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The Autobiography of a Thief

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Title: The Autobiography of a Thief

Author: Hutchins Hapgood


        
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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A THIEF ***

Transcriber's Note:

  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.




The Autobiography of a Thief.




     The Autobiography of
     a Thief

     Recorded by
     HUTCHINS HAPGOOD
     Author of "The Spirit of the Ghetto," etc.


     NEW YORK
     FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY
     1903




     Copyright, 1903, BY
     FOX, DUFFIELD & COMPANY

     Entered at the Library of Congress, Washington, U. S. A.

     Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England.

     Published May, 1903.




"_Oh, happy he who can still hope to emerge from this sea of error!_"

                                                               FAUST.

"_There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake, but thereby to
purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour, or the like; therefore
why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me? And
if any man should do wrong merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but
like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch because they can do no
other._"

                                                                 BACON.




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER                                                       PAGE
              Editor's Note                                        9
  I.          Boyhood and Early Crime                             15
  II.         My First Fall                                       34
  III.        Mixed Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards      50
  IV.         When the Graft Was Good                             73
  V.          Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds                      89
  VI.         What the Burglar Faces                             107
  VII.        In Stir                                            132
  VIII.       In Stir (Continued)                                154
  IX.         In Stir and Out                                    182
  X.          At the Graft Again                                 202
  XI.         Back to Prison                                     228
  XII.        On the Outside Again                               255
  XIII.       In the Mad-House                                   300
  XIV.        Out of Hell                                        332
              Editor's Postscript                                348




Editor's Note.


I met the ex-pickpocket and burglar whose autobiography follows soon
after his release from a third term in the penitentiary. For several
weeks I was not particularly interested in him. He was full of a desire
to publish in the newspapers an exposé of conditions obtaining in two
of our state institutions, his motive seeming partly revenge and partly
a very genuine feeling that he had come in contact with a systematic
crime against humanity. But as I continued to see more of him, and
learned much about his life, my interest grew; for I soon perceived
that he not only had led a typical thief's life, but was also a man
of more than common natural intelligence, with a gift of vigorous
expression. With little schooling he had yet educated himself, mainly
by means of the prison libraries, until he had a good and individually
expressed acquaintance with many of the English classics, and with some
of the masterpieces of philosophy.

That this ex-convict, when a boy on the East Side of New York City,
should have taken to the "graft" seemed to me, as he talked about
it, the most natural thing in the world. His parents were honest, but
ignorant and poor. One of his brothers, a normal and honorable man,
is a truck driver with a large family; and his relatives and honest
friends in general belong to the most modest class of working people.
The swell among them is another brother, who is a policeman; but Jim,
the ex-convict, is by far the cleverest and most intelligent of the
lot. I have often seen him and his family together, on Saturday nights,
when the clan gathers in the truckman's house for a good time, and
he is the life of the occasion, and admired by the others. Jim was an
unusually energetic and ambitious boy, but the respectable people he
knew did not appeal to his imagination. As he played on the street,
other boys pointed out to him the swell thief at the corner saloon, and
told him tales of big robberies and exciting adventures, and the prizes
of life seemed to him to lie along the path of crime. There was no one
to teach him what constitutes real success, and he went in for crime
with energy and enthusiasm.

It was only after he had become a professional thief and had done time
in the prisons that he began to see that crime does not pay. He saw
that all his friends came to ruin, that his own health was shattered,
and that he stood on the verge of the mad-house. His self-education in
prison helped him, too, to the perception that he had made a terrible
mistake. He came to have intellectual ambitions and no longer took
an interest in his old companions. After several weeks of constant
association with him I became morally certain that his reform was
as genuine as possible under the circumstances; and that, with fair
success in the way of getting something to do, he would remain honest.

I therefore proposed to him to write an autobiography. He took up
the idea with eagerness, and through the entire period of our work
together, has shown an unwavering interest in the book and very decided
acumen and common sense. The method employed in composing the volume
was that, practically, of the interview. From the middle of March to
the first of July we met nearly every afternoon, and many evenings,
at a little German café on the East Side. There, I took voluminous
notes, often asking questions, but taking down as literally as
possible his story in his own words; to such a degree is this true,
that the following narrative is an authentic account of his life, with
occasional descriptions and character-sketches of his friends of the
Under World. Even without my explicit assurance, the autobiography
bears sufficient internal evidence of the fact that, essentially, it is
a thief's own story. Many hours of the day time, when I was busy with
other things, my friend--for I have come to look upon him as such--was
occupied with putting down on paper character-sketches of his pals
and their careers, or recording his impressions of the life they had
followed. After I had left town for the summer, in order to prepare
this volume, I wrote to Jim repeatedly, asking for more material on
certain points. This he always furnished in a manner which showed his
continued interest, and a literary sense, though fragmentary, of no
common kind.

     H. H.




The Autobiography of a Thief.




CHAPTER I.

_Boyhood and Early Crime._


I have been a professional thief for more than twenty years. Half
of that time I have spent in state's prison, and the other half in
"grafting" in one form or another. I was a good pickpocket and a fairly
successful burglar; and I have known many of the best crooks in the
country. I have left the business for good, and my reasons will appear
in the course of this narrative. I shall tell my story with entire
frankness. I shall not try to defend myself. I shall try merely to tell
the truth. Perhaps in so doing I shall explain myself.

I was born on the east side of New York City in 1868, of poor but
honest parents. My father was an Englishman who had married an Irish
girl and emigrated to America, where he had a large family, no one of
whom, with the exception of myself, went wrong. For many years he was
an employee of Brown Brothers and Company and was a sober, industrious
man, and a good husband and kind father. To me, who was his favorite,
he was perhaps too kind. I was certainly a spoiled child. I remember
that when I was five years old he bought me a twenty-five dollar suit
of clothes. I was a vigorous, handsome boy, with red, rosy cheeks and
was not only the pet of my family, but the life of the neighborhood as
well.

At that time, which is as far back as I can remember, we were living
on Munro Street, in the Seventh Ward. This was then a good residential
neighborhood, and we were comfortable in our small, wooden house. The
people about us were Irish and German, the large Jewish emigration
not having begun yet. Consequently, lower New York did not have such
a strong business look as it has now, but was cleanly and respectable.
The gin-mills were fewer in number, and were comparatively decent. When
the Jews came they started many basement saloons, or cafés, and for the
first time, I believe, the social evil began to be connected with the
drinking places.

I committed my first theft at the age of six. Older heads put me up to
steal money from the till of my brother's grocery store. It happened
this way. There were several much older boys in the neighborhood who
wanted money for row-boating and theatres. One was eighteen years old,
a ship-caulker; and another was a roustabout of seventeen. I used to
watch these boys practice singing and dancing in the big marble lots
in the vicinity. How they fired my youthful imagination! They told me
about the theatres then in vogue--Tony Pastor's, the old Globe, Wood's
Museum and Josh Hart's Theatre Comique, afterwards owned by Harrigan
and Hart.

One day, George, the roustabout, said to me: "Kid, do you want to go
row-boating with us?" When I eagerly consented he said it was too bad,
but the boat cost fifty cents and he only had a ten-cent stamp (a small
paper bill: in those days there was very little silver in circulation).
I did not bite at once, I was so young, and they treated me to one of
those wooden balls fastened to a rubber string that you throw out and
catch on the rebound. I was tickled to death. I shall never forget that
day as long as I live. It was a Saturday, and all day long those boys
couldn't do too much for me.

Towards evening they explained to me how to rob my brother's till. They
arranged to be outside the store at a certain hour, and wait until I
found an opportunity to pass the money to them. My mother watched in
the store that evening, but when she turned her back I opened the till
and gave the eight or ten dollars it contained to the waiting boys. We
all went row-boating and had a jolly time. But they were not satisfied
with that. What I had done once, I could do again, and they held out
the theatre to me, and pretended to teach me how to dance the clog.
Week in and week out I furnished them with money, and in recompense
they would sometimes take me to a matinée. What a joy! How I grew to
love the vaudeville artists with their songs and dances, and the wild
Bowery melodramas! It was a great day for Indian plays, and the number
of Indians I have scalped in imagination, after one of these shows, is
legion.

Some of the small boys, however, who did not share in the booty grew
jealous and told my father what was doing. The result was that a
certain part of my body was sore for weeks afterwards. My feelings were
hurt, too, for I did not know at that time that I was doing anything
very bad. My father, indeed, accompanied the beating with a sermon,
telling me that I had not only broken God's law but had robbed those
that loved me. One of my brothers, who is now a policeman in the
city service, told me that I had taken my ticket for the gallows. The
brother I had robbed, who afterwards became a truckman, patted me on
the head and told me not to do it again. He was always a good fellow.
And yet they all seemed to like to have me play about the streets with
the other little boys, perhaps because the family was large, and there
was not much room in the house.

So I had to give up the till; but I hated to, for even at that age I
had begun to think that the world owed me a living! To get revenge I
used to hide in a charcoal shed and throw pebbles at my father as he
passed. I was indeed the typical bad boy, and the apple of my mother's
eye.

When I couldn't steal from the till any more, I used to take clothes
from my relatives and sell them for theatre money; or any other object
I thought I could make away with. I did not steal merely for theatre
money but partly for excitement too. I liked to run the risk of being
discovered. So I was up to any scheme the older boys proposed. Perhaps
if I had been raised in the wild West I should have made a good trapper
or cow-boy, instead of a thief. Or perhaps even birds' nests and fish
would have satisfied me, if they had been accessible.

One of my biggest exploits as a small boy was made when I was eight
years old. Tom's mother had a friend visiting her, whom Tom and I
thought we would rob. Tom, who was a big boy, and some of his friends,
put me through a hall bed-room window, and I made away with a box of
valuable jewelry. But it did me no good for the big boys sold it to a
woman who kept a second-hand store on Division Street, and I received
no part of the proceeds.

My greatest youthful disappointment came about four weeks later. A boy
put me up to steal a box out of a wagon. I boldly made away with it and
ran into a hall-way, where he was waiting. The two of us then went into
his back-yard, opened the box and found a beautiful sword, the handle
studded with little stones. But the other boy had promised me money,
and here was only a sword! I cried for theatre money, and then the
other boy boxed my ears. He went to his father, who was a free mason,
and got a fifty cent "stamp." He gave me two three-cent pieces and
kept the rest. I shall never forget that injustice as long as I live.
I remember it as plainly as if it happened yesterday. We put the sword
under a mill in Cherry Street and it disappeared a few hours later. I
thought the boy and his father had stolen it, and told them so. I got
another beating, but I believe my suspicion was correct, for the free
mason used to give me a ten cent stamp whenever he saw me--to square
me, I suppose.

When it came to contests with boys of my own size I was not so meek,
however. One day I was playing in Jersey, in the back-yard of a boy
friend's house. He displayed his pen-knife, and it took my fancy. I
wanted to play with it, and asked him to lend it to me. He refused,
and I grabbed his hand. He plunged the knife into my leg. I didn't like
that, and told him so, not in words, but in action. I remember that I
took his ear nearly off with a hatchet. I was then eight years old.

About this time I began to go to Sunday School, with what effect on my
character remains to be seen. One day I heard a noted priest preach.
I had one dollar and eighty cents in my pocket which I had stolen from
my brother. I thought that each coin in my pocket was turning red-hot
because of my anxiety to spend it. While the good man was talking of
the Blessed One I was inwardly praying for him to shut up. He had two
beautiful pictures which he intended to give to the best listener among
the boys. When he had finished his talk he called me to him, gave me
the pictures and said: "It's such boys as you who, when they grow up,
are a pride to our Holy Church."

A year later I went to the parochial school, but did not stay long,
for they would not have me. I was a sceptic at seven and an agnostic
at eight, and I objected to the prayers every five minutes. I had
no respect for ceremonies. They did not impress my imagination in
the slightest, partly because I learned at an early age to see the
hypocrisy of many good people. One day half a dozen persons were
killed in an explosion. One of them I had known. Neighbors said of him:
"What a good man has gone," and the priest and my mother said he was
in heaven. But he was the same man who had often told me not to take
money from the money-drawer, for that was dangerous, but to search my
father's pockets when he was asleep. For this advice I had given the
rascal many a dollar. Ever after that I was suspicious of those who
were over-virtuous. I told my mother I did not believe her and the
priest, and she slapped my face and told me to mind my catechism.

Everything mischievous that happened at the parochial school was laid
to my account, perhaps not entirely unjustly. If a large firecracker
exploded, it was James--that was my name. If some one sat on a bent
pin, the blame was due to James. If the class tittered teacher Nolan
would rush at me with a hickory stick and yell: "It's you, you devil's
imp!" and then he'd put the question he had asked a hundred times
before: "Who med (made) you?"

I was finally sent away from the parochial school because I insulted
one of the teachers, a Catholic brother. I persisted in disturbing
him whenever he studied his catechism, which I believed he already
knew by heart. This brother's favorite, by the way, was a boy who used
to say his prayers louder than anybody else. I met him fifteen years
afterwards in state's prison. He had been settled for "vogel-grafting,"
that is, taking little girls into hall-ways and robbing them of their
gold ear-rings. He turned out pretty well, however, in one sense, for
he became one of the best shoe-makers in Sing Sing.

Although, as one can see from the above incidents, I was not given to
veneration, yet in some ways I was easily impressed. I always loved old
buildings, for instance. I was baptized in the building which was until
lately the Germania Theatre, and which was then a church; and that
old structure always had a strange fascination for me. I used to hang
about old churches and theatres, and preferred on such occasions to
be alone. Sometimes I sang and danced, all by myself, in an old music
hall, and used to pore over the names marked in lead pencil on the
walls. Many is the time I have stood at night before some old building
which has since been razed to the ground, and even now I like to go
round to their sites. I like almost anything that is old, even old men
and women. I never loved my mother much until she was an old woman. All
stories of the past interested me; and later, when I was in prison, I
was specially fond of history.

After I was dismissed from the parochial school, I entered the public
school, where I stayed somewhat longer. There I studied reading,
writing, arithmetic and later, grammar, and became acquainted with
a few specimens of literature. I remember Longfellow's _Excelsior_
was a favorite of mine. I was a bright, intelligent boy, and, if it
had not been for conduct, in which my mark was low, I should always
have had the gold medal, in a class of seventy. I used to play truant
constantly, and often went home and told my mother that I knew more
than the teacher. She believed me, for certainly I was the most
intelligent member of my family.

Yes, I was more intelligent than my parents or any of my brothers and
sisters. Much good it has done me! Now that I have "squared it" I see a
good deal of my family, and they are all happy in comparison with me.
On Saturday nights I often go around to see my brother the truckman.
He has come home tired from his week's work, but happy with his twelve
dollar salary and the prospect of a holiday with his wife and children.
They sit about in their humble home on Saturday night, with their pint
of beer, their songs and their jovial stories. Whenever I am there,
I am, in a way, the life of the party. My repartee is quicker than
that of the others. I sing gayer songs and am jollier with the working
girls who visit my brother's free home. But when I look at my stupid
brother's quiet face and calm and strong bearing, and then realize my
own shattered health and nerves and profound discontent, I know that
my slow brother has been wiser than I. It has taken me many years on
the rocky path to realize this truth. For by nature I am an Ishmælite,
that is, a man of impulse, and it is only lately that wisdom has been
knocked into me.

Certainly I did not realize my fate when I was a kid of ten, filled
with contempt for my virtuous and obscure family! I was overflowing
with spirits and arrogance, and began to play "hooky" so often that I
practically quit school about this time.

It was then, too, that we moved again, this time to Cherry Street, to
the wreck of my life. At the end of the block on which we lived was a
corner saloon, the headquarters of a band of professional thieves. They
were known as the Old Border Gang, and among them were several very
well-known and successful crooks. They used to pass our way regularly,
and boys older than I (my boy companions always had the advantage of me
in years) used to point the famous "guns" out to me. When I saw one of
these great men pass, my young imagination was fired with the ambition
to be as he was! With what eagerness we used to talk about "Juggy,"
and the daring robbery he committed in Brooklyn! How we went over again
and again in conversation, the trick by which Johnny the "grafter" had
fooled the detective in the matter of the bonds!

We would tell stories like these by the hour, and then go round to
the corner, to try to get a look at some of the celebrities in the
saloon. A splendid sight one of these swell grafters was, as he stood
before the bar or smoked his cigar on the corner! Well dressed, with
clean linen collar and shirt, a diamond in his tie, an air of ease and
leisure all about him, what a contrast he formed to the respectable
hod-carrier or truckman or mechanic, with soiled clothes and no collar!
And what a contrast was his dangerous life to that of the virtuous
laborer!

The result was that I grew to think the career of the grafter was the
only one worth trying for. The real prizes of the world I knew nothing
about. All that I saw of any interest to me was crooked, and so I began
to pilfer right and left: there was nothing else for me to do. Besides
I loved to treat those older than myself. The theatre was a growing
passion with me and I began to be very much interested in the baseball
games. I used to go to the Union grounds in Brooklyn, where after the
third inning, I could usually get admitted for fifteen cents, to see
the old Athletics or Mutuals play. I needed money for these amusements,
for myself and other boys, and I knew of practically only one way to
get it.

If we could not get the money at home, either by begging or stealing,
we would tap tills, if possible, in the store of some relative; or tear
brass off the steps in the halls of flats and sell it at junk shops. A
little later, we used to go to Grand Street and steal shoes and women's
dresses from the racks in the open stores, and pawn them. In the old
Seventh Ward there used to be a good many silver plates on the doors of
private houses. These we would take off with chisels and sell to metal
dealers. We had great fun with a Dutchman who kept a grocery store
on Cherry Street. We used to steal his strawberries, and did not care
whether he saw us or not. If he grabbed one of us, the rest of the gang
would pelt him with stones until he let go, and then all run around the
corner before the "copper" came into sight.

All this time I grew steadily bolder and more desperate, and the day
soon came when I took consequences very little into consideration.
My father and mother sometimes learned of some exploit of mine, and a
beating would be the result. I still got the blame for everything, as
in school, and was sometimes punished unjustly. I was very sensitive
and this would rankle in my soul for weeks, so that I stole harder
than ever. And yet I think that there was some good in me. I was
never cruel to any animals, except cats; for cats, I used to tie their
tails together and throw them over a clothesline to dry. I liked dogs,
horses, children and women, and have always been gentle to them. What
I really was was a healthy young animal, with a vivid imagination and
a strong body. I learned early to swim and fight and play base-ball.
Dime and nickel novels always seemed very tame to me; I found it much
more exciting to hear true stories about the grafters at the corner
saloon!--big men, with whom as yet I did not dare to speak; I could
only stare at them with awe.

I shall never forget the first time I ever saw a pickpocket at work.
It was when I was about thirteen years old. A boy of my own age, Zack,
a great pal of mine, was with me. Zack and I understood one another
thoroughly and well knew how to get theatre money by petty pilfering,
but of real graft we were as yet ignorant, although we had heard many
stories about the operations of actual, professional thieves. We used
to steal rides in the cars which ran to and from the Grand Street
ferries; and run off with overcoats and satchels when we had a chance.
One day we were standing on the rear platform when a woman boarded the
car, and immediately behind her a gentlemanly looking man with a high
hat. He was well-dressed and looked about thirty-five years old. As
the lady entered the car, the man, who stayed outside on the platform,
pulled his hand away from her side and with it came something from her
pocket--a silk handkerchief. I was on the point of asking the woman
if she had dropped something, when Zack said to me, "Mind your own
business." The man, who had taken the pocket-book along with the silk
handkerchief, seeing that we were "next," gave us the handkerchief and
four dollars in ten and fifteen cent paper money ("stamps").

Zack and I put our heads together. We were "wiser" than we had been
half an hour before. We had learned our first practical lesson in the
world of graft. We had seen a pickpocket at work, and there seemed to
us no reason why we should not try the game ourselves. Accordingly a
day or two afterwards we arranged to pick our first pocket. We had,
indeed, often taken money from the pockets of our relatives, but that
was when the trousers hung in the closet or over a chair, and the owner
was absent. This was the first time we had hunted in the open, so to
speak; the first time our prey was really alive.

