer, if he is a stranger, and
has no friends, is oftentimes sent to the Island for ten days for being
drunk, while the pretty waiter girl who has drugged, robbed and finally
discarded him is never even arrested. There are many other cases,
however, in which the pretty waiter girl does not fare so well, and
after conviction has to serve out her time, thereby losing her lover and
her liberty.

What has been written applies more especially to the concert-saloon
waiter girl, and does not in the least pertain to that other class of
girls who are found in what are called dance houses, of which latter
there are not a few in this city. There are some very peculiar kinds of
females to be found in dance houses and not to be met with outside the
abodes of Terpsichore. The term, dance house, itself, is susceptible
of various interpretations. It may mean anything from Harry Hill's, at
Crosby and Houston streets, to an Italian gathering in Mott or Mulberry
street. But the performances carried on are precisely alike in all. In
the sporting dance house, a series of boxing matches, small theatrical
sketches may be acted, a song or two interspersed, and some piano
playing, winding up afterwards with a dance, in which all so inclined
may indulge, taking either the regular girls employed in the house as
partners, or others who have strayed in from the streets.

In the regular dance houses, such as the Haymarket on Sixth avenue,
"ladies" are admitted free, but "gentlemen" are charged twenty-five
cents admittance, and here regular dancing takes place, such as
quadrilles, waltzes, etc. In the French Madame's on Thirty-first street,
which is ostensibly a restaurant, the girls come in from the street, and
while sipping black coffee, are ready to accept an engagement to dance
the _cancan_, which is performed up-stairs in rooms paid for by those
desiring to see the questionable performance. It is not infrequently
danced by the females in an entirely nude state, with various other
concomitants not to be mentioned here, but of such a nature as to
horrify any but the most _blase roue_. There is also the well-known
Billy McGlory's, in Hester street, near the Bowery, where general
dancing is indulged in until an early hour of the morning, when a
universal _cancan_ takes place upon the public floor, and where each
female boldly exposes just enough of her person to excite desire in the
beholder. These girls dance in ordinary street costumes, and in many
cases are paid by the proprietor for their services. It is a wild
debauch, and needs but to be seen once, to be ever afterward remembered
with disgust and loathing.

There are other places, not particularly dance houses nor yet
concert saloons, such as the Empire, Star and Garter, Gould's, etc.,
which are used as general places of resort by all classes of males and
Magdalenes. Here may be found the professional prize fighter, men about
town, gamblers, merchants, clerks, politicians, bankers, officials of
all kinds, and all classes of females, mistresses, _nymphs du pave_,
inmates of assignation houses, all intent on fun and dissipation, and a
desire to not only see the elephant, but pull it by the tail. Some of
the girls-haunting these places have been pretty waiter girls, but find
it more profitable to ply their trade as Cyprians. The bars are the
chief sources of profit in these as in kindred establishments. Hence
females are encouraged to visit them, for when they congregate in force
men will follow, and men who enter these places do so for the purpose of
finding congenial temporary mates and spending money for drinks.

Of the females who make these places their resort for the best part of
the night, and participate in the recklessness and debauchery that has
its ending only in an early death and the "Potter's Field," nothing
remains to be said, except that they are the same as thousands leading
similar lives in other cities of the world. The victims first of man's
perfidy, through a too-confiding reliance on his promises, they become
so afterwards as a matter of business and livelihood. Each has her
lover, of course--what woman of the town has not?--and if she should
happen to make a little money in the way of her questionable business,
she divides it with him, for generally he has his eyes upon her during
the entire course of the evening. Very few of them will leave any of
these places with strange men without first notifying their lovers of
where they are going and how long they will be away. In return for these
services the lover sees to her, helps her to customers, prevents her
being imposed upon by others of her sex when in the dance houses or
concert saloons, and occasionally acts as her _cavalier servante_ to
various places for pleasure. There are many girls to be seen in these
dance houses who are not over fifteen years of age--and they have
lovers, too. In Billy McGlory's, one night, a desperate fight took place
there over two rival claimants for the regard of a girl not yet entered
on her teens.

It is considered one of the sights of the great city to visit these
up-town resorts. Here all the young swells who desire to show country
cousins the city, commercial travelers, chaperoned by city salesmen of
various business houses, chorus girls from the theaters, and a mixed
company generally, are to be found sitting around the various tables,
drinking. The atmosphere is foggy with cigar smoke. The saloon is all
ablaze with light. On the stage is some fourth-rate performer rendering
a popular song. There is a long lunch counter, upon which is placed the
materials for manufacturing all kinds of sandwiches. There is the flower
girl, with her tray of fresh pansies and roses, casting a reflected
bloom upon her otherwise pale face. There are the negro waiters ready to
pounce upon the first glass that is half-emptied of its contents, so
that its owner seeing no glass before him feels it incumbent to order
again. There are crowds of females--girls and women in street
costumes--some smoking cigarettes sitting poised on men's knees; others
at the tables quaffing stimulants like their male companions. There are
voices loud, mingled with the constant succession of orders for drinks
shouted out unpleasantly by the waiters. There is the sound of clinking
and jingling of glasses, the constant rapping on tables, boisterous
laughter, an occasional oath, and once in a while an hysterical scream,
as some unfortunate woman succumbs to the influence of rum. Above all
this is heard at intervals, the sound of music, as it squeezes itself
through the thick and sticky air. Men and women are continuously going
and coming, and all this drags on until daylight appears, and the
persons in the place, from sheer fatigue and exhaustion, seek some place
to sleep until the next night, when the females go through the same
scenes, with a new lot of the same kind of men. That is the up-town
place as it is to-day. The stories one hears are the same as those told
two thousand years ago. Woman's fall, man's perfidy, woman's frailty,
man's inhumanity form the themes, with drunkeness, depravity and
debauchery thrown in parenthetically.

Most of the proprietors of these up-town resorts are very prosperous and
would not countenance theft of any kind, nor permit any woman guilty of
it to come into their saloons if they knew them to be thieves. Persons
and property are comparatively as safe here as they can reasonably be
expected to be; but there are lots of persons who visit these places who
are known to be professional thieves and pickpockets, and while
apparently in the place for amusement, are really watching for some
unfortunate who, under the influence of drink, attempts to find his way
home alone. Such an individual is followed, and by one pretext or
another is robbed. Danger lurks in all these places for the man who
drinks. The temperate man is safe almost anywhere, but the temperate man
is not in the habit of visiting such places as have been described,
except--once in a while.



CHAPTER VI.

SHOP-LIFTERS.

_Who they are and how they are made--Their Methods of Operating and upon
whom--The Fashionable Kleptomaniac and her opposite--The Modern Devices
of Female Thieves._

Many persons contend that certain kinds of criminals inherit their
law-breaking propensities. There are others, less charitably disposed,
perhaps, who strenuously insist that all criminals, without exception,
are simply born with a natural desire to be bad, and would not be
otherwise if they could; that they are prone and susceptible to the
worst influences because they incline that way. There are others, again,
who as strongly and vigorously urge that felons, of whatever grade,
class or character, are made so by circumstances, in which poverty,
idleness, inability to obtain work, temptation, and a thousand other
things, conspire to be either the direct or indirect causes of the
individual falling from the straight path and entering the crooked path
of crime. But, from whatever motive, by whatever temptation, whether
forced or led, certain it is that both male and female criminals have
some peculiar ideas of crime, entertained, perhaps, for reasons only
known to themselves. The chances of escape from detection are, no doubt,
seriously weighed and carefully considered by the persons bent upon
committing felony as a mode of livelihood, and, undoubtedly, some
special line is selected, as the particular branch of the profession to
be followed, in accordance with the physical and mental fitness of the
man or woman to succeed in it.

In other words, they gradually become "specialists," like other
professional persons in the respectable walks of life. It may be safely
said, however, that a thief in one thing is a thief in all things. He
would be callow, indeed, who would predicate that a professional burglar
would hesitate to commit highway robbery because his weapon was a jimmy,
or that a panel thief would turn up his nose at picking an inviting
pocket. It is all in the line of business, and neither professional
would lose caste. No doubt both men and women select the peculiar line
of crime for which they imagine they are physically and mentally best
adapted, and which, in each particular case, seems to offer the most
facilities and immunities. For these considerations, shop-lifting has
its obvious attractions and temptations for women.

For years past, the newspapers of our large cities almost daily have
chronicled the arrests of men and women, in stores, who have been caught
in the act of appropriating articles that have been temptingly displayed
on the counters. Yet it is very doubtful if there has yet appeared one
published account of the exact manner in which such goods have been
stolen, or an explanation given of the _finesse_ by which, in spite of
the Argus eyes of the watchers, clerks, visitors and customers, the
thief generally contrives to escape detection. It goes without saying
that there are adroit and dexterous shop-lifters of both sexes, while
the manner of conducting their operations is as diverse as can well be
conceived.

The annual thefts of goods from the retail stores of this city alone
aggregate an almost fabulous sum. It is very difficult to reach a
reliable approximation of the total amount thus stolen, because
store-keepers are naturally averse to having their losses from this
source known. As a prominent Sixth-avenue gentleman once remarked, "If I
should tell how much I annually lost through thieves, or suffered by
shop-lifters, I would have the entire band occasionally paying me
visits, thinking I had not provided myself with the usual safe-guards
against them." Nevertheless, it can be stated as an absolute fact that
not less than half a million dollars' worth of goods yearly disappear
from the stores through shop-lifters, embracing all kinds of articles,
from diamonds to penny fans.

The professional diamond and jewelry thief, however, is not to be
confounded with the shop-lifter, for the former employs quite a
different _modus operandi_ in capturing his illicit goods. The diamond
thief has been known to display the most fertile ingenuity in devising
schemes to rob the unwary though generally alert jeweler. An instance is
recorded of a thief entering a jewelry store, leaving his "pal" outside
to look in through the window, asking to see some diamond rings. While
pretending to examine them with severe criticism, and keeping the
salesman engaged, he cleverly attached one end of the string, held by
his confederate outside, to several of the most valuable, and quietly
dropped them at his feet. His "pal" then quietly pulled them along the
floor, out through the door, into the street and decamped. A search of
the thief who remained behind disclosed nothing and, as proof was thus
wanting, he had to be discharged.

