CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII. CHAPTER XIV. CHAPTER XV. CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XVIII. CHAPTER XIX. CHAPTER XX. CHAPTER XXI. CHAPTER XXII. CHAPTER XXIII. CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. 1 CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII. CHAPTER XIV. CHAPTER XV. CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XVIII. CHAPTER XIX. CHAPTER XX. CHAPTER XXI. CHAPTER XXII. CHAPTER XXIII. Danger! A True History of a Great City's by William Howe and Abraham Hummel The Project Gutenberg EBook of Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations, by William Howe and Abraham Hummel This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations The Veil Lifted, and Light Thrown on Crime and its Causes, and Criminals and their Haunts. Facts and Disclosures. Author: William Howe Abraham Hummel Release Date: February 29, 2008 [EBook #24717] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANGER! *** DANGER! A TRUE HISTORY OF A GREAT CITY'S WILES AND TEMPTATIONS THE VEIL LIFTED, AND LIGHT THROWN ON CRIME AND ITS CAUSES, AND Danger! A True History of a Great City's by William Howe and Abraham Hummel 2 CRIMINALS AND THEIR HAUNTS. FACTS AND DISCLOSURES BY HOWE & HUMMEL. BUFFALO: THE COURIER COMPANY, PRINTERS. 1886 (Scanned by someone at Lehigh University, OCRed/proofread/formatted by DIzzIE, Carriage return mule: Gaz, Direct all correspondence to DIzzIE, xcon0 @t yahoo d0.t c.0m Copy-text page scans available at: www.dizzy.ws/dangerscans.zip and www.rorta.net/textfiles/dangerscans.zip) PREFACE. It may not be amiss to remark, in explanation of the startling and sensational title chosen for this production, that logic has not yet succeeded in framing a title-page which shall clearly indicate the nature of a book. The greatest adepts have frequently taken refuge in some fortuitous word, which has served their purpose better than the best results of their analysis. So it was in the present case. "DANGER!" is a thrilling and warning word, suggestive of the locomotive headlight, and especially applicable to the subject matter of the following pages, in which the crimes of a great city are dissected and exposed from the arcanum or confessional of what we may be pardoned for designating the best-known criminal law offices in America. So much for the title. A few words as to the motif of the publication. Despite the efficiency of our police and the activity of our many admirable reforming and reclaiming systems, crime still abounds, while the great tide of social impurity continues to roll on with unabated velocity. Optimists and philanthropic dreamers in every age have pictured in glowing colors the gradual but sure approach of the millennium, yet we are, apparently, still as far from that elysium of purity and unselfishness as ever. Whenever the wolf and the lamb lie down together, the innocent bleater is invariably inside the other's ravenous maw. There may be and we have reason to know that there is a marked diminution in certain forms of crime, but there are others in which surprising fertility of resource and ingenuity of method but too plainly evince that the latest developments of science and skill are being successfully pressed into the service of the modern criminal. Increase of education and scientific skill not only confers superior facilities for the successful perpetration of crime, but also for its concealment. The revelations of the newspapers, from week to week, but too plainly indicate an undercurrent of vice and iniquity, whose depth and foulness defy all computation. We are not in accord with those pessimists who speak of New York as a boiling caldron of crime, without any redeeming features or hopeful elements. But our practice in the courts and our association with criminals of every kind, and the knowledge consequently gained of their history and antecedents, have demonstrated that, in a great city like New York, the germs of evil in human life are developed into the rankest maturity. As the eloquent Dr. Guthrie, in his great work, "The City, its Sins and its Sorrows," remarks: "Great cities many have found to be great curses. It had been well for many an honest lad and unsuspecting country girl that hopes of higher wages and opportunities of fortune, that the gay attire and gilded story of some acquaintance, had never turned their steps cityward, nor turned them from the simplicity and safety of their country home. Many a foot that once lightly pressed the heather or brushed the dewy grass has wearily trodden in darkness, guilt and remorse, on these city pavements. Happy had it been for many had they never exchanged the starry skies for the lamps of the town, nor had left their quiet villages for the throng and roar of the big city's streets. Weil for them had they heard no roar but the river's, whose winter flood it had been safer to breast; no roar but ocean's, whose stormiest waves it had been safer to ride, than encounter the flood of city temptations, which has Danger! A True History of a Great City's by William Howe and Abraham Hummel 3 wrecked their virtue and swept them into ruin." By hoisting the DANGER signal at the mast-head, as it were, we have attempted to warn young men and young women the future fathers and mothers of America against the snares and pitfalls of the crime and the vice that await the unwary in New York. Our own long and extensive practice at the bar has furnished most of the facts; some, again, are on file in our criminal courts of record; and some, as has already been hinted, have been derived from the confidential revelations of our private office. With the desire that this book shall prove a useful warning and potent monitor to those for whose benefit and instruction it has been