Week3 Sheck95 Thief

The Autobiography of a Thief
Author: Hutchins Hapgood
"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.
2
Table of Contents.
Boyhood and Early Crime. ................................. 13

My First Fall. ..................................................... 31
Mixed-Ale Life in the Fourth and Seventh Wards.
......................................................................... 47
When the Graft Was Good. ............................... 69
Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds. .................... 83
What The Burglar Faces. ................................... 99
In Stir. ............................................................. 123
In Stir (_continued_). ...................................... 141
In Stir and Out................................................. 165
At the Graft Again. .......................................... 181
Back to Prison. ................................................ 203
On the Outside Again. ..................................... 225
In the Mad-House. .............................................. 3
Out of Hell. ....................................................... 31
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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
5
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.
6
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.
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The Autobiography of a Thief
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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
13
Boyhood and Early Crime
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.
14
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.
15
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
16
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
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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."
18
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?"
19
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.
20
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
21
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!
22
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
23
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
24
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").
25
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.
26
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.
27
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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
31
My First Fall
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.
32
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
33
My First Fall
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
34
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.
35
My First Fall
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.
36
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.
37
My First Fall
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.
38
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
39
My First Fall
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
40
(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
41
My First Fall
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
42
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.
43
45
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
47
When the Graft Was
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,
48
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
49
When the Graft Was
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
50
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
51
When the Graft Was
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
52
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
53
When the Graft Was
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 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
54
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),
55
When the Graft Was
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
56
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
57
When the Graft Was
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
58
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
59
When the Graft Was
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.
60
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
61
When the Graft Was
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
62
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
63
When the Graft Was
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.
64
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.
65
67
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
69
When the Graft Was Good
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
70
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
71
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).
72
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
73
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.
74
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.
75
"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
76
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
77
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:
78
"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
79
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
80
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.
[A] Summer of 1902
81
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
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Mamie and the Negotiable Bonds
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.
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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.
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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
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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
87
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.
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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.
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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
90
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
91
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
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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:
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"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."
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"'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
95
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
96
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,
97
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.
98
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
99
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.
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"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.
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"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
102
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
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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."
104
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
105
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
106
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
107
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
108
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.
109
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
110
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."
111
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.
112
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
113
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
114
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
115
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
116
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
117
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
118
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.
119
121
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?
123
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
124
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
125
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
126
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.
127
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.
128
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.
129
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
130
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
131
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.
132
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?
133
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
134
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
135
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
136
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
137
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
138
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.)
139
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,
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In Stir and Out
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
142
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
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In Stir and Out
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
144
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
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In Stir and Out
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.
146
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.
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In Stir and Out
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
148
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.
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In Stir and Out
"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
150
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
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In Stir and Out
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
152
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.
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In Stir and Out
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
154
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.
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In Stir and Out
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
156
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
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In Stir and Out
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,
158
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
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In Stir and Out
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
160
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
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In Stir and Out
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
162
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.
163
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
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In Stir and Out
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
166
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
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In Stir and Out
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
168
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 broke loose in the cells.
They yelled and beat their coffee cups against the iron
doors, and the officials were powerless to quiet them.
There was more noise even than on a holiday at Auburn.
Soon after I was transferred from Sing Sing to

Auburn, a friend came to me and said: "Jimmy, are you on
either of the shoe-shop galleries? No? Well, if you can get
on Keeper Riley's gallery I think you can spring (escape)."
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In Stir and Out
Then he let me in on one of the cleverest beats I
ever knew; if I could have succeeded in being put on that
gallery I should not have finished my first term in State's
prison. At that time work was slack and the men were
locked in their cells most of the time. Leahy started in to
dig out the bricks from the ceiling of his cell. Each day,
when taking his turn for an hour in the yard, he would
give the cement, which he had done up in small packages,
to friends, who would dump it in their buckets, the
contents of which they would then throw into the large
cesspool. While exercising in the yard, the cons would
throw the bricks Leahy had removed on an old brick pile
under the archway. After he had removed sufficient stuff
to make a hole big enough to crawl through, all he had
left to do was to saw a few boards, and remove a few
tiles, and then he was on the roof. It is the habit of the
guard, when he goes the rounds, to rap the ceiling of
every cell with his stick, to see if there is an excavation.
Leahy had guarded against this by filling a small box with
sand and placing it in the opening. Then he pasted a piece
of linen over the box and whitewashed it. Even when the
screw came around to glance in his cell Leahy would
continue to work, for he had rigged up a dummy of
himself in bed. When he reached the roof, he dropped to
a lower building, reached the wall which surrounds the
prison, and with a rope lowered himself to the ground.
With a brand new suit of clothes which a friend had stolen
from the shop, Leahy went forth into the open, and was
never caught.
170
At Sing Sing an old chum of mine named Tom
escaped, and would never have been caught if he had not
been so sentimental. Indeed, he was improvident in every
way. He had been a well-known house-worker, and made
lots of money at this graft, but he lived well and blew
what he stole, and consequently did many years in prison.
He was nailed for a house that was touched of "éclat"
worth thousands, and convicted, though of this particular
crime he was, I am convinced, innocent; of course, he
howled like a stuck pig about the injustice of it, all his life.
While he was in Raymond Street jail he got wind of the
men who really did the job. They were pals and he asked
them to try to turn him out. His girl, Tessie, heard of it and
wanted to go to Police Headquarters and squeal on the
others, to save her sweetheart. But Tom was frantic, for
there was no squeal in him. You find grafters like that
sometimes, and Tom was always sentimental. He certainly
preferred to go to stir rather than have the name of being
a belcher. So he went to Sing Sing for seven and a half
years. He was a good mechanic and was assigned to a
brick-laying job on the wall. He had an easy time in stir, for
he had a screw right, and got many luxuries through the
Underground; and was not watched very closely. One day
he put a suit of clothes under his stripes, vamoosed into a
wood near by, and removed his stripes. He kept on
walking till he reached Connecticut, which, as I have said,
is the softest state in the Union.
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In Stir and Out
Tom would never have finished that bit in stir, if,
as I have also said, he had not been so sentimental. When
in prison a grafter continually thinks about his old pals
and hang-outs, and the last scenes familiar to him before
he went to stir. Tom was a well-known gun, with his
picture in the Hall of Fame, and yet, after beating prison,
and leaving years behind, and knowing that if caught he
would have to do additional time, would have the
authorities sore against him and be confined in the dark
cell, he yet, in spite of all that, after a short time, made for
his old haunts on the Bowery, where he was nailed by a
fly-cop and sent back to Sing Sing. So much for the force
of habit and of environment, especially when a grafter is a
good fellow and loves his old pals.
On one occasion Tom was well paid for being a

good fellow. Jack was a well-known pugilist who had
become a grafter. His wife's sister had married a
millionaire, and Jack stole the millions, which amounted,
in this case, to only one hundred thousand dollars. For
this he was put in prison for four years. While in stir, Tom,
who had a screw right, did him many favors, which Jack
remembered. Years afterwards they were both on the
outside again. Tom was still a grafter, but Jack had gone
to work for a police official as general utility man, and
gained the confidence of his employer, who was chief of
the detective force. The latter got Jack a position as
private detective in one of the swellest hotels in Florida.
Now, Tom happened to be grafting in that State, and met
172
his old friend Jack at the hotel. Instead of tipping off the
chief that Tom was a grafter, Jack staked his old pal, for
he remembered the favors he had received in stir. Tom
was at liberty for four years, and then was brought to
police headquarters where the chief said to him: "I know
that you met Jack in Florida, and I am sore because he did
not tip me off." Tom replied indignantly: "He is not a
hyena like your ilk. He is not capable of the basest of all
crimes, ingratitude. I can forgive a man who puts his hand
in my pocket and steals my money. I can forgive him, for it
may do him good. He may invest the money and become
an honored member of the community. But the crime no
man can forgive is ingratitude. It is the most inhuman of
crimes and only your ilk is capable of it."
The Chief smiled at Tom's sentiment--that was

always his weak point--poor Tom!--and said: "Well, you are
a clever thief, and I'm glad I was wise enough to catch
you." Whereupon Tom sneered and remarked: "I could
die of old age in this city for all of you and your detectives.
I was tipped off to you by a Dicky Bird (stool pigeon)
damn him!" I have known few grafters who had as much
feeling as Tom.
More than five years passed, and the time for my

release from Auburn drew near. The last weeks dragged
terribly; they seemed almost as long as the years that had
gone before. Sometimes I thought the time would never
come. The day before I was discharged I bade good-bye
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In Stir and Out
to my friends, who said to me, smiling: "She has come at
last," or "It's near at hand," or "It was a long time a-
coming." That night I built many castles in the air, with the
help of a large piece of opium: and continued to make the
good resolutions I had begun some time before. I had
permission from the night guard to keep my light burning
after the usual hour, and the last book I read on my first
term in stir was _Tristram Shandy_. Just before I went to
bed I sang for the last time a popular prison song which
had been running in my head for months:
"Roll round, '89, '90, '91, sweet '92 roll around.

How happy I shall be the morning I go free, sweet '92 roll
around."
Before I fell asleep I resolved to be good, to quit

opium and not to graft any more. The resolution was
easily made and I went to bed happy. I was up at day-
break and penned a few last words to my friends and
acquaintances remaining in stir. I promised some of them
that I would see their friends on the outside and send
them delicacies and a little money. They knew that I
would keep my promise, for I have always been a man of
my word; as many of the most successful grafters are. It is
only the vogel-grafter, the petty larceny thief or the "sure-
thing" article, who habitually breaks his word. Many
people think that a thief can not be trusted; and it
certainly is true that the profession does not help to make
a man virtuous in his personal relations. But it is also true
174
that a man may be, and sometimes is, honorable in his
dealings with his own world, and at the same time a
desperate criminal in the other. It is not of course
common, to find a thief who is an honest man; but is
there very often an honest man anywhere, in the world of
graft or out of it? If it is often, so much the better, but
that has not been my experience. Does not everyone
know that the men who do society the greatest injury
have never done time; in fact, may never have broken any
laws? I am not trying to excuse myself or my companions
in crime, but I think the world is a little twisted in its ideas
as to right and wrong, and who are the greatest sinners.
When six o'clock on the final day came round it

was a great relief. I went through the regular routine, and
at eight o'clock was called to the front office, received a
new suit of clothes, as well as my fare home and ten
dollars with which to begin life afresh.
"Hold on," I said, to the Warden. "I worked

eighteen months. Under the new piece-price plan I ought
to be allowed a certain percentage of my earnings."
The Warden, who was a good fellow and

permitted almost anything to come in by the
Underground Tunnel, asked the clerk if there was any
more money for me. The clerk consulted with the keepers
and then reported to the Warden that I was the most
tired man that ever entered the prison; adding that it was
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In Stir and Out
very nervy of me to want more money, after they had
treated me far better than the parent of the Prodigal
treated his son. The Warden, thereupon, remarked to me
that if I went pilfering again and were not more energetic
than I had been in prison, I would never eat. "Goodbye,"
he concluded.
"Well," I said, "I hope we'll never meet again."
With my discharge papers in my hand, and in my

mind a resolution never to go back to the stir where so
many of my friends, strong fellows, too, had lost their
lives or had become physical or mental wrecks, I left
Auburn penitentiary and went forth into the free world. I
had gone to stir a boy of twenty-one, and left it a man of
twenty-six. I entered healthy, and left broken down in
health, with the marks of the jail-bird upon me; marks,
mental and physical, that would never leave me, and
habits that I knew would stick closer than a brother. I
knew that there was nothing in a life of crime. I had
tested that well enough. But there were times during the
last months I spent in my cell, when, in spite of my good
resolutions, I hated the outside world which had forced
me into a place that took away from my manhood and
strength. I knew I had sinned against my fellow men, but I
knew, too, that there had been something good in me. I
was half Irish, and about that race there is naturally
something roguish; and that was part of my wickedness.
When I left stir I knew I was not capable, after five years
176
and some months of unnatural routine, of what I should
have been by nature.
A man is like an electric plant. Use poor fuel and

you will have poor electricity. The food is bad in prison.
The cells at Sing Sing are a crime against the criminal; and
in these damp and narrow cells he spends, on the
average, eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. In the
name of humanity and science what can society expect
from a man who has spent a number of years in such
surroundings? He will come out of stir, as a rule, a burden
on the tax-payers, unable to work, and confirmed in a life
of crime; desperate, and willing to take any chance. The
low-down, petty, canting thief, who works all the
charitable societies and will rob only those who are his
benefactors, or a door-mat, is utterly useless in prison or
out. The healthy, intelligent, ambitious grafter is capable
of reform and usefulness, if shown the error of his ways
or taken hold of before his physical and mental health is
ruined by prison life. You can appeal to his manhood at
that early time. After he has spent a certain number of
years in stir his teeth become decayed; he can not chew
his food, which is coarse and ill-cooked; his stomach gets
bad: and once his stomach becomes deranged it is only a
short time before his head is in a like condition.
Eventually, he may be transferred to the mad-house. I left
Auburn stir a happy man, for the time, for I thought
everything would be smooth sailing. As a matter of fact I
could not know the actual realities I had to face, inside
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and outside of me, and so all my good resolutions were
nothing but a dream.
It was a fine May morning that I left Auburn and I

was greatly excited and bewildered by the brightness and
joy of everything about me. I took my hat off, gazed up at
the clear sky, looked up and down the street and at the
passers-by, with a feeling of pleasure and confusion. I
turned to the man who had been released with me, and
said, "Let's go and get something to eat." On the way to
the restaurant, however, the jangling of the trolleys upset
my nerves. I could not eat, and drank a couple of
whiskies. They did not taste right. Everything seemed
tame, compared with the air, which I breathed like a
drunken man.
I bought a few pounds of tea, canned goods,

cheese and fruit, which I sent by a keeper to my friends in
stir. I also bought for my friends a few dollars' worth of
morphine and some pulverized gum opium. How could I
send it to them, for the keeper was not "next" to the
Underground? Suddenly I had an idea. I bought ten cents
worth of walnuts, split them, took the meat out, put the
morphine and opium in, closed them with mucilage, put
them in a bag and sent them to the convicts with the
basket of other things I had left with the innocent keeper.
I got aboard my train, and as I pulled out of the

town of Auburn gave a great sigh of relief. I longed to go
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directly to New York, for I always did like big cities,
particularly Manhattan, and I was dying to see some of
my old girls. But I stopped off at Syracuse, according to
promises, to deliver some messages to the relatives of
convicts, and so reached New York a few hours later than
my family and friends had expected. They had gone to
meet an earlier train, and had not waited, so that when I
reached my native city after this long absence I found
nobody at the station to welcome me back. It made me
sad for a moment, but when I passed out into the streets
of the big town I felt excited and joyous, and so confused
that I thought I knew almost everybody on the street. I
nearly spoke to a stranger, a woman, thinking she was
Blonde Mamie.
I soon reached the Bowery and there met some

of my old pals; but was much surprised to find them
changed and older. For years and years a convict lives in a
dream. He is isolated from the realities of the outside
world. In stir he is a machine, and his mind is continually
dwelling on the last time he was at liberty; he thinks of his
family and friends as they were then. They may have
become old, sickly and wrinkled, but he does not realize
this. When, set free, he tries to find them, he expects that
they will be unchanged, but if he finds them at all, what a
shock! An old-timer I knew, a man named Packey, who
had served fifteen years out of a life sentence, and had
been twice declared insane, told me that he had reached
a state of mind in which he imagined himself to be still a
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In Stir and Out
young fellow, of the age he was when he first went to
stir.
180
CHAPTER X.
At the Graft Again.
I spent my first day in New York looking up my

old pals and girls, especially the latter. How I longed to
exchange friendly words with a woman! But the girls I
knew were all gone, and I was forced to make new
acquaintances on the spot. I spent all the afternoon and
most of the evening with a girl I picked up on the Bowery;
I thought she was the most beautiful creature in the
world; but when I saw her again weeks afterwards, when
women were not so novel to me, I found her almost
hideous. I must have longed for a young woman's society,
for I did not go to see my poor old mother until I had left
my Bowery acquaintance. And yet my mother had often
proved herself my only friend! But I had a long talk with
her before I slept, and when I left her for a stroll in the
wonderful city before going to bed my resolution to be
good was keener than ever.
As I sauntered along the Bowery that night the

desire to talk to an old pal was strong. But where was I to
find a friend? Only in places where thieves hung out.
"Well," I said to myself, "there is no harm in talking to my
old pals. I will tell them there is nothing in the graft, and
that I have squared it." I dropped into a music hall, a
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resort for pickpockets, kept by an old gun, and there I
met Teddy, whom I had not seen for years.
"Hello, Jim," he said, giving me the glad hand, "I

thought you were dead."
"Not quite so bad as that, Teddy," I replied, "I am

still in evidence."
We had a couple of beers. I could not quite make

up my mind to tell him I had squared it; and he put me
next to things in town.
"Take my advice," he said, "and keep away from -