The female shop-lifter is generally a woman well known to the police, as
her picture will, in nearly every case, be found in the Rogues' Gallery
at Police Headquarters. Usually, when she discovers that her actions are
watched and her movements shadowed, she quietly folds her tent and
proceeds to some other city where she is comparatively a stranger, and
where, unsuspected, she can ply her nefarious occupation with less risk
of detection and capture. She is often either the wife of a gambler,
professional burglar, forger or other criminal; or she may be the wife
of some reputable mechanic whose income is insufficient to supply her
with the furbelows her vanity craves; or, again, she is one of those
women who, having a natural aversion to labor, seek to support
themselves by petty thefts.

The fact is notorious, and easily demonstrated by the records of the
police courts, that "a shop-lifter once, a shop-lifter always." It is a
lamentable psychological idiosyncrasy that, despite the most earnest and
apparently sincere resolutions to lead an honest life, the female
shop-lifter, intent on making a legitimate purchase, is incapable of
withstanding the temptation offered by a display of fancy articles. She
will usually attempt to purloin some trinket or other and be caught
again. Perhaps the leniency with which crimes of this character have
been treated by the authorities has tended to increase the number of
persons engaged in committing them. For, heartless as man is at times,
he detests the idea of prosecuting a woman for the commission of a petty
theft, when the end, for her, means the penitentiary. In very many,
perhaps the majority of, cases he will be satisfied if his goods are
recovered, and permit the thief to go unpunished. This is very
frequently the case with that class of shop-lifters called, by courtesy,
the "kleptomaniac,"--the wealthy lady who steals what she could easily
have purchased. This is a phase of female character only accounted for
upon the Christian hypothesis that her thieving propensities are a
disease, while they are really a manifestation of the same base desires
which actuate less fortunate women who expiate their misdemeanor in the
penitentiary.

Most of the rich kleptomaniacs are well known to the various
store-keepers. A woman of this kind is watched from the moment she
enters an establishment until she leaves it. Usually, a trusty employee
or detective follows her from counter to counter, unobserved, noting all
the articles purloined. When the fair and aristocratic thief enters her
carriage and is driven to her palatial residence a bill of the goods so
"lifted," addressed to the husband, follows her and, in nearly every
case, is paid upon presentation and without questioning. Thus the
transaction ends, until another visit from the lady occasions another
bill. If the "blue-blooded" thief enters a store, however, where she is
not known, and to the proprietor of which her "disease" is unsuspected,
she often escapes with her "swag," like the unfortunate female who
adopts stealing as a means of subsistence. There should be no
distinction made between the wealthy and aristocratic female thief and
her less fortunate sister, for the crime is the same in both cases; the
only difference being that the latter cannot claim the possession of
riches in extenuation of her guilt.

The frequency with which thefts by shop-lifters occur, and the amount of
valuable goods stolen, has rendered store-keepers more suspicious and
cautious, probably, than any other class of men in the world. Nearly all
the large stores on Sixth avenue, Twenty-third street, Broadway,
Fourteenth street, and others, where ladies do most of their shopping,
and which are perfectly jammed with people nearly all day long, employ
either male or female detectives (and in some instances both are used),
who are constantly on the alert for the detection of female
shop-lifters. Such stores as McCreery's, Lord & Taylor's, O'Neill's,
Macy's, Simpson, Crawford & Simpson's, Hearn's, Altman's, Koch's,
Kaughran's, Ehrich's, Denning's, Stern's and Le Boutillier's are
examples. Some stores have had seats erected near the ceiling, where,
secreted among shawls and other pendant goods, the detectives are
securely hidden from the sight of all persons, and can thus watch the
actions of every woman making a purchase. Other detectives are posted at
the different entrances; while still others, having the appearance of
buyers, are constantly walking and circulating through the various
departments, on the lookout for thieves. During the holidays all these
precautions are doubled, and some officers are even posted on the
sidewalk, in front of the windows.

Before Christmas these stores carry enormous stocks of every kind of
fancy goods, and their lavish display, added to their crowded condition
at all times, renders theft easier than usual. So that, try as they may,
the proprietors cannot prevent a certain amount of thieving, and
thousands of dollars worth of goods are annually lost to each store by
the depredations of shop-lifters. Even the small shops of Third and
Eighth avenues, and Avenues A and B, are not free from the visits of
this class of thieves, and no stores are exempt from the imposition of
their tribute.

Before leaving home on a thieving excursion to the stores the female
shop-lifter carefully and systematically prepares her clothing, and sees
that it is in proper form and ready for business. This she does by first
putting on a corset made especially for the purpose, with broad, strong
bands which pass over the shoulders. Between her legs she arranges a
large bag or receptacle made of some extremely strong cloth, which is
suspended from the corset by a stout band running around the waist. Her
dress or frock covers this, and in front of the dress is an opening or
slit, nicely arranged in the folds so as not to be noticed, which leads
into the suspended bag. Over this, in winter, is worn a sealskin sacque,
cloth cloak, fur circular, or other garment, according to the means of
the wearer. In summer she wears a light shawl, which completely hides
the slit in the dress from view. She now takes her muff, which, to the
uninitiated eye, has nothing to distinguish it, outwardly, from
thousands of other muffs, but which is a master-piece of ingenious
contrivance. It is covered with any kind of fur, just as honest muffs
are, with the significant exception that, instead of being padded with
cotton, the fur rests upon a framework of wire. Between the fur covering
and the wire supporting frame, the space usually filled with cotton is
left vacant, thus providing accommodation for quite a stock of valuable
lace, articles of jewelry, gloves, or anything small and valuable. In
the bottom of the muff there is a small slide, on the inside, worked by
the hand of the wearer, who, after introducing the stolen article into
the muff, presses back this slide and drops the plunder into the cavity
between the frame and the fur.

With one of these muffs, shop-lifting is so easy as to be successfully
practiced by novices, as not one store-walker in a thousand would
suspect that his counters could be worked through a muff worn as these
are when in action. Thus equipped, the expert female shop-lifter sallies
out. Generally, she dresses rather expensively. Sometimes she uses a
carriage, but more frequently walks, stopping to gaze in the store
windows as she saunters along; and in no particular can she be
distinguished from others of her sex, except, perhaps, that in some
cases she is rather more richly and attractively clothed. Upon
selecting a store that suits her, she walks boldly in, going at once,
and without noticeable hesitation, to the lace or other department,
before the counter of which she seats herself, adroitly arranging her
dress and the slit. Asking the saleswoman to be shown some kinds of
lace, she examines it critically, and, laying it down upon the counter,
asks to see another kind, or some feathers, or something else, and so
contrives to have several articles just before her, one covering the
other, if possible. Having accumulated a number of articles upon the
counter in an eligible position, she points to some things high up on a
shelf behind the counter, thus getting the saleswoman's back turned
towards her for an instant, when, with soft dexterity, she conveys
anything that happens to be handily in the way through the slit in her
dress into the bag between her legs. The goods examined and priced, "not
suiting" her, and other customers coming up, she takes the opportunity
of moving to another counter, where the same tactics are repeated, and
so on, till she is satisfied with her haul or exhausted her stowage
capacity.

The muff is worked in this way: The operator rests her hand, with the
muff on it, on the goods which she proposes to sample, and a moment of
diverted attention on the part of the salesman or saleswoman is ample
for her to transfer to her ingenious warehouse such samples as she can
conveniently and quickly pick up with one hand. The movement of
concealing the stolen articles is instantaneously executed, and, however
well the muff may be stuffed, it cannot be bulged out to attract
attention. It is surprising to know the vast quantities of material
these bags and muffs will contain. At police headquarters, once, in
examining the contents of one of these bags, it was found to actually
hold a piece of satin, several cards of lace, a camel's-hair shawl, two
large china ornaments, a number of spools of silk, several elegant fans,
expensive ostrich plumes, and numberless smaller articles, feathers,
artificial flowers and some minor trinkets. Shop-lifters are the terror
of the shop-keepers, for the thefts embrace everything of convenient
character lying about. With one dexterous sweep they will frequently put
out of sight a dozen small articles.

All the articles stolen are carried home, the trade-marks upon them
destroyed, and then subsequently sold to some "fence" for about
one-third their value, to finally be resold again over the counter of
some other store in another city. It is seldom the female shop-lifter
uses a male confederate, but it frequently happens that they travel in
couples, one engaging the attention of the seller while the other fills
her bag or muff, taking turn about until both have stolen sufficient for
the day. Sometimes several trips are made to the same store, but
generally one is enough.

It often happens that store-keepers make mistakes and wrongfully accuse
respectable ladies of shop-lifting, and in such cases the over-zealous
vender suffers greatly, both in loss of custom and, oftentimes, in heavy
damages in a court of law. All stores are provided with what are called
examination rooms. When a person is suspected of being a thief, some of
the attaches of the store, or a detective, as the case may be, taps the
person lightly upon the shoulder, and politely invites them into this
examination room. Here their bundles and packages are searched and, if
warranted, their clothing is personally inspected by some female
attendant. Here is where some very curious scenes are enacted. The
professional thief will resort to tears, expostulations, explanations,
excuses of all kinds, finally begging to be allowed to depart. The
discovery of the bag or the muff, however, invariably settles the case
and the offender is marched off to jail.

In the case of a mistake, as stated, the store-keeper generally makes
the explanations, excuses, and so forth, supplementing them afterwards
by payment in a suit for damages.

Men shop-lifters--or, more properly, store thieves--pursue an entirely
different method, and confine their operations to a far different kind
of store. They go into the thieving business to make it pay, and are not
tempted by the display of merely pretty things. They prefer to operate
in the wholesale stores, and how ingeniously and systematically they
accomplish their object, under the very eyes of people, borders on the
marvelous.

It has often been said that the same amount of ingenuity, thought, care
and planning, which is bestowed by criminals upon the perpetration of
felony, if directed properly upon some legitimate business would render
them successful and rich. Undoubtedly, this is true. What inventive
faculties they must have to devise such a convenient contrivance as the
shop-lifter's muff, the various burglar's implements, the safe-robber's
tools, their delicate files, saws, etc., made from the best of steel,
and thousands of other things used in various ways, including the store
thief's satchel, must be manifest to the most ordinary comprehension.