It was an exciting occasion. Zack and I, who were "wise," (that is,
up to snuff) got several other boys to help us, though we did not tell
them what was doing, for they "were not buried" yet, that is, "dead,"
or ignorant. We induced five or six of them to jump on and off the rear
platform of a car, making as much noise and confusion as possible, so
as to distract the attention of any "sucker" that might board. Soon I
saw a woman about to get on the car. My heart beat with excitement, and
I signalled to Zack that I would make the "touch." In those days women
wore big sacques with pockets in the back, open, so that one could
look in and see what was there. I took the silk handkerchief on the
run, and with Zack following, went up a side street and gloried under
a lamp-post. In the corner of the handkerchief, tied up, were five
two-dollar bills, and for weeks I was J. P. Morgan.

For a long time Zack and I felt we were the biggest boys on the block.
We boasted about our great "touch" to the older boys of eighteen or
nineteen years of age who had pointed out to us the grafters at the
corner saloon. They were not "in it" now. They even condescended to be
treated to a drink by us. We spent the money recklessly, for we knew
where we could get more. In this state of mind, soon after that, I met
the "pick" whom we had seen at work. He had heard of our achievement
and kindly "staked" us, and gave us a few private lessons in picking
pockets. He saw that we were promising youngsters, and for the sake
of the profession gave us a little of his valuable time. We were proud
enough, to be taken notice of by this great man. We felt that we were
rising in the world of graft, and began to wear collars and neckties.




CHAPTER II.

_My First Fall._


For the next two years, until I was fifteen, I made a great deal
of money at picking pockets, without getting into difficulties with
the police. We operated, at that time, entirely upon women, and were
consequently known technically as Moll-buzzers--or "flies" that "buzz"
about women.

In those days, and for several years later, Moll-buzzing, as well as
picking pockets in general, was an easy and lucrative graft. Women's
dresses seemed to be arranged for our especial benefit; the back
pocket, with its purse and silk handkerchief could be picked even by
the rawest thief. It was in the days when every woman had to possess
a fine silk handkerchief; even the Bowery "cruisers" (street-walkers)
carried them; and to those women we boys used to sell the handkerchiefs
we had stolen, receiving as much as a dollar, or even two dollars, in
exchange.

It was a time, too, before the great department stores and delivery
wagon systems, and shoppers were compelled to carry more money with
them than they do now, and to take their purchases home themselves
through the streets. Very often before they reached their destination
they had unconsciously delivered some of the goods to us. At that time,
too, the wearing of valuable pins and stones, both by men and women,
was more general than it is now. Furthermore, the "graft" was younger.
There were not so many in the business, and the system of police
protection was not so good. Altogether those were halcyon days for us.

The fact that we were very young helped us particularly in this
business, for a boy can get next to a woman in a car or on the street
more easily than a man can. He is not so apt to arouse her suspicions;
and if he is a handsome, innocent-looking boy, and clever, he can go
far in this line of graft. He usually begins this business when he
is about thirteen, and by the age of seventeen generally graduates
into something higher. Living off women, in any form, does not appeal
very long to the imagination of the genuine grafter. Yet I know
thieves who continue to be Moll-buzzers all their lives; and who are
low enough to make their living entirely off poor working girls. The
self-respecting grafter detests this kind; and, indeed, these buzzers
never see prosperous days after their boyhood. The business grows
more difficult as the thief grows older. He cannot approach his prey
so readily, and grows shabbier with declining returns; and shabbiness
makes it difficult for him to mix up in crowds where this kind of work
is generally done.

For several years we youngsters made a great deal of money at this
line. We made a "touch" almost every day, and I suppose our "mob,"
composed of four or five lads who worked together, averaged three or
four hundred dollars a week. We worked mainly on street cars at the
Ferry, and the amount of "technique" required for robbing women was
very slight. Two or three of us generally went together. One acted as
the "dip," or "pick," and the other two as "stalls." The duty of the
"stalls" was to distract the attention of the "sucker" or victim, or
otherwise to hide the operations of the "dip". One stall would get
directly in front of the woman to be robbed, the other directly behind
her. If she were in such a position in the crowd as to render it hard
for the "dip," or "wire" to make a "touch," one of the stalls might
bump against her, and beg her pardon, while the dip made away with her
"leather," or pocket-book.

Shortly before I was fifteen years old I was "let in" to another kind
of graft. One day Tim, Zack and I were boasting of our earnings to an
older boy, twenty years of age, whose name was Pete. He grinned, and
said he knew something better than Moll-buzzing. Then he told us about
"shoving the queer" and got us next to a public truckman who supplied
counterfeit bills. Our method was to carry only one bad bill among
several good ones, so that if we were collared we could maintain our
innocence. We worked this as a "side-graft," for some time. Pete and I
used to go to mass on Sunday morning, and put a bad five dollar bill
in the collector's box, taking out four dollars and ninety cents in
change, in good money. We irreverently called this proceeding "robbing
the dago in Rome." We use to pick "leathers," at the same time, from
the women in the congregation. In those days I was very liberal in my
religious views. I was not narrow, or bigoted. I attended Grace Church,
in Tenth Street, regularly and was always well repaid. But after a
while this lucrative graft came to an end, for the collector began
to get "next". One day he said to me, "Why don't you get your change
outside? This is the fourth time you have given me a big bill." So we
got "leary" (suspicious) and quit.

With my big rosy cheeks and bright eyes and complexion I suppose I
looked, in those days, very holy and innocent, and used to work this
graft for all it was worth. I remember how, in church, I used tracts or
the Christian Advocate as "stalls"; I would hand them to a lady as she
entered the church, and, while doing so, pick her pocket.

Even at the early age of fifteen I began to understand that it was
necessary to save money. If a thief wants to keep out of the "pen"
or "stir," (penitentiary) capital is a necessity. The capital of a
grafter is called "spring-money," for he may have to use it at any
time in paying the lawyer who gets him off in case of an arrest, or in
bribing the policeman or some other official. To "spring," is to escape
from the clutches of the law. If a thief has not enough money to hire
a "mouth-piece" (criminal lawyer) he is in a bad way. He is greatly
handicapped, and can not "jump out" (steal) with any boldness.

But I always had great difficulty in saving "fall-money," (the same as
spring-money; that is money to be used in case of a "fall," or arrest).
My temperament was at fault. When I had a few hundred dollars saved
up I began to be troubled, not from a guilty conscience, but because
I could not stand prosperity. The money burned a hole in my pocket. I
was fond of all sorts of amusements, of "treating," and of clothes.
Indeed, I was very much of a dude; and this for two reasons. In the
first place I was naturally vain, and liked to make a good appearance.
A still more substantial reason was that a good personal appearance is
part of the capital of a grafter, particularly of a pickpocket. The
world thinks that a thief is a dirty, disreputable looking object,
next door to a tramp in appearance. But this idea is far from being
true. Every grafter of any standing in the profession is very careful
about his clothes. He is always neat, clean, and as fashionable as
his income will permit. Otherwise he would not be permitted to attend
large political gatherings, to sit on the platform, for instance, and
would be handicapped generally in his crooked dealings with mankind.
No advice to young men is more common in respectable society than
to dress well. If you look prosperous the world will treat you with
consideration. This applies with even greater force to the thief. Keep
up a "front" is the universal law of success, applicable to all grades
of society. The first thing a grafter is apt to say to a pal whom he
has not seen for a long time is, "You are looking good," meaning that
his friend is well-dressed. It is sure flattery, and if a grafter wants
to make a borrow he is practically certain of opening the negotiations
with the stereotyped phrase: "You are looking good;" for the only time
you can get anything off a grafter is when you can make him think you
are prosperous.

But the great reason why I never saved much "fall-money" was not
"booze," or theatres, or clothes. "Look for the woman" is a phrase, I
believe, in good society; and it certainly explains a great deal of a
thief's misfortunes. Long before I did anything in Graftdom but petty
pilfering, I had begun to go with the little girls in the neighborhood.
At that time they had no attraction for me, but I heard older boys say
that it was a manly thing to lead girls astray, and I was ambitious to
be not only a good thief, but a hard case generally. When I was nine or
ten years old I liked to boast of the conquests I had made among little
working girls of fourteen or fifteen. We used to meet in the hall-ways
of tenement houses, or at their homes, but there was no sentiment in
the relations between us, at least on my part. My only pleasure in it
was the delight of telling about it to my young companions.

When I was twelve years old I met a little girl for whom I had a
somewhat different feeling. Nellie was a pretty, blue-eyed little
creature, or "tid-bit," as we used to say, who lived near my home on
Cherry Street. I used to take her over on the ferry for a ride, or
treat her to ice-cream; and we were really chums; but when I began
to make money I lost my interest in her; partly, too, because at that
time I made the acquaintance of a married woman of about twenty-five
years old. She discovered me one day in the hallway with Nellie, and
threatened to tell the holy brother on us if I didn't fetch her a pint
of beer. I took the beer to her room, and that began a relationship
of perhaps a year. She used to stake me to a part of the money her
husband, a workingman, brought her every Saturday night.

Although the girls meant very little to me until several years later,
I nevertheless began when I was about fifteen to spend a great deal of
money on them. It was the thing to do, and I did it with a good grace.
I used to take all kinds of working girls to the balls in Walhalla Hall
in Orchard Street; or in Pythagoras, or Beethoven Halls, where many
pretty little German girls of respectable families used to dance on
Saturday nights. It was my pride to buy them things--clothes, pins, and
to take them on excursions; for was I not a rising "gun," with money in
my pocket? Money, however, that went as easily as it had come.

Perhaps if I had been able to save money at that time I might not
have fallen (that is, been arrested) so early. My first fall came,
however, when I was fifteen years old; and if I was not a confirmed
thief already, I certainly was one by the time I left the Tombs, where
I stayed ten days. It happened this way. Zack and I were grafting,
buzzing Molls, with a pal named Jack, who afterwards became a famous
burglar. He had just escaped from the Catholic Protectory, and told us
his troubles. Instead of being alarmed, however, I grew bolder, for if
Jack could "beat" the "Proteck" in three months, I argued I could do
it in twenty-four hours. We three ripped things open for some time;
but one day we were grafting on Sixth Avenue, just below Twentieth
Street, when I fell for a "leather." The "sucker," a good-looking Moll
was coming up the Avenue. Her "book," which looked fat, was sticking
out of her skirt. I, who was the "wire," gave Jack and Zack the tip
(thief's cough), and they stalled, one in front, one behind. The girl
did not "blow" (take alarm) and I got hold of the leather easily.
It looked like a get-away, for no one on the sidewalk saw us. But as
bad luck would have it, a negro coachman, standing in the street by
the pavement, got next, and said to me, "What are you doing there?" I
replied, "Shut up, and I'll give you two dollars." But he caught hold
of me and shouted for the police. I passed the leather to Jack, who
"vamoosed." Zack hit the negro in the face and I ran up Seventh Avenue,
but was caught by a flyman (policeman), and taken to the station house.

On the way to the police station I cried bitterly, for, after all,
I was only a boy. I realized for the first time that the way of the
transgressor is hard. It was in the afternoon, and I spent the time
until next morning at ten, when I was to appear before the magistrate,
in a cell in the station-house, in the company of an old grafter. In
the adjoining cells were drunkards, street-walkers and thieves who had
been "lined up" for the night, and I spent the long hours in crying and
in listening to their indecent songs and jokes. The old grafter called
to one of the Tenderloin girls that he had a kid with him who was
arrested for Moll-buzzing. At this they all expressed their sympathy
with me by saying that I would either be imprisoned for life or be
hanged. They got me to sing a song, and I convinced them that I was
tough.

In the morning I was arraigned in the police court. As there was
no stolen property on me, and as the sucker was not there to make a
complaint, I was "settled" for assault only, and sent to the Tombs for
ten days.

My experience in the Tombs may fairly be called, I think, the turning
point of my life. It was there that I met "de mob". I learned new
tricks in the Tombs; and more than that, I began definitely to look
upon myself as a criminal. The Tombs of twenty years ago was even less
cheerful than it is at present. The Boys' Prison faced the Women's
Prison, and between these two was the place where those sentenced to
death were hanged. The boys knew when an execution was to take place,
and we used to talk it over among ourselves. One man was hanged while
I was there; and if anybody thinks that knowledge of such things helps
to make boys seek the path of virtue, let him go forth into the world
and learn something about human nature.

On my arrival in the Tombs, Mrs. Hill, the matron, had me searched for
tobacco, knives or matches, all of which were contraband; then I was
given a bath and sent into the corridor of the cells where there were
about twenty-five other boys, confined for various crimes, ranging
from petty larceny to offenses of the gravest kind. On the second day
I met two young "dips" and we exchanged our experiences in the world
of graft. I received my first lesson in the art of "banging a super,"
that is, stealing a watch by breaking the ring with the thumb and
forefinger, and thus detaching it from the chain. They were two of the
best of the Sixth Ward pickpockets, and we made a date to meet "on the
outside." Indeed, it was not many weeks after my release before I could
"bang a super," or get a man's "front" (watch and chain) as easily as
I could relieve a Moll of her "leather".

As I look back upon the food these young boys received in the tombs,
it seems to me of the worst. Breakfast consisted of a chunk of poor
bread and a cup of coffee made of burnt bread crust. At dinner we had
soup (they said, at least, there was meat in it), bread and water;
and supper was the same as breakfast. But we had one consolation. When
we went to divine service we generally returned happy; not because of
what the good priest said, but because we were almost sure of getting
tobacco from the women inmates.

Certainly the Gerry Society has its faults; but since its organization
young boys who have gone wrong but are not yet entirely hardened, have
a much better show to become good citizens than they used to have. That
Society did not exist in my day; but I know a good deal about it, and I
am convinced that it does a world of good; for, at least, when it takes
children into its charge it does not surround them with an atmosphere
of social crime.

While in the Tombs I experienced my first disillusionment as to the
honor of thieves. I was an impulsive, imaginative boy, and that a
pal could go back on me never seemed possible. Many of my subsequent
misfortunes were due to the treachery of my companions. I have learned
to distrust everybody, but as a boy of fifteen I was green, and so the
treachery I shall relate left a sore spot in my soul.

It happened this way. On a May day, about two months before I was
arrested, two other boys and I had entered the basement of a house
where the people were moving, had made away with some silverware, and
sold it to a Christian woman in the neighborhood for one twentieth of
its value. When I had nearly served my ten days' sentence for assault,
my two pals were arrested and "squealed" on me. I was confronted with
them in the Tombs. At first I was mighty glad to see them, but when
I found they had "squealed," I set my teeth and denied all knowledge
of the "touch." I protested my innocence so violently that the police
thought the other boys were merely seeking a scape-goat. They got
twenty days and my term expired forty-eight hours afterwards. The
silverware I stole that May morning is now an heirloom in the family of
the Christian woman to whom I sold it so cheap.

If I had always been as earnest a liar as I was on that occasion in the
Tombs I might never have gone to "stir" (penitentiary); but I grew more
indifferent and desperate as time went on; and, in a way, more honest,
more sincerely a criminal: I hardly felt like denying it. I know some
thieves who, although they have grafted for twenty-five years, have not
yet "done time"; some of them escaped because they knew how to throw
the innocent "con" so well. Take Tim, for instance. Tim and I grafted
together as boys. He was not a very skilful pickpocket, and he often
was on the point of arrest; but he had a talent for innocence, and the
indignation act he would put up would melt a heart of stone. He has,
consequently, never been in stir, while I, a much better thief, have
spent half of my adult life there. That was partly because I felt,
when I had once made a touch, that the property belonged to me. On
one occasion I had robbed a "bloke" of his "red super" (gold watch),
and made away with it all right, when I carelessly dropped it on the
sidewalk. A crowd had gathered about, and no man really in his right
mind, would have picked up that super. But I did it, and was nailed
dead to rights by a "cop." Some time afterwards a pal asked me why
the deuce I had been so foolish. "Didn't the super belong to me," I
replied, indignantly. "Hadn't I earned it?" I was too honest a thief.
That was one of my weaknesses.




CHAPTER III.

_Mixed-Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards._


For a time--a short time--after I left the Tombs I was quiet. My
relatives threw the gallows "con" into me hard, but at that time I
was proof against any arguments they could muster. They were not able
to show me anything that was worth while; they could not deliver the
goods, so what was the use of talking?

Although I was a disgrace at home, I was high cock-a-lorum among the
boys in the neighborhood. They began to look up to me, as I had looked
up to the grafters at the corner saloon. They admired me because I was
a fighter and had "done time." I went up in their estimation because
I had suffered in the good cause. And I began to get introductions to
the older grafters in the seventh ward--grafters with diamond pins and
silk hats. It was not long before I was at it harder than ever, uptown
and downtown. I not only continued my trade as Moll-buzzer, but began
to spread myself, got to be quite an adept in touching men for vests
and supers and fronts; and every now and then "shoved the queer" or
worked a little game of swindling. Our stamping-ground for supers and
vests at that time was Fulton, Nassau, Lower Broadway and Wall Streets,
and we covered our territory well. I used to work alone considerably.
I would board a car with a couple of newspapers, would say, "News,
boss?" to some man sitting down, would shove the paper in front of his
face as a stall, and then pick his super or even his entire "front"
(watch and chain). If you will stand for a newspaper under your chin
I can get even your socks. Many is the "gent" I have left in the car
with his vest entirely unbuttoned and his "front" gone. When I couldn't
get the chain, I would snap the ring of the watch with my thumb and
fore-finger, giving the thief's cough to drown the slight noise made
by the breaking ring, and get away with the watch, leaving the chain
dangling. Instead of a newspaper, I would often use an overcoat as a
stall.

It was only when I was on the "hurry-up," however, that I worked alone.
It is more dangerous than working with a mob, but if I needed a dollar
quick I'd take any risk. I'd jump on a car, and tackle the first sucker
I saw. If I thought it was not diplomatic to try for the "front," and
if there was no stone in sight, I'd content myself with the "clock"
(watch). But it was safer and more sociable to work with other guys.
We usually went in mobs of three or four, and our methods were much
more complicated than when we were simply moll-buzzing. Each thief had
his special part to play, and his duty varied with the position of the
sucker and the pocket the "leather" was in. If the sucker was standing
in the car, my stall would frequently stand right in front, facing him,
while I would put my hand under the stall's arm and pick the sucker's
leather or super. The other stalls would be distracting the attention
of the sucker, or looking out for possible interruptions. When I had
got possession of the leather I would pass it quickly to the stall
behind me, and he would "vamoose." Sometimes I would back up to the
victim, put my hand behind me, break his ring and pick the super, or I
would face his back, reach round, unbutton his vest while a pal stalled
in front with a newspaper, a bunch of flowers, a fan, or an overcoat,
and get away with his entire front.

A dip, as I have said, pays special attention to his personal
appearance; it is his stock in trade; but when I began to meet boys
who had risen above the grade of Moll-buzzers, I found that the dip, as
opposed to other grafters, had many other advantages, too. He combines
pleasure and instruction with business, for he goes to the foot-ball
games, the New London races, to swell theatres where the graft is good,
and to lectures. I have often listened to Bob Ingersoll, the greatest
orator, in my opinion, that ever lived. I enjoyed his talk so much
that I sometimes forgot to graft. But as a general rule, I was able to
combine instruction with business. I very seldom dropped a red super
because of an oratorical flourish; but the supers did not come my way
all the time, I had some waiting to do, and in the meantime I improved
my mind. Then a dip travels, too, more than most grafters; he jumps
out to fairs and large gatherings of all descriptions, and grows to be
a man of the world. When in the city he visits the best dance halls,
and is popular because of his good clothes, his dough, and his general
information, with men as well as women. He generally lives with a Moll
who has seen the world, and who can add to his fund of information. I
know a dip who could not read or write until he met a Moll, who gave
him a general education and taught him to avoid things that interfered
with his line of graft; she also took care of his personal appearance,
and equipped him generally for an A No. 1 pickpocket. Women are much
the same, I believe, in every rank of life.