--- ---- (naming certain clubs and saloons where thieves
congregated). The proprietors of these places and the
guns that hang out there, many of them anyway, are not
on the level. Some of the grafters who go there have the
reputation of being clever dips, but they have protection
from the Front Office men because they are rats and so
can tear things open without danger. By giving up a
certain amount of stuff and dropping a stall or two
occasionally to keep up the flyman's reputation, they are
able to have a bank account and never go to stir. The
flymen hang out in these joints, waiting for a tip, and they
are bad places for a grafter who is on the level."
182
I listened with attention, and said, by force of
habit:
"Put me next to the stool-pigeons, Teddy. You

know I am just back from stir."
"Well," he answered, "outside of so and so (and

he mentioned half-a-dozen men by name) none of them
who hang out in those joints can be trusted. Come to my
house, Jim, and we'll have a long talk about old times, and
I will introduce you to some good people (meaning
thieves)."
I went with him to his home, which was in a

tenement house in the lower part of the first ward. He
introduced me to his wife and children and a number of
dips, burglars and strong-armed men who made his place
a kind of rendezvous. We talked old times and graft, and
the wife and little boy of eight years old listened
attentively. The boy had a much better chance to learn
the graft than I had when a kid, for my father was an
honest man.
The three strong-arm men (highwaymen) were a

study to me, for they were Westerners, with any amount
of nerve. One of them, Denver Red, a big powerful fellow,
mentioned a few bits he had done in Western prisons,
explained a few of his grafts and seemed to despise New
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York guns, whom he considered cowardly. He said the
Easterners feared the police too much, and always
wanted to fix things before they dared to graft.
I told them a little about New York State

penitentiaries, and then Ted said to Denver Red: "What
do you think of the big fellow?" Denver grinned, and the
others followed suit, and I heard the latest story. A well-
known politician, leader of his district, a cousin of Senator
Wet Coin; a man of gigantic stature, with the pleasing
name, I will say, of Flower, had had an adventure. He is
even better developed physically than mentally, and
virtually king of his district, and whenever he passes by,
the girls bow to him, the petty thief calls him "Mister" and
men and women alike call him "Big Flower." Well, one
night not long before the gathering took place in Teddy's
house, Big Flower was passing through the toughest
portion of his bailiwick, humming ragtime, when my new
acquaintances, the three strong-arm workers from the
West, stuck him up with cannisters, and relieved him of a
five carat diamond stud, a gold watch and chain and a
considerable amount of cash. The next day there was
consternation among the clan of the Wet Coins, for Big
Flower, who had been thus nipped, was their idol. We all
laughed heartily at the story, and I went home and to
sleep.
The next day I found it a very easy thing to drift

back to my old haunts. In the evening I went to a sporting
184
house on Twenty-seventh Street, where a number of guns
hung out. I got the glad hand and an invitation to join in
some good graft. I said I was done with the Rocky Path.
They smiled and gently said: "We have been there, too,
Jim."
One of them added: "By the way, I hear you are

up against the hop, Jim." It was Billy, and he invited me
home with him. There I met Ida, as pretty a little shop girl
as one wants to see. Billy said there was always an
opening for me, that times were pretty good. He and Ida
had an opium layout, and they asked me to take a smoke.
I told them my nerves were not right, and that I had quit.
"Poor fellow," said Billy.
Perhaps it was the sight or smell of the hop, but

anyway I got the yen-yen and shook as in an ague. My
eyes watered and I grew as pale as a sheet. I thought my
bones were unjointing and took a pint of whiskey; it had
no effect. Then Billy acted as my physician and prepared a
pill for me. So vanished one good resolution. My only
excuse to myself was: Human nature is weak, ain't it? No
sooner had I taken the first pill than a feeling of ecstasy
came over me. I became talkative, and Billy, noticing the
effect, said: "Jim, before you try to knock off the hop, you
had better wait till you reach the next world." The opium
brought peace to my nerves and dulled my conscience
and I had a long talk with Billy and Ida about old pals.
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They told me who was dead, who were in stir and who
were good (prosperous).
Not many days after my opium fall I got a note

from Ethel, who had heard that I had come home. In the
letter she said that she was not happy with her husband,
that she had married to please her father and to get a
comfortable home. She wanted to make an appointment
to meet me, whom, she said, she had always loved. I
knew what her letter meant, and I did not answer it, and
did not keep the appointment. My relation to her was the
only decent thing in my life, and I thought I might as well
keep it right. I have never seen her since the last time she
visited me at Auburn.
For some time after getting back from stir I tried

for a job, but the effort was only half-hearted on my part,
and people did not fall over themselves in their eagerness
to find something for the ex-convict to do. Even if I had
had the best intentions in the world, the path of the ex-
convict is a difficult one, as I have since found. I was run
down physically, and could not carry a hod or do any
heavy labor, even if I had desired to. I knew no trade and
should have been forever distrusted by the upper world.
The only thing I could do well was to graft; and the only
society that would welcome me was that of the under
world. My old pals knew I had the requisite nerve and was
capable of taking my place in any good mob. My
resolutions began to ooze away, especially as at that time
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my father was alive and making enough money to
support the rest of the family. So I had only myself to look
out for--and that was a lot; for I had my old habits, and
new ones I had formed in prison, to satisfy. When I stayed
quietly at home I grew intensely nervous; and soon I felt
that I was bound to slip back to the world of graft. I am
convinced that I would never have returned to stir or to
my old trade, however, if my environment had been
different, on my release, from what it had been formerly;
and if I could have found a job. I don't say this in the way
of complaint. I now know that a man can reform even
among his old associates. It is impossible, as the reader
will see, I believe, before he finishes this book, for me
ever to fall back again. Some men acquire wisdom at
twenty-one, some not till they are thirty-five, and some
never. Wisdom came to me when I was thirty-five. If I had
had my present experience, I should not have fallen after
my first bit; but I might not have fallen anyway, if I had
been placed in a better environment after my first term in
prison. A man can stand alone, if he is strong enough, and
has sufficient reasons; but if he is tottering, he needs
outside help.
I was tottering, and did not get the help, and so I

speedily began to graft again. I started in on easy game,
on picking pockets and simple swindling. I made my first
touch, after my return, on Broadway. One day I met the
Kid there, looking for a dollar as hard as a financier. He
asked me if I was not about ready to begin again, and
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pointed out a swell Moll, big, breezy and blonde, coming
down the street, with a large wallet sticking out of her
pocket. It seemed easy, with no come-back in sight, and I
agreed to stall for the Kid. Just as she went into Denning's
which is now Wanamaker's, I went in ahead of her, turned
and met her. She stopped; and at that moment the Kid
nicked her. We got away all right and found in the wallet
over one hundred dollars and a small knife. In the knife
were three rivets, which we discovered on inspection to
be magnifying glasses. We applied our eyes to the same
and saw some pictures which would have made Mr.
Anthony Comstock howl; if he had found this knife on this
aristocratic lady he would surely have sent her to the
penitentiary. It was a beautiful pearl knife, gold tipped,
and must have been a loss; and yet I felt I was justified in
taking that wallet. I thought I had done the lady a good
turn. She might have been fined, and why shouldn't I have
the money, rather than the magistrate?
The Kid was one of the cleverest dips I ever

knew; he was delicate and cunning, and the best stone-
getter in the city. But he had one weakness that made
him almost a devil. He fell in love with every pretty face he
saw, and cared no more for leading a girl astray than I
minded kicking a cat. I felt sorry for many a little working
girl he had shaken after a couple of weeks; and I used to
jolly them to cheer them up.
188
I once met Kate, one of them, and said, with a
smile: "Did you hear about the Kid's latest? Why don't you
have him arrested for bigamy?"
She did not smile at first, but said: "He'll never

have any luck. My mother is a widow, and she prays to
God to afflict him with a widow's curse."
"One of the Ten Commandments," I replied,

"says, 'thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God
in vain,' and between you and me, Kate, the
commandment does not say that widows have the
monopoly on cursing. It is a sin, anyway, whether it is a
man, a girl or a widow."
This was too deep for Kate.
"Stop preaching, Jim," she said, "and give me a

drink," and I did. After she had drunk half-a-dozen glasses
of beer she felt better.
Women are queer, anyway. No matter how bad

they are, they are always good. All women are thieves, or
rather petty pilferers, bless them! When I was just
beginning to graft again, and was going it easy, I used to
work a game which well showed the natural grafting
propensities of women. I would buy a lot of Confederate
bills for a few cents, and put them in a good leather.
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When I saw a swell-looking Moll, evidently out shopping,
walking along the street, I would drop the purse in her
path; and just as she saw it I would pick it up, as if I had
just found it. Nine women out of ten would say, "It's
mine, I dropped it." I would open the leather and let her
get a peep of the bills, and that would set her pilfering
propensities going. "It's mine," she would repeat.
"What's in it?" I would hold the leather carefully away
from her, look into it cautiously and say: "I can see a
twenty dollar bill, a thirty dollar bill, and a one hundred
dollar bill, but how do I know you dropped it?" Then she'd
get excited and exclaim, "If you don't give it to me quick
I'll call a policeman." "Madam," I would reply, "I am an
honest workingman, and if you will give me ten dollars for
a reward, I will give you this valuable purse." Perhaps she
would then say: "Give me the pocket-book and I'll give
you the money out of it." To that I would reply: "No,
Madam, I wish you to receive the pocket-book just as it
was." I would then hand her the book and she would give
me a good ten dollar bill. "There is a woman down the
street," I would continue, "looking for something." That
would alarm her and away she would go without even
opening the leather to see if her money was all right. She
wouldn't shop any more that day, but would hasten home
to examine her treasure--worth, as she would discover to
her sorrow, about thirty cents. Then, no doubt, her
conscience would trouble her. At least, she would weep; I
am sure of that.
190
When I got my hand in again, I began to go for
stone-getting, which was a fat graft in those days, when
the Lexow committee was beginning their reform.
Everybody wore a diamond. Even mechanics and farmers
were not satisfied unless they had pins to stick in their
ties. They bought them on the installment plan, and I
suppose they do yet. I could always find a laborer or a
hod-carrier that had a stone. They usually called attention
to it by keeping their hands carefully on it; and very often
it found its way into my pocket, for carelessness is bound
to come as soon as a man thinks he is safe. They probably
thought of their treasure for months afterwards; at least,
whenever the collector came around for the weekly
installments of pay for stones they no longer possessed.
It was about this time that I met General Brace

and the Professor. One was a Harvard graduate, and the
other came from good old Yale; and both were grafters.
When I knew them they used to hang out in a joint on
Seventh Street, waiting to be treated. They had been
good grafters, but through hop and booze had come
down from forging and queer-shoving to common shop-
lifting and petty larceny business. General Brace was very
reticent in regard to his family and his own past, but as I
often invited him to smoke opium with me, he sometimes
gave me little confidences. I learned that he came from a
well-known Southern family, and had held a good position
in his native city; but he was a blood, and to satisfy his
habits he began to forge checks. His relatives saved him
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from prison, but he left home and started on the
downward career of graftdom. We called him General
Brace because he looked like a soldier and was continually
on the borrow; but a good story always accompanied his
asking for a loan and he was seldom refused. I have often
listened to this man after he had smoked a quantity of
opium, and his conversational powers were something
remarkable. Many a gun and politician would listen to him
with wonder. I used to call him General Brace Coleridge.
The Professor was almost as good a talker. We

used to treat them both, in order to get them to converse
together. It was a liberal education to hear them hold
forth in that low-down saloon, where some of the finest
talks on literature and politics were listened to with
interest by men born and bred on the East Side, with no
more education than a turnip, but with keen wits. The
graduates had good manners, and we liked them and
staked them regularly. They used to write letters for
politicians and guns who could not read or write. They
stuck together like brothers. If one of them had five
cents, he would go into a morgue (gin-mill where rot-gut
whiskey could be obtained for that sum) and pour out
almost a full tumbler of booze. Just as he sipped a little of
the rot-gut, his pal would come in, as though by accident.
If it was the General who had made the purchase, he
would say: "Hello, old pal, just taste this fine whiskey. It
tastes like ten-cent stuff." The Professor would take a sip
and become enthusiastic. They would sip and exclaim in
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turn, until the booze was all gone, and no further expense
incurred. This little trick grew into a habit, and the bar-
tender got on to it, but he liked Colonel Brace and the
Professor so much that he used to wink at it.
I was in this rot-gut saloon one day when I met

Jesse R----, with whom I had spent several years in prison.
I have often wondered how this man happened to join
the under world; for he not only came of a good family
and was well educated, but was also of a good, quiet
disposition, a prime favorite in stir and out. He was tactful
enough never to roast convicts, who are very sensitive,
and was so sympathetic that many a heartache was
poured into his ear. He never betrayed a friend's
confidence.
I was glad to meet Jesse again, and we

exchanged greetings in the little saloon. When he asked
me what I was doing, I replied that I had a mortgage on
the world and that I was trying to draw my interest from
the same. I still had that old dream, that the world owed
me a living. I confided in him that I regarded the world as
my oyster more decidedly than I had done before I met
him in stir. I found that Jesse, however, had squared it for
good and was absolutely on the level. He had a good job
as shipping clerk in a large mercantile house; when I
asked him if he was not afraid of being tipped off by some
Central Office man or by some stool-pigeon, he admitted
that that was the terror of his life; but that he had been at
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work for eighteen months, and hoped that none of his
enemies would turn up. I asked him who had
recommended him for the job, and I smiled when he
answered: "General Brace". That clever Harvard graduate
often wrote letters which were of assistance to guns who
had squared it; though the poor fellow could not take
care of himself.
Jesse had a story to tell which seemed to me one

of the saddest I have heard: and as I grew older I found
that most all stories about people in the under world, no
matter how cheerfully they began, ended sadly. It was
about his brother, Harry, the story that Jesse told. Harry
was married, and there is where the trouble often begins.
When Jesse was in prison Harry, who was on the level and
occupied a good position as a book-keeper, used to send
him money, always against his wife's wishes. She also
complained because Harry supported his old father. Harry
toiled like a slave for this woman who scolded him and
who spent his money recklessly. He made a good salary,
but he could not keep up with her extravagance. One
time, while in the country, she met a sporting man, Mr. O.
B. In a few weeks it was the old, old story of a foolish
woman and a pretty good fellow. While she was in the
country, her young son was drowned, and she sent Harry
a telegram announcing it. But she kept on living high and
her name and that of O. B. were often coupled. Harry
tried to stifle his sorrow and kept on sending money to
the bladder he called wife, who appeared in a fresh new
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dress whenever she went out with Mr. O. B. One day
Harry received a letter, calling him to the office to explain
his accounts. He replied that he had been sick, but would
straighten everything out the next day. When his father
went to awaken him in the morning, Harry was dead. A
phial of morphine on the floor told the story. Jesse
reached his brother's room in time to hear his old father's
cry of anguish and to read a letter from Harry, explaining
that he had robbed the firm of thousands, and asking his
brother to be kind to Helene, his wife.
Then Jesse went to see the woman, to tell her

about her husband's death. He found her at a summer
hotel with Mr. O. B., and heard the servants talk about
them.
"Jim," said Jesse to me, at this point in the story,

"here is wise council. Wherever thou goest, keep the
portals of thy lugs open; as you wander on through life
you are apt to hear slander about your women folks.
What is more entertaining than a little scandal, especially
when it doesn't hit home? But don't look into it too deep,
for it generally turns out true, or worse. I laid a trap for
my poor brothers wife, and one of her letters, making
clear her guilt, fell into my hands. A telegram in reply from
Mr. O. B., likewise came to me, and in a murderous frame
of mind, I read its contents, and then laughed like a
hyena: 'I am sorry I cannot meet you, but I was married
this morning, and am going on my wedding tour. _Au
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Revoir._' You ask me what became of my sister-in-law?
Jim, she is young and pretty, and will get along in this
world. But, truly, the wages of sin is to her Living Ashes."
It was not very long after my return home that I

was at work again, not only at safe dipping and swindling,
but gradually at all my old grafts, including more or less
house work. There was a difference, however. I grew far
more reckless than I had been before I went to prison. I
now smoked opium regularly, and had a lay-out in my
furnished room and a girl to run it. The drug made me
take chances I never used to take; and I became dead to
almost everything that was good. I went home very
seldom. I liked my family in a curious way, but I did not
have enough vitality or much feeling about anything. I
began to go out to graft always in a dazed condition, so
much so that on one occasion a pal tried to take
advantage of my state of mind. It was while I was doing a
bit of house-work with Sandy and Hacks, two clever
grafters. We inserted into the lock the front door key
which we had made, threw off the tumblers, and opened
the door. Hacks and I stalled while Sandy went in and got
six hundred dollars and many valuable jewels. He did not
show us much of the money, however. The next day the
newspapers described the "touch," and told the amount
of money which had been stolen. Then I knew I had been
"done" by Sandy and Hacks, who stood in with him, but
Sandy said the papers were wrong. The mean thief,
however, could not keep his mouth shut, and I got him. I
196
am glad I was not arrested for murder. It was a close
shave, for I cut him unmercifully with a knife. In this I had
the approval of my friends, for they all believed the worst
thing a grafter could do was to sink a pal. Sandy did not
squeal, but he swore he would get even with me. Even if I
had not been so reckless as I was then, I would not have
feared him, for I knew there was no come-back in him.
Another thing the dope did was to make me

laugh at everything. It was fun for me to graft, and I saw
the humor of life. I remember I used to say that this world
is the best possible; that the fine line of cranks and fools
in it gives it variety. One day I had a good laugh in a
Brooklyn car. Tim, George and I got next to a Dutchman
who had a large prop in his tie. He stood for a newspaper
under his chin, and his stone came as slick as grease. A
minute afterwards he missed his property, and we did not
dare to move. He told his wife, who was with him, that his
stone was gone. She called him a fool, and said that he
had left it at home, in the bureau drawer, that she
remembered it well. Then he looked down and saw that
his front was gone, too. He said to his wife: "I am sure I
had my watch and chain with me," but his wife was so
superior that she easily convinced him he had left it at
home. The wisdom of women is beyond finding out. But I
enjoyed that incident. I shall never forget the look that
came over the Dutchman's face when he missed his front.
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I was too sleepy those days to go out of town
much on the graft; and was losing my ambition generally.
I even cared very little for the girls, and gave up many of
my amusements. I used to stay most of the time in my
furnished room, smoking hop. When I went out it was to
get some dough quick, and to that end I embraced almost
any means. At night I often drifted into some concert hall,
but it was not like the old days when I was a kid. The
Bowery is far more respectable now than it ever was
before. Twenty years ago there was no worse place
possible for ruining girls and making thieves than Billy
McGlory's joint on Hester Street. About ten o'clock in the
morning slumming parties would chuckle with glee when
the doors at McGlory's would be closed and young girls in
scanty clothing, would dance the can-can. These girls
would often fight together, and frequently were beaten
unmercifully by the men who lived on them and their
trade. Often men were forcibly robbed in these joints.
There was little danger of an arrest; for if the sucker
squealed, the policeman on the beat would club him off
to the beat of another copper, who would either continue
the process, or arrest him for disorderly conduct.
At this time, which was just before the Lexow

Committee began its work, there were at least a few
honest coppers. I knew one, however, that did not remain
honest. It happened this way. The guns had been tearing
open the cars so hard that the street car companies, as
they had once before, got after the officials, who stirred
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up Headquarters. The riot act was read to the dips. This
meant that, on the second offense, every thief would be
settled for his full time and that there would be no
squaring it. The guns lay low for a while, but two very
venturesome grafters, Mack and Jerry, put their heads
together and reasoned thus: "Now that the other guns
are alarmed it is a good chance for us to get in our fine
work."
Complaints continued to come in. The police

grew hot and sent Mr. F----, a flyman, to get the rascals.
Mr. F---- had the reputation of being the most honest
detective on the force. He often declared that he wanted
promotion only on his merits. Whenever he was
overheard in making this remark there was a quiet smile
on the faces of the other coppers. F---- caught Mack dead
to rights, and, not being a diplomat, did not understand
when the gun tried to talk reason to him. Even a large
piece of dough did not help his intellect, and Mack was
taken to the station-house. When a high official heard
about it he swore by all the gods that he would make an
example of that notorious pickpocket, Mack; but human
nature is weak, especially if it wears buttons. Mack sent
for F----'s superior, the captain, and the following dialogue
took place:
_Captain_: What do you want?
_Mack_: I'm copped.