As this latter article is used by the class of thief about to be spoken
of, a short description of it will not be amiss. To all outward
appearance it is a very unpretentious traveling-bag. It looks honest,
and does not differ, apparently, from any other bag of its kind. A
careful scrutiny hardly discloses any variation from the ordinary
valise; but, nevertheless, it has a false side, so ingeniously arranged
as to open and close noiselessly, being caught with a well-oiled spring
or fastening. The hinges of this false side are made on the iron which,
in ordinary satchels, contains the lock, and it opens upwards, when
placed in the usual manner upon a table, instead of downwards--just the
reverse of the honest one. It is the simplest thing in the world, then,
for an expert, carrying a valise of this description by the handle, to
place it over a piece of valuable cloth, open the slide, which works
with a spring; at the precise moment slip the goods in, and, taking his
valise by the handle, walk off undiscovered. To any one who may be
watching, the action of the thief is the most natural one in the world,
and if the goods themselves are not missed no one would ever suspect
they were in the valise carried by the gentleman who merely let it rest
for a second on the table. But it is captured all the same, although you
cannot see it. It has changed from one place to the other under the
magical "presto" of the thief.

The store thief saunters down-town to the dry goods district, watches
the wholesale houses, notes the interior of the stores, and carefully
makes his selection of some one suitable to his purpose. The next
morning, bright and early, he attires himself like a country
store-keeper, and, taking his satchel in his hand, he makes haste to
reach the store he intends to work, appearing to the quietly-observant
porter like an out-of-town buyer, just come off some early incoming
train. Asking the porter or clerk, who, probably, about this time, is
sweeping out, in expectation of the arrival of some of the salesmen or
proprietors, if Mr. Smith, a salesman, is in, he is informed that none
of the clerks or salesmen are down yet. Remarking in answer that he will
wait a moment or two, as he has just arrived from Schenectady, he deftly
places his gripsack upon the counter, over some valuable piece of goods,
and saunters around the store, coming back to where his valise is, when,
embracing a favorable opportunity, he slips the one, two or three pieces
of cloth through the false portion of the valise, and, taking it by the
handle in the usual careless manner, "guesses he will go to his hotel
and have a wash and return later," and leaves the store not only
undetected but entirely unsuspected. Very probably the theft remains
undiscovered until the next taking of stock, when it is impossible to
tell how the goods were lost, and in many cases some attache of the
store is discharged, never knowing for what sin of omission or
commission he was suspected. The success of this mode of theft is best
shown by the infrequency with which such cases are ever brought to light
or its perpetrator ever caught and arrested.



CHAPTER VII.

KLEPTOMANIA.

_Extraordinary Revelations--A Wealthy Kleptomaniac in the Toils of a
Black-mailing Detective._

In the issue of the New York _World_, bearing date Saturday, May 11,
1867, appeared a long article criticising, exposing, and severely
condemning the methods of the city's detective police. "A detective,"
said the writer, "is presumed to be alike active, capable and honest,
and were he such, he would be a public benefactor; but as he is too
often either ignorant, indolent, or positively dishonest, he becomes a
public pest. That detectives are in league with thieves; that they
associate with them publicly and privately on the most intimate terms;
that they occasionally 'put up' jobs with them by which the people are
alike fleeced and astonished; that although the perpetrators of great
robberies are generally known to them, the said perpetrators almost
invariably escape punishment; that far more attention is paid to the
sharing of the plunder, or the obtaining of a large percentage on the
amount of money recovered, than to the furtherance of the ends of
justice--all these statements are undeniably true."

Coming to specific charges, the writer said further on: "A handsome
female, a Broadway shop-lifter, recently testified that although she had
been desirous of reforming her life for a year past, she had been
totally prevented from so doing by the extortions of certain members of
the detective force, who threatened to reveal her former history unless
she 'came down handsomely,' and in order to 'come down,' as they styled
it, she was obliged to resort to her old disgraceful business."

The foregoing reference to a concurrent incident was presented to the
reader as coldly and curtly as a historic hailstone, striking him but to
glance off, and not like a real, breathing story, as it was, appealing
strongly to his heart. The following facts, which have been kept
inviolate in this office for nearly twenty years, and only brought to
light here because those most concerned have passed away, will show what
a stirring and pathetic narrative lay beneath the newspaper chronicler's
dry words.

Early in the spring of the year above named, an elderly gentleman of
undoubted respectability was shown into our private office. He was
exceedingly nervous and flurried, and his wan, colorless face looked
like an effaced page. In a tortuous, round-about way, he intimated that
his married daughter was in great trouble, in consequence of the
operation of a great weakness or defect in character which was
apparently hereditary. Her mother, his wife, he said, an excellent,
kind-hearted, conscientious, truthful woman, had occasionally manifested
the kleptomania impulse and had been detected. Happily the crime had
been committed under circumstances which obviated exposure; it had been
charitably overlooked upon his paying the bill for the purloined goods.
Up to the date of her marriage, he had not observed or otherwise become
cognizant of the development of the unfortunate trait in his only
daughter. Her husband was a noble-minded man who devotedly loved her,
and whom she idolized. Two years after her marriage she was caught
shop-lifting in an establishment where she was known. By a merciful
stroke of fortune, the information and the bill were sent to the father
instead of the husband. Great moral and religious influence had been
brought to bear on her, and for several years there was cause to believe
that she had overcome her weakness. Unfortunately there had been another
lapse into temptation. At present she was suffering the tortures of the
damned, but in what particular respect she had refused to explain to
him. "Father, find me an active, bold and energetic lawyer," she had
said in a paroxysm of tears, "and I will tell him what I _cannot_ tell
you."

The lady came to the office next morning, alone. She was pale as a lily,
and she bore on her forehead that shadow of melancholy which tells all
the world that a woman is suffering and unhappy. Her eyes were dark and
soft as the darkest and softest violet, and she was dressed with the
utmost simplicity. She was in a most desponding mood. She said nothing
was worth striving for any more. There was no good under the sun for
her. The splendor had gone from the grass--the glory from the flower.
Life, affection, family ties, love of good name--all these had ceased to
appeal to her.

In the _sanctum sanctorum_ of a criminal lawyer's office the extremes of
mental agony and poignant suffering are sometimes revealed in all their
phases; but it would be hard to imagine any one suffering more than this
fair, prepossessing woman, as she told how that sleepless and merciless
vulture of remorse, aided by the machinations of a licensed fiend in
human form, dogged her steps by day and made night horrible. The recital
recalled the picture suggested by the lines:


"Lean abstinence, pole grief and haggard care,
The dire attendants of forlorn despair."


With pale, quivering lips, she told the story of her humiliation.
Primarily, some two years after she became a happy wedded wife, she was
impelled by an irresistible impulse to take some article, almost
valueless in itself, from the counter of a dry-goods store. She had been
making several purchases and had plenty of money in her pocket at the
time. Afterwards, as opportunity offered, the wretched larceny was
repeated. Then came discovery, and her father's awakening to the
realization that his daughter was a thief. He summoned a minister and
some worthy Christian women--relatives of his--to talk to her and to
urge her to seek strength from that source where it is never withheld
when earnestly and penitently invoked. She became a church-member,
zealous and earnest in the path of righteousness, partaking regularly of
the Sacred Elements, visiting the sick, relieving the distressed, and
comforting the afflicted. To use Milton's language,


"Such a sacred and homefelt delight,
Such sober certainty of waking bliss,"


she had never felt till then. Under these happy conditions five years
passed, and then again during the holiday season, temptation assailed
her and was stronger than she. The person who discovered her theft was a
detective. He did not arrest and expose her. He did worse. He followed
her, obtained an interview and promised to keep her secret if she made
it worth his while. She willingly gave him a sum of money, and expected
to hear no more of him or of her transgression. But this newer edition
of Fagin, who was as vile as the sewers, and who lied like a prospectus,
dogged her movements and systematically shadowed her wherever she went,
again and again demanding money and threatening her with newspaper
publicity. She gave this rapacious vampire all the money she could
procure, even borrowing from her father. The pawnbrokers had in safe
keeping her diamonds, jewels, and some of her furs and laces. They had
been pledged to furnish this licensed black-mailer with money, and still
he was insatiate and unappeased. Her husband's suspicions meanwhile had
been aroused. She spent so much money in occult ways that he had been
impelled to ask her father what he thought L---- was doing with so much
money. Fettered thus, with the torments both of Prometheus and
Tantalus--the vulture gnawing at her vitals, and the lost joys mocking
her out of reach--she had at last in sheer desperation been driven to
request her father to procure her the assistance of a fearless lawyer.

It is not expedient to reveal the _modus operandi_ used in emancipating
this unfortunate lady from her worse than Egyptian bondage. But the
reader may rest assured that through the co-operation of the police
commissioners the shameless scoundrel was dismissed from the police
force. Afterwards, he served a term in a Western state prison, and up to
this hour has been heard no more of in New York.


CHAPTER VIII.

PANEL HOUSES AND PANEL THIEVES.

_The Inmates--The Victims--The Gains--Complete Exposure of the Manner of
Operations, and how Unsuspecting Persons are Robbed._

Some years since respectable New York was startled and horrified by the
recitals of criminal life, which, in the fulfillment of a disagreeable
public duty, the daily newspapers printed in their news columns. The
stirring appeal for the suppression of the evil then made by the press
to the moral sentiment of the community, was backed by the judiciary, by
the money and influence of wealthy and patriotic citizens, by the
various charitable organizations, and by the whole police force.
Consequently, the foul Augean stable of vice and iniquity, for the time
being, at least, was in a great degree cleansed and purified. The
leaders of that foul army of vicious men and women were gradually rooted
out and driven away from their noxious haunts. Some found a congenial
haven in the State prison, a few reformed, and many died in want. The
plague being temporarily stayed, and popular indignation a matter of
record, New York, as is its invariable custom, permitted its vigilance
to go quietly to sleep, with a fair prospect of it being rudely awakened
to find history repeating itself. That this awakening cannot safely be
much longer deferred, it is partly the mission of the present chapter to
show. For it is useless to deny that we have in this city to-day, a
condition of affairs very similar to that which aroused the indignation
and called for the severe repressional measures of our immediate
predecessors. Up-town, in many instances closely contiguous to the
dwellings of people of the highest respectability, there are dens as
vile and infamous as ever disgraced any civilized community. Hardly a
street, however apparently exclusive and fashionable, can boast that it
is free from gambling, prostitution or panel houses.

Some time since, a journalist connected with a prominent morning paper,
took great pains to collect statistics concerning houses of prostitution
in New York. The article in which the results of his investigation were
given, estimates that over $15,000,000 was invested in that business,
and that the yearly amount spent in those houses averaged over
$10,000,000. In this chapter, however, the reader's attention is more
particularly invited to the class of assignation and prostitution
bagnios, known as panel houses.