It was at this time, when I was a kid of fifteen, that I first met
Sheenie Annie, who was a famous shop-lifter. She was twenty-one years
old, and used to give me good advice. "Keep away from heavy workers,"
(burglars) she would say; "there is a big bit in that." She had lived
in Graftdom ever since she was a tid-bit, and she knew what she was
talking about. I did not work with her until several years later,
but I might as well tell her sad story now. I may say, as a kind of
preface, that I have always liked the girl grafter who could take care
of herself instead of sucking the blood out of some man. When I find
a little working girl who has no other ambition than to get a little
home together, with a little knick-knack on the wall, a little husband
and a little child, I don't care for her. She is a nonentity. But such
was not Sheenie Annie, who was a bright, intelligent, ambitious, girl;
when she liked a fellow she would do anything for him, but otherwise
she wouldn't let a man come near her.

The little Jewish lassie, named Annie, was born in the toughest part
of New York. Later on, as she advanced in years and became an expert
pilferer, she was given the nickname of "Sheenie." She was brought
up on the street, surrounded by thieves and prostitutes. Her only
education was what she received during a year or two in the public
school. She lived near Grand Street, then a popular shopping district.
As a very little girl she and a friend used to visit the drygoods
stores and steal any little notion they could. There was a crowd of
young pickpockets in her street, and she soon got on to this graft,
and became so skilful at it that older guns of both sexes were eager
to take her under their tuition and finish her education. The first
time I met her was in a well-known dance-hall--Billy McGlory's--and we
became friends at once, for she was a good girl and full of mischief.
She was not pretty, exactly, but she was passable. She was small, with
thick lips, plump, had good teeth and eyes as fine and piercing as any
I ever saw in man or woman. She dressed well and was a good talker, as
nimble-witted and as good a judge of human nature as I ever met in her
sex.

Sheenie Annie's graft broadened, and from dipping and small
shop-lifting she rose to a position where she doubled up with a mob
of clever hotel workers, and made large amounts of money. Here was a
girl from the lowest stratum of life, not pretty or well shaped, but
whom men admired because of her wit and cleverness. A big contractor
in Philadelphia was her friend for years. I have seen letters from him
offering to marry her. But she had something better.

For she was an artist at "penny-weighting" and "hoisting." The police
admitted that she was unusually clever at these two grafts, and they
treated her with every consideration. Penny-weighting is a very "slick"
graft. It is generally worked in pairs, by either sex or both sexes.
A man, for instance, enters a jewelry store and looks at some diamond
rings on a tray. He prices them and notes the costly ones. Then he
goes to a fauny shop (imitation jewelry) and buys a few diamonds which
match the real ones he has noted. Then he and his pal, usually a woman,
enter the jewelry store and ask to see the rings. Through some little
"con" they distract the jeweler's attention, and then one of them (and
at this Sheenie Annie was particularly good) substitutes the bogus
diamonds for the good ones; and leaves the store without making a
purchase.

I can give an example of how Sheenie Annie "hoisted," from my own
experience with her. On one occasion, when I was about eighteen years
old, Sheenie and I were on a racket together. We had been "going it"
for several days and needed some dough. We went into a large tailoring
establishment, where I tried on some clothes, as a stall. Nothing
suited me.--I took good care of that--but in the meantime Annie had
taken two costly overcoats, folded them into flat bundles, and, raising
her skirt quickly, had hidden the overcoats between her legs. We left
the store together. She walked so straight that I thought she had got
nothing, but when we entered a saloon a block away, and the swag was
produced, I was forced to laugh. We "fenced" the overcoats and with the
proceeds continued our spree.

Once Sheenie "fell" at this line of graft. She had stolen some costly
sealskins from a well-known furrier, and had got away with them. But
on her third visit to the place she came to grief. She was going out
with a sealskin coat under her skirt when the office-boy, who was
skylarking about, ran into her, and upset her. When the salesman,
who had gone to her rescue, lifted her up, she lost her grip on
the sealskin sacque, and it fell to the floor. It was a "blow," of
course, and she got nailed, but as she had plenty of fall-money, and a
well-known politician dead to rights, she only got nine months in the
penitentiary.

Sheenie Annie was such a good shop-lifter that, with only an
umbrella as a stall, she could make more money in a week than a poor
needle-woman could earn in months. But she did not care for the money.
She was a good fellow, and was in for fun. She was "wise," too, and
I liked to talk to her, for she understood what I said, and was up to
snuff, which was very piquant to me. She had done most of the grafts
that I had done myself, and her tips were always valuable.

To show what a good fellow she was, her sweetheart, Jack, and another
burglar named Jerry were doing night work once, when they were unlucky
enough to be nailed. Sheenie Annie went on the stand and swore perjury
in order to save Jack. He got a year, but Jerry, who had committed the
same crime, got six. While he was in prison Annie visited him and put
up a plan by which he escaped, but he would not leave New York with
her, and was caught and returned to "stir." Annie herself fell in half
a dozen cities, but never received more than a few months. After I
was released from serving my second bit in the "pen," I heard Annie
had died insane. An old girl pal of hers told me that she had died a
horrible death, and that her last words were about her old friends and
companions. Her disease was that which attacks only people with brains.
She died of paresis.

Two other girls whom I knew when I was fifteen turned out to be
famous shop-lifters--Big Lena and Blonde Mamie, who afterwards married
Tommy, the famous cracksman. They began to graft when they were about
fourteen, and Mamie and I used to work together. I was Mamie's first
"fellow," and we had royal good times together. Lena, poor girl, is
now doing five years in London, but she was one of the most cheerful
Molls I ever knew. I met her and Mamie for the first time one day as
they were coming out of an oyster house on Grand Street. I thought
they were good-looking tid-bits, and took them to a picnic. We were
so late that instead of going home Mamie and I spent the night at the
house of Lena's sister, whose husband was a receiver of stolen goods,
or "fence," as it is popularly called. In the morning Lena, Mamie and I
made our first "touch" together. We got a few "books" uptown, and Mamie
banged a satchel at Sterns. After that we often jumped out together,
and took in the excursions. Sometimes Mamie or Lena would dip and I
would stall, but more frequently I was the pick. We used to turn our
swag over to Lena's sister's husband, Max, who would give us about
one-sixth of its value.

These three girls certainly were a crack-a-jack trio. You can't find
their likes nowadays. Even in my time most of the girls I knew did not
amount to anything. They generally married, or did worse. There were
few legitimate grafters among them. Since I have been back this time
I have seen a great many of the old picks and night-workers I used to
know. They tell the same story. There are no Molls now who can compare
with Big Lena, Blonde Mamie, and Sheenie Annie. Times are bad, anyway.

After my experience in the Tombs I rose very rapidly in the world of
graft, and distanced my old companions. Zack, the lad with whom I had
touched my first Moll, soon seemed very tame to me. I fell away from
him because he continued to eat bolivers (cookies), patronize the free
baths, and stole horse-blankets and other trivial things when he could
not get "leathers." He was not fast enough for me. Zack "got there,"
nevertheless, and for little or nothing, for several years later I
met him in State's prison. He told me he was going to Colorado on his
release. I again met him in prison on my second bit. He was then going
to Chicago. On my third hit I ran up against the same old jail-bird,
but this time his destination was Boston. To-day he is still in prison.

As I fell away from the softies I naturally joined hands with
more ambitious grafters, and with those with brains and with good
connections in the upper world. As a lad of from fifteen to eighteen
I associated with several boys who are now famous politicians in
this city, and "on the level," as that phrase is usually meant. Jack
Lawrence was a well-educated boy, and high up as far as his family
was concerned. His father and brothers held good political positions,
and it was only a taste for booze and for less genteel grafting that
held Jack back. As a boy of sixteen or seventeen he was the trusted
messenger of a well-known Republican politician, named J. I. D. One
of Jacks pals became a Federal Judge, and another, Mr. D----, who was
never a grafter, is at present a city magistrate in New York.

While Jack was working for J. I. D., the politician, he was arrested
several times. Once he abstracted a large amount of money from the vest
pocket of a broker as he was standing by the old _Herald_ building.
He was nailed, and sent word to his employer, the politician, who went
to police headquarters, highly indignant at the arrest of his trusted
messenger. He easily convinced the broker and the magistrate that Jack
was innocent; and as far as the Republican politician's business was
concerned, Jack was honest, for J. I. D. trusted him, and Jack never
deceived him. There are some thieves who will not "touch" those who
place confidence in them, and Jack was one of them.

After he was released, the following conversation, which Jack related
to me, took place between him and the politician, in the latter's
office.

"How was it?" the Big One said, "that you happened to get your fingers
into that man's pocket?"

Jack gave the "innocent con."

"None of that," said J. I. D., who was a wise guy, "I know you have a
habit of taking small change from strangers' pockets."

Jack then came off his perch and gave his patron a lesson in the art
of throwing the mit (dipping). At this the politician grinned, and
remarked: "You will either become a reputable politician, for you have
the requisite character, or you will die young."

Jack was feared, hated and envied by the other young fellows in
J. I. D.'s office, for as he was such a thorough rascal, he was a
great favorite with those high up. But he never got J. I. D.'s full
confidence until after he was tested in the following way. One day the
politician put his gold watch on a table in his office. Jack saw it,
picked it up and put it in the Big One's drawer. The latter entered the
room, saw that the watch was gone, and said: "I forgot my watch. I must
have left it home."

"No," said Jack, "you left it on the table, and I put it in your desk."
A smile spread over the patron's face.

"Jack, I can trust you. I put it there just to test your honesty."

The boy hesitated a moment, then, looking into the man's face, replied;
"I know right well you did, for you are a wise guy."

After that J. I. D. trusted Jack even with his love affairs.

As Jack advanced in life he became an expert "gun," and was often
nailed, and frequently brought before Magistrate D----, his old friend.
He always got the benefit of the doubt. One day he was arraigned before
the magistrate, who asked the flyman the nature of the complaint. It
was the same as usual--dipping. Jack, of course, was indignant at such
an awful accusation, but the magistrate told him to keep still, and,
turning to the policeman, asked the culprit's name. When the copper
told him, the magistrate exclaimed: "Why, that is not his name. I knew
him twenty years ago, and he was a d---- rascal then; but that was not
his name."

Jack was shocked at such language from the bench, and swore with
such vehemence that he was innocent, that he again got the benefit of
the doubt, and was discharged, and this time justly, for he had not
made this particular "touch." He was hounded by a copper looking for
a reputation. Jack, when he was set free, turned to the magistrate,
and said: "Your honor, I thank you, but you only did your duty to an
innocent man." The magistrate had a good laugh, and remarked: "Jack, I
wouldn't believe you if you swore on a stack of Bibles."

A curious trait in a professional grafter is that, if he is "pinched"
for something he did not do, although he has done a hundred other
things for which he has never been pinched, he will put up such a wail
against the abominable injustice that an honest man accused of the
same offense would seem guilty in comparison. The honest man, even if
he had the ability of a Philadelphia lawyer, could not do the strong
indignation act that is characteristic of the unjustly accused grafter.
Old thieves guilty of a thousand crimes will nourish revenge for years
against the copper or judge who sends them up to "stir" on a false
accusation.

When I was from fifteen to seventeen years old, I met the man who,
some think, is now practically leader of Tammany Hall. I will call him
Senator Wet Coin. At that time he was a boy eighteen or nineteen and
strictly on the level. He knew all the grafters well, but kept off the
Rocky Path himself. In those days he "hung out" in an oyster shanty
and ran a paper stand. It is said he materially assisted Mr. Pulitzer
in making a success of the _World_, when that paper was started. He
never drank, in spite of the name I have given him. In fact, he derived
his real nickname from his habit of abstinence. He was the friend of
a Bowery girl who is now a well-known actress. She, too, was always
on the level in every way; although her brother was a grafter; this
case, and that of Senator Wet Coin prove that even in an environment of
thieves it is possible to tread the path of virtue. Wet Coin would not
even buy a stolen article; and his reward was great. He became captain
of his election district, ran for assemblyman, was elected, and got as
high a position, with the exception of that of Governor, as is possible
in the State; while in the city, probably no man is more powerful.

Senator Wet Coin made no pretensions to virtue; he never claimed to
be better than others. But in spite of the accusations against him,
he has done far more for the public good than all the professional
reformers, religious and other. He took many noted and professional
criminals in the prime of their success, gave them positions and by his
influence kept them honest ever since. Some of them are high up, even
run gin-mills to-day. I met one of them after my second bit, who used
to make his thousands. Now he has a salary of eighteen dollars a week
and is contented. I had known him in the old days, and he asked:

"What are you doing?"

"The same old thing," I admitted. "What are you up to?"

"I have squared it, Jim," he replied earnestly. "There's nothing in the
graft. Why don't you go to sea?"

"I'd as lief go to stir," I replied.

We had a couple of beers and a long talk, and this is the way he gave
it to me:

"I never thought I could live on eighteen dollars a week. I have to
work hard but I save more money than I did when I was making hundreds
a week; for when it comes hard, it does not go easy. I look twice at my
earnings before I part with them. I live quietly with my sister and am
happy. There's nothing in the other thing, Jim. Look at Hope. Look at
Dan Noble. Look at all the other noted grafters who stole millions and
now are willing to throw the brotherly hand for a small borrow. If I
had the chance to make thousands to-morrow in the under world, I would
not chance it. I am happy. Better still, I am contented. Only for Mr.
Wet Coin I'd be splitting matches in the stir these many years. Show
me the reformer who has done as much for friends and the public as Wet
Coin."

       *       *       *       *       *

A "touch" that pleased me mightily as a kid was made just before my
second fall. Superintendent Walling had returned from a summer resort,
and found that a mob of "knucks" (another name for pick-pockets) had
been "tearing open" the Third Avenue cars outside of the Post Office.
About fifty complaints had been coming in every day for several weeks;
and the Superintendent thought he would make a personal investigation
and get one of the thieves dead to rights. He made a front that
he was easy and went down the line. He did not catch any dips, but
when he reached police head-quarters he was minus his gold watch and
two hundred and fifty dollars in money. The story leaked out, and
Superintendent Walling was unhappy. There would never have been a
come-back for this "touch" if an old gun, who had just been nailed,
had not "squealed" as to who touched the boss. "Little Mick" had done
it, and the result was that he got his first experience in the House of
Refuge.

It was only a short time after Little Mick's fall that it came my turn
to go to the House of Refuge. I had grown tougher and much stuck on
myself and was taking bigger risks. I certainly had a swelled head in
those days. I was seventeen years old at the time, and was grafting
with Jack T----, who is now in Byrnes's book, and one of the swellest
"Peter" men (safe-blowers) in the profession. Jack and I, along with
another pal, Joe Quigley, got a duffer, an Englishman, for his "front,"
on Grand Street, near Broadway. It was a "blow," and I, who was the
"wire," got nailed. If I had not given my age as fifteen I should have
been sent to the penitentiary. As it was I went to the House of Refuge
for a year. Joe Quigley slipped up on the same game. He was twenty, but
gave his age as fifteen. He had had a good shave by the Tombs barber,
there was a false date of birth written in his Aunt's Bible, which was
produced in court by his lawyer, and he would probably have gone with
me to the House of Refuge, had not a Central Office man who knew him,
happened in; Joe was settled for four years in Sing Sing.

When I arrived at the House of Refuge, my pedigree was taken and my
hair clipped. Then I went into the yard, looked down the line of boys
on parade and saw about forty young grafters whom I knew. One of them
is now a policeman in New York City, and, moreover, on the level.
Some others, too, but not many, who were then in the House of Refuge,
are now honest. Several are running big saloons and are captains of
their election districts, or even higher up. These men are exceptions,
however, for certainly the House of Refuge was a school for crime.
Unspeakably bad habits were contracted there. The older boys wrecked
the younger ones, who, comparatively innocent, confined for the crime
of being orphans, came in contact with others entirely hardened. The
day time was spent in the school and the shop, but there was an hour
or two for play, and the boys would arrange to meet for mischief in the
basement.

Severe punishments were given to lads of fifteen, and their tasks
were harder than those inflicted in State's prison. We had to make
twenty-four pairs of overalls every day; and if we did not do our work
we were beaten on an unprotected and tender spot until we promised to
do our task. One morning I was made to cross my hands, and was given
fifteen blows on the palms with a heavy rattan stick. The crime I had
committed was inattention. The principal had been preaching about the
Prodigal Son. I, having heard it before, paid little heed; particularly
as I was a Catholic, and his teachings did not count for me. They
called me a "Papist," and beat me, as I described.

I say without hesitation that lads sent to an institution like the
House of Refuge, the Catholic Protectory, or the Juvenile Asylum, might
better be taken out and shot. They learn things there they could not
learn even in the streets. The newsboy's life is pure in comparison. As
for me, I grew far more desperate there than I had been before: and I
was far from being one of the most innocent of boys. Many of the others
had more to learn than I had, and they learned it. But even I, hard as
I already was, acquired much fresh information about vice and crime;
and gathered in more pointers about the technique of graft.




CHAPTER IV.

_When the Graft Was Good._


I stayed in the House of Refuge until I was eighteen, and when
released, went through a short period of reform. I "lasted," I think,
nearly three weeks, and then started in to graft again harder than
ever. The old itch for excitement, for theatres, balls and gambling,
made reform impossible. I had already formed strong habits and desires
which could not be satisfied in my environment without stealing. I was
rapidly becoming a confirmed criminal. I began to do "house-work,"
which was mainly sneak work up town. We would catch a basement open
in the day time, and rummage for silverware, money or jewels. There
is only a step from this to the business of the genuine burglar, who
operates in the night time, and whose occupation is far more dangerous
than that of the sneak thief. However, at this intermediate kind of
graft, our swag, for eighteen months, was considerable. One of our
methods was to take servant girls to balls and picnics and get them
to tip us off to where the goods were and the best way to get them.
Sometimes they were guilty, more often merely suckers.

During the next three years, at the expiration of which I made my first
trip to Sing Sing, I stole a great deal of money and lived very high.
I contracted more bad habits, practically ceased to see my family at
all, lived in a furnished room and "hung out" in the evening at some
dance-hall, such as Billy McGlory's Old Armory, George Doe's or "The"
Allen's. Sheenie Annie was my sweetheart at this period, and after we
had made a good touch what times we would have at Coney Island or at
Billy McGlory's! Saturday nights in the summer time a mob of three or
four of us, grafters and girls, would go to the island and stop at a
hotel run by an ex-gun. At two or three o'clock in the morning we'd
all leave the hotel, with nothing on but a quilt, and go in swimming
together. Sheenie Annie, Blonde Mamie and Big Lena often went with
us. At other times we took respectable shop-girls, or even women who
belonged to a still lower class. What boy with an ounce of thick blood
in his body could refuse to go with a girl to the Island?

And Billy McGlory's! What times we had there, on dear old Saturday
nights! At this place, which contained a bar-room, dance-room,
pool-room and a piano, congregated downtown guns, house-men and thieves
of both sexes. No rag-time was danced in those days, but early in the
morning we had plenty of the cancan. The riots that took place there
would put to shame anything that goes on now.[A] I never knew the town
so tight-shut as it is at present. It is far better, from a moral point
of view than it has ever been before; at least, in my recollection.
"The" Allen's was in those days a grade more decent than McGlory's; for
at "The's" nobody who did not wear a collar and coat was admitted. I
remember a pal of mine who met a society lady on a slumming expedition
with a reporter. It was at McGlory's. The lady looked upon the grafter
she had met as a novelty. The grafter looked upon the lady in the same
way, but consented to write her an article on the Bowery. He sent her
the following composition, which he showed to me first, and allowed me
to copy it. I always did like freaks. I won't put in the bad grammar
and spelling, but the rest is:

"While strolling, after the midnight hour, along the Lane, that
historic thoroughfare sometimes called the Bowery, I dropped into a
concert hall. At a glance, I saw men who worked hard during the week
and needed a little recreation. Near them were their sisters (that
is, if we all belong to the same human family), who had fallen by the
wayside. A man was trying to play a popular song on a squeaky piano,
while another gent tried to sing the first part of the song, when the
whole place joined in the chorus with a zest. I think the song was most
appropriate. It was a ditty of the slums entitled, 'Dear Old Saturday
Night.'"

When I was about nineteen I took another and important step in the
world of graft. One night I met a couple of swell grafters, one of
whom is at the present time a Pinkerton detective. They took me to
the Haymarket, where I met a crowd of guns who were making barrels of
money. Two of them, Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, became my friends,
and introduced me to Mr. R----, who has often kept me out of prison.
He was a go-between, a lawyer, and well-known to all good crooks. If
we "fell" we had to notify him and he would set the underground wires
working, with the result that our fall money would need replenishing
badly, but that we'd escape the stir.