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_Captain_: Yes, and you're dead to rights.
_Mack_: I tried to do business with F----. What is

the matter with him?
_Captain_: He is a policeman. He wants his

promotion by merit. (Even the Captain smiled.)
_Mack_: I'd give five centuries (five hundred

dollars) if I could get to my summer residence in Asbury
Park.
_Captain_: How long would it take you to get it?
_Mack_: (He, too, was laconic.) I got it on me.
_Captain_: Give it here.
_Mack_: It's a sure turn-out?
_Captain_: Was I ever known to go back on my

word?
Mack handed the money over, and went over to

court in the afternoon with F----. The Captain was there,
and whispered to F----: "Throw him out." That nearly
knocked F---- down, but he and Mack took a car, and he
said to the latter: "In the name of everything how did you
200
hypnotize the old man?" Mack replied, with a laugh: "I
tried to mesmerize you in the same way; but you are
working on your merits."
Mack was discharged, and F---- decided to be a

diplomat henceforth. From an honest copper he became
as clever a panther as ever shook coin from a gun. Isn't it
likely that if a man had a large income he would never go
to prison? Indeed, do you think that well-known guns
could graft with impunity unless they had some one right?
Nay! Nay! Hannah. They often hear the song of split half
or no graft.
But at that time I was so careless that I did not

even have enough sense to save fall-money, and after
about nine months of freedom I fell again. One day three
of us boarded a car in Brooklyn and I saw a mark whom I
immediately nicked for his red super, which I passed
quickly to one of my stalls, Eddy. We got off the car and
walked about three blocks, when Eddy flashed the super,
to look at it. The sucker, who had been tailing, blew, and
Eddy threw the watch to the ground, fearing that he
would be nailed. A crowd gathered around the super, I
among them, the other stall, Eddy having vamoosed, and
the sucker. No man in his senses would have picked up
that gold watch. But I did it and was nailed dead to rights.
I felt that super belonged to me. I had nicked it cleverly,
and I thought I had earned it! I was sentenced to four
years in Sing Sing, but I did not hang my head with shame,
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this time, as I was taken to the station. It was the way of
life and of those I associated with, and I was more a
fatalist than ever. I hated all mankind and cared nothing
for the consequences of my acts.
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CHAPTER XI.
Back to Prison.
I was not recognized by the authorities at Sing

Sing as having been there before. I gave a different name
and pedigree, of course, but the reason I was not known
as a second-timer was that I had spent only nine months
at Sing Sing on my first term, the remainder having been
passed at Auburn. There was a new warden at Sing Sing,
too, and some of the other officials had changed; and,
besides, I must have been lucky. Anyway, none of the
keepers knew me, and this meant a great deal to me; for
if I had been recognized as a second-timer I should have
had a great deal of extra time to serve. On my first term I
had received commutation time for good behavior
amounting to over a year, and there is a rule that if a
released convict is sent back to prison, he must serve, not
only the time given him on his second sentence, but the
commutation time on his first bit. Somebody must have
been very careless, for I beat the State out of more than a
year.
Some of the convicts, indeed, knew that I had

served before; but they did not squeal. Even some of
those who did not know me had an inkling of it, but
would not tell. It was still another instance of honor
among thieves. If they had reported me to the
authorities, they might have had an easier time in stir and
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had many privileges, such as better jobs and better things
to eat. There were many stool-pigeons there, of course,
but somehow these rats did not get wind of me.
It did not take me long to get the Underground

Tunnel in working order again, and I received contraband
letters, booze, opium and morphine as regularly as on my
first bit. One of the screws running the Tunnel at the time,
Jack R----, was a little heavier in his demands than I
thought fair. He wanted a third instead of a fifth of the
money sent the convicts from home. But he was a good
fellow, and always brought in the hop as soon as it
arrived. Like the New York police he was hot after the
stuff, but who can blame him? He wanted to rise in the
world, and was more ambitious than the other screws. I
continued my pipe dreams, and my reading; indeed, they
were often connected. I frequently used to imagine that I
was a character in one of the books; and often choked
the detestable Tarquin into insensibility.
On one occasion I dreamed that I was arraigned

before my Maker and charged with murder. I cried with
fear and sorrow, for I felt that even before the just God
there was no justice; but a voice silenced me and said that
to be guilty of the crime of murder, it was not necessary
to use weapons or poison. Suddenly I seemed to see the
sad faces of my father and mother, and then I knew what
the voice meant. Indeed, I was guilty. I heard the word,
"Begone," and sank into the abyss. After many thousand
204
years of misery I was led into the Chamber of
Contentment where I saw some of the great men whose
books I had read. Voltaire, Tom Paine and Galileo sat on a
throne, but when I approached them with awe, the angel,
who had the face of a keeper, told me to leave. I appealed
to Voltaire, and begged him not to permit them to send
me among the hymn-singers. He said he pitied me, but
that I was not fit to be with the great elect. I asked him
where Dr. Parkhurst was, and he answered that the
doctor was hot stuff and had evaporated long ago. I was
led away sorrowing, and awoke in misery and tears, in my
dark and damp cell.
On this bit I was assigned to the clothing

department, where I stayed six months, but did very little
work. Warden Sage replaced Warden Darson and
organized the system of stool-pigeons in stir more
carefully than ever before; so it was more difficult than it
was before to neglect our work. I said to Sage one day:
"You're a cheap guy. You ought to be President of a
Woman's Sewing Society. You can do nothing but make
an aristocracy of stool-pigeons." I gave up work after six
months because of my health, which had been bad for a
long time, but now grew worse. My rapid life on the
outside, my bad habits, and my experience in prison were
beginning to tell on me badly. There was a general
breaking-down of my system. I was so weak and coughed
so badly that they thought I was dying. The doctors said I
had consumption and transferred me to the prison
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hospital, where I had better air and food and was far
more comfortable in body but terribly low in my mind. I
was so despondent that I did not even "fan my face"
(turn my head away to avoid having the outside world
become familiar with my features) when visitors went
through the hospital. This was an unusual degree of
carelessness for a professional gun. One reason I was so
gloomy was that I was now unable to get hold of my
darling hop.
I was so despondent in the hospital that I really

thought I should soon become an angel; and my
environment was not very cheerful, for several convicts
died on beds near me. Whenever anybody was going to
die, every convict in the prison knew about it, for the
attendants would put three screens around the dying
man's bed. There were about twenty beds in the long
room, and near me was an old boyhood pal, Tommy
Ward, in the last stages of consumption. Tommy and I
often talked together about death, and neither of us was
afraid of it. I saw a dozen men die during my experience in
state prisons and I never heard one of them clamor for a
clergyman. Tommy was doing life for murder, and ought
to have been afraid of death, if anyone was. But when he
was about to die, he sent word to me to come to his
bedside, and after a word or two of good-bye he went
into his agony. The last words he ever said were: "Ah, give
me a big Peter (narcotic)." He did not receive the last rites
of the Catholic Church, and his ignorant family refused to
206
bury him. So Tommy's cell number was put on the
tombstone, if it could be called such, which marked his
grave in the little burying ground outside the prison walls.
Indeed, it is not easy to throw the religious con

(confidence game) into a convict. Often, while we were in
chapel, the dominie would tell us that life was short; but
hardly one of the six or seven hundred criminals who
were listening believed the assertion. They felt that the
few years they were doing for the good of their country
were as long as centuries. If there were a few "cons" who
tried the cheerful dodge, they did not deceive anybody,
for their brother guns knew that they were sore in their
hearts because they had been caught without fall-money,
and so had to serve a few million years in stir.
After I got temporarily better in health and had

left the hospital, I began to read Lavater on physiognomy
more industriously than ever. With his help I became a
close student of faces, and I learned to tell the thoughts
and emotions of my fellow convicts. I watched them at
work and when their faces flushed I knew they were
thinking of Her. Sometimes I would ask a man how She
was, and he would look confused, and perhaps angry
because his day dream was disturbed. And how the men
used to look at women visitors who went through the
shops! It was against the rules to look at the inhabitants
of the Upper World who visited stir, but I noticed that
after women visitors had been there the convicts were
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generally more cheerful. Even a momentary glimpse of
those who lived within the pale of civilization warmed
their hearts. After the ladies had gone the convicts would
talk about them for hours. Many of their remarks were
vulgar and licentious, but some of the men were broken
down with feeling and would say soft things. They would
talk about their mothers and sweethearts and eventually
drift back on their ill-spent lives. How often I thought of
the life behind me! Then I would look at the men about
me, some of whom had stolen millions and had
international reputations--but all discouraged now,
broken down in health, penniless and friendless. If a man
died in stir he was just a cadaver for the dissecting table,
nothing more. The end fitted in well with his misspent life.
These reflections would bring us around again to good
resolutions.
People who have never broken the law--I beg

pardon, who were never caught--can not understand how
a man who has once served in stir will take another
chance and go back and suffer the same tortures. A
society lady I once met said she thought criminals who go
on grafting, when they know what the result will be, must
be lacking in imagination. I replied to her: "Madam, why
do you lace tight and indulge in social dissipation even
after you know it is bad for the health? You know it is a
strain on your nerves, but you do it. Is it because you have
no imagination? That which we all dread most--death--we
all defy."
208
The good book says that all men shall earn their
bread by the sweat of their brow, but we grafters make
of ourselves an exception, with that overweening
egotism and brash desire to do others with no return,
which is natural to everybody. Only when the round-up
comes, either in the sick bed or in the toils, we often can
not bear our burdens and look around to put the blame
on someone else. If a man is religious, why should he not
drop it on Jesus? Man! How despicable at times! How
ungallant to his ancestor of the softer sex! From time
immemorial he has exclaimed: "Only for her, the
deceiving one, my better half, I should be perfect."
Convicts, particularly if they are broken in health,

often become like little children. It is not unusual for them
to grow dependent on dumb pets, which they smuggle
into prison by means of the Underground Tunnel. The
man in stir who has a white mouse or robin is envied by
the other convicts, for he has something to love. If an
artist could only witness the affection that is centered on
a mouse or dog, if he could only depict the emotions in
the hard face of the criminal, what a story! I had a white
rat, which I had obtained with difficulty through the
Underground. I used to put him up my sleeve, and he
would run all over my body, he was so tame. He would
stand on his hind legs or lie down at my command.
Sometimes, when I was lonely and melancholy, I loved
this rat like a human being.
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In May, 1896, when I still had about a year to
serve on my second term, a rumor circulated through the
prison that some of the Salvation Army were going to visit
the stir. The men were greatly excited at the prospect of a
break in the dreary routine. I imagined that a big burly
Salvationist, beating a drum, with a few very thin
Salvation lasses, would march through the prison yard. I
was dumbfounded by the reality, for I saw enter the
Protestant chapel, which was crowded with eager
convicts, two delicate, pretty women. No actor or actress
ever got a warmer welcome than that given to Mrs.
Booth and her secretary, Captain Jennie Hughes. After
the clapping of hands and cheering had ceased, Mrs.
Booth arose and made a speech, which was listened to in
deep silence. Certainly she was eloquent, and what she
said impressed many an old gun. She was the first visitor
who ever promised practical Christianity and eventually
carried out the promise. She promised to build homes for
us after our release; and in many cases, she did, and we
respect her. She spoke for an hour, and afterwards
granted private interviews, and many of the convicts told
her all their troubles, and she promised to take care of
their old mothers, daughters and wives.
Before leaving the chapel, she sang: "O Lord, let

the waves of thy crimson sea roll over me." I did not see
how such a pretty, intelligent, refined and educated
woman could say such a bloody thing, but she probably
had forgotten what the words really meant. At any rate,
210
she is a good woman, for she tried hard to have the
Parole Bill passed. That bill has recently become a law,
and it is a good one, in my opinion; but it has one fault. It
only effects first-timers. The second and third timers, who
went to Sing Sing years ago when there was contract
labor and who worked harder than any laborer in New
York City, ought to have a chance, too. Show a little
confidence in any man, even though he be a third-timer,
as I have been, and he will be a better man for it.
After the singing, on that first morning of Mrs.

Booth's visit, she asked those convicts who wanted to
lead a better life to stand up. About seventy men out of
the five or six hundred arose, and the others remained
seated. I was not among those who stood up. I never met
anybody who could touch me in that way. I don't believe
in instantaneous Christianity. I knew half a dozen of the
men who stood up, and they were not very strong
mentally. I often wondered what the motives were that
moved the men in that manner. Man is a social animal,
and Mrs. Booth was a magnetic woman. After I had heard
her speak once, I knew that. She had a good personal
appearance and one other requisite that appealed
strongly to those who were in our predicament--her sex.
Who could entirely resist the pleadings of a pretty woman
with large black eyes?
Certainly I was moved by this sincere and

attractive woman, but my own early religious training had
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made me suspicious of the whole business. Whenever
anybody tried to reform me through Christianity I always
thought of that powerful Celt who used to rush at me in
Sunday school with a hickory stick and shout "Who made
you?" And I don't think that most of the men who profess
religion in prison are sincere. They usually want to curry
favor with the authorities, or get "staked" after they
leave stir. One convict, whom I used to call "The Great
American Identifier," because he used to graft by claiming
to be a relative of everybody that died, from California to
Maine and weeping over the dead body, was the worst
hypocrite I ever saw--a regular Uriah Heep. He was one of
Mrs. Booth's converts and stood up in chapel. After she
went away he said to me: "What a blessing has been
poured into my soul since I heard Mrs. Booth." Another
hypocrite said to me on the same occasion: "I don't know
what I would do only for Mrs. Booth. She has lightened
my weary burdens." Now, I would not trust either of
those men with a box of matches; and so I said to the
Great American Identifier: "You are the meanest, most
despicable thief in the whole stir. I'd respect you if you
had the nerve to rob a live man, but you always stole from
a cadaver." He was horrified at my language and began to
talk of a favorite subject with him--his wealthy relatives.
Some of these converts were not hypocrites, but

I don't think even they received any good from their
conversion. Some people go to religion because they
have nothing else to distract their thoughts, and the
212
subject sometimes is a mania with them. The doctors say
that there is only one incurable mental disease--religious
insanity. In the eyes of the reformers Mrs. Booth does a
great thing by making some of us converts, but experts in
mental diseases declare that it is very bad to excite
convicts to such a pitch. Many of the weak-minded among
them lose their balance and become insane through these
violent religious emotions.
I did not meet so many of the big guns on my

second term as on my first; but, of course, I came across
many of my old pals and formed some new
acquaintances. It was on this term that four of us used to
have what I called a tenement house oratory talk
whenever we worked together in the halls. Some of us
were lucky enough at times to serve as barbers, hall-men
and runners to and from the shops, and we used to
gather together in the halls and amuse ourselves with
conversation. Dickey, Mull, Mickey and I became great
pals in this way. Dickey was a desperate river pirate who
would not stand a roast from anybody, but was well liked.
Mull was one of the best principled convicts I ever knew
in my life. He was quiet, delicate and manly, and opposed
to abusing young boys, yet if you did him an injury he
would cut the liver out of you. He was a good fellow.
Mickey was what I called a tenement house philosopher.
He'd stick his oar into every bit of talk that was started.
One day the talk began on Tammany Hall and went
something like this:
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"All crooked officials," said Mull, "including all of
them, ought to be railroaded to Sing Sing."
_Dickey_: "Through their methods the county

offices are rotten from the judge to the policeman."
_Mull_: "I agree with you."
_Mickey_: "Ah, wat's the matter wid Tammany?

My old man never voted any other ticket. Neither did
yours. When you get into stir you act like college
professors. Why don't you practice what you spout? I
always voted the Tammany ticket--five or six times every
election day. How is it I never got a long bit?"
_Mull_: "How many times, Mickey, have you

been in stir?"
_Mickey_: "This is the fourth, but the highest I

got was four years."
_Dickey_: "You never done anything big enough

to get four."
_Mickey_: "I didn't, eh? You have been hollering

that you are innocent, and get twenty years for piracy. I
only get four, but I am guilty every time. There is a big
difference between that and twenty, aint it?"
214
Mull slapped Mickey on the back and said:
"Never mind. You will get yours yet on the installment
plan." Then, turning to me, Mull asked: "Jim, don't you
think that if everything was square and on the level we'd
stand a better chance?"
"No," I replied. "In the first place we have not

reached the millennium. In the second place they would
devise some legal scheme to keep a third timer the rest of
his natural days. I know a moccasin who would move
heaven and earth to have such a bill passed, and he is one
of the crookedest philanthropists in America to-day. I am
a grafter, and I believe that the present administration is
all right. I know that I can stay out of prison as long as I
save my fall-money. When I blow that in I ought to go to
prison. Every gun who is capable of stealing, knows that if
he puts by enough money he can not only keep out of stir
but can beat his way into heaven. I'm arguing as a
professional thief."
This was too much for Mickey, who said: "Why

don't you talk United States and not be springing whole
leaves out of a dictionary?"
Just then Big Jim came up. He had heard what I

said and he joined in: "You know why I got the tenth of a
century? I had thousands in my pocket and went to buy
some silk underwear at a haberdasher's in New York. But
it seemed to me a waste of good coin to buy them, so I
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stole a dozen pair of silk stockings. They tried to arrest
me, I shot, and got ten years. I always did despise a petty
thief, but I never felt like kicking him till then. Ten years
for a few stockings! Can you blame the judge? I didn't.
Even a judge admires a good thief. If I had robbed a bank
I'd never have got such a long bit. The old saying is true:
Kill one man and you will be hanged. Kill sixteen, and the
United States Government is likely to pension you."
The tenement-house philosopher began to

object again, when the guard, as usual, came along to
stop our pleasant conversation. He thought we were
abusing our privileges.
It was during this bit that I met the man with the
white teeth, as he is now known among his friends. I will
call him Patsy, and tell his story, for it is an unusual one.
He was a good deal older man than I and was one of the
old-school burglars, and a good one. They were a
systematic lot, and would shoot before they stood the
collar; but they were gentlemanly grafters and never
abused anybody. The first thing Patsy's mob did after
entering a house was to round up all the inmates and put
them into one room. There one burglar would stick them
up with a revolver, while the others went through the
house. On a fatal occasion Patsy took the daughter of the
house, a young girl of eighteen or nineteen, in his arms
and carried her down stairs into the room where the rest
of the family had been put by the other grafters. As he
216
carried the girl down stairs, she said: "Mr. Burglar, don't
harm me." Patsy was masked, all but his mouth, and
when he said: "You are as safe as if you were in your
father's arms," she saw his teeth, which were remarkably
fine and white. Patsy afterwards said that the girl was not
a bit alarmed, and was such a perfect coquette that she
noticed his good points. The next morning she told the
police that one of the bad men had a beautiful set of
teeth. The flymen rounded up half a dozen grafters on
suspicion, among them Patsy; and no sooner did he open
his mouth, than he was recognized, and settled for a long
bit. Poor Patsy has served altogether about nineteen
years, but now he has squared it, and is a waiter in a
Bowery saloon, more content with his twelve dollars a
week than he used to be with his thousands. I often go
around and have a glass with him. He is now a quiet,
sober fellow, and his teeth are as fine as ever.
One day a man named "Muir," a mean, sure-thing