The name "panel house" was originally derived from a false impression
prevalent in the community, that the rooms occupied by the inmates were
fitted with sliding panels in the walls and partitions, through and by
means of which most of the robberies were committed. But, as will be
seen hereafter, the term is a misnomer, so far as the fact is concerned.
But they had to have some distinctive appellation, and "panel house" is
a convenient generic term.

The proprietors of panel houses, in years gone by, were nearly all
professional gamblers, a fact which is more or less true to-day, where
the real, genuine house of that character exists, but there are hundreds
of women who work the "panel game" upon their victims, who hire a simple
room in some furnished-room house. If detected the entire house has
conferred upon it the name of panel house, and is ever afterwards
described and known as such in police and court records.

The real, Simon-pure panel thief is generally a young and pretty female,
who has been initiated into the mysteries of the game by either a
gambler or a lover, and of whom she is the mistress. It is the
conception of a man's brain, needing the assistance of an attractive
woman to carry out the scheme, and was probably originally devised by
some broken-down gambler to secure enough funds wherewith to resume
play. No woman would ever have dreamt of practicing such an intricate
and bold robbery, for she could never have carried it out. There are
many women engaged in these robberies who are neither young nor
handsome, but they are adepts and make up in knowledge and experience
what they lack in charms; but the most successful are young and
attractive. They succeed better when they are winsome, for reasons which
require no explanation.

Strange as it may appear, there are instances on record in which some of
the professional females engaged in this panel game have preserved
intact their virtue, so far as men generally were concerned, and have
remained steadfast and true to their lovers, through all vicissitudes.
They have solicited and accompanied men to their rooms, yet still have
so contrived and maneuvered, as to have their male companion robbed
without indulging in any of the other apparently necessary concomitants
to the success of the undertaking. But these women are rare--very rare
indeed. The fact of their occasional existence merely proves that the
sole object of all women engaged in the nefarious game of panel thieving
is robbery--first, last and all the time.

From the well-known dislike of the victims of this game to making their
names and losses known by figuring prominently in a court of justice,
panel-house thieves escape the punishment they justly deserve and thrive
more successfully, perhaps, than other professional robbers. Besides,
the game is practiced more particularly upon the most respectable
element of the community. Men of families, strangers visiting the city,
men of advanced years, and even clergymen are sometimes caught in the
net. As may be imagined, people of this class prefer to lose their money
rather than have their names made public, and so long as such victims
are to be found, panel houses will thrive and thieves become rich.
Instances are on record where as much as eight thousand dollars have
been secured from a single victim, who, from his prominence in social
and business circles, allowed the matter to drop, although he was
acquainted with the thief.

A man and a woman are essential to the execution of the panel game. The
woman's part consists in "cruising," a term applied to walking the
streets to pick up men. The man has two parts to enact, as "runner" and
"robber." The first role consists in being on the street watching his
female decoy. If he sees a man partially under the influence of liquor,
he informs the decoy, who places herself in the way of the obfuscated
citizen. Or, in the event of the woman securing a customer herself, the
"runner" observes it, and when she and her new-found friend proceed
towards the house, the "runner" rapidly goes ahead and unobserved slips
in first to make arrangements for the second role in the drama, and
which in some cases has ended in a tragedy.

The foregoing more particularly concerns panel thieves, that is,
"couples" who adopt the business on their own account. There are regular
panel houses, by which is meant houses of ill-fame, with perhaps from
ten to twenty girl inmates, where nearly every room in the house is
perfectly arranged for systematically pursuing this kind of robbery, and
where the moment a girl retires to a room with a gentleman, the
proprietor is notified, and when the chance occurs, completely cleans
the unconscious victim of every cent he may have about him. These
houses, however, are not now as plentiful as they were immediately after
the close of the war. The victims of these houses were many, for
outwardly they did not differ from ordinary gilded palaces of sin, and,
being situated in streets well known to contain respectable seraglios,
were frequently visited in the orthodox way by gentlemen in search of
the "elephant."

The game, however, is played in precisely the same way in all cases,
whether by a "loving couple" on their own account or by one of the many
girls in a regular house instituted for the sole purpose. And this is
the way it is done: A pretty female, young, with entrancing eyes, an
elegant form, richly and fashionably attired, is noticed daintily
picking her steps on a street crossing. She is more frequently noticed
in the act of crossing a street, as it affords her an opportunity of
rendering herself still more attractive and seductive by practicing
those apparently aimless little feminine arts that prove so fascinating
to the coarser sex. The skirts are just lifted high enough to discover a
beautiful foot; perhaps a glimpse of an ankle bewitchingly smothered in
lace frills is revealed; while a warm scintillant glance of invitation
is thrown at the interested beholder, who, perhaps, follows and engages
her in conversation. More than likely he is agreeably surprised to find
how lady-like and attractive her manners are, and by his own suggestion
or her invitation he readily accompanies her to her home; not, however,
without being previously warned that she is married, that her husband is
very ugly and jealous, and a big, strong, quarrelsome fellow, to boot.

The room to which she conducts him is apparently an ordinary room,
furnished in an ordinary way. It is, however, usually a front room,
separated by folding doors from the room in the rear. It is in
connection with these folding doors that mystery and danger lurk. These
folding doors are a study. Some are so constructed that instead of
opening in the center, one of them opens upon hinges which are placed on
that portion of the doors where the lock is usually situated, so that it
opens at the woodwork on the side. If a chance visitor to one of these
rooms should have his suspicions aroused by any act of his companion,
and should closely examine the doors, he would find a bolt on the inside
securely fastened, but he would not be likely to see that it barely
rested in the socket, and thinking everything was all right, his
suspicions would be disarmed. As there would be but one other door in
the room--that by which he entered--and as he locked that himself,
privacy would apparently be insured.

In the folding doors are several minute holes, through which a person
behind them can watch all that goes on in the front room. These holes,
however, are frequently dispensed with, and a cough or other understood
signal by the female gives the thief warning when all is ready for his
entrance.

After the lapse of perhaps five minutes the female coughs or makes some
understood signal, the door noiselessly opens at the side, a man enters
unseen, secures the victims clothing, disappears into the next room,
takes the money out of a pocket-book or pocket, replaces the pocket-book
in the clothes, takes the watch, the studs out of the shirt, everything,
in fact, of any value, and replacing the clothing, softly closes the
door again. Now comes the scene: A knock is heard on the other
door--that by which the victim entered. With a slight scream the female
remarks, that the person knocking is her husband, and with great haste
proceeds to dress, all the while telling her now frightened companion
that he will kill him if he sees him, hurriedly assists him to dress and
half pushing him, forces him out of the room, down the stairs into the
street.

Another phase of this trick is when, in the absence of folding doors,
the lock or bolt is so arranged that socket and bolt are both upon the
door. Another is to fill the socket with some substance, a cork for
instance, so that when the bolt is pushed forward, it fails to enter the
socket.

An instance is related of an elderly man coming into one of these rooms,
and casually remarking to his female friend, "I hope I won't be rapped
out of this room by anyone, for I have been in two places to-night and
was rapped out of both." That gentleman was robbed in the first house he
entered, and must have remarked in the second one that he was "rapped
out" of the first, for his companion in this last affair knew what had
happened in the other cases, and that he would not have been treated in
that manner unless they had secured his money. And so his remark being
again overheard, he was unceremoniously "rapped out" of this third and
last house. Here is a case from the records which probably illustrates
the method as well as any other:

An elderly man, about sixty years of age, entered a panel-room with a
dark-haired, flashily-dressed woman, who immediately requested him to
bolt the door. This he did, but he might have saved himself the trouble,
for the door was no more closed then than it was before. These bolts are
very ingenious. The catch on the jamb of the door into which the bolt
slides has three false screw-heads in it. In reality it is not attached
to the door-casing at all, but is fastened to the body of the bolt by an
unseen plate. Consequently, when the door is opened, the catch goes
forward with the remainder of the bolt. This, of course, was not noticed
by the man, as the gas was not turned up by the woman till after the
door was closed. While the man was bolting the door the woman hurried to
the dressing-table and hastily laid her hat on one chair and her cloak
on the other. This action compelled the man to place his clothes on the
couch or on one of the chairs by the folding doors. When all was ready,
one of the operators scratched lightly on the door with his finger-nail,
to warn the woman he was about to enter the room. The next moment the
man boldly opened the door wide, removed the chair out of his way, and
glided rapidly to the other chair, on which the man's clothes lay. At
this moment the woman redoubled her fascinations, for the purpose of
distracting the attention of her companion, in which intent she was
eminently successful. The work of going through the man's pockets, and
what is technically known as "weeding" his pocket-book, was quickly
over, the chair was quietly replaced, the panel-door closed, and the
thief appeared with a roll of bills in his hand. The whole thing was
done in from twenty to twenty-five seconds. Immediately after the
closing of the door the man went outside, and, knocking on the
passage-door of the bedroom, said in a loud whisper.

"Jenny, here's Joe; hurry up."

"My God!" exclaimed the girl, jumping up, "you must get away as fast as
you can. That's my lover. He's dreadful jealous, and would shoot you as
soon as look at you."

It is needless to say that the victim required no urging. He jumped into
his clothes as fast as possible, only too glad to get out of the way
before the appearance of the terrible imaginary lover, and apparently
without the slightest notion that he had been robbed.

The victims of these thefts have really no redress. It is so hard to
find the guilty woman afterwards, or even to locate the house, for
unless the pleasure hunter suspects some trap he pays no particular
attention to the kind of house, its situation, or its number. In the
case of a stranger he never seeks the thieves again, but "pockets his
loss." If an elderly man, he does likewise. But if he be really an
obstinate man, determined upon catching the thieves and prosecuting
them, he will invariably be approached and his money and valuables will
be returned to him upon condition that he withdraws his complaint.
Convictions are very rarely obtained in any case from the difficulty of
identifying the parties.

Many of these women never see a penny of the plundered money, the man,
in most cases, retaining the whole of the loot. It sometimes happens
that a victim discovers that he has been robbed before he leaves, and
makes what is called in the vernacular a "kick"; if so, it also
sometimes happens that he is unmercifully beaten by the lover and his
pals, but it has occurred that when "the kicker" was a man about town,
that he has gotten away with his assailant in a manner calculated to
make the heart of a Sullivan beat with pleasure.

There is quite a different feature of this panel-game, but which more
properly belongs to black-mail, in which, through the peep-holes in the
doors, the face of the man or woman in the adjoining room is studied,
waited for on the outside, followed to his or her home, and in a few
days threatened with exposure, if the sum demanded is not forthcoming.