That I was not convicted again for three years was entirely due to my
fall money and to the cleverness of Mr. R----. Besides these expenses,
which I considered legitimate, I used to get "shaken down" regularly by
the police and detectives. The following is a typical case:

I was standing one day on the corner of Grand Street and the Bowery
when a copper who knew me came up and said: "There's a lot of knocking
(complaining) going on about the Grand Street cars being torn open. The
old man (the chief) won't stand for it much longer."

"It wasn't me," I said.

"Well, it was one of the gang," he replied, "and I will have to make an
arrest soon, or take some one to headquarters for his mug," (that is,
to have his picture taken for the rogues' gallery).

I knew what that meant, and so I gave him a twenty dollar bill. But
I was young and often objected to these exorbitant demands. More than
anybody else a thief hates to be "touched," for he despises the sucker
on whom he lives. And we were certainly touched with great regularity
by the coppers.

Still, we really had nothing to complain of in those days, for we made
plenty of money and had a good time. We even used to buy our collars,
cuffs and gloves cheap from grafters who made it their business to
steal those articles. They were cheap guns,--pipe fiends, petty larceny
thieves and shop-lifters--but they helped to make our path smoother.

After I met the Haymarket grafter I used to jump out to neighboring
cities on very profitable business. A good graft was to work the fairs
at Danbury, Waverly, Philadelphia and Pittsburg, and the foot-ball
games at Princeton. I always travelled with three or four others, and
went for gatherings where we knew we would find "roofers," or country
gentlemen. On my very first jump-out I got a fall, but the copper was
open to reason. Dutch Lonzo and Charlie Allen, splendid pickpockets,
(I always went with good thieves, for I had become a first-class dip
and had a good personal appearance) were working with me in Newark,
where Vice-President Hendricks was to speak. I picked a watch in the
crowd, and was nailed. But Dutch Lonzo, who had the gift of gab better
than any man I ever met, took the copper into a saloon. We all had a
drink, and for twenty-five dollars I escaped even the station-house.
Unfortunately, however, I was compelled to return the watch; for the
copper had to "square" the sucker. Then the copper said to Dutch
Lonzo, whom he knew: "Go back and graft, if you want, but be sure
to look me up." In an hour or two we got enough touches to do us for
two weeks. Senator Wet Coin was at this speech with about two hundred
Tammany braves, and we picked so many pockets that a newspaper the next
day said there must have been at least one hundred and ninety-nine
pickpockets in the Tammany delegation. We fell quite often on these
trips, but we were always willing to help the coppers pay for their
lower flats. I sometimes objected because of their exorbitant demands,
but I was still young. I knew that longshoremen did harder work for
less pay than the coppers, and I thought, therefore, that the latter
were too eager to make money on a sure-thing graft. And I always hated
a sure-thing graft.

But didn't we strike it rich in Connecticut! Whether the people of that
State suffer from partial paralysis or not I don't know, but certainly
if all States were as easy as Connecticut the guns would set up as
Vanderbilts. I never even got a tumble in Connecticut. I ripped up the
fairs in every direction, and took every chance. The inhabitants were
so easy that we treated them with contempt.

After a long trip in Connecticut I nearly fell on my return, I was that
raw. We were breech-getting (picking men's pockets) in the Brooklyn
cars. I was stalling in front, Lonzo was behind and Charlie was the
pick. Lonzo telephoned to me by gestures that Charlie had hold of
the leather, but it wouldn't come. I was hanging on a strap, and,
pretending to slip, brought my hand down heavily on the sucker's hat,
which went over his ears. The leather came, was slipped to me, Lonzo
apologized for spoiling the hat and offered the sucker a five dollar
bill, which he politely refused. Now that was rough work, and we would
not have done it, had we not been travelling so long among the Reubs
in Connecticut. We could have made our gets all right, but we were so
confident and delayed so long that the sucker blew before we left the
car, and Lonzo and Charlie were nailed, and the next morning arraigned.
In the meantime, however, we had started the wires working, and
notified Mr. R.---- and Lonzo's wife to "fix" things in Brooklyn. The
reliable attorney got a bondsman, and two friends of his "fixed" the
cops, who made no complaint. Lonzo's wife, an Irishwoman and a handsome
grafter, had just finished a five year bit in London. It cost us six
hundred dollars to "fix" that case, and there was only two hundred and
fifty dollars in the leather.

That made Lonzo's wife exceedingly angry.

"Good Lord," she said. "There's panthers for you in New York! There's
the blokes that shakes you down too heavy. I'd want an unlimited cheque
on the Bank of England if you ever fell again."

A little philosophy on the same subject was given me one day by an
English Moll, who had fallen up-State and had to "give up" heavily.

"I've been in a good many cities and 'amlets in this country," said
she, "but gad! blind me if I ever want to fall in an 'amlet in this
blooming State again. The New York police are at least a little
sensible at times, but when these Rufus's up the State get a Yorker or
a wise guy, they'll strip him down to his socks. One of these voracious
country coppers who sing sweet hymns in jail is a more successful gun
than them that hit the rocky path and take brash to get the long green.
It is only the grafter that is supposed to protect the people who makes
a success of it. The hypocritical mouthings of these people just suit
the size of their Bibles."

Lonzo and I, and Patsy, a grafter I had picked up about this time,
made several fat trips to Philadelphia. At first we were leary of the
department stores, there had been so many "hollers," and worked the
"rattlers" (cars) only. We were told by some local guns that we could
not "last" twenty-four hours in Philadelphia without protection, but
that was not our experience. We went easy for a time, but the chances
were too good, and we began voraciously to tear open the department
stores, the churches and the theatres; and without a fall. Whenever
anybody mentioned the fly-cops (detectives) of Philadelphia it reminded
us of the inhabitants of Connecticut. They were not "dead": such a
word is sacred. Their proper place was not on the police force, but
on a shelf in a Dutchman's grocery store labelled the canned article.
Philadelphia was always my town, but I never stayed very long, partly
because I did not want to become known in such a fat place, and partly
because I could not bear to be away from New York very long; for,
although there is better graft in other cities, there is no such place
to live in as Manhattan. I had no fear of being known in Philadelphia
to the police; but to local guns who would become jealous of our
grafting and tip us off.

On one of my trips to the City of Brotherly Love I had a poetical
experience. The graft had been good, and one Sunday morning I left Dan
and Patsy asleep, and went for a walk in the country, intending, for a
change, to observe the day of rest. I walked for several hours through
a beautiful, quiet country, and about ten o'clock passed a country
church. They were singing inside, and for some reason, probably because
I had had a good walk in the country, the music affected me strangely.
I entered, and saw a blind evangelist and his sister. I bowed my head,
and my whole past life came over me. Although everything had been
coming my way, I felt uneasy, and thought of home for the first time
in many weeks. I went back to the hotel in Philadelphia, feeling very
gloomy, and shut myself up in my room. I took up my pen and began
a letter to a Tommy (girl) in New York. But I could not forget the
country church, and instead of writing to the little Tommy, I wrote the
following jingles:

     "When a child by mother's knee
     I would watch, watch, watch
     By the deep blue sea,
     And the moon-beams played merrily
     On our home beside the sea.

CHORUS.

     "The Evening Star shines bright-i-ly
     Above our home beside the sea,
     And the moon-beams danced beamingly
     On our home beside the sea.
     But now I am old, infirm and grey
     I shall never see those happy days;
     I would give my life, all my wealth, and fame
     To hear my mother gently call my name."

Towards evening Patsy and Dan returned from a good day's work. Patsy
noticed I was quiet and unusually gloomy, and asked:

"What's the matter? Didn't you get anything?"

"No," I replied, "I'm going back to New York."

"Where have you been?" asked Dan.

"To church," I replied.

"In the city?" he asked.

"No," I replied, "in the country."

"I cautioned you," said Dan, "against taking such chances. There's
no dough in these country churches. If you want to try lone ones on a
Sunday take in some swell church in the city."

The following Sunday I went to a fashionable church and got a few
leathers, and afterwards went to all the swell churches in the city. I
touched them, but they could not touch me. I heard all the ministers
in Philadelphia, but they could not move me the way that country
evangelist did. They were all artificial in comparison.

Shortly after my poetical experience in Philadelphia I made a trip up
New York State with Patsy, Dan and Joe, and grafted in a dozen towns.
One day when we were on the cars going from Albany to Amsterdam, we saw
a fat, sleepy-looking Dutchman, and I nicked him for a clock as he was
passing along the aisle to the end of the car. It took the Dutchman
about ten minutes after he had returned to his seat to blow that his
super was gone, and his chain hanging down. A look of stupid surprise
spread over his innocent countenance. He looked all around, picked up
the end of his chain, saw it was twisted, put his hand in his vest
pocket, then looked again at the end of the chain, tried his pocket
again, then went through all of his pockets, and repeated each of these
actions a dozen times. The passengers all got "next," and began to
grin. "Get on to the Hiker," (countryman) said Patsy to Joe, and they
both laughed. I told the Dutchman that the clock must have fallen down
the leg of his underwear; whereupon the Reuben retired to investigate,
searched himself thoroughly and returned, only to go through the same
motions, and then retire to investigate once more. It was as good as a
comedy. But it was well there were no country coppers on that train.
They would not have cared a rap about the Dutchman's loss of his
property, but we four probably should have been compelled to divide
with them.

Grafters are a superstitious lot. Before we reached Buffalo a feeling
came over me that I had better not work in that town; so Joe, Dan and
an English grafter we had picked up, named Scotty, stopped at Buffalo,
and Patsy and I went on. Sure enough, in a couple of days Joe wired
me that Scotty had fallen for a breech-kick and was held for trial.
I wired to Mr. R----, who got into communication with Mr. J----, a
Canadian Jew living in Buffalo, who set the wires going. The sucker
proved a very hard man to square, but a politician who was a friend
of Mr. J---- showed him the errors of his way, and before very long
Scotty returned to New York. An English Moll-buzzer, a girl, got hold
of him and took him back to London. It was just as well, for it was
time for our bunch to break up. We were getting too well-known; and
falls were coming too frequent. So we had a general split. Joe went to
Washington, Patsy down East, Scotty to "stir" in London and I stayed in
Manhattan, where I shortly afterwards met Big Jack and other burglars
and started in on that dangerous graft. But before I tell about my
work in that line, I will narrate the story of Mamie and Johnny, a
famous cracksman, whom I met at this time. It is a true love story of
the Under World. Johnny, and Mamie, who by the way is not the same as
Blonde Mamie, are still living together in New York City, after many
trials and tribulations, one of the greatest of which was Mamie's
enforced relation with a New York detective. But I won't anticipate on
the story, which follows in the next chapter.


FOOTNOTE:

     [A] Summer of 1902




CHAPTER V.

_Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds._


Johnny met Mamie when he was sixteen. At that time he was looked up
to in the neighborhood as one of the most promising of the younger
thieves.

He was an intelligent, enterprising boy and had, moreover, received an
excellent education in the school of crime. His parents had died before
he was twelve years old, and after that the lad lived at the Newsboys'
Lodging House, in Rivington Street, which at that time and until it
ceased to exist was the home of boys some of whom afterwards became
the swellest of crooks, and some very reputable citizens and prominent
politicians. A meal and a bed there cost six cents apiece and even the
youngest and stupidest waif could earn or steal enough for that.

Johnny became an adept at "hooking" things from grocery stores and
at tapping tills. When he was thirteen years old he was arrested for
petty theft, passed a night in the police station, and was sent to the
Catholic Protectory, where he was the associate of boys much older and
"wiser" in crime than he. At that place were all kinds of incurables,
from those arrested for serious felonies to those who had merely
committed the crime of being homeless. From them Johnny learned the
ways of the under world very rapidly.

After a year of confinement he was clever enough to make a key and
escape. He safely passed old "Cop O'Hagen," whose duty it was to watch
the Harlem bridge, and returned to the familiar streets in lower New
York, where the boys and rising pickpockets hid him from the police,
until they forgot about his escape.

From that time Johnny's rise in the world of graft was rapid. He
was so successful in stealing rope and copper from the dry-docks
that the older heads took him in hand and used to put him through
the "fan-light" windows of some store, where his haul was sometimes
considerable. He began to grow rich, purchased some shoes and
stockings, and assumed a "tough" appearance, with great pride. He rose
a step higher, boarded tug-boats and ships anchored at the docks, and
constantly increased his income. The boys looked upon him as a winner
in his line of graft, and as he gave "hot'l" (lodging-house) money to
those boys who had none, he was popular. So Johnny became "chesty",
began to "spread" himself, to play pool, to wear good linen collars and
to associate with the best young thieves in the ward.

It was at this time that he met Mamie, who was a year or two younger
than he. She was a small, dark, pale-faced little girl, and as neat
and quick-witted as Johnny. She lived with her parents, near the
Newsboys' Lodging House, where Johnny still "hung out". Mamie's father
and mother were poor, respectable people, who were born and bred in the
old thirteenth ward, a section famous for the many shop girls who were
fine "spielers" (dancers). Mamie's mother was one of the most skillful
of these dancers, and therefore Mamie came by her passion for the waltz
very naturally; and the light-footed little girl was an early favorite
with the mixed crowd of dancers who used to gather at the old Concordia
Assembly Rooms, on the Bowery.

It was at this place that Johnny and Mamie met for the first time. It
was a case of mutual admiration, and the boy and girl started in to
"keep company." Johnny became more ambitious in his line of graft;
he had a girl! He needed money to buy her presents, to take her to
balls, theatres and picnics; and he began to "gun", which means to
pickpockets, an occupation which he found far more lucrative than
"swagging" copper from the docks or going through fan-light windows. He
did not remain content, however, with "dipping" and, with several much
older "grafters", he started in to do "drag" work.

"Drag" work is a rather complicated kind of stealing and success at
it requires considerable skill. Usually a "mob" of four grafters work
together. They get "tipped off" to some store where there is a line
of valuable goods, perhaps a large silk or clothing-house. One of the
four, called the "watcher", times the last employee that leaves the
place to be "touched". The "watcher" is at his post again early in
the morning, to find out at what time the first employee arrives. He
may even hire a furnished room opposite the store, in order to secure
himself against identification by some Central Office detective who
might stroll by. When he has learned the hours of the employees he
reports to his "pals". At a late hour at night the four go to the
store, put a spindle in the Yale lock, and break it with a blow from a
hammer. They go inside, take another Yale lock, which they have brought
with them, lock themselves in, go upstairs, carry the most valuable
goods downstairs and pile them near the door. Then they go away, and,
in the morning, before the employees are due, they drive up boldly
to the store with a truck; representing a driver, two laborers, and a
shipping clerk. They load the wagon with the goods, lock the door, and
drive away. They have been known to do this work in full view of the
unsuspecting policeman on the beat.

While Johnny had advanced to this distinguished work, Mamie, too,
had become a bread-earner, of a more modest and a more respectable
kind. She went to work in a factory, and made paper boxes for two and
one-half dollars a week. So the two dressed very well, and had plenty
of spending money. Unless Johnny had some work to do they always met in
the evening, and soon were seriously in love with one another. Mamie
knew what Johnny's line of business was, and admired his cleverness.
The most progressive people in her set believed in "getting on" in
any way, and how could Mamie be expected to form a social morality for
herself? She thought Johnny was the nicest boy in the world, and Johnny
returned her love to the full. So Johnny finally asked her if she would
"hitch up" with him for life, and she gladly consented.

They were married and set up a nice home in Allen Street. It was before
the time when the Jews acquired an exclusive right to that part of
the town, and in this neighborhood Mamie and Johnny had many friends
who used to visit them in the evening; for the loving couple were
exceedingly domestic, and, when Johnny had no business on hand, seldom
went out in the evening. Johnny was a model husband. He had no bad
habits, never drank or gambled, spent as much time as he could with
his wife, and made a great deal of money. Mamie gave up her work in the
shop, and devoted all her attention to making Johnny happy and his home
pleasant.

For about four years Johnny and Mamie lived very happily together.
Things came their way; and Johnny and his pals laid by a considerable
amount of money against a rainy day. To be sure, they had their little
troubles. Johnny "fell," that is to say, was arrested, a score of
times, but succeeded in getting off. It was partly due to good luck,
and partly to the large amount of fall-money he and his pals had
gathered together.

On one occasion it was only Mamie's cleverness and devotion that saved
Johnny, for a time, from the penitentiary. One dark night Johnny
and three pals, after a long conversation in the saloon of a ward
politician, visited a large jewelry store on Fulton Street, Brooklyn,
artistically opened the safe, and made away with fifteen thousand
dollars. It was a bold and famous robbery, and the search for the
thieves was long and earnest. Johnny and his friends were not suspected
at first, but an old saying among thieves is, "wherever there are three
or four there is always a leak," a truth similar to that announced by
Benjamin Franklin: "Three can keep a secret when two are dead."

One of Johnny's pals, Patsy, told his girl in confidence how the
daring "touch" was made. That was the first link in the long chain of
gossip which finally reached the ears of the watching detectives; and
the result was that Patsy and Johnny were arrested. It was impossible
to "settle" this case, no matter how much "fall-money" they had at
their disposal; for the jeweler belonged to the Jewelers' Protective
Association, which will prosecute those who rob anyone belonging to
their organization.

As bribery was out of the question, Johnny and Patsy, who were what is
called in the underworld "slick articles," put their heads together,
and worked out a scheme. The day of their trial in the Brooklyn Court
came around. They were waiting their turn in the prisoner's "pen,"
adjoining the Court, when Mamie came to see them. The meeting between
her and Johnny was very affecting. After a few words Mamie noticed
that her swell Johnny wore no neck-tie. Johnny, seemingly embarrassed,
turned to a Court policeman, and asked him to lend him his tie for a
short time. The policeman declined, but remarked that Mamie had a tie
that would match Johnny's complexion very well. Mamie impulsively took
off her tie, put it on Johnny, kissed him, and left the Court-house.

Johnny was to be tried in ten minutes, but he induced his lawyer to
have the trial put off for half an hour; and another case was tried
instead. Then he took off Mamie's neck-tie, tore the back out of it,
and removed two fine steel saws. He gave one to Patsy, and in a few
minutes they had penetrated a small iron bar which closed a little
window leading to an alley. Patsy was too large to squeeze himself
through the opening, but "stalled" for Johnny while the latter "made
his gets". When they came to put these two on trial there was a
sensation in Court. No Johnny! Patsy knew nothing about it, he said;
and he received six years for his crime.

But Johnny's day for a time in the "stir" soon came around. He made a
good "touch", and got away with the goods, but was betrayed by a pal, a
professional thief who was in the pay of the police, technically called
a "stool-pigeon". Mamie visited Johnny in the Tombs, and when she found
the case was hopeless she wanted to go and steal something herself so
that she might accompany her boy to prison. But when Johnny told her
there were no women at Sing Sing she gave up the idea. Johnny went to
prison for four years, and Mamie went to a tattooer, and, as a proof of
her devotion, had Johnny's name indelibly stamped upon her arm.

Mamie, in consequence of her fidelity to Johnny, whom she regularly
visited at Sing Sing, was a heroine and a martyr in the eyes of the
grafters of both sexes. The money she and Johnny had saved began to
dwindle, and soon she was compelled to work again at box-making. She
remained faithful to Johnny, although many a good grafter tried to make
up to the pretty girl. When Johnny was released from Sing Sing, Mamie
was even happier than he. They had no money now, but some politicians
and saloon-keepers who knew that Johnny was a good money-getter, set
them up in a little house. And they resumed their quiet domestic life
together.

Their happiness did not last long, however. Johnny needed money more
than ever now and resumed his dangerous business. He got in with a
quartette of the cleverest safe-crackers in the country, and made
a tour of the Eastern cities. They made many important touches, but
finally Johnny was again under suspicion for a daring robbery in Union
Square, and was compelled to become a solitary fugitive. He sent word,
through an old-time burglar, to Mamie, exhorted her to keep up the
home, and promised to send money regularly. He was forced, however,
to stay away from New York for several years, and did not dare to
communicate with Mamie.