grafter, came to the stir on a visit to some of his
acquaintances. He had never done a bit himself, although
he was a notorious thief. But he liked to look at the
misfortunes of others, occasionally. On this visit he got
more than he bargained for. He came to the clothing
department where Mike, who had grafted with Muir in
New York, and I, were at work. Muir went up to Mike and
offered him a bill. Mike threw it in Muir's face and called
him--well, the worst thing known in Graftdom. "If it
wasn't for you," he said, "I wouldn't be doing this bit."
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Back to Prison
There are several kinds of sure-thing grafters.
Some are crooked gamblers, some are plain stool-
pigeons, some are discouraged thieves who continue to
graft but take no risks. Muir was one of the meanest of
the rats that I have known, yet in a way, he was handy to
the professional gun. He had somebody "right" at
headquarters and could generally get protection for his
mob; but he would always throw the mob over if it was to
his advantage. He and two other house-work men robbed
a senator's home, and such a howl went up that the
police offered all manner of protection to the grafter who
would tip them off to who got the stuff. Grafters who
work with the coppers don't want it known among those
of their own kind, for they would be ostracized. If they do
a dirty trick they try to throw it on someone else who
would not stoop to such a thing. Muir was a diplomat,
and tipped off the Central Office, and those who did the
trick, all except Tom and Muir, were nailed. A few nights
after that the whisper was passed among guns of both
sexes, who had gathered at a resort up-town, that
somebody had squealed. The muttered curses meant that
some Central Office man had by wireless telegraphy put
the under world next that somebody had tipped off the
police. But it was not Muir that the hard names were said
against: the Central Office man took care of that. With
low cunning Muir had had the rumor circulated that it was
Tom who had thrown them down, and Tommy was
ostracized.
218
I knew Muir and I knew Tommy, and I was sure
that the latter was innocent. Some time after Tom had
been cut by the rest of the gang I saw Muir drinking with
two Central Office detectives, in a well-known resort, and
I was convinced that he was the rat. His personal
appearance bore out my suspicion. He had a weak face,
with no fight in it. He was quiet of speech, always smiling,
and as soft and noiseless as the animal called the snake.
He had a narrow, hanging lip, small nose, large ears, and
characterless, protruding eyes. The squint look from
under the eye-brows, and the quick jerk of the hand to
the chin, showed without doubt that he possessed the
low cunning too of that animal called the rat. Partly
through my influence, Muir gradually got the reputation
of being a sure-thing grafter, but he was so sleek that he
could always find some grafter to work with him. Pals
with whom he fell out, always shortly afterwards came to
harm. That was the case with Big Mike, who spat in Muir's
face, when the latter visited him in Sing Sing. When Muir
did pickpocket work, he never dipped himself, but acted
as a stall. This was another sure-thing dodge. Muir never
did a bit in stir because he was of more value to
headquarters than a dozen detectives. The fact that he
never did time was another thing that gradually made the
gang suspicious of him. Therefore, at the present time he
is of comparatively little value to the police force, and
may be settled before long. I hope so.
219
Back to Prison
One of the meanest things Muir ever did was to a
poor old "dago" grafter, a queer-maker (counterfeiter).
The Italian was putting out unusually good stuff, both
paper and metal, and the avaricious Muir thought he saw
a good chance to get a big bit of money from the dago.
He put up a plan with two Central Office men to bleed the
counterfeiter. Then he went to the dago and said he had
got hold of some big buyers from the West who would
buy five thousand dollars worth of the "queer." They met
the supposed buyers, who were in reality the two Central
Office men, at a little saloon. After a talk the detectives
came out in their true colors, showed their shields, and
demanded one thousand dollars. The dago looked at
Muir, who gave him the tip to pay the one thousand
dollars. The Italian, however, thinking Muir was on the
level, misunderstood the sign, and did not pay. The
outraged detectives took the Italian to police
headquarters, but did not show up the queer at first; they
still wanted their one thousand dollars. So the dago was
remanded and remanded, getting a hearing every twenty-
four hours, but there was never enough evidence. Finally
the poor fellow got a lawyer, and then the Central Office
men gave up the game, and produced the queer as
evidence. The United States authorities prosecuted the
case, and the Italian was given three years and a half.
After he was released he met Muir on the East Side, and
tried to kill him with a knife. That is the only way Muir will
ever get his deserts. A man like him very seldom dies in
state's prison, or is buried in potter's field. He often
220
becomes a gin-mill keeper and captain of his election
district, for he understands how to control the repeaters
who give Tammany Hall such large majorities on election
day in Manhattan.
It was on this second bit in prison, as I have said

in another place, that the famous "fence" operated in stir.
I knew him well. He was a clever fellow, and I often
congratulated him on his success with the keepers; for he
was no stool-pigeon and got his pull legitimately. He was
an older grafter than I and remembered well Madame
Mandelbaum, the Jewess, one of the best fences, before
my time, in New York City. At the corner of Clinton and
Rivington Streets there stood until a few years ago a
small dry goods and notions store, which was the scene
of transactions which many an old gun likes to talk about.
What plannings of great robberies took place there, in
Madame Mandelbaum's store! She would buy any kind of
stolen property, from an ostrich feather to hundreds and
thousands of dollars' worth of gems. The common shop-
lifter and the great cracksman alike did business at this
famous place. Some of the noted grafters who patronized
her store were Jimmy Hope, Shang Draper, Billy Porter,
Sheenie Mike, Red Leary, Johnnie Irving, Jack Walsh, alias
John the Mick, and a brainy planner of big jobs, English
George.
Madame Mandelbaum had two country

residences in Brooklyn where she invited her friends, the
221
Back to Prison
most famous thieves in two continents. English George,
who used to send money to his son, who was being
educated in England, was a frequent visitor, and used to
deposit with her all his valuables. She had two beautiful
daughters, one of whom became infatuated with George,
who did not return her love. Later, she and her daughters,
after they became wealthy, tried to rise in the world and
shake their old companions. The daughters were finely
dressed and well-educated, and the Madame hunted
around for respectable husbands for them. Once a bright
reporter wrote a play, in which the central character was
Madame Mandelbaum. She read about it in the
newspapers and went, with her two daughters, to see it.
They occupied a private box, and were gorgeously
dressed. The old lady was very indignant when she saw
the woman who was supposed to be herself appear on
the stage. The actress, badly dressed, and made up with a
hooked nose, was jeered by the audience. After the play,
Madame Mandelbaum insisted on seeing the manager of
the theatre. She showed him her silks and her costly
diamonds and then said: "Look at me. I am Madame
Mandelbaum. Does that huzzy look anything like me?"
Pointing to her daughters she continued: "What must my
children think of such an impersonation? Both of them are
better dressed and have more money and education than
that strut, who is only a moment's plaything for bankers
and brokers!"
222
In most ways, of course, my life in prison during
the second term was similar to what it was on my first
term. Books and opium were my main pleasures. If it had
not been for them and for the thoughts about life and
about my fellow convicts which they led me to form, the
monotony of the prison routine would have driven me
mad. My health was by that time badly shattered. I was
very nervous and could seldom sleep without a drug.
My moral health was far worse, too, than it had

been on my first term. Then I had made strong efforts to
overcome the opium habit, and laid plans to give up
grafting. Then I had some decent ambitions, and did not
look upon myself as a confirmed criminal; whereas on the
second term, I had grown to take a hopeless view of my
case. I began to feel that I could not reform, no matter
how hard I tried. It seemed to me, too, that it was hardly
worth while now to make an effort, for I thought my
health was worse than it really was and that I should die
soon, with no opportunity to live the intelligent life I had
learned to admire through my books. I still made good
resolutions, and some effort to quit the hop, but they
were weak in comparison with the efforts I had made
during my first term. More and more it seemed to me that
I belonged in the under world for good, and that I might
as well go through it to the end. Stealing was my
profession. It was all I knew how to do, and I didn't
believe that anybody was interested enough in me to
teach me anything else. On the other hand, what I had
223
Back to Prison
learned on the Rocky Path would never leave me. I was
sure of my knowledge of the technique of graft, and I
knew that a sucker was born every minute.
224
CHAPTER XII.
On the Outside Again.
My time on the second bit was drawing to a

close. I was eager to get out, of course, but I knew way
down in my mind, that it would be only to graft again. I
made a resolution that I would regain my health and
gather a little fall-money before I started in hard again on
the Rocky Path.
On the day of my release, Warden Sage called me

to his office and talked to me like a friend. He did not
know that I was a second timer, or he might not have
been so kind to me. He was a humane man, and in spite of
his belief in the stool-pigeon system, he introduced good
things into Sing Sing. He improved the condition of the
cells and we were not confined there so much as we had
been before he came. On my first term many a man staid
for days in his cell without ever going out; one man was
confined twenty-eight days on bread and water. But
under Mr. Sage punishments were not so severe. He even
used to send delicacies to men chained up in the Catholic
Chapel.
I should like to say a good word for Head Keeper

Connoughton, too. He was not generally liked, for he was
a strict disciplinarian, but I think he was one of the best
225
On the Outside Again
keepers in the country. He was stern, but not brutal, and
when a convict was sick, Mr. Connoughton was very kind.
He was not deceived by the fake lunatics, and used to say:
"If you go to the mad-house, you are liable to become
worse. If you are all right in the morning I will give you a
job out in the air." Although Mr. Connoughton had had
little schooling he was an intelligent man.
I believe the best thing the community can do to

reform criminals is to have a more intelligent class of
keepers. As a rule they are ignorant, brutal and stupid,
under-paid and inefficient; yet what is more important for
the State's welfare than an intelligent treatment of
convicts? Short terms, too, are better than long ones, for
when the criminal is broken down in health and made
fearful, suspicious and revengeful, what can you expect
from him? However, in the mood I was in at the end of my
second term, I did not believe that anything was any good
as a preventive of crime. I knew that when I got on the
outside I wouldn't think of what might happen to me. I
knew that I couldn't or wouldn't carry a hod. What
ambition I had left was to become a more successful
crook than I had ever been before.
Warden Sage gave me some good advice and

then I left Sing Sing for New York. I did not get the
pleasure from going out again that had been so keen
after my first bit. My eye-sight was failing now, and I was
sick and dull. My only thought was to get back to my old
226
haunts, and I drank several large glasses of whiskey at
Sing Sing town, to help me on my way. I intended to go
straight home, as I felt very ill, to my father and mother,
but I didn't see them for several days after my return to
New York. The first thing I did in the city was to deliver
some messages from my fellow convicts to their relatives.
My third visit for that purpose was to the home of a fine
young fellow I knew in stir. It was a large family and
included a married sister and her children. They were glad
to hear from Bobby, and I talked to them for some time
about him, when the husband of the married sister came
home, and began to quarrel with his wife. He accused her
of having strange men in the house, meaning me. The
younger brother and the rest of the family got back at the
brother-in-law and gave him better than they got. The
little brother fired a lamp at him, and he yelled "murder".
The police surrounded the house and took us all to the
station-house in the patrol wagon. And so I spent the first
night after my return in confinement. It seemed natural,
however. In the morning we were taken before the
magistrate, and the mother and sister testified that I had
taken them a message from their boy, and had committed
no offense. The brother-in-law blurted out that he had
married into a family of thieves, and that I had just
returned from Sing Sing. I was discharged, but fined five
dollars. Blessed are the peacemakers,--but not in my case!
I passed the next day looking for old girls and

pals, but I found few of them. Many were dead and
227
others were in stir or had sunk so far down into the under
world that even I could not find them. I was only about
thirty-two years old, but I had already a long acquaintance
with the past. Like all grafters I had lived rapidly,
crowding, while at liberty, several days into one. When I
got back from my second bit the greater part of my life
seemed to be made up of memories of other days. Some
of the old pals I did meet again had squared it, others
were "dead" (out of the game) and some had
degenerated into mere bums.
There are several different classes of "dead

ones":
1. The man who has lost his nerve. He generally

becomes a whiskey fiend. If he becomes hopelessly a
soak the better class of guns shun him, for he is no good
to work with. He will not keep an engagement, or will
turn up at the place of meeting too late or too early. A
grafter must be exactly on time. It is as bad to be too
early as too late, for he must not be seen hanging around
the place of meeting. Punctuality is more of a virtue in the
under world than it is in respectable society. The slackest
people I know to keep their appointments, are the honest
ones; or grafters who have become whiskey fiends. These
latter usually wind up with rot-gut booze and are
sometimes seen selling songs on the Bowery.
228
2. The man who becomes a copper. He is known
as a stool-pigeon, and is detested and feared by all
grafters. Nobody will go with him. Sometimes he
becomes a Pinkerton man, and is a useful member of
society. When he loses his grip with the upper world, he
belongs to neither, for the grafters won't look at him.
3. The man who knows a trade. This grafter often

"squares" it, is apt to marry and remain honest. His
former pals, who are still grafters, treat him kindly, for
they know he is not a rat. They know, too, that he is a
bright and intelligent man, and that it is well to keep on
the right side of him. Such a man has often educated
himself in stir, and, when he squares it, is apt to join a
political club, and is called in by the leader to help out in
an election, for he possesses some brains. The gun is apt
to make him an occasional present, for he can help the
grafter, in case of a fall, because of his connection with
the politicians. This kind of "dead one" often keeps his
friends the grafters, while in stir, next to the news in the
city.
4. The gun who is _supposed_ to square it. This

grafter has got a bunch of money together and sees a
good chance to open a gin-mill, or a Raines Law hotel, or a
gambling joint. He knows how to take care of the
repeaters, and is handy about election time. In return he
gets protection for his illegal business. He is a go-
between, and is on good terms with coppers and grafters.
229
He supplies the grafter who has plenty of fall-money with
bondsmen, makes his life in the Tombs easy, and gets him
a good job while in stir. This man is supposed to be
"dead," but he is really very much alive. Often a copper
comes to him and asks for the whereabouts of some
grafter or other. He will reply, perhaps: "I hear he is in
Europe, or in the West." The copper looks wise and
imagines he is clever. The "dead" one sneers, and, like a
wise man, laughs in his sleeve; for he is generally in
communication with the man looked for.
5. The sure-thing grafter. He is a man who

continues to steal, but wants above everything to keep
out of stir, where he has spent many years. So he goes
back to the petty pilfering he did as a boy. General Brace
and the Professor belonged to this class of "dead ones."
The second night I spent on the Bowery after my return
from my second bit I met Laudanum Joe, who is another
good example of this kind of "dead one." At one time he
made thousands of dollars, but now he is discouraged
and nervous. He looked bad (poorly dressed) but was
glad to see me.
"How is graft?" he asked.
"I have left the Rocky Path," I replied, thinking I

would throw a few "cons" into him. "I am walking
straight. Not in the religious line, either."
230
He smiled, which was tantamount to saying that I
lied.
"What are you working at?" he asked.
"I am looking for a job," I replied.
"Jimmy, is it true, that you are pipes (crazy)? I

heard you got buggy (crazy) in your last bit."
"Joe," I replied, "you know I was never bothered

above the ears."
"If you are going to carry the hod," he said, "you

might as well go to the pipe-house, and let them cure you.
Have you given up smoking, too?" he continued.
He meant the hop. I conned him again and said:

"Yes." He showed the old peculiar, familiar grin, and said:
"Say, I have no coin. Take me with you and give

me a smoke."
I tried to convince him that there was nothing in

it, but he was a doubter.
"What are _you_ doing, Joe?" I asked.
231
"O, just getting a few shillings," he replied,
meaning that he was grafting.
"Why don't you give up the booze?" I asked.
I had made a break, for he said, quickly:
"Why? Because I don't wear a Piccadilly collar?"

All grafters of any original calibre are super-sensitive, to a
point very near insanity. Laudanum Joe thought I had
reference to his dress, which was very bum.
"Joe," I said, "I never judge a man by his clothes,

especially one that I know."
"Jimmy," he said, "the truth is I can't stand

another long bit in stir. I do a little petty pilfering that
satisfies my wants--a cup of tea, plenty of booze, and a
little hop. If I fall I only go to the workhouse for a couple
of months. The screws know I have seen better days and I
can get a graft and my booze while there. If I aint as
prosperous as I was once, why not dream I'm a
millionaire?"
Some grafters who have been prosperous at one

time fall even lower than Laudanum Joe. When they get
fear knocked into them and can't do without whiskey
they sink lower and lower. Hungry Bob is another
232
example. I grafted with him as a boy, but when I met him
on the Bowery after my second bit I hardly knew him, and
at first he failed to recognize me entirely. I got him into a
gin-mill, however, and he told how badly treated he had
been just before we met. He had gone into a saloon kept
by an old pal of his who had risen in the world, and asked
him for fifteen cents to buy a bed in a lodging-house. "Go
long, you pan-handler (beggar)," said his old friend. Poor
Bob was badly cut up about it, and talked about
ingratitude for a long time. But he had his lodging money,
for a safe-cracker who knew Hungry Bob when he was
one of the gayest grafters in town, happened to be in the
saloon, and he gave the "bum" fifteen cents for old times
sake.
"How is it, Bob," I said to him, "that you are not

so good as you were?"
"You want to know what put me on the bum?"

he answered. "Well, it's this way. I can't trust nobody, and
I have to graft alone. That's one thing. Then, too, I like the
booze too much, and when I'm sitting down I can't get up
and go out and hustle the way I used to."
Hungry Bob and I were sitting in a resort for

sailors and hard-luck grafters in the lower Bowery, when a
Sheenie I knew came in.
233
"Hello, Jim," he said.
"How's graft, Mike?" I replied.
"Don't mention it."
"What makes you look so glum?"
"I'm only after being turned out of police court

this morning."
"What was the rap, Mike?"
"I'm looking too respectable. They asked me

where I got the clothes. I told them I was working, which
was true. I have been a waiter for three months. The
flymen took me to headquarters. I was gathered in to
make a reputation for those two shoo-flies. Whenever I
square it and go to work I am nailed regularly, because my
mug is in the Hall of Fame. When I am arrested, I lose my
job every time. Nobody knows you now, Jim. You could
tear the town open."
I made a mental resolution to follow Mike's

advice very soon--as soon as my health was a little better.
Just then Jack, a boyhood pal of mine, who knew the old
girls, Sheenie Annie and the rest, came in. I was mighty
glad to see him, and said so to him.
234
"I guess you've got the advantage of me, bloke,"
was his reply.
"Don't you remember Jimmy the Kid, ten years

ago, in the sixth?" I jogged his memory with the names of
a few pals of years ago, and when he got next, he said:
"I wouldn't have known you, Jim. I thought you

were dead many years ago in stir. I heard it time and time
again. I thought you were past and gone."
After a short talk, I said:
"Where's Sheenie Annie?"
"Dead," he replied.
"Mamie?" I asked.
"Dead," he replied.
"Lucy?"
"In stir."
"Swedish Emmy?"
235
"She's married."
"Any good Molls now? I'm only after getting back

from stir and am not next," I said.
"T'aint like old times, Jim," he said. "The Molls

won't steal now. They aint got brains enough. They are
not innocent. They are ignorant. All they know how to do
is the badger."
I went with Jack to his house, where he had an

opium layout. There we found several girls and grafters,
some smoking hop, some with the subtle cigarette
between their lips. I was introduced to an English grafter,
named Harry. He said he was bloomin' glad to see me. He
was just back from the West, he said, but I thought it was
the pen. He began to abuse the States, and I said:
"You duffer, did you ever see such pretty girls as

here? Did you ever wear a collar and tie in the old
country?"
He grew indignant and shouted: "'Oly

Cobblestones! In this ---- country I have two hundred
bucks (dollars) saved up every time, but I never spend a
cent of it. 'Ow to 'Ell am I better off here? I'm only stealin'
for certain mugs (policemen) and fer those 'igher up, so
they can buy real estate. They enjoy their life in this
236
country and Europe off my 'ard earned money and the
likes of me. They die as respected citizens. I die in the
work'us as an outcast. Don't be prating about your ----
country!"
As soon as I had picked out a good mob to join I

began to graft again. Two of my new pals were safe-
blowers, and we did that graft, and day-work, as well as
the old reliable dipping. But I wasn't much at the graft
during the seven months I remained on the outside. My
health continued bad, and I did not feel like "jumping out"
so much as I had done formerly. I did not graft except
when my funds were very low, and so, of course, contrary
to my plans, I saved no fall-money. I had a girl, an opium
lay-out and a furnished room, where I used to stay most
of the time, smoking with pals, who, like myself, had had
the keen edge of their ambition taken off. I had a strange
longing for music at that time; I suppose because my
nerves were weaker than they used to be. I kept a
number of musical instruments in my room, and used to
sing and dance to amuse my visitors.
During these seven months that I spent mainly in

my room, I used to reflect and philosophize a lot, partly
under the influence of opium. I would moralize to my girl
or to a friend, or commune with my own thoughts. I often
got in a state of mind where everything seemed a joke to
me. I often thought of myself as a spectator watching the
play of life. I observed my visitors and their characteristics
237
and after they had left for the evening loved to size them
up in words for Lizzie.
My eyes were so bad that I did not read much,

but I took it out in epigrams and wise sayings. I will give a
few specimens of the kind of philosophy I indulged in.
"You always ought to end a speech with a sneer

or a laconic remark. It is food for thought. The listener will
pause and reflect."
"It is not what you make, but what you save, that
counts. It isn't the big cracksman who gets along. It is the
unknown dip who saves his earnings."
"To go to Germany to learn the language is as

bad as being in stir for ten years."
"Jump out and be a man and don't join the

Salvation Army."
"Always say to the dip who says he wants to

square it; Well, what's your other graft?"
"When a con gets home he is apt to find his

sweetheart married, and a 'Madonna of the wash tubs.'"
238
"He made good money and was a swell grafter,
but he got stuck on a Tommy that absorbed his attention,
and then he lost his punctuality and went down and out."
"Do a criminal a bodily injury and he may forget.