Couples have been known to ply the panel-game very successfully in some
of the most prominent hotels in the city. The lady would make her
conquest upon the streets in the ordinary manner and the game would be
worked in two rooms of the hotel as already described. This enterprise
was carried on successfully by a scoundrel and his wife at one time in
one of the best hotels, and although it was generally known, there never
was any one to complain against them. It was only by the proprietor
specially employing several detectives that they were finally
discovered, arrested and punished.



CHAPTER IX.

A THEATRICAL ROMANCE.

_Kale Fisher, the Famous Mazeppa, involved--Manager Hemmings charged
by Fast-paced Mrs. Bethune with Larceny._

A good many years since, at a fashionable boardinghouse in Philadelphia,
a handsome Adonis-shapen young man, well and favorably known by the name
of George Hemmings, became acquainted with a member of the fairer sex
who had scarcely passed "sweet sixteen," and was accredited with a
bountiful supply of beauty, named then Eliza Garrett. An intimacy at
once sprung up between the two, which at length ripened into a mutual
attachment.

A series of journeys were undertaken by Miss Garrett and Hemmings, and
for some time they lived together enjoying all the pleasures and sweets
of love; but for some cause the pair separated, and for a number of
years saw nothing of each other. Meantime, many changes had occurred in
the circumstances of both. Eliza had been transformed into Mrs. Bethune
and lived in a fashionable part of Gotham, her reputed husband, John
Bethune, Esquire, being a gentleman of wealth and sporting
proclivities.

George Hemmings, who, by the way, was very respectably connected, had
migrated from the "City of Brotherly Love" to "Gotham," and filled a
position as superintendent in a dry-goods establishment.

It was whilst in this city, when "walking down Broadway" one afternoon,
Hemmings' attention was attracted by a lady who seemed to have been
previously pleased with his acquaintance, and in whom he recognized his
former inamorata, Miss Garrett. A grand recapitulation of the
pleasantries of by-gone days ensued, and the damsel informed her "once
dear George" that she was now Mrs. Bethune, but prevailed upon him to
accompany her to her home. Here a hearty welcome was accorded him, and,
if his statement be correct, it is said that the intimacy of former
times was renewed.

Matters continued in this manner, and Hemmings was induced to leave his
former situation and take up his abode at the residence of Mrs. Bethune
as general superintendent of that household, inasmuch as Mr. Bethune
himself was occasionally absent from the city.

On one occasion, as Mr. Hemmings alleged, the beauteous Mrs. Bethune was
violently assaulted by her better-half for some alleged indiscretion,
and it was her early lover who played the part of Good Samaritan on the
occasion, comforting her as well as he was able himself, and calling in
a physician to bind up her wounds. During her sickness, the relationship
between Hemmings and the lady seems to have been of the most intimate
character. She gave him a pair of diamond ear-rings to pledge for four
hundred dollars, which money was a portion of an amount which was to be
called into requisition for the necessary engagements and other expenses
incurred at the opening of a theatre in Pittsburg, the management to be
assumed by Miss Kate Fisher, the well-known "Mazeppa" and equestrienne
actress, and George Hemmings. A troupe was thereupon engaged, and the
entire company, including Miss Fisher and Hemmings, started for
Pennsylvania, where they intended to delight the inhabitants with the
drama of the "fiery, untamed steed" order.

Soon after "Cupid George" departed for the West, Mrs. Bethune became a
prey to the "green-eyed monster." She realized the temptations that
would surely beset George as he basked in the smiles of the alluring and
classically modeled equestrienne. Other troubles beset Mrs. Bethune at
this juncture. Her husband asked her one day what had become of her
diamond ear-rings, and she was seized with confusion and dismay. To
disclose the truth would be to incur Bethune's jealousy, natural
indignation and too probable violence, and so the convenient idea seems
to have occurred to her that by accusing Hemmings of the theft of the
jewelry, she would achieve a two-fold success; namely, the one of
concealing her own frailty, and the other of snatching her beloved one
from a hated supposed rival. Bethune, believing her story, obtained a
requisition from Governor Fenton and procured Hemmings' arrest in
Pittsburg, and he was accordingly brought to this city. The services of
Howe & Hummel were called into requisition, and Hemmings brought into
court for trial.

The greatest excitement was aroused amongst theatrical and sporting
celebrities, and long before the opening of the court every seat was
filled by eager and expectant spectators, and when the prisoner was
called to the bar an immense throng surged to and fro to obtain a
glimpse at his features, and those of the accusing beauty.

City Judge Russel presided, and the Hon. Robert C. Hutchings, afterwards
Surrogate, conducted the prosecution.

Mr. Hutchings opened the case for the people in a fair and temperate
speech, stating that he was instructed that he should be enabled to
establish a clear case of larceny against the defendant, who then stood
indicted for having, on the 19th of October, 1868, at the city of New
York, feloniously stolen, taken, and carried away, one pair of diamond
ear-rings of the value of $400, the property of one James A. Lynch.

Mr. Hutchings then called Mrs. Eliza Bethune, who, amidst breathless
silence, was sworn, and testified that Hemmings was observed by her
daughter purloining the ear-rings from her boudoir drawer on the day in
question, and that immediately she was informed of the larceny she had
sought out Hemmings and ascertained that he had fled to Pittsburgh. On
inquiry, she had also traced the missing jewelry to a pawn-office kept
by Mr. Barnard, at No. 404 Third avenue, where the articles were pledged
by Hemmings. She also went to Pittsburg with Detective Young, and the
pawn-ticket of the ear-rings was found on Hemmings, which she took from
him. Mrs. Bethune further stated that the officer then handcuffed the
prisoner and brought him on to this city.

The witness was then subjected to a rigid cross-examination by Mr. Howe,
who propounded questions as follows:

Mr. Howe: Are you married to Mr. Bethune?

Mrs. Bethune (imploringly to Judge Russel): Am I compelled to answer
that question?

Judge Russel: Mr. Howe, I have already ruled that these kind of
questions are improper.

Mr. Howe (with pertinacity): Your honor, I desire to show that this
witness is not the wife of Mr. Bethune; and I contend that, in justice
to my client, the question should be answered.

Judge Russel: I rule it out.

Mr. Howe: I take exception to the ruling of the court, and will now put
another question, namely:

Is Mr. Bethune your husband? (Sensation in court.)

Judge Russel ruled the question inadmissible, and exception was taken.

Detective John Young, of the Eighteenth Precinct Police, was next
called, and deposed: I am connected with the Metropolitan Police of this
city; I was sent with a requisition issued by Governor Fenton to
Pittsburgh to arrest George Hemmings for grand larceny; I went there
with Mr. and Mrs. Bethune; I took Hemmings into custody at the
Pittsburgh Theatre; he made a violent resistance, and scuffled with me;
I was necessitated to handcuff him in the cars; he became very abusive
and threatening; in fact, so much so, that I was compelled to hit him on
the head with the butt-end of my pistol; at the time of his arrest he
had upon him the ticket of the ear-rings.

Alexander Barnard, a pawnbroker at No. 404 Third avenue, was the next
witness, and said: I know the prisoner at the bar; he pledged me with
two diamond ear-rings on the 20th of last October, which Mr. Lynch
subsequently identified as his property.

Cross-examined by Mr. Howe: Hemmings has frequently pawned articles of
jewelry with me; he pledged them in the name of Mrs. Bethune.

Mr. Howe here requested that the pawnbroker should be directed to
produce his book in order that the jury might see the dates, the
production of which the counsel insisted would entirely contradict Mrs.
Bethune's testimony.

The book was subsequently produced, and Mr. Barnard testified, on
further cross-examination by Mr. Howe, that Hemmings had pledged with
him a watch belonging to Mrs. Bethune on the 17th of November, being
_nearly one month_ after the date the ear-rings were pledged.

Mrs. Lynch proved that the ear-rings were her property, and that she had
loaned them to Mrs. Bethune.

Mrs. Bethune now took the witness stand, and she was asked by Mr. Howe
how long she had known Hemmings, the prisoner at the bar?

Mrs. Bethune: About twelve years.

Mr. Howe: Where did you first become acquainted with him?

Mrs. Bethune: At Philadelphia; I was employed in the United States Mint,
and we boarded together in the same house.

Mr. Howe: Did you subsequently come on to New York with him?

Witness (hesitatingly): I did.

Mr. Howe: Were you on terms of peculiar intimacy with him?

Mrs. Bethune: I was not (sensation in the court): we were friends.

Mr. Howe: Was it not at your solicitation that he was taken to live in
the same house with yourself and Mr. Bethune?

Mrs. Bethune: Yes, it was; but I merely took him in out of charity, as
he was poor and had no clothes (sensation in court).

Mr. Howe: Did you ever stay at the Washington Hotel in this city with
him?

Judge Russel here interposed, and informed Mrs. Bethune that she need
not answer that question.

Mr. Howe: Did you not visit him when he was employed at A. T. Stewart's
store in this city?

Mrs. Bethune: I did; but I got him employed there.

Mr. Howe (aside): Compassionate woman (laughter). Now, Mrs. Bethune,
through whom did you get him employed at that store?

Mrs. Bethune: Through Mr. Griswold, a gentleman of my acquaintance.

Mr. Howe: Did you not know at the time you had Hemmings in your house
that he was a married man?

Mrs. Bethune: I did. (Sensation.)

Mr. Howe: Have you not been to the Whitney House with Hemmings?

The court also decided that witness need not answer that question,
whereupon counsel took exception.

Mr. Howe: Have you not frequently been to the Chanler House in this city
with Mr. Hemmings?

Question overruled.

Mr. Howe: Did you not receive visits from Hemmings in East Fourth
street, in this city?

Mrs. Bethune: Am I bound to answer that question?

Judge Russel: I overrule that question, and you need not answer it.

Mr. Howe: Did you ever live in a house in Lombard street, Philadelphia,
kept by a Miss Graham, and did you ever meet Hemmings there.

Mrs. Bethune (indignantly): I did not.

Mr. Howe: Did you ever introduce Hemmings to any person at Saratoga as
your brother?

Mrs. Bethune (reluctantly): Yes, I have. (Sensation.)

Mr. Howe: How many times have you given Hemmings your jewelry to pledge
that he might have money?

Mrs. Bethune: I never gave him permission to pledge any of my jewelry.

Mr. Howe: Do you mean to swear that he has never pledged any of your
jewelry prior to the present occasion?