At first, Mamie tried to resume her work at box-making. But she had
had so much leisure and had lived so well that she found the work
irksome and the pay inadequate. Mamie knew many women pickpockets and
shop-lifters, friends of her husband. When some of these adventurous
girls saw that Mamie was discontented with her lot, they induced her to
go out and work with them. So Mamie became a very clever shop-lifter,
and, for a time, made considerable money. Then many of the best "guns"
in the city again tried to make up to Mamie, and marry her. Johnny
was not on the spot, and that, in the eyes of a thief, constitutes
a divorce. But Mamie still loved her wayward boy and held the others
back.

In the meantime Johnny had become a great traveller. He knew that the
detectives were so hot on his track that he dared to stay nowhere very
long; nor dared to trust anyone: so he worked alone. He made a number
of daring robberies, all along the line from Montreal to Detroit, but
they all paled in comparison with a touch he made at Philadelphia, a
robbery which is famous in criminal annals.

He had returned to Philadelphia, hoping to get a chance to send word
to Mamie, whom he had not seen for years, and for whom he pined. While
in the city of brotherly love he was "tipped off" to a good thing. He
boldly entered a large mercantile house, and, in thirteen minutes, he
opened a time-lock vault, and abstracted three hundred thousand dollars
worth of negotiable bonds and escaped.

The bold deed made a sensation all over the country. The mercantile
house and the safe manufacturers were so hot for the thief that the
detectives everywhere worked hard and "on the level". Johnny was not
suspected then, and never "did time" for this touch. For a while he
hid in Philadelphia; boarded there with a poor, respectable family,
representing himself as a laborer out of work. He spent the daytime in
a little German beer saloon, playing pinocle with the proprietor; and
was perfectly safe.

But his longing for Mamie had grown so strong that he could not bear
it. He knew that the detectives were still looking for him because
of the old crime, and that they were hot to discover the thief of the
negotiable bonds. He sent word to Mamie, nevertheless, through an old
pal he found at Philadelphia, and arranged to see her at Mount Vernon,
near New York.

The two met in the side room of a little saloon near the railway
station; and the greeting was affectionate in the extreme. They had not
seen one another for years! And hardly a message had been exchanged.
After a little Johnny told Mamie, proudly, that it was he who had
stolen the negotiable bonds.

"Now," he added, "we are rich. After a little I can sell these bonds
for thirty cents on the dollar and then you and I will go away and
give up this life. I am getting older and my nerve is not what it was
once. We'll settle down quietly in London or some town where we are not
known, and be happy. Won't we, dear?"

Mamie said "Yes," but she appeared confused. When Johnny asked her what
was the matter, she burst into tears; and choked and sobbed for some
time before she could say a word. She ordered a glass of whiskey, which
she never used to drink in the old days, and when the bar-tender had
left, she turned to the worried Johnny, embraced him tenderly and said,
in a voice which still trembled:

"Johnny, will you forgive me if I tell you something? It's pretty bad,
but not so bad as it might be, for I love only you."

Johnny encouraged her with a kiss and she continued, in a broken voice:

"When you were gone again, Johnny, I tried to make my living at the
old box-making work; but the pay wasn't big enough for me then. So I
began to graft--dipping and shop-lifting--and made money. But a Central
Office man you used to know--Jim Lennon--got on to me."

"Jim Lennon?" said Johnny, "Sure, I knew him. He used to be sweet on
you, Mamie. He treated you right, I hope."

Mamie blushed and looked down.

"Well?" said Johnny.

"Jim came to me one day," she continued, "and told me he wouldn't
stand for what I was doing. He said the drygoods people were hollering
like mad; and that he'd have to arrest me if I didn't quit. I tried to
square him with a little dough, but I soon saw that wasn't what he was
after."

"'Look here, Mamie,' he finally said. 'It's just this way. Johnny is a
good fellow, but he's dead to you and dead to me. He's done time, and
that breaks all marriage ties. Now, I want you to hitch up with me, and
lead an honest life. I'll give you a good home, and you won't run any
more risk of the pen!'"

Johnny grew very pale as Mamie said the last words; and when she
stopped speaking, he said quietly:

"And you did it?"

Mamie again burst into tears. "Oh, Johnny," she cried, "what else could
I do. He wouldn't let me go on grafting, and I had to live."

"And so you married him?" Johnny insisted.

The reply was in a whisper.

"Yes," she said.

For the next thirty seconds Johnny thought very rapidly. This woman had
his liberty in her hands. He had told her about the negotiable bonds.
Besides, he loved Mamie and understood the difficulty of her position.
His life as a thief had made him very tolerant in some respects. He
therefore swallowed his emotion, and turned a kind face to Mamie.

"You still love me?" he asked, "better than the copper?"

"Sure," said Mamie, warmly.

"Now listen," said Johnny, the old business-like expression coming back
into his face. "I am hounded for the old trick; and the detectives are
looking everywhere for these negotiable bonds, which I have here, in
this satchel. Can I trust you with them? Will you mind them for me,
until things quiet down?"

"Of course, I will," said Mamie, gladly.

So they parted once more. Johnny went into hiding again, and Mamie
went to the detective's house, with the negotiable bonds. She had no
intention of betraying Johnny; for she might be arrested for receiving
stolen goods; and, besides, she still loved her first husband. So she
planted the bonds in the bottom of the detective's trunk.

Here was a pretty situation. Her husband, the detectives, and
many other "fly-cops" all over the country, were looking for these
negotiable bonds, at the very moment when they were safely stowed
away in the detective's trunk. Mamie and Johnny, who continued to meet
occasionally, often smiled at the humor of the situation.

Soon, however, suspicion for the Philadelphia touch began to attach
to Johnny. Mamie's detective asked her one evening if she had heard
anything about Johnny, of late.

"Not for years," said Mamie, calmly.

But one night, several Central Office men followed Mamie as she went
to Mt. Vernon to meet Johnny; and when the two old lovers parted,
Johnny was arrested on account of the fifteen thousand dollar robbery
in Brooklyn, from the penalty of which he had escaped by means of
Mamie's neck-tie many years before. The detectives suspected Johnny
of having stolen the bonds, but of this they could get no evidence. So
he was sent to Sing Sing for six years on the old charge. When he was
safely in prison the detectives induced him to return the bonds, on the
promise that he would not be prosecuted at his release, and would be
paid a certain sum of money. The mercantile house agreed, and Johnny
sent word to Mamie to give up the bonds. Then, of course, the detective
knew about the trick that Mamie had played him. But he, like Johnny,
was a philosopher, and forgave the clever woman. When he first heard of
it, however, he had said to her, indignantly:

"You cow, if you had given the bonds to me, I would have been made a
police captain, and you my queen."

As soon as Johnny got out of stir, Mamie quit the detective, and the
couple are now living again together in a quiet, domestic manner, in
Manhattan.




CHAPTER VI.

_What The Burglar Faces._


For a long time I took Sheenie Annie's advice and did not do any night
work. It is too dangerous, the come-back is too sure, you have to
depend too much on the nerve of your pals, the "bits" are too long; and
it is very difficult to square it. But as time went on I grew bolder.
I wanted to do something new, and get more dough. My new departure was
not, however, entirely due to ambition and the boldness acquired by
habitual success. After a gun has grafted for a long time his nervous
system becomes affected, for it is certainly an exciting life. He is
then very apt to need a stimulant. He is usually addicted to either
opium or chloral, morphine or whiskey. Even at this early period I
began to take a little opium, which afterwards was one of the main
causes of my constant residence in stir, and was really the wreck of my
life, for when a grafter is doped he is inclined to be very reckless.
Perhaps if I had never hit the hop I would not have engaged in the
dangerous occupation of a burglar.

I will say one thing for opium, however. That drug never makes a man
careless of his personal appearance. He will go to prison frequently,
but he will always have a good front, and will remain a self-respecting
thief. The whiskey dip, on the other hand, is apt to dress carelessly,
lose his ambition and, eventually to go down and out as a common "bum".

I began night-work when I was about twenty years old, and at first
I did not go in for it very heavily. Big Jack, Jerry, Ed and I made
several good touches in Mt. Vernon and in hotels at summer resorts and
got sums ranging from two hundred to twenty-seven hundred dollars.
We worked together for nearly a year with much success and only an
occasional fall, and these we succeeded in squaring. Once we had a
shooting-match which made me a little leary. I was getting out the
window with my swag, when a shot just grazed my eye. I nearly decided
to quit then, but, I suppose because it was about that time I was
beginning to take opium, I continued with more boldness than ever.

One night Ed, a close pal of mine, was operating with me out in Jersey.
We were working in the rear of a house and Ed was just shinning up the
back porch to climb in the second story window, when a shutter above
was thrown open and, without warning, a pistol shot rang out.

Down came Ed, falling like a log at my feet.

"Are you hurt?" said I.

"Done!" said he, and I saw it was so.

Now a man may be nervy enough, but self-preservation is the first rule
of life. I turned and ran at the top of my speed across two back yards,
then through a field, then over a fence into what seemed a ploughed
field beyond. The ground was rough and covered with hummocks, and as I
stumbled along I suddenly tripped and fell ten feet down into an open
grave. The place was a cemetery, though I had not recognized it in the
darkness. For hours I lay there trembling, but nobody came and I was
safe. It was not long after that, however, that something did happen to
shake my nerve, which was pretty good. It came about in the following
way.

A jeweler, who was a well-known "fence", put us on to a place where we
could get thousands. He was one of the most successful "feelers-out" in
the business. The man who was my pal on this occasion, Dal, looked the
place over with me and though we thought it a bit risky, the size of
the graft attracted us. We had to climb up on the front porch, with an
electric light streaming right down on us.

I had reached the porch when I got the well-known signal of danger. I
hurriedly descended and asked Dal what was the matter.

"Jim," he said, "there's somebody off there, a block away."

We investigated, and you can imagine how I felt when we found nothing
but an old goat. It was a case of Dal's nerves, but the best of us get
nervous at times.

I went to the porch again and opened the window with a putty knife
(made of the rib of a woman's corset), when I got the "cluck" again,
and hastily descended, but again found it was Dal's imagination.

Then I grew hot, and said: "You have knocked all the nerve out of me,
for sure."

"Jim," he replied, "I ain't feeling good."

Was it a premonition? He wanted to quit the job, but I wouldn't let
him. I opened up on him. "What!" I said. "You are willing to steal one
piece of jewelry and take your chance of going to stir, but when we get
a good thing that would land us in Easy Street the rest of our lives,
you weaken!"

Dal was quiet, and his face unusually pale. He was a good fellow, but
his nerve was gone. I braced him up, however, and told him we'd get the
"éclat" the third time, sure. Then climbing the porch the third time, I
removed my shoes, raised the window again, and had just struck a light
when a revolver was pressed on my head. I knocked the man's hand up,
quick, and jumped. As I did so I heard a cry and then the beating of a
policeman's stick on the sidewalk.

I ran, with two men after me, and came to the gateway of a yard, where
I saw a big bloodhound chained to his kennel. He growled savagely, but
it was neck or nothing, so I patted his head just as though I were not
shaking with fear, slipped down on my hands and knees and crept into
his dog-house. Why didn't he bite me? Was it sympathy? When my pursuers
came up, the owner of the house, who had been aroused by the cries,
said: "He is not here. This dog would eat him up." When the police saw
the animal they were convinced of it too.

A little while later I left my friend's kennel. It was four o'clock in
the morning and I had no shoes on and only one dollar and sixty cents
in my pocket. I sneaked through the back window of the first house I
saw, stole a pair of shoes and eighty dollars from a room where a man
and his wife were sleeping. Then I took a car. Knowing that I was still
being looked for, I wanted to get rid of my hat, as a partial disguise.
On the seat with me was a working man asleep. I took his old soft hat,
leaving my new derby by his side, and also took his dinner pail. Then
when I left the car I threw away my collar and necktie, and reached New
York, disguised as a workingman. The next day the papers told how poor
old Dal had been arrested. Everything that had happened for weeks was
put on him.

A week later Dal was found dead in his cell, and I believe he did the
Dutch act (suicide), for I remember one day, months before that fatal
night, Dal and I were sitting in a politicians saloon, when he said to
me:

"Jim, do you believe in heaven?"

"No," said I.

"Do you believe in hell?" he asked.

"No," said I.

"I've got a mind to find out," he said quickly, and pointed a big
revolver at his teeth. One of the guns in the saloon said: "Let him try
it," but I knocked the pistol away, for something in his manner made me
think seriously he would shoot.

"You poor brute," I said to him. "I'll put your ashes in an urn some
day and write "Dear Old Saturday Night" for an epitaph for you; but it
isn't time yet."

It did not take many experiences like the above to make me very leary
of night-work; and I went more slowly for some time. I continued
to dip, however, more boldly than ever and to do a good deal of day
work; in which comparatively humble graft the servant girls, as I have
already said, used to help us out considerably. This class of women
never interested me as much as the sporting characters, but we used to
make good use of them; and sometimes they amused us.

I remember an entertaining episode which took place while Harry, a
pal of mine at the time, and I, were going with a couple of these
hard-working Molls. Harry was rather inclined to be a sure-thing
grafter, of which class of thieves I shall say more in another chapter;
and after my recent dangerous adventures I tolerated that class more
than was customary with me. Indeed, if Harry had been the real thing I
would have cut him dead; as it was he came near enough to the genuine
article to make me despise him in my ordinary mood. But, as I say, I
was uncommonly leary just at that time.

He and I were walking in Stuyvesant Square when we met a couple of
these domestic slaves. With a "hello," we rang in on them, walked them
down Second Avenue and had a few drinks all around. My girl told me
whom she was working with. Thinking there might be something doing I
felt her out further, with a view to finding where in the house the
stuff lay. Knowing the Celtic character thoroughly, I easily got the
desired information. We took the girls into Bonnell's Museum, at Eighth
Street and Broadway, and saw a howling border melodrama, in which wild
Indians were as thick as Moll-buzzers in 1884. Mary Anne, who was my
girl, said she should tell her mistress about the beautiful play; and
asked for a program. They were all out, and so I gave her an old one,
of another play, which I had in my pocket. We had a good time, and made
a date with them for another meeting, in two weeks from that night;
but before the appointed hour we had beat Mary Anne's mistress out of
two hundred dollars worth of silverware, easily obtained, thanks to
the information I had received from Mary Anne. When we met the girls
again, I found Mary Anne in a great state of indignation; I was afraid
she was "next" to our being the burglars, and came near falling through
the floor. But her rage, it seemed, was about the play. She had told
her mistress about the wild Indian melodrama she had seen, and then had
shown her the program of _The Banker's Daughter_.

"But there is no such thing as an Indian in _The Banker's Daughter_,"
her mistress had said. "I fear you are deceiving me, Mary Anne, and
that you have been to some low place on the Bowery."

The other servants in the house got next and kidded Mary Anne almost
to death about Indians and _The Banker's Daughter_. After I had quieted
her somewhat she told me about the burglary that had taken place at her
house, and Harry and I were much interested. She was sure the touch had
been made by two "naygers" who lived in the vicinity.

It was shortly after this incident that I beat Blackwell's Island out
of three months. A certain "heeler" put me on to a disorderly house
where we could get some stones. I had everything "fixed." The "heeler"
had arranged it with the copper on the beat, and it seemed like a sure
thing; although the Madam, I understood, was a good shot and had plenty
of nerve. My accomplice, the heeler, was a sure thing grafter, who had
selected me because I had the requisite nerve and was no squealer. At
two o'clock in the morning a trusted pal and I ascended from the back
porch to the Madam's bed-room. I had just struck a match, when I heard
a female voice say, "What are you doing there?" and a bottle, fired at
my head, banged up against the wall with a crash. I did not like to
alarm women, and so I made my "gets" out the window, over the fence,
and into another street, where I was picked up by a copper, on general
principles.

The Madam told him that the thief was over six feet tall and had a
fierce black mustache. As I am only five feet seven inches and was
smoothly shaven, it did not seem like an identification; although when
she saw me she changed her note, and swore I was the man. The copper,
who knew I was a grafter, though he did not think I did that kind of
work, nevertheless took me to the station-house, where I convinced
two wardmen that I had been arrested unjustly. When I was led before
the magistrate in the morning, the copper said the lady's description
did not tally with the short, red-haired and freckled thief before
his Honor. The policemen all agreed, however, that I was a notorious
grafter, and the magistrate, who was not much of a lawyer, sent me to
the Island for three months on general principles.

I was terribly sore, for I knew I had been illegally treated. I felt
as much a martyr as if I had not been guilty in the least; and I
determined to escape at all hazards; although my friends told me I
would be released any day; for certainly the evidence against me had
been insufficient.

After I had been on the Island ten days I went to a friend, who
had been confined there several months and said: "Eddy, I have been
unjustly convicted for a crime I committed--such was my way of putting
it--and I am determined to make my elegant, (escape) come what will. Do
you know the weak spots of this dump?"

He put me "next", and I saw there was a chance, a slim one, if a man
could swim and didn't mind drowning. I found another pal, Jack Donovan,
who, like me, could swim like a fish; he was desperate too, and willing
to take any chance to see New York. Five or six of us slept together
in one large cell, and on the night selected for our attempt, Jack and
I slipped into a compartment where about twenty short term prisoners
were kept. Our departure from the other cell, from which it was very
difficult to escape after once being locked in for the night, was not
noticed by the night guard and his trusty because our pals in the cell
answered to our names when they were called. It was comparatively easy
to escape from the large room where the short term men were confined.
Into this room, too, Jack and I had taken tools from the quarry during
the daytime.

It was twelve o'clock on a November night when we made our escape.
We took ropes from the canvas cot, tied them together, and lowered
ourselves to the ground on the outside, where we found bad weather,
rain and hail. We were unable to obtain a boat, but secured a telegraph
pole, rolled it into the water, and set off with it for New York.
The terrific tide at Hellgate soon carried us well into the middle
of Long Island Sound, and when we had been in the water half an hour,
we were very cold and numb, and began to think that all was over. But
neither of us feared death. All I wanted was to save enough money to
be cremated; and I was confident my friends would see to that. I don't
think fear of death is a common trait among grafters. Perhaps it is
lack of imagination; more likely, however, it is because they think
they won't be any the worse off after death.

Still, I was not sorry when a wrecking boat suddenly popped our way.
The tug did not see us, and hit Jack's end of the pole a hard blow that
must have shaken him off. I heard him holler "Save me," and I yelled
too. I didn't think anything about capture just then. All my desire to
live came back to me.

I was pulled into the boat. The captain was a good fellow. He was
"next" and only smiled at my lies. What was more to the purpose he
gave me some good whiskey, and set me ashore in Jersey City. Jack was
drowned. All through life I have been used to losing a friend suddenly
by the wayside; but I have always felt sad when it happened. And yet it
would have been far better for me if I had been picked out for an early
death. I guess poor Jack was lucky.

Certainly there are worse things than death. Through these three years
of continual and for the most part successful graft, I had known a
man named Henry Fry whose story is one of the saddest. If he had been
called off suddenly as Jack was, he would certainly have been deemed
lucky by those who knew; for he was married to a bad woman. He was
one of the most successful box-men (safe-blowers) in the city, and
made thousands, but nothing was enough for his wife. She used to say,
when he would put twelve hundred dollars in her lap, "This won't meet
expenses. I need one thousand dollars more." She was unfaithful to
him, too, and with his friends. When I go to a matinée and see a lot
of sleek, fat, inane looking women, I wonder who the poor devils are
who are having their life blood sucked out of them. Certainly it was so
with Henry, or Henny, as we used to call him.

One day, I remember, we went down the Sound with a well-known
politician's chowder party, and Henny was with us. Two weeks
earlier New York had been startled by a daring burglary. A large
silk-importer's place of business was entered and his safe, supposed
to be burglar-proof, was opened. He was about to be married, and his
valuable wedding presents, which were in the safe, and six thousand
dollars worth of silk, were stolen. It was Henny and his pals who
had made the touch, but on this beautiful night on the Sound, Henny
was sad. We were sitting on deck, as it was a hot summer night, when
Henny jumped off his camp-stool and asked me to sing a song. I sang
a sentimental ditty, in my tenor voice, and then Henny took me to the
side of the boat, away from the others.

"Kid," he said, "I feel trouble coming over me."

"Cheer up," I replied. "You're a little down-hearted, that's all."