Wound his feelings and he will never forgive."
"Most persons have seen a cow or a bull with a

board put around its head in such a way that the animal
can see nothing. It is a mode of punishment. Soon the
poor beast will go mad, if the board is not removed. What
chance has the convict, confined in a dark cell for years,
to keep his senses? He suffers from astigmatism of the
mind."
"I am as much entitled to an opinion as any other

quack on the face of the earth."
"General Grant is one of my heroes. He was a boy

at fifteen. He was a boy when he died. A boy is loyalty
personified. General Grant had been given a task to do,
and like a boy, he did it. He was one of our greatest men,
and belongs with Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin and
Robert Ingersoll."
"Why don't we like the books we liked when we

were boys? It is not because our judgment is better, but
239
because we have a dream of our own now, and want
authors to dream along the same lines."
"The only gun with principles is the minor

grafter."
"The weakest man in the universe is he who falls

from a good position and respectable society into the
world of graft. Forgers and defaulters are generally of this
class. A professional gun, who has been a thief all his life,
is entitled to more respect."
"In writing a book on crime, one ought to have in

mind to give the public a truthful account of a thief's life,
his crimes, habits, thoughts, emotions, vices and virtues,
and how he lives in prison and out. I believe this ought to
be done, and the man who does it well must season his
writings with pathos, humor, sarcasm, tragedy, and thus
give the real life of the grafter."
"Sympathy with a grafter who is trying to square

it is a tonic to his better self."
"The other day I was with a reporter and a

society lady who were seeing the town. The lady asked
me how I would get her diamond pin. It was fastened in
such a way that to get it, strong arm work would be
necessary. I explained how I would "put the mug on her"
240
while my husky pal went through her. 'But,' she said, 'that
would hurt me.' As if the grafters cared! What a selfish
lady to be always thinking of herself!" "Life is the basis of
philosophy. Philosophy is an emanation from our daily
routine. After a convict has paced his cell a few thousand
times he sometimes has an idea. Philosophy results from
life put through a mental process, just as opium, when
subjected to a chemical experiment, produces laudanum.
Why, therefore, is not life far stronger than a narcotic?"
"I believe in platonic love, for it has been in my

own life. A woman always wants love, whether she is
eighteen or eighty--real love. Many is the time I have seen
the wistful look in some woman's eye when she saw that
it was only good fellowship or desire on my part."
"In this age of commerce there is only one true

friendship, the kind that comes through business."
"An old adage has it that all things come to him

who waits. Yes: poverty, old age and death. The
successful man is he who goes and gets it."
"If thy brother assaults you, do not weep, nor

pray for him, nor turn the other cheek, but assail him with
the full strength of your muscles, for man at his best is
not lovable, nor at his worst, detestable."
241
"There is more to be got in Germany, judging
from what Dutch Lonzo used to say, than in England or
America, only the Dutchmen are too thick-headed to find
it out. A first class gun in Germany would be ranked as a
ninth-rater here."
"Grafters are like the rest of the world in this:

they always attribute bad motives to a kind act."
"From flim-flam (returning short change) to

burglary is but a step, provided one has the nerve."
"Why would a woman take to him (a sober,

respectable man but lacking in temperament) unless she
wanted a good home?"
"If there is anything detestable, it is a grafter

who will steal an overcoat in the winter time."
"'Look for the woman.' A fly-cop gets many a tip

from some tid-bit in whom a grafter has reposed
confidence."
* * * * *
I did not do, as I have said, any more grafting

than was necessary during these seven months of liberty;
but I observed continually, living in an opium dream, and
242
my pals were more and more amusing to me. When I
thought about myself and my superior intelligence, I was
sad, but I thought about myself as little as possible. I
preferred to let my thoughts dwell on others, who I saw
were a a fine line of cranks and rogues.
Somewhere in the eighties, before I went to stir,

there was a synagogue at what is now 101 Hester Street.
The synagogue was on the first floor, and on the ground
floor was a gin-mill, run by an ex-Central Office man. Many
pickpockets used to hang out there, and they wanted to
drive the Jews out of the first floor, so that they could lay
out a faro game there. So they swore and carried on most
horribly on Saturdays, when the rabbi was preaching, and
finally got possession of the premises. Only a block away
from this old building was a famous place for dips to get
"books", in the old days. Near by was Ridley's dry-goods
store, in which there were some cash-girls who used to
tip us off to who had the books, and were up to the graft
themselves. They would yell "cash" and bump up against
the sucker, while we went through him. The Jews were
few in those days, and the Irish were in the majority. On
the corner of Allen and Hester Streets stood the saloon of
a well-known politician. Now a Jew has a shop there. Who
would think that an Isaacs would supersede a Finnigan?
At the gin-mill on Hester Street, I used to know a

boy dip named Buck. When I got back from my second bit
I found he had developed into a box-man, and had a
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peculiar disposition, which exists outside, as well as
inside, Graftdom. He had one thousand eight hundred
dollars in the bank, and a fine red front (gold watch and
chain), but he was not a good fellow. He used to invite
three or four guns to have a drink, and would order
Hennessy's brandy, which cost twenty cents a glass. After
we had had our drinks he would search himself and only
find perhaps twenty cents in his clothes. He got into me
several times before I "blew". One time, after he had
ordered drinks, he began the old game, said he thought
he had eighteen dollars with him, and must have been
touched. Then he took out his gold watch and chain and
threw it on the bar. But who would take it? I went down,
of course, and paid for the drinks. When we went out
together, he grinned, and said to me: "I pity you. You will
never have a bank account, my boy."
The next time Buck threw down his watch and

said he would pay in the morning, I thought it was dirt, for
I knew he had fifty dollars on him. So I said to the
bartender: "Take it and hock it, and get what he owes
you. This chump has been working it all up and down the
line. I won't be touched by the d---- grafter any more."
Buck was ready witted and turning to the

bartender, said: "My friend here is learning how to play
poker and has just lost eighteen dollars. He is a dead sore
loser and is rattled."
244
We went out with the watch, without paying for
our drinks, and he said to me: "Jim, I don't believe in
paying a gin-mill keeper. If the powers that be were for
the people instead of for themselves they would have
such drinkables free on every corner in old New York."
The next time Buck asked me to have a drink I told him to
go to a warm place in the next world. Buck was good to
his family. He was married and had a couple of brats.
Many a man educates himself in stir, as was my

case. Jimmy, whom I ran up against one day on the street,
is a good example. He had squared it and is still on the
level. When I saw him, after my second bit, he was making
forty dollars a week as an electrical engineer; and every
bit of the necessary education he got in prison. At one
time he was an unusually desperate grafter; and entirely
ignorant of everything, except the technique of theft.
Many years ago he robbed a jewelry store and was sent to
Blackwell's Island for two years. The night of the day he
was released he burglarized the same store and assaulted
the proprietor. He was arrested with the goods on him
and brought to General Sessions before Recorder
Smythe, who had sentenced him before. He got ten years
at Sing Sing and Auburn, and for a while he was one of
the most dangerous and desperate of convicts, and made
several attempts to escape. But one day a book on
electricity fell into his hands, and from that time on he
was a hard student. When he was released from stir he
got a job in a large electrical plant up the State, and
245
worked for a while, when he was tipped off by a country
grafter who had known him in stir. He lost his job, and
went to New York, where he met me, who was home
after my first term. I gave him the welcome hand, and,
after he had told me his story, I said: "Well, there is plenty
of money in town. Jump out with us." He grafted with me
and my mob for a while, but got stuck on a Tommy, so
that we could not depend on him to keep his
appointments, and we dropped him. After that he did
some strong arm work with a couple of gorillas and fell
again for five years. When he returned from stir he got his
present position as electrical engineer. He had it when I
met him after my second bit and he has it to-day. I am
sure he is on the level and will be so as long as he holds
his job.
About this time I was introduced to a peculiar

character in the shape of a few yards of calico. It was at
Carey's place on Bleecker Street that I first saw this good-
looking youth of nineteen, dressed in the latest fashion.
His graft was to masquerade as a young girl, and for a
long time Short-Haired Liz, as we called him, was very
successful. He sought employment as maid in well-to-do
families and then made away with the valuables. One day
he was nailed, with twenty charges against him. He was
convicted on the testimony of a chamber-maid, with
whom, in his character of lady's maid, he had had a lark.
Mr. R----, who was still influential, did his best for him, for
his fall-money was big, and he only got a light sentence.
246
I heard one day that an old pal of mine, Dannie,
had just been hanged. It gave me a shock, for I had often
grafted with him when we were kids. As there were no
orchards on the streets of the east side, Dannie and I used
to go to the improvised gardens that lined the side-walks
outside of the green grocers' shops, and make away with
strawberries, apples, and other fruits. By nature I suppose
boys are no more bothered with consciences than are
police officials. Dannie rose rapidly in the world of graft
and became very dangerous to society. As a grafter he
had one great fault. He had a very quick temper. He was
sensitive, and lacking in self-control, but he was one of
the cleverest guns that ever came from the Sixth Ward, a
place noted for good grafters of both sexes. He married a
respectable girl and had a nice home, for he had enough
money to keep the police from bothering him. If it had
not been for his bad temper, he might be grafting yet. He
would shoot at a moment's notice, and the toughest of
the hard element were afraid of him. One time he had it in
for an old pal of his named Paddy. For a while Paddy kept
away from the saloon on Pell Street where Dannie hung
out, but Paddy, too, had nerve, and one day he turned up
at his old resort, the Drum, as it was called. He saw Dannie
and fired a cannister at him. Dannie hovered between life
and death for months, and had four operations
performed on him without anæsthetics. After he got well
Dannie grafted on the Albany boats. One night he and his
pals tried to get a Moll's leather, but some Western guns
who were on the boat were looking for provender
247
themselves and nicked the Moll. Dannie accused them of
taking his property, and, as they would not give up, pulled
his pistol. One of the Western guns jumped overboard,
and the others gave up the stuff. Dannie was right, for
that boat belonged to him and his mob.
A few months after that event Dannie shot a

mug, who had called him a rat, and went to San Antonio,
Texas, where he secured a position as bartender. One day
a well-known gambler who had the reputation of being a
ten time killer began to shoot around in the saloon for
fun. Dannie joined in the game, shot the gambler twice,
and beat the latter's two pals into insensibility. A few
months afterwards he came to New York with twenty-
seven hundred dollars in his pocket; and he enjoyed
himself, for it is only the New York City born who love the
town. But he had better have stayed away, for in New
York he met his mortal enemy, Splitty, who had more
brains than Dannie, and was running a "short while
house" in the famous gas house block in Hester Street.
One night Dannie was on a drunk, spending his twenty-
seven hundred dollars, and riding around in a carriage
with two girls. Beeze, one of the Molls, proposed to go
around to Splitty's. They went, and Beeze and the other
girl were admitted, but Dannie was shut out. He fired
three shots through the door. One took effect in Beeze's
breast fatally, and Dannie was arrested.
248
While in Tombs waiting trial he was well treated
by the warden, who was leader of the Sixth Ward, and
who used to permit Dannie's wife to visit him every night.
At the same time Dannie became the victim of one of the
worst cases of treachery I ever heard of. An old pal of his,
George, released from Sing Sing, went to visit him in the
Tombs. Dannie advised George not to graft again until he
got his health back, suggesting that meanwhile he eat his
meals at his (Dannie's) mother's house. The old lady had
saved up about two hundred and fifty dollars, which she
intended to use to secure a new trial for her son. George
heard of the money and put up a scheme to get it. He told
the old woman that Dannie was going to escape from the
Tombs that night and that he had sent word to his mother
to give him (George) the money. The villain then took the
money and skipped the city, thus completing the dirtiest
piece of work I ever heard of. "Good Heavens!" said
Dannie, when he heard of it. "A study in black!" Dannie,
poor fellow, was convicted, and, after a few months,
hanged.
Another tragedy in Manhattan was the end of

Johnny T----. I had been out only a short time after my
second bit, when I met him on the Bowery. He was just
back, too, and complained that all his old pals had lost
their nerve. Whenever he made a proposition they
seemed to see twenty years staring them in the face. So
he had to work alone. His graft was burglary, outside of
New York. He lived in the city, and the police gave him
249
protection for outside work. He was married and had two
fine boys. One day a copper, contrary to the agreement,
tried to arrest him for a touch made in Mt. Vernon.
Johnny was indignant, and wouldn't stand for a collar
under the circumstances. He put four shots into the
flyman's body. He was taken to the station-house, and
afterwards tried for murder. The boys collected a lot of
money and tried to save him, but he had the whole police
force against him and in a few months he was hanged.
A friend of mine, L----, had a similar fate. He was a

prime favorite with the lasses of easy virtue, and was
liked by the guns. One night when I met him in a joint
where grafters hung out, he displayed a split lip, given
him by the biggest bully in the ward. It was all about a girl
named Mollie whom the bully was stuck on and on whose
account he was jealous of L----, whom all the women ran
after. A few nights later, L---- met the bully who had
beaten him and said he had a present for him. "Is it
something good?" asked the gorilla. "Yes," said L----, and
shot him dead. L---- tried to escape, but was caught in
Pittsburg, and extradited to New York, where he was
convicted partly on the testimony of the girl, whom I used
to call Unlimited Mollie. She was lucky, for instead of
drifting to the Bowery, she married a policeman, who was
promoted. L---- was sentenced to be hanged, but he died
game.
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I think kleptomania is not a very common kind of
insanity, at least in my experience. Most grafters steal for
professional reasons, but Big Sammy was surely a
kleptomaniac. He had no reason to graft, for he was well
up in the world. When I first met he was standard bearer
at a ball given in his honor, and had a club named after
him. He had been gin-mill keeper, hotel proprietor, and
theatrical manager, and had saved money. He had, too, a
real romance in his life, for he loved one of the best choir
singers in the city. She was beautiful and loved him, and
they were married. She did not know that Sammy was a
gun; indeed, he was not a gun, really, for he only used to
graft for excitement, or at least, what business there was
in it was only a side issue. After their honeymoon Sammy
started a hotel at a sea-side resort, where the better class
of guns, gamblers and vaudeville artists spent their
vacation. That fall he went on a tour with his wife who
sang in many of the churches in the State. Sammy was a
good box-man. He never used puff (nitro-glycerine), but
with a few tools opened the safes artistically. His pal Mike
went ahead of the touring couple, and when Sammy
arrived at a town he was tipped off to where the goods
lay. When he heard that the police were putting it on to
the hoboes, he thought it was a good joke and kept it up.
He wanted the police to gather in all the black sheep they
could, for he was sorry they were so incompetent.
The loving couple returned to New York, and

were happy for a long time. But finally the wife fell ill, and
251
under-went an operation, from the effects of which she
never recovered. She became despondent and jealous of
Sammy, though he was one of the best husbands I have
known. One morning he had an engagement to meet an
old pal who was coming home from stir. He was late, and
starting off in a hurry, neglected to kiss his wife good-bye.
She called after him that he had forgotten something.
Sammy, feeling for his money and cannister, shouted
back that everything was all right, and rushed off. His wife
must have been in an unusually gloomy state of mind, for
she took poison, and when Sammy returned, she was
dead. It drove Sammy almost insane, for he loved her
always. A few days afterwards he jumped out for
excitement and forgetfulness and was so reckless when
he tried to make a touch that he was shot almost to
pieces. He recovered, however, and was sent to prison for
a long term of years. He is out again, and is now regularly
on the turf. During his bit in stir all his legitimate
enterprizes went wrong, and when he was released,
there was nothing for it but to become a professional
grafter.
During the seven months which elapsed between

the end of my second, and the beginning of my third
term, I was not a very energetic grafter, as I have said.
Graft was good at the time and a man with the least bit of
nerve could make out fairly well. My nerve had not
deserted me, but somehow I was less ambitious.
Philosophy and opium and bad health do not incline a
252
man to a hustling life. The excitement of stealing had left
me, and now it was merely business. I therefore did a
great deal of swindling, which does not stir the
imagination, but can be done more easily than other
forms of graft. I was known at headquarters as a dip, and
so I was not likely to be suspected for occasional
swindling, just as I had been able to do house-work now
and then without a fall.
I did some profitable swindling at this time, with

an Italian named Velica for a pal. It was a kind of graft
which brought quick returns without much of an outlay.
For several weeks we fleeced Velica's country men
brown. I impersonated a contractor and Velica was my
foreman. We put advertisements in the newspapers for
men to work on the railroads or for labor on new
buildings. We hired desk room in a cheap office, where
we awaited our suckers, who came in droves, though only
one could see us at a time. Our tools for this graft were
pen, paper, and ink; and one new shovel and pick-axe.
Velica did the talking and I took down the man's name
and address. Velica told his countryman that we could not
afford to run the risk of disappointing the railroad, so that
he would have to leave a deposit as a guarantee that he
would turn up in the morning. If he left a deposit of a few
dollars we put his name on the new pick and shovel,
which we told him he could come for in the morning. If
we induced many to give us deposits, using the same pick
and shovel as a bribe, we made a lot of money during the
253
day. The next morning we would change our office and
vary our form of advertisement.
Sometimes we met our victims at saloons. Velica

would be talking to some Italian immigrant who had
money, when I would turn up and be introduced. Treating
all around and flashing a roll of bills I could soon win the
sucker's respect and confidence, and make him ante up
on any old con. One day in a saloon in Newark we got an
Italian guy for one hundred and fifty dollars. Before he
left the place, however, he suspected something. We had
promised him the position of foreman of a gang of
laborers, and after we got his dough we could not let well
enough alone, and offered to give his wife the privilege of
feeding the sixty Italians of whom he was to be the
foreman. I suppose the dago thought that we were too
good, for he blew and pulled his gun. I caught him around
the waist, and the bartender, who was with us, struck him
over the head with a bottle of beer. The dago dropped
the smoke-wagon and the bartender threatened to put
him in prison for pulling a rod on respectable people. The
dago left the saloon and never saw his money again.
About this time, too, I had an opportunity to go