Mrs. Bethune: Yes, he has, but not with my consent. (Sensation.)

Mr. Howe: Was that whilst he was living in your house?

Mrs. Bethune: It was.

Mr. Howe: Why did you not have him arrested for so doing?

Mrs. Bethune: Because he cried, and I forgave him. (Sensation.)

Mr. Howe: Yes, you forgave your "BROTHER" (roars of laughter). Now,
madam! will you swear that you did not give Hemmings your watch to
pledge on the 17th of November last, nearly one month after he pledged
the ear-rings?

Mrs. Bethune: I did not; I will swear that I never gave him anything to
pledge after he pawned the ear-rings; I did not give him the ear-rings;
I paid Kate Fisher the money with which to open the theatre, and not to
Hemmings; I did not pay her in the Chanler House, in Hemmings' presence;
I paid her on the street, the reason Hemmings went to Saratoga with me,
was to take care of Mr. Bethune's horses (immoderate laughter); I will
swear that I had not seen Hemmings since he took the ear-rings until I
had him arrested; I did not arrest him right away, because I was sick;
the ear-rings were not mine, they belonged to Mr. Lynch; I borrowed them
from Mrs. Lynch.

Mr. Howe: What was your name when you became acquainted with Hemmings?

Mrs. Bethune: Eliza Garrett.

This closed the case for the prosecution, and Mr. Howe, for the defense,
called Dr. J. Kennedy, who testified as follows:

I am a physician, and reside in East Tenth street in this city; I have
seen the prisoner before. In October last, I saw him in a house in East
Fourth street.

Mr. Howe: What were you doing at that house?

Dr. Kennedy: I was attending a lady there, professionally.

Mr. Howe: Would you know that lady again?
Dr. Kennedy: I should.
Mr. Howe (to Mrs. Bethune): Madam, will you oblige me by standing up and
raising your veil?

The lady complied with Mr. Howe's request, and amidst breathless silence
Mr. Howe, addressing Dr. Kennedy, said, "Doctor, is that the lady?"

Dr. Kennedy: It is. (Flutter in the court-room.)

Mr. Howe: How many times did you visit her?

Dr. Kennedy: Eight or ten times.

Mr. Howe: Was Hemmings in the room with her?

Dr. Kennedy: He was. (Sensation.)

Mr. Howe then applied for attachments against two witnesses who had been
subpoenaed to prove that Mrs. Bethune had been at the Whitney House and
the Washington Hotel with Hemmings, but Judge Russel declined to grant
any time, and peremptorily ordered Mr. Howe to proceed with his defense
to the jury.

Mr. Howe then arose and addressed the court. He said:

Gentlemen of the Jury: I approach the consideration of this case with
some degree of embarrassment, which is necessarily forced upon me, from
the fact, that whilst discharging, as I shall endeavor to do, to the
best of my ability, my duties as an advocate to the young man accused of
this larceny, I regret that I am called upon to animadvert in terms of
censure and reproach, upon one who leaves a name which is dear and
hallowed to us all--the originator of our being--a name that we all
revere and respect when we view it in the beauteous and lovely purity
which is thrown around it. But I think, gentlemen, it is not unfair when
that name is divested of its purity, and becomes shrouded with that
which is base and vile--when the guard which we naturally and
intuitively throw around it is dispelled, and, instead of the beauteous
statue of monumental alabaster, we see a black, foetid, loathsome thing
before us, from which we shrink with indignation and horror, knowing it
is that which drags our young men down to degradation, disgrace and
death--I say, in entering upon this prisoner's defense, such is the
distinction between pure and hallowed and virtuous women (against whom
none dare point) and her who forgets herself--forgets the holy ties due
to her sex, and her own self-respect: and who assumes the place of wife
to a man without that sanction which God has instituted and commanded,
and who, entrapping others, comes to court to-day--not the pure being to
demand your respect--but one whom we can but contemplate with loathing
and disgust, and who has proved herself utterly unworthy of belief.
Gentlemen, I simply wish to direct your attention to the proven facts. I
have thus ventured to allude to the distinction I have endeavored to
draw, not for the purpose of warping your minds, or in any degree
throwing an unfair prejudice around this case; but, in view of the
solemnity of the oaths you have taken, to do justice between the People
of the State of New York and the prisoner at the bar, and to see upon
what testimony you are asked to consign an innocent, but foolish young
man, for a long term of years to the state prison.

I find in the book before me, gentlemen, to my surprise--and when it
will be handed to you I think you will agree with me and share my
astonishment--that on the first day of October last Mr. Lynch has sworn
that _his_ diamond ear-rings were stolen. I find that from the first day
of October until the 8th day of December--a long lapse of nearly two
months--no steps are taken by those who are alleged to have sustained
the loss, and nothing is done until the latter date. I will show you why
this demand is made upon the Executive--a novel proceeding altogether,
without any indictment being preferred in this office--and a journey is
made to Pittsburgh, not by the officers alone, but as we have it on the
sworn testimony of the woman in this case, that she, without her
protector, without the man Bethune (who is with her now as her husband,
and who professed to be so then), proceeded alone to Pittsburgh, and is
subsequently followed by Mr. Bethune. That is the first era, the first
of October. We next find Mrs. Bethune detailing to you that these
ear-rings were taken (how she does not know), but only what she was told
by a little girl whom we have not seen. So her story runs. It is pretty
for the present; but I hope to destroy the poetry of it very shortly.
That this man stole, not on the first of October, but on the 19th of
October, and subsequently corrected to-day, by the lady of treacherous
memory, to the date of the 20th. At all events, it is perfectly clear,
now, according to her last amended allegation, that on the 20th of
October she claims a larceny to have been committed. But a Mr. Lynch is
supposed to be the owner of the earrings, and not Mrs. Bethune! It
transpires that she had merely borrowed them for a while, as she tells
you; and then on the 20th of October she learns the loss. Why,
gentlemen, did not Mrs. Bethune tell you, that nearly a month after that
and in November, she had met this man on the street with Miss Kate
Fisher? That they had business transactions, that she knew him--the
theatrical manager--that he was to open a theatre--that money was
supplied by her for that express purpose? Did not she know within one
month after this transaction the same state of facts which she deposes
to-day? Why not have had the prisoner arrested on the street then?

No, gentlemen, I will give you my theory of this case; I will render to
you what this man has told me, and if it be not a common-sense view of
it, no logic--no metaphysics--then discard every word uttered and
condemn this man. The pawnbroker throws additional light upon this
transaction, and, gentlemen, if you will refer to the date in his book
of the 17th of November (a month after his alleged larceny), you will
find an important fact which I beseech you to hold, pointedly, in your
own estimation. You will remember that she contradicts herself, and
stated that she had had no transactions with Hemmings after the alleged
larceny. One of the gentlemen on the jury put the very pertinent
question (seeing the force of this), whether she had transactions with
the prisoner after this alleged stealing. You will remember for
yourselves, gentlemen, and I point to it without fear of contradiction,
that at first she stated the ear-rings were taken on the 19th of
October, but, seeing, with a woman's keen perception, the fatal error
she had made in stating that admission, seeing that you, as common-sense
men, would have at once said: "Why not have had him arrested then?" she
quickly drew back, like a snail when the crashing foot is coming upon
it, and drew the horns within the shell which covered it; and,
yesterday, corrected the date. She changed the date and put it back from
November to October. I congratulate her upon the change! For all the
trickery and malice which were embodied in it, only enured to the
prisoner's benefit. It was here sworn, to-day, that on the 17th of
November last, her watch and chain (her watch and chain, gentlemen) not
Mr. Lynch's, but Eliza Bethune's, was pledged in New York at Mr.
Barnard's, the identical pawnbroker with whom the earrings were pledged.
By whom? By Mrs. Bethune? Oh no! gentlemen! but by Hemmings, the man
here. If he accomplished this ubiquitous feat, like the ghost in Hamlet,
to be in two places at one time, he is one of the most wonderful
performers of the modern day. (Laughter.) He could not be in Barnard's
pawn-shop in New York pledging Mrs. Bethune's watch on the 17th of
November, a month after the larceny, and be, as she would have you
believe, with Kate Fisher performing in Pittsburgh. Why, look at that
contradiction! I invoke that book (pointing to the pawnbroker's record),
as in other temples I appeal to the Holy one, for my protection. In your
hands I place it. Upon your altar do I offer it up; and I believe that
you will grant my prayers, that this will be taken as the strongest
evidence of the prisoner's innocence. Records cannot lie here. The
testimony is that this man had subsequent transactions with Mrs.
Bethune, supporting, beyond a doubt, my theory that she gave him the
ear-rings to pledge. Now let us see. She tells you (and there are other
circumstances of greater peculiarity still around this case)--she tells
you that she became acquainted with this man some twelve years since;
and although I was prohibited (perhaps properly) by the court from
putting other questions, I think I am not saying too much, when I urge
that I did elicit from that lady sufficient to justify any one of you in
forming an opinion as to the immoral terms of intimacy subsisting
between Hemmings and that lady who was upon the witness stand. I can
only say that I think there is not one of you composing that jury who
would be pleased to have a wife of yours detailing circumstances in any
way similar. I think that not only jealousy, but indignation of the
strongest character, would be aroused in each of you, and you would
unhesitatingly brand her as an adulteress.

Now, gentlemen, we find they have known each other for twelve years, and
what besides? Why, she takes him into her house; she gives him an
apartment there. Nay, she does more, according to her confession. She
saw that he was poor and had no clothes (to use her own expression.) I
do not think, gentlemen, that she exactly meant that, when she said it,
in its literal signification (laughter), but she certainly said that he
had no clothes, and that she clothed him and she "took him in" (loud
laughter). She went to A. T. Stewart's (kind-hearted charitable woman!)
and saw Mr. Griswold. She interceded with Griswold and got Hemmings a
situation in A. T. Stewart's. What relation was Hemmings to her, at this
time, to induce her to take this kind and charitable interest in him? I,
gentlemen, am not so charitable as she professed to be; neither do I
think you will be, gentlemen. I apprehend that the motive which actuated
the taking in, the clothing and the obtaining a situation at Stewart's,
was another motive altogether (immoderate laughter). What it was, I will
leave you to conjecture. Look a little further. Hemmings is no relation
to her, and yet we find her taking him to Saratoga! In what capacity?
Why, she tells you, to attend Bethune's horses at Saratoga (laughter).
Yes, gentlemen, and this hostler, this stable boy, in the same breath,
is introduced by this lady as what--a lover! oh, no, she dare not do
that--but as a relation--a blood relation! She makes him, for that
occasion, her brother at Saratoga! Well, so far, there is no
impropriety, you will say; but coupled with several other facts--coupled
with the act that that book (the pawnbrokers book) teems with the name
of Bethune, as pledging jewelry pledged by Hemmings, and belonging to
the lady, you must see the intimacy which unquestionably existed. She
admitted to you that time and again he had pledged what? Why, he had
pledged her studs, her brooches and God knows what all! What did she?
Why not have him arrested then? Oh! well, she says, "he cried--my
brother cried." (Loud laughter.) "I did not like to hurt my brother."
She forgave him, and I will tell you why.