"I wish to God," he said, "I was like you."

I pulled out a five dollar bill and a two dollar bill and remarked:
"I've got just seven dollars to my name."

He turned to me and said:

"But you are happy. You don't let anything bother you."

Henny did not drink as a rule; that was one reason he was such a good
box-man, but on this occasion we had a couple of drinks, and I sang
"I love but one." Then Henny ordered champagne, grew confidential, and
told me his troubles.

"Kid" he said, "I've got thirty five hundred dollars on me. I have
been giving my wife a good deal of money, but don't know what she does
with it. In sixty days I have given her three thousand dollars, and she
complains about poverty all the time."

Henny had a nice flat of seven or eight rooms; he owed nothing and
had no children. He said he was unable to find any bank books in his
wife's trunk, and was confident she was not laying the money by. She
did not give it to her people, but even borrowed money from her father,
a well-to-do builder.

Two days after the night of the excursion, one of Henny's pals in the
silk robbery, went into a gin mill, treated everybody, and threw a
one thousand dollar bill down on the bar. Grafters, probably more than
others, like this kind of display. It is the only way to rise in their
society. A Central Office detective saw this little exhibition, got
into the grafters confidence and weeded him out a bit. A night or two
afterwards Henny was in bed at home, when the servant girl, who was in
love with Henny, and detested his wife because she treated her husband
so badly (she used to say to me, "She ain't worthy to tie his shoe
string") came to the door and told Henny and his wife that a couple of
men and a policeman in uniform were inquiring for him. Henny replied
sleepily that they were friends of his who had come to buy some stones;
but the girl was alarmed. She knew that Henny was crooked and feared
that those below meant him no good. She took the canvas turn-about
containing burglar's tools which hung on the wall near the bed, and
pinned it around her waist, under her skirt, and then admitted the
three visitors.

The sergeant said to Henny, who had dressed himself, "You are under
suspicion for the silk robbery." Yet there was, as is not uncommon, a
"but," which is as a rule a monetary consideration. Henny knew that
the crime was old, and, as he thought his "fence" was safe, he did
not see how there could be a come-back. So he did not take the hint to
shell out, and worked the innocent con. But those whose business it is
to watch the world of prey, put two and two together, and were "next"
that Henny and his mob had pulled off the trick. So they searched the
house, expecting to find, if not _éclat_, at least burglars tools;
for they knew that Henny was at the top of the ladder, and that he
must have something to work with. While the sergeant was going through
Henny's trunk, one of the flymen fooled with the pretty servant girl.
She jumped, and a pair of turners fell on the floor. It did not take
the flyman long to find the whole kit of tools. Henny was arrested,
convicted, and sent to Sing Sing for five years. While in prison
he became insane, his delusion being that he was a funny man on the
Detroit Free Press, which he thought was owned by his wife.

I never discovered what Henny's wife did with the money she had from
him. When I last heard of her she was married to another successful
grafter, whom she was making unhappy also. In a grafter's life a woman
often takes the part of the avenger of society. She turns against the
grafters their own weapons, and uses them with more skill, for no man
can graft like a woman.

       *       *       *       *       *

I had now been grafting for three years in the full tide of success.
Since the age of eighteen I had had no serious fall. I had made
much money and lived high. I had risen in the world of graft, and
I had become, not only a skillful pickpocket, but a good swindler
and drag-worker and had done some good things as a burglar. I was
approaching my twenty-first year, when, as you will see, I was to go to
the penitentiary for the first time. This is a good place, perhaps, to
describe my general manner of life, my daily menu, so to speak, during
these three fat years: for after my first term in state's prison things
went from bad to worse.

I lived in a furnished room; or at a hotel. If there was nothing doing
in the line of graft, I'd lie abed late, and read the newspapers to see
if any large gathering, where we might make some touches, was on hand.
One of my girls, of whom there was a long succession, was usually with
me. We would breakfast, if the day was an idle one, about one or two
o'clock in the afternoon. Then we'd send to the restaurant and have
a beefsteak or chops in our rooms, and perhaps a whiskey sour. If it
was another grafter's girl I'd won I'd be greatly pleased, for that
kind of thing is a game with us. In the afternoon I'd take in some
variety show; or buy the "Tommy" a present; if it was summer we might
go to a picnic, or to the Island. If I was alone, I would meet a pal,
play billiards or pool, bet on the races, baseball and prize fights,
jump out to the Polo grounds, or go to Patsy's house and have a game
of poker. Patsy's wife was a handsome grafter; and Patsy was jealous.
Every gun is sensitive about his wife, for he doesn't know how long he
will have her with him. In the evening I would go to a dance-hall; or
to Coney Island if the weather was good.

If it was a busy day, that is, if there was a touch to be pulled off,
we would get up in the morning or the afternoon, according to the best
time for the particular job in hand. In the afternoon we would often
graft at the Polo grounds, where we had a copper "right." We did not
have the same privileges at the race track, because it was protected by
the Pinkerton men. We'd console ourselves at the Polo grounds, which
we used to tear wide open, and where I never got even a hint of a
fall; the coppers got their percentage of the touches. In the morning
we would meet at one of the grafters homes or rooms and talk over our
scheme for the day or night. If we were going outside the city we would
have to rise very early. Sometimes we were sorry we had lost our sleep;
particularly the time we tried to tear open the town of Sing Sing,
near which the famous prison is. We found nothing to steal there but
pig iron, and there were only two pretty girls in the whole village.
We used to jump out to neighboring towns, not always to graft, but
sometimes to see our girls, for like sailors, the well-dressed, dapper
pickpocket has a girl in every port. If we made a good touch in the
afternoon we'd go on a spree in the evening with Sheenie Annie, Blonde
Mamie, Big Lena or some other good-natured lasses, or we'd go over and
inspect the Jersey maidens. After a good touch we would put some of the
dough away for fall-money, or for our sick relatives or guns in stir
or in the hospital. We'd all chip in to help out a woman grafter in
trouble, and pool a piece of jewelry sometimes, for the purpose. Then,
our duty done, we would put on our best front, and visit our friends
and sporting places. Among others we used to jump over to a hotel kept
by an ex-gun, one of the best of the spud men (green goods men), who is
now on the level and a bit of a politician. He owns six fast horses, is
married and has two beautiful children.

A few months before I was sent to the penitentiary for the first time,
I had my only true love affair. I have liked many girls, but sentiment
of the kind I felt for Ethel has played little part in my life. For
Ethel I felt the real thing, and she for me. She was a good, sensible
girl, and came from a respectable family. She lived with her father,
who was a drummer, and took care of the house for him. She was a
good deal of a musician, and, like most other girls, she was fond of
dancing. I first met her at Beethoven Hall, and was introduced to her
by a man, an honest laborer, who was in love with her. I liked her at
first sight, but did not love her until I had talked with her. In two
weeks we were lovers, and went everywhere together. The workingman
who loved her too was jealous and began to knock me. He told her I
was a grafter, but she would not believe him; and said nothing to me
about it, but it came to my ears through an intimate girl pal of hers.
Shortly after that I fell for a breech-kick (was arrested for picking
a man's trouser's pocket), but I had a good lawyer and the copper
was one of those who are open to reason. I lay a month in the Tombs,
however, before I got off, and Ethel learned all about it. She came to
the Tombs to see me, but, instead of reproaches, I got sympathy from
her. After I was released I gave her some of my confidence. She asked
me if I wouldn't be honest, and go to work; and said she would ask
her father to get me a job. Her father came to me and painted what my
life would be, if I kept on. I thought the matter over sincerely. I
had formed expensive habits which I could not keep up on any salary I
could honestly make. Away down in my mind (I suppose you would call it
soul) I knew I was not ready for reform. I talked with Ethel, and told
her that I loved her, but that I could not quit my life. She said she
would marry me anyway. But I thought the world of her, and told her
that though I had blasted my own life I would not blast hers. I would
not marry her, she was so good and affectionate. When we parted, I said
to myself: Man proposes, habit disposes.

It was certainly lucky that I did not marry that sweet girl, for a
month after I had split with her, I fell for a long term in state's
prison. It was for a breech-kick, which I could not square. I had gone
out of my hotel one morning for a bottle of whiskey when I met two
grafters, Johnny and Alec, who were towing a "sucker" along with them.
They gave me the tip that it was worth trying. Indeed, I gathered that
the man must have his bank with him, and I nicked him in a car for his
breech-leather. A spectator saw the deed and tipped off a copper. I was
nailed, but had nothing on me, for I had passed the leather to Alec.
I was not in the mood for the police station, and with Alec's help I
"licked" the copper, who pulled his gun and fired at us as we ran up a
side street. Alec blazed back, and escaped, but I was arrested. I could
not square it, as I have said, for I had been wanted at Headquarters
for some time past, because I did not like to give up, and was no
stool-pigeon. I notified Mr. R----, who was told to keep his hands off.
I had been tearing the cars open for so long that the company wanted
to "do" me. They got brassy-mouthed and yelled murder. I saw I had
a corporation against me and hadn't a living chance to beat it. So I
pleaded guilty and received five years and seven months at Sing Sing.

A boy of twenty-one, I was hand-cuffed with two old jail-birds, and as
we rode up on a Fourth Avenue car to the Grand Central Station, I felt
deeply humiliated for the first time in my life. When the passengers
stared at me I hung my head with shame.




CHAPTER VII.

_In Stir._


I hung my head with shame, but not because of contrition. I was ashamed
of being caught and made a spectacle of. All the way to Sing Sing
station people stared at us as if we were wild animals. We walked from
the town to the prison, in close company with two deputy sheriffs. I
observed considerably, knowing that I should not see the outside world
again for a number of years. I looked with envy at the people we passed
who seemed honest, and thought of home and the chances I had thrown
away.

When I reached the stir I was put through the usual ceremonies. My
pedigree was taken, but I told the examiners nothing. I gave them a
false name and a false pedigree. Then a bath was given to my clothes
and I was taken to the tailor shop. When my hair had been cropped close
and a suit of stripes given me I felt what it was to be the convicted
criminal. It was not a pleasant feeling, I can tell you, and when I was
taken to my cell my heart sank indeed. A narrow room, seven feet, four
inches long; dark, damp, with moisture on the walls, and an old iron
cot with plenty of company, as I afterwards discovered--this was to be
my home for years. And I as full of life as a young goat! How could I
bear it?

After I had been examined by the doctor and questioned about my
religion by the chaplain, I was left to reflect in my cell. I was
interrupted in my melancholy train of thought by two convicts who
were at work in the hall just outside my cell. I had known them on
the outside, and they, taking good care not to be seen by the screws
(keepers) tipped me off through my prison door to everything in stir
which was necessary for a first timer to know. They told me to keep
my mouth shut, to take everything from the screws in silence, and if
assigned to a shop to do my work. They told me who the stool-pigeons
were, that is to say, the convicts who, in order to curry favor and
have an easy time, put the keepers next to what other convicts are
doing, and so help to prevent escapes. They tipped me off to those
keepers who were hard to get along with, and put me next to the
Underground Tunnel, and who were running it. Sing Sing, they said, is
the best of the three New York penitentiaries: for the grub is better
than at the others, there are more privileges, and, above all, it is
nearer New York, so that your friends can visit you more frequently.
They gave me a good deal of prison gossip, and told me who among my
friends were there, and what their condition of health was. So and so
had died or gone home, they said, such and such had been drafted to
Auburn or Clinton prisons. If I wanted to communicate with my friends
in stir all that was necessary for me to do was to write a few stiffs
(letters) and they would be sent by the Underground Tunnel. They asked
me about their old pals, hang-outs and girls in New York, and I, in
turn gave them a lot of New York gossip. Like all convicts they shed a
part of the things they had received from home, gave me canned goods,
tobacco and a pipe. It did not take me long to get on to the workings
of the prison.

I was particularly interested in the Underground Tunnel, for I saw
at once its great usefulness. This is the secret system by which
contraband articles, such as whiskey, opium and morphine are brought
into the prison. When a rogue is persuasive with the coin of the realm
he can always find a keeper or two to bring him what he considers
the necessaries of life, among which are opium, whiskey and tobacco.
If you have a screw "right," you can be well supplied with these
little things. To get him "right" it is often necessary to give him a
share--about twenty per cent--of the money sent you from home. This
system is worked in all the State prisons in New York, and during
my first term, or any of the other terms for that matter, I had no
difficulty in supplying my growing need for opium.

I do not want people to get the idea that it is always necessary to
bribe a keeper, in order to obtain these little luxuries; for many a
screw has brought me whiskey and hop, and contraband letters from other
inmates, without demanding a penny. A keeper is a human being like the
rest of us, and he is sometimes moved by considerations other than of
pelf. No matter how good and conscientious he may be, a keeper is but
a man after all, and, having very little to do, especially if he is in
charge of an idle gang of "cons" he is apt to enter into conversation
with them, particularly if they are better educated or more interesting
than he, which often is the case. They tell him about their escapades
on the outside and often get his sympathy and friendship. It is
only natural that those keepers who are good fellows should do small
favors for certain convicts. They may begin by bringing the convicts
newspapers to read, but they will end by providing them with almost
everything. Some of them, however, are so lacking in human sympathy,
that their kindness is aroused only by a glimpse of the coin of the
realm; or by the prospect of getting some convict to do their dirty
work for them, that is, to spy upon their fellow prisoners.

At Auburn penitentiary, whither I was drafted after nine months at
Sing Sing, a few of the convicts peddled opium and whiskey, with, of
course, the connivance of the keepers. There are always some persons in
prison as well as out who want to make capital out of the misfortunes
of others. These peddlars, were despised by the rest of the convicts,
for they were invariably stool-pigeons; and young convicts who never
before knew the power of the drug became opium fiends, all on account
of the business propensities of these detestable rats (stool-pigeons)
who, because they had money and kept the screws next to those cons who
tried to escape, lived in Easy Street while in stir.

While on this subject, I will tell about a certain famous "fence"
(at one of these prisons) although he did not operate until my second
term. At that time things were booming on the outside. The graft was so
good that certain convicts in my clique were getting good dough sent
them by their pals who were at liberty; and many luxuries came in,
therefore, by the Underground Tunnel. Now those keepers who are next
to the Underground develop, through their association with convicts, a
propensity to graft, but usually have not the nerve to hustle for the
goods. So they are willing to accept stolen property, not having the
courage and skill to steal, from the inhabitants of the under world.
A convict, whom I knew when at liberty, named Mike, thought he saw
an opportunity to do a good "fencing" business in prison. He gave a
"red-front" (gold watch and chain), which he had stolen in his good
days, to a certain keeper who was running the Underground, and thus
got him "right." Then Mike made arrangements with two grafters on the
outside to supply the keeper and his friends with what they wanted. If
the keeper said his girl wanted a stone, Mike would send word to one
of the thieves on the outside to supply a good diamond as quickly as
possible. The keeper would give Mike a fair price for these valuable
articles and then sell the stones or watches, or make his girl a
present.

Other keepers followed suit, for they couldn't see how there was any
"come-back" possible, and soon Mike was doing a thriving business. It
lasted for five or six months, when Mike stopped it as a regular graft
because of the growing cupidity of the keepers. One of them ordered
a woman's watch and chain and a pair of diamond ear-rings through the
Underground Tunnel. Mike obtained the required articles, but the keeper
paid only half of what he promised, and Mike thereupon shut up shop.
Occasionally, however, he continued to sell goods stolen by his pals
who were at liberty, but only for cash on the spot, and refused all
credit. The keepers gradually got a great feeling of respect for this
convict "fence" who was so clever and who stood up for his rights; and
the business went on smoothly again, for a while.

But finally it was broken up for good. A grafter on the outside, Tommy,
sent through the Underground a pawn ticket for some valuable goods,
among them a sealskin sacque worth three hundred dollars, which he
had stolen and hocked in Philadelphia. Mike sold the pawn-ticket to
a screw. Soon after that Tommy, or one of his pals, got a fall and
"squealed". The police got "next" to where the goods were, and when
the keeper sent the ticket and the money to redeem the articles they
allowed them to be forwarded to the prison, but arrested the keeper for
receiving stolen goods. He was convicted and sentenced to ten years,
but got off through influence. That, however, finished the "fence" at
the institution.

To resume the thread of my narrative, the day after I reached Sing Sing
I was put through the routine that lasted all the time I was there. At
six-thirty in the morning we were awakened by the bell and marched in
lock-step (from which many of us were to acquire a peculiar gait that
was to mark us through life and help prevent us from leading decent
lives) to the bucket-shop, where we washed, marched to the mess for
breakfast at seven-thirty, then to the various shops to work until
eleven-thirty, when at the whistle we would form again into squads
and march, again in the lock-step, fraternally but silently, to our
solemn dinner, which we ate in dead silence. Silence, indeed, except
on the sly, was the general rule of our day, until work was over, when
we could whisper together until five o'clock, the hour to return to
our cells, into which we would carry bread for supper, coffee being
conveyed to us through a spout in the wall. The food at Sing Sing was
pretty good. Breakfast consisted of hash or molasses, black coffee and
bread; and at dinner we had pork and beans, potatoes, hot coffee and
bread. Pork and beans gave place to four eggs on Friday, and sometimes
stews were given us. It was true what I'd heard, that Sing Sing has the
best food of any institution I have known. After five o'clock I would
read in my cell by an oil lamp (since my time electricity has been put
in the prison) until nine o'clock, when I had to put out my light and
go to bed.

I had a great deal more time for reading and meditation in my lonely
cell than one would think by the above routine. I was put to work in
the shop making chairs. It was the first time I had ever worked in my
life, and I took my time about it. I felt no strong desire to work for
the State. I was expected to cane a hundred chairs a day, but I usually
caned about two. I did not believe in work. I felt at that time that
New York State owed me a living. I was getting a living all right, but
I was ungrateful. I did not thank them a wee bit. I must have been a
bad example to other "cons," for they began to get as tired as myself.
At any rate, I lost my job, and was sent back to my cell, where I
stayed most of the time while at Sing Sing.

I worked, indeed, very little at any time during my three bits in the
penitentiary. The prison at Sing Sing, during the nine months I was
there on my first term, was very crowded, and there was not enough work
to go round; and I was absolutely idle most of the time. When I had
been drafted to Auburn I found more work to do, but still very little,
for it was just then that the legislature had shut down on contract
labor in the prisons. The outside merchants squealed because they could
not compete with unpaid convict labor; and so the prison authorities
had to shut down many of their shops, running only enough to supply
the inside demand, which was slight. For eighteen months at Auburn I
did not work a day. I think it was a very bad thing for the health of
convicts when this law was passed; for certainly idleness is a very bad
thing for most of them; and to be shut up nearly all the time in damp,
unhealthy cells like those at Sing Sing, is a terrible strain on the
human system.

Personally, however, I liked to be in my cell, especially during my
first year of solitary confinement, before my health began to give
way; for I had my books from the good prison libraries, my pipe or
cigarettes, and last, but not least, I had a certain portion of opium
that I used every day.

For me, prison life had one great advantage. It broke down my health
and confirmed me for many years in the opium habit, as we shall see;
but I educated myself while in stir. Previous to going to Sing Sing my
education had been almost entirely in the line of graft; but in stir,
I read the English classics and became familiar with philosophy and the
science of medicine and learned something about chemistry.

One of my favorite authors was Voltaire, whom I read, of course, in a
translation. His "Dictionary" was contraband in prison but I read it
with profit. Voltaire was certainly one of the shrewdest of men, and
as up to snuff as any cynical grafter I know, and yet he had a great
love for humanity. He was the philosopher of humanity. Goethe said
that Luther threw the world back two hundred years, but I deny it; for
Luther, like Voltaire, pointed out the ignorance and wickedness of the
priests of their day. These churchmen did not understand the teachings
of Christ. Was Voltaire delusional? The priests must have thought so,
but they were no judges, for they were far worse and less humane than
the French revolutionists. The latter killed outright, but the priests
tortured in the name of the Most Humane. I never approved of the
methods of the French revolutionists, but certainly they were gentle in
comparison with the priests of the Spanish Inquisition.