into still another lucrative kind of swindling, but didn't. It
was not conscience either that prevented me from
swindling the fair sex, for in those days all touches,--
except those made by others off myself--seemed
legitimate. I did not go in for it because, at the time it was
254
proposed to me, I had enough money for my needs, and
as I have said, I was lazy. It was a good graft, however,
and I was a fool for not ringing in on it. The scheme was
to hire a floor in a private house situated in any good
neighborhood. One of the mob had to know German, and
then an advertisement would be inserted in the _Herald_
to the effect that a young German doctor who had just
come from the old country wanted to meet a German
lady of some means with a view to matrimony. A pal of
mine who put such an advertisement in a Chicago paper
received no less than one hundred and forty five answers
from women ranging in age from fifteen to fifty. The
grafters would read the letters and decide as to which
ladies they thought had some money. When these arrived
at the office, in answer to the grafters' letters, they would
meet two or three men, impersonating the doctor and his
friends, who had the gift of "con" to a remarkable degree.
The doctor would suggest that if the lady would advance
sufficient money to start him in business in the West it
would be well. If he found she had plenty of money he
married her immediately, one of his pals acting the
clergyman. She then drew all her money from the bank,
and they went to a hotel. There the doctor leaving her in
their room, would go to see about the tickets for the
West, and never return. The ladies always jumped at
these offers, for all German women want to marry
doctors or clergymen; and all women are soft, even if
they are so apt to be natural pilferers themselves.
255
When I was hard up, and if there was no good
confidence game in sight, I didn't mind taking heavy
chances in straight grafting; for I lived in a dream, and
through opium, was not only lazy, but reckless. On one
occasion a Jew fence had put up a plan to get a big touch,
and picked me out to do the desperate part of the job.
The fence was an expert in jewels and worked for one of
the biggest firms that dealt in precious stones. He kept an
eye on all such stores, watching for an opening to put his
friends the grafters "next." To the place in question he
was tipped off by a couple of penny weighters, who
claimed it was a snap. He agreed with them, but kept his
opinion to himself, and came to see me about it. I and two
other grafters watched the place for a week. One day the
two clerks went out together for lunch, leaving the
proprietor alone in the store. This was the opportunity. I
stationed one of my pals at the window outside and the
other up the street to watch. If I had much trouble with
"the mark" the pal at the window was to come to my
assistance. With red pepper (to throw, if necessary, in the
sucker's eyes) and a good black jack I was to go into the
store and buy a baby's ring for one dollar. While waiting
for my change, I was to price a piece of costly jewelry, and
while talking about the merits of the diamond, hit my man
on the head with the black jack. Then all I had to do was
to go behind the counter and take the entire contents of
the window--only a minute's work, for all the costly jewels
were lying on an embroidered piece of velvet, and I had
only to pick up the four corners of the velvet, bundle it
256
into a green bag, and jump into the cab which was waiting
for us a block away. Well, I had just about got the
proprietor in a position to deal him the blow when the
man at the window weakened, and came in and said,
"Vix." I thought there was a copper outside, or that one
of the clerks was returning, and told the jeweler I would
send my wife for the ring. I went out and asked my pal
what was the matter. He said he was afraid I would kill
the old fellow, and that the come-back would be too
strong. My other pal I found a block away. We all went
back together to the fence, and then I opened on them, I
tell you. I called them petty larceny barnacles, and came
near clubbing them, I was so indignant. I have often had
occasion to notice that most thieves who will steal a
diamond or a "front" weaken when it comes to a large
touch, even though there may be no more danger in it
than in the smaller enterprises. I gave those two men a
wide berth after that, and whenever I met them I
sneered; for I could not get over being sore. The "touch"
was a beauty, with very little chance of a come-back, for
the police don't look among the pickpockets for the men
who make this kind of touches, and I and my two
companions were known to the coppers as dips.
Just before I fell for my third and most terrible

term, I met Lottie, and thought of marrying. I did not love
her, but liked her pretty well, and I was beginning to feel
that I ought to settle down and have a decent woman to
look after me, for my health was bad and I had little
257
ambition. Lottie seemed the right girl for the place. She
was of German extraction, and used to shave me
sometimes at her father's barber shop, where I first met
her. She seemed to me a good, honest girl, and I thought I
could not do better, especially as she was very fond of
me. Women like the spruce dips, as I have said before,
and even when my graft had broadened, I always retained
the dress, manners and reputation of a pickpocket. Lottie
promised to marry me, and said that she could raise a few
hundred dollars from her father, with which I might start
another barber shop, quit grafting, and settle down to my
books, my hop and domestic life. One day she gave me a
pin that cost nine dollars, she said, and she wouldn't let
me make her a present. All in all, she seemed like a
sensible girl, and I was getting interested in the marriage
idea. One day, however, I discovered something. I was
playing poker in the office of a hotel kept by a friend of
mine, when a man and woman came down stairs together
and passed through the office. They were my little
German girl and the owner of a pawn-shop, a Sheenie of
advanced years. Suddenly I realized where she had got
the pin she gave me; and I began to believe stories I had
heard about her. I thought I would test her character
myself. I did, and found it weak. I did not marry her! What
an escape! Every man, even a self-respecting gun, wants
an honest woman, if it comes to hitching up for good.
Soon after I escaped Lottie, I got my third fall for

the stir. The other times that I had been convicted, I was
258
guilty, but on this occasion I was entirely innocent. Often
a man who has done time and is well-known to the police
is rounded up on suspicion and convicted when he is
innocent, and I fell a victim to this easy way of the officials
for covering up their failure to find the right person. I had
gone one night to an opium joint near Lovers Row, a
section of Henry Street between Catherine and Oliver
Streets, where some guns of both sexes were to have a
social meeting. We smoked hop and drank heavily and
told stories of our latest touches. While we were thus
engaged I began to have severe pains in my chest, which
had been bothering me occasionally for some time, and
suddenly I had a hemorrhage. When I was able I left the
joint to see a doctor, who stopped the flow of blood, but
told me I would not live a month if I did not take good
care of myself. I got aboard a car, went soberly home to
my furnished room, and--was arrested.
I knew I had not committed any crime this time

and thought I should of course be released in the
morning. Instead however of being taken directly to the
station house, I was conducted to a saloon, and
confronted with the "sucker". I had never seen him
before, but he identified me, just the same, as the man
who had picked his pocket. I asked him how long ago he
had missed his valuables, and when he answered, "Three
hours," I drew a long sigh of relief, for I was at the joint at
that time, and thought I could prove an alibi. But though
the rapper seemed to weaken, the copper was less
259
trustful and read the riot act to him. I was so indignant I
began to call the policeman down vigorously. I told him
he had better try to make a reputation on me some other
time, when I was really guilty, whereupon he lost his
temper, and jabbed me in the chest with his club, which
brought on another flow of blood from my lungs.
In this plight I was taken to the station house, still

confident I should soon be set at liberty, although I had
only about eighty dollars for fall-money. I hardly thought I
needed it, but I used it just the same, to make sure, and
employed a lawyer. For a while things looked favorable to
me, for I was remanded back from court every morning
for eight days, on account of lack of evidence, which is
almost equivalent to a turn-out in a larceny case. Even the
copper began to pig it (weaken), probably thinking he
might as well get a share of my "dough," since it began to
look as if I should beat the case. But on the ninth day luck
turned against me. The Chief of detectives "identified"
me as another man, whispering a few words to the
justice, and I was committed under two thousand dollars
bail to stand trial in General Sessions. I was sent to the
Tombs to await trial, and I knew at last that I was lost. My
character alone would convict me; and my lawyer had
told me that I could not prove an alibi on the oaths of the
thieves and disorderly persons who had been with me in
the opium joint.
260
No matter how confirmed a thief a man may be, I
repeat, he hates to be convicted for something he has not
done. He objects indeed more than an honest man would
do, for he believes in having the other side play fair;
whereas the honest man simply thinks a mistake has been
made. While in the Tombs a murderous idea formed in my
mind. I felt that I had been horribly wronged, and was hot
for revenge. I was desperate, too, for I did not think I
should live my bit out. Determined to make half a dozen
angels, including myself, I induced a friend, who came to
see me in the Tombs, to get me a revolver. I told him I
wanted to create a panic with a couple of shots, and
escape, but in reality I had no thought of escape. I was
offered a light sentence, if I would plead guilty, but I
refused. I believed I was going to die anyway, and that
things did not matter; only I would have as much
company as possible on the road to the other world. I
meant to shoot the copper who had beaten me with his
club, District Attorney Olcott, the judge, the complainant
and myself as well, as soon as I should be taken into the
court room for trial. The pistol however was taken away
from me before I entered the court: I was convicted and
sentenced to five years at Sing Sing.
Much of the time I spent in stir on my third bit I

still harbored this thought of murder. That was one
reason I did not kill myself. The determination to do the
copper on my release was always in my mind. I planned
even a more cunning revenge. I imagined many a scheme
261
to get him, and gloat over his dire misfortunes. One of my
plans was to hunt him out on his beat, invite him to drink,
and put thirty grains of hydrate of chloral in his glass.
When he had become unconscious I would put a bottle of
morphine in his trousers pocket, and then telephone to a
few newspapers telling them that if they would send
reporters to the saloon they would have a good story
against a dope copper who smoked too much. The result
would be, I thought, a rap against the copper and his
disgrace and dismissal from the force would follow.
Sometimes this seemed to me better than murder; for
every copper who is "broke" immediately becomes a
bum. When my copper should have become a bum I
imagined myself catching him dead drunk and cutting his
hamstrings. Certainly I was a fiend when I reflected on my
wrongs, real and imaginary. At other times I thought I
merely killed him outright.
262
CHAPTER XIII.
In the Mad-House.
On the road to Sing Sing again! The public may

say I was surely an incorrigible and ought to have been
shut up anyway for safe keeping, but are they right if they
say so? During my confinement I often heard the prison
chaplain preach from the text "Though thou sinnest
ninety and nine times thy sin shall be forgiven thee."
Probably Christ knew what He meant: His words

do not apply to the police courts of Manhattan. These do
not forgive, but send you up for the third term, which, if it
is a long one, no man can pass through without
impairment in body or in brain. It is better to make the
convict's life as hard as hell for a short term, than to wear
out his mind and body. People need not wonder why a
man, knowing what is before him, steals and steals again.
The painful experiences of his prison life, too often
renewed, leave him as water leaves a rubber coat. Few
men are really impressionable after going through the
deadening life in stir.
Five months of my third term I spent at Sing Sing,

and then, as on my first bit, I was drafted to Auburn. At
Sing Sing I was classified as a second term man. I have
already explained that during my first term I earned over
3
In the Mad-House
a year's commutation time; and that that time would have
been legally forfeited when I was sent up again within
nine months for my second bit if any one, except a few
convicts, had remembered I had served before.
When, on my third sentence, I now returned to

Sing Sing, I found that the authorities were "next," and
knew that I had "done" them on the second bit. They
were sore, because it had been their own carelessness,
and they were afraid of getting into trouble. To protect
themselves they classified me as a second term man, but
waited for a chance to do me. I suppose it was some d----
Dickey Bird (stool-pigeon) who got them next that I had
done them; but I never heard who it was, though I tried to
find out long and earnestly.
When I got back to my cell in Sing Sing this third

time I was gloomy and desperate to an unusual degree,
still eaten up with my desire for vengeance on those who
had sent me to stir for a crime I had not committed. My
health was so bad that my friends told me I would never
live my bit out, and advised me to get to Clinton prison, if
possible, away from the damp cells at Sing Sing. But I
took no interest in what they said, for I did not care
whether I lived or died. I expected to die very soon, and in
the meantime thought I was well enough where I was. I
did not fear death, and I had my hop every day. All I
wanted from the keepers was to be let alone in my cell
and not annoyed with work. The authorities had an inkling
4
that I was in a desperate state of mind, and probably
believed it was healthier for them to let me alone a good
deal of the time.
Before long schemes began to form in my head

to make my gets (escape). I knew I wouldn't stop at
murder, if necessary in order to spring; for, as I have said,
I cared not whether I lived or died. On the whole,
however, I rather preferred to become an angel at the
beginning of my bit than at the end. I kept my schemes
for escape to myself, for I was afraid of a leak, but the
authorities must somehow have suspected something,
for they kept me in my cell twenty-three hours out of the
twenty-four. Perhaps it was just because they had it in for
me for beating them on my second bit. As before, I
consoled myself, while waiting a chance to escape, with
some of my favorite authors; but my eye-sight was
getting bad and I could not read as much as I used to.
It was during these five months at Sing Sing that I

first met Dr. Myers, of whom I saw much a year or two
later in the mad-house. At Sing Sing he had some
privileges, and used to work in the hall, where it was easy
for me to talk to him through my cell door. This
remarkable man, had been a splendid physician in
Chicago. He had beaten some insurance companies out of
one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, but was in
Sing Sing because he had been wrongfully convicted on a
charge of murder. He liked me, especially when later we
5
In the Mad-House
were in the insane asylum together, because I would not
stand for the abuse given to the poor lunatics, and would
do no stool-pigeon or other dirty work for the keepers. He
used to tell me that I was too bright a man to do any work
with my hands. "Jim," he said once, "I would rather see
you marry my daughter than give her to an ignorant
business man. I know you would treat her kindly and that
she would learn something of the world. As my wife often
said, I would rather die at thirty-eight after seeing the
world and enjoying life than live in a humdrum way till
ninety."
He explained the insurance graft to me, and I still

think it the surest and most lucrative of all grafts. For a
man with intelligence it is the very best kind of crooked
work. About the only way the insurance companies can
get back at the thieves is through a squeal. Here are a few
of the schemes he told me for this graft:
A man and his female pal take a small house in

town or on the outskirts of a large city. The man insures
his life for five thousand dollars. After they have lived
there a while, and passed perhaps as music teachers, they
take the next step, which is to get a dead body. Nothing is
easier. The man goes to any large hospital, represents
himself as a doctor and for twenty-five dollars can
generally get a stiff, which he takes away in a barrel or
trunk. He goes to a furnished room, already secured, and
there dresses the cadaver in his own clothes, putting his
6
watch, letters and money in the cadavers pockets. In the
evening he takes the body to some river or stream and
throws it in. He knows from the newspapers when the
body has been found, and notifies his woman pal, who
identifies it as her husband's body. There are only two
snags that one must guard against in this plot. The
cadaver must not differ much in height from the person
that has been insured; and its lungs must not show that
they were those of anybody dead before thrown into the
water. The way to prepare against this danger is to inject
some water with a small medical pump into the lungs of
the stiff before it is thrown overboard. Then it is easy for
the "widow" to get the money, and meet the alleged
dead man in another country.
A more complicated method, in which more

money is involved, is as follows. The grafter hires an office
and represents himself as an artist, a bric-à-brac dealer, a
promoter or an architect. Then he jumps to another city
and takes out a policy under the tontien or endowment
plan. When the game is for a very large amount three or
four pals are necessary. If no one of the grafters is a
doctor, a physician must be impersonated, but this is
easy. If there are, say, ten thousand physicians in
Manhattan, not many of whom have an income of ten
thousand a year, it is perhaps not difficult to get a
diploma. After a sheepskin is secured, the grafter goes to
another State, avoiding, unless he is a genuine physician,
New York and Illinois, for they have boards of regents.
7
In the Mad-House
The acting quack registers so that he can practice
medicine and hangs out his shingle. The acting business
man takes out a policy, and pays the first premium.
Before the first premium is paid he is dead, for all the
insurance company knows. Often a live substitute,
instead of a dead one, is secured. The grafter goes to the
charity hospital and looks over the wrecks waiting to die.
Some of these poor dying devils jump at the chance to go
West. It is necessary, of course, to make sure that the
patient will soon become an angel, or everything will fall
through. Then the grafter takes the sick man to his house
and keeps him out of sight. When he is about to die he
calls in the grafter who is posing as a physician. After the
death of the substitute the doctor signs the death
certificate, the undertaker prepares the body, which is
buried. The woman grafter is at the funeral, and
afterwards she sends in her claim to the companies. On
one occasion in Dr. Myers's experience, he told me, the
alleged insured man was found later with his head blown
off, but when the wife identified the body, the claim had
been paid.
* * * * *
One afternoon, after I had been at Sing Sing five

months, I was taken from my cell, shackled hand and
foot, and sent, with fifty other convicts, to Auburn. When
I had been at Auburn prison about six months I grew
again exceedingly desperate, and made several wild and
8
ill-thought-out attempts to escape. I would take no back
talk from the keepers, and began to be feared by them.
One day I had a fight with another convict. He struck me
with an iron weapon, and I sent him to the hospital with
knife thrusts through several parts of his body. Although I
had been a thief all my life, and had done some strong
arm work, by nature I was not quarrelsome, and I have
never been so quick to fight as on my third term. I was
locked up in the dungeon for a week and fed on bread
and water in small quantities. After my release I was
confined to my cell for several days, and used to quarrel
with whoever came near me. The keepers began to
regard me as a desperate character, who would cause
them a great deal of trouble; and feared that I might
escape or commit murder at any time. One day, I
remember, a keeper threatened to club me with a heavy
stick he had. I laughed at him and told him to make a
good job of it, for I had some years still to serve, and if he
did not kill me outright, I would have plenty of time to get
back at him. The cur pigged it (weakened). They really
wanted to get rid of me, however, and one morning the
opportunity came.
I was feeling especially bad that morning and

went to see the doctor, who told me I had consumption,
and transferred me to the consumptive ward in the
prison. There the doctor and four screws came to my
bedside, and the doctor inserted a hyperdermic needle
into my arm. When I awoke I found myself in the isolated
9
In the Mad-House
dungeon, nicknamed the Keeley Cure by the convicts,
where I was confined again for several weeks, and had a
hyperdermic injection every day. At the end of that time I
was taken before the doctors, who pronounced me
insane. With three other convicts who were said to be
"pipes" (insane) I was shackled hand and foot, put on a
train and taken to the asylum for the criminal insane at
Matteawan. I had been in bad places before, but at
Matteawan I first learned what it is to be in Hell.
Why was I put in the Pipe House? Was I insane?
In one way I have been insane all my life, until

recently. There is a disease called astigmatism of the
conscience, and I have been sorely afflicted with that. I
have always had the delusion, until the last few months,
that it is well to "do" others. In that way I certainly was
"pipes." And in another way, too, I was insane. After a
man has served many years in stir and has contracted all
the vices, he is not normal, even if he is not violently
insane. His brain loses its equilibrium, no matter how
strong-minded he may be, and he acquires astigmatism of
the mind, as well as of the conscience. The more
astigmatic he becomes, the more frequently he returns to
stir, where his disease grows worse, until he is prison-
mad.
To the best of my knowledge and belief I was not

insane in any definite way--no more so than are nine out
10
of ten of the men who had served as much time in prison
as I. I suppose I was not sent to the criminal insane asylum
because of a perverted conscience. The stir, I believe, is
supposed to cure that. Why did they send me to the mad-
house? I don't know, any more than my reader, unless it
was because I caused the keepers and doctors too much
trouble, or because for some reason or other they wanted
to do me.
But whether I had a delusion or not--and I am