You know the quotation that "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
Mr. Hemmings, who is a fine, healthy, fashionable, well-rounded and
vigorous, and, some women might say, good-looking young man, had
migrated from the city of New York to spend some time in Pittsburgh, and
he was in dangerous proximity to a very enticing and attractive actress,
Miss Kate Fisher. (Loud laughter).

Gentlemen, in the play of Othello, which many of you have doubtless seen
and read, you will find the episode of the handkerchief, which you will
remember belonged to Desdemona; being the gift of her husband, the Moor.
You remember Iago (in that case it was a man, however,) instigated his
wife to purloin the handkerchief, and to deposit it in the chamber of
Cassio, if I am correct; and Cassio, unfortunately, not seeing the
little trap that was prepared for him, wound that spotted piece of
cambric around his knee to stop the blood flowing from the wound he had
received in a drunken brawl. Upon Othello seeing that, he states, that
not being jealous, he "was perplexed in the extreme," and the sequel was
the murder about which we have so often heard. I say, gentlemen, if ever
there was the play of Othello reduced to private life and reacted, it is
here. These ear-rings are the handkerchief, and Mrs. Bethune is the
Iago. (Laughter.) This young man tells me, that in accordance with
ancient usage and time-honored customs existing between this gentleman
and lady, she had given him, as she narrated here, money to enable Kate
Fisher to open a theatre at Pittsburgh, and that Hemmings was to be the
manager. She had given them, from time to time, money obtained from
Barnard's pawn office, through the instrumentality of the unfortunate
Hemmings.

That is the history; that is all before you, and it cannot be gainsayed.
Then why the arrest this time more than at the others? It explains
itself. You have it in testimony that these ear-rings were the property
of Mr. Lynch, and that Mrs. Lynch had loaned them to Mrs. Bethune.
Hemmings alleges, and I believe with truth, that Mrs. Bethune, whilst
riding in a coach with him, and after a "love encounter" (laughter) gave
to him these jewels to hypothecate in the place to which he had been a
frequent visitor for Mrs. Bethune. He goes to this pawnbroker's not in
his own name, but, as the pawnbroker tells you (and I point to that fact
as one of the strong points in the defense), that he panned them with
him, telling him at the time that they belonged to Mrs. Bethune. Would a
thief who stole your property or mine go to a place where he was known,
that is if he stole them with the intention of keeping them? There was
no larceny here, no dishonest motive about the transaction. Would he go
to the pawnbroker to whom he was known and say, "Here is some property;
it is not mine, it is Mrs. Bethune's?" On the contrary, you know,
gentlemen--you must know--that there are a thousand other pawnbroker's
establishments in New York City; and if this had been a felonious taking
of these ear-rings, Hemmings could have gone to Simpson's across the way
from this court house, or to another place at the Battery, or east,
west, north or south, upon any corner in New York to a strange
pawnbroker, who did not know him, had there been any felony about the
transaction. Another point is, that a felon who steals invariably covers
up his crime. The Prosecution brought out this fact, and I appeal to it
as their own destruction, why in the name of Heaven did this man, if he
intended to appropriate these ear-rings to his own use, carry about him
the evidence of his guilt? Why, they told you when they got to
Pittsburgh, after the altercation, that he produced the pawn-ticket! Did
that look like stealing?

But to revert to the ownership. Mr. Lynch, in a moment of kindness,
loaned these ear-rings to his wife. Mrs. Lynch again loaned them to Mrs.
Bethune; and, as Hemmings says, whilst riding in a coach, she (Mrs.
Bethune) gave him those ear-rings to pledge. He did so pledge them. Mind
you, gentlemen, there has been no dispute about that since the
commencement; he has never denied the pledging. Having pledged them, as
he represents, a request was made to Mrs. Bethune for the return of the
ear-rings. She could not produce them, and for the best possible reason;
and not until nearly two months after the occurrence is the complaint
made before the police magistrate. She wished to hide from Mr. Bethune
(the gentleman who sustained the relation of husband to her) what had
become of the ear-rings; and, necessarily, she had no resort but to turn
round and say: "It is not very pleasant to tell my husband (or the man
who stands in that capacity) that I have given those ear-rings to a
lover! I cannot, without offending you, tell you the true cause of this
affair, but I must, in order to save myself, say, O, this George stole
them, and he is in Pittsburgh with Kate Fisher." This is _two months_
after the occurrence! And then, on the first of December, a requisition
is gotten out, and the more marvelous part of it is, that she goes on
alone in the first instance while Mr. Bethune followed subsequently. Now
see what occurred in Pittsburgh. She told you she did not know whether
he was arrested or not. She "believed" there was a form gone through of
getting out some papers. She "believes" she was taken before the mayor;
and what became of the case she did not know. But Mr. Bethune, who could
not shield himself in this way, very promptly answered that he was
arrested at the suit of this man; and Hemmings could not make idle
charges there. He was a theatrical manager in Pittsburgh, a public man!
and, as they told you, boasted that he was intimate with the members of
the press and police force, who were dead-heads at his theatre, and who
witnessed the performance gratuitously; so that you perceive he was very
well known. Do you believe, will any sane man of common sense credit the
statement, that a man who was as well known in Pittsburgh as G. L. Fox
is in this city, could afford to arrest a citizen and have the matter
made public unless he had reasons to do so?

I say, gentlemen, that the entire case, from the commencement to the
end, abounds in doubts suggestive of this man's innocence, especially
the fact which cannot be denied, that this lady, _she is not like
Caesar's wife_, above suspicion, shields herself, as no honest woman
would, behind that protection which the judge afforded.

Good God, gentlemen, in a court of justice, where jurors are empanelled
to decide upon the future prospects and the life of this young man,
would your wife or mine refuse to answer such a question? Is it a
_shame_ for us to acknowledge that the holy bonds of matrimony have
united us with a being--the mother of our offspring? Would you deny that
you were the husband of a lady, placed upon the witness stand to support
a charge against a thief for having stolen your watch? Why, I think,
gentlemen, that honor, affection, duty and every obligation known to
society, demands, in imperious tones, that instead of denying the wife
of your bosom, you stand forward as her champion and say, "Thank God,
she is my wife and I am proud of it!" That is what you or I would have
answered. But the gauzy curtain that was covered over this foul tableau,
has been lifted up, and you see it in all it hideous deformity. As I
have before stated, you have seen, gentlemen, the flimsy evidence upon
which is attempted to predicate a conviction for grand larceny. I am
confident that in spite of all the attempts that have been made by a
shameless wanton and her pretended husband, to crush this man, despite
the meretricious trickery and villainous conspiracy which instigated,
concocted and carried out this _persecution_, relying as I do, on your
sense of justice, your strict integrity, and the independence of an
American jury, that you will not permit our temples erected to justice,
to be prostituted to the accomplishment of the designs of the polluted
and the infamous and that innocence will triumph, and your verdict be
"Not guilty."

At the conclusion of Mr. Howe's address, Mr. Hutchings summed up for the
people. Judge Russel proceeded to charge the jury. After recapitulating
very carefully the whole of the testimony, told them that if they were
satisfied that the prisoner Hemmings had taken these ear-rings from Mrs.
Bethune, and had pledged them without her consent, then they should
convict; but if they had any well-founded doubt arising from the
testimony itself, and not engendered by the eloquent speech of the
prisoner's counsel, then they should give the prisoner the benefit of
the doubt and acquit him.

The jury then retired, and after a quarter of an hour's absence returned
into court and rendered a verdict of NOT GUILTY.

Hemmings was accordingly discharged, and he quitted the court amidst the
congratulations of his friends.

Mrs. Bethune also brought a charge of theft against Kate Fisher, which
was heard at Essex Market Police Court. The New York _Herald_ reported
the proceedings next day as follows:

Essex Market court-room was this afternoon densely crowded with
theatrical personages of all grades, apparently deeply interested in the
progress of the case which concerns the position and honor of an actress
so well known as Kate Fisher. The seats of the court would not contain
more than half the number of the persons present, the remainder being
compelled to stand around against the walls and in the nooks of the
doors, etc. Among those present were W. B. Freligh, manager of the
Bowery Theatre; John Jones, the treasurer; Clark, the stage manager;
Deane, leader of the orchestra, and others. The court-room was at last
found to be too small, and the whole party adjourned to examine the room
on the second floor of the building, which was also found to be rather
small, but yet more convenient for the purposes of an examination.

Justice Shandley then took his seat on the bench, and the parties
concerned appeared in court. Mrs. Bethune was rather flashily dressed,
and evidently intended to make a show. Kate Fisher was quietly dressed
in black, and was very modest in her demeanor; attracting no attention,
except from those who were acquainted with her. Mr. Bethune accompanied
the complainant, and Messrs. Howe and Hummel, appeared for Miss Kate
Fisher.

Having taken their respective seats, the case of Eliza Bethune, of
Centreville, Long Island, against Kate Fisher, for the larceny of a gold
watch and chain, valued at $200, was then called on.

Mrs. Bethune, the first witness, was then examined by her counsel. She
stated that her name was Eliza Bethune, and that she resided at
Centreville, L. I. She knew Kate Fisher, and knew her on the 16th of
last November. She was then living in East Fourth street. On that day
she missed her watch, and her daughter told her that Miss Fisher had
taken it. Acting on this information, she sent for Kate Fisher on the
afternoon of that day. Mrs. Bethune then asked her where her watch was.
Kate Fisher was very much intoxicated at the time, but understood all
that was said to her. She answered that she had taken it, and had given
it to Hemmings. The watch and chain was worth $200. Mrs. Bethune
subsequently learned that the watch had been pledged. Some time after,
she, Mrs. Bethune, caused the arrest of Kate Fisher at Pittsburgh, but
the case was dismissed for want of jurisdiction.