I think that, in variety of subjects, Voltaire has no equal among
writers. Shrewd as he was, he had a soul, and his moral courage was
grand. His defense of young Barry, who was arrested for using language
against the church, showed his kindness and breadth of mind. On his
arrival in Paris, when he was only a stripling, he denounced the
cowardly, fawning sycophants who surrounded Louis XIV,[B] and wrote
a sarcastic poem on His Nibs, and was confined in the Bastille for
two years. His courage, his wit, his sarcasms, his hatred of his
persecutors, and his love and kindness, stamp him as one of the great,
healthy intellects of mankind. What a clever book is _Candide_! What
satire! What wit! As I lay on my cot how often I laughed at his caustic
comments on humanity! And how he could hate! I never yet met a man of
any account who was not a good hater. I own that Voltaire was ungallant
toward the fair sex. But that was his only fault.

I enjoyed Victor Hugo because he could create a great character, and
was capable of writing a story with a plot. I rank him as a master
of fiction, although I preferred his experience as a traveller, to
his novels, which are not real enough. Ernest Renan was a bracing
and clever writer, but I was sadly disappointed in reading his _Life
of Jesus_. I expected to get a true outline of Christ's time and
a character sketch of the man himself, but I didn't. I went to the
fountain for a glass of good wine, but got only red lemonade.

I liked Dumas, and revelled in the series beginning with _The Three
Musketeers_. I could not read Dumas now, however. I also enjoyed
Gaboriau and Du Boisgobey, for they are very sensational; but that was
during my first term in stir. I could not turn a page of their books
now, for they would seem idiotic to me. Balzac is a bird of another
feather. In my opinion he was one of the best dissectors of human
nature that the world ever produced. Not even Shakespeare was his
equal. His depth in searching for motives, his discernment in detecting
a hypocrite, his skill in showing up women, with their follies, their
loves, their little hypocrisies, their endearments, their malice and
their envy is unrivalled. It is right that Balzac should show woman
with all her faults and follies and virtues, for if she did not possess
all these characteristics, how could man adore her?

In his line I think Thackeray is as great as Balzac. When I had read
_Vanity Fair_, _Pendennis_, _The Newcomes_ and _Barry Lyndon_, I was
so much interested that I read anything of his I could lay my hands
on, over and over again. With a novel of Thackeray's in my hand I would
become oblivious to my surroundings, and long to know something of this
writers personality. I think I formed his mental make-up correctly,
for I imagined him to be gentle and humane. Any man with ability and
brains equal to his could not be otherwise. What a character is Becky
Sharp! In her way she was as clever a grafter as Sheenie Annie. She did
not love Rawdon as a good wife should. If she had she would not be the
interesting Becky that she is. She was grateful to Rawdon for three
reasons; first, he married her; second, he gave her a glimpse into a
station in life her soul longed for; third, he came from a good family,
and was a soldier and tall, and it is well-known that little women
like big men. Then Rawdon amused Becky. She often grinned at his lack
of brains. She grinned at everything, and when we learn that Becky got
religion at the end of the book, instead of saying, God bless her, we
only grin, too.

_Pendennis_ is a healthy book. I always sympathize with Pen and Laura
in their struggles to get on, and when the baby was born I was willing
to become Godpapa, just for its Mamma's sake. _The Newcomes_ I call
Thackeray's masterpiece. It is truer to life than any other book I
ever read. Take the scene where young Clive throws the glass of wine
in his cousin's face. The honest horror of the father, his indignation
when old Captain Costigan uses bad language, his exit when he hears a
song in the Music Hall--all this is true realism. But the scene that
makes this book Thackeray's masterpiece is that where the old Colonel
is dying. The touching devotion of Madam and Ethel, the love for old
Tom, his last word "_adsum_" the quiet weeping of his nurse, and the
last duties to the dead; the beautiful tenderness of the two women, of
a kind that makes the fair sex respected by all men--I can never forget
this scene till my dying day.

When I was sick in stir a better tonic than the quack could prescribe
was Thackeray's _Book of Snobs_. Many is the night I could not sleep
until I had read this book with a relish. It acted on me like a bottle
of good wine, leaving me peaceful after a time of pleasure. In this
book are shown up the little egotisms of the goslings and the foibles
of the sucklings in a masterly manner.

I read every word Dickens ever wrote; and I often ruminated in my
mind as to which of his works is the masterpiece. _Our Mutual Friend_
is weak in the love scenes, but the book is made readable by two
characters, Noddy Boffin and Silas Wegg. Where Wegg reads, as he
thinks, _The Last of the Russians_, when the book was _The Decline and
Fall Of the Roman Empire_, there is the quintessence of humor. Silas's
wooden leg and his occupation of selling eggs would make anybody smile,
even a dip who had fallen and had no money to square it.

The greatest character in _David Copperfield_ is Uriah Heep. The prison
scene where this humble hypocrite showed he knew his Bible thoroughly,
and knew the advantage of having some holy quotations pat, reminded
me often of men I have known in Auburn and Sing Sing prisons. Some
hypocritical jail-bird would dream that he could succeed on the outside
by becoming a Sunday School superintendent; and four of the meanest
thieves I ever knew got their start in that way. Who has not enjoyed
Micawber, with his frothy personality and straitened circumstances,
and the unctuous Barkis.--Poor Emily! Who could blame her? What woman
could help liking Steerforth? It is strange and true that good women
are won by men they know to be rascals. Is it the contrast between Good
and Evil, or is it because the ne'er-do-well has a stronger character
and more magnetic force? Agnes was one of the best women in the world.
Contrast her with David's first wife. Agnes was like a fine violin,
while Dora was like a wailing hurdy-gurdy.

_Oliver Twist_ is Dickens's strongest book. He goes deeper into human
nature there than in any other of his writings. Fagin, the Jew, is a
very strong character, but overdrawn. The picture of Fagin's dens and
of the people in them, is true to life. I have seen similar gatherings
many a time. The ramblings of the Artful Dodger are drawn from the real
thing, but I never met in real life such a brutal character as Bill
Sykes; and I have met some tough grafters, as the course of this book
will show. Nancy Sykes, however, is true to life. In her degradation
she was still a woman. I contend that a woman is never so low but a
man was the cause. One passage in the book has often touched me, as it
showed that Nancy had not lost her sex. When she and Bill were passing
the prison, she turned towards it and said: "Bill, they were fine
fellows that died to-day." "Shut your mouth," said Bill. Now I don't
think there is a thief in the United States who would have answered
Nancy's remark that way. Strong arm workers who would beat your brains
out for a few dollars would be moved by that touch of pity in Nancy's
voice.

But Oliver himself is the great character, and his story reminds me
of my own. The touching incident in the work-house where his poor
stomach is not full, and he asks for a second platter of mush to the
horror of the teachers, is not overdrawn. When I was in one of our
penal institutions, at a later time of my life, I was ill, and asked
for extra food; but my request was looked upon as the audacity of a
hardened villain. I had many such opportunities to think of Oliver.

I always liked those authors who wrote as near life as decency would
permit. Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_ has often amused me, and _Tom
Jones_, _Roderick Random_ and _Peregrine Pickle_ I have read over and
over again. I don't see why good people object to such books. Some
people are forever looking after the affairs of others and neglecting
their own; especially a man whom I will call Common Socks who has put
himself up as a mentor for over seventy millions of people. Let me tell
the busy ladies who are afraid that such books will harm the morals of
young persons that the more they are cried down the more they will be
read. For that matter they ought to be read. Why object to the girl
of sixteen reading such books and not to the woman of thirty-five?
I think their mental strength is about equal. Both are romantic and
the woman of thirty-five will fall in love as quickly as the girl of
sixteen. I think a woman is always a girl; at least, it has been so in
my experience. One day I was grafting in Philadelphia. It was raining,
and a woman was walking along on Walnut Street. She slipped on the wet
sidewalk and fell. I ran to her assistance, and saw that her figure was
slim and girlish and that she had a round, rosy face, but that her hair
was pure white. When I asked her if she was hurt, she said "yes," but
when I said "Let me be your grandson and support you on my way," I put
my foot into it, for, horrors! the look she gave me, as she said in an
icy voice, "I was never married!" I wondered what manner of men there
were in Philadelphia, and, to square myself, I said: "Never married!
and with a pair of such pretty ankles!" Then she gave me a look,
thanked me, and walked away as jauntily as she ever did in her life,
though she must have been suffering agonies from her sprained ankle.
Since that time I have been convinced that they of the gentle sex are
girls from fifteen to eighty.

I read much of Lever, too, while I was in stir. His pictures of Ireland
and of the noisy strife in Parliament, the description of Dublin with
its spendthrifts and excited populace, the gamblers and the ruined but
gay young gentlemen, all mixed up with the grandeur of Ireland, are the
work of a master. I could only compare this epoch of worn-out regalia
with a St. Patrick's day parade twenty years ago in the fourth ward of
Manhattan.

Other books I read in stir were Gibbon's _Roman Empire_, Carlyle's
_Frederick the Great_, and many of the English poets. I read
Wordsworth, Gray and Goldsmith, but I liked Tom Moore and Robert Burns
better. The greatest of all the poets, however, in my estimation, is
Byron. His loves were many, his adventures daring, and his language was
as broad and independent as his mind.


FOOTNOTE:

     [B] _Sic._ (Editor's Note.)




CHAPTER VIII.

In Stir (_continued_).


Sing Sing was overflowing with convicts, and after I had been there
nine months, I and a number of others were transferred to Auburn
penitentiary. There I found the cells drier, and better than at
Sing Sing, but the food not so good. The warden was not liked by the
majority of the men, but I admired him for two things. He believed in
giving us good bread; and he did not give a continental what came into
the prison, whether it was a needle or a cannister, as long as it was
kept in the cell and not used.

It was in Auburn stir that opium grew to be a habit with me. I used to
give the keepers who were running the Underground one dollar of every
five that were sent me, and they appreciated my kindness and kept me
supplied with the drug. What part the hop began to play in my life may
be seen from the routine of my days at Auburn; particularly at those
periods when there was no work to be done. After rising in the morning
I would clean out my cell, and turn up my bed and blankets; then I went
to breakfast, then if there was no work to do, back to my cell, where
I ate a small portion of opium, and sometimes read the daily paper,
which was also contraband. It is only the stool-pigeons, those convicts
who have money, or the cleverest among the rascals, who get many of
these privileges. After I had had my opium and the newspaper I would
exercise with dumb-bells and think or read in my cell. Then I would
have a plunge bath and a nap, which would take me up to dinner time.
After dinner I would read in my cell again until three o'clock, when I
would go to the bucket-shop or exercise for half an hour in the yard,
in lock step, with the others; then back to the cell, taking with me
bread and a cup of coffee made out of burnt bread crust, for my supper.
In the evening I would read and smoke until my light went out, and
would wind up the day with a large piece of opium, which grew larger,
as time passed.

For a long time I was fairly content with what was practically solitary
confinement. I had my books, my pipe, cigarettes and my regular supply
of hop. Whether I worked in the daytime or not I would usually spend my
evenings in the same way. I would lie on my cot and sometimes a thought
like the following would come to me: "Yes, I have stripes on. When I
am released perhaps some one will pity me, particularly the women. They
may despise and avoid me, most likely they will. But I don't care. All
I want is to get their wad of money. In the meantime I have my opium
and my thoughts and am just as happy as the millionaire, unless he has
a narcotic."

After the drug had begun to work I would frequently fall into a deep
sleep and not wake until one or two o'clock the following morning; then
I would turn on my light, peer through my cell door, and try to see
through the little window out in the corridor. A peculiar nervousness
often came over me at this hour, particularly if the weather had been
rainy, and my imagination would run on a ship-wreck very often, or on
some other painful subject; and I might tell the story to myself in
jingles, or jot it down on a piece of paper. Then my whole being would
be quiet. A gentle, soothing melancholy would steal upon me. Often
my imagination was so powerfully affected that I could really see
the events of my dream. I could see the ship tossing about on waves
mountain high. Then and only then I was positive I had a soul. I was
in such a state of peace that I could not bear that any human being
should suffer. At first the scenes before my imagination would be most
harrowing, with great loss of life, but when one of the gentle sex
appeared vividly before me a shudder passed over me, and I would seek
consolation in jingles such as the following:

     A gallant bark set sail one day
     For a port beyond the sea,
     The Captain had taken his fair young bride
     To bear him company.
     This little brown lass
     Was of Puritan stock.
     Her eyes were the brightest e'er seen.
     They never came back;
     The ship it was wrecked
     In a storm in the old Gulf Stream.

     Two years had passed, then a letter came
     To a maid in a New England town.
     It began Darling Kate, it ended Your Jack,
     I am alive in a foreign land.
     The Captain, his gentle young wife and your own
     Were saved by that hand unseen,
     But the rest----they went down
     In that terrible storm
     That night in the old Gulf Stream.

But these pleasures would soon leave me, and I would grow very
restless. My only resource was another piece of opium. Sometimes I
awoke much excited, paced my cell rapidly and felt like tearing down
the door. Sometimes a book would quiet me. The best soother I had
was the most beautiful poem in the English language--Walt Whitman's
_Ode To Death_. When I read this poem, I often imagined I was at the
North Pole, and that strange shapes in the clouds beckoned me to come
to them. I used to forget myself, and read aloud and was entirely
oblivious to my surroundings, until I was brought to myself by the
night guard shouting, "What in ---- is the matter with you?"

After getting excited in this way I usually needed another dose of
hop. I have noticed that the difference between opium and alcohol is
that the latter is a disintegrator and tears apart, while the opium
is a subtle underminer. Opium, for a long time anyway, stimulates the
intelligence; while the reverse is true of alcohol. It was under the
influence of opium that I began to read philosophy. I read Hume and
Locke, and partly understood them, I think, though I did not know
that Locke is pronounced in only one syllable till many years after
I had read and re-read parts of _The Human Understanding_. It was not
only the opium, but my experience on the outside, that made me eager
for philosophy and the deeper poetry; for a grafters wits, if they
don't get away from him altogether, become keen through his business,
since he lives by them. It was philosophy, and the spectacle of men
going suddenly and violently insane all about me, that led me first
to think of self-control, though I did not muster enough to throw
off the opium habit till many years afterwards. I began to think of
will-power about this time, and I knew it was an acquired virtue, like
truth and honesty. I think, from a moral standpoint, that I lived as
good a life in prison as anybody on the outside, for at least I tried
to overcome myself. It was life or death, or, a thousand times worse,
an insane asylum. Opium led me to books besides those on philosophy,
which eventually helped to cure me. At this time I was reading Balzac,
Shakespeare, Huxley, Tyndall and Lavater. One poem of Shakespeare's
touched me more than any other poem I ever read--_The Rape of Lucrece_.
It was reading such as this that gave me a broader view, and I began to
think that this was a terrible life I was leading. But, as the reader
will see, I did not know what hell was until several years later.

I had been in stir about four years on my first bit when I began to
appreciate how terrible a master I had come under. Of course, to a
certain extent, the habit had been forced upon me. After a man has
had for several years bad food, little air and exercise, no natural
companionship, particularly with the other sex, from whom he is
entirely cut off, he really needs a stimulant. Many men fall into the
vilest of habits. I found, for my part, that only opium would calm
me. It takes only a certain length of time for almost all convicts to
become broken in health, addicted to one form or another of stimulant
which in the long run pulls them down completely. Diseases of various
kinds, insanity and death, are the result. But before the criminal
is thus released, he grows desperate in the extreme; particularly if
he resorts to opium, for that drug makes one reckless. The hop fiend
never takes consequences into consideration. Under its influence I
became very irritable and unruly, and would take no back talk from the
keepers. They and the stool-pigeons began to be afraid of me. I would
not let them pound me in any way, and I often got into a violent fight.

As long as I had my regular allowance of opium, which in the fourth
year of my term was about twenty grains a day, I was peaceable enough.
It was when I began to lessen the amount, with the desire to give
it up, that I became so irritable and violent. The strain of reform,
even in this early and unsuccessful attempt, was terrible. At times I
used to go without the full amount for several days; but then I would
relapse and go on a debauch until I was almost unconscious. After
recovery, I would make another resolution, only to fall again.

But my life in stir was not all that of the solitary; there were means,
even when I was in the shop, of communicating with my fellow convicts;
generally by notes, as talking was forbidden. Notes, too, were
contraband, but we found means of sending them through cons working
in the hall. Sometimes good-natured or avaricious keepers would carry
them; but as a rule a convict did not like to trust a note to a keeper.
He was afraid that the screw would read it, whereas it was a point of
honor with a convict to deliver the note unread. The contents of these
notes were usually news about our girls or pals, which we had received
through visitors--rare, indeed!--or letters. By the same means there
was much betting done on the races, baseball games and prize fights. We
could send money, too, or opium, in the same way, to a friend in need;
and we never required an I. O. U.

We were allowed to receive visitors from the outside once every two
months; also a box could be delivered to us at the same intervals
of time. My friends, especially my mother and Ethel, sent me things
regularly, and came to see me. They used to send me soap, tooth brushes
and many other delicacies, for even a tooth brush is a delicacy in
prison. Ethel stuck to me for three years and visited me regularly
during that period. Then her visits ceased, and I heard that she had
married. I couldn't blame her, but I felt bad about it all the same.

But my mother came as often as the two months rolled by; not only
during this first term, but during all my bits in stir. Certainly
she has stuck to me through thick and thin. She has been my only true
friend. If she had fallen away from me, I couldn't have blamed her;
she would only have gone with the rest of the world; but she didn't.
She was good not only to me, but to my friends, and she had pity for
everybody in stir. I remember how she used to talk about the rut worn
in the stone pavement at Sing Sing, where the men paced up and down.
"Talk about the Bridge of Sighs!" she used to say.

When a man is in stir he begins to see what an ungrateful brute he
has been; and he begins to separate true friends from false ones. He
thinks of the mother he neglected for supposed friends of both sexes,
who are perhaps friendly at the beginning of his sentence, but soon
desert him if he have a number of years to serve. Long after all others
have ceased coming to see him, his old mother, bowed and sad, will
trudge up the walk from the station to visit her thoughtless and erring
son! She carries on her arm a heavy basket of delicacies for the son
who is detested by all good citizens, and in her heart there is still
hope for her boy. She has waited many years and she will continue to
wait. What memories come to the mother as she sees the mansion of woes
on the Hudson looming up before her! Her son is again a baby in her
imagination; or a young fellow, before he began to tread the rocky
path!--They soon part, for half an hour is all that is given, but they
will remember forever the mothers kiss, the son's good-bye, the last
choking words of love and familiar advice, as she says: "Trust in God,
my lad."

After one of my mothers visits I used to have more sympathy for my
fellow convicts. I was always a keen observer, and in the shops or
at mess time, and when we were exercising together in lock step, or
working about the yard or in the halls, I used to "feel out" my brother
"cons," often with a kindly motive. I grew very expert in telling when
a friend was becoming insane; for imprisonment leads to insanity, as
everybody knows. Many a time a man I knew in stir would grow nervous
or absent-minded, then suspicious, and finally would be sent to the
madhouse at Dannemora or Matteawan.

For instance, take a friend of mine named Billy. He was doing a bit
of ten years. In the fifth year of his sentence I noticed that he was
brooding, and I asked him what was the matter.

"I am afraid," he said, "that my wife is going outside of me."

"You are not positive, are you?" I asked.

"Well," he answered, "she visited me the other day, and she was looking
good (prosperous). My son was with her, and he looked good, too.
She gave me five dollars and some delicacies. But she never had five
dollars when I was on the outside."

"She's working," said I, trying to calm him.

"No; she has got a father and mother," he replied, "and she is living
with them."

"Billy," I continued, "how long have you been in stir?"

"Growing on six years," he said.

"Billy," I proceeded, "what would you do if you were on the outside and
she was in prison for six years?"

"Well," he replied, "I'd have to give myself some rope."

"Philosophers claim that it is just as hard for a woman to live alone
as for a man," I said. "You're unreasonable, Billy. Surely you can't
blame her."

Billy's case is an instance of how, when a convict has had bad food,
bad air and an unnatural routine for some time, he begins to borrow
trouble. He grows anæmic and then is on the road to insanity. If he
has a wife he almost always grows suspicious of her, though he does not
speak about it until he has been a certain number of years in prison.
It was not long after the above conversation took place that Billy was
sent to the insane asylum at Matteawan.