convinced myself that I have always been right above the
ears--there certainly are many perfectly sane men
confined in our state asylums for the criminal insane.
Indeed, if all the fake lunatics were sent back to prison, it
would save the state the expense of building so many
hospitals. But I suppose the politicians who want
patronage to distribute would object.
Many men in prison fake insanity, as I have

already explained. Many of them desire to be sent to
Matteawan or Dannemora insane asylums, thinking they
will not need to work there, will have better food and can
more easily escape. They imagine that there are no stool-
pigeons in the pipe-house, and that they can therefore
easily make their elegant (escape). When they get to the
mad-house they find themselves sadly mistaken. They find
many sane stool-pigeons there, and their plans for escape
are piped off as well there as in stir. And in other ways, as
I shall explain, they are disappointed. The reason the
11
In the Mad-House
"cons" don't get on to the situation in the mad-house
through friends who have been there is that they think
those who have been in the insane asylum are really
pipes. When I got out of the mad-house and told my
friends about it, they were apt to remark, laconically,
"He's in a terrible state." When they get there
themselves, God help them. I will narrate what happened
to me, and some of the horrible things I saw there.
After my pedigree was taken I was given the

regulation clothes, which, in the mad-house, consist of a
blue coat, a pair of grey trousers, a calico shirt, socks and
a pair of slippers. I was then taken to the worst violent
ward in the institution, where I had a good chance to
observe the real and the fake lunatics. No man or woman,
not even an habitual criminal, can conceive, unless he has
been there himself, what our state asylums are. My very
first experience was a jar. A big lunatic, six feet high and a
giant in physique, came up to me in the ward, and said:
"I'll kick your head off, you ijit (idiot). What the ---- did you
come here for? Why didn't you stop off at Buffalo?" I
thought that if all the loons were the size of this one I
wasn't going to have much show in that violent ward; for
I weighed only one hundred and fifteen pounds at the
time. But the big lunatic changed his note, smiled and
said: "Say, Charley, have you got any marbles?" I said,
"No," and then, quick as a flash, he exclaimed: "Be Japes,
you don't look as if you had enough brains to play them."
12
I had been in this ward, which was under the
Head Attendant, nick-named "King" Kelly, for two days,
when I was taken away to a dark room in which a
demented, scrofulous negro had been kept. For me not
even a change of bed-clothing was made. In rooms on
each side of me were epileptics and I could hear,
especially when I was in the ward, raving maniacs
shouting all about me. I was taken back to the first ward,
where I stayed for some time. I began to think that prison
was heaven in comparison with the pipe house. The food
was poor, we were not supposed to do any work, and we
were allowed only an hour in the yard. We stayed in our
ward from half past five in the morning until six o'clock at
night, when we went to bed. It was then I suffered most,
for there was no light and I could not read. In stir I could
lie on my cot and read, and soothe my nerves. But in the
mad-house I was not allowed to read, and lay awake
continually at night listening to the idiots bleating and the
maniacs raving about me. The din was horrible, and I am
convinced that in the course of time even a sane man
kept in an insane asylum will be mad; those who are a
little delusional will go violently insane. My three years in
an insane asylum convinced me that, beyond doubt, a
man contracts a mental ailment just as he contracts a
physical disease on the outside. I believe in mental as well
as physical contagion, for I have seen man after man, a
short time after arriving at the hospital, become a raving
maniac.
13
In the Mad-House
For weeks and months I had a terrible fight with
myself to keep my sanity. As I had no books to take up my
thoughts I got into the habit of solving an arithmetical
problem every day. If it had not been for my persistence
in this mental occupation I have no doubt I should have
gone violently insane.
It is only the sensitive and intelligent man who,

when placed in such a predicament, really knows what
torture is. The cries of the poor demented wretches
about me were a terrible lesson. They showed me more
than any other experience I ever passed through the error
of a crooked life.
I met many a man in the violent ward who had

been a friend of mine and good fellow on the outside.
Now the brains of all of them were gone, they had the
most horrible and the most grotesque delusions. But
horrible or grotesque they were always piteous. If I were
to point out the greatest achievement that man has
accomplished to distinguish him from the brute, it would
be the taking care of the insane. A child is so helpless that
when alms is asked for his maintenance it is given
willingly, for every man and woman pities and loves a
child. A lunatic is as helpless as a child, and often not any
more dangerous. The maniac is misrepresented, for in
Matteawan and Dannemora taken together there are
very few who are really violent.
14
And now I come to the most terrible part of my
narrative, which many people will not believe--and that is
the cruelty of the doctors and attendants, cruelty
practiced upon these poor, deluded wretches.
With my own eyes I saw scores of instances of

abuse while I was at Matteawan and later at Dannemora.
It is, I believe, against the law to strike an insane man, but
any man who has ever been in these asylums knows how
habitual the practice is. I have often seen idiots in the
same ward with myself violently attacked and beaten by
several keepers at once. Indeed, some of us used to
regard a beating as our daily medicine. Patients are not
supposed to do any work; but those who refused to clean
up the wards and do other work for the attendants were
the ones most likely to receive little mercy.
I know how difficult it is for the public to believe

that some of their institutions are as rotten as those of
the Middle Ages; and when a man who has been both in
prison and in the pipe house is the one who makes the
accusation, who will believe him? Of course, his testimony
on the witness stand is worthless. I will merely call
attention, however, to the fact that the great majority of
the insane are so only in one way. They have some
delusion, but are otherwise capable of observation and of
telling the truth. I will also add that the editor of this book
collected an immense number of instances of brutality
from several men, besides myself, who had spent years
15
In the Mad-House
there, and that those instances also pointed to the
situation that I describe. Moreover, I can quote the
opinion of the writer on criminology--Josiah Flynt--as
corroborative of my statements. He has said in my
presence and in that of the editor of this book, Mr.
Hapgood, that his researches have led him to believe that
the situation in our state asylums for the criminal insane is
horrible in the extreme.
Indeed, why shouldn't these attendants be

brutal? In the first place, there is very little chance of a
come-back, for who will believe men who have ever been
shut up in an insane asylum? And very often these
attendants themselves are unhinged mentally. To begin
with, they are men of low intelligence, as is shown by the
fact that they will work for eighteen dollars a month, and
after they have associated with insane men for years they
are apt to become delusional themselves. Taking care of
idiots and maniacs is a strain on the intelligence of the
best men. Is it any wonder that the ordinary attendant
often becomes nervous and irascible, and will fly at a poor
idiot who won't do dirty work or whose silly noises get on
his nerves? I have noticed attendants who, after they had
been in the asylum a few months, acquired certain insane
characteristics, such as a jerking of the head from one
side to the other, looking up at the sky, cursing some
imaginary person, and walking with the body bent almost
double.
16
Early in my stay at Matteawan I saw something
that made me realize I was up against a hard joint. An
attendant in the isolation ward had an incurable patient
under him, whom he was in the habit of compelling to do
his work for him, such as caning chairs and cleaning
cuspidors. The attendants had two birds in his room, and
he used to make Mickey, the incurable idiot, clean out the
cage for him. One day Mickey put the cages under the
boiling water, to clean them as usual. The attendant had
forgot to remove the birds, and they were killed by the
hot water. Another crank, who was in the bath room with
Mickey, spied the dead pets, and he and Mickey began to
eat them. They were picking the bones when the
attendant and two others discovered them--and treated
them as a golfer treats his golf-balls.
Another time I saw an insane epileptic patient try

to prevent four attendants from playing cards in the ward
on Sunday. He was delusional on religious subjects and
thought the attendants were doing wrong. The reward he
received for caring for the religious welfare of his keepers
was a kick in the stomach by one of the attendants, while
another hit him in the solar plexus, knocking him down,
and a third jammed his head on the floor until the blood
flowed. After he was unconscious a doctor gave him a
hyperdermic injection and he was put to bed. How often,
indeed, have I seen men knocked out by strong arm work,
or strung up to the ceiling with a pair of suspenders! How
often have I seen them knocked unconscious for a time or
17
In the Mad-House
for eternity--yes--for eternity, for insane men sometimes
do die, if they are treated too brutally. In that case, the
doctor reports the patient as having died of consumption,
or some other disease. I have seen insane men turned
into incurable idiots by the beatings they have received
from the attendants. I saw an idiot boy knocked down
with an iron pot because he insisted on chirping out his
delusion. I heard a patient about to be beaten by four
attendants cry out: "My God, you won't murder me?" and
the answer was, "Why not? The Coroner would say you
died of dysentery." The attendants tried often to force
fear into me by making me look at the work they had
done on some harmless lunatic. I could multiply instances
of this kind. I could give scores of them, with names of
attendants and patients, and sometimes even the dates
on which these horrors occurred. But I must cut short this
part of my narrative. Every word of it, as sure as I have a
poor old mother, is true, but it is too terrible to dwell
upon, and will probably not be believed. It will be put
down as one of my delusions, or as a lie inspired by the
desire of vengeance.
Certainly I made myself obnoxious to the

authorities in the insane asylum, for I objected vigorously
to the treatment of men really insane. It is as dangerous
to object to the curriculum of a mad-house in the State of
New York as it is to find fault with the running of the
government in Russia. In stir I never saw such brutality as
takes place almost every day in the pipe house. I reported
18
what I saw, and though I was plainly told to mind my own
business, I continued to object every time I saw a chance,
until soon the petty spite of the attendants was turned
against me. I was reported continually for things I had not
done, I had no privileges, not even opium or books, and
was so miserable that I repeatedly tried to be transferred
back to prison. A doctor once wrote a book called _Ten
Years in a Mad-House_, in which he says "God help the
man who has the attendants against him; for these
demented brutes will make his life a living hell." Try as I
might, however, I was not transferred back to stir, partly
because of the sane stool-pigeons who, in order to curry
favor with the attendants, invented lies about attempts
on my part to escape. If I had not had such a poor opinion
of the powers that be and had stopped finding fault I
should no doubt have been transferred back to what was
beginning to seem to me, by contrast, a delightful place--
state's prison.
The all absorbing topic to me in the pipe house

was paresis. I thought a great deal about it, and observed
the cranks about me continually. I noticed that almost all
insane persons are musical, that they can hum a tune
after hearing it only once. I suppose the meanest faculty
in the human brain is that of memory, and that idiots,
lunatics and madmen learn music so easily because that
part of the brain which is the seat of memory is the only
one that is active; the other intellectual qualities being
dead, so that the memory is untroubled by thought.
19
In the Mad-House
I was often saddened at the sight of poor
George, who had been a good dip and an old pal of mine.
When he first saw me in the pipe house he asked me
about his girl. I told him she was still waiting, and he said:
"Why doesn't she visit me then?" When I replied: "Wait
awhile," he smiled sadly, and said: "I know." He then put
his finger to his head, and, hanging his head, his face
suddenly became a blank. I was helpless to do anything
for him. I was so sorry for him sometimes that I wanted to
kill him and myself and end our misery.
Another friend of mine thought he had a number

of white blackbirds and used to talk to them excitedly
about gold. This man had a finely shaped head. I have
read in a book of phrenology that a man's intelligence can
be estimated by the shape of his head. I don't think this
theory amounts to anything, for most of the insane men I
knew had good heads. I have formed a little theory of my
own (I am as good a quack as anybody else) about
insanity. I used to compare a well shaped lunatic's head to
a lady's beautiful jewel box from which my lady's maid
had stolen the precious stones. The crank's head
contained both quantity and quality of brains, but the
grey matter was lacking. The jewel box and the lunatic's
head were both beautiful receptacles, but the value had
flown.
Another lunatic, a man named Hogan, thought

that girls were continually bothering him. "Now go away,
20
Liz, and leave me alone," he would say. One day a lady
about fifty years old visited the hospital with
Superintendent Allison, and came to the violent ward
where Hogan and I were. She was not a bit afraid, and
went right up to Hogan and questioned him. He
exclaimed, excitedly, "Go away, Meg. You're disfigured
enough without my giving you another sockdolager." She
stayed in the ward a long while and asked many
questions. She had as much nerve as any lady I ever saw.
As she and Allison were leaving the ward, Hogan said:
"Allison, chain her up. She is a bad egg." The next day I
learned that this refined, delicate and courageous woman
had once gone to war with her husband, a German prince,
who had been with General Sherman on his memorable
march to the sea. She was born an American, and
belonged to the Jay family, but was now the Princess
Salm-Salm.
The most amusing crank (if the word amusing

can be used of an insane man) in the ward was an
Englishman named Alec. He was incurably insane, but a
good musician and mathematician. One of his delusions
was that he was the sacred camel in the London Zoo. His
mortal enemy was a lunatic named Jimmy White, who
thought he was a mule. Jimmy often came to me and said:
"You didn't give your mule any oats this morning." He
would not be satisfied until I pretended to shoe him. Alec
had great resentment for Jimmy because when Alec was
a camel in the London Zoo Jimmy used to prevent the
21
In the Mad-House
ladies and the kids from giving him sweets. When Jimmy
said: "I never saw the man before," Alec replied
indignantly, "I'm no man. I'm a sacred camel, and I won't
be interfered with by an ordinary, common mule, like
you."
There are divers sorts of insanity. I had an

interview with a doctor, a high officer in the institution,
which convinced me, perhaps without reason, that
insanity was not limited to the patients and attendants.
One day an insane man was struck by an attendant in the
solar plexus. He threw his hands up in the air, and cried:
"My God, I'm killed." I said to another man in the ward:
"There's murder." He said: "How do you know?" I replied:
"I have seen death a few times." In an hour, sure enough,
the report came that the insane man was dead. A few
days later I was talking with the doctor referred to and I
said:
"I was an eye-witness of the assault on D----." And

I described the affair.
"You have been reported to me repeatedly," he

replied.
"By whom?" I asked, "attendants or patients?"
"By patients," he replied.
22
"Surely," I remarked, "you don't believe half
what insane men tell you, do you? Doctor, these same
patients (in reality sane stool-pigeons) that have been
reporting me, have accused you of every crime in the
calendar."
"Oh, but," he said, "I am an old man and the

father of a family."
"Doctor," I continued, "do you believe that a man

can be a respectable physician and still be insane?"
"What do you mean?" he said.
"In California lately," I replied, "A superintendent

of an insane asylum has been accused of murder, arson,
rape and peculation. This man, too, was more than fifty,
had a mother, a wife and children, and belonged to a
profession which ought to be more sympathetic with a
patient than the church with its communicants. When a
man will stoop to such crimes, is it not possible that there
is a form of mental disease called partial, periodical
paralysis of the faculty humane, and was not Robert Louis
Stevenson right when he wrote Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde ?"
The doctor grabbed me by the wrist and

shouted: "Don't you dare to tell anybody about this
interview." I looked into his eyes and smiled, for I am
23
In the Mad-House
positive that at that moment I looked into the eyes of a
madman.
King Kelly, an attendant who had been on duty in

insane asylums for many years, was very energetic in
trying to get information from the stool-pigeons. The
patients used to pass notes around among themselves,
and the attendants were always eager to get hold of
those notes, expecting to find news of beats (escapes)
about to be attempted. I knew that King Kelly was eager
to discover "beats" and as I, not being a stool-pigeon, was
in bad odor with him, I determined to give him a jar. So
one day I wrote him the following note:
"Mr. Kelly; You have been in this hospital for

years. The socks and suspenders which should go to the
patients are divided impartially between you and the
other attendants. Of the four razors, which lately arrived
for patients, two are in your trunk, one you sent to your
brother in Ireland, and the fourth you keep in the ward
for show, in case the doctor should be coming around."
That night when I was going to bed I slipped the note into
the Kings hand and whispered: "There's going to be a
beat tonight." The King turned pale, and hurriedly
ordered the men in the ward to bed, so that he could read
the note. Before reading it he handed it to a doctor, to be
sure to get the credit of stopping the beat as soon as
possible. The doctor read it and gave the King the laugh.
In the morning, when the doctor made his rounds, Mr.
24
Kelly said to him: "We have one or two funny men in the
ward who, instead of robbing decent people, could have
made their fortunes at Tony Pastor's." The result was that
the doctor put me down for three or four new delusions.
Knowing the Celtic character thoroughly I used to crack
many a joke on the King. I would say to another patient,
as the King passed: "If it hadn't been for Kelly we should
have escaped that time sure." That would make him wild.
My gift of ridicule was more than once valuable to me in
the mad-house.
But I must say that the King was pretty kind

when a patient was ill. When I was so ill and weak that I
didn't care whether I died or not, the old King used to
give me extras,--milk, eggs and puddings. And in his heart
the old man hated stool-pigeons, for by nature he was a
dynamiter and believed in physical force and not mental
treachery.
The last few months I served in the insane asylum

was at Dannemora, where I was transferred from
Matteawan. The conditions at the two asylums are much
the same. While at Dannemora I continued my efforts to
be sent back to stir to finish my sentence, and used to talk
to the doctors about it as often as I had an opportunity. A
few months before I was released I had an interview with
a Commissioner--the first one in three years, although I
had repeatedly demanded to talk to one.
25
In the Mad-House
"How is it," I said, "that I am not sent back to
stir?"
He turned to the ward doctor and asked: "What

is this mans condition?"
"Imaginary wrongs," replied the doctor.
That made me angry, and I remarked,

sarcastically: "It is curious that when a man tries to make
a success at little things he is a dead failure."
"What do you mean?" asked the Superintendent,

trying to feel me out for a new delusion.
I pointed to the doctor and said: "Only a few

years ago this man was interlocutor in an amateur
minstrel troupe. As a barn-stormer he was a failure. Since
he has risen to the height of being a mad-house doctor he
is a success."
Then I turned to the Commissioner and said: "Do

you know what constitutes a cure in this place and in
Matteawan?"
"I'd like to know," he replied.
26
"Well," I said, "when a man stoops to carrying
tales on other patients and starts in to work cleaning
cuspidors, then, and not till then, he is cured. Everybody
knows that, in the eyes of attendants and doctors, the
worst delusions in the asylum are wanting to go home,
demanding more food, and disliking to do dirty work and
bear tales."
I don't know whether my talk with the

Commissioner had any effect or not, but a little while
after that, when my term expired, I was released. I had
been afraid I should not be, for very often a man is kept in
the asylum long after his term expires, even though he is
no more insane than I was. When the stool-pigeons heard
that I was to be released they thought I must have been a
rat under cover, and applied every vile name to me.
I had been in hell for several years; but even hell

has its uses. When I was sent up for my third term, I
thought I should not live my bit out, and that, as long as I
did live, I should remain a grafter at heart. But the pipe
house cured me, or helped to cure me, of a vice which, if
it had continued, would have made me incapable of
reform, even if I had lived. I mean the opium habit. Before
I went to the mad-house there had been periods when I
had little opium, either because I could not obtain it, or
because I was trying to knock it off. My sufferings in
consequence had been violent, but the worst moral and
physical torture that has ever fallen to my lot came to me
27
In the Mad-House
after I had entered the pipe house; for I could practically
get no opium. That deprivation, added to the horrors I
saw every day, was enough to make any man crazy. At
least, I thought so at the time. I must have had a good
nervous system to have passed through it all.
Insufficient hop is almost as bad as none at all.