Mr. Howe then asked if the counsel had closed his case, but received an
answer in the negative, as there were more witnesses to be examined. Mr.
Howe stated that he was sorry that the case was not closed, as before he
desired to commence a cross-examination he would take all the evidence
to be exhausted. His case was a revival of one which had already been
settled at the General Sessions, and bore on its very face the evidence
of a malicious prosecution to injure the character and spotless
reputation of a lady whose profession brought her constantly before the
public, and whose good name became thereby part of her business capital.
He regretted it, therefore, that the counsel for the complainant would
not exhaust his case, as it made it necessary to adopt a course of
procedure in his cross-examination that he should have preferred not to
have done.

The counsel for Mrs. Bethune persisting that the cross-examination of
each witness should go on in regular order as each witness appeared on
the stand, Mr. Howe then proceeded by asking the witness her name.

My name is Eliza Bethune.

Are you married?

I am.

To whom?

Mr. Bethune.

What is his first name?

That is not your business.

Counsel appealed to the court, when the magistrate said the question was
a proper one, and she answered:

My husband's name is Bethune. His first name I do not choose to give.

After further questioning, she at last replied:

My first husband's name was John Bethune.

What is the name of your present husband?

That is not your business.

Is he here in court.

He is. He represents me here.

What is his first name?

After a great deal of cross-firing the answer was elicited that it was
George Bethune.

Were you ever married to George Bethune, the one who is now in court?

Objected to by counsel.

Justice Shandley: That is a proper question, and must be answered.

That is my business. He has been my husband for over ten years.

Were you ever married to him?

Objected to. Objection overruled.

I have answered already. I have answered all I am going to do.

Justice Shandley insisted that she must answer the questions, but when
she still refused, almost in a defiant manner, he rose from the bench,
and declared the case dismissed. His action was received with rounds of
applause from the persons assembled.



CHAPTER X.

A MARINER'S WOOING.

_Captain Hazard's Gushing Letters--Breakers on a Matrimonial Lee
Shore--He is Grounded in Divorce Shoals_.

Aforetime, when the mariner was entirely dependent on the winds and the
tides to make his voyage, he was, as everybody knows, a peculiarly
impulsive, generous, faithful and credulous mortal in his love affairs.
Once ashore, he spliced the main-brace, sneered oathfully at
land-lubbers, hitched up his trousers and ran alongside the first
trim-looking craft who angled for his attentions--and his money. These
fine salt-water impulses, begotten of a twelve or fifteen-months'
voyage, have mostly vanished. Steam has greatly revolutionized Jack's
sweet-hearting. He comes to port every fortnight, or so; he wears dry
goods and jewelry of the latest mode; and he marries a wife, or divorces
a wife, with the same conventional _sangfroid_ of any mercantile
"drummer" who travels by railroad. The conjugal history of that
distinguished son of Neptune, Captain Oliver Perry Hazard, now to be
related, haply has a delectable smack of mercantile jack's old-time
methods, mingled with the shrewder utilitarianism of the steamship Jack
of to-day.

Up in the estuary called the Y, and at the mouth of the river Amstel,
lay, some years ago, the good American ship which had safely borne young
Hazard across the Atlantic. He was a handsome, a tall, and a lively
young man of five and twenty; and, with a vivacious young mariner's
curiosity, he went ashore to sample the "Holland," for which the Dutch
are so famous, to stroll across the two hundred and ninety-odd bridges,
and to take an observation of the pretty girls that loomed up in sedate
but ample old Amsterdam. There, in a saloon where the gin was a most
divine Hippocrene, and the cigars fragrant, Oliver beheld a tight little
craft, and straightway ran up his flag as a salute. She was a brunette,
with as pretty a form as the sun had ever kissed. Her dark, dark eyes
were large, lustrous and superb. Oliver shares Lord Byron's weakness for
handsome eyes. He's very fond of them. The name of the Amsterdam
divinity was Marie. He resembled the same illustrious poet in his
predilection for the name of Mary or Marie. He thought there was a
sweetness in it. And so he sank into the quicksands of Eros, right over
his tarry toplights, and, nothing loth, Marie accompanied him in the
Avernian descent. Every morning that he lay in the Dutch port our
mariner squared his yard-arms and trimmed himself for bringing-to
alongside Marie. Every night the tics were getting tauter, and when he
proposed that she should cross with him to England there was no pitching
on her part worth speaking of. And so they voyaged to Albion and to
several ports in Gaul; and there was no lee-way in their love, but still
the tics were getting tauter, evidencing strong probabilities of a life
cruise together.

A year or two after, both Oliver and Marie were in New York, and,
according to the affidavit of Captain Hazard's mother, Marie called upon
the matron and told her "that she had been living with her son Oliver;
that she had first met him in Amsterdam, and had traveled with him as
his wife in England and in France, and that he had brought her to
America." Marie assured the old lady that she loved him dearly, that she
had been faithful and true to him ever since their intimacy, and hence
she was anxious that Oliver should marry her and make her an honest
woman in the eyes of the law and of the world. Whereupon, the mother
persuaded the son to marry the pretty, young, gazelle-eyed girl, who
could speak American and write like a born citizen.

Oliver's own account of this momentous event, as chronicled in his
affidavit, is not materially different. He affirms that he first met
Marie in a liquor store in Amsterdam, "which she was in the habit of
frequenting. At this time she was of loose character;" she "lived with
him and traveled to England and France, and he was going to send her
back to Holland, when his mother urged him to marry her, which he did
reluctantly."

In what way or to what extent, if any, the relations between the young
mariner and his wife were affected after Hymen had stepped in and
chained them together, there are data for determining. If we are to
unqualifiedly accept the averments of the captain's affidavit we should
come to the conclusion that Marie's nature and disposition were woefully
transformed when she could legally designate herself, "Mrs. Captain
Oliver P. Hazard." She then discovered "a jealous disposition" and "an
ungovernable temper." When he returned from his various voyages she "did
not receive him kindly;" but, contrariwise, sometimes received him on
the side of "a poker," on the end of "a dirk" or at the muzzle of
"pistol." Moreover--and this is dolefully comic--"she repeatedly left
this deponent imprisoned in the house for hours under lock and key!"
What a situation for a foaming mariner, accustomed to roam the vastness
of the majestic, the free, the uncontrollable deep! Probably the next
arraignment is still more exasperating. "She kept a servant to act as a
spy and treat this deponent with disrespect." With the lapse of years,
and with the peculiar hue which strife assumes in its backward
prospective, his once happy-home and connubial comforts wore a jaundiced
and sickly aspect. He ceased to recall the days when his heart was
linked unto Marie's as a rosebud is linked to its stem.

Mrs. Hazard possessed some letters, written to her by her whilom amorous
husband, which will enable the reader to form a pretty correct idea of
the estimation in which, until quite recently, the captain held his
pretty wife. For example, one Fourth of July, he writes from "On board
the U. S. Steamer John Rice," from Fortress Monroe to "My own dear and
precious wife," informing her that the ship has been landing troops,
that he feels rather seedy and low-spirited, and wishes he was at home
to spend "the glorious Fourth" in her company. In a postscript he blazes
into amorous enthusiasm and exclaims, "Write your dear Olly!" and in the
bottom left-hand corner, within a sort of fairy circle, about the size
of the orifice of a quart-bottle neck, appeared the gushing invitation,
("Kiss me.")

Nearly a year afterward he writes from Havana, "On board the steamer
Liberty, May 6, 1865," to "My own dear precious wife," informing her
that he is safe from New Orleans, with other personal matters not
necessary to rehearse. He subscribes himself, "Your affectionate and
loving Olly." Over ten years afterward we find the captain writing
another letter from on board the same steamer, October 13, 1875, lying
in Savannah, to "My darling beloved wife," in which he graphically tells
her the sort of dog Jocko is. "Jocko came on board all serene," writes
the captain, "He is asleep under my sofa all the time when he is not
hunting beef, and I keep my room very warm. So that is the kind of dog
Jocko is. If he was a half decent dog I would keep him on board, but he
is asleep all the day under my sofa, and hates to be on deck. So he is
good for nix, the worse cur I ever saw. I will leave him with a good
keeper, and glad to lose sight of him."

At this period Mrs. Captain Hazard was in the habit of sub-letting a
portion of her house; and in the tail-end of the letter from which we
have just quoted reference is made thereto. "Have you advertised in the
_Tribute_ yet? Try fifty cents' worth for two days, you may catch a
sucker. May God, in his infinite mercy, ever bless, protect and make you
well and successful, my darling wife, is the prayer of your ever-loving
and affectionate husband, Oliver P. Hazard." In the usual corner appears
the magic circle, with the imperative ("Kiss me.")

In the early portion of the year 1876, he had so persistently coaled up
the fires of his love boilers that he couldn't wait until the steamer
sailed, but plunges into glowing correspondence as soon as he reaches
"Pier 2." He is now the captain of the Ocean Steam Navigation Company's
vessel, San Jacinto, and on April 22 he writes, "My own darling good
wife," before sailing, advising her to take good care of herself. The
usual circular, hieroglyphic and osculatory invitation appears at the
lower left-hand corner.

Four brief days afterwards our Strephon has reached Savannah. Again he
writes, April 26, 1876, "On board the steamship San Jacinto." To "My
blessed good darling wife," informing her that he has "no aches, no
pains," and assures her that he is "growing stronger." Then he rushes
into particulars in the following unique manner: "I still keep my
oatmeal diet and Pepson. God's blessing and infinite mercies on you, my
darling. . . . I have had all kinds of horable imaginations
about you. . . . I hope Mr. C. K. Garrison will permit you to
make next trip with me. Eat no salt smoked meats or fish, or
drink no strong tea, but cat oatmeal and what will easily digest,
to keep your bowels open. . . . I will, with God's help, be with
my dear Marie on Tuesday. I have the Harriet Beecher Stowe
and Crane family to bring North this trip, about the last of the
crowd. I wish they were landed in New York, as I don't like any of
them, but will fight through in a quiet way." This epistle occupies six
closely-written and carefully-numbered pages of note-paper, and the lip
sign-manual is emblazoned in the usual corner. It ought to be remarked
that the captain is an admirable penman, moderately seaworthy as to
syntax, but in need of overhauling in an orthographical aspect.

While we are busy with the correspondence, it may be _apropos_ to quote
the last amorous letter he penned to his Marie before a cyclonic storm
from the no

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