designed, and in the earnest hope that, by its influence, some few may be saved from prison, penitentiary, lunatic asylum, or suicides' purgatory, it is now submitted to the intelligent readers of America, By the public's obedient servants, HOWE & HUMMEL. CONTENTS. Danger! A True History of a Great City's by William Howe and Abraham Hummel 4 CHAPTER I. Ancient and Modern Prisons Some of the City's Ancient Prisons How Malefactors were Formerly Housed Ancient Bridewells and Modern Jails, CHAPTER I. 5 CHAPTER II. Criminals and their Haunts The Past and Present Gangs of the City How and Where they Herd Prominent Characters that have passed into History, CHAPTER II. 6 CHAPTER III. Street Arabs of Both Sexes The Pretty Flower and News Girls The Young Wharf Rats and their eventful Lives How they all Live, where they Come From, and where they finally Finish their Career, CHAPTER III. 7 CHAPTER IV. Store Girls Their Fascinations, Foibles and Temptations, CHAPTER IV. 8 CHAPTER V. The Pretty Waiter Girl Concert Saloons and how they are Managed How the Pretty Waitresses Live and upon Whom, and how the Unwary are Fleeced and Beguiled A Midnight Visit to one of the Dives, CHAPTER V. 9 CHAPTER VI. Shoplifters Who they are and how they are made Their Methods of Operating and upon whom The Fashionable Kleptomaniac and her Opposite The Modern Devices of Female Thieves, CHAPTER VI. 10 [...]... German language a useful adjunct to the practice of a criminal lawyer in New York and gave promise of attaining a high rank as an advocate, Mr Howe made him his partner before he was admitted to the bar To-day, in stature, he is probably the smallest professional man in America; but size is not 'the standard of the man,' and if Abe's stature were in proportion to his merit he would be a veritable giant...CHAPTER VII 11 CHAPTER VII Kleptomania Extraordinary Revelations A Wealthy Kleptomaniac in the Toils of a Black-mailing Detective, CHAPTER VIII 12 CHAPTER VIII Panel Houses and Panel Thieves The Inmates The Victims The Gains Complete Exposure of the Manner of Operation, and how Unsuspecting Persons are Robbed, CHAPTER IX CHAPTER IX A Theatrical Romance Kate Fisher, the Famous Mazeppa, involved Manager... formed and never relinquished, I returned to the country of my birth My earliest essays at the American bar have been fairly and impartially told by another pen, and, as the autobiographical form of narrative has its limitations as well as its advantages, the reader will pardon me if in this place I drop the "ego" and quote: "On arriving here, Mr Howe entered the office of E H Seeley, Esq., one of our... deserving and worthy persons dwelling in the locality, quite a different type of humanity also makes its home there The neighborhood in question is comprised in Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth streets, and First avenue, and Avenues A, B and C It harbors a wild gang of lawbreakers, ready and willing to commit any kind of lawless act, in which the chances of escape are many and detection slight Notwithstanding... talk, and continued a subject of conversation for many weeks afterwards A number of ingenious, daring and highly-cultured train robbers, under the leadership of the notorious Ike Marsh, among whom was one who has since attained celebrity as an actor, boarded a train on the Hudson River Railroad, near Spuyten Duyvil, the spot immortalized by Washington Irving, and, entering the express car, bound and. .. dwelling in the Fourth and Sixth wards and streets in the vicinity of Catherine and Roosevelt There were among these two gangs of the city's representative "toughs," materials of a far different kind from the actual felon, but who were none the less dangerous, and among them may be CHAPTER II 33 classed many leaders of ward politics and volunteer fire companies, and from which Lew Baker and his victim, Bill... title of "Thieves' Nest." It is comparatively a safe thoroughfare in daylight, and after dark, if one is on constant guard, he may safely pass unharmed In the Fourth ward, just beyond the locality written about, was another terrible rendezvous for an equally desperate set of men It was known as Slaughter-house Point, and a criminal here was, for a time, safe from the police, as its many intricate streets... in 1863, at a salary of two dollars per week, and subsequently, in May, 1869, as my partner, have been told more than once in the public press Mr Hummel was born in Boston, July 27, 1849; came, with his parents, to this city at an early age; attended Public School No 15, on East Fifth street, and made my acquaintance on a January morning before he was fourteen years old I have at hand a newspaper clipping,... burglar, expert counterfeiter, adroit pickpocket, villainous sneak and panel thief, or daring and accomplished forger; hence crime, from being in a measure "protected," increased, criminals multiplied and prisons were made necessarily larger But this was years ago, and under a far different police system than that now in vogue, the merits and efficacy of which it will be both a duty and a pleasure hereafter... legal practitioners Here he remained one year, studying American law and practice with persistent assiduity, and frequently appearing in our courts, 'by grace,' until he was fully licensed And it may be here stated that out of a list of CHAPTER XXIII 28 over one hundred candidates for admission to the bar only eighteen passed, and in that number was included the young lawyer from London "His first case . *** DANGER! A TRUE HISTORY OF A GREAT CITY'S WILES AND TEMPTATIONS THE VEIL LIFTED, AND LIGHT THROWN ON CRIME AND ITS CAUSES, AND Danger! A True History. City's by William Howe and Abraham Hummel The Project Gutenberg EBook of Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations, by William