Sometimes, after a man has begun to grow insane, he will show it by
reticence, rather than by talkativeness, according to his disposition.
One of my intimate friends, in stir much longer than I, was like a ray
of sunshine, witty and a good story teller. His laugh was contagious
and we all liked to see him. He was one of the best night prowlers
(burglars) in the profession, and had many other gifts. After he
had been in stir, however, for a few years, he grew reticent and
suspicious, thought that everybody was a stool-pigeon, and died a
raving maniac a few years later at Matteawan.

Sometimes a convict will grow so nervous that he will attempt to
escape, even when there is no chance, or will sham insanity. An
acquaintance of mine, Louis, who had often grafted with me when we
were on the outside, told me one day he did not expect to live his bit
out. When confined a man generally thinks a lot about his condition,
reads a book on medicine and imagines he has every disease the book
describes. Louis was in this state, and he consulted me and two others
as to whether he ought not to "shoot a bug" (sham insanity); and so
get transferred to the hospital. One advised him to attack a keeper and
demand his baby back. But as Billy had big, black eyes and a cadaverous
face, I told him he'd better shoot the melancholy bug; for he could
do that better. Accordingly in the morning when the men were to go to
work in the stone yard, Billy appeared in the natural (naked). He had
been stalled off by two friends until he had reached the yard. There
the keepers saw him, and as they liked him, they gently took him to
the hospital. He was pronounced incurably insane by two experts, and
transferred to the madhouse. The change of air was so beneficial that
Louis speedily recovered his senses. At least, the doctors thought so
when he was discovered trying to make his elegant (escape); and he was
sent back to stir.

As a rule, however, those who attempted to sham insanity failed. They
were usually lacking in originality. At any hour of the day or night
the whole prison might be aroused by some convict breaking up house,
as it was called when a man tried to shoot the bug. He might break
everything in his cell, and yell so loud that the other convicts in the
cells near by would join in and make a horrible din. Some would curse,
and some laugh or howl. If it was at night and they had been awakened
out of an opium sleep, they would damn him a thousand miles deep. His
friends, however, who knew that he was acting, would plug his game
along by talking about his insanity in the presence of stool-pigeons.
These latter would tell the keepers that he was buggy (insane), and,
if there was not a blow, he might be sent to the hospital. Before that
happened, however, he had generally demolished all his furniture. The
guards would go to his cell, and chain him up in the Catholic chapel
until he could be examined by the doctor. Warden Sage was a humane man,
and used to go to the chapel himself and try to quiet the fake lunatic,
and give him dainties from his own table. During the night the fake had
historic company, for painted on the walls were, on one side of him,
Jesus, and on the other, Judas and Mary Magdalene.

A favorite method of shooting the bug, and a rather difficult one for
the doctors to detect, was that of hearing voices in one's cell. This
is more dangerous for the convict than for anybody else, for when a
fake tries to imagine he hears voices, he usually begins to really
believe he does, and then from a fake he becomes a genuine freak.
Another common fake is to tell the keeper that you have a snake in
your arm, and then take a knife and try to cut it out; but it requires
nerve to carry this fake through. Sometimes the man who wants to make
the prison hospital merely fakes ordinary illness. If he has a screw or
a doctor "right" he may stay for months in the comparatively healthy
hospital at Sing Sing, where he can loaf all day, and get better food
than at the public mess. It is as a rule only the experienced guns who
are clever enough to work these little games.

For faking, conversing, loafing in the shop, and for many other
forbidden things, we were often punished, though the screws as often
winked at small misdemeanors. At Sing Sing they used to hang us up by
the wrists sometimes until we fainted. Auburn had a jail, now used as
the condemned cells, where there was no bed and no light. In this place
the man to be punished would remain from four to ten days and live on
ten ounces of bread and half a jug of water a day. In addition, the
jail was very damp, worse even than the cells at Sing Sing, where I
knew many convicts who contracted consumption of the lungs and various
kidney complaints.

Indeed, a great deal of dying goes on in State's prison. During my
first term it seemed as if three niggers died to every white man. A
dozen of us working around the front would comment on the "stiffs"
when they were carried out. One would ask, "Who's dead?" The reply
might be, "Only a nigger." One day I was talking in the front with a
hall-room man when a stiff was put in the wagon. "Who's dead?" I asked.
The hall-man wanted to bet it was a nigger. I bet him a dollar it was
a white man, and then asked the hospital nurse, who said it was not a
nigger, but an old pal of mine, named Jerry Donovan. I felt sore and
would not accept the money I had won. Poor Jerry and I did house-work
together for three months, some of which I have told of, and he was a
good fellow, and a sure and reliable grafter. And now he had "gone up
the escape," and was being carried to the little graveyard on the side
of the hill where only an iron tag would mark his place of repose.

My intelligence was naturally good, and when I began to get some
education I felt myself superior to many of my companions in stir. I
was not alone in this feeling, for in prison there are many social
cliques; though fewer than on the outside. Men who have been high
up and have held responsible positions when at liberty make friends
in stir with men they formerly would not have trusted as their
boot-blacks. The professional thieves usually keep together as much as
possible in prison, or communicate together by means of notes; though
sometimes they associate with men who, not professional grafters, have
been sent up for committing some big forgery, or other big swindle. The
reason for this is business; for the gun generally has friends among
the politicians, and he wants to associate while in stir only with
others who have influence. It is the guns who are usually trusted by
the screws in charge of the Underground Tunnel, for the professional
thief is less likely to squeal than the novice. Therefore, the big
forger who has stolen thousands, and may be a man of ability and
education appreciates the friendship of the professional pickpocket
who can do him little favors, such as railroading his mail through the
Underground, and providing him with newspapers, or a bottle of booze.

The pull of the professional thief with outside politicians often
procures him the respect and consideration of the keepers. One day a
convict, named Ed White, was chinning with an Irish screw, an old man
who had a family to support. Jokes in stir lead to friendship, and when
the keeper told Ed that he was looking for a job for his daughter, who
was a stenographer, Ed said he thought he could place her in a good
position. The old screw laughed and said; "You loafer, if you were made
to carry a hod you wouldn't be a splitting matches in stir." But Ed
meant what he had said, and wrote to the famous Tammany politician, Mr.
Wet Coin, who gave the girl a position as stenographer at a salary of
fourteen dollars a week. The old screw took his daughter to New York,
and when he returned to Auburn he began to "Mister" Ed. "I 'clare to
God," he said, "I don't know what to make out of you. Here you are
eating rotten hash, cooped up like a wild animal, with stripes, when
you might be making twelve to fifteen dollars a week." Ed replied,
sarcastically, "That would about keep me in cigar money."

One of the biggest men I knew in stir was Jim A. McBlank, at one time
chief of police and Mayor of Coney Island. He was sent to Sing Sing
for his repeating methods at election, at which game he was A No. 1.
He got so many repeaters down to the island that they were compelled
to register as living under fences, in dog kennels, tents, or any old
place. There was much excitement in the prison when the Lord of Coney
Island was shown around the stir by Principal Keeper Connoughton. He
was a good mechanic, and soon had a gang of men working under him;
though he was the hardest worker of them all. After he had been there
awhile the riff-raff of of the prison, though they had never heard
the saying that familiarity breeds contempt, dropped calling him
Mr. McBlank, and saluted him as plain Jimmy. He was never in touch,
however, with the majority of the convicts, for he was too close to the
authorities; and the men believe that convicts can not be on friendly
terms with the powers that be unless they are stool-pigeons. Another
thing that made the "cons" dislike the Mayor was the fact, that, when
he was chief of police, he had settled a popular dip named Feeley for
ten years and a half. The very worst thing against him, however, was
his private refrigerator in which he kept butter, condensed milk and
other luxuries, which he did not share with the other convicts. One
day a young convict named Sammy, tried to beat Sing Sing. He bricked
himself up in the wall, leaving a movable opening at the bottom.
While waiting a chance to escape Sammy used to sally forth from his
hiding-place and steal something good from McBlank's box. One night,
while helping himself to the Mayor's delicacies, he thought he heard
a keeper, and hastily plunging his arm into the refrigerator he made
away with a large piece of butter. What did the ex-Chief of police do
but report the loss of his butter to the screws which put them next to
the fact that the convict they had been looking for for nine nights was
still in the stir. The next night they would have rung the "all-right"
bell, and given up the search, and indeed, they rang the bell, but
watched; and when Sammy, thinking he could now go to New York, came out
of his hiding place, he was caught. When the story circulated in the
prison all kinds of vengeance were vowed against McBlank, who was much
frightened. I heard him say that he would rather have lost his right
arm than see the boy caught. What a come-down for a man who could throw
his whole city for any state or national candidate at election time,
to be compelled to apologize as McBlank was, to the lowest element
in prison. Here indeed was the truth of that old saying: pride goeth
before a fall.

One of the best liked of the convicts I met during my first bit was
Ferdinand Ward, who got two years for wrecking the firm in which
General Grant and his son were partners. He did many a kindness in stir
to those who were tough and had few friends. Another great favorite
was Johnny Hope, son of Jimmy Hope, who stole three millions from the
Manhattan Bank. The father got away, and Johnny, who was innocent,
was nailed by a copper looking for a reputation, and settled for
twenty years in Sing Sing, because he was his father's son and had the
misfortune to meet an ambitious copper. When Johnny had been in prison
about ten years, the inspector, who was the former copper, went to the
Governor, and said he was convinced that the boy was innocent. But
how about young Hope's wrecked life? Johnny's father, indeed, was a
well-known grafter whom I met in Auburn, where we worked together for a
while in the broom-shop. He was much older than I, and used to give me
advice.

"Don't ever do a day's work in your life, my boy," he would say,
"unless you can't help it. You are too intelligent to be a drudge."

Another common remark of his was: "Trust no convict," and a third was:
"It is as easy to steal five thousand dollars as it is to steal five
dollars."

Old man Hope had stolen millions and ought to know what he was talking
about. In personal appearance he was below the medium height, had light
gray hair and as mild a pair of eyes as I ever saw in man or woman. I
ranked him as a manly old fellow, and he was an idol among the small
crooks, though he did not have much to do with them. He seemed to like
to talk to me, partly because I never talked graft, and he detested
such talk particularly among prison acquaintances. He referred one day
to a pick pocket in stir who was always airing what he knew about the
graft. "He's tiresome," said old Hope. "He is always talking shop."

One of the worst hated men at Auburn was Weeks, a well-known club man
and banker, who once stole over a million dollars. He was despised
by the other convicts, for he was a "squealer." One of the screws in
charge of the Underground Tunnel was doing things for Weeks, who had
a snap,--the position of book-keeper, in the clothing department. In
his desk he kept whiskey, beer and cigars, and lived well. One day a
big bug paid him a visit, and Weeks belched how he had to give up his
watch and chain in order to secure luxuries. His friend, the big bug,
reported to the prison authorities, and the principal keeper went to
Weeks and made the coward squeal on the keeper who had his "front." The
screw lost his job, and when the convicts heard of it, they made Weeks'
life miserable for years.

But the man who was hated worst of all those in prison was Biff
Ellerson. I never understood why the other cons hated him, unless
it was that he always wore a necktie; this is not etiquette in stir,
which in the convicts' opinion ought to be a place of mourning. He had
been a broker and a clubman, and was high up in the world. Ellerson
was a conscientious man, and once, when a mere boy, who had stolen
a ten dollar watch, was given fifteen years, had publicly criticized
the judge and raised a storm in the newspapers. Ellerson compared this
lad's punishment with that of a man like Weeks, who had robbed orphans
out of their all and only received ten years for it. Many is the time
that this man, Biff Ellerson, has been kind to men in stir who hated
him. He had charge of the dungeon at Auburn where convicts who had
broken the rules were confined. I have known him to open my door and
give me water on the quiet, many a time, and he did it for others who
were ungrateful, and at the risk, too, of never being trusted again by
the screws and of getting a dose of the cuddy-hole himself.

By far the greater number of these swell grafters who steal millions
die poor, for it is not what a man steals, but what he saves, that
counts. I have often noticed that the bank burglar who is high up in
his profession is not the one who has the most money when he gets to be
forty-five or fifty years of age. The second or third class gun is more
likely to lay by something. His general expenses are not so large and
he does not need so much fall-money; and in a few years he can usually
show more money than the big gun who has a dozen living on him. I knew
a Big One who told me that every time he met a certain police official,
his watch, a piece of jewelry, a diamond stud or even his cuff buttons
were much admired. The policeman always had some relative or friend who
desired just the kind of ornament the Big One happened to be wearing at
the time.

I cannot help comparing those swell guys whom I knew at Sing Sing
with a third class pickpocket I met on the same bit. The big ones are
dead or worse, but the other day I met, in New York, my old pickpocket
friend in stir, Mr. Aut. I am positive that the hand-shake he gave me
was only a muscular action, for Mr. Aut has "squared it", and the gun
who has reformed and has become prosperous does not like to meet an
old acquaintance, who knows too much about his past life. When I ran
across him in the city I started in to talk about old times in stir
and of pals we knew in the long ago, but he answered me by saying,
"Nix", which meant "Drop It". To get him to talk I was forced to throw
a few "Larrys" into him, such as: "Well, old man, only for your few
mistakes of the past, you might be leader of Tammany Hall." Gradually
he expanded and told me how much he had gained in weight since he
left stir and what he had done for certain ungrateful grafters. He
boasted that he could get bail for anyone to the sum of fifty thousand
dollars, and he told the truth, for this man, who had been a third
class dip, owns at the present time, three gin-mills and is something
of a politician. He has three beautiful children and is well up in
the world. His daughter was educated at a convent, and his son is at a
well-known college.

Yet I remember the time when this ex gun, Mr. Aut, and I, locked near
one another in Sing Sing and consoled one another with what little
luxuries we could get together. Our letters, booze and troubles were
shared between us, and many is the time I have felt for him; for he
had married a little shop girl and had two children at that time.
When he got out of stir he started in to square it, that is, not to
go to prison any more. He was wise and no one can blame him. He is a
good father and a successful man. If he had been a better grafter it
would not have been so easy for him to reform. I wish him all kinds
of prosperity, but I don't like him as well as I did when we wore the
striped garb and whispered good luck to one another in that mansion of
woes on the Hudson.

One of Mr. Aut's possessions makes me smile whenever I think of it.
In his swell parlor, over a brand new piano, hangs an oil painting
of himself, in which he takes great pride. I could not help thinking
that that picture showed a far more prosperous man and one in better
surroundings than a certain photograph of his which is quite as highly
treasured as the more costly painting; although it is only a tintype,
numbered two thousand and odd, in the Rogues' Gallery.




CHAPTER IX.

_In Stir and Out._


Some of the most disagreeable days I ever spent in prison were
the holidays, only three of which during the year, however, were
kept--Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In Sing Sing there
was no work on those days, and we could lie abed longer in the morning.
The food was somewhat better than usual. Breakfast consisted of boiled
ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a cup of coffee with milk. After
mess we went, as usual, to chapel, and then gave a kind of vaudeville
show, all with local talent. We sang rag-time and sentimental songs,
some of us played on an instrument, such as the violin, mandolin, or
cornet, and the band gave the latest pieces from comic opera. After the
show was over we went to the mess-room again where we received a pan
containing a piece of pie, some cheese, a few apples, as much bread as
we desired and--a real luxury in stir--two cigars. With our booty we
then returned to our cells, at about eleven o'clock in the morning, and
after the guards had made the rounds to see that none of the birds had
gone astray, we were locked up until the next morning, without anything
more to eat. We were permitted to talk to one another from our cells
until five o'clock, when the night guards went on duty. Such is--just
imagine it--a great day in Sing Sing! The gun, no matter how big a guy
he is, even if he has robbed a bank and stolen millions, is far worse
off than the meanest laborer, be he ever so poor. He may have only a
crust, but he has that priceless boon, his liberty.

At Auburn the routine on holidays is much the same as that of Sing
Sing; but one is not compelled to go to chapel, which is a real
kindness. I don't think a man ought to be forced to go to church, even
in stir, against his will. On holidays in Auburn a man may stay in his
cell instead of attending divine service, if he so desires, and not be
punished for it. Many a con prefers not to go even to the vaudeville
show, which at Auburn is given by outside talent, but remains quietly
all day in his cell. There is one other great holiday privilege at
Auburn, which some of the convicts appreciate more than I did. When
the clock strikes twelve o'clock the convicts, locked in their cells,
start in to make the rest of the night hideous, by pounding on the
doors, playing all sorts of instruments, blowing whistles, and doing
everything else that would make a noise. There is no more sleep that
night, for everything is given over to Bedlam, until five thirty in the
morning, when discipline again reigns, and the nervous man who detests
these holidays sighs with pleasure, and says to himself: "I am so glad
that at last everything is quiet in this cursed stir."

What with poor food, little air and exercise, no female society, bad
habits and holidays, it is no wonder that there are many attempts, in
spite of the danger, to escape from stir. Most of these attempts are
unsuccessful, but a few succeed. One of the cleverest escapes I know of
happened during my term at Auburn. B---- was the most feared convict in
the prison. He was so intelligent, so reckless and so good a mechanic
that the guards were afraid he would make his elegant any day. Indeed,
if ever a man threw away gifts for not even the proverbial mess of
pottage, it was this man B----. He was the cleverest man I ever met in
stir or out. It was after one of the delightful holidays in Auburn that
B----, who was a nervous man, decided to make his gets. He picked a
quarrel with another convict and was so rough that the principal keeper
almost decided to let him off; but when B---- spat in his face he
changed his mind and put him in the dungeon. I have already mentioned
this ram-shackle building at Auburn. It was the worst yet. All B----'s
clothing was taken off and an old coat, shirt, and trousers without
buttons were given him. An old piece of bay rope was handed him to tie
around his waist, and he was left in darkness. This was what he wanted,
for, although they had stripped him naked and searched him, he managed
to conceal a saw, which he used to such good purpose that on the second
night he had sawed himself into the yard. Instead of trying to go over
the wall, as most cons would have done, B---- placed a ladder, which
he found in the repair shop, against the wall, and when the guards
discovered next morning that B---- was not in the dungeon, and saw the
ladder on the wall, they thought he had escaped, and did not search
the stir but notified the towns to look after him. He was not found,
of course, for he was hiding in the cellar of the prison. A night or
two afterwards he went to the tailor shop, selected the best suit of
clothes in the place, opened the safe which contained the valuables
of the convicts, with a piece of steel and a hammer, thus robbing his
fellow sufferers, and escaped by the ladder. After several months of
freedom he was caught, sent back to stir, and forfeited half of his
commutation time.

A more tragic attempt was made by the convicts, Big Benson and Little
Kick. They got tools from friends in the machine shop and started in
to saw around the locks of their doors. They worked quietly, and were
not discovered. The reason is that there is sometimes honor among
thieves. Two of their friends in their own gallery, two on the gallery
above and two on that underneath, tipped them off, by a cough or
some other noise, whenever the night guard was coming; and they would
cease their work with the saws. Convicts grow very keen in detecting
the screw by the creaking of his boots on the wooden gallery floor;
if they are not quite sure it is he, they often put a small piece of
looking-glass underneath the door, and can thus see down the gallery in
either direction a certain distance. Whenever Benson and Kick were at
work, they would accompany the noise of the saw with some other noise,
so as to drown the former, for they knew that, although they had some
friends among the convicts, there were others who, if they got next,
would tip off the keepers that an escape was to be made. In the morning
they would putty up the cuts made in the door during the night. One
night when everything was ready, they slipped from their cells, put the
mug on the guard, took away his cannister, and tied him to the bottom
of one of their cells. They did the same to another guard, who was
on the watch in the gallery below, went to the outside window on the
Hudson side of Sing Sing, and putting a Jack, which they had concealed
in the cell, between the bars of the window, spread them far apart,
so that they could make their exit. At this point however they were
discovered by a third guard, who fired at them, hitting Little Kick in
the leg. The shot aroused the sergeant of the guards and he gave the
alarm. Big Benson was just getting through the window when the whole
pack of guards fired at him, killing him as dead as a door-nail. Little
Kick lost his nerve and surrendered, and was taken to the dungeon. Big
Benson, who had been serving a term for highway robbery, was one of the
best liked men in stir, and when rumors reached the convicts that he
had been shot, pandemonium br

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