During my first months in the madhouse, the doctor
occasionally took pity on me and gave me a little of the
drug, but taken in such small quantities it was worse than
useless. He used to give me sedatives, however, which
calmed me for a time. Occasionally, too, I would get a
little hop from a trusty, who was a friend of mine, and I
had smuggled in some tablets of morphine from stir; but
the supply was soon exhausted, and I saw that the only
thing to do was to knock it off entirely. This I did, and
made no more attempts to obtain the drug. For the last
two years in the asylum I did not have a bit of it. I can not
describe the agonies I went through. Every nerve and
muscle in my body was in pain most of the time, my
stomach was constantly deranged, my eyes and mouth
exuded water, and I could not sleep. Thoughts of suicide
were constant with me. Of course, I could never have
given up this baleful habit through my own efforts alone.
The pipe house forced me to make the attempt, and after
I had held off for two years, I had enough strength to
continue in the right path, although even now the longing
for it returns to me. It does not seem possible that I can
ever go back to it, for that terrible experience in the mad-
28
house made an indelible impression. I shall never be able
to wipe out those horrors entirely from my mind. When
under the influence of opium I used frequently to imagine
I smelled the fragrance of white flowers. I never smell
certain sweet perfumes now without the whole horrible
experience rushing before my mind. Life in a mad-house
taught me a lesson I shall never forget.
29
CHAPTER XIV.
Out of Hell.
I left Dannemora asylum for the criminal insane

on a cold winter morning. I had my tickets to New York,
but not a cent of money. Relatives or friends are
supposed to provide that. I was happy, however, and I
made a resolution, which this time I shall keep, never to
go to stir or the pipe house again. I knew very well that I
could never repeat such an experience without going
mad in reality; or dying. The first term I spent in stir I had
my books and a new life of beauty and thought to think
about. Once for all I had had that experience. The thought
of going through prison routine again--the damp cells, the
poor food, the habits contracted, with the mad-house at
the end--no, that could never be for me again. I felt this,
as I heard the loons yelling good-bye to me from the
windows. I looked at the gloomy building and said to
myself: "I have left Hell, and I'll shovel coal before I go
back. All the ideas that brought me here I will leave
behind. In the future I will try to get all the good things
out of life that I can--the really good things, a glimpse of
which I got through my books. I think there is still
sufficient grey matter in my brain for that."
I took the train for New York, but stopped off at

Plattsburg and Albany to deliver some messages from the
31
Out of Hell
poor unfortunates to their relatives. I arrived in New York
at twelve o'clock at night, having had nothing to eat all
day. My relatives and friends had left the station, but
were waiting up for me in my brother's house. This time I
went straight to them. My father had died while I was in
the pipe house, and now I determined that I would be at
last a kind son to the mother who had never deserted me.
I think she felt that I had changed and the tears that
flowed from her eyes were not all from unhappiness. She
told me about my father's last illness, and how cheerful
he had been. "I bought him a pair of new shoes a month
before he died," she said. "He laughed when he saw them
and said: 'What extravagance! To buy shoes for a dying
man!'"
Living right among them, I met again, of course,

many of my old companions in crime, and found that
many of them had thought I was dead. It was only the
other day that I met "Al", driving a peddlers wagon. He,
like me, had squared it. "I thought you died in the pipe
house, Jim," he said. This has happened to me a dozen
times since my return. I had spent so much time in stir
that the general impression among the guns at home
seemed to be that I had "gone up the escape."
As a general thing I found that guns who had

squared it and become prosperous had never been very
successful grafters. Some of the best box-men and
burglars in the business are now bar-tenders in saloons
32
owned by former small fry among the dips. There are
waiters now in saloons and concert halls on the bowery
who were far cleverer thieves than the men who employ
them, and who are worth thousands. Hungry Joe is an
instance. Once he was King of confidence men, and on
account of his great plausibility got in on a noted person,
on one occasion, for several thousand dollars. And now
he will beg many a favor of men he would not look at in
the old days.
A grafter is jealous, suspicious and vindictive. I

had always known that, but never realized it so keenly as I
have since my return from the mad-house. Above
everything else a grafter is suspicious, whether he has
squared it or not--suspicious of his pals and of everybody
else. When my old pals saw that I was not working with
them, they wondered what my private graft was. When I
told them I was on the level and was looking for a job,
they either laughed or looked at me with suspicion in
their eyes. They saw I was looking good (well-dressed)
and they could not understand it. They put me down,
some of them, as a stool-pigeon. They all feel instinctively
that I am no longer with them, and most of them have
given me the frosty mit. Only the bums who used to be
grafters sail up to me in the Bowery. They have not got
enough sense left even for suspicion. The dips who hang
out in the thieves' resorts are beginning to hate me; not
because I want to injure them, for I don't, but because
they think I do. I told one of them, an old friend, that I
33
Out of Hell
was engaged in some literary work. He was angry in an
instant and said: "You door mat thief. You couldn't get
away with a coal-scuttle."
One day I was taking the editor of this book

through the Bowery, pointing out to him some of my old
resorts, when I met an old pal of mine, who gave me the
glad hand. We had a drink, and I, who was feeling good,
started in to jolly him a little. He had told me about an old
pal of ours who had just fallen for a book and was
confined in a Brooklyn jail. I took out a piece of "copy"
paper and took the address, intending to pay a visit to
him, for everybody wants sympathy. What a look went
over that grafter's face! I saw him glance quickly at the
editor and then at me, and I knew then he had taken
alarm, and probably thought we were Pinkerton men, or
something as bad. I tried to carry it off with a laugh, for
the place was full of thieves, and told him I would get him
a job on a newspaper. He answered hastily that he had a
good job in the pool-room and was on the level. He
started in to try to square it with my companion by saying
that he "adored a man who had a job." A little while
afterwards he added that he hated anybody who would
graft after he had got an honest job. Then, to wind up his
little game of squaring himself, he ended by declaring
that he had recently obtained a very good position.
That was one of the incidents that queered me

with the more intelligent thieves. He spread the news,
34
and whenever I meet one of that gang on the Bowery I
get the cold shoulder, a gun is so mighty quick to grow
suspicious. A grafter who follows the business for years is
a study in psychology, and his two most prominent
characteristics are fear and suspicion. If some stool-
pigeon tips him off to the police, and he is sent to stir, he
invariably suspects the wrong person. He tells his friends
in stir that "Al done him," and pretty soon poor Al, who
may be an honest thief, is put down as a rat. If Al goes to
stir very often the result is a cutting match between the
two.
There are many convicts in prison who lie awake

at night concocting stories about other persons, accusing
them of the vilest of actions. If the prisoner can get hold
of a Sunday newspaper he invariably reads the society
news very carefully. He can tell more about the Four
Hundred than the swells will ever know about
themselves; and he tells very little good of them. Such
stories are fabricated in prison and repeated out of it.
When I was in Auburn stir I knew a young fellow

named Sterling, as straight a thief as ever did time. He had
the courage of a grenadier and objected to everything
that was mean and petty. He therefore had many enemies
in prison, and they tried to make him unpopular by
accusing him of a horrible crime. The story reached my
ears and I tried to put a stop to it, but I only did him the
more harm. When Sterling heard the tale he knocked one
35
Out of Hell
of his traducers senseless with an iron bar. Tongues
wagged louder than ever and one day he came to me and
talked about it and I saw a wild look in his eyes. His
melancholia started in about that time, and he began to
suspect everybody, including me. His enemies put the
keepers against him and they made his life almost
unbearable. Generally the men that tip off keepers to the
alleged violent character of some convict are the worst
stool-pigeons in the prison. Even the Messiah could not
pass through this world without arousing the venom of
the crowd. How in the name of common sense, then,
could Sterling, or I, or any other grafter expect otherwise
than to be traduced? It was the politicians who were the
cause of Christ's trials; and the politicians are the same to-
day as they were then. They have very little brains, but
they have the low cunning which is the first attribute of
the human brute. They pretend to be the people's
advisers, but pile up big bank accounts. Even the convict
scum that come from the lower wards of the city have all
the requisites of the successful politician. Nor can one say
that these criminals are of low birth, for they trace their
ancestors back for centuries. The fact that convicts
slander one another with glee and hear with joy of the
misfortunes of their fellows, is a sign that they come from
a very old family; from the wretched human stock that
demanded the crucifixion of Christ.
This evil trait, suspiciousness, is something I

should like to eliminate from my own character. Even now
36
I am afflicted with it. Since my release I often have the old
feeling come over me that I am being watched; and
sometimes without any reason at all. Only recently I was
riding on a Brooklyn car, when a man sitting opposite
happened to glance at me two or three times. I gave him
an irritated look. Then he stared at me, to see what was
the matter, I suppose. That was too much, and I asked
him, with my nerves on edge, if he had ever seen me
before. He said "No", with a surprised look, and I felt
cheap, as I always do after such an incident. A neighbor of
mine has a peculiar habit of watching me quietly
whenever I visit his family. I know that he is ignorant of
my past but when he stares at me, I am rattled. I begin to
suspect that he is studying me, wondering who I am. The
other day I said to him, irritably: "Mr. K----, you have a bad
habit of watching people." He laughed carelessly and I,
getting hot, said: "Mr. K---- when I visit people it is not
with the intention of stealing anything." I left the house in
a huff and his sister, as I afterwards found, rebuked him
for his bad manners.
Indeed, I have lost many a friend by being over

suspicious. I am suspicious even of my family. Sometimes
when I sit quietly at home with my mother in the evening,
as has grown to be a habit with me, I see her look at me. I
begin immediately to think that she is wondering whether
I am grafting again. It makes me very nervous, and I
sometimes put on my hat and go out for a walk, just to be
alone. One day, when I was in stir, my mother visited me,
37
Out of Hell
as she always did when they gave her a chance. In the
course of our conversation she told me that on my
release I had better leave the city and go to some place
where I was not known. "For," she said, "your character,
my boy, is bad." I grabbed her by the arm and exclaimed:
"Who is it that is circulating these d---- stories about me?"
My poor mother merely meant, of course, that I was
known as a thief, but I thought some of the other
convicts had slandered me to her. It was absurd, of
course, but the outside world cannot understand how
suspicious a grafter is. I have often seen a man, who
afterwards became insane, begin being queer through
suspiciousness.
Well, as I have said, I found the guns suspicious

of me, when I told them I had squared it, or when I
refused to say anything about my doings. Of course I
don't care, for I hate the Bowery now and everything in it.
Whenever I went, as I did several times with my editor, to
a gun joint, a feeling of disgust passed over me. I pity my
old pals, but they no longer interest me. I look upon them
as failures. I have seen a new light and I shall follow it.
Whatever the public may think of this book, it has already
been a blessing to me. For it has been honest work that I
and my friend the editor have done together, and leads
me to think that there may yet be a new life for me. I feel
now that I should prefer to talk and associate with the
meanest workingman in this city than with the swellest
thief. For a long time I have really despised myself. When
38
old friends and relatives look at me askance I say to
myself: "How can I prove to them that I am not the same
as I was in the past?" No wonder the authorities thought I
was mad. I have spent the best years of my life behind the
prison bars. I could have made out of myself almost
anything I wanted, for I had the three requisites of
success: personal appearance, health and, I think, some
brains. But what have I done? After ruining my life, I have
not even received the proverbial mess of pottage. As I
look back upon my life both introspectively and
retrospectively I do not wonder that society at large
despises the criminal.
I am not trying to point a moral or pose as a

reformer. I cannot say that I quit the old life because of
any religious feeling. I am not one of those who have
reformed by finding Jesus at the end of a gas pipe which
they were about to use as a black jack on a citizen, just in
order to finger his long green. I only saw by painful
experience that there is nothing in a life of crime. I ran up
against society, and found that I had struck something
stronger and harder than a stone wall. But it was not that
alone that made me reform. What was it? Was it the
terrible years I spent in prison? Was it the confinement in
a mad-house, where I daily saw old pals of mine become
drivelling idiots? Was it my reading of the great authors,
and my becoming acquainted with the beautiful thoughts
of the great men of the world? Was it a combination of
these things? Perhaps so, but even that does not entirely
39
Out of Hell
explain it, does not go deep enough. I have said that I am
not religious, and I am not. And yet I have experienced
something indefinable, which I suppose some people
might call an awakening of the soul. What is that, after all,
but the realization that your way of life is ruining you even
to the very foundation of your nature?
Perhaps, after all, I am not entirely lacking in

religion; for certainly the character of Christ strongly
appeals to me. I don't care for creeds, but the personality
of the Nazarene, when stripped of the aroma of divinity,
appeals to all thinking men, I care not whether they are
atheists, agnostics or sceptics. Any man that has
understanding reveres the life of Christ, for He practiced
what He preached and died for humanity. He was a
perfect specimen of manhood, and had developed to the
highest degree that trait which is lacking in most all men--
the faculty humane.
I believe that a time comes in the lives of many

grafters when they desire to reform. Some do reform for
good and all, and I shall show the world that I am one of
them; but the difficulties in the way are great, and many
fall again by the wayside.
They come out of prison marked men. Many

observers can tell an ex-convict on sight. The lock-step is
one of the causes. It gives a man a peculiar gait which he
will retain all his life. The convicts march close together
40
and cannot raise their chests. They have to keep their
faces turned towards the screw. Breathing is difficult, and
most convicts suffer in consequence from catarrh, and a
good many from lung trouble. Walking in lock-step is not
good exercise, and makes the men nervous. When the
convict is confined in his cell he paces up and down. The
short turn is bad for his stomach, and often gets on his
mind. That short walk will always have control of me. I
cannot sit down now to eat or write, without jumping up
every five minutes in order to take that short walk. I have
become so used to it that I do not want to leave the
house, for I can pace up and down in my room. I can take
that small stretch all day long and not be tired, but if I
walk a long straight distance I get very much fatigued.
When I wait for a train I always begin that short walk on
the platform. I have often caught myself walking just
seven feet one way, and then turning around and walking
seven feet in the opposite direction. Another physical
mark, caused by a criminal life rather than by a long
sojourn in stir, is an expressionless cast of countenance.
The old grafter never expresses any emotions. He has
schooled himself until his face is a mask, which betrays
nothing.
A much more serious difficulty in the way of

reform is the ex-convict's health which is always bad if a
long term of years has been served. Moreover, his brain
has often lost its equilibrium and powers of discernment.
When he gets out of prison his chance of being able to do
41
Out of Hell
any useful work is slight. He knows no trade, and he is not
strong enough to do hard day labor. He is given only ten
dollars, when he leaves stir, with which to begin life
afresh. A man who has served a long term is not steady
above the ears until he has been at liberty several
months; and what can such a man do with ten dollars? It
would be cheaper for the state in the end to give an ex-
convict money enough to keep him for several months;
for then a smaller percentage would return to stir. It
would give the man a chance to make friends, to look for
a job, and to show the world that he is in earnest.
A criminal who is trying to reform is generally a

very helpless being. He was not, to begin with, the
strongest man mentally, and after confinement is still less
so. He is preoccupied, suspicious and a dreamer, and
when he gets a glimpse of himself in all his naked realities,
is apt to become depressed and discouraged. He is easily
led, and certainly no man needs a good friend as much as
the ex-convict. He is distrusted by everybody, is apt to be
"piped off" wherever he goes, and finds it hard to get
work which he can do. There are hundreds of men in our
prisons to-day who, if they could find somebody who
would trust them and take a genuine interest in them,
would reform and become respectable citizens. That is
where the Tammany politician, whom I have called
Senator Wet Coin is a better man than the majority of
reformers. When a man goes to him and says he wants to
square it he takes him by the hand, trusts and helps him.
42
Wet Coin does not hand him a soup ticket and a tract nor
does he hold on tight to his own watch chain fearing for
his red super, hastily bidding the ex-gun to be with Jesus.
43
EDITOR'S POSTSCRIPT.
The life of the thief is at an end; and the life of

the man and good citizen has begun. For I am convinced
that Jim is strictly on the level, and will remain so. The
only thing yet lacking to make his reform sure is a job. I,
and those of my friends who are interested, have as yet
failed to find anything for him to do that is, under the
circumstances, desirable. The story of my
disappointments in this respect is a long one, and I shall
not tell it. I have learned to think that patience is the
greatest of the virtues; and of this virtue an ex-gun needs
an enormous amount. If Jim and his friends prove good in
this way, the job will come. But waiting is hard, for Jim is
nervous, in bad health, with an old mother to look after,
and with new ambitions which make keen his sense of
time lost.
One word about his character: I sometimes think

of my friend the ex-thief as "Light-fingered Jim"; and in
that name there lingers a note of vague apology. As he
told his story to me, I saw everywhere the mark of the
natural rogue, of the man grown with a roguish boy's
brain. The humor of much of his tale seemed to me
strong. I was never able to look upon him as a deliberate
malefactor. He constantly impressed me as gentle and
imaginative, impressionable and easily influenced, but not
naturally vicious or vindictive. If I am right, his reform is
nothing more or less than the coming to years of sober
45
Out of Hell
maturity. He is now thirty-five years old, and as he himself
puts it: "Some men acquire wisdom at twenty-one, others
at thirty-five, and some never."
The End
46

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The Autobiography of a Thief

Author: Hutchins Hapgood

"Oh, happy he who can still hope to emerge

Boyhood and Early Crime. ................................. 13

That this ex-convict, when a boy on the East Side

It was only after he had become a professional

I have been a professional thief for more than

I was born on the east side of New York City in

At that time, which is as far back as I can

I committed my first theft at the age of six. Older

Towards evening they explained to me how to

So I had to give up the till; but I hated to, for even

When I couldn't steal from the till any more, I

One of my biggest exploits as a small boy was

My greatest youthful disappointment came

When it came to contests with boys of my own

About this time I began to go to Sunday School,

Everything mischievous that happened at the

Although, as one can see from the above

Yes, I was more intelligent than my parents or

Certainly I did not realize my fate when I was a

It was then, too, that we moved again, this time

The result was that I grew to think the career of

If we could not get the money at home, either by

All this time I grew steadily bolder and more

I shall never forget the first time I ever saw a

It was an exciting occasion. Zack and I, who were

For the next two years, until I was fifteen, I made

In those days, and for several years later, Moll-

It was a time, too, before the great department

The fact that we were very young helped us

Shortly before I was fifteen years old I was "let

With my big rosy cheeks and bright eyes and

Even at the early age of fifteen I began to

But I always had great difficulty in saving "fall-

But the great reason why I never saved much

Although the girls meant very little to me until

In the morning I was arraigned in the police

My experience in the Tombs may fairly be called,

On my arrival in the Tombs, Mrs. Hill, the matron,

As I look back upon the food these young boys

Certainly the Gerry Society has its faults; but

While in the Tombs I experienced my first

It happened this way. On a May day, about two

If I had always been as earnest a liar as I was on

For a time--a short time--after I left the Tombs I

Although I was a disgrace at home, I was high

It was only when I was on the "hurry-up,"

A dip, as I have said, pays special attention to his

It was at this time, when I was a kid of fifteen,

The little Jewish lassie, named Annie, was born in

Sheenie Annie's graft broadened, and from

For she was an artist at "penny-weighting" and

I can give an example of how Sheenie Annie

Once Sheenie "fell" at this line of graft. She had

Sheenie Annie was such a good shop-lifter that,

To show what a good fellow she was, her

Two other girls whom I knew when I was fifteen

These three girls certainly were a crack-a-jack

After my experience in the Tombs I